Dogs

by Nancy Kress

  Opening the kitchen door to the outside, he suddenly paused with his hand halfway to the latch of the old screen, which he hadn’t gotten around to replacing last fall with the storm door. Something was wrong.

  The three Samoyeds—"Stupid to keep sled dogs in Maryland!" Cora’s voice nagged in his head—stood bunched by the door, waiting for him to let them in from the fenced backyard. Nothing unusual in that. But a low noise came from the dogs, rumbles in the back of their throats, that sent cold sliding down Ed’s spine. Rex and Petey stared directly at him, tails high and bristling, ears forward. Jake, usually the leader and Ed’s favorite, stayed further behind. His lips pulled back and forty-two long, sharp teeth gleamed in the light from the kitchen.

  “Hey, guys,” Ed tried to say, but the words came out a croak. All at once a picture flashed into his mind from some movie, primitive men crouched close around a fire while in the darkness beyond, creatures moved with firelit eyes and drooling jaws. But these were Ed’s pets, his protectors!

  “Hey, guys—”

  All at once Jake snarled and sprang over Petey. Ed slammed the door. He heard Jake hit the screen and heard the wire mesh, soft as cloth from so many summers, rip away from the wood frame. All three dogs howled and snapped. Ed locked the door and leaned against it, panting as if he’d run a mile. His stomach lurched.

  What the fuck had just happened?

  Next door, Del Lassiter was wakened by the Dormund dogs barking. 5:46 by the bedside clock. Those awful animals! Still, they usually weren’t outside this early.

  Silently Dol slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Brenda. Once he was awake, he could never get back to sleep. Something to do with getting older, he supposed. At twenty-two he had been able to sleep through a fire alarm; sixty-seven was a different matter.

  Del padded to the kitchen, where Folly slept on her little bed. The Chihuahua liked to be near the heat register. Folly woke, too, and gave him a friendly bark and tail wag, all two pounds of her.

  Putting on water for coffee, Del could still hear the Dormund dogs snarling and barking. He tried to catch sight of them through the window, but apparently they were in back. The barks sounded…enraged, somehow. What could have upset them like that? Well, whatever it was, Del would have to talk to Ed about it. Brenda needed her sleep; the chemo was hard on her. Yes, he’d call Ed later, at a decent hour, even though everything in Del recoiled from the idea. He hated confrontation of any kind.

  Folly yawned, stretched, and wandered to her water bowl.

  Two blocks away, Ellie Caine stirred in her warm bed. One of the Greyhounds in the kitchen, it sounded like Song, whimpered. Probably had a bad dream. Ellie shuddered to think what Song might be dreaming.

  She’d rescued the four Greyhounds from a race track, where conditions were horrifying. Dogs were trained to run by starving them and then forcing them to chase a piece of meat on a mechanical arm that moved faster and faster. Sometimes, even though it was supposed to be illegal, the meat was replaced by a live rabbit with its legs broken to make it scream. If a Greyhound couldn’t run fast enough, or after its racing days were over, the poor dog was killed.

  Ellie wished she could rescue more Greyhounds, but even four were a tight fit for her small house and yard. She was passionately determined to make up to Song, Music, Butterfly, and Chimes everything terrible that had been done to them. She rushed home from work at noon to spend her lunch hour with them; she took them every day to the dog park; she stayed home with them every night. They were her friends, her companions, and so much more reliable and loving than people ever were.

  Song still whimpered, and Ellie decided to give him five more minutes. Then if all wasn’t quiet in the kitchen, she’d leave her cozy bed and go to the greyhounds.

  Just five more minutes.

  Steve Harper sat on a sofa at the Webster Funeral Home. He couldn’t have described the sofa, or the room, or the funeral home. Nothing registered, nothing except the mental picture of Davey, in that spun-out moment when the brown mastiff raised its head and looked straight at Steve, a single long string of saliva and blood hanging from its mouth—

  “Mr. Harper?” someone said.

  Hanging from its mouth onto Davey’s body…

  “Mr. Harper!”

  Slowly the funeral director came into focus. The man, the room, the purpose for this terrible visit. And then one thing more.

  “As I was saying, Mr. Harper, FEMA’s temporary regulations make it impossible for us to go forward with little David’s viewing, service, or burial just now. But we can still choose the casket and make—”

  The thing sat on the fireplace mantel. A statue, china or glass…

  “—all the other arrangements for the eventual—”

  A statue of a dog.

  The brown mastiff with a single long string of saliva and blood hanging from its mouth onto Davey’s body...

  Steve jumped from the sofa, seized the obscene decoration, and smashed it as hard as he could to the floor.

  » 12

  Cami Johnson dropped the IV bag on her way to her patient’s curtained corner of the ER, caught it just before it hit the floor, and banged her head on a metal linen shelf while straightening up. The fall wouldn’t have hurt the sealed plastic bag, but the bump hurt Cami. She blinked back tears even as she looked around to see if Rosita Perez had noticed.

  The charge nurse noticed everything. “You’ve been on duty how long, Camilla? Sixteen hours? Go home.”

  "It's all right, ma'am, I'm fine, I just slipped, I think there's a bit of water on the floor…”

  “Then wipe it up, hang the bag, and go home. You look like shit.”

  Probably true, Cami thought wearily. Sixteen hours, and the dog bites had just kept pouring in. They wouldn’t stop. The hospital had every available doctor, resident, and intern seeing patients, and still stretchers were stacked in the hall, people sat bleeding in the er waiting room, and ORs had been commandeered from Maternity, so that women were delivering babies in their rooms. Nobody, the older nurses told her, had ever seen anything like it. And so many of the patients were children! Children and dogs, a boy and his dog, how much is that doggie in the window…Cami’s tired mind had been going around and around with that silly tune for the last hour.

  Rosita was right; Cami needed to go home for a little while. And even if Rosita hadn’t been right, nobody argued with Rosita.

  She was surprised to find a police officer in the underground staff parking area. “Can I see some I.D., ma’am?”

  Cami showed him her driver’s license and hospital pass. He inspected them, unsmiling, and then said, “All right. Drive straight out with your windows rolled up. Don’t roll them down to talk to any reporters, or anyone else, who may be outside the hospital. Drive straight home. Do you have a dog at home, ma’am?”

  Cami hesitated. If she said yes, would he give orders to take Belle away?

  All the while she’d been working on the terrible dog bites flooding the ER, Cami had had Belle in the back of her mind. Cami had had one course in public health during nursing school. If there was an animal-borne plague, an important step was to eliminate the animal hosts. That’s what WHO had tried (and failed) to do world-wide with malaria in the 1970s: eliminate the host mosquitoes. Eliminating mice had helped to bring hantavirus under some control in the Southwest. And, of course, all those poor monkeys in Reston, Virginia in 1983, carriers of Ebola from the Philippines—every single monkey had been killed. Wasn’t that eventually what might happen here?

  But Belle was different. She was so old, and so gentle. With her arthritis, even walking was a chore. If she were infected—and Cami had let her off the leash in the dog park last weekend, with tons of other dogs—Belle could hardly even hobble over to someone to attack. By the time Belle got there, the “victim” would have been able to escape to the next county.

  Anyway, Belle would never attack Cami.

  There were no reporters outside the hospital, after all. Cami drove sl
owly home, so tired that it was a chore to keep her arms raised to the steering wheel. The streets were weirdly deserted, even for February. But she saw a lot of police cars.

  At her apartment complex, she pulled into the long garage built beneath her building. Each renter was allotted one garage slot and one outside parking place, and all the indoor slots were filled. In the SUV next to her Ford, a German shepherd barked ferociously, lunging at the window and snapping as if he could tear through the glass and get at her. He couldn’t, of course, but—this garage was supposed to be communal! How dare the dog’s owner put everyone else at risk…but, of course, what else could they do with the dog if there were children in their unit?

  Cami flung open her car, hurried across the garage, and closed the stairwell door on the frantic barking.

  At 2-B she paused and knocked. “Mr. Anselm? Are you okay? It’s Cami Johnson.”

  Slow footsteps punctuated by the tapping of a cane. The door opened on Mr. Anselm and his seeing-eye dog, Captain. “Cami? How nice of you to stop by. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “No, I can’t stay,” Cami said, so exhausted that the words had trouble rising past her lips. “I just wanted to make sure that you heard about the dogs and don’t go out. Did you hear, Mr. Anselm?”

  His wrinkled old forehead wrinkled even more above the filmy, unfocused blue eyes. “Heard what, my dear?”

  “Some kind of plague is affecting dogs, Mr. Anselm. Nobody knows what it is. Captain hasn’t snapped at you or anything, has he?”

  “Captain? No, of course not. He’s too well-trained for anything like that, isn’t he, ol’ boy?”

  Cami nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. Seeing-eye dogs were superbly trained. And Mr. Anselm hardly ever left the house anyway. She wanted to say more, but she was just too tired. She managed, “Take care, Mr. Anselm,” staggered to her own door, and let herself in.

  For just a second, as she pushed open the door, Cami felt a frisson of fear: What if Belle…But the collie met her at the door, tail wagging, gentle old eyes shining with pleasure that Cami was home.

  In a blur of exhaustion Cami put down food and water for the dog, took off her scrubs, and fell into bed in her underwear. She hadn’t taken Belle out…how could she take her out, anyway? Let Belle pee, and even shit, in a corner of the kitchen, as she’d had to do once or twice before when Cami had worked a double shift. Cami could clean it up later. Right now sleep, sleep, sleep…

  But just before she crashed, she pulled herself up off the duvet and closed the bedroom door, leaving Belle on the other side. Just in case.

  » 13

  Tessa, who’d spent all of Thursday and much of Friday morning unpacking boxes in her new kitchen and bedroom, looked around her living room, which still seemed to be full of boxes. How did she own this much stuff? She’d given away, it seemed to her, entire roomfuls of stuff before she left D.C., calling the Goodwill and Salvation Army to haul away truckloads of chairs and books and frying pans and throw pillows. Yet here was all this stuff.

  It wasn’t the most restful site for meditation, but Tessa nonetheless unfolded her mat. She hadn’t meditated this morning; it would make a nice break now. She opened the window to the bracing cold air, faced the brass statue, and sat on her heels, hands on knees, spine straight and relaxed. Breathe…

  The doorbell rang. Minette started her insane barking, and Tessa picked her up as she opened the door. Minette was always thrilled to see anyone. A visit from the FedEx man could send her into orgasm.

  “Hi, I’m Pioneer Cable,” said an impossibly young workman. “You had a one P.M. call for a new cable hook-up, but I got started early today so if it’s okay with you…”

  “Fine,” Tessa said. “Want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks, ma’am. I’m sort of in a hurry. Running behind schedule.”

  Tessa left him with his time contradictions in the living room, tethered the yipping Minette to the kitchen table, and made herself coffee. Then she checked her email for the third time today. One of Salah’s unknown correspondents had answered her: pennj@amserve.net.

  Dear Tessa,

  I write in English for your convenience. I have heard not of Salah’s death and it is very great shock to me. We have shared rooms at the Sorbonne, perhaps you know this. Also I have known him since a long time, when we were boys in Tunis. I am very sad to hear of his death. How has this occurred? Please tell me, if it is not too painful for you.

  I have written Salah last year because our classmate has written to me to ask for Salah’s email address. I have written to Salah first to see if this is okay for him. Salah said yes, so I have given the address to our classmate, Richard Ebenfield, American. Richard writes not any Arabic. Neither Salah nor I have seen Richard since many, many years.

  I live now in London. Salah and I have promised to write to each other again but somehow we have not done this. Again, I am very sad to hear of this death. Please tell me what has occurred.

  Sincerely,

  Ruzbihan al-Ashan

  Tessa closed her eyes. Salah had spoken occasionally of Ruzbihan. They had been great pals as children and at the Sorbonne but then, like many college friends, had drifted apart. No overt break, just living in different countries with different activities. And they were both still young, in their early forties only, there was lots of time. Until time had run out.

  She wrote back to Ruzbihan, giving him the bare details of her husband’s senseless death and adding a bit about their former life together. Then she turned to Salah’s laptop, still set up beside her own Toshiba, and scanned his files for “Richard Ebenfield.” Nothing. Salah had evidently not referred to his old roommate specifically by name when he wrote back to Ruzbihan, or he had transliterated the name into Arabic. And Ebenfield, who would write in English, had apparently not contacted Salah even though he’d asked for Salah’s address.

  That left the other Arabic email correspondent to wonder about. He (she?) hadn’t yet answered. And, of course, it was entirely possible that neither email had anything to do with Salah’s and her names turning up on intelligence chatter in the Middle East. Tessa had been trained to follow all leads, but 95% of all leads turned out to be crap. Always. If Salah—

  “All done, ma’am,” the cable guy said, holding out a fistful of brochures. “You have all network stations, local station KJV-TV, plus—”

  “That’s okay, I’ll read it later,” Tessa said.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s that statue on that little table under the open window? I ask because it’s, like, the only thing unpacked in there.”

  “It’s a god, Natraja,” Tessa said. “Shiva Dancing.”

  “What are you, Islam?”

  Tessa stared at the nasty expression on the face of this bigoted, ignorant, probably racist kid. “No. Shiva is a Hindu god, one of many. Hindu, as in ‘India.’ Islam has only one God.”

  “Oh,” he said, losing interest. “That’ll be fifty-four dollars for installation plus the—”

  “Just give me the bill. I can read,” she snapped, and he blinked. They finished the transaction in silence and mutual dislike.

  No chance of meditating after that. Not that Tessa hadn’t gotten used to the attitude, ever since 9/11. The glances at Salah as he walked down the street in his beautiful business suits and Arab headdress. The murmur in restaurants. A certain kind of silence when Salah came home from work, his usually cheerful face clouded. She’d learned not to ask; he didn’t like to discuss it. It was hardest when the silent attitude came from people that they’d considered friends, people who should have been sophisticated enough to know not only that not every Arab was a fundamentalist terrorist, but also that Tunisia had a long alliance with the United States. But, then, the fucking FBI hadn’t seemed to know any better.

  Now there really wasn’t any chance of a quiet meditation. Not until she cleared her mind. She threw on her coat and untethered Minette. “Let’s go for a walk, baby. Too bad you didn’t bite that
cable bastard.”

  Minette, hearing no word but “walk,” went into paroxysms of joy.

  The afternoon was clear, windless, still in the forties. Minette trotted forward on her short legs, thrilled to be outside. A dog’s life was so simple: If you like it, lick it. If you don’t like it, growl at it. If it smells interesting, pee on it.

  A few early crocuses poked green shoots above the earth. Winter sunlight touched the treetops with pale gold. Tessa breathed deeply of the crisp air. Maybe this move would be okay, would help her “adjust.” Whatever that meant. Tyler was a pretty place, and so peaceful after D.C. No traffic on her side street, no people crowding her, nothing moving anywhere at all, which now that she thought about it seemed a bit odd—

  A police car rounded the corner and the patrolman rolled down his window, his face exhausted and incredulous. “Ma’am—what are you doing?”

  “I’m walking my dog,” Tessa said. At the Bureau she’d joined in all the usual jokes about inept locals, the run-of-the-mill assumption that federal agents were superior to small-town cops. She hadn’t really believed it. Some locals were good, some weren’t—just like agents. Still, for this guy to ask such an obvious question—

  He said, “Return home immediately with that animal, ma’am, and keep it inside. The mayor has issued an off-the-streets order for all dogs, effective immediately. I guess you didn’t hear about it.”

  “An off-the-streets order? Why?”

  He stared at her, and Tessa realized what he saw: a person so out-of-it, so friendless, that no one had called her to tell her whatever this was about. She said in her most professional voice, “I just moved here from D.C., officer. Please tell me what’s happened.”

  “Some kind of disease turning dogs vicious. The CDC is here. Get inside now."