Cadaver Dog (5 page)

Twenty minutes later, she was about to call her dad to cancel the exercise when Murder barked low. His light stick had gone still, and she couldn’t read any behavior off of him in the dark. Something moved among the boulders up ahead, right next to her dog. Angie felt a weight lift off her shoulders. Murder had found her father.

“You can come out, Dad! You went too far. Now we have a long walk home.”

But her father didn’t say anything. He moved away from the dog, as if uncomfortable around Murder. As a reader of body movements, this struck Angie as very odd, and an old fear started to unfurl its wings inside her. She had never seen her father react like that to any animal. Then her father flailed at Murder, who barked loudly and ran back to Angie to get his chicken. A fear colder than the mountain waters doused her spine.

Angie pulled the bear deterrent she never went into the Cristos without and unloaded four plugs from her Magnum into the dead woman. The recoil shook her arms and shoulders. Half her shots went wide. The other two blew out chunks of the woman’s arm and hip. The dead woman was dressed in a bright blue gown and wore her best jewelry, which shined in Angie’s flashlight.  

Something like a concrete pylon hit Angie’s shoulder. She hit the ground hard, her butt landing on rocks. At the same time, Murder tore a chunk of the zombie’s calf away from the bone.

The head, dumbass,
she thought to herself, and raised her weapon. The zombie opened its maw, venomous saliva dripping from its teeth. Briefly, ghost-pain throbbed in her shoulder, a reminder of the effects of the venom. The last bullet in the barrel tore out most of the zombie’s jawbone, throat, and lower brain. The undead re-died, falling like stones to the ground.

Murder shook off the chunk of leg and barked again at the fallen zombie.

“Quiet, Murder.” Angie leaned back against a gray boulder. Murder restrained himself to low growls. His hair stood on end.

A giant six-legged monster uncurled its segmented body from what remained of the body and dragged itself away, twitching and curling and uncurling with half its abdomen blown to bits. Angie had never been so close to a living wasp that wasn’t attached to a damned thing’s head. Her heart pumped like engine pistons when the foot is jammed on the accelerator. The crimson wasp scowled viciously at her from its compound eyes as it fell behind some rocks and curled up and died.

The monster gone, Murder circled Angie, his tail waving low. He did not like her down on the ground. As far as Murder was concerned, humans were two-legged creatures and should be upright, not down low with him.

Like all trackers, the first thing Angie thought of was not her health (or lack thereof) but rather collecting the new scent item. She ripped off a spruce branch and used it to lift the dead wasp out from behind the rocks. She cringed as she held it out as far away as possible. Even though common sense told her the wasp was dead, her imagination told her otherwise. Any shift in the wasp’s position made Angie gasp.

A few minutes later, she had gingerly walked back to the creek. Her butt hurt from falling, her arms were sore from unloading the Magnum, and her shoulder felt like it had been kissed by a steamroller. Suddenly Murder caught wind of something and ran across the creek barking happily.

“Murder, get back here!” She would have to work on his recall.

Murder came back a minute later, this time with her father. The beam of his flashlight danced in the woods.

“I heard the shots and came as fast as I could. What happened? Are you alright?” he asked, staring at the dead wasp suspended between spruce branches.

“I’m fine, I guess. Murder went and found the wrong wasp, but we got a new one.”

“That’s wonderful, Angie. Did you reward him?”

“I was busy trying to save my life.”

Her father put his arm around her. “You could at least reward him for finding me.”

In fact, Murder was running circles around them both and barking piteously. Her father took the branches from Angie so that she could reward Murder with his chicken. Angie reached to her back pocket, though, and found it was empty.

“Shit. We have to go back, Dad. I’ve lost his toy.”

“It’s alright. He will learn to make due.”

“But it’s his chicken. You don’t understand. He’s OCD about the thing.”

“Then we will find it in the morning or get him a new one. Right now you need some rest.”

Chapter Three

Two ibuprofens and a pack of ice later, and Angie was back in her bed. Her father kenneled Murder, who whined and hollered like a mother with a lost puppy. Even from the house, Angie could hear Murder’s wails. It was a piteous thing to listen to.

The next morning Angie’s arm was swollen and stiff, like a solid piece of steel. She took some more pills and wished the medical geniuses of the world could build a better ibuprofen. She went to the barn and turned on her radio while she fed the dogs. It was an old transistor radio, a kind that was rarely seen anymore. Instead of electronic buttons, there was a big, fat silver knob for changing the dial and a punch button for switching between AM and FM frequencies. It was an ugly shade of beige. A thick antenna rod that reminded her too much of the creatures she hunted extended from the radio. Angie found a talk radio station and started filling bowls with her one good arm while she listened to the discussion.

“Welcome back to
Around the World
. I’m Charles Blight. Today we are talking about the origins of the crimson wasp. We just heard a new report from Dr. Ahuja Chatterjee about evidence that the crimson wasp originated in Thailand as an offshoot of the emerald wasp. I have two other guests with me to discuss two very different origins. Welcome, Father Michael Carligi and former CIA operative Avery Rueben.”

Charles Blight had the crisp, trained cadence of a long-time newscaster. Angie filled up the bowls and tuned out Charles Blight’s unaccented speaking while she fed the dogs. Murder she fed first. He lay in his kennel as low to the ground as possible, with little rolls of fat pancaked on either side of him and his muzzle and ears flattened on the ground.

“Hey, boy,” she said as high-pitched and sing-songy as her raspy voice let her. “I got you some food.”

Murder didn’t move. He stared at the bowl of chow and whined.

With her good arm, she smoothed the hairs on his head. “I know you miss your toy, but we will get you a new one. In fact, look what I got,” she said as she pulled out a rope that was knotted on one end. She dangled it in front of Murder to try to entice him. Nothing doing, though. The dog didn’t move.

Angie left the rope with Murder, then closed his kennel and went back to get bowls to feed the other dogs. When all the dogs were fed, she opened an old foot locker full of leftover toys. While she looked, the debate raged on over the airwaves.

“Look, Father Mike, I don’t mean to belittle your point,” the ex-CIA agent was saying. “But it’s kind of an excuse. I went to Bible school and all that, and so I get creationism. But I’m telling you, this is not something God made. This is something that was built in a lab. Either by the Chinese or the Americans or maybe even the Russians.”

“But even you have to admit,” Charles Blight interjected, “The lack of evidence to support that the government built a biological weapon so dangerous and yet so ineffective. Surely there has to be a better way to topple governments than usurping their dead. What purpose do these creatures serve except to terrorize? They don’t turn other people into zombies like in the movies.”

“All I’m saying is that the US government doesn’t torture its prisoners, until Abu Ghraib happens and then the truth is out. The NSA doesn’t keep track of your phone calls, until some contractor comes out and tells the papers that that’s exactly what they do. And the US wouldn’t develop a monster like this giant crimson wasp, until somebody calls them on it and they are forced to admit it.”

Angie shook her head and turned off the dial. Did it really matter how they came to me? Maybe to NPR, and maybe to people like Dr. Saracen, but to her? All that mattered was finding them.

Like the Santa Claus of dogs, she cradled a dozen toys in her arms. She propped open Murder’s kennel with her one hand, then dumped the pile of toys into Murder’s pen.

“You find one you like, you let me know, buddy,” she told the disconsolate dog, who still had yet to touch his food.

Angie tried everything. She ordered a new rubber stork with goofy eyeballs online, but when she presented it to Murder, he just kind of looked at it like it was day-old sushi. So she commanded him to sit, opened his mouth and shoved the stork in his mouth like it was a pill. Murder sat there not knowing what to do.

Angie took him outside. The familiar box lay in the middle of the field. But when Angie commanded Murder to “Find buzz” her dog dropped the stork, turned tail, and ran back to the pen.

Again and again she tried. Neither stuffed flamingos from Colorado City toy stores nor stuffed giraffes, which were at least yellow, worked with Murder.

“Well, damnit, what is going to work?” she yelled in frustration. “You are the most stubborn cuss I have ever worked with!”

Murder just stared at her helplessly.

“I know!” Then, “Shut up!”

Finally, she called in help. When Dr. Saracen picked up the phone, Angie said, “I can’t get Murder to work anymore, Henry. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried Kongs, I’ve tried treats, I’ve tried rubber chickens, I’ve even tried a stuffed flamingo from Colorado City. Nothing works!”

“I don’t understand, Ms. Graves.”

“Murder was doing great, and then the first time I really tested him on a night hunt, double-blind, and I go and screw things up. I’ve been up and down that trail a hundred times and I haven’t found anything. Not even in the creek. You set me sailing down this little river. You have to bail me out.”

“Okay,” he said credulously. “What do you need me to do?”

“I need a chicken, a stuffed chicken. Not a real animal with taxidermy done to it, but a toy, like a kid’s plaything. It needs to be bright yellow with a white breast and like neon red beak. I have tried Amazon, I have tried Wal-Mart, I just can’t find it, and Murder won’t work without the chicken. Do you understand now, Henry?”

“You need a chicken.”

“I need a chicken.”

“And I’m going to ignore for now all that stuff about murder and trust you. I don’t want you to worry. I will get my people on it.”

“Thank you.” Angie ended her call and took a deep breath. She wished there was some chocolate in the house.

With a doleful dog and her father’s words echoing inside her, Angie immersed herself in finishing many of her other dogs. She flew Hank and Cash out to New York City. She traveled with them so that she could demonstrate the techniques needed to work the bomb-sniffing dogs. She flew back to Colorado in time to turn around and fly back to New York City with the forensics dog. Then she spent a week working with the arson dog before driving him home to North Dakota and “Scuba” the golden retriever back to his parents in Colorado City.

She also finally went and got her blood drawn for Hepatitis C and AIDS testing. She hadn’t felt any symptoms so she was ignoring them, but the hospital had called three times to remind her to get her blood drawn.

She spent a few days working on the gun dog. Bama retrieved well, clearly loved bringing back birds, and did not drop the bird from her mouth. She showed hardly any dropoff from the last time Angie had worked with her steadily. Bama, like many retrievers, did have a love for running pell-mell and forgetting to retrieve, so Angie set up some scenarios of increasing difficulty that had the dog running through brush. The dog quickly focused on her game. After a few days of full scenarios bird hunting with her dad, Bama was ready to certify. Angie returned her to the owners and made arrangements to meet them and Bama at a gun dog certification.

The evening after returning Bama, she went into the barn. Despite the heat, the inside of the barn felt cold. She had no dogs in except her own. On these rare occasions, she often let her dogs come inside the house with her. Waylon, Darcy, and Lizzy came eagerly and paraded around her. She let them in the house, and they fanned out in full-on scrounge mode, searching for particles of pizza that had fallen into tiny crevices unseen except by a dog’s nose.

Angie kept the door open and looked across the lawn to the barn. Murder still hadn’t come. She started walking out, when she noticed the black and blue shadow emerging from the open barn door. Murder, moped as he walked, head down, with little energy and a small tail wag.

Angie kneeled down in front of Murder and hugged him. She could still feel the scars in his hide, and she felt that pull that made her wish she could find out about his past. What kind of life did this dog have before she met him? What boulders did he strike in the river of life before some eddy dropped him into her own currents?

Murder licked Angie’s ear.

Two days later the Shovelhead surfed a wave of dirt up her driveway. Henry Jameson Saracen, PhD, looked like a member of an outlaw biker gang with his faded black leather, boots, and jeans. As he cut the engine, Angie walked up, Waylon and two other Labradors following beside her.

“For a man who likes the straight-forwardness of bugs, you have a duality to you, Henry.”

“I’ve always enjoyed looking into the dark shadows where few others dare. I think as a person training a dog to hunt zombies, you would understand.”

“I understand turning a need into a line of work.”

“Well said. Now, I’m not here to banter about our respective idiosyncrasies, I wanted to stop by and give you something.”

“Please be a chicken. Please be a chicken.”

Dr. Saracen waved his finger at her. “Now, I want you to understand that I had two interns set aside their studies into Africanized bee brain morphology to spend the rest of their week searching for toy chickens.”

“I ran out of options,” Angie said.

“No, you were right. I set you on this path, and it wouldn’t be fair to not assist.” He opened one of the satchels. It was filled to the brim with stuffed toy chickens, all with shiny red beaks, bright yellow bodies, and white bellies.

“Lucky for you one of my interns has an uncle who is a stuffed animal aficionado. The less we know about his eccentricities, I think, the better.”

“Murder,” Angie called toward the back of the house.

The black and blue dog with part of one ear missing loped around the corner.

“What a strange beast,” Dr. Saracen commented. “And you call him Murder?”

“I found him in the road, half-dead. I usually don’t take in strays, but something about him just caught my eye. He was found−”

“Under a flock of ravens, hence the name,” Dr. Saracen finished for her. He watched the dog come up to them. Murder didn’t quite look like a Labrador, but didn’t quite look like any other kind of dog either.

At the sight of the chickens, Murder sprinted, tail wagging, to the bike. Angie saw the inevitable happening and tried to hold one of the chickens away from the Shovelhead. Murder ignored her and plowed through them both, jamming his paws onto the bike. The bike fought stiffly against the dog, but as his head plunged into the bag of chickens, Murder’s weight pushed the bike off balance. Dr. Saracen tried helplessly to keep it upright. A happy Murder sifted through the chickens, grabbed one from the very bottom, and yanked it out of the pouch. While Angie apologized and Dr. Saracen pulled his bike upright, Murder trotted away, his feet barely touching the ground with his shoulders high and his head arched.

“Well, I think this calls for a drink,” Dr. Saracen said once he got his bike back up. “What do you have?”

Angie grabbed two beers from her refrigerator. She had two older rockers on her porch, hand-me-downs from her parents. Dr. Saracen was already sitting in one when she brought him a bottle. He had pushed the rockers almost against the outer wall to keep them in the shade and out of the summer sunlight. He was rubbing Waylon behind the ears and watching Murder pull the stuffing out of the toy chicken. He stopped rubbing Waylon to take the bottle that Angie offered.

He swallowed some of the drink and savored its coolness. “You never know how hot it is in the summer until you drive a cycle outside. You have beautiful property up here. It must be wonderful to have a home up in the pines away from it all.”

“Fifty two acres. I border a national park on two sides, and my father on the other. He gave me these fifty two when I told him I wanted to train bomb dogs.”

“The world needs people like you to do its dirty work, Ms. Graves.”

“Call me Angie. You make me sound like an assassin.”

“I don’t mean that at all. I mean−”

“I know what you mean, Henry.” Angie drank from her bottle. Like Dr. Saracen, she appreciated the beer’s coolness as a kind of stop-gap between her and the encroaching heat. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“It’s about these wasps. I’ve been trying to learn more about them, but it seems there is still a lot that nobody knows, certainly me included. How did they get to be so big? I remember seeing bugs that big in pictures of dinosaurs.”

“You think maybe a crack opened in the ground near the Yellowstone caldera and these wasps, saved from extinction so many eons ago, have ventured forth to tear apart mankind?” Dr. Saracen asked.

“Well, when you say it like that,” Angie said.

“Don’t be shy. People have had weirder ideas. And large wasps are not uncommon. The Asian Giant Hornet can grow to be bigger than your index finger, and they have killed hundreds of people in Asia. But the best DNA tests show the crimson wasps to be descendants of emerald wasps, not Asian Giant Hornets. Why they are the size of your hand and why they prey on humans? We’re still working on that one. Now can I ask you a question?”