Part III: Contact
Chapter Nine: The Story of Wawa
Wawa never learned the name of the man who owned her before everything changed. But she hoped he was dead or dying somewhere. Preferably the latter, in some dank cave where the last of the humans waited out their final days. And she hoped that he saw her scarred face in his dreams, and that he wanted to remember her name but couldn’t, and that it drove him mad. He deserved to know that he had failed to break her. He deserved to be afraid.
Wawa didn’t have time to be dwelling on these things again. It was late, and she had work to do. The only light in her cramped room at the barracks came from an old computer salvaged from the rubble, displaying a spreadsheet that detailed every possible EMSAH infection in the sector. Mort(e)’s investigation had begun, and she had to record his findings. If this was an EMSAH outbreak, then it was spreading so fast that the Red Sphinx would soon need an army of investigators to sort through everything. Of course, she could not yet use the word EMSAH, not even in the filename. In keeping with the gag order, she described the cases in numbingly bland prose: “Thor (canine, 12). Murdered by neighbor, Averroes (canine, 10). Altercation began Y9 7.3. Assailant stabbed victim; later poisoned family at dinner (mate, two pups); committed suicide.” There was still a blank cell where she would have to write an equally flat assessment of the deer suicides. It was almost a relief to hear reported cases of biological symptoms. At least they were more predictable. But they had turned up negative in every suspected case so far. Now anyone with an abnormally long cold was being tested.
Though she had heard about settlements that had been erased from the map, she had not witnessed the process in real time. “Think of it as a test,” Culdesac told her. Everything was a test to him, including Wawa’s initiation into the Red Sphinx. He had toured the refugee camp where she lived, searching for new recruits. After being told they were drafting only cats, Wawa challenged the newest members to a fight. It was three against one. Wawa held her own against them until Culdesac consented to let her join, making her the first canine in the squad. The others were stunned. “You owe me,” Culdesac reminded her, “and you will pay up.”
Upon hearing the story of her slave days, Culdesac nodded and smiled. “You should be grateful,” he said. “Grateful to be alive. Grateful that your master gave you this rage that you’ve harnessed. That is who you are. That is your strength. You have to let it burn inside you. Never let it go out. And then you’ll be your own master.”
The colonel was the only other person at the base who was still awake. From her window, Wawa could see a light in his office. That damned coffee was keeping him up, along with a host of worries she was not supposed to know about. Instead of coffee, it was the expression on Mort(e)’s face earlier that day that kept her from sleeping. When she had pointed her gun at him. He thought that he was better than her. He was the bravest. Culdesac’s favorite — something neither she nor her comrades could ever hope to be. She had to listen to all the stories of Mort(e)’s exploits, told by drunk, arrogant cats who thought that she wasn’t qualified to be a member of their little Red Sphinx club.
If he only knew what she was before all this.
Before the Change, her only reason for living was to make her master rich, while the canines around her suffered unspeakably, lived meaninglessly, and died horribly. Even now, after surviving so much, she could not shake the feeling that things could return to the way they were, and she would suddenly find herself trapped in her old life, realizing that the war had been a dream.
She could remember the litter of puppies, her brothers and sisters huddled together, hiding from the cold and the light. Then they were all separated, her mother included. Everyone was confined to cages facing a white stucco wall. Wawa could hear her siblings, along with many others, squealing above, beside, and beneath her. She tried to talk to them, but her voice died out amidst the shouts bouncing off the wall. Every once in a while, an overhead fluorescent light would turn on. Her master would enter, usually to feed everyone. He was shorter than most men, always dressed in a tracksuit — pants and jacket in matching colors, a white stripe traveling from his shoulders down to his ankles. A bucket hat or a baseball cap covered his shaved head. He called her Jenna. Years later, after giving up on finding out his name, Wawa began to refer to him simply as Tracksuit.
When she was older, her master and some of his friends would take her out of the cage and into a yard along with the other dogs. It was so bright that her eyes felt as though they would burst. Her nose and ears tingled with unfamiliar sensory input: grass, dirt, leaves, wood, concrete, rusty metal, rope, tiny armored creatures that crawled on the ground, distant elegant monsters that glided in the sky above. The master leashed the dogs to a row of dying trees, which allowed them to get close to one another without touching. Other humans would arrive. These visitors — almost always young men — would gawk at the dogs, occasionally nodding in approval. Sometimes they would even point and smile at her. She barked at them as loud as she could to show them that she would protect her master. They would smile more, as if she had performed some trick on command. The men inspected the animals, squeezing their hind legs, holding their jaws and examining the teeth. Sometimes, after a lengthy inspection, they would take one of the dogs away. In the yard, Wawa learned the names of the others in her pack. Rommel, a brown dog who fought with the others whenever he got loose. Hector, a younger one, very agile and fast. Kai, another female who wheezed when she growled.
One evening, Tracksuit placed Wawa and three other dogs in cages and loaded them into the rear of a windowless van. She recognized her companions: Baron, Ajax, and an older one, Cyrus. He had a whitish coat with a few black splotches. His mottled tail and missing left ear suggested that he had been defending the pack for many years, second in command only to Tracksuit. He could quiet the others with a mere grumbling in his throat. One time, he protected Kai from Rommel, reminding the others who was in charge. He was the elder, the strongest among them. He would drink first from the trough in the yard and got the largest share of the food.
Wawa could not take her eyes from Cyrus as he sat in his cage, scratching himself, unburdened by what took place around him. After the van arrived at its destination, Tracksuit and his friend opened the door and led the animals out one at a time. The landscape was much different from the one outside her master’s house. The ground was flat, rough, and hard. Tall poles held lights that hung over a vast empty space. In one direction, a highway stretched into the distance. In the other was a square building, the front of which glowed blindingly white through giant windows. Inside, the linoleum floor reflected the light like the surface of a puddle. Brightly colored cans, bags, and boxes lined the shelves. A man stood behind a counter, eyeing Tracksuit suspiciously. At the top of the building, looming over it, were glowing red objects braced to the wall with bolts and bent into shapes Wawa did not recognize.
Behind the building, the parking lot ended at a wooded area. A row of trash cans, fragrant with a week’s worth of garbage, concealed a dirt trail into the forest. Wawa followed, her senses alert. In the failing light, Tracksuit’s outfit went from a navy blue to black.
The trail snaked its way to a house painted a dull green color to blend in. The curtains were drawn. Tracksuit knocked, and the door opened, releasing the sound of hundreds of voices along with the smell of smoke, alcohol, and sweat. Once inside, Wawa was lost in a moving forest of legs. Few of the people seemed to notice her arrival. Instead, the crowd circled around an arena in which a man stood. There was a wall that rose as high as the man’s waist. On the other side of the wall, Wawa could hear the unmistakable sound of two dogs thrashing at each other. A head and a tail peeked above the lip of the barrier. Each yelp from the combatants drew cheers from the spectators. Before she could get a better view, Tracksuit pulled her into another smoky room where four men sat around a table. Each wore a long white T-shirt that went almost down to the knees, along with baggy jeans and high-top sneakers. Glowing cigarettes hung from their lips. One of them had a porkpie hat and wraparound sunglasses. He did not speak much, but the others were quiet and attentive when he did. Wawa had been trained to be silent, but she wanted to warn Tracksuit that these men were enemies from another pack, constantly encircling them. She could smell it on them. And she could detect the anxiety seeping through her master’s sweaty outfit.