The Last Dog on Earth (9 page)

“What?” Mom cried. She slammed down her butter knife with a clatter. “Logan got the dog to
stop
jumping on the chair! Isn't that what you wanted? What's your problem, Robert?
I
think Logan's
doing a good job with the dog. And I'd appreciate it if you started leaving him alone.”

Robert and Logan both gaped at her for a moment.

“My property is being destroyed,” Robert said stiffly.

Jack barked at him.

“Your tennis racket is
our
property,” Mom said. “We're a family, remember? We share things.”

“You might want to remind your son of that,” Robert snapped.

Logan stared at them. He started to feel weirdly detached, as if he were watching the scene unfold on cheap, grainy videotape. This was possibly the dumbest argument in the history of planet Earth. But somehow it was so
serious.
Mom and Robert were glaring at each other. Any satisfaction that Logan felt over Mom's decision to side with him began to melt away like the butter that was sitting in the sun on the kitchen table. Why was Robert so mad, anyway? This was stupid even for
him.

“Robert, listen,” Logan said. “I'm sorry about your racket. But look at it this way. Jack's an animal.
And
a puppy. So she does whatever she feels like. I mean, I get just as angry as you do when she messes with
my
stuff. But it isn't, like …
personal.
You know? If she sees something she wants to chew, she'll chew it. We just have to put things away. And we have to stop her if we catch her. We have to teach her that it's wrong.”

“Makes sense to me,” Mom said pointedly.

Logan offered Robert an apologetic smile. He was trying to call a truce, even though smiling for Robert's benefit always made him feel ill.

Robert pushed himself away from the table. The chair screeched on the linoleum.

“All I know is that if we'd gotten the dog I asked for, I'd still have a tennis racket,” he said. He dropped his plate into the sink, then strode out of the kitchen.

Logan's jaw tightened. In the space of about three seconds, he'd gone from fantasizing about making peace to fantasizing about ramming that chewed-up tennis racket down Robert's throat so his stomach would explode and guts would fly everywhere.

Logan stared down into Jack's bright, saucerlike brown eyes. How could anybody possibly blame her for chewing on something? She was
supposed
to chew on things. She was a dog. She did whatever felt natural. It was absurd. No, it was beyond absurd. It was incomprehensible. It was …

Robert.

Logan came to an important realization at that moment. A monumental realization.
Humongous.
It was the kind of realization that could change you forever; it could give you the power to quit everything and move to a mountaintop and become one of those Shaolin monks who are so wise and enlightened that they don't even have to
eat—
they only have to breathe air.

After four years of struggling to understand the oaf who'd married his mom, Logan still hadn't gotten anywhere. But in less than a week he'd come to understand the newest member of his family better than he'd understood anyone else in his whole life.

And …

And there was something very depressing about that.

Westerly wasn't quite sure what he was doing. As a scientist, he was used to planning everything very carefully. Meticulously, in fact. But today, he just couldn't seem to organize his thoughts. He'd left the house after lunch and started walking down the highway. And now, some thirty minutes later, he found himself standing in front of his nearest neighbor's property: a run-down bungalow at the end of a short dirt drive.

The windows were dark. It looked deserted.

I should go home
, he said to himself.

He turned around.

No, I shouldn't go home. I've come all this way. I should just ring the doorbell and ask Mrs. Hoover if Daisy is okay. It'll take two minutes. I'll just go up there and knock.

But still, he couldn't move. This sort of paralysis seemed to be happening a lot lately.

In the days following his conversation with Harold Marks, Westerly had felt as if the two sides of his brain were at war. One side kept demanding that he test Jasmine's food for the presence of prions:
Get it over with!
But the other side kept consoling him:
Jasmine's not sick. She can't be sick
. And that was the side he chose to listen to. That was the side that kept him buried in his flu vaccine research. He couldn't afford to get distracted and waste valuable
time. He simply couldn't believe the situation was
that
bad. Jasmine seemed to be all right.

Except … this morning, she'd nearly fallen down the porch stairs.

But the stairs were tricky. She'd stumbled on them lots of times.

He'd left her at home for a change. In case there was a problem with Daisy.

Just go and ask Mrs. Hoover about her dog!

If Daisy was healthy, Westerly knew that there would be nothing to worry about. It would mean that the disease hadn't spread this far. Jasmine's stumble would have been a coincidence.

He frowned. A siren was approaching.

It grew louder and louder, wailing down the highway.

The next thing he knew, an ambulance was screeching to a halt beside him. At least, it
looked
like an ambulance. But it was all black, and there were no markings on it at all. The back doors flew open. Someone jumped out.

What the—

Westerly's heart lurched. It was a figure in a bulky white safe suit, the kind of full-body protective gear used for dealing with radiation—complete with a helmet and an oxygen tank. Whoever was inside looked like an astronaut. Westerly couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman. The faceplate was tinted so that you couldn't see through it.

“Move away, please,” the figure barked. It was a man's voice, but the sound of it was tinny and muffled, like on a walkie-talkie. “This area is unsafe.”

Westerly swallowed. “It is? But—”

“Move it!”

Another safe-suited figure jumped out and ran down the driveway toward the house.

“I don't understand,” Westerly said.

The first one took him by the arm and tried to hustle him down the road, his gloved fingers digging into Westerly's flesh. But Westerly refused to budge.

“Can you please explain to me what's going on?” he asked. He wrenched himself free of the man's grip. “Who are you?”

“The CDC.” The man shoved his faceplate within inches of Westerly's nose. Westerly found himself staring at his own angry reflection—but it was distorted, as if he were looking at himself through a fishbowl. “You have to leave. The dog on these premises has paws.”

“The dog has … what?” Westerly asked.

“Paws,” the man said. “
P-O-S.
Psychotic outburst syndrome. POS. The disease. Don't you watch the news?”

“I …” Westerly didn't know what to say. The truth was, he'd been
avoiding
the news. He didn't want to see or hear anything that would make him more nervous about Jasmine.

“POS is one hundred percent fatal,” the man said. “We've just confirmed that humans are susceptible as well. Twenty-nine people have already been infected, all through dog bites. Unless you want to be number thirty, I suggest you move.”

Westerly's face went pale. “Humans?” he gasped. “But that's impossible. It's a prion disease. It doesn't spread among different species. There's no way—”

“Aaaaahrgh!”

A terrified shriek silenced him. It came from inside the house.

Seconds later, something exploded through the front door.
Something
big.
And gray. At first, Westerly couldn't even tell what it was. But then he saw the bloody teeth, the slobber, the tail, the pointy ears …
Daisy.
She was headed straight for them. Her eyes were glittery, unfocused—two wild marbles rolling around in her head. Her snout was dark and wet.

The CDC man yanked a pistol from a pouch in his safe suit.

“Get down!” he shouted.

Reflexively, Westerly dove to the grass. There were three quick, deafening shots:
pow-pow-pow!
He cringed and glanced up. All three rounds had hit Daisy in the face. She collapsed, even as the noise still echoed down the road—but she kept rolling toward them, side over side, moving too fast to stop right away.

When Daisy finally lay still, she was less than ten feet from them. Blood trickled from the holes in her skull, staining the dirt with ugly, blackish-red drops.

“Is she dead?” the figure near the house asked.

“Yes,” the first one answered. “She—”
“Help me!”

Westerly flinched, still too frightened to stand. It was that same voice … the one that had screamed. Once again, the door flew open. Mrs. Hoover staggered out. Westerly's stomach rose. He gulped, nearly retching. He hadn't even recognized her….
My God.
She was in bad shape. A large chunk of flesh had been torn from her left shin. The dog had bitten her clear through her jeans, all the way down to the bone. Westerly could see the white fragments there, stained red with blood. Her face was ashen, glazed—in shock.

“Let's get her into the truck,” the one with the gun called.

Westerly stared, slack-jawed, as the figure closest to the house
escorted Mrs. Hoover into the black ambulance. He felt as if he were watching a movie on fast forward. Everything was happening too quickly. He couldn't sort it out. He glanced back at Daisy. The first CDC man was scooping her into a black plastic body bag. He zipped it up, then dumped the bag into the ambulance and climbed inside.

“Wait!” Westerly said. He pushed himself to his feet. His legs felt like jelly. “Where are you going?”

“Portland University,” the guy answered. “If I were you, I'd get home and stay indoors. If you see any stray dogs, make sure your doors are locked—and call us.” The doors slammed shut.

“Hey!” Westerly yelled. “Stop! I used to work at Portland—”

There was a squeal of tires. He winced. The ambulance lurched forward and peeled down the road, disappearing around the corner, sirens wailing.

After a minute or so, the sirens faded to silence.

I'm all alone
, Westerly thought.

Not that this was anything new. He was always alone. There was a difference, though. For the first time in a long while—seven years, in fact—he didn't
want
to be alone. He wanted someone to help him. He wanted someone to tell him that Jasmine was going to be okay. But he was the only one who could do that.
He
was the only one who could go home and run the test—the one that would tell for certain whether Jasmine was going to live or die.

“Yo! Logan!”

Logan paused on the rain-slicked sidewalk.

Devon Wallace.

Drizzle pattered on the hood of Logan's windbreaker:
pip-pippip.
He shook his head at Jack. What he could really use right now was one of those personalized nuclear rocket backpacks. With two radioactive rocket engines so that he and Jack could blast off this rainy street to a spot above the clouds, where it was nice and dry, and at the same time vaporize Devon Wallace's perfect hair.