Dogs (23 page)
Authors: Nancy Kress
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Medical, #General, #Science Fiction, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers, #Fiction
Something was going on underground in Tyler. Jess could feel it when he rang doorbells to ask questions about dogs, when he paid for gas at the Kwik-Fill, when he picked up groceries for dinner. People wouldn't meet his eyes, or gazed at him too steadily, or said hello with false heartiness. He tried, and failed, to find a name for what he sensed. Suspicion. Fear. Anger. It was all of these, and something more.
Nearly 400 dogs were unaccounted for. Jess suspected a lot of those had been deliberately let loose by their owners, people like Ed Dormund. Dormund smirked at him at the gas station, as if he knew something that Jess did not.
The short winter afternoon was darkening when Jess put his key into the front door, scooped two days' worth of
Washington Post
s off the porch, and put a Hungry-Man TV dinner into the microwave. As it heated, he pulled the latest newspaper from its plastic bag and scanned the headlines.
TEDIC CALLS FOR DESTRUCTION OF ALL INFECTED DOGS
House Minority Leader Albert Tedic (D-Ohio) today called for the destruction of all dogs infected with canine plague in quarantined Tyler, Maryland. “Have we learned nothing from the bird flu?” Tedic asked dramatically on the House floor. “The safety of all Americans must and will be our first priority, not the sentiments of a handful of pet owners. It's not impossible that this thing could go airborne
â
why is the current administration taking this risk with American lives?”
The battle in Washington power circles over the best way to handle canine plague has heated up in the last few days as various partyâ
Jess grimaced. Not that he hadn't seen it coming. In one way, Tedic was right. The dogs in those open cages were a potential menace, and people went in and out of the tents all the time. Christ, people still went in and out of
Tyler
all the time. Tessa Sanderson certainly had. If the wiggling blue viruses that Dr. Latkin had shown him did mutateâ¦
But Tedic was wrong, too. It wasn't just “the sentiments of a handul of pet owners” that were keeping those dogs alive. Dr. Latkin needed them for research, had a whole sequential order set up to kill them for their brains. The public didn't know that yet. Or maybe they did, it had been three days since Jess had really attended to any news that wasn't right under his nose, soâ
His phone rang. “Jess? Billy. Listen, did you hear?”
“Hear what? I just got home.”
“Then come back. They'll want you. One got out.”
“One what?” Jess said, a second before he realized that it was maybe the stupidest question of his entire life. But he'd thought immediately of Tessa, who'd gotten out of Tyler:
One got out
â¦
“One
dog
,” Billy said. “Game warden over the state line shot a Doberman that brought down a doe. Didn't get it clean, and when he went closer to finish it off, he saw that white film on the eyes. Dog was snarling and lunging like a son-of-a-bitch, even shot in the leg it tried to attack. Warden got back-up and they're bringing the Doberman into Tyler.”
“Was the dog wearing tags?”
“Hell, I don't know, you think they tell me everything? I just happened to be with Don DiBella when the call come. Better get in here.”
Jess shoved three spoonfuls of Hungry-Man Steak Tips into his mouth, burned his tongue, and headed back out again.
An escaped dog.
The FEMA cordon, the Maryland Guard, the hunting teamsâ¦none of it had worked. And how many other dogs had the Doberman infected, roaming around the West Virginia hills for the last however many days?
It wasn't over yet. In one awful sense, it might be just beginning.
He was late going out to feed the dogs. It was the fucking rashâit had kept him up half the night. And the smell was getting worse, much worse. Why should he have to suffer this way? But, no, that was wrong thinking. Suffering made a man strong. Suffering was a test, and a glory.
Still, the itching had gotten so much worse it made it hard to sleep.
So he stumbled out at mid-morning toward the dog shed. The mountains, so different from those of his real country, shone with sunlight on snow. He hated that; the dazzle hurt his eyes. Which also itched. He carried the bucket of kibble to the dog pen, ignoring the growling and snarling, and saw that one of them was missing.
The man stood very still, dread seeping along his spine. He'd been told to not let this happen. He'd been
told
â¦frantically he searched along the fence. The hole dug under it hadn't been there yesterday. It was small, and deep, and bloody. The dog had dug it overnight and squeezed under, tearing his own flesh. The others hadn't followed, not yet.
He brought stones and dirt and filled the hole. He fed the remaining three dogs. He scratched the rash on his face until it bled, and through all of it his rage grew, replacing the dread. Rage was better. Rage was heartening. Rage let him be in command, no matter what the others said. And command was his right. He'd been denied it all those years by all those soft elite bastards, and now it was his right, because unlike those others, he was not soft. He was a true man.
Leaving the dazzle of the day that so hurt his eyes, he went back into the dark cabin and sat at the laptop to compose email messages. Later, he would drive to some place with wireless capacity, sit outside in his car, and send them.
And very soon now he would have his reward.
» 45
Ed Dormund slipped through the back door of Tom Martinez's house at four in the morning. It was a relief to finally get out of his own place and away from Cora. They were all meeting at Tom's because he lived out in the country and didn't have a wife, lucky bastard.
Dennis Riley was already there, along with two other friends of his, Sam Jones and Leo Somebody, plus a guy Ed didn't know. Dennis said, “This is Brad Karsky. He used to work with me at Slocum. He's an explosives expert.”
Instantly the air in the dim kitchen tautened. Brad was older than the rest of them, maybe in his fifties, with drooping jowls and a deliberate, almost fussy manner. Ed felt a kind of coldness coming off the man, something you could almost touch. Weird.
Dennis said, “Slocum Mining really screwed Brad over but good. Fifteen years he puts in without a single mining accident for his explosives andâ”
Brad cut in with, “That isn't relevant here, Dennis,” and immediately Dennis shut up.
“What matters,” Brad said in his heavy way, “is that we do this right. First a warning explosion, because that may be enough to achieve our goal. And no one gets hurt. That's an absolute must. We want safe destruction of a meaningful target. We want to be absolutely positive that no one is inside the building. We want the explosion followed by a clear and untraceable phone message stating the activity the authorities should take.”
“âFree the uninfected dogs,'” Tom said. “Short and sweet.”
Brad said, “Better would be âReturn all uninfected dogs to their owners within the next twenty-four hours.'”
Ed nodded. This Brad guy was smart.
Sam said, “What's the explosive?”
Brad said, “An RDX compound with blasting cap and remote detonator.”
“How'd you get RDX out of Slocum?” Leo asked. “I thought all that stuff was controlled.”
“It is. But it's not hard to fill out the forms for a certain amount of explosives needed for secondary rock breakage and then use a little less. The blasting caps and detonators I make myself.”
Dennis said, “I thought Congress got all itchy about terrorism and made the manufacturers embed plastic I.D. tags in all that stuff.”
“True,” Brad said. “But my supply predates those regulations.”
Feeling left out, Ed demanded, “You sure your stuff is still good?”
“I'm sure.”
Tom said, “So what's our target?”
Brad told them.
Jess started out at first light for the West Virginia mountains, one of five cars slipping unobtrusively and separately out of Tyler. Each car held one or two men, animal-control officers or deputies. “Attract as little attention as possible,” Sheriff DiBella had said, “but find out if you can where that Doberman came from, if it happens that the damn thing
didn't
escape from Tyler. Find out if anyone's missing a dog, find out if anybody's been attacked.”
“Anybody been attacked, they'd of reported it,” deputy Ed Ames objected.
“Not necessarily,” DiBella said. “If the Doberman bit a commuting soccer mom, you bet your buns we'd know about it by now. But you know how secretive and clannish some of those hill folk are. Or maybe you don't. Our story is that Flatsburgh Animal Control has a Doberman that was bringing down deer and does anyone know where it belongs. Keep your eyes peeled for anyone who acts like he knows more than he's saying.”
The eight men shifted their booted feet uneasily. Finally Ames said, “Sheriff, are we looking for a terrorist?”
“No. Jesus H. Christ, Ames, there's no terrorist out there! You been watching too much bad TV. There's a dog that either got infected in Tyler and wandered out, or a West Virginia dog that caught this thing some other way. We're just trying to find out which. Now everybody get out there, and be careful what you say.”
Jess headed for his truck.
Or a West Virginia dog that caught this thing some other way
, DiBella had said, and that was the real terror. DiBella meant an airborne germ of some kind. DiBella meant that the thing might have spread away from Tyler, wafting through the air like lethal snowflakes, infecting neighboring counties. DiBella meant an out-of-control pandemic, spread by dogs. DiBella meant mass plague and mass hysteria.
No. It hadn't happened yet. Don't borrow trouble.
Jess snorted at his own thin optimism and showed his papers at the checkpoint out of Tyler.
Up in the West Virginia mountains, most radio stations disappeared. The truck was down to two, both of which ran heavily to country-and-western music and announcements of car-dealership events. Finally he caught WKBL from Keyser. A very angry woman from some animal-protection organization was being interviewed.
“Nearly all of the dogs in detention in Tyler are
not
infected, and they're beloved members of families, and. Even ifâ” Jess dipped over the top of the rise and down a steep slope, and the station dissolved into static.
Something bright orange lay in the snow behind a stand of bare trees.
Jess stopped the car, backed up carefully, and pulled over. He tried the binoculars but the orange splotch was hidden from this position; he'd caught it only by chance when he'd glanced into the rearview mirror at just the right point. Carefully Jess waded across a small stream, the icy water not quite reaching the top of his boots, and under trees that gave onto a snowy upland field.
The hiker had been dead a while. She lay looking up at the gray sky, half her face torn away. Her orange jacket was soaked with dried blood; the rest of the blood had been covered by the falling snow. From the part of her face that was left, he could see that the girl had been young, twenties maybe. Her eyes were blue, her hair light brown. She'd been pretty.
Jess pulled out his cell phone. He'd keyed in most of DiBella's number when he saw the dog.
It lay about thirty feet away, partially covered by drifting snow, as dead as its mistress. A King Charles spaniel, not really a hiking dog at all. Jess squatted beside him and stared into the dog's open eyes. No milky white film. The spaniel's body wasn't mauled, but the head lay at a strange angle, as if the dog's neck had been broken. The girl might have landed a lucky kick, but Jess doubted that's what had happened. This spaniel had been a victim, not an attacker.
Cell reception was bad up here in the mountains, and non-existent back at his truck. Jess had to tramp over half the field before he got a staticky, intermittent call through.
“DiBella here.”
“Don, I'veâ”
“What? What? I can't hear you!”
“It's Jess!” he shouted, as if shouting would help. He moved to another, higher section of the field. His boot prints made a mess of the pristine snow. “I got something. Dead hiker alone in a field, female, throat torn out. Maybe yesterday, I can't be sure. Also dead is a dog, King Charles spaniel, not mauled. I think I shouldâ”
“Wait a minute,” DiBella said, in a voice not his own. “I'm standing here with Mr. Lurie and Dr. Latkin. Let meâ¦wait a minute.”
Jess waited, gazing across the snow at the body. It looked very small and very alone.
Finally DiBella said something garbled by static.
“What?”
“I said, what's your position?”
Jess gave the GPS coordinates memorized in his truck.
“Okay, that's Bonchester jurisdiction. Call the sheriff's office there and report theâ¦no, just a minute, Mr. Lurie wants to talk to you.”
