“Section Chief Mike Leahy,” the man said, shaking my hand as we entered the building. “Thanks for agreeing to come.”
He led us out of a stairwell into a long, blinding-white corridor.
“Sorry for all the drama, but when”—he glanced at Eli—“the you-know-what hits the fan, things tend to work pretty fast around here.”
We turned a corner and entered a semicircular room that had rows of seats and a podium in front. It reminded me of a college lecture hall. Behind the podium was a shiny, sleek television screen the size of a billboard.
A side door opened and a middle-aged black man entered the room. Leahy was in business attire, but this guy wore a black polo shirt with black jeans and Chuck Taylors that squeaked like balloon animals on the shiny white floor. The gold Rolex at his wrist added a splash of bling to the ensemble.
“Are you the president?” Eli said, gazing up at him.
“No, I’m not,” the man said.
“Actually,” Leahy said, smiling stiffly, “the president has been detained. This is Conrad Marlowe from the Defense Department.”
“Don’t jerk their chains, Mike,” Marlowe said. His teeth could have been mah-jongg tiles, and his voice was like a velvet cello. “Mr. Oz here is smarter than that. He saw this coming back in 2012. Hell, back in 2011, 2010. The president’s not coming. They say that to get you on the bird. And technically, I’m not from the Defense Department. I work for a think tank. War games. That kind of happy crap. They think I can solve this Rubik’s Cube, but I’m having my doubts.”
“But we really do need your help, Mr. Oz,” said Leahy.
Now standing in the doorway was a severe-looking sparrow of a woman with threaded brows and hair yanked back as tight as a figure skater’s. She clicked her knuckles twice on the open door. Leahy cleared his throat.
“This is Jen, my assistant,” he said. “Would it be all right if she brought Eli across the hall to have some ice cream and play computer games while we talk shop?”
“Heck, if he doesn’t want to go, I’m down,” Marlowe said, glancing at Jen, a speck of fire in his eye.
“Can I go, Mommy?”
“No ice cream without the magic word, okay?”
“Pleeease!” Eli beamed bright as a headlight as Jen herded him out the door.
“Hard to find a sitter on short notice,” I told Leahy.
“Okay,” Chloe said after they were gone. “Let’s cut to the chase, yes? What is this? Why are we here? What’s happened?”
“It’s here, Mrs. Oz,” Leahy said.
“What’s here?” I said.
“HAC has arrived in the United States like gangbusters,” said Marlowe. “The animals are on the warpath. It’s spreading. A pandemic.”
“We’re calling the unfortunate new environment Z-O-O,” Leahy said, spelling out the word. “Those letters stand for something, but fuck if I can remember what.”
Marlowe snickered. “And we’re just one of the animals.”
Chapter 54
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
DR. CHARLES GROH lets the hiss and crackle rise to a frenzy, and then, sensing their undersides beginning to burn, reaches a fork into the cast-iron pan and turns over the slices of bacon one by one. The bacon strips tremble and buckle, spitting a mist of fat flecks and smoke above the pan.
Behind him, sprawled on the patterned floor of Mexican Talavera tiles, his chocolate Lab, Charlie II, whines pitifully and drums his tail against the side of the kitchen island. His whining erupts into a yelp.
“Patience, Charlie. Patience,” Groh says, waving his fork in the air like a maestro. “With the important things in life, it’s all about the timing. And bacon is a very important thing.”
After draping the bacon on a paper towel, Groh hobbles to the sink with his cane and washes his hand. The male gorilla who had attacked him in his primatology lab at Johns Hopkins three years ago took his left hand as well as his nose, his lips, his right eye, left ear, and his right leg from the knee down. Groh uses a prosthetic hand and leg.
The incident had actually been a perverse godsend, in a cosmic sense. Back then, everything had been put on the back burner but his career. He was tenured, secure in his career, with a CV thick as a phone book. He had written academic books and several popular books on gorillas, and had been awarded a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation. He was the toast of intellectual circles—but as his career floated higher and higher into the ether he had been spending less and less time with his wife, Adrianna, and his son, Christopher Robin. He was growing distant from his family, and Christopher was growing up without him. He was even neglecting his teaching, sloughing off most of his classes on TAs.
For all its pain and horror, the mauling and his grueling recovery had saved him, in a way—it brought him back down to earth. Yes, he now wears sunglasses in public, and his potential career as a foot model is shot. But he can still teach. Although certain positions are off the table, he can still make love to his wife. He can still fry bacon.
All things considered, Groh thinks, lifting a steaming mug of coffee to his surgically reconstructed lips, he is a relatively lucky man.
Groh folds a strip of bacon into his mouth and switches on the radio beside the sink. The needle’s zeroed in on some nattering morning talk show, and he paws around the dial until he lands on some classical music. Verdi. That’s better. He hears the clink of crockery against the marble counter of the kitchen island and turns. His twelve-year-old son mumbles a good morning as he tilts a box of Lucky Charms into a cereal bowl. He’s a handsome kid, currently brown as a nut from hours of outdoor play at his summer day camp.
“Hey, kiddo,” Groh says. “Cease and desist with the Charms. I made us bacon.”
“Bacon and what?” says Chris, turning on the MLB Network on the kitchen TV. He mutes it, letting his dad’s Verdi score the recap of the Braves losing to the Orioles the night before.
“Bacon and bacon so far,” Groh says, opening the fridge. “How about an egg?”
“Can I have bacon with Lucky Charms?” says his son, staring at the screen.
“I don’t know. Would your mother let you do that?”
Adrianna is in Baltimore for a few days with her elderly mother, who just had her gallbladder removed.
“Are you nuts? Hell no,” Chris says.
Groh smiles as he brings over the steaming pieces of swine.
“Then have at it, boy,” he says. “She’ll be home soon.”
Groh makes his way across the floor between the kitchen and the front door when he hears a truck pull up outside. He glances out the window and sees that it’s a Lawn Doctor truck in front of the neighbors’ place across the street. A couple of childless yuppie lobbyists who pull down some long green, apparently, judging from their matching Beemers. They certainly aren’t landscapers. Crabgrass and brown spots mottle their sickly lawn like mange. Hence the Lawn Doctor truck.
When he turns from the window, Charlie II is looking out the open front door, panting as he spies with him on the neighbors through the glass of the storm door. Groh galumphs back toward the kitchen on his cane, patting the dog on top of his sleek, brown, dopey head. A flurry of shiny red cartoon hearts is floating out of Charlie II’s expression.
“Okay,” Groh says, scooping up his keys with a jingle from the kitchen counter. “I’m off to work. You’re on your own for another hour, Chris. Mom left Nana’s already and will be here to take you to camp. Love you.”
“Dad, wait. I almost forgot,” Chris says.
Groh watches his son ransack the backpack dangling from a hook on the wall by the front door. He fishes something from the bag and hands it to him—what looks like a red-and-white plastic necklace.
“It’s a lanyard. I made it at camp yesterday,” says Chris. “I thought it could hold your sunglasses, you know, like, around your neck, when you’re working or something. I made it red and white for the Nats.”
Groh looks at it, then at his son, his one eye th
reatening to fog up.
“Hey, thanks, kiddo,” Groh says. “It’s awesome. Are the Nats playing tonight?”
“At home. Versus the Diamondbacks. Seven tonight. Strasburg’s starting.”
“You want to go?” Groh says.
“What? To the stadium? Heck, yeah!” says Chris, slapping him a high five.
Lucky man, Groh thinks again as he pats his son on the shoulder and then steps into the garage.
Chapter 55
“HEY, CHARLIE. WANT some bacon?” Chris says to Charlie II when his dad is gone. “Hear that, boy? The Nats game. Stephen Strasburg throws like a hundred miles an hour.” He heads back into the kitchen. The dog’s claws click on the floor tiles behind him.
No one in the family loves Charlie II more than Chris. They’ve practically grown up together, having been “pups” at the same time. The family has moved three times, following Charles’s new jobs, and each time, Charlie II was Chris’s best friend until he managed to make human friends. Chris remembers how hard it was to make the dog stay home when he went off to play with his friends. Charlie II would whine in sadness, his eyes forlornly watching Chris from the window as he left the house. And if Chris looked back, he might not be able to leave. To not be with Chris seems to be the hardest thing for the dog to do. They are close as brothers.
Chris kills the Verdi on the radio, turns up the volume on the TV, and zaps through the channels with one hand, searching for ESPN. With the other hand he picks up a slice of bacon from the grease-dampened paper towel and offers it to Charlie II under the counter.
A hot shock of pain in his hand. Chris drops the remote.
“Hey!” He yanks back his hand and looks at it. Charlie bit him. There are puncture marks in his hand.
“Ow! What the fuck? What’d you do that for?”
Chris looks agape at Charlie II, standing beside him in the kitchen. The piece of bacon lies untouched on the floor tiles. Something is—something is not right. There is some weird look in the dog’s eyes—some knowing, almost angry glaze in them that Chris has never seen before. Charlie begins to growl. His jowls flap against his teeth, spit percolating deep in his throat. The eighty-pound Labrador crouches, coiling back, the fur bristling high and stiff as steel wool on the back of his neck. He is growling, sounding like a guard dog, his teeth bared, a gloopy white thread yo-yoing from his lower lip in a pool of saliva.
“What in the hell? What’s wrong, boy? Stop it. It’s me. What’s wrong with you?”
It looks like one of his eyes is messed up. Charlie’s head keeps jerking to one side, as though he were a boxer shaking off a punch. Something is wrong.
Charlie curls in on his hind legs and lets loose with a string of the loudest, most threatening barks Chris has ever heard him make. He sounds like a junkyard dog warning off intruders, not the family pet he’s known more than half his life. Charlie is in a rage—lungs heaving up quick, loud, guttural barks that sound like “WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR—WAR!”
That’s it. Chris gets scared. He panics. He tumbles from his chair and starts running. He feels Charlie’s hot breath on the backs of his knees, hears jaws snapping behind him.
The closest door is the hallway pantry. Chris dashes inside and slams the door, and feels the whump and rattle of Charlie throwing his weight against it. He leans with his back against the pantry door, holding it shut.
On the other side of it, Charlie smashes his body into the door, the thing shuddering on its hinges under the impact. Charlie scrabbles his toenails at the door, clawing and barking, heaves himself into it in manic thumps, seemingly wanting to rip him to ribbons. In all the years they have owned the dog, he’s never sounded like—like a wild animal.
He’s gone crazy, Chris thinks. He saw it in his eyes. The dog is off his rocker. He no longer seems like Charlie II. He is something else. Another dog entirely. A bad dog.
He feels himself beginning to cry. In the hallway, he can hear the dog skulking in circles, still rumble-jawed, occasionally sneezing, occasionally breaking into a fresh wave of furious barking.
“WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR—WAR!”
Chris looks down at his hand. The punctures in his palm aren’t huge, but they’re deep, and bleeding. There’s blood all over his shorts.
Chris shakes his head, swiping at his eyes. He has to calm down and think. He’s still bleeding. He has to deal with that.
He crouches down and reaches for a package of paper towels on the bottom shelf. On the paper towel package, a handsome mountain man in a flannel shirt smiles. He tears open the bag with his teeth, wraps a wad of paper towels around his hand, and tightens the makeshift bandage with a strip of plastic wrap.
He sits in the hot, cramped darkness, listening to the dog pace and growl in the hallway. He is thinking about maybe using the broom to beat back the dog for long enough to run for help. Then the phone in the kitchen rings.
The machine bleeps and someone starts leaving a message. He hears Charlie II skitter back into the kitchen.
Chris bolts from the pantry and races up the back stairs. He’s halfway to his room when Charlie arrives on the stairs in front of him.
Chris dives sidelong into his parents’ bedroom. Charlie comes through the doorway a moment later, forcing Chris into the bathroom. He whams the door shut a split second before the dog crashes against it, and Charlie again goes berserk with barks and snarls.
Damn it. His plan had been to call his mom or dad from the cell phone in his room. Now he’s stuck again.
“Charlie!” he calls through the door. “There’s something wrong with you. It’s me. It’s Chris.”
He can hear a note of pleading in his own voice, and it seems only to spark the dog’s contempt.
Charlie either can’t hear him or it doesn’t matter. He continues barking, clawing, snarling.
“WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR—WAR!”
That’s when he remembers that his mom is on her way home. She doesn’t know Charlie II has gone berserk. If she comes in the front door, Charlie might bite her, too.
He needs to call her. His cell phone is in his bedroom. He starts pacing back and forth across the bright bathroom floor. It’s still steamy from a shower. He suddenly remembers the box in his dad’s closet. His dad’s a gadget guy; has trouble tossing out spare parts and computer cables and stuff like that. Chris remembers the box has some old cell phones in it. You can dial 911 on old cell phones, right? He remembers hearing that somewhere. He hopes it’s true.
His parents’ closet is right next to the bathroom. And the walls are made of Sheetrock, right? He stepped through the ceiling once, dicking around in the attic when they’d first moved in, and knew firsthand how that stuff is surprisingly soft and crumbly.
Plan. He will make a hole in the wall, try to climb through it into the closet. Get the old cell phone from the box. Call 911.
He unscrews the metal shower curtain rod and begins to bash at the wall with it. He works at it for a while. The hole is about the diameter of a basketball when he hears the rumbling electric moan of the garage door opening from the floor below.
Charlie II stops barking and bolts from the room.
Chris panics. He’s too late. His mom will get bitten. He thinks of his dad’s gun. He’s been duck hunting a few times with his dad; sometimes with his uncle, too, when his uncle is visiting. He knows there’s a shotgun in the closet. He’s not sure if there are shells.
Chris drops the shower curtain rod to the bathroom tiles with a clatter, yanks the door open, and then goes into the closet. The shotgun is on the top shelf, lying on a pair of folded orange hunting vests. He can’t quite reach the shelf. He kick-scoots a chair into the closet, scrambles on top of it. He fumbles through the orange vests. He finds a box of ammo in one of them. He knocks out a handful of shells, pockets them, races downstairs with the shotgun.
He fiddles with the gun on the stairs. How the fuck do you load the stupid thing again?
Slow down, he tells himself. Think.
He’s shot the thing
like three times in his life, always with his dad, and his dad has always done the loading. Remember. He flips the gun over and notices some sort of closed slot on the side. He fiddles with a little catch underneath it and works the slide forward, opening it up. Then he slips the slug in and pumps the slide back. It goes chik-clack.
He can hear his mother coming through the door as he slides around the hallway corner, slippery in his socks on the glossy hardwood floor, shotgun heavy and awkward in his hands.
“Hello?” he hears his mom call. “Chris?”
“Mom!” he shouts down the hallway. “Look out! There’s something wrong with Charlie!”
The dog appears. He turns the corner at the opposite end of the hallway. His toenails click on the wood floor. Spit hangs in frothy strings from his mouth. He does that crazed head-twitching thing again, sneezes.
The dog moves forward slowly, growling, loose pulled-back lips flapping against bared teeth.
He watches the dog approach. He doesn’t want to shoot. Charlie isn’t just a pet. He’s a brother.
“WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR—WAR!”
The dog breaks forward into a run and leaps.
Chris raises the barrel of the gun and pulls the trigger. The kick of the gun butt knocks him on his back. The dog falls.
Blood peppers the walls.
The blast has taken off the Labrador’s face. His skin is gone; blood pumps from the place where his eyes used to be.
Chris rises to his knees, then crumbles back to the floor, crying. He drops the gun. He hears his mom come running.
“What the hell is going on?” she shouts.
The dog’s legs twitch wretchedly as blood gushes on the floor, dampening Chris’s socks. The animal lies dying just feet away from him.
“I’m sorry,” Chris half whispers. “Oh, I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
Chapter 56