Chapter 55
"HEY, CHARLIE. WANT some bacon?" Chris says to Charlie II when his dad is gone. "Hear that, boy? The Nats game. Stephen Strasburg throws like a hundred miles an hour." He heads back into the kitchen. The dog's claws click on the floor tiles behind him.
No one in the family loves Charlie II more than Chris. They've practically grown up together, having been "pups" at the same time. The family has moved three times, following Charles's new jobs, and each time, Charlie II was Chris's best friend until he managed to make human friends. Chris remembers how hard it was to make the dog stay home when he went off to play with his friends. Charlie II would whine in sadness, his eyes forlornly watching Chris from the window as he left the house. And if Chris looked back, he might not be able to leave. To not be with Chris seems to be the hardest thing for the dog to do. They are close as brothers.
Chris kills the Verdi on the radio, turns up the volume on the TV, and zaps through the channels with one hand, searching for ESPN. With the other hand he picks up a slice of bacon from the grease-dampened paper towel and offers it to Charlie II under the counter.
A hot shock of pain in his hand. Chris drops the remote.
"Hey!" He yanks back his hand and looks at it. Charlie bit him. There are puncture marks in his hand.
"Ow! What the fuck? What'd you do that for?"
Chris looks agape at Charlie II, standing beside him in the kitchen. The piece of bacon lies untouched on the floor tiles. Something is-something is not right. There is some weird look in the dog's eyes-some knowing, almost angry glaze in them that Chris has never seen before. Charlie begins to growl. His jowls flap against his teeth, spit percolating deep in his throat. The eighty-pound Labrador crouches, coiling back, the fur bristling high and stiff as steel wool on the back of his neck. He is growling, sounding like a guard dog, his teeth bared, a gloopy white thread yo-yoing from his lower lip in a pool of saliva.
"What in the hell? What's wrong, boy? Stop it. It's me. What's wrong with you?"
It looks like one of his eyes is messed up. Charlie's head keeps jerking to one side, as though he were a boxer shaking off a punch. Something is wrong.
Charlie curls in on his hind legs and lets loose with a string of the loudest, most threatening barks Chris has ever heard him make. He sounds like a junkyard dog warning off intruders, not the family pet he's known more than half his life. Charlie is in a rage-lungs heaving up quick, loud, guttural barks that sound like "WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR!"
That's it. Chris gets scared. He panics. He tumbles from his chair and starts running. He feels Charlie's hot breath on the backs of his knees, hears jaws snapping behind him.</ol>
The closest door is the hallway pantry. Chris dashes inside and slams the door, and feels the whump and rattle of Charlie throwing his weight against it. He leans with his back against the pantry door, holding it shut.
On the other side of it, Charlie smashes his body into the door, the thing shuddering on its hinges under the impact. Charlie scrabbles his toenails at the door, clawing and barking, heaves himself into it in manic thumps, seemingly wanting to rip him to ribbons. In all the years they have owned the dog, he's never sounded like-like a wild animal.
He's gone crazy, Chris thinks. He saw it in his eyes. The dog is off his rocker. He no longer seems like Charlie II. He is something else. Another dog entirely. A bad dog.
He feels himself beginning to cry. In the hallway, he can hear the dog skulking in circles, still rumble-jawed, occasionally sneezing, occasionally breaking into a fresh wave of furious barking.
"WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR!"
Chris looks down at his hand. The punctures in his palm aren't huge, but they're deep, and bleeding. There's blood all over his shorts.
Chris shakes his head, swiping at his eyes. He has to calm down and think. He's still bleeding. He has to deal with that.
He crouches down and reaches for a package of paper towels on the bottom shelf. On the paper towel package, a handsome mountain man in a flannel shirt smiles. He tears open the bag with his teeth, wraps a wad of paper towels around his hand, and tightens the makeshift bandage with a strip of plastic wrap.
He sits in the hot, cramped darkness, listening to the dog pace and growl in the hallway. He is thinking about maybe using the broom to beat back the dog for long enough to run for help. Then the phone in the kitchen rings.
The machine bleeps and someone starts leaving a message. He hears Charlie II skitter back into the kitchen.
Chris bolts from the pantry and races up the back stairs. He's halfway to his room when Charlie arrives on the stairs in front of him.
Chris dives sidelong into his parents' bedroom. Charlie comes through the doorway a moment later, forcing Chris into the bathroom. He whams the door shut a split second before the dog crashes against it, and Charlie again goes berserk with barks and snarls.
Damn it. His plan had been to call his mom or dad from the cell phone in his room. Now he's stuck again.
"Charlie!" he calls through the door. "There's something wrong with you. It's me. It's Chris."
He can hear a note of pleading in his own voice, and it seems only to spark the dog's contempt.
Charlie either can't hear him or it doesn't matter. He continues barking, clawing, snarling.
"WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR!"
That's when he remembers that his mom is on her way home. She doesn't know Charlie II has gone berserk. If she comes in the front door, Charlie might bite her, too.
He needs to call her. His cell phone is in his bedroom. He starts pacing back and forth across the bright bathroom floor. It's still steamy from a shower. He suddenly remembers the box in his dad's closet. His dad's a gadget guy; has trouble tossing out spare parts and computer cables and stuff like that. Chris remembers the box has some old cell phones in it. You can dial 911 on old cell phones, right? He remembers hearing that somewhere. He hopes it's true.
His parents' closet is right next to the bathroom. And the walls are made of Sheetrock, right? He stepped through the ceiling once, dicking around in the attic when they'd first moved in, and knew firsthand how that stuff is surprisingly soft and crumbly.
Plan. He will make a hole in the wall, try to climb through it into the closet. Get the old cell phone from the box. Call 911.
He unscrews the metal shower curtain rod and begins to bash at the wall with it. He works at it for a while. The hole is about the diameter of a basketball when he hears the rumbling electric moan of the garage door opening from the floor below.
Charlie II stops barking and bolts from the room.
Chris panics. He's too late. His mom will get bitten. He thinks of his dad's gun. He's been duck hunting a few times with his dad; sometimes with his uncle, too, when his uncle is visiting. He knows there's a shotgun in the closet. He's not sure if there are shells.
Chris drops the shower curtain rod to the bathroom tiles with a clatter, yanks the door open, and then goes into the closet. The shotgun is on the top shelf, lying on a pair of folded orange hunting vests. He can't quite reach the shelf. He kick-scoots a chair into the closet, scrambles on top of it. He fumbles through the orange vests. He finds a box of ammo in one of them. He knocks out a handful of shells, pockets them, races downstairs with the shotgun.</ol>
He fiddles with the gun on the stairs. How the fuck do you load the stupid thing again?
Slow down, he tells himself. Think.
He's shot the thing like three times in his life, always with his dad, and his dad has always done the loading. Remember. He flips the gun over and notices some sort of closed slot on the side. He fiddles with a little catch underneath it and works the slide forward, opening it up. Then he slips the slug in and pumps the slide back. It goes chik-clack.
He can hear his mother coming through the door as he slides around the hallway corner, slippery in his socks on the glossy hardwood floor, shotgun heavy and awkward in his hands.
"Hello?" he hears his mom call. "Chris?"
"Mom!" he shouts down the hallway. "Look out! There's something wrong with Charlie!"
The dog appears. He turns the corner at the opposite end of the hallway. His toenails click on the wood floor. Spit hangs in frothy strings from his mouth. He does that crazed head-twitching thing again, sneezes.
The dog moves forward slowly, growling, loose pulled-back lips flapping against bared teeth.
He watches the dog approach. He doesn't want to shoot. Charlie isn't just a pet. He's a brother.
"WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR!"
The dog breaks forward into a run and leaps.
Chris raises the barrel of the gun and pulls the trigger. The kick of the gun butt knocks him on his back. The dog falls.
Blood peppers the walls.
The blast has taken off the Labrador's face. His skin is gone; blood pumps from the place where his eyes used to be.
Chris rises to his knees, then crumbles back to the floor, crying. He drops the gun. He hears his mom come running.
"What the hell is going on?" she shouts.
The dog's legs twitch wretchedly as blood gushes on the floor, dampening Chris's socks. The animal lies dying just feet away from him.
"I'm sorry," Chris half whispers. "Oh, I'm so sorry, so sorry."
Chapter 56
THE NEXT FEW hours didn't seem real. We sat in squeaking, uncomfortable chairs that were bolted to the floor facing the massive TV. Leahy dimmed the lights to show us footage of attacks that the NSA had picked up throughout the country. The most chilling one was from California.