by D. Gideon
I looked up to find Marco with his hand extended, trying to get King to sniff it.
“I haven’t introduced you yet, so if you want to keep your fingers, you’ll quit that,” I said. He dropped his hand back to his side. “Sooo…everyone just locked up and went home at 3 o’clock on Friday?”
“Looks that way,” Marco replied.
“That’s bullshit. I mean, Animal Control is considered non-essential, but even on snow days we’ve still got to come in and care for the impounds,” I said.
Marco pointed at the paper. “It clearly says shall not report to work.”
“It’s still bullshit,” I said, wadding the paper into a ball and stuffing it into my pocket. “I’ve got two dead dogs because of this.”
Marco looked past me to the rows of cages. “Are these all you have?”
“There’s another barracks for cats, and then one for Other,” I said. “The cats are pissed off, but they’re fine, and both of my Others are okay too. Everyone was happy to finally get fed.”
“What have you got in the Other room?”
“A cockatiel and a turtle. Last week we had a chicken, believe it or not. She was fun. She laid two eggs while she stayed with us. I mixed them in with this guy’s food.” I didn’t have to bend at all to rub King on his head.
“You said you’d introduce me.”
“I did. Here, squat down with me.”
We squatted, and I took Marco’s hand and rubbed my palm over his. Then I held both of our hands up to King.
“King, sniff. Friend. Marco’s a friend.” King sniffed Marco’s hand gently, his big head dwarfing our hands in comparison. After a moment, King licked Marco’s palm.
“Good boy,” I said, rubbing him behind the ears. “Good boy. Friend.”
“Can I pet him now?”
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “Give him some more time to get used to you first. Here, take these.” I dug some doggie treats out of my pocket, where I’d stuffed them when I came in. “Give him one now, and put the rest in your pocket. Let him see you do it.”
Marco smiled as King gently snuffled the treat out of his open palm. The stub of his tail waggled and his short ears perked forward.
“I’ll give you another one in a bit,” Marco said. “You keep being nice to me and I’ll give you all of them.” He lifted his flashlight a little and blew out a breath. “Whoa. Those are some serious scars.” He passed the light over King’s body. “Jesus, he’s covered in them. Did someone try to run him through a wood chipper?”
“Dog fights,” I said. “We can’t prove it, though. I mean, it’s obvious that’s what it was, and some of them are barely a few months old, but we’ve got no proof the owner was involved in any of the fight rings around here. Probably took him up to Baltimore, or maybe up to Atlantic City. The fighting rings are huge up there.”
“Did the owner go to jail?”
“Not yet. He says King had most of the scars when he got him as a puppy, and the new ones came from pushing through the wooden fence in his backyard.”
Marco shook his head, then looked up. “You know, if it didn’t stink so bad, I’d probably sleep down here tonight. It’s got to be twenty degrees cooler than upstairs.”
“Yay for basements,” I said. “There’s room in the Other barracks, if you can find a way to get comfortable on the floor.”
“I’ll think about it. What are you going to do with the two dogs that…passed?”
“There’s nothing I can do. We can’t let anyone see us outside in the night digging holes, and they never showed me how to run the incinerator. I don’t even know if it’ll work without power. I’ll have to just leave them here.”
We were both quiet for a moment, thinking.
“You said you’d answer any question I had,” I said.
Marco nodded. “I thought you’d get around to that. Let’s go upstairs and find the other two. I only want to do this once.”
I kicked a rubber wedge under the door to hold it open in case King needed to come back to his cage to do his business, and the three of us headed upstairs.
I had a lot of questions, but I was dreading the answers.
“Before you say anything, the creamer in the fridge was spoiled, so I poured it down the drain. That’s what that smell is,” Mel said from her seat at the break room’s only table. Someone had found the camping lantern we kept under the sink for power outages and set it on the counter. It did a good enough job lighting up the room. “Should’ve left it alone. But Marco made me coffee, so it’s all good.”
Then she saw King. “Dayum, that’s a big dog. C’mere boy. Come.” She patted her leg, and King trotted right over to her. She put her hands behind his ears, scratching vigorously, and bent over and rubbed her face on his forehead. King’s little nub wiggled furiously, and he made happy grunting noises.
“Man, I can feel tons of scars. This boy’s had a hard life,” Mel said, kissing King’s forehead.
Marco gaped. “I had to be introduced and give him a treat,” he said.
I shrugged, looking into a small sauce pot of coffee on the gas stove. The grounds had formed a layer of mud on the bottom. “She’s a woman. Where’s Corey?”
Mel sat up, but didn’t stop scratching King, who laid his big head in her lap. “He crashed out about ten minutes ago. Went into that office down the hall with the big computer chair, leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, and he was out. I just went to see why he was gone for so long, thinking maybe he’d found something good, and he was already snoring. By the way, I call dibs on that couch.”
She nodded her head towards a worn-out couch across the room. The building the Animal Control offices occupied had once been a small school, and what was now the break room had been part of the original cafeteria. As such, it was a good-sized break room, and we had a gas range that we could cook on as well as a fridge and a sink. Years ago, someone had brought in their old sofa, and since then, it had become the de-facto bed for anyone staying overnight during one of Maryland’s famous ice storms, or just to grab a few winks before heading out on the road on another call.
I thought about pouring myself what was left of the coffee, but knew that it would keep me up for hours. I opened the cabinet and pulled down a Solo cup, opting for a glass of water instead.
“Can I have some, too?” Marco asked, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table. I got another cup down and filled it from the faucet. Besides having a locker to store some of my things in, the shelter had been a natural stop for any “get off of campus” plan. Its basement doubled as a fallout shelter, having been built in the 60s. The cistern on the roof provided water with pressure even when the power was out; at least until it was empty. With that water and the gas range, we could cook something to eat. Eventually the pressure in the natural gas lines would slip down to nothing, but Corey assured me that would probably take a couple of weeks, depending on the community’s usage. The building still looked like a small schoolhouse, which would put it low on a looter’s list of targets.
Marco pushed out a chair for me as I set the cups on the table. “This just delays the talk,” I said. “You’re not off the hook.”
“I realize that,” Marco said. “Have you made plans yet for tomorrow’s route? We should be able to cover at least ten miles, possibly even twenty. We’re all used to walking around campus; it’s not like we’re couch potatoes.”
“Speak for yourself,” Mel said. “Running those two blocks just about killed me.” She took another sip of her coffee.
I shook my head. “Not yet. I was just focused on getting here. You can look at my maps if you want. I do have things to do here tomorrow, though.” I took a drink, and noticed over the rim of my Solo cup that they were both looking at me expectantly.
“Oh. Sorry. I’m going to feed everyone one last time, and then bring up and dump as much food as I can by the back door. I’ll put the cat food up on top of the recycle dumpster so the dogs can’t get to it.” I took another s
ip.
“Then I’m letting them all go.”
Marco ran his finger around the rim of his cup. “You sure you want to do that? When dogs go feral, they form packs. They attack anything they see…like children. I’ve seen it happen, Ripley. It’s not pleasant.”
“I haven’t seen this, but I’ve read about it,” Mel said. “When the economy crashed, people down in Venezuela were turning their dogs and cats loose when they couldn’t get food for them. A few weeks later, the people were in the streets shooting them for food. That’s a pretty sorry way to die.”
“I’ve thought about both of those things, and I agree they’re possibilities. But I can’t let them starve to death down in that basement, waiting for someone to come for them. I just can’t. It’s beyond cruel.”
“I don’t like saying this Ripley, but…you do realize you can’t let this one loose, don’t you? He’s just too big. He could take down an adult. He’ll decimate the local rabbit population, and then he’ll start hunting humans.” Marco gestured to the big dog, who had lain down between Mel and I.
“I’m not killing King,” I said. “I’m not killing any of them. Maybe someone will need a dog for defense, and they’ll take him in. Maybe he’ll find his way out of suburbia. I was ready to put Sassy and Frassy to sleep, because they were old and needed medication. They wouldn’t have been able to fend for themselves. I had prepared myself for that; make it quick and painless with one syringe each. But the rest of these guys are all healthy. They’ve got a chance.”
Marco rubbed his fingers together, thinking. “They’ve been impounded for one reason or another. Do they deserve a chance?”
“They’ve been impounded because their owners were idiots,” I said. “Not because of something they did. Vicious dogs are put down within hours. Lost and Founds go straight to Petco for adoption after we evaluate them. All of the ones I’ve got downstairs right now are perfectly fine to go into homes; they’re just waiting for court cases or appeals.”
“King’s fine to go into a home? After dog fighting? With not trusting men?” Marco said, gently.
I realized he was asking questions that made sense, and trying to do it in a way that wouldn’t upset me, but I was getting upset anyway. I couldn’t kill King. He’d been my buddy for six months now. I’d been riding shotgun the day the call came in to seize a large pit bull. He had growled at the Animal Control officer I was riding with, but came right to me and jumped into the cage in the back of the truck when I’d told him to. I’d been working with him nearly every day, trying to prove that he was safe. I’d borrowed props from a rehabilitator and tested him over and over again. He didn’t react when hands reached into his food. He licked crying baby dolls. He just laid his head down and sighed with endless patience when I used small hand toys to grab his ears, pull his tail, and pinch him. I’d tried all of that with my own hands, with the same peaceful results. He got along with all of the other dogs that had been brought in. I had watched him lick kittens clean and let himself be used as a climbing post and cat bed. I’d even taken him in and shown him the chicken. He’d just sniffed her and laid down, bored.
King’s only problem was adult men. White adult men, in particular. He didn’t trust them. And from the scars on his body, he had good reason not to. I wasn’t going to kill him for that.
“He’s here because he’s part pit bull, and Prince George’s County has a ban on pit bulls. We can’t foster him out for full-time rehabilitative socializing because according to the ban, he’s not even allowed to exist in this county. We can’t send him out of the county, because pit bulls can’t be transported into or out of the county unless they’re purebred show dogs with a temporary permit.” I tapped my finger on the table with each point. “We can’t destroy him, because we have no proof of him hurting anyone. And there’s a pro-pit bull group that’s sued the state to have the ban removed, and all pit bulls in restricted counties are pretty much in stasis waiting for that to go through or not, thanks to a judge that put an injunction into place a couple of months ago,” I said. I drained most of my cup of water. “He would be fine in a house where the adult male had experience handling abused dogs. Even better, he’d be a hell of a protector for a single mother with little kids. Yes, he’s fine to go into a home.”
“I hope you realize I’m not arguing with you,” Marco said. “I’m just trying to help you think this through, to be sure you’re making the right decision. He could rip someone to shreds. If he were to do that-“
“If he were to do that, it would be because they attacked him first, and they’d deserve whatever they got,” I said. Then something hit me.
“Those people tonight, they attacked us for no reason. Yet they get a chance to live through this. He deserves the same chance. More so. He hasn’t attacked anyone,” I said.
“You’re right,” Marco said. “If he hasn’t attacked anyone, he deserves it more than they do.”
“Damn straight,” Mel said.
I finished my water and tossed the cup into the trash. Pushing my chair back, I stood and walked over to a small set of school lockers bolted onto the wall just inside the doorway. After a few spins, I pulled the lock off, opened the door, and pulled out a small 3-day pack. I took it back over and set it down onto the table.
“This was my backup stash, in case…well, in case. It’s not much, just the very basics, but you guys go through it and split it up between you. Corey and I already have everything that’s in there.” I walked back to the locker and pushed aside four pairs of socks, a poncho, and a sweater. Underneath of them was something I had been wishing I’d had with me all night.
“I want that,” Marco said immediately. “Mel can have everything in the pack. I want the knife.”
I shook my head and pulled the knife out of its leather sheath. It was my favorite piece of camping equipment. The blade was just a bit over five inches long, it had a full tang, it was made of carbon steel so I could strike flint on it for sparks if I had to, and it had a nice thick spine with a 90-degree edge so I could use it to scrape the ferro rod that was in my pack. It had been hand-forged by a bladesmith named Jeff White, who my Dad had met at a Pathfinder gathering in Ohio. A replica of an old English trade knife, with beautiful cherry wood scales, I’d fallen in love with it the instant he’d put it in my hands.
“This is a bushcraft knife. If I have to, I can split wood with this. I can make shavings for a fire. I can cut-“
Marco plucked it out of my hand, spun it around expertly, and ended with it laying across the tip of his finger, perfectly balanced.
“Can you fight with it?” He asked.
“If I had to,” I said, reaching for it.
He moved his hand out of my reach, still balancing the knife on his finger without even looking at it.
“I’m not asking if you would fight with it, I’m asking if you can fight with it. Do you know how to use it as a weapon?”
“The pointy part goes in the bad guy,” Mel said. “It’s not hard, Marco.”
Marco ignored her, staring at me. He lifted his eyebrows, waiting for a response.
“No, I haven’t trained for that,” I admitted.
“I have. And because I have, it would be best if I carried it. If you need it to split wood, just take it from me. But I should carry it, in case we need it as a weapon. Unless there are any other weapons here?”
I thought for a moment. “About the closest we’ve got is a tranquilizer gun, but we’ve only got one and Joe, the head officer, keeps it in his county truck.”
“Then the person who is trained should have it,” Marco said.
He was right. If he was telling the truth, that is. From the way he was handling it, it looked like he was probably telling the truth.
I sighed and handed him the sheath. “Fine. But if you break it, I’ll freakin’ kill you. My Dad gave me that knife, and I’ve had it for years. It’s gone camping with me-“
“I’ll be careful with it, I promise,” he said. He tes
ted the edge with his thumb, and smiled. “That’s a very nice edge. Good work.” He slipped it back into its sheath and started unbuckling his belt to put it on.
I threw up my hands. “The one thing I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on all night, and it’s gone in seconds.”
Mel leaned over and tried to look into the locker. “You sure you don’t have a gun in there? Maybe an axe, a taser?”
I pulled the clothes out and dumped the poncho and sweater on the table. Then I sat down next to my bag, which I’d dropped inside the door before heading straight downstairs, and started trying to find a place to put the socks.
“It was bad enough that I had that knife in there,” I said. “If anyone had seen it, I might have lost my internship. I would have loved to be able to keep a tomahawk or camp axe in there, but there would’ve been no way to hide it.”
“They probably would have overlooked a personal stun gun,” Marco said. “Being that you’re a woman and had to walk to and from campus.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “But I couldn’t afford one of those anyway.” I wrestled with the items in my bag for another moment, then gave up.
“This is a mess. What in the world did you guys do to my pack?”
“We stuffed everything back in there as quickly as we could,” Marco said. “There wasn’t really time for organization.” He situated the knife just behind his right hip and began pushing his belt back through the loops.
“I’m going to have to dump this whole thing out and re-pack it,” I said, pushing the pack away with a sigh. “Tomorrow.”
“Can you dig your maps out for me, at least?” Marco asked. He slid my combination lock off of the door and snapped it shut, then slipped it into his pocket. At this point, I didn’t bother asking why. I was too worn out.
I pointed at the table. “There’s a backup copy in the pack. Have at it.”
I pulled my wool blanket and my towel out of the bucket and stood up. “I’m heading down to the supervisor’s office; she’s got another couch. Marco, I’ve never gone into the annex for this building, but it’s got all of the county school board offices in it. You might be able to find a couch or something over there.”