Tammy and LaVerne had stopped screaming and were listening now, their dirty faces under the tangled lank hair turning to gaze from one person to another. Allen said desperately, “Mr. Davis, you can’t take Susie! You can’t! She never bit anyone and she isn’t dangerous and they’ll kill her! Please leave her! I’m really sorry I shot you and I promise to never do it again but please leave Susie!”
“Son, I can’t. But—no, listen to me, Allen, really listen—nobody is going to kill Susie. Dr. Latkin at the CDC wants her. He’s been looking for a dog that’s got the plague but isn’t biting anybody so he can…I don’t know. Something. But the doctors need her alive to study so nobody’s going to hurt your dog.”
Allen wanted desperately to believe him. But Mr. Davis’s eyes, below the blood-soaked towel, slid sideways and didn’t meet Allen’s. Mr. Davis was just talking, the way Allen’s dad did. He didn’t know for sure what would happen to Susie.
“I’m going with her!” Allen said as Mr. Davis got cautiously to his feet. He still held Jimmy’s father’s gun. “You can’t take her without me. If you try to I’ll…I’ll yell rape!”
"Do what?" Mr, Davis siad. "You don't even know what that means, do you?”
Allen didn’t; it was a threat he’d heard a girl make on TV. But Jimmy must of known because he had his hand clamped over his mouth, laughing. Allen felt tears fill his eyes.
“Come on, Allen, let’s go,” Mr. Davis said wearily. “Jimmy, your dad got a permit for this gun?”
“Sure he does.”
“Uh-huh. I’m going to put it on the closet shelf where your little sisters can’t get it, and you tell your dad I’m checking his registration, you hear me?” Mr. Davis shoved the gun behind a mass of sweaters on the highest closet shelf. Awkwardly he picked up Susie, balancing her on the arm in his sling. Susie grunted and licked his face. Jimmy and both twins started to giggle.
“Now what?” Mr. Davis said, as Allen stumbled to his feet and clutched at the hem of Mr. Davis’s parka. He would just hang on wherever Mr. Davis took Susie, and not let go no matter what. Wherever Susie went, Allen was going, too.
Tammy piped up, “You look weird.”
“With that towel and bloody head and dog!” Jimmy amplified.
Then Mr. Davis muttered something that didn’t even make any sense. “Christ,” he said, “I hope to hell Cami don’t want any kids.”
» 59
DiBella was speechless a full fifteen seconds after Jess called him about the attack by the Great Dane mix. Finally he said, “Jesus, Jess—through the window?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll tell Lurie. We need to get the word out right away—board up windows, stay in windowless rooms, especially if you have an infected pet who might come home and…the kid okay?”
“I don’t know. The ambulance just took him away.”
“Hospital’s buried in dog bite victims in the second phase.”
Jess already knew this; Billy had called him about his new girlfriend, Cami Johnson.
DiBella said. “KJV-TV can help. And maybe—through the window?”
“Yes.”
“This changes everything.”
“I know.”
At home, Jess bandaged his hand, which hurt like hell. He should probably get stitches but with all the second-wave dog-bite victims coming in, it would be hours before anybody in the ER got to him, if at all. He settled for hydrogen peroxide and enough gauze to stop the Johnstown Flood, then turned on the TV.
DiBella, or Lurie, or KJV-TV was efficient. The story was already there. “Breaking news…local man…FEMA recommends…all citizens of Tyler…please notify friends and neighbors…urgent breaking announcement….”
By now it would have begun. People would be nailing plywood to window frames, moving bedding and food and water to safe rooms on barricaded second floors. Building fortresses inside their own homes. Getting angrier, and more desperate, and more afraid.
And talking. They would call, email, blog. Jess wasn’t a great user of the Internet, but he knew it was one way groups organized themselves. It was now much easier to find fellow believers, in any cause at all, than it had ever been before.
“Return all uninfected dogs to their owners within the next twenty-four hours, or this will happen again." And the dogs had not been returned.
“If you and the whole damn federal government can’t kill these vicious dogs, we’ll do it for you. No more kids are going to die because you guys won’t do what you fucking well should." And the uninfected beagle Hearsay had been shot.
He stared helplessly at the his heavily bandaged hand in the blue glow of the television.
INTERIM
The president sat behind his desk in the oval office and scowled at his chief of staff. “A dog actually broke through a window to attack?”
“Yes, sir. Terry spoke directly to the local sheriff.”
“Where’s Scott Lurie?”
“He’s there. And he concurs about what we have to do.”
“I don’t like it,” the president said.”
“No one does, sir.” His tone held a sourness that the president didn’t pick up. The leader of the free world, Martin thought, seemed even more out of touch than usual. Martin, who was never out of touch, had wanted to replace Lurie a year ago. Now he reflected, not for the first time, that “electable” and “capable” were words with far different roots.
“You told me, Hugh—you yourself!—that killing all the dogs would be a really unpopular move. That people love their pets and spend all that money on them and we should wait. You told me so right in this office!”
“We did wait, Mr. President. Now we have to act. And we have to do it quickly to show we recognize the gravity of people not being safe even in their own houses.”
“But killing the well dogs, too, the ones that aren’t infected—”
“Necessary, sir. Who knows what those dogs might have been exposed to? If we don’t do a thorough cleansing euthanasia, we risk looking weak, and so does FEMA and Homeland Security. The country’s had enough of that.”
“Well…” The president shifted fitfully in his chair. In this mood, he could be impossible to deal with. Martin willed himself to patience.
“What about the dogs nobody’s caught yet?” the president demanded. “And why the whole damned Maryland Guard plus all these animal people can’t catch a bunch of Lassies and Rin Tin Tins…what does the governor say?”
“He agrees that the uncaught dogs are the reason we have to evacuate Tyler completely. This is our last chance to demonstrate that we will do anything necessary to protect our citizens, and that we’ll do it pro-actively.”
Not that that had worked very well so far.
“Evacuate. Jesus Christ, Hugh, I hate this. You know some of those people will resist. We can’t even get everybody out when a volcano is going to blow.”
“We still have to make the effort, sir.”
“And what about that FBI agent, ex-agent, whatever she is?”
“We still haven’t found her or Ebenfield.”
“Why the hell not?”
There was no answer to that, so Martin waited. The president swiveled his chair and stared out at the dark Rose Garden.
“Hugh, you think it’s possible she found Ebenfield?”
Martin hoped not, fervently. But again he said nothing.
“All right. All right. Give the orders.”
“Yes, sir. The Army Veterinary Corps can go in to Tyler tomorrow and Scott can get the evacuation started. But Rob should brief the press tonight, late as it is, while we still have control of the story.”
“All right. Do it. And Hugh—”
“Yes, sir?”
“Find the FBI agent NOW.”
FRIDAY
» 60
At just after midnight, Ellie Caine sat slumped in a chair in her living room. On her lap rested Music’s rawhide bone. Ellie had sat in the same position for hours, not eating or sleeping. What was the
point? She was too depressed to even turn on the TV.
Butterfly was dead, the other three greyhounds lost to her. Locked up. Not dead—if they were dead, Ellie would know. In her heart she’d know.
She fingered the rawhide bone. Other toys littered the floor: Song’s favorite ball, a stuffed alligator that Butterfly loved. Every time she looked at them, Ellie felt like crying all over again, but she had no tears left.
When the phone rang, Ellie jumped. Few people ever called her, usually just telemarketers, and not at midnight. Who…
“Ellie Caine? Is this Ellie Caine?”
“Yes.”
“Ellie, my name is Jenna, you don’t know me. I got your name from Larry Campos at the Greyhound Rescue League in Frederick. He said you adopted four greyhounds and are really zealous for the League.”
“Yes…”
“Well, I live in Tyler, like you, and I have dogs I love. Had dogs. Jess Langstrom took my English setters last week and they were not infected. Now we have this awful announcement from the White House and—”
“What announcement? What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t had the TV on?”
“No!”
Jenna said, “The president has ordered all the confiscated dogs in Tyler killed—sick and well dogs!—and the town evacuated, starting tomorrow. Because of that dog that crashed through a window and attacked a little boy.”
Ellie hadn’t heard about that either, but her mind barely registered it. All the dogs in Tyler killed! All!
“Some of us won’t permit that,” Jenna said, her voice hardening. “Our pets aren’t infected and we won’t let them be murdered. Even the infected dogs shouldn’t die because the CDC might come up with a cure. So we. Will. Not. Permit. This.”
Ellie stood very still, clutching the phone. A strange emotion leapt through her. Hope.
“What are you going to do?”
“Are you with us?”
“Yes! Oh, yes!”
“Larry vouched for you. Our organization is still pretty loose, and we don’t have much time, but we’re going to free our dogs. Do you own a gun?”
“No. But I can shoot.” Her father had shown her once, fifteen years ago, the one time he’d paid any attention to her at all. Surely she could remember what he’d demonstrated.
“Good. Stay at home all day tomorrow and I’ll call again with instructions. We’re still getting our plans together. But I can tell you this—no uninfected dog in Tyler is going to die. Not one. Bye for now.”
Ellie stood blinking in the middle of her kitchen. So much to take in. There would be danger, and she had never been particularly brave. But for Song and Chimes and Music, she could dare anything, even take on the government. And it wasn’t like the government had ever done all that much for her. It hadn’t protected her against her father or ever helped her find a job or sent her checks like those welfare deadbeats. Ellie Caine had always been on her own, and the greyhounds had given her all the love and comfort she ever got. She could do whatever was necessary to save them.
In her mind she rehearsed the steps to load, cock, and aim a gun.
Steve Harper stared at his TV. It was barely six in the morning, but he couldn’t sleep. He’d spent the night in his recliner, dozing fitfully, only to wake from nightmares about Davey. The brown mastiff with a single long string of saliva...
Davey’s toys spilled from the toy box in the corner; Steve hadn’t been able to bring himself to remove them. Plastic stacking rings, red and blue and yellow. The dump truck. A stuffed pig. The miniature plastic baseball bat.
Whatever was on TV wasn’t making enough distracting noise. Steve flipped through channels, coming to CNN. “—in Tyler, Maryland. Scott Lurie, FEMA director, announced last night that all dogs in Tyler will be euthanized in an attempt to control the canine plague. Many consider this a long-overdue move to—”
Damn right! Steve sat up straighter and clenched his fists. If they’d done that immediately, maybe more people wouldn’t have died the way Davey did. Wusses. But at least they were doing it now.
“—emergency evacuation from Tyler. Volunteers from Tyler itself will help coordinate the evacuation. FEMA said it would provide buses for those unable to—”
An evacuation. That made sense. And they needed volunteers, probably to make sure no half-assed idiot tried to smuggle a dog out of town in their luggage. Steve could do that. And he fucking sure needed to do something.
Since DiBella had put him on temporary suspension, the only constructive thing he’d done was shoot that dog on Herlinger Street right out from under Jess Langstrom. Putting a bullet in at least one canine killer had been satisfying, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, to discharge his rage or grief. He needed to do something.
Just let anybody try to get a fucking dog past his checkpoint.
Del heard the announcement on the radio while he fixed Brenda’s breakfast. He felt a pang for Folly, sweet little dog that she was. But the government had to think about everybody, had to look at the big picture. And maybe leaving Tyler would be for the best for him and Brenda, too. As long as they could switch Brenda’s chemo to Frederick—and the doctor said just yesterday that they could—it might be better to be there with Chrissy. Their daughter always cheered up Del and kept Brenda interested in scrapbooking and all those other crafts they both liked. Yes, an evacuation was a good idea.
He was glad the government was finally bringing the crisis to a close.
» 61
Tessa, stiff and aching, woke on the floor of Ebenfield’s cabin. Slowly she stood, stretching her sore body. Ebenfield’s scabrous smell still hung in the small space. In the corner, the puppies whined in their box.
Outside, all was quiet.
She climbed onto the bed and untacked one corner of the blanket over the window. Bright sunlight struck her eyes; the window faced south, the only direction not thickly covered with pines. It was at least midmorning. Overnight the cold front had passed and it was maybe forty degrees out there, maybe more. Water dripped from pine boughs. Ebenfield’s car was pulled up under trees about thirty feet from the cabin, but open space lay between. The keys were either in his car or in a pocket on his mangled body. Tessa couldn’t see any of the dogs—had they run off?
She heated water, mashed it into dry dog food, and put the mixture in the box. The puppies ate it eagerly. After she heated and ate a can of stew, she combed the cabin, inch by inch, looking for papers, CD-ROMs, memory stick, anything that Ebenfield might have hidden and Ruzbihan’s men missed. Nothing.
Then she had to pee. The cabin had no chemical toilet; Ebenfield must have gone outside. Since that wasn’t an option until she was sure where the dogs were, Tessa used a corner of the cabin, grimacing. As she finished, she climbed on the bed and peeked outside.
Two of the dogs stood between her and the car, facing the cabin window. Against the white snow their dark bodies bulked even larger than she remembered. When they glimpsed her face at the window, their ears pricked forward and muscles rippled in their powerful back legs, but they made no sound. The milky white film over their eyes made them look blind, but their heads followed her every shift in position.
The only way she was going to get out of this cabin was to kill them.
Oh, right. With what?
The dogs moved closer, and Tessa had to fight the impulse to leap backward off the bed. She was safe enough inside—but not indefinitely. She’d found no spare canister of propane, and the stew and figs wouldn’t last very long.
The dogs began to act weird.
First one, then the other, began snapping at empty air. Abruptly the larger dog leapt two feet off the ground and closed his powerful jaws on nothing. He did it again, this time with a twist in the air, as if to bite squarely into something slightly off-center from his leap. The other animal did the same, slavering and gnashing its fangs. The entire performance took place in total silence. Again and again they leapt, bit, fell, ignoring each other, nei
ther of them looking at Tessa. What on Earth—
The dogs were attacking something that wasn’t there.
Gooseflesh rose on Tessa’s neck. There was something eerie, almost frightening, about the scene. The dogs whirling, jumping, biting at nothing—it was somehow worse than if there had been something solid there to attack. The animals’ utter silence only deepened the eeriness, removing the dogs from their own nature and turning them into creatures moving in some unseen, spectral realm. Ghost dogs, half in this world and half in another, attacking demons visible to only their demented, filmy eyes…
Were they maybe hallucinating? Could dogs hallucinate?
A long shiver ran through her body, clear from neck to legs. Ebenfield. He’d been bitten in Africa by infected dogs. Initially, Frère Luc-Claude had said, Ebenfield had developed a high fever, then a coma, and then seeming recovery. But if the virus had remained in his brain—and some viruses could do that, Tessa knew—what then? Had the virus gone on eating slowly at Ebenfield’s mind? Turning him into a human and therefore more complex version of these dogs—into an animal that senselessly fears, hates, attacks?
By his end, Ebenfield, like the dogs, had believed things that did not exist. He’d believed himself to be superior to Salah, an alpha male if there ever was one. A top dog.
In Arabic, the adjective went after the noun. Not “dogs first—“first dog.”
Tessa stepped off the bed, sat on the edge, and allowed herself a moment to calm her breathing. All of this was speculation; none of ot might be true. Still...
She walked to the cabin door, slid back the bar, and cracked it an inch. If the dogs were now attacking things that didn’t exist, perhaps they would ignore things that did exist. She stuck one hand through the crack.
The dogs raced around the side of the cabin, now growling and snarling audibly. Tessa slammed the door and slid the bar into place. Apparently if something solid moved into their awareness, the dogs reverted from their illusionary world to this one.