The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

  That dog should never have been there.

  Well, by the time I’m finished with them, no bomb detection dog is ever going to make a mistake like that again.

  * * *

  Bradley arrives, out of breath, in his overalls, smelling of cow.

  “Tia says Sergeant Scott is here. I came as fast as I could. Did you make him a cup of tea?”

  “No,” I say, looking up from the computer.

  “Listen, Jess. The Air Force account is the most lucrative one that we have. If we lose it, we’re out of business. We bend over backwards for them, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll make the tea.”

  “No, no. I’ll make it. I want you to go through the records of all the military working dogs we have on file. Put together an ice box with all the vaccinations that are due. I’m going out to the base in a couple of hours. You can meet me there after your consults.”

  When I look through the files, I find thirty German shepherds who’ve been given exemplary care. Their teeth are cleaned yearly under anaesthetic. State-of-the-art nutrition and parasite control is institutionalised. The dogs are fully immunised for duty in South-East Asia and the Middle East. They each have a service number, but their names are taken from defunct gods or warriors of legend: Ares, Odin, Ghengis.

  All of them are undesexed males.

  The handlers are almost all male, too, except for LAC Nadia Lucas. Her dog is MWD Ripper.

  I try to imagine how it would be working with an entire squad of Sergeant Scotts, and salute Ms Lucas’s fortitude.

  Tia ducks her head around the corner.

  “There’s a poodle in consult one,” she says. “Needs a heartworm injection.”

  When I go into the consulting room, the white standard poodle crouching on the table coughs nervously.

  “Hi Nan,” I say.

  “Hello, dear,” my grandmother beams.

  “Hi Peppe,” I say.

  Peppe cowers.

  I hold him gently while I examine him. He’s got a dodgy heart. Through the stethoscope, the murmur is obvious, and his lungs crackle as he breathes with all the retained fluid in them. His pulse is pathetic and when I push on his gums, it takes forever for the pinkness to come back.

  I don’t say it, but I don’t think heartworms could make his heart much worse than it already is. His teeth are terrible, too. Nan feeds him soft tinned food. There’s great black and orange chunks of calculus around his molars.

  “Nan,” I say, “if bacteria get into his bloodstream because of his rotten teeth and end up in his kidneys, that could be the last straw for him.”

  Nan’s expression turns miserable.

  “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

  I tactfully ignore the question.

  “He can’t have an anaesthetic for a dental because of his heart,” I say, “but I can try to crack some of that tartar off just while he’s sitting there on the table.”

  She tries to hold him for me, but at the sight of the tartar removing forceps, Peppe goes berserk.

  I talk quietly to him while I try to peel back his lips.

  “Peppe, it’s fine, everything is fine. I’m just going to scrape some muck off your back teeth. It’s a little bit cold but it doesn’t hurt. Good boy, Peppe. Good boy.”

  But it’s no use. He’s stressing too much, throwing his head around. I send him home with Nan before he can turn blue and keel over.

  I wish the animals could understand me. I wish I could show them that I wasn’t going to hurt them. And if I was going to hurt them, give them a needle or manipulate a sore joint, well, it would only be for a bloody good reason.

  If only they knew, I could take so much better care of them.

  * * *

  I used to wonder about the last thoughts of the victims.

  There’s transmission. That happens to the strong ones. For the rest, there’s the slow sickness and death. You can’t tell from looking which one it’s going to be. If you set out deliberately to make a human into a wolf, in all likelihood the only thing you’re going to make is a human into a corpse.

  We’ve all had our little slip-ups. You can’t dwell on them. The important thing is, there’s less of us, now. One day, there’ll be none.

  We’re all pleased by that. Almost all. Someone will occasionally go on a rampage, but the Council finds them and puts them out of their misery. One new werewolf could be a mistake. Ten new werewolves, well, it’s a death sentence, and that’s getting off lightly, because where there’s ten new werewolves there’s a hundred dead humans.

  Funny thing is, it isn’t the wolf in them that makes the mad ones want to infect others. It’s the human.

  The side that feels loneliness like a kick in the gut.

  I get that.

  Shit, I miss Toby so badly.

  * * *

  The barking can be heard from the far end of the runway.

  “They get loads of exercise,” Tom says. “It’s a big perimeter. We patrol the base with the ground defence personnel. Day or night. Rain, hail or shine.”

  I’m listening to the charismatic handler but not really hearing him. My knuckles are white on my seatbelt as he comes around a bend and floors the accelerator into the straight. The airfield is flat and grassy. Speed limit signs read one-tenth of Tom’s current velocity.

  “There’s a stop sign,” I say weakly.

  “Oh yeah,” Tom says. He swerves off the road to avoid the twin speed humps designed to force ground vehicles to stop and check for air traffic. The car shudders through the grass, crosses the perpendicular runway, hits the grass on the other side and swerves back onto the road.

  Tom points at some buildings in the distance, outside the base itself.

  “There’s a vet surgery over there. Way closer than Brad’s. We used to take the dogs there. Heaps cheaper, too. But the vet was scared of the dogs. Used to examine them from the other side of the room with his back up against a wall.”

  “Not very thorough.”

  “He was on holiday, one time. One of our dogs got bit on the face by a black snake. We took him out to Brad’s. We couldn’t muzzle the dog without covering up the bite. Brad marched right up to him and grabbed his head to have a proper look. Impressed the hell out of Sergeant Scott.”

  “I bet.”

  “He started sending all the dogs to Brad, even when the other vet came back from holidays. We had some mean dogs, then. Sure couldn’t have used them for crowd control. They were vicious, mongrel things. The meanest one was Hurricane. He went in to have his teeth cleaned and Brad knocked him out for it. Only, Hurricane wasn’t completely knocked out.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh he ripped a hole in Brad’s stomach. Twenty-eight stitches they gave him at the hospital. We liked Brad before that, but after that he was a goddamned hero.”

  So that’s what it’ll take to impress Sergeant Scott. Twenty-eight stitches. Well, I’m not planning on getting bitten, but neither am I going to vaccinate any dog I haven’t given a proper examination.

  Tom pulls into the parking lot beside the kennels.

  I carry the cooler with the vaccines and heartworm preventative over to the trestle table where Bradley’s set up the paperwork.

  The handlers bring their dogs out and form two lines. The barking doesn’t stop.

  “They’re excited,” Tom says, “because of the muzzles. They only wear them for two things. One of them is getting checked by the vet.”

  “What’s the other one?”

  “Attack training. When they practice on real people.”

  The first dog in my line is the only one that isn’t barking. He’s sleek, alert, and slightly bigger than the others.

  His handler is a tall, dark-haired woman with John Lennon sunglasses and a peaked camouflage cap.

  “This must be Ripper,” I say. “Would you mind holding his head while I listen to his heart?”

  “He won’t move,” Nadia Lucas says, loosely holding the end of th
e leather leash. I start to smile and tell her to do it anyway when I’m struck by the fact that Ripper is standing, unnaturally immobile, in the perfect show position.

  He’s wearing a muzzle. It can’t hurt to try. When he moves, then I can ask Nadia to hold him.

  I check his eyes, his ears and his lymph nodes. I part his thick fur and palpate his abdomen. I listen to his chest, take his temperature and feel his pulse.

  Ripper doesn’t move.

  Shaking my head in wonder, I ask Nadia to take off Ripper’s muzzle and hold back his lips so I can see his teeth. Nadia gives a little derisive snort before complying. Ripper’s teeth are perfect. I give the injections and send them away.

  “Nadia’s brother,” Tom whispers to me, “was in the infantry. Got blown up in Afghanistan last year. The bomb sniffing dog tried to pick up the IED. Nadia wants to transfer to Darwin to train bomb dogs but she’s got to finish her basics here first.”

  “She’s got Ripper trained pretty well.”

  “Nobody knows how she does it. It’s not just Ripper. She can control any dog. Sergeant Scott won’t pass her, but.”

  “Why not?” I hiss back at him, but then Sergeant Scott’s at the head of the line with a dog that’s straining towards me, hyperventilating, salivating and pawing at the ground.

  “This is Stormy-Boy,” the Sergeant informs me. “Son of the famous Hurricane. You heard about Hurricane?”

  “Yes,” I say. My heart gallops with the primal fear most people feel on confronting a snarling wolf, but this is it. I force myself to smile. This is my moment to show I can do the job.

  Scott seizes the dog by the collar, getting it in a headlock while I make my observations. There’s not much use trying to take Storm’s temperature while he’s overexcited. I pull on a glove and squeeze some lubricant onto a finger.

  “You finished yet?” Scott barks over his shoulder at me.

  “Got to check his prostate,” I reply, seizing the dog’s tail.

  As soon as I insert a finger, Storm goes ballistic. It’s all Scott and Tom can do to keep holding him.

  “That’s it, we’re done,” the Sergeant says.

  “No,” I say. “I haven’t finished.”

  “You bloody well have.”

  “I’m sorry, but this is an entire male dog and he only gets checked once a year. He could die if he’s got a tumour and it’s been missed this time around.”

  There’s laughter in the line behind Scott.

  Wolf-whistles.

  Bestiality jokes.

  “For fuck’s sake,” the Sergeant says, bending back down to tackle the dog, whose whites are showing around its crazed eyes.

  * * *

  The new vet’s so green.

  Going through the motions like she knows what she’s doing, but would she know an abnormality if she felt one?

  Let’s just hope she had good teachers that took her out of the lab and into the world. Because you can’t work out what living tissue feels like if you’ve been taught with textbooks and virtual reality any more than a dog from outside the ADF that’s been taught to retrieve mail packages full of drugs can work out not to bring a land mine back to its handler.

  * * *

  When all the dogs are vaccinated, Bradley claps me on the shoulder.

  “Good job, partner,” he says. “We’ve finished early.”

  Sergeant Scott comes up and shakes Bradley’s hand.

  “It wasn’t easy or cheap, but we’ve implemented all your recommendations, Brad.”

  “I can tell. The dogs are in excellent condition.”

  “I’d like you to come out and give another talk on first aid in combat situations. We’ve got some new handlers that missed out on the last one.”

  “I noticed. The woman. Nadia? Pretty good, is she?”

  Scott turns immediately sour.

  “Women,” he says, as though I’m not even there. “She’ll be knocked up and out of the squad in no time. There’s no point teaching them anything. They’re gone before you know it.”

  I take the return ride to the surgery in Bradley’s car.

  “How was that, then?” he asks, full of good cheer.

  “I don’t think much of Sergeant Scott,” I say. “Tom’s alright.”

  “Give the Sergeant a break,” Bradley says. “He hasn’t been well.”

  “What’s wrong with him? A carrot up his arse?”

  “You could say that. He’s got cancer. An osteosarcoma arising from the fourth vertebra of his tailbone. They can’t excise the tumour and get clean margins without leaving him with permanent faecal incontinence and a high likelihood of recurrent infections.”

  “Oh,” I say in a small voice.

  “It was picked up on a yearly prostate check. Apparently his GP, a new graduate, missed it the first time around.”

  “What’s going to happen? Will he try surgery anyway?”

  “No. He said he’d rather die with dignity, though I don’t think it’s going to be dignified either way. They were looking at Tom for his replacement, but the kid keeps getting into drunken brawls at the local and being demoted.”

  I think: That explains why he hates me. Also, Nadia should be the one to replace Sergeant Scott, but there’s no point even saying that aloud.

  It’s never going to happen.

  * * *

  News Flash: The old bastard’s going to kick the bucket.

  But I haven’t finished with him yet.

  He thinks he’s keeping me back out of spite, because he’s jealous of what I can do. In fact, he’s still got plenty to teach me. A day’s going to come when I’ll want to teach others to train bomb detection dogs. Problem is, nobody but a werewolf has the skill of being able to put images direct into a dog’s mind, to calm them down or stir them up just by thinking at them.

  I need to know all of Michael Scott’s little tricks, his devious ways, the things he feels so deeply in his bones that he’s forgotten he ever had to learn them.

  I’ve decided to take the chance. He’s dying anyway, right? And if it doesn’t work, well, I’ll tell the others it was an accident. There’s certainly no love lost between us.

  * * *

  The phone wakes me.

  It’s 2 AM.

  The full moon hangs, huge, outside my window. I live in a unit above the veterinary surgery. It makes being on after hours duty that much more bearable. When people’s cats start vomiting in the middle of the night, all I have to do is crawl into my clothes, sink a cup of coffee and stumble down the stairs.

  The call centre connects me to the client. It’s the RAAF.

  One of the dogs is distressed, restless and panting.

  I tell them to bring it straight down.

  Fifteen minutes later, Tom lifts Ripper out of the back of the doggies’ truck and sets him down on the paved driveway. He’s unsteady on his feet. Neck extended, he retches uncontrollably.

  “He’s in a bad way,” Tom says. “Nobody knows where Nadia is. Sergeant Scott isn’t answering his phone, either.”

  The alert, obedient dog that I vaccinated at the base is gone. Ripper, despite trembling legs that won’t hold him up, growls and lays his ears back as I examine him on the treatment room table. Tom holds the dog’s jaw shut with one hand and hugs his chest with the other. He’s got a weak, thready pulse and pale membranes.

  “It’s serious,” I say.

  “He got a clean bill of health yesterday.”

  I panic, wondering if I missed a life-threatening heart problem in my examination. All the dogs were barking and jumping around. Except Ripper. If any dog had been checked properly, it was Ripper.

  “Put on the lead suit and gloves,” I say. “I’m going to need him lying down on his right side on the x-ray table.”

  Radiographs clearly show the displaced, air-filled pylorus.

  “It’s gastric dilatation and volvulus,” I say. “We mostly see it in big, deep-chested dogs like German shepherds and Great Danes. Plenty of room in there to
move. The stomach expands and twists. Air can get in but it can’t get out. A bunch of different blood supplies get cut off. I’ve got to get his stomach untwisted or he’ll go into shock and die.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now. First thing is to see if I can get a tube down his throat and decompress that way. Then I’ll go in and sew his stomach to his abdominal wall so it can’t get twisted again.”

  He shuffles around a bit in his combat boots, starts to say something, decides against it, and then says it.

  “You don’t want to call Brad or anything?”

  I do, in fact, very much want to call him. But I happen to know he’s interstate.

  “I’ll need a nurse,” I say, “to monitor the anaesthetic. I’ll call Tia. But first I’m going to get Ripper on some IV fluids, get his blood pressure up a bit. You can help me place the catheter. Hold up his front leg.”

  “Brad doesn’t usually shave the leg,” Tom protests. “It takes ages to grow back and the boss doesn’t like them to look sick when they’re on patrol.”

  “Hair removal,” I explain, mercilessly clipping a long rectangle of fur, “gets rid of a lot of dirt and bacteria, decreasing the amount of muck that’s going to get pushed into Ripper’s bloodstream when I stick the needle in. It also increases visibility for finding the vein, which will be flat and almost undetectable because of his shockingly low blood pressure.”

  “Oh, right,” Tom says, brightening. “Just so I can tell that to Sergeant Scott. If he ever answers his phone.”

  * * *

  The phone rings in his office but he doesn’t get up.

  He started to bandage the bite, but halfway through he keeled over on the couch in the staff lunch room, breathing deeply.

  I sit back on my haunches in the open doorway. I howl at the painfully beautiful moon.

  The dogs go crazy. I’m distantly aware of the danger. If anybody else comes, they’ll be easy prey, unless I’ve got a thing for them, and I haven’t got a thing for anybody, not even Tom. He looks too much like Toby, and he’s done a tour of Afghanistan as well. Every time I look at him, I wonder why Toby got blown to hell and Tom didn’t.

  It’s difficult to hold thoughts in my head. I let them drift away before an onslaught of scents and sounds: frogs in far hollows, machine parts being oiled and turned, boots in long grass. The small, sleepy, feathery smell of swallows under the eaves. The musk of the male dogs, their urine, the meat on their breath from the evening meal.