DoG (9 page)

“So basically it was just an extension of spring break. I obviously couldn’t go to DeLuca’s and thought it best to lay low while this thing blew over, so I stayed home and drank alone. I know there are more constructive things to do with my time, but I figured that under the circumstances, getting drunk by myself would at least keep me out of trouble. So that’s what I did for the next three days. Everything would have been fine, except…”

“Except what?”

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“Kat DeLuca stopped by. She said she felt bad about what had happened. She said she told the principal that I hadn’t done anything wrong, but her dad was still pressuring the district to fire me.”

“You let her into her house?”

“Yes. In hindsight it was pretty stupid, but it was raining, and it seemed silly to stand out in the rain for appearance’s sake when there was no one watching. Plus I was drunk.”

“So what happened?”

“She kissed me.”

“You sure you didn’t kiss her?”

“Honestly, I didn’t. She initiated. But I didn’t stop her and I…”

“You what?”

“I had sex with her.”

Before he’d said this, Culann hadn’t realized how guilty he’d felt for hiding the truth from Frank. Even though it was alcohol that loosened his tongue, a surge of relief flooded through Culann. He was foolish to have thought he could achieve absolution without confession.

“Jesus, Culann. You can go to jail for that, you know.”

“It was a moment of weakness. I told her we couldn’t ever do that again, and we didn’t.”

“Did she tell on you?”

“No, she didn’t. But her dad had hired a private investigator to watch me. He got video footage of her coming into my house and then leaving half-an-hour later. Kat found out about it and called me. I left town before the police came back, which was only a matter of time.”

“So all of this ‘I’m-not-a-pervert-stuff’ has been bullshit.”

“You can think what you want, Frank, but it was an isolated incident.”

“Oh, yeah? Then how come I have to just about tackle you to keep you away from Gus’s daughter?”

“I’m not going to do anything to her. Is there something wrong with striking up a conversation with the only person here who’s not a smelly old fisherman?”

“You are so full of shit, Culann. I thought this whole thing was supposed to be some sort of therapy for you. You were talking about doing ‘something big’ so you could put all this behind you. But the minute we get to shore, you’re drunk off your ass and chasing after the only underage girl within a hundred miles. You haven’t changed at all.

This has all been bullshit.”

Culann didn’t respond. Frank was right. Culann had proved something to himself by surviving the voyage and wresting the orb away from the Captain. He’d proved that he 58

was tougher than he’d thought and that he was not just bright, but clever. But so what?

Toughness and cleverness had not been his problems. It was all meaningless if his trials didn’t lead him to a different sort of life. The two walked silently in the murkily-sunlit night. Frank stopped.

“Where are the mosquitoes?” Frank asked.

“What?”

“The mosquitoes. This time of year we should be walking through a shit-ton of mosquitoes. I haven’t gotten bit once.”

It was true. Culann didn’t have a bite on him. The day before they embarked, Culann had learned to be careful talking outside to prevent bugs from flying into his mouth. Now there were none.

“Holy shit,” Frank said. “Look down.”

Culann couldn’t tell at first, because they blended in with the brown dirt road, but there were thousands, maybe millions, of dead mosquitoes lying in the road. The cousins crouched down. Every square inch of the road was covered with miniscule corpses.

“Did they spray for bugs?” Culann asked.

“Up here it doesn’t make any sense to. If you sprayed enough to put a dent in the mosquito population, we’d all be dead.”

“Weird,” Culann said before draining the last of his cup. “I’m empty. Let’s go back.”

“Okay, but stay away from Gus’s daughter. He keeps a knife in his boot, you know. A big one.”

Frank led the way back to the party. McGillicuddy was shooting off bottle

rockets. As they approached the tent, a bird dropped from the sky and landed at their feet.

“Did that crazy son of a bitch hit a bird?” Frank asked.

Culann bent down and examined the bird, a gray- and white-striped sparrow. Its feathers weren’t singed and it showed no signs of injury, but it was surely dead.

“I don’t think so,” Culann said. “I guess its time was just up.”

They walked farther and found another dead bird on the walkway. On the path ahead, two dogs were fighting over something, something that shed feathers each time they shook their heads. Beyond them, in the clearing ahead, dozens of dogs ran around with birds in their mouths, shaking them savagely and tossing the carcasses around. By now the other revelers had caught sight of what was happening. They lined the edge of the tent and stared out at the field littered with dead birds.

Theories were of course posited.

“Maybe they got poisoned somehow,” McGillicuddy wondered.

“It’s all those oil wells up here,” his wife replied. “Alaska is being raped by those greedy bastards. Who knows what they’re dumping into the atmosphere? The birds could only take so much. This is probably just the tip of iceberg.”

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“It’s not pollution,” Alistair replied, his eyes, unblinking, focused off in the distance. “At least not in the physical sense. This is caused by spiritual pollution. This is the hand of God. He is visiting plague and pestilence upon us to punish us for our wicked ways. If His vengeance is reaching all the way up here, the rest of the world must already be gone.”

A few people tittered at Alistair’s gloomy prediction, but the rest at least entertained the possibility they were facing something beyond worldly explanation.

Whatever it was, people were concerned for their dogs, happily romping through the field of death. The festivities came to an abrupt halt. The dogs and their owners retreated to the safety of their homes. Frank and Culann snatched a keg to take back with them

“Alphonse, come,” Frank shouted at the dog, who was busy chewing on a bird.

Frank called again, but the dog ignored him.

“Goddamnit, Alphonse. Come!”

Alphonse paused for a moment to scratch his ear with his hind leg, but then he resumed gnawing on the bird.

“Come on, Alphonse,” Culann said with a clap of his hands, and the dog suddenly cast aside the bird and trotted over to the cousins.

“What the fuck was that?” Frank asked.

“I guess he likes me now.”

“Yeah, well that makes one of us.”

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Diary of Culann Riordan, Day 9

The last time I’d seen Frank before coming to Alaska had been at his second
wedding. He and I drank together at the Holiday Inn bar just outside of the hall where
the reception was taking place. We were both drunk and not paying appropriate levels of
attention to my date or his new bride. We reminisced about all the good times we’d had
as boys, lamented how we’d grown apart and made false promises to spend more time
together.

My date was Darlene, a girl I’d been seeing for about three months. She taught at
the junior high school in my district, so we were acquainted through work but didn’t
actually work together on a daily basis. This cut down on the awkwardness that I might
have otherwise experienced after getting so drunk that night that I wet the bed. Darlene
barely spoke to me as we drove home the next morning, and never spoke to me again
afterwards.

Frank didn’t fare much better. One of the last things I remember about that night
was seeing Alison arguing with him and wiping her mascara-stained tears on the white
lace sleeve of her wedding dress. They would split up within six months. When my dad
told me about their impending divorce, I vowed to call Frank and offer my sympathies,
which I never did.

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3

Culann awoke to Alphonse’s insistent tongue against his face. He pushed the dog away and forced his eyelids open. Frank was still out cold. Alphonse whined up at him.

Culann got up and pushed open the front door for him, but the dog evidently didn’t need to use the bathroom. Culann certainly did, so he shut the door and went into the tiny WC

for a long leak. He tried to flush the toilet, but nothing came out. After finishing, Culann almost tripped over Alphonse, who pressed against his leg as he returned to the living room.

“Frank, there’s something wrong with your toilet.”

He didn’t answer. Culann went into the kitchen, Alphonse clinging to his heels the whole way. Culann poured himself a bowl of Cheerios. Alphonse sat at his feet, staring up at him. Figuring he was hungry, Culann poured kibble into his dish, but the dog ignored it.

“Frank, do you want any cereal?”

He didn’t respond, so Culann ate the cereal dry with Alphonse lying over the tops of his feet. After finishing, Culann tried the radio again. Not even static came out.

“Hey, Frank, wake up.”

He continued to lie still. Culann reached over and shook his shoulder. No

response. Employing an old trick from boyhood slumber parties, he pinched Frank’s nose shut. His face felt cold.

Culann jumped up and wiped his hand on has pants. He charged out of the trailer to look for Worner in the ridiculous hope that the piss-poor paramedic could somehow raise the dead. Alphonse followed closely behind. As they ran the quarter mile to Worner’s place, every dog in Pyrite began to bark. Those dogs that were outside and unchained followed, while the rest shouted encouragement to the others rushing by.

Not bothering to knock, Culann shoved his way into Worner’s shack. Alphonse and three other dogs crowded along with him into the humble living room. Worner lay face down on the floor, not moving. An orange housecat lay on its back beside him like an overturned table, its tiny pink tongue hanging from its mouth. The dogs whined up at Culann. He backed out into the road and dropped to his knees, stunned by the sights of Frank and Worner dead, and the realization that others were likely gone, too. He’d fled civilization to live with these rugged outsiders who died just after they’d accepted him.

Frank was the only person in his life he could rely on, and he’d grown close to Worner and McGillicuddy in their time at sea. Yesterday he’d imagined that they’d formed a lifetime bond through their adventures. Today Culann was alone in the world.

“My dad’s dead,” a small voice called out from behind him.

He turned and saw Gus’s daughter, looking every bit as beautiful as the night before. Her hair hung down to her shoulders. She wore a UAF Nanooks t-shirt that came down to the tops of her thighs. If she wore anything else, Culann couldn’t see it. Her eyes were puffy from crying. He rose to his feet.

“Worner’s dead, too,” he said. “And my cousin, Frank.”

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She nodded. Culann walked over and put his arm around her shoulder. She fell sobbing into him. He inhaled the lilac scent of her hair and squeezed her tightly for a few moments, savoring her sweet vitality while contemplating the death around him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing away. “I don’t even know you.”

“My name’s Culann.”

“I’m Constance.”

“Something bad has happened. Something big. We need to figure out how big.”

She nodded.

“I’m going to check each house. You can come with me if you want, but you

might not like what you see.”

She thought about it for a second and then said, “I want to go with you.”

Culann extended his hand, and she took it. A tingling ran up his arm as her slender fingers clutched his hand. They crossed the street and opened the door to the cabin. Two dogs bounded out and joined the pack swirling around them. Inside they found a dead fisherman on a cot. Constance turned her head away.

“So, do you live out here year-round?” he asked, wanting to distract her from the horrors surrounding them.

“No, I live with my mom in Fairbanks. I don’t see my dad all that much.’

“What are you doing out here now? We were supposed to be gone for another

week-and-a-half. How did you know we’d be back early?”

“I didn’t,” she replied with a smirk. “I thought I could get two weeks to myself by coming up before he got back.”

“Why would a girl your age need two weeks by herself?”

“It doesn’t really matter.”

The two worked their way from dwelling to dwelling, finding only dead

fishermen and live dogs. Along the way, they stepped over dead birds, dead squirrels, dead raccoons. About a half-mile up the road, a woman slouched against the front door of her trailer. She raised her hand to her lips and puffed on a cigarette. Culann and Constance raced over, the dogs nearly enveloping the woman in their enthusiasm.

She looked up at them with blank eyes. It was Margaret McGillicuddy,

McGillicuddy’s wife, although she was drained of the effervescence Culann had found so charming the night before. He had a hard time recognizing her at first.

“Moses is dead,” she said.

Culann nodded.

“Neighbors are dead, too.”

He put his left hand on her shoulder, careful not to let go of Constance’s hand with his right. Culann explained what he’d found out so far, who he knew to be dead.

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Margaret listened without speaking. She smoked her cigarette down to the filter and then lit another one.

“But if we’re alive, there’s got to be more,” Constance chimed in.

Culann was buoyed by the hopefulness in her voice. And she was right. Margaret stayed on her step, but Culann, Constance and the dogs found seven more survivors.

Alistair, Julia and little Marty had all survived. There was Simon Coughlin, an elderly man who ran the general store and appeared to be blind in his clouded-over left eye.

Culann recognized him as one of the silent old coots from Alistair’s bar. And there were fishermen’s wives. Genevieve Gordon looked to be about fifty years old. She spoke with a faint French accent and a not-so-faint slur. Culann guessed she’d responded to the sight of her husband dead beside her by cracking open a bottle. LaTonya Munch was a slight woman of about forty with a hooked nose. Carla Verig was the stoic Native woman who’d waved to Culann from her doorway on his first drunken stumble up Pyrite Avenue. She again wore her raincoat despite the sunny sky. By the time the group finished their survey, the pack of dogs following them had surged to around fifty.