The man approached Robbie at a crouch, his hand out, gently, as if stalking a rabbit or a small bird. Robbie tilted his head to the side, and when the man stroked his ears, he licked his hand. “Isn’t that something? I used to have a dog. A hairy little mutt. I left him at home when I came to school. Don’t know what happened to him.” He sounded very sad to Jenny, like he needed a hug.
“Did he have a name?”
He ruffled Robbie’s fur on his back. Distracted, he said, “Ralph. We got him from the pound when he wasn’t bigger than a football. Always thought we were doing him a favor.” Suddenly angry, he looked at Jenny. “We were good folks, taking that dog. Mom wanted a purebred, but Dad said we should save a castaway. They kill dogs at a pound. We were good folks. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
Jenny retreated a step—he was so intense!—and Robbie growled. The man snatched his hand to his chest.
“They’re going to get me if I stay still. They’ll get you too.” He stood. “You keep that dog close to you. Nobody should have to give up a dog. Fucking aliens.” Looking at the sky again, he stepped back. “Hope you find a doctor. Your dad needs something.” With three long strides and a jump, the man was over the fence and out of sight.
Dad said, “Somebody should clean this pool. Maybe if there was a skimmer.” He looked around.
“We’ll fix it after we get to the hospital.” She pulled on his arm to help him to his feet, but he was so much heavier than she that she wasn’t able to budge him. Dad grunted, then stood unsteadily.
“I used to read stories about alien contact,” Dad said to the air as he followed Jenny to the gate. She checked the alley before letting him out. Light was fading rapidly, and a cold breeze stirred papers on the ground. “They were always something like us. I mean, we could communicate with them. We wanted the same things in the stories, and these aliens were like that at first. ‘Dawn of a new era in interstellar contact,’ the president said.” Dad slowed to cough, each explosion wrenching his face into pain. When he finally stopped, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I need to take a nap.”
Jenny looked at the darkening sky. “We can’t, Dad. Not now. You just took one. Tell me more about the aliens. Keep talking.” She wasn’t really listening. As long as he talked, he would keep walking. Nothing he said would be as scary as him giving up.
They were at the top of a house-covered hill. At the bottom of the street, several blocks below them, the highway overpass shadowed the road. A hunk of the bridge’s middle was gone and a semi-trailer truck hung partly on the overpass, its cab dangling above the broken section. Beyond that, the red stonework of the campus was just visible through the smoke, but the hospital was on the far side, out of sight.
Dad said, “Different planets, different worlds, and states’ rights. It’s a stupid war. Our negotiating team laughed at the demand. Dogs aren’t people. We laughed; they attacked. No counteroffers.”
The path was downhill now, although she didn’t dare let them take the sidewalk. They stayed close to the houses, crossing lawns, stepping over privet hedges or knee-high fences some people put on their yards to know where to stop mowing. There was still a lot of broken glass, although little sign of burning now. As they passed a white two-story with blue trim, she noticed a sign by the door, “God Bless This Home.” She thought a curtain flicked behind one of the windows, but she couldn’t be sure.
She watched Robbie. He ran ahead of them, poking his nose into bushes, then running back as if he had important news. Robbie always heard the aliens before she did. If he stopped with his ears up, they needed to hide.
“Lots of people don’t own dogs, you know,” Dad said. “They just don’t like to be told by extra-solar beings that they can’t own a dog. They didn’t understand the relationship, or they understood, but they didn’t like it. Called it, ‘repressed, emerging sapiency.’” He hummed an off-pitched tune to himself for a few steps. “Good thing horses weren’t ‘emerging’ or, God forbid, pigs. We’d really been in trouble then,” he added, then went back to humming.
Jenny could feel the fever in his hand. In the morning, when she’d decided they couldn’t hide in their basement any longer, the skin under the bandage had an angry yellow and purple look to it, and the cut, which hadn’t seemed that bad when he first got it, had deepened and widened. She’d bathed it the best she could before wrapping his chest clumsily. She was afraid of what she’d find if she looked at it now.
On the other side of the overpass, a light shone in several windows of the nearest university buildings. It was really getting dark now and cold. The going was tough. They traced a zig-zag pattern from the house, out to the sidewalk to get past taller walls or impenetrable bushes, Jenny jumping at every sound or shadow, then back to the hiding places of the homes. Dad’s fingers rested limply in her own, and each step seemed a prelude to a fall. He mumbled to himself, his eyes closed. “Even the trees spoke.”
“Dad?”
He took several steps before saying, “What?”
“What’s that about talking trees?”
“Wizard of Oz. How’d you like it if someone picked
your apples? Everything’s in how you look at it. I’ll get you, my pretty. You and your little dog.” He stumbled, caught himself, then straightened his shoulders. “It’s Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows. Alien horror documentaries.”
He squeezed Jenny’s fingers, then fell backwards. Jenny dropped to her knees, shook him, called to him, but he didn’t stir. Robbie looked on quizzically.
She tried to pull him toward the house, a pleasant looking two-story Victorian, but it was useless. He weighed too much.
In the house, at the bottom of a ransacked closet, she found a tablecloth—all the blankets were gone—and took it outside. He hadn’t moved.
“Dad,” she said. “Dad? I’m going to get help. The hospital’s just a few more blocks. I won’t be gone long.” She smoothed the tablecloth over him. Above, the clouds roiled in a luminescent gray, nearly touching the rooftops. There was no traffic on the street. No voices. Only Dad’s wheezing breaths.
“You stay here, Robbie. Stay with Dad.” Robbie lifted an ear, then dropped it. “Do you understand? Stay. Be a good dog.” She kissed Dad’s forehead before running down the street. Robbie followed.
“Go back! Stay with Dad! You’ll be safer.” She shooed him away. He sat instead.
They were nearly to the underpass. “Go back,” she pleaded.
Without waiting to see what he’d do, she turned toward the campus. Even when she heard his claws clicking against the cement, she didn’t look behind.
The dangling truck cab creaked when she ran under it. Broken asphalt and bent lengths of rusty rebar sticking from cement slabs made walking treacherous. A sharp cordite smell lingered. Only a block separated her from the university, but after she negotiated the last obstacle beneath the overpass, she slowed to a walk. Across the road that entered the campus grounds, the same road the hospital was on, stretched a tall fence. Footlights every ten feet along the ground illuminated the shiny chain link structure, and in the exact middle of the road was a small gate, not nearly big enough for a car, a people gate. Two dark figures sat on the other side. As she approached, they stood. One of them shined a flashlight, blinding her.
“It’s a little girl,” a voice said.
“What do you think she’s doing out there?” the other voice asked. “I thought everyone had been detained.”
“My dad’s hurt,” Jenny called. “I need to get him to the hospital, but he’s too weak to come. I need help.” She tried to see them, but the light was too bright.