“What about the red-and-white?”
“Fire.”
“And the green?”
“There’s nothing we can do until we get closer,” Tom said.
“What are the green lights?” Sam insisted.
“Ambulance.”
Sam tapped the pilot. “You have binoculars?”
The pilot nodded and handed Sam an old and battered pair. It was too difficult to make out any details at their current distance, but after a few more minutes, Sam was able to see the entire horrible scene more clearly—the fire devouring the church, the barricades, the FDNY pulling hoses, people fighting. She thought she saw someone on the ground outside the church, but then the smoke blotted it out. Sam just kept repeating the same two words: “My God.”
The helicopter pitched to the left. Sam shifted the binoculars a few degrees and saw a huge pack of dogs running toward the park. Sam was sure it was her imagination, or the smoke, or the tears in her eyes, but she thought Nick was leading the pack. That couldn’t be, she knew; Nick was too sick to walk, let alone run. She also saw a mass of people following or chasing the pack, but they couldn’t keep up and were falling behind.
Sam panned the binoculars several blocks ahead of the dogs to the perimeter line. But it was what she saw three blocks farther east that made her stomach contract in a searing spasm. The Guard was forming a defensive line at the western entrance to the park that was already twenty strong. She remembered what had happened at the perimeter with Louis and then imagined it inflamed by several orders of magnitude.
Tom took the binoculars and scanned the scene below.
“How long till we land?” Sam called out to the pilot.
“Four minutes,” he answered.
“Make it two,” Tom told him.
“OK. But you won’t like it. Hold on.”
The helicopter plummeted. That was it. Sam’s resolve folded. She turned her head and puked on the floor.
39
Kendall watched the ambulance drive off. He thought if he could figure out what Andy had been trying to tell him, then somehow the boy would be OK. But it had been gibberish, hadn’t it? Another shard in a day that had long since splintered into incomprehensiveness. Still, something felt wrong. He knew he was missing a connection.
McGreary came up beside him. “He’ll be OK, right?”
“I think so,” Kendall said. He did a slow spin, taking in the mess surrounding them. Of course it all felt wrong; he would need to be dead inside to feel otherwise. But still… a hole tugged at him.
McGreary’s phone buzzed and he lifted the receiver to his ear. After a moment he said, “But we don’t know that… Who gave them that order?… These are my men and women… On whose authority?… Now?” And then a resigned, “I understand, sir.”
“What is it?” Kendall asked.
McGreary’s face answered before his mouth could. “By order of the governor, the dogs from the shelter are now all presumed infected. We are to obtain them as humanely as possible, but they may not under any circumstances cross into the park. We are establishing a second perimeter at the park entrance and keeping the public away. Firearms use is authorized for any dog who breaches. No exceptions.”
Kendall shook his head in a mixture of disbelief and anger. “But you can’t—”
“I’m with you on this one, Jim. I really am. But I’ve got no choice.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said. “Maybe my men can help corral them before you need to go to weapons.”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I wish you could join me, but I have orders to keep you and your men here. Maybe that’s a blessing. I don’t think you’re going to want your hands anywhere near this one. This might be the stuff of nightmares.”
“You’re a good man, Ray. I believe that. You’ll do the right thing if it comes to that.”
Sid stepped up to them with Molly in one arm and Eliot in the other. “Have you seen Gabriel?” he asked.
Kendall gasped. The hole suddenly had a name and a face.
40
Gabriel examined the wheelchair apparatus again and almost laughed at his own stupidity. He reached down and unscrewed the air valve on the jammed tire. He heard the hiss of trapped air escaping. It was enough. The wheelchair rolled free of the pew. The device was now an unbalanced and awkward mess, but it still rolled well enough. Hips started for the door and then glanced backward, waiting for his rescuer to join.
“Go!” Gabriel shouted. Hips whined, looking between the priest and the door.
Gabriel tried to lift himself off the floor and felt something in his body give out. It was not unpleasant—like the fatigue that comes after thirty minutes on the treadmill. He dropped to his knees because his legs would no longer support him.
Hips took a step back toward Gabriel. The priest would not let that happen. He pulled off a shoe and threw it at the dog. “Go!”
That was enough. Hips ran out the door to safety.
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. His eyes darted around the sanctuary. He wanted to remember it all. His gaze finally landed on the stained glass image of Abraham and Isaac above him. He watched the glass finally shatter from the heat. Isaac was free.
“I am the ram,” Gabriel whispered. A smile brightened his weary face. He closed his eyes to the heat and smoke and embraced his victory. Then his old friend Christ dropped down from his cross on the ceiling and swept over him.
That was where Kendall found him.
41
The pilot landed as close to the front entrance of the park as he dared, adjacent to the space cleared for the convention party. “Wait for the blades to stop,” he demanded.
Sam opened her door. “Can’t. No time.” She jumped out. Tom was half a step behind her.
They cleared the helicopter and ran between the faux Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. They made it to the park entrance on a sprint.
Twenty-five armed Guards blocked the entrance in the type of formation Sam had seen only in pictures of riots—shoulder to shoulder, their heavy batons held out horizontally in front of their chests. The dogs were still several blocks away, but Sam could see them coming. She couldn’t identify the dogs from this distance, but several struck her as familiar.
Sam raced up to the line of Guards. “You can’t hurt them! The dogs are safe! We have proof!”
“It was a vaccine!” Tom shouted. “The dogs aren’t contagious. We need them alive,” he yelled at anyone who would look at him. The stone-faced Guards would not respond.
“Please, listen to us!” Sam cried out. In her frustration she tried to jerk the baton out of the hands of one of the soldiers, but he was impossible to move.
Tom reached for her. “Don’t, Sam. They’ll hurt you.”
Sam shook him off. “Let me go!”
McGreary’s Jeep screeched to a halt in front of the line of Guards and he jumped out. “Step away, miss!” he shouted at Sam. “This is now a restricted area.”
Tom ran up to McGreary. “Look, I’m the deputy mayor, Tom Walden. I don’t know what’s going on here, but these dogs are safe and we need them. Alive. Please.”
“You have proof of that, Mr. Walden?”
“We’re getting it. We are talking to the CDC right now.”
“That doesn’t help me, sir. The governor believes that if those dogs cross into the park, they will have access to the entire city.”
“Bullshit! That’s not why you’re here,” Tom said. “The governor screwed this up from the start, trying to protect his convention party, and now he can’t back down without admitting it. That’s what this is about—what it always was about!”
McGreary turned to his troops. “Stand ready! You have my orders, soldiers. I don’t care what else you have heard today. I expect you to follow my orders. Do you understand?”
The soldiers, long drilled in command and combat, responded in unison: “Yessir!” Whatever feelings they had about their orders, these men and women did not show
it.
Sam scanned the street; the dogs were just two blocks away. The leader ran with a familiar graceful strength. It was Nick! Scrabble, Blinker, and Monster ran behind him, along with all the shelter regulars and a mass of other dogs. The large pack dodged cars and pedestrians and leaped over obstacles, as if something in the park called to the dogs. They showed no signs of slowing.
Sam refused to stand around arguing with people who wouldn’t listen. That was how she had spent her whole life, always out of place and too often ashamed even to be a member of this species. She knew that she had only one real choice.
Sam ran toward the pack.
She was still a block away from the dogs when Nick, relying on some impossible reserve of energy, charged ahead of the others. He bounded up to Sam, plunked his big paws on her shoulders, and licked her face. Despite everything that had happened, Sam felt a moment of elation. She hugged him tight and noticed with great relief that his eyes were bright and his breath smelled clean.
Scrabble, Blinker, and Monster ran up next. Then all the shelter dogs, the ones Sam had lived with and cared for, surrounded her. They had only a few moments of joyous reunion before the remainder of the dogs overtook them. Sam tried to stop them from pushing forward, but realized almost immediately that it was a lost cause.
Sam’s twin demons of numbness and panic battled for control in her head. Then she heard her mother’s voice cut through, as firm and as clear as if she’d been standing next to Sam. “Trust yourself,” her mother said.
Perhaps she couldn’t save these animals, but Sam vowed that she would never be the face of their Devil. The only thing she knew with certainty was that she had to get there with them.
Sam turned and, with Nick on one side and Scrabble and Blinker on the other, ran for the line of soldiers.
Of the thousands of images recorded that day, this one—of Sam running side by side with Nick, Scrabble, and Blinker toward the boundary of Guards, the rest of pack fanned out behind her—was the one that appeared on the cover of every New York and national newspaper and magazine. Sam often looked at that photograph in the years afterward and prayed that she had proven worthy of her running companions on that day.
The dogs were now a few hundred feet away from the Guards. Sam was nearly keeping pace with them despite her fatigue. All those years of running had conditioned her. But there was something else too. Sam felt part of a larger entity—powerful, feral, primitive, graceful, and purposeful. She had returned to an earlier form of her being and had never felt so utterly whole.
The first dogs, the fastest, charged forward to the line of Guards. Sam had no idea what would happen once the dogs met the batons, but she prepared herself to see the worst of humanity, knowing how horrible the worst could be. The nearly infinite number of images from an insane history of human-animal conflict sped through her mind: clubbed baby seals lying on bloodstained ice; lowland gorillas with their heads and hands removed; chimpanzees strapped to surgical tables; bulldozers full of dead pigs, sheep, and cows; dog carcasses lining the street following a rabies cull; caged dogs with their vocal cords sliced through.
The dogs met the Guards twenty feet in front of her.
“No!” she yelled. Please, she begged silently. Give us sanctuary.
McGreary called out three words. Sam’s heart was pounding so hard in her ears that she wasn’t sure she had heard them correctly. It sounded like—
“At ease, soldiers!”
The soldiers lowered their batons to their sides as one.
Most of the dogs stopped at the line. They sniffed soldiers, pawed the ground, and lifted their heads for soft scratches, playful pats, and utterances of affection that some of the dogs had not felt or heard in a few days and others in an entire lifetime.
Tom was so relieved that he nearly collapsed. Sam caught his arm before he hit the ground. That somehow turned into a hug and Sam didn’t mind it at all.
The mayor arrived in a black SUV with blue bubble lights flashing. A few men in white lab coats jumped out with her. She ran to Tom, Sam, and McGreary, who stood in the center of two dozen excited dogs. “We have CDC confirmation,” the mayor said breathlessly. “These dogs are no threat.”
The mayor turned to McGreary. “I know for a fact what your orders were, Lieutenant. And this,” she said, pointing to the scene of Guards and dogs playing together in small groups, “was not it. You have an explanation?”
McGreary smiled warmly for the first time since his assignment had begun. “Sometimes you’ve got to interpret and improvise,” he said. “As someone very smart once told me, this is New York. We don’t kill puppies in New York.”
Nick and most of the shelter dogs surrounded Sam. Despite her human form, she was still their alpha. She had fulfilled her duty to keep the pack safe.
But, perhaps, only for today. She still had no long-term solutions and was no further along in her quest for a permanent sanctuary. Old voices tried to fill her head… voices of judgment, shame, and admonishment… familiar snickering. The countdown clock still loomed, accusing her of failure.
“Sanctuary.”
She repeated the word. Now that her anger no longer gorged on her present, the word felt different in her mouth. She looked at her dogs… and really took them in this time. They were so happy to be near her. That counted for something. Perhaps she didn’t need to find an abandoned farm in upstate New York to create her sanctuary. What if sanctuary was not about a specific place, guarded by a large lock from the outside world, but a feeling… a space that she had the power to create simply by choosing to be present for them? By caring? If that was so, then she could carry her sanctuary with her wherever she and the dogs ended up. The only thing really required of her was that she continue to love them.
And Sam could not deny that she did love them. She loved them so much that the thought of losing any one of them now for want of will was unacceptable. Their connection was so powerful that it sustained her just as much as she sustained them.
The recognition hit her as Nick and the others sniffed her shoes and jeans. These creatures offered her sanctuary in return. They always had. Sam saw the symmetry and felt its innocent beauty in a way that had been absent from her life since the days of her childhood animal tea parties. An injured dog, an angry daughter, a sick child, an abused teen, a grieving widower, a recovering drug addict, and a priest looking for understanding—they were all just seeking meaningful connections. They were all seeking sanctuary. In this most fundamental respect, no being was superior to another.
They were no less than equals.
42
Nine dogs—the nine Andy had originally led from the park—did not stop with the others. They continued through the Guards, straight ahead into the park. They ran past baited traps that held no interest for them. They crossed the ring of Ailanthus altissima, leaped through the narrow stone opening, and entered the cavern that was now their home.
There they joined others who existed so deep in the caverns of humanity that only the sins, songs, and sufferings of others could reach them.
And that is where they finally came to rest, waiting.
Book IV
And Thereafter
“The executive staff of the then-Governor of the State of New York (“the Executive Staff”) exceeded their authority and the authority of the Office of the Governor when they employed executive powers in an attempt to eradicate the threat of rabies in Central Park. While the intentions of the Executive Staff may have been in the public interest, the means chosen to implement those intentions were contrary to the health and safety of the citizens of Riverside and the population of Manhattan in general. The decisions of the Executive Staff in this regard, while not the direct cause of the Riverside Virus, facilitated a series of events that both created the Virus and greatly exaggerated the response to the Virus. These decisions ultimately gave rise to the civil disturbance now known as ‘the Riverside Riot.’ There is no evidence that the governor was directly aware of
the actions of his Executive Staff, although safeguards should have been in place in the executive office to prevent this type of inappropriate use of the executive’s powers. It is our understanding that the safeguards recommended in this report are now being implemented.”
Excerpt from Report and Recommendations of the Senate Subcommittee on the Causes of and Response to the Riverside Riot
The report was issued following the governor’s nomination at the convention, but prior to the general election. The governor’s celebration party in Central Park was canceled. The mayor resisted an eleventh-hour effort to draft her to run on an independent ticket, even though some polls showed she could take the majority vote. The governor failed to carry New York and lost the general election.
Daniel Lewis, working together with the CDC, was able to reverse engineer the Riverside Virus from the vaccine. No additional children became sick, and those who were ill received an antiviral drug Daniel helped create from the blood serum of several of the dogs who had been vaccinated and had developed immunity. With the knowledge that all the dogs exposed to the virus had been seen by Morgan, the city was able to isolate all avenues of infection. The dogs brought to the shelter during the crisis were reunited with their owners unharmed.
Daniel eventually returned to Cornell, where he resumed his research and lectured about the never-ending and always-evolving connection between emerging viruses and the way humans treat their animals. He was always on the lookout for evidence of renewed activity by VetMed and others and championed new legislation for rigorous controls on agricultural vaccine development.
Kendall worked closely with McGreary in the days that followed to return dogs, remove poisoned bait from the park, and clean up the mess that was now the Riverside Church. Kendall remained a commanding officer, and he had the respect and some say love of those he commanded. He was honored by his daughter’s school on “Hero Day.” His wife and daughter brought in a special cake in the shape of a Jedi Knight.
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