Dogs (38 page)
Authors: Nancy Kress
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Medical, #General, #Science Fiction, #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Thrillers, #Fiction
“What if she's not there?” Allen said anxiously.
“She's there,” said the young man in the white coat. He smiled down at Allen with that look grown-ups got when they saw him on crutches. It was a sappy look but good for getting things, if you answered right. Today Allen didn't care how he answered. He was too excited.
“Which building? Which
one?”
“That brick one over there, behind the big tree.”
“Allen,” his mother said, “slow down, you're still not used to your crutches. Allen, do you hear me?”
Allen didn't want to slow down. As fast as he could, he swung himself along the path that wound among the CDC buildings. It was warmer here in Atlanta than at home, and the grass was lots greener, but he didn't care about that, either.
“Sometimes I can't do a thing with him,” Mrs. Levy apologized.
“Well⦠kids,” said the attendant, who was all of twenty-two.
“Since his father left, that bastardâ¦never mind, I'm sorry.” She fumbled in her purse for a tissue, still walking rapidly to keep up with Allen, while the attendant looked delicately away.
Allen burst through the doors of the building. It smelled wonderful, of dogs and cats and maybe even something exciting like monkeys. He'd read on-line that the CDC had monkeys. But today not even a monkey could deter him.
“This way,” the attendant said. “Down this elevator.”
An elevator, another corridorâAllen was moving so fast his crutches almost slipped on the slick floorâand another door, and then there she was!
“Susie!” He hurled himself to the floor.
The attendant opened the cage and Susie ran out, nearly knocking Allen over. Her tail wagged non-stop and she barked and whined and climbed clumsily all over him.
“Allen, watch your leg, do you hear me?”
“She's got on a muzzle! Why does she got on a muzzle! Take it off!”
“I'm sorry but I can't,” the young man said. “She's still infected, you know. If she bit youâ”
“She would never bite me!”
“I'm sorry,” the attendant said in a tone that said he wasn't budging. Allen scowled at him but after a second he forgot the muzzle. He was with Susie again! A long plane ride and the night in the hotel and listening to his mother cry when she thought Allen was asleepâ¦it was all horrible but here was Susie, and she was safe and whole.
“Susie,” he crooned as she pressed into him, uttering little yelps of joy. “Susie, Susie⦔
The attendant looked mistily down at them. “I had a dog when I was a child.”
Allen's mother didn't answer.
“A boy and his dog. Such a simple, easy relationship. Nothing but pure love, no messy human complications.”
“Oh, shut up,” Amy Levy said.
EPILOGUE:
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
It happened so fast that only one person actually saw it. The little boy squatted in the sandbox, digging with a red plastic shovel. His mother sat two feet away on a park bench, talking with the mother of the baby in the carriage and the mother of the little girl driving everybody crazy by demanding that the adults dance with her, and screaming at the top of her lungs if they didn't.
“Dance! Dance with me!”
“Not just now, darling, Mama's tired.”
“Dance!”
“Later.”
The child let out an ear-stabbing yowl that made the other two women jump. They exchanged covert, disapproving looks. What an obnoxious kid!
Wearily the girl's mother got up to dance with her beside the park bench.
The dog came out of nowhere, a bouncy red-gold Labrador retriever that dashed up to the boy in the sandbox and leapt onto his lap. The two year-old screamed and did something, and the dog howled and snapped. The boy's mother snatched him up just as the dog owner, a young man in dirty khaki shorts and scraggly blond beard, sauntered up.
“Your dog is supposed to be on a leash!” the mother screamed, frantically jiggling her son in her arms.
“Hey, chill, Garcia never bites,” the man said. Languidly he took a leash from his pocket and fastened it on the dog, who stood trembling at his feet, his broad tail tucked between his legs. “Hey, Garcia, it's all right, boyâ¦wow, he's really upset.”
"He's
upset,” said the mother of the dancing girl. “We should report you to the police!”
“Whatever,” said the young man, leading his dog away.
“We
should
report him!”
“Well, maybe,” said third woman, who was the group's peacemaker, “but Labs are pretty peaceful dogs. We always had them when I was growing up. He didn't bite Robbie, did he?”
“No, I don't think so,” Robbie's mother said. The child had stopped crying and was clambering to return to the sandbox. There were no rips in his Oshkosh overalls or little red T-shirt, nor any punctures on his chubby hands.
His mother hugged him tight. No, she wasn't going to say anything⦠she
wasn't
. She and Bob had lost so many of their old friends, from fear or pity or something. It was so unfair because they were doing everything right: checking in with the CDC every three months, keeping all those charts and records of Robbie's health. Giving Robbie the experimental drugs. Since their move to Philly, she'd been really lonely until she met these two women in the park. Sarah, the mother of the infant, might even become a real friend. And although it was true that lately Robbie had been biting everything in sightâtoys, spoons, his babysitter, the catâshe hadn't actually
seen
him bite the Labrador. Chances were, he hadn't. She didn't want to throw away these precious mornings in the parkânobody knew how hard it was to raise a child without the companionship of other women!âfor an accident that most likely hadn't even happened. After all, she deserved a life, too.
“Dance!” demanded the little girl.
Robbie's mother set him back down in the sandbox. Such a happy baby, usually. And the scar under his shirt was fading more every day. She was very lucky. When you think of all the children that hadn't survived the dog bitesâ¦
“
Dance!”
shrieked the little monster in the pink sundress. “
Now!”
The red-gold lab whimpered on its leash. The young man didn't notice. He had left the park and was ambling toward the supermarket, whistling tunelessly. Garcia trotted obediently beside him, the teeth marks hidden by the thick, red-gold fur on his tail. They reached the curb and disappeared into the crowd on the city street.
Sometimes the book you read is not the book the author wrote.
Dogs
went through changes as I wrote it, because every book does. Some of these were my own revisions, some were suggested by my agent, Ralph Vicinanza, who had some of the best eyes in the business. Finally, when Ralph and I were both happy with the book, we offered it to my publisher. Who turned it down.
“I like this,” he told me privately. “It's exciting and fast-paced. But I can't publish it. The content would offend dog lovers too much.”
He was not alone. Why is it that in fiction you can kill off any number of people, but no dogs? My son had a less-than-helpful suggestion: “Make the plague carried by gerbils instead!” It's true that probably not a lot of people would rise up in arms to defend gerbils.However,for the purposes of fiction,the emotional impact is just not the same.
So I was delighted when Jacob Weisman of Tachyon decided to publish the novel. Before he did so, he asked for one change. In my version, both love affairs (Billy/Cami and Jess/Tessa) ended badly. Jacob pointed out that, in the face of plague and death and armed rebellion, it would be nice for at least
somebody
to end up happy. Billy, being dead, probably wasn't a good candidate. How about Tessa?
Jacob was right. I changed Chapter 75 so that Tessa and Jess have a chance to be together. Only a chanceâbut that's all any of us ever gets, really. What you do with chances is up to you.
To a writer, e-books are what Thomas Wolfe said you can't have: the chance to go home again. You can revisit out-of-print books, which are just as good as when someone first published them, but which the physical encumbrances of paper, bindings, and warehouse space have made no longer financially viable. These books can be resurrected, given another chance. Every writer I know is busily putting their backlist up for e-publication, grateful for their books to have a second life.
E-books also give writers a chance to include side materialâsuch as this afterword. Without the constraints and expense of physical books, authors can play with the form. In such a spirit of play, I'm offering here the original Chapter 75 of
Dogs.
I think Jacob was correct in asking me to change itâbut what do YOU think?
Send me your responses through the email on my website, http://www.sff.net/people/nankress/, or leave a comment on my on-going blog, http://nancykress.blogspot.com/. I'd love to know which version you prefer!
