Cadaver Dog

by Doug Goodman

  Angie called out for Rawls, then waited. The heat was more intense. A fire-striken tree fell over the lair, dropping little coals on them. The girl screamed and Murder wagged his tail weakly, but did not move. Angie gave him his chicken, and he wagged his tail contentedly but did not chew on the toy.

  She called again, and this time Rawls answered back. He was above them with the Wolf.

  “Get me the hell out of here!”

  “I have a rope,” he said. “The Wolf has a winch.”

  First, they raised Sarah out of the lair. She still wasn’t moving or speaking, but she had stopped screaming. Then he lowered the bowline to Angie.

  She started to loop it around Murder, but Rawls stopped her. “You first.”

  “You can take my dog first or leave us.”

  Rawls didn’t answer. She wrapped the bowline around Murder’s chest. He whined back at her.

  Rawls pressed the lever on the Wolf’s winch to raise the rope. Half-way up, the fiery tree snapped and landed on Murder. The dog jerked violently in its snare and howled so balefully that Angie’s heart snapped too. She tried to climb up to Murder, but the rocks would not let her get to him. She could just make out his legs spasming behind the log.

  Rawls kicked the tree on the other end and pulled on the rope. The tree snapped again. Rawls pulled up the dog’s body. Angie knew her dog was dead because he wasn’t fighting against the flames on his muzzle.

  Angie pulled herself up the rock face, pain erupting from all parts of her body. She reached for Murder. Pulled him away from the fallen tree trunk and patted down the flames on his nose. The flesh there was bubbling. She cradled him as the Wolf led them back up to the convenience store. They didn’t have to make it to the road before the firefighters pulled them up and out. As the trucks raced away from the approaching fire, EMTs worked on Sarah and Angie and Rawls. Angie had refused treatment until Murder was attended first. They had placed his limp body on a stretcher and carried him up the mountain. The dog disappeared in the smoke.

  Every muscle in Rawls’ body ached. He was pretty sure he was starting to go into shock. As EMTs rushed up to him, placing an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, he picked up the tablet one last time. He entered new coordinates for the Wolf while a burly woman checked his vital signs. Behind her, he saw the robot rise up like a black skeleton. He last saw the Wolf entering the brush on the far side of the road, waves of fire roaring behind it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Angie buried her dogs. She knew there were easier, cheaper options out there, but none were as personal to her. That is what made this one worse than any other dog she had put beneath the earth. She was too injured to bury her lost dog. Between the bear attack and the fall in the lair, Angie was too beat up to do that kind of work.

  “I didn’t do enough for you,” she said to the grave.

  The recovery of Sarah Erikson from the wasp’s lair was nothing short of sensational. It had grown into a national story almost overnight. The thoroughly scarred muzzle and ripped ear of Angie’s dead dog, Murder, made the front page of Newsweek.

  Angie, though, just missed her dog. Since she could not dig, her father and Dr. Saracen dug most of the grave. For an older man, her father still had a lot of muscle in him. They lowered the dog into the ground, a brown tarp wrapped around its body. Angie stood over the grave and wept as they shoveled the cut earth back into the hole.

  The blackened, burned trees seemed appropriate for the burial site.

  When the ceremony was over (these ceremonies don’t end, Angie noted, they’re just over), she walked back out of the forest of cinder and ash to what remained of her house. Most of it was burned to the ground except for a few charred bricks. The barn was burned down to the foundation. Only the metal of the kennels remained.

  Angie sat down on the bricks and wondered what to do next. Rebuild? Move? She had lost everything.

  Waylon came up to her and put his snout on her leg. Angie sniffed as she petted her companion, loyal even in depression. Next to her lay her Darcy, lost in his own sadness. There were those who believed that dogs were incapable of emotions, that any perception of feelings by humans was just anthropomorphizing a dog. They had never seen a dog depressed over the loss of a friend. His heartbreak made her loss more agonizing.

  From behind her came the nudging of her dead dog as he stuck his scarred muzzle between her arm and her side and pushed her hand on his head. Murder wagged his tail. Lizzy was off in Wyoming, but Angie still had more family.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Dr. Saracen said as he approached her. Like close siblings, Angie’s dogs guarded her emotionally. To them, Dr. Saracen was a potential problem that needed to be evaluated. Was he right for her, emotionally? If not, they would remove him from the premises with prejudice.

  Murder led the others, wagging his tail and extending his nose to sniff at Dr. Saracen’s hand.

  “Thank you,” Angie said. “There isn’t a one of them I don’t love like my own child. I would die for them.”

  “It is difficult when we lose family. But when we are ready, we return to our work.” He showed her the Newsweek story that had exposed the harsh reality of the wasps.

  “Now we know what happens,” Dr. Saracen said as he put his hand on her shoulder. “The hard truth about wasp reproduction is out there. We have a way to break the cycle, and so we have a way to stop the zombies. So rest and mourn, and when you are ready, there is work to be done.”

  Thanks for Reading

  If you enjoyed Cadaver Dog, please leave a review on Amazon. These reviews not only help other readers pick books, but also help authors to be seen. And keep an eye out for the sequel. I plan to keep running the dogs with Angie and Murder.

  I am also the author of Dominion and Kaiju Fall (out from Severed Press) and a collection of bloody Arthurian Tales called Warriors of Camlann.

  My books can be found at:

  http://www.amazon.com/Doug-Goodman/e/B00IHF1I8S/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1 (or just search for me on Amazon.)

  As always, my website is www.douggoodman.net and my email is dgoodman1@hotmail.com.

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