"Supper's ready."
"Save it."
"I don't know," the sergeant said. The dogs were whimpering. The moon was higher. "Maybe that's Bodine. If he's been hurt up here, he might have seen our fire and tried crawling toward it. That would explain the noises we've been hearing."
"He'd have shouted."
"Could be he's not able."
"But the noises are from different sections."
"There's his wife and son, remember. Could be all three of them are hurt. Maybe separated."
"That's a lot of 'could be's."
"But at least an explanation."
The noises became louder.
"Hell, I'm going out there. I want to find out what that is," the sergeant said.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"It's the only one we've had. And anyway, suppose it is Bo-dine. We've got to help him." The sergeant looked at them. "I can't order you, I guess. Is anybody coming with me?"
They glanced toward the ground, toward the dogs, anywhere except toward the sergeant.
"Yeah, okay. If no one else will, I'll volunteer." It was the man who'd just told the story. 'This is getting on my nerves just waiting here."
The sergeant smiled. "That's fine. I'm glad to have you."
So they clutched their rifles, and they started from the campfire toward the darkness. Out there, they could hear the noises.
"Hey, be careful," one man said.
"Don't worry."
The sergeant and his companion now had disappeared beyond the firelight. Those who stayed beside the fire heard the footsteps brushing through the mountain grass. The distance was sufficient that in a moment the weak sound didn't carry, and the three men stood there staring at the darkness, and they waited.
"They should reach the forest soon."
"Just give them time."
"The sauce is burning."
One man stooped and grabbed a glove to pull the pan out from the fire's edge.
"They should turn on their flashlights."
"Just give them time, I said. They'll want to save the batteries. They'll need them for a lot of hours yet."
But there were no lights near the forest.
"Okay, I'm convinced. They're taking too long. They've had too much time to reach the forest."
At once they heard barking.
"What's that?"
"They're in trouble. Let's go help them."
"Wait. We're still not sure yet."
"What the hell's the matter with you? They're in trouble."
The man who had stooped to move the sauce was clutching his rifle. "I'm not going to wait here while they need me." He moved toward the forest. Then he turned and looked at them. "You're coming?"
They hesitated.
"To hell with you."
He continued moving forward.
"Use your flashlight."
He was just beyond the firelight as the last two men heard the howling. Not just barking as before, but howling.
"No!" somebody shouted from the darkness out there. "No, stay back!"
The howling intensified. Then they heard the rifle shot.
"No! Stay back! My God, no! Run!"
They started backing toward the fire, staring toward the darkness. There were sounds of movement in the darkness to their right and left. They lurched farther back, staring, aiming. As the snarling figures hurtled toward them, one man fired, but he was overpowered, and the other man kept stumbling back. He felt cold water in his boots and realized that he'd stepped into the lake. He was shooting, tugging at his rifle's bolt and shooting yet again, his eyes unsteady from his panic, peering at the swirling howling figures on the lakeshore, but the water held them back as he kept shooting. He dropped one and then another, and he worked the bolt and pulled the trigger, and the pin snapped down on empty. All his other bullets were inside his knapsack by the fire. The figures twisted, snarling, on the shore. He couldn't see them clearly, only made out silhouettes against the fire behind them, heard his partners screaming off there in the darkness as he drew his handgun, eager now to save his bullets for their final rush at him. The water. Sure. They don't like coming in the water. Otherwise they would have charged me. In a rush, he waded farther out, and suddenly, attentive only to what faced him on the lakeshore, he ignored what might be rising behind him, lost his balance as the muck beneath him sloped much deeper, and he fell back, completely swallowed by the water.
NINE
Everything was speeding up. The medical examiner didn't have the time to think things through, to make sure that he did things properly. When Owens left to take the dog down to the clinic, for example, he himself had stayed behind to calm the owner. All the while he stood there talking with the man, at last walking with him toward the house, the medical examiner wanted to rush through the streets to get to Owens and to watch him do the tests. At the same time, he was thinking that he ought to get in touch with Slaughter, to tell him what was going on. But what was going on? He didn't know yet. There was nothing positive. For all he could predict, the tests would indicate some other problem, and he didn't want to trouble Slaughter, didn't want to bother him without a reason. So he'd gone inside the house and stayed there briefly until he'd reassured the owner. Then he hurried from the house ("Don't go out in the backyard. You could be infected by the doghouse or the chain.") and frantically realized that he'd left his car at the hospital. He ran through the backyard of the house next door. The man in tennis clothes came out to tell him, "Hey, if I'd wanted people cutting through here, I'd have put in a sidewalk." But the medical examiner didn't answer. He simply clambered up the fence and jumped down on the other side, racing through the long grass toward the trees and then the dry creek. He no longer cared about the snakes or other things that might be hiding there. He thought only about his car, about the tests that Owens soon would be performing.
He scrambled from the dry creek, through the trees and bushes toward the fence that he had toppled, jumping across the ants' nest, running to reach his car. But as he stood there, breathing hard, fumbling in his pocket for his keys, he suddenly remembered the objects in the trunk of his car: the plastic bags, the dead cat, and the blood-soaked dirt. How much danger did they pose? He couldn't take the chance. They might be so contaminated that they'd spread the disease. Until he had time to examine them, he needed to make sure that they were safely stored in medical-waste containers.
The process took twenty minutes. Only then was he able to hurry to his car and speed away. He swerved up the driveway toward the back of the veterinary clinic. The sun had set now. In the darkness, except that the rear doors were closed and Owens' van was parked before them, this was much like when he'd come here Friday morning, seeing old Doc Markle dead and staring at the mangled steer, when everything had started for him. He skidded to a stop beside the van and jumped out. He gripped the door beside the two big double-doors, and Owens hadn't locked it. As he rushed inside, he squinted from the blazing lights and was mindful once again of Friday morning. Had it started only yesterday? He saw the dog up on the table, a protective plastic sheet beneath it, Owens there beside it in his lab coat and his face mask.
Owens turned to him, his voice muffled by the face mask. "The dog was dead before I got here."
"Is that common?"
"Sometimes the paralysis can set in very quickly."
The medical examiner understood what Owens was referring to. An animal with rabies would go through several stages. First it acted normally until the virus worked along the nerves. Then the brain became infected, and the victim was excited, furious. At last the virus spread back through the total nervous system, and the animal was lethally paralyzed.
"But I saw it in the active stage. Several hours later, and it's dead? Paralysis shouldn't be that quick."
"Maybe. I agree with you. This could be something else," Owens said. "You'll find a coat and face mask in that locker over there."