The scene repeated itself many times. Some animal—usually a puppy, but sometimes a large cat—would be placed in her cage, and she would kill it with increasingly ruthless efficiency. Wawa did not understand where they were coming from, or how they were getting past Tracksuit’s defenses. But she could feel the pack willing her to fight for them. And when Tracksuit put her on a strict exercise regimen, marching her endlessly on a treadmill with heavy chains on her shoulders, Wawa felt her body getting stronger. She was becoming an extension of this pack.
Every two weeks or so, Tracksuit let Cyrus out of his cage for another fight. Hours later, he would return, occasionally with a scratch, reeking with the blood, fur, and saliva of the rival he had vanquished. She would join the others in praising him.
One day, Wawa heard the tense voices of Tracksuit and his friend. They entered the room, Tracksuit carrying Cyrus’s hind legs, his friend carrying the front. Cyrus was barely conscious. His spine bent toward the floor with the weight of his stomach. His tail was shredded. One leg dangled as if the bones had been liquefied. His snout was a mask of dried blood. With a tenderness that Wawa had never seen before, the two men placed Cyrus in his cage and closed the gate.
The room where the pack slept was oppressively quiet for two days. Wawa occasionally whimpered, hoping that Cyrus would hear her. Sometimes he would move, and Wawa could feel everyone in the room tense up and try to listen, to see if Cyrus was attempting to speak to them. But the moment would pass. Upstairs, Tracksuit paced the floor, slamming things.
On the morning of the third day, Tracksuit opened Wawa’s cage and walked her to a room in the house where she had never been. The space had been cleared out, save for a small table in the center, which was just high enough for her to prop her belly on. The surface of the table was made of smooth wood, and the metal legs were bolted to the floorboards. Tracksuit fastened Wawa’s leash to the front of it. He then took another leash and tied her ankles to the back legs. She was in no mood to argue with him. She was already convinced that whatever he was doing had everything to do with Cyrus and the good of the pack.
Tracksuit left her under the buzzing fluorescent light, her tail to the door. About twenty minutes passed until he returned. Wawa picked up Cyrus’s scent right away. She spun her head as far as she could in order to see him. The great dog limped into the room, favoring his front right paw. Though the blood had been cleaned off him, the gash in his face was still raw and infected. Cyrus needed Tracksuit to push him along. Once the dog was close, Tracksuit retreated to a corner of the room and sat with his head between his knees. Cyrus was the broken one, but Tracksuit looked ready to die and turn to dust right there.
Cyrus limped closer to her, still emitting the alien scent of the dog that had crippled him. Wawa did not fully understand what was meant to happen next, but she knew that she and Cyrus were supposed to join together somehow, that this was how the pack would survive. This would be her greatest service to the others.
Cyrus placed his paws on her skin. She faced forward. But then, with a sickly tremor, he slid away from her and fell to the floor, his claw scraping along her ribs. Quickly, Tracksuit was upon him, cradling him in his arms, saying soothing things. She had never seen Tracksuit cry. But now water streamed down his stubbly cheeks, dripping onto Cyrus’s fur. Wawa could smell the salt, mixed with some alcohol. Tracksuit did not have the energy to release Wawa from her bonds. All he could do was rock Cyrus gently, saying he was sorry over and over. After a while, he stood up and carried Cyrus away. Wawa stared into the dog’s eyes, knowing it would be for the last time. The sun went down before Tracksuit returned, released her from the table, and took her back to her cage.
Wawa went to sleep that night knowing that the pack had been broken. It was the moment she became self-aware, when she saw the world as more than simply her immediate field of vision. There were other packs out there, she realized. The world was enormous, unfair, unknown but knowable, arranged by rules that did not always make sense. She wondered how she did not know these things before. And then she noticed that she was in the act of wondering, of using her mind to do more than track food and assess friends and foes. She considered the possibility that Cyrus had somehow passed these gifts on to her in their final moments together. She quickly dismissed the notion. Cyrus, she now understood, was a mere animal. She was moving beyond whatever he had been.
Lost in thought, Wawa did not notice that the hair had begun to fall away from her paws.
When Tracksuit opened her cage the next day, Wawa thought that he was letting her go. But she realized that he expected her to fight. She saw how easy it would be to escape—it was a matter of sprinting for the open door. She decided against it. She wanted to learn everything, to gather as much information as possible. Going with Tracksuit to the house at the end of the trail would be the best way to do it.
They arrived at the brightly lit building at the tree line. When she exited the van, Wawa immediately sought out the giant red objects attached to the front of the structure. The realization eased into her mind: they were letters, forming a word. The word represented a sound. The sound represented an idea, or a name, or a thing, or a place. The sign was speaking to her.
There was some commotion going on inside the building. The items on the shelves had been scattered about the white linoleum. People scooped up cans and boxes from the floor and display cases. The front window was broken, leaving a jagged hole large enough for a person to jump through.
“Holy shit,” Tracksuit said. Wawa had heard him. She could imagine the words hanging in the air like the bright red one that floated above. As they entered the trail, leaving the scene at the store behind, she wondered what the words meant.
The house at the end of the trail was not as noisy as it had been the last time. There were empty seats for the evening’s match. In the front row, right where she thought he would be, sat the man with the porkpie hat, his dead eye hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. Tracksuit prepped her, washing her down with a bucket of warm water. She faced the crowd. Everyone, she understood, was a sad, scared, powerful, emotional being like herself. They gazed out into the new world as she did: wondering, hoping, fearing, sometimes fighting back. She assessed her opponent, a jet-black dog. Probably younger than she was. Breathing heavily. Wawa wondered if he was undergoing the same changes, which led to another revelation: she was actually concerned about someone outside of the pack.
There is more than the pack, she thought.
Tracksuit slapped her on the side and said, “Go get him, girl.” Her eyes stayed on him. I am not part of his pack, she thought. She was Tracksuit’s slave. The great Cyrus and all the others were slaves. These fights were not protecting anyone. They were merely for sport. She stood still as she considered the awful cruelty of it all. The ways of the world could be learned, but they could also stamp you into the ground before you even noticed something was wrong.
The fight began. The dog charged at her. She parried him, shifting her weight so that he collided with the wall. He kept attacking. He was angry, probably starved or beaten. She noticed a barely healed gash on his left flank and realized that she might not be able to reason with him.
Stop, she said. Listen to me! But she was merely barking. The words were in her mind, but she could not speak them.
They’ve tricked us! she howled. Don’t you get it? We can get out of here!
The dog continued to surge forward. She focused on the throbbing artery in the dog’s neck. How unbelievable, she thought, that this weak point had been there the entire time, and the dogs had been taught to scrape and claw everything else.
I don’t want to hurt you! she said. Nothing. The dog jabbed at her. Wawa remained still in the hopes that her opponent would accept the peace offering. Instead, she felt the dog’s claw sink into the side of her face and rake across it. Drops of blood spattered at her feet.
Wawa swung her right paw in a horizontal arc, slashing the dog’s throat in one movement. A spray of
blood hit her wounded face. The animal staggered away, the gash spilling its contents onto the floor, an obscene red against the white canvas. The dog slumped over, collapsing in a crimson pool. Hatred for everyone in the room welled up in Wawa’s gut, making blood throb in her ears, overwhelming the silence that had fallen. They made her do this.
People tried to get closer. At the other end of the ring, Tracksuit stood up. She could tell that he was shocked, and that he was trying to hide his excitement.
And then Wawa rose on her hind legs. She locked eyes only with her master. His eyebrows stretched upward, his mouth a gaping hole in his face. “Jenna?” he said.
“You,” she said, relishing the gasp that emitted from the spectators. “You … are not part of my pack.”
She heard a metal click. Her ears pointed to it first. She turned to see the man with the porkpie hat pointing a gun at her. A breathless What the fuck? came from somewhere.
Wawa leapt out of the ring in one bound. The gun fired. She imagined the bullet striking someone in the audience. Someone screamed. Panicking bodies scurried away. A man tried to bar her path to the door. All she had to do was roar to get him to move.
She was on the trail now. The lights of the parking lot flashed through the tree branches. When she reached the flat asphalt, she gazed for the last time at the little store. It was empty, with the lights still on. The shelves had been completely cleared. She stared at the massive red sign and could at last read it. It said WAWA. It did not make sense, and she knew that she would have to keep going until all the words did. She would have to keep going until something did.
Mort(e) could sense that the plague was coming. Perhaps the ants already knew about it, and they were testing the animals’ loyalty. Or their competence. Regardless, EMSAH was inevitable. Quarantine was sure to follow. For all Mort(e) knew, this was the quarantine: an old veteran sequestered in a dead city, chasing ghosts. Forever.
The investigation files arrived in a laptop computer delivered by Bonaparte. Mort(e) opened a video of Wawa sitting at her desk, the drab surroundings of the barracks behind her. Wawa went over the list of suspected infections, along with the incidents that had been piling up, all involving ritualistic suicides or murders, with the quarry incident being the largest event yet. And there were already three more cases since then.
Wawa would focus her efforts on the quarry for now. She had to investigate a symbol painted on the hoof of one of the deer, written in a language no one recognized. A linguist in another sector was trying to translate it. This same symbol, she added, was found etched into the side of a trailer at the quarry. Wawa concluded the video by telling Mort(e) to begin interviewing witnesses at the other sites; to gather clues; to make sure the army medics collected blood samples from everyone; to note any irregularities; to ask questions but to answer none. And above all, he was to keep things quiet. The settlers were already talking about quarantine.
So he set out, flashing his newly acquired ID badge at the homes of dogs, cats, squirrels, rats, reformed farm animals. It was hard not to think of Tiberius, who would have relished the opportunity to decode the mysteries of the plague. Mort(e) never shared his dead friend’s enthusiasm for this kind of work, and instead made up for it with a grim determination, an unemotional understanding of the hand he had been dealt. This was his most honed skill, the one around which all the others revolved. He owed it to Tiberius to see things through. And to Sheba. He was working for two dead friends now. And maybe with some luck, he could make a small difference in this war.
His first stop was at a house full of rats. Because the rats hated bright light, the windows were boarded up. Most of the inhabitants stayed in the basement, which they expanded with new tunnels and passages that would link all the rodent homes in the area, thereby recreating the labyrinths of subway systems and abandoned buildings from which many of the rats came. This exclusivity was officially discouraged, but people made an exception for the rats. They were among the most productive members of the new society, and they weren’t hurting anyone.
A member of their little colony, a scrawny female named Victoria—the rats loved regal names—rounded up a new brood of babies and led them into the bathtub, where they all drowned. The others found the bodies, moistened from the steam, while Victoria lay dead with her veins opened up. When Mort(e) tried to get the rats to explain, they all spoke at once. They would not listen when he told them to shut up, to speak one at a time. From what he gathered, Victoria had done nothing out of the ordinary prior to the incident, which was even more chilling than if she had. If she had simply snapped, then it had to be some kind of affliction of the brain.
Victoria was born before the Change, something that all the suicides had in common so far. But as was the case with so many of the rats, her life was improved by the war, not harmed by it. She had not taken her upgraded brain for granted. By all accounts, she was determined to make things better for her kind, and for all animals. Victoria was one of the rats who had planned the tunnel project, and she chose the day on which the first phase was completed to kill herself in a very public fashion.
It seemed far-fetched that she was trying to send a political message until Mort(e) read the files on the deer suicides. All of them worked at the quarry, another project that helped the community become independent. So these deaths could have been some kind of sabotage. But there was no evidence, and no connection between the saboteurs.
Mort(e) checked everything: the deer and the rats had not been in the camps together, had not fought in the war, did not come from the same parts of the country. The similarity between the two cases remained a coincidence. Still, it nagged at him. Had they received messages regarding dead loved ones as he had?
To add to the confusion: the autopsies and blood tests were coming up negative, with no physical signs of the virus. Perhaps a new strain of EMSAH—impossible to detect, and far more lethal than before—had been unleashed. He could not say that out loud yet, even though it was screaming in his head.
It was the violent murder scene at the home of a family of dogs that made Mort(e) accept that he was facing an EMSAH outbreak. Or something worse, if such a thing was even possible. The family consisted of a husband and wife, two daughters, and the wife’s mother, an old mixed-breed who would probably not live to see another summer. The father—a mutt named Averroes—was a member of the Bureau. He had worked his way up, starting with dead human removal before being appointed the Assistant Director of Sanitation. They even gave him his own SUV with the Bureau logo on the door, and his neighbors saw him driving to and from the plant. In a rebuilding sector, this job afforded great respect. The dog was quite good at it. He was a genuine believer in the future that the Queen offered.
It took Mort(e) a day to piece it together, but based on blood spatters, footprints, and the placement of some dog hairs and a tooth, he was able to figure out roughly what happened on the day that Averroes died. The next-door neighbor, a dog named Thor, apparently entered Averroes’s property. He was most likely trespassing, or bringing some unpleasant news, because an altercation ensued. Not content to merely repel the invader, Averroes chased Thor onto the adjoining property, where he stabbed Thor to death. He propped the victim on his couch with one hand on the armrest, the other slung across his belly. Mort(e) couldn’t figure it out. Why make someone comfortable in his chair after killing him? Was it an apology, a realization that this act of vengeance had gone too far?
When Averroes’s mate and children returned from a day spent roving in the woods, he had dinner waiting for them. The meal was poisoned, and they died within minutes of taking their first bite. Then Averroes took a piece of biscuit with him to the bathroom. He gazed at himself in the mirror and swallowed the poison.
Luckily, the mate’s mother was at the hospital, picking up her ration of vitamins and supplements. Averroes probably planned to kill her when she returned but had lost patience and panicked, knowing that it was only a matter of time before Thor’s death caught
up with him. When Mort(e) visited her, she sat in a rocking chair wearing a hoodie, her muzzle sticking out from the blue cotton. The older ones unnerved him. There was always the question of how much they had unlearned after years of worshipping a human master and defending their slave home.
Her name was Olive. She told him the details, not bothering to complain about having to go through it all again. Averroes, she explained, had not done or said anything unusual. Then again, he was a quiet one, anyway. He often relieved stress by digging in the yard. This had been his master’s house, and the act of burying something, sniffing it out, and digging it up again reminded him of a simpler time.
When Olive was finished, she stood up and headed for the kitchen. The teapot whistled, and Mort(e) thought that she was fetching something to drink. Instead, she returned with a silver necklace. “If my daughter had worn this,” she said, “she’d still be alive today.”
Mort(e) extended his hand for it. The medallion had an image of a bearded man in robes, a perfect ring around his head. St. Jude, it said. He had seen one before, but could not remember when or where. “Why would she still be alive?”
“St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes,” Olive said.
“So the medallion would have reminded your daughter to—”
“It wouldn’t have reminded her of anything,” Olive said. “You soldiers are like robots, you know that? I’m telling you that St. Jude would have protected her.”
Mort(e) stopped himself from asking how much exposure she had had to her son-in-law. It was a moot point now.
“And I don’t care what you say,” she continued. “Write it in your report. Tell the ants I’m crazy. You’re all spying on me anyway, right?”
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