Dogs (11 page)

“I have two. Two dogs with demons!”

Billy pulled out two cages. Balonov let them get halfway to the front steps before he pulled out a semi-automatic and fired.

Jess and Billy hit the ground rolling. Jess made it behind the truck, but Billy screamed, hit somewhere. Jess pulled out his own gun and took aim. He missed; he'd never been the shot that Billy was. Victor Balonov fired twice more at Billy, who kept rolling, and missed both times. How many rounds did the gun hold? Maybe eight, maybe ten. Jess fired again, missed. Now Balonov leapt down the steps, running toward Billy; he wouldn't miss again. “And demons in people!” Balonov shouted, and aimed. Jess, desperate, dodged around the truck to squeeze off another shot. No time, he didn't have enough time—

Balonov froze in midair, looking almost comical in his surprise, and toppled over onto Billy.

Jess looked at his gun. He hadn't fired.

Then he was running toward them just as Billy, cursing and shouting, was struggling out from under Balonov's motionless bulk, and Tessa was saying calmly from where she stood at the side of the house, “It's all right, Jess, he's dead.” She stood in perfect regulation shooting stance, legs apart and two hands steady on her gun, the winter breeze gently ruffling her shiny black hair.

The bastards were coming for all the dogs and taking them away!

Ed Dormund scowled at the TV. That tit-heavy reporter, Annie Farnham, had just made the announcement on KJV-TV. Every dog in Tyler was supposed to be hauled off to God-knew-where, so the government could do whatever it wanted with them. And no people who left town could return. It was a goddamn fascist state, that's what it was. What was next, concentration camps for everybody who owned a pet?

Not if Ed Dormund had anything to say about it.

“I paid three hundred bucks for each of my dogs!” he said aloud, before he knew he was going to say anything at all.

“What?” Cora said blearily. “Can't you turn that damn TV down?”

“Nag, nag, nag. Go back in the bedroom if you don't like it.”

“I got as much right to be here as you do.” She plopped onto the sofa.

Ed ignored her. Outside, Jake and Petey and Rex had started to bark and snarl again. Ed didn't like to admit even to himself that he was afraid to open the door.

But that didn't matter. What mattered was that these dogs were
his
, and no pansy government was going to take them away. Ed knew his rights. This was supposed to be a free country, right?

Just let them try.

Del Lassiter opened the door to the two animal control officers. Brenda was asleep again, and Del hadn't told her what was happening. Time enough when she felt a little stronger.

He let the men in and handed over Folly, who looked miniscule in the cage they put her in. The Chihuahua looked at him reproachfully and started to shiver. Del had to turn away to hide the tears in his eyes.

The desk officer looked up as Steve Harper walked into the barracks. Steve saw the feelings flicker over Giametti's face: surprise then pity then the embarrassment people felt talking to somebody whose kid had died. Steve didn't give Giametti time to say anything dumb.

“I'm back for duty, Jack.”

“But I thought—”

“I'm back for duty.” Steve hoped his tone would end any objections here and now. He had to get back to work or go nuts, had to have something to do besides stare at the image in his brain.
The brown mastiff, a single long string of saliva and blood hanging from its mouth onto Davey's body
…

“Well, sure, okay,” Giametti said uneasily. “We can use you. I'll call the sheriff.”

“Good,” Steve said.

Ellie Caine drove home as fast as she could, pushing red lights, peeling into her driveway. She'd heard the news at work and had instantly left her desk and raced to the parking lot.

It couldn't be true! No one would be so cruel as to take away her greyhounds, who had already had such crappy lives, to put them in cages. Maybe even euthanize them. Maybe even experiment on them! Ellie had read what happened to animals in so-called medical experiments.

The four greyhounds swarmed around her. Ellie looked frantically around her tiny house. Where could she hide them,
where
…
?

There was no place. She didn't even have a basement.

Ellie dropped to the floor and hugged Song, Chimes, Music, and But
terfly. Sensing her distress, they pressed into her body, licking her face and hands. Her babies, her friends. To be staked out, shot up with keta
mine, vivisected…

No
.

Ellie got to her feet. The dogs followed her through the kitchen into the backyard. At the far corner, under the maple tree, was a gate giving onto open fields and then the woods along Black Creek. Ellie led the dogs through the gate, then darted back into the yard and locked them out.

For a moment she hesitated. How could they survive outside her care? She could feed them at night, of course, but rescued dogs had all sorts of strange issues. Kept in dog runs from an early age, they weren't exposed to the normal things that other dogs adjusted to. Song freaked out whenever he saw a ceiling fan, reacting as if it were a giant bird of prey. Chimes attacked all laundry baskets. Music was terrified of sloping land. How would they—

There was no choice.

“Run!” she cried, and the greyhounds, obeying a call familiar from their puppyhood and intoxicated by the sudden freedom, streaked joyously over the brown field toward the woods.

Cami woke on a strange, hard bed, and somehow her bedroom was filled with people—how could that be? How had they gotten in, and what if they were burglars? She cried out and tried to sit up.

“She's awake,” someone said.

“Goddamn it, sedate her again! She's next in line for the OR!”

Someone dressed like a duck—
that couldn't be right—
tried to stab her. Cami heard weird, strangled noises coming from someone. She realized it was herself just before she slid away again into sleep.

When she woke again, she recognized that she lay on a gurney in a hospital hallway. The attack by Mr. Anselm's dog came flooding back, but not anything after that. A nurse whom Cami didn't know, a middle-aged woman dressed in scrubs printed with ducks, hurried by.

“Wait…wait…” Her voice came out faint and scratchy but the woman heard it and stopped. Deep circles ringed her eyes. “What…happened… me?”

“You've been operated on, honey. Compound tibial/fibular fracture. You should be in Recovery but there's no more room.”

“Wait…”

“I can't stop to talk, honey. All I know is that you were attacked by a dog and some sheriff's deputies interrupted the attack and brought you in.”

“Mr.…Anselm?” But the nurse was already gone.

A man lay on another gurney beside her, his shoulder thick with dressings, blond stubble on his face. He watched her from merry hazel eyes. “Hey, little thing, it ain't as bad as all that.”

“I…” She felt tears start.

“Aw, don't cry, pretty girl like you, after the dog missed your face it'd be a shame to ruin all that make-up.”

That made Cami smile; she never wore make-up. How could this man look so happy? “You…dog…”

“Not me, no dog bite here, I got shot,” he said cheerfully. “Meanest dog owner in Tyler didn't want to give up his little ol' vicious pets. I'm an animal control officer. Billy Davis.”

“Cami. Johnson…nurse.”

“A nurse, huh? Well, then, that dog oughta missed you altogether, we need you too much…oh, shit, Cami, don't cry. What can I get you to make you feel better?”

He looked as if he shouldn't move himself, let alone get her anything. But maybe, since he was an animal control officer, he knew people. She managed to get out, “Belle…”

“You want a bell? What for? You gonna ring in the new year? Missed it by a month and a half, sweetheart.”

“My dog…”

“Belle's your dog? That who bit you?”

Exhausted from talking, she tried to shake her head, which made it ache so violently that she cried out and everything went black. The next thing she knew the duck-scrubbed nurse was bending over her but scolding Billy Davis. “Mr. Davis, I told you twice not to get up! Miss Johnson,
you
should know better than to try to move. Now lie still, both of you!”

“Wicked Witch of the West,” Billy said when she'd left, “'cept this is East Tyler. Listen, Nurse Cami, I'll find out about your Belle.”

And he did. Everybody that went past, Billy harassed by name. “Hey, Rod, you bring in another load? Can you find out from Jess about a dog named Belle from the Magnolia Apartments? Sure appreciate any information… Hey, Burt…naw, I'm fine, takes more 'n a Russian semi to keep me down but I tell you, Jess and me got egg on our faces the way that FBI girl saved our bacon…Listen, there's a dog named Belle—”

Cami slept. When she woke, she felt marginally better. Billy Davis was being wheeled away by a tired-looking orderly who nonetheless was shaking his head and smiling. Billy saw that her eyes were open and said, “Your dog Belle's an old collie, right? She's safe at the tent that FEMA put up 'cross from the Cedar Springs Motel, for dog overflow. Bye, Nurse Cami, I'm gonna see you again, you can bet on it!”

Belle was safe. What a nice guy to find that out for her! When Cami had finished nursing school in West Virginia, become bored with her hometown, and taken the job at Tyler Community Hospital, her mother had warned her that even though Tyler, too, was a small town it was pretty near to Washington. Cami should watch out for those oversexed city boys with their smooth talk. But here was Billy Davis, as nice and real as possible, finding out about her dog just so Cami wouldn't worry. A thorough gentleman.

She drifted off to sleep, smiling.

Even in the middle of a natural disaster, Jess realized, you cannot kill somebody without repercussions. Not if you're deputized, and the federal government is trying to do everything right to make up for what it hasn't done right in the past, and the national media is slavering for news. And if you're the idiot who deputized the shooter, you're involved, too.

Not that he wasn't grateful. Without Tessa's interference, Billy would be dead, and it's possible Jess would have had to shoot Victor Balonov. Jess had never killed a man before. Something made him suspect that Tessa had. So Jess was grateful, and was slightly humiliated, and was kept hanging around critical-incident headquarters until sundown when what he wanted was to be back out on the street picking up dogs.

“You need to stick around, Jess, until Mr. Lurie says you can go,” the sheriff told him.

“Don, they need me out there. You know that. What's Lurie got to do with this? It's local law enforcement—your jurisdiction, not FEMA's.”

“You know that, and I know that, but Washington doesn't know that, and Lurie's in charge of everything by direct order of the White House.”

Jess saw the conflict on Don DiBella's honest, exhausted face; DiBella had voted for this administration. Jess had not. But Don was a good man trying to make the best of a bad situation. Jess said, “I want to go by the hospital to check on Billy.”

“Billy's fine. Burt just called in—Billy was badgering him about some girl's dog. A girl on the bed next to him.” Don smiled, apparently despite himself. “Same old Billy. Anyway, I have your statement, it sure sounds like a justifiable shooting to me, so just stay around here until they're done with the lady FBI agent, in case Lurie's guys have more questions.” Don glanced around, leaned forward, and whispered, “Between you and me, I think it's a goddamn turf war. FEMA doesn't want the Fibbies here.”

“She's an ex-agent,” Jess felt compelled to say, although he couldn't have given a reason for saying it.

“Whatever. Just stick around.”

Jess left the Cedar Springs Motel room that served as temporary law-enforcement headquarters, blinking in the afternoon sunlight. The motel, he decided, was one ring of a three-ring circus, the ring where exhausted humans capered and jumped through hoops. Ring number 2, across the street in an empty field, belonged to the dogs; huge Army-issue tents were being set up to house all the caged animals taken from Tyler. In Ring number 3 the microbes performed, or maybe didn't. The CDC, the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, and FEMA's National Disaster Medical System each had huge trailers flanked by more tents for their respective personnel.

The entire circus was in turn ringed by the media, gawkers, and protestors, kept at bay by troops from the Maryland Guard. Reporters that had ventured into Tyler were now stuck here, although hastily printed “authorization passes” had been issued to crisis personnel. Occasionally someone from the motel would venture into the slavering audience of media and throw them tidbits of news, shouting to be heard over the hundreds of snarling, barking, and snapping dogs in the tents. And somewhere in the woods and fields all around Tyler were more troops, ready to shoot any escaping dogs, with or without owners. Already they'd captured two teenage girls and a middle-aged man, each trying to get out of Tyler with a pet dog.