The Long Road

by Christopher Holt

  The good doctor had these pets well trained.

  Finally, Dr. Lynn filled the remaining bowls with kitty chow. When she was finished, she whistled, and the dogs and cats surged forward to lap up the water and crunch down mouthfuls of food. Georgie barreled forward to enter the fray without a single thought, until the only animals not eating were Max, Rocky, and Gizmo, who sat waiting on the sidewalk.

  “Still waiting for me, I see,” Dr. Lynn said as she strolled across the grass. “I’d have expected you to go for the food, but you three seem awfully obedient.”

  Behind her, the dogs and cats woofed and meowed as they shoved past one another to get their fill. Max wondered if a fight might break out, but any animal inclined to hiss or growl glanced at the old woman and calmed down.

  Max’s tail set to wagging again as the doctor rubbed the top of his head with one hand and the underside of his jaw with the other, and he almost collapsed to the ground with pleasure. He closed his eyes, enjoying every stroke of his golden coat, imagining Charlie and Emma were there to tousle his fur along with Dr. Lynn.

  Fingers massaged his neck, and Max realized she was sifting through his fur. He opened his eyes to find the woman looking puzzled.

  “Hmm, no collar,” she said.

  Max sighed as she pulled her hands away from him, then watched with longing as she scratched Rocky’s ears. The Dachshund fell onto his side, exposing his belly. Dr. Lynn laughed and scratched his stomach, and Rocky’s hind leg scrabbled at the air.

  “Oh, yeah,” Rocky barked. “Maybe up a little higher. Between the shoulder blades, too, if you don’t mind.”

  But Dr. Lynn only shook her head at not finding a collar on Rocky, either. Gizmo received her own round of petting before the old woman stood up and crossed her arms.

  “Not a collar among the three of you,” she said. “Let’s hope you either lost them or your owners decided to go high-tech.” Backing away, she held out her hand. “Do you know come?”

  With a nod from Max, all three dogs climbed to their feet and followed the old woman onto the lawn.

  “Very good,” she said. “Come! Follow me!”

  She turned and walked toward the front entrance of the vet’s office, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the dogs were behind her. Max decided he was not going to let the woman out of his sight.

  “What’s so special about them?” a slender gray cat asked, casually swiping a paw over its face. Nearby lay the black cat, Minerva, sunning herself after her meal.

  “Oh, them?” Minerva asked, tail twitching. “I don’t rightly know. They look all raggedy, though I’m sure they can’t help it, being dogs. Bless their hearts.”

  Dr. Lynn led Max, Rocky, and Gizmo up the front walkway and onto the porch. They sat as she opened the front door.

  Holding the door open, Dr. Lynn looked down at the three dogs and said, “After you.”

  Max nodded at her, then walked inside, followed by his two small friends. As they sat on the cool linoleum floor of the lobby, the old woman laughed.

  “Aren’t you three smart!” she said, offering Max another blissful scratch behind his ears.

  The lobby was similar to the one at the vet’s office back home. There were chairs lining the walls and a big front desk. Everything gleamed bright and clean.

  While the three dogs waited, Dr. Lynn took off her big straw hat and tossed it on a chair in the waiting area. She shook her head to let her white hair fall in soft waves to her shoulders.

  “Back this way, my friends,” she called as she walked past the front desk and down a hallway.

  The three dogs followed her into an examination room. She carefully picked up Rocky and Gizmo to set them atop a metal table, then sat down on a stool in front of a computer.

  Max studied the room. Like the front lobby, the surfaces glimmered beneath the fluorescent lights. There were counters and cabinets along two of the walls and a big metal sink. The acrid smell of bleach lingered in the air, along with the barest scents of other animals.

  After so many months on their own, it seemed almost strange to be in the company of a human again. For the first time in ages, Max was able to relax and just be a dog. He’d almost forgotten what that was like.

  Strange, yes. But also very, very nice.

  “This might sound weird, but I’m actually kind of looking forward to this,” Rocky whispered.

  Gizmo giggled. “Me, too! Mostly I just want to feel her hands on my fur again. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like, to have a human.”

  The doctor spun on her stool and smiled at the two small dogs. “I hear you vocalizing; I know you must be bored. This won’t take too long, I promise.”

  The old woman climbed off the stool, then picked up a device that sat next to the computer. It looked like a long, flat gray spatula with a screen that showed a bunch of red zeroes.

  The woman waved the device over Max’s back, just between his front shoulder blades. The thing beeped, and she lifted it up to look at the numbers.

  “Excellent,” she said, turning back to the computer. “Your owners put a microchip in your back.”

  “They did?” Max said.

  “You have a chip in you?” Rocky asked. “Like a potato chip? How? Did you eat one?”

  Max shook his head. “No! But even if I did, I don’t think it would be in my shoulders.”

  Dr. Lynn ignored their barking and typed into the computer. The screen flashed, and Max could see a photo of himself next to a bunch of words.

  “So you’re Max,” Dr. Lynn said. “Good name, Max. And you’re from… Oh, my.”

  She peered down at Max.

  “You’ve come an astoundingly long way, my friend,” she said. “I wish I’d seen you walking about when I was up there weeks ago. You must be looking for your family, huh, boy?”

  Max whimpered and placed his head on her lap.

  “There, there,” Dr. Lynn said as she petted the sides of his neck. “You won’t be alone much longer, Max. I’m going to fix this mess I caused, one way or another.”

  Dr. Lynn stood once more, then ran the scanning device over Gizmo’s back and frowned when it did not beep.

  “I guess you weren’t chipped,” she said. “For today, I’ll call you Jane. It’s a lovely name, yes? It’s from Jane Goodall, a scientist like me who loves animals.”

  Gizmo wagged her tail and licked Dr. Lynn’s hand. “Thank you! Jane is a great name.”

  Dr. Lynn laughed. “You like it! If you don’t mind, Jane, I must turn my attention to your handsome Dachshund friend.”

  When the old woman scanned Rocky’s back, the device beeped once more, and she returned to the computer. In seconds the screen showed a picture of a much fatter Rocky.

  “Oh, you’re Dr. Walters’s dog!” she said. “I remember you.” Turning back to the dogs, she added, “And Max, too. You were at the same kennel where I put up Madame. In fact, that’s why I came through those parts. I was trying to find her.”

  “How sad,” Gizmo said softly. “She doesn’t know what happened to Madame.”

  “I think I’m glad we can’t tell her,” Max said.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Lynn set about with the rest of the checkups. She began by washing the dogs one by one in the big basin, marveling at their obedience and intelligence as each of them calmly let her scrub them with the foul-smelling soap that kept the fleas away.

  The car wash had rid them of some of the muck they’d crawled through, but there was nothing like a good, deep scrubbing, and Max soon felt cleaner than he had in ages. The woman ran a brush all through his fur, talking soothingly as she gently prodded his limbs, checking them for injuries.

  “Ouch,” she said as she discovered the recent cut on his forehead. “It looks like you hit your head. I’ll put something on it to keep out the bacteria.”

  By the time Dr. Lynn was done with them, Max, Rocky, and Gizmo had never looked better. Max couldn’t remember when Rocky’s black fur had been so shiny, but Gizmo proved the r
eal revelation. She’d been traveling for weeks or months on her own before Max and Rocky met her, so her tan-and-black coat was always a tangle of fluff. But now, every tuft and curl was in the right place.

  “We all look so nice!” Gizmo said.

  Rocky pranced in a circle on the metal tabletop. “Why, thank you,” he said. “You look pretty amazing yourself.”

  Now that they were clean and their outsides all examined, Dr. Lynn turned her attention to their insides. She pressed a cold stethoscope against their chests and sides to listen to their heartbeats and breathing, shone light into their eyes and noses, and lifted their lips to examine their gums, teeth, and tongues.

  Finally, she produced a long needle attached to a small plastic tube. A syringe. Max winced, but he trusted Dr. Lynn, so he did not flinch as she approached.

  “Sorry about this, Max,” the doctor said. “It’ll only prick for a second, I promise.” She gently propped Max against her leg, prepared to grab him if he tried to run. Then, she stuck the needle into his skin and pulled back the plunger on the syringe, drawing his blood.

  Letting out a breath, Dr. Lynn put a cap on the syringe and set it on a nearby countertop. She then did the same to Rocky and Gizmo, who both clenched their teeth and closed their eyes to make it as easy as possible for their new doctor friend.

  Shaking her head in amazement, Dr. Lynn began to label vials for the freshly drawn blood.

  “I have never once had a checkup go this smoothly,” she said. “Not even Madame could get through one without squirming a little bit. I don’t know if Dr. Walters was Jane’s vet, too, but I’ll have to find the man and learn his secrets.”

  Producing some more vials and bottles from the cabinets, Dr. Lynn said, “Now all we have to do is get your current weight, and we’re done.”

  “Hey, down there,” Rocky said, gesturing to a metal slab near the door. “That’s probably the weighing machine, if I remember my other vet visits right.”

  Max wandered over to the machine while Rocky and Gizmo jumped off the table and onto the linoleum. Together, the three dogs crowded around the slab and sniffed at it.

  “I think you might be right,” Max said.

  Behind them, Dr. Lynn gasped.

  All three dogs turned to face her. The old woman stood next to the examination table, a hand in front of her mouth.

  “It’s not possible,” she whispered.

  “What’s wrong?” Gizmo asked.

  Rocky’s head darted from side to side. “Did we do something bad? Were we not supposed to move?”

  Dr. Lynn stared at the dogs, then ran her hands back through her wavy white hair.

  “Max,” she said. “I need a ball from behind the front counter in the lobby. It’s in a box with several other balls, but only two are red, and only one of those balls has little nubs on it. I need that ball. Rocky and Jane, you two stay right where you are.”

  Max barked and wagged his tail. While Rocky and Gizmo sat down in front of the scale, Max ran out of the examination room and back to the front desk in the lobby.

  There, just as the old woman had said, was a cardboard box with several balls inside. There were plain blue, yellow, and green balls, and an orange one that had holes in its side to show a shiny bell in the center. Max nosed them aside until he saw flashes of red at the bottom of the box. One ball was smooth, and one was covered in dozens of nubby spikes.

  Max grabbed the spiked red ball in his jaws, then ran quickly back into the examination room. He dropped the red ball at Dr. Lynn’s feet, then sat down and looked up at her, tail wagging as he waited for her approval.

  A smile spread across the old woman’s face. “My, oh my,” she said softly.

  Crouching down, she scratched beneath Max’s chin, then stared directly into his brown eyes.

  And she said, “You three can understand me.”

  CHAPTER 14

  HOW IT ALL BEGAN

  Dr. Lynn collected bowls from another room and set out two each for Max, Rocky, and Gizmo, so all three dogs had their own portions of fresh kibble and water.

  While they ate their fill next to the examination table, the doctor dripped a tiny amount of each of their blood onto glass slides, then viewed the red splotches under a microscope. She combined the blood with various chemicals, shaking them together and holding the vials up to the light. As she worked, she recorded her findings both in a notebook and on the computer.

  The doctor worked in silence, so the room was filled with the crunching of kibble and slurping of water. Just as Max, Rocky, and Gizmo finished their meals, Dr. Lynn closed her notebook and said, “I don’t know how, but you three completed the Praxis project.”

  “Let’s sit by her feet so she knows we’re listening to her,” Max said.

  The three dogs sat side by side in front of the woman’s white shoes. They looked up at her and offered a wag of their tails.

  Biting her lip, Dr. Lynn looked at each of them. “I certainly didn’t expect this. Did another human do this to you? Please bark once for no, twice for yes.”

  Max, Rocky, and Gizmo all barked once.

  “Hmm,” Dr. Lynn said. “But you were at the laboratory, right? Please bark once for no or twice for yes if you were at the laboratory.”

  All three barked twice.

  Dr. Lynn sighed, reaching down to scratch behind their ears. “I was hoping there might be some other solution, but I see I still have my work cut out for me. A few more questions. Was it my dog Madame Curie who took you to the lab?”

  One bark: No.

  “Did you see Madame? Did you travel with her?”

  Two barks: Yes.

  “Then why isn’t—” The old woman’s hand flew to her face, covering her mouth. She asked, “Did you leave Madame behind?”

  None of the dogs barked at first. Max’s chest felt tight, and his tail drooped. He finally barked twice to say yes.

  “Did you want to leave her behind?”

  No.

  Dr. Lynn’s hands trembled now, and her eyes watered. She took a shaky breath and asked, “Did Madame… pass on?”

  Max whimpered and lowered his head. Rocky and Gizmo curled against each other, sniffling. They didn’t have to bark in response. Max could tell that Dr. Lynn knew.

  A tear fell down the old woman’s pale, wrinkled cheek, then another. She looked up from the three dogs, not bothering to wipe away the tears.

  “I’m so sorry,” Max said. He rose and set his head on the woman’s lap. “She was a very good friend. I miss her, too.”

  Absently, the woman rubbed Max’s head, but she still stared off into the distance, lost in memory.

  “This is so sad,” Gizmo said. “She never got to say good-bye.”

  “I’m starting to wish we hadn’t figured out how to talk to her, after all,” Rocky said.

  Max licked Dr. Lynn’s hand, then nuzzled her leg with his head.

  Shaking her head, the doctor swiped the back of her hand across her cheeks and eyes. She looked down at Max and rubbed the sides of his head, offering him a sad smile.

  “Something tells me that you loved Madame, too, Max,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past her to send you to find me. I know she must have come looking for me, too, even if she never…”

  Gently moving Max aside, Dr. Lynn climbed off the stool and began cleaning up the examination room. The dogs watched and listened.

  “You know, I named Madame after one of my idols,” she said, her back turned to the dogs while she placed the vials in a cabinet. “Madame Marie Curie was a brilliant scientist at a time when women were not so highly looked upon. Now I would never dare to compare myself to her, but the real Marie Curie and I have something in common.” She looked at the dogs with serious eyes. “Her work led her to be fatally sickened by the radium that she discovered. And I myself am afflicted with the Praxis virus, which now lies in every animal in much of the country. My creation, which was meant for good, has instead done much harm. And it’s up to me to fix it.” />
  Dr. Lynn leaned back against the counters and crossed her arms. “I don’t know who finished the Praxis process with you. Perhaps you stumbled upon it yourselves, or maybe one of our other enhanced animals helped you. I wonder, do you know the full story of why you’re smarter now, and why all the people left?”

  The three dogs each barked once for no.

  “I’ll tell you, then,” she said. “You deserve to know why you were left behind. Your families never wanted this. You were not abandoned. You are still loved.”

  She crouched down in front of the dogs and petted them one by one. “They had no choice in leaving you, and even now they miss you. Do you understand? You are loved.”

  Max barked twice, then jumped up, hugging the woman with his paws over her shoulders and his head nuzzled into her neck. She put one arm around his side and pulled him close, then reached for Rocky and Gizmo. They sat there on the linoleum, beneath the bright fluorescent lights, embracing one another with their eyes closed.

  Even though Max had often told himself that his family was waiting, that they wouldn’t have left if they didn’t have to, and that people didn’t hate the animals, it still hadn’t kept some doubt from creeping into his mind.

  So to hear from a human, a person as trustworthy and kind as Dr. Lynn, that everything he’d hoped for was true—it made his heart swell. He ached with longing for his family, more than ever now. But knowing for certain that they missed him made the hurt not quite as bad.

  Dr. Lynn let go of the three dogs and stood up, again wiping tears from her eyes. “All right, Max, Rocky, and Jane,” she said. “I’ll tell the story from the beginning. But how about we go somewhere more comfortable first?”

  Dr. Lynn exited the examination room with Max, Rocky, and Gizmo trotting at her heels. As she walked, the old woman pulled her hair back into a loose knot, and when they reached the lobby she collected her straw hat and placed it on her head. She grabbed a handful of toy mice from a basket atop the welcome desk and stuffed them in her pants pocket, then collected the box of balls that Max had dug through earlier.