The Death & Life of an American Dog Read online

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  The two dogs passed out of Zain’s field of vision, but he remained atop the flat roof of the duplex. They had questioned the house pets, those who were naught but vermin, or so he was taught, living intimately with companions when they should have been roaming free or doing useful work. Now they would be watchful, especially at the house where the dogs had lingered so long.

  He did not like the way the golden dog had looked about so often, as if she could somehow sense his presence.

  He hated these dogs who did not follow the Dog at the Well. It was the way of his pack to destroy dogs who would not abandon the old, forbidden ways. He hated them, yet he had never found joy in their chastisement, their whimpers. He had seen revulsion in the eyes of his friend, Purdil, but each kept safe the other’s secret.

  He forced his thoughts to Iblis. As long as he lived, their honor was sullied, Anila’s most of all. Thinking of Anila, Zain quivered. He had lost Iblis, and now she would have to be told. He would have prayed to the Dog at the Well for mercy, but he suspected even that supernal being feared Anila.

  Eventually, when the sun started to slide westward and he was fairly sure he could get away unseen, Zain made his way off the roof and down the tree. He had to hurry now, head for the port terminal in National City. He had no idea when the ship would dock, but be had to be in place when it did.

  Impatient and fearful, the brindle Gull Dong shot for Broadway and rounded the corner without looking back.

  He should have looked back.

  Chapter 4

  Twilight was still an hour off when Levi, Sunny and Yoda returned to the big brown house on Fifth Avenue. The search of the hospital grounds had been fruitless. For hours, they systematically roamed the area around the hospital, checking out every source of water, every nook and cranny, every hidey-hole where a frightened dog might go to ground. They also checked the areas where there were automatic doors, since a dog the size of Iblis would certainly have triggered any motion sensor.

  They even managed to check out maintenance and engineering areas inside the hospital, thanks to the cooperation of some friendly therapy dogs who acted as camouflage for the detectives. Although they brightened the days of several companions in that unhappy place, they did not find any trace of Iblis.

  The absolute lack of his scent along any of the walkways or on the grassy areas was disappointing, but it supported the idea that the German Shepherd had not come this way. None of them remarked on the obvious alternative, but all of them were hoping for good news from the cats when they got home.

  As they came up the long drive and passed through the open gate, they saw Groucho and Smokey lounging under the teal Ford Escort wagon that had returned during their absence. One look at their grim feline expressions told them all they needed to know.

  “We checked through the middle school,” Groucho said. “We came across two Shepherds, but neither was Iblis.”

  “Those reprobates,” Sunny groaned.

  “The Chula Vista Maulers,” Yoda said dramatically.

  Levi frowned. Not that long ago, during the case of Bruce, the gentle giant who had been dognapped in the course of a burglary gone wrong, they had had another run-in with the gang of bullies.

  “Black Fang?” Levi asked.

  “Yeah, he and his four lackeys, all spoiling for a fight with two cats out on their own,” Groucho explained enthusiastically. “We tried to tell them why we were there, what we were looking for, but they just wanted to rumble. We wanted answers, they wanted to fight, and Smokey told Black Fang to choose between the two.”

  “What happened?” Yoda demanded.

  “He chose poorly,” Smokey murmured.

  “And then they answered our questions,” Groucho said.

  “After they woke up,” Smokey added.

  “But it was no use,” Groucho continued. “They’d knocked over all the trashcans after school, which took them everywhere, but they had seen no trace of Iblis. But we checked anyway.”

  “What about the Irregulars?” Levi asked.

  Smokey shook his head.

  Levi sighed, disappointed but not entirely surprised. In his gut, he had known Iblis had somehow made it across H Street, that if he were not hiding somewhere in the shopping center he had at least passed through it. In a new territory, his instinct-driven imperative would be to leave his mark somewhere along the way. On the other paw, Levi thought, Iblis’ fear of discovery might have given him the strength to fight aeons of behavioral conditioning. In that instant, Levi knew their last hope had become their only hope.

  “I don’t know when Atlas will arrive, or leave,” Levi said to the cats and Yoda, “but we’ll set out for the shopping center a half-hour after the place closes.”

  “I don’t like being left behind,” Sunny said.

  Levi started to take a deep breath.

  “Oh, don’t start,” Sunny snapped. “I understand the reason, but don’t expect me to like it.”

  Sunny pawed the kitchen door and marched in when it opened, the other two following silently.

  After such a long trek on a very warm day, water and food were high on the list of priorities, but in short order they finished their repast, settled into the attentive Sphinx Position, and waited to hear whatever Kim and Little Kitty had gleaned from the Internet and sources around the neighborhood.

  “First of all, Levi, you said the name Iblis was familiar to you somehow,” the Torby began.

  “But I can’t remember where I heard the name,” Levi said.

  “Well, you probably heard it when Yoda had the television on the SyFy Channel earlier in the year,” she said.

  Yoda’s ears perked. “What?”

  “Retro sci-fi month earlier in the year,” Kim said. “They ran all those old shows from the Seventies and Eighties, and Yoda…”

  “Let me tell it!” Little Kitty exclaimed. “Let me!”

  “Little Kitty, this is not some kind of a…”

  “Please,” the Calico whined. “After all, we would have never found it if I hadn’t…”

  “Fine,” Kim sighed. “Go ahead. Knock yourself out.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, for Anubis’ sake, Little Kitty!” Yoda snapped. “Just spill it…tell us what you found out.”

  “Well, it was a name used on a show called Battlestar…”

  “Count Iblis!” Levi exclaimed. “He was one of the characters on the original Battlestar Galactica.”

  “The only Battlestar Galactica, you mean,” corrected Yoda, a die-hard fan of old television shows and even older films. “The reboot of the series was…”

  “That explains why it sounded familiar,” Levi interrupted, not wanting to get bogged down in one of Yoda’s television rants. If it had been Star Trek, he might have been tempted, but not a series he still thought of as Battlestar Ponderosa. “Why would anyone saddle a dog with the name of a bad guy from an old TV series?”

  “Probably because of its meaning, and perhaps its origin,” Kim answered. “It’s an Arabic word that…”

  “Let me tell it!” Little Kitty interrupted.

  “No, I let you handle the first part, so be still,” Kim snapped.

  Little Kitty rolled off the top of the couch and landed on the cushions, legs splayed as if she might be dying. She uttered a sigh so deep it could have passed for her last rattling breath.

  “No one lets me do anything,” she moaned softly.

  “As I was saying,” Kim continued. “The word Iblis comes the Arabic language and means ‘demon’ or ‘devil.’ It is also used as a proper name to substitute for Satan. Applying it to…”

  “Wow,” Yoda breathed. “That whole story arc makes sense to me now. I get what Starbuck was trying to…”

  Kim hissed at just the right frequency to penetrate Yoda’s thoughts, smiling a little when the Pom winced and fell silent.

  “To continue,” Kim said archly. “Iblis says he was called that in a dream, but he’s ignorant of what it me
ans. The unknown figure in the dream, then, must not only know the definition of the name and be familiar with Arabic, but also know enough about the culture from which it comes to apply it to your German Shepherd in such an accusatory and pejorative way.”

  “So,” Yoda ventured, “what they were saying is that Iblis, or whatever his name may be, is a devil?”

  “No,” Kim countered, “that he is the Devil.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Yoda demanded. “The Phantom named his dog…er, wolf, Devil, and that just made bad guys sit very still.”

  “It’s the culture,” Kim replied.

  Yoda tilted his head in confusion and looked to Levi.

  “What Kim is saying is that dogs, like companions, are shaped by the cultures in which they live,” Levi explained. “To us, Iblis is just a word, and even the definition is more a concept than anything else. Animals have spirit guides, such as First Dog and Anubis for canines and Primal Cat and Bast for felines, but even though the guides have their fearsome natures, they would never be demons or devils, and certainly no dog would ever envision a being like Satan. We may need guidance, but when we were brought into being by the All-Creator, we were endowed with a natural sense of…”

  “So, if no dog would believe in the Devil,” Yoda interrupted as he felt himself slipping into a semi-comatose state, “then why would a dog tag Iblis as Iblis?”

  “It’s the culture in which they live,” Kim said.

  “Yes, in his dreams Iblis is remembering an encounter with a dog so steeped in the culture of the companions among which he dwells that it has affected his natural canine beliefs,” Levi said. “A dog who believes in Iblis—Satan—might not know anything about First Dog or Anubis, and not from simple ignorance.”

  Yoda and Sunny nodded. From time to time, they encountered a dog unschooled in the ways of First Dog or Anubis, usually one taken from its litter before hearing the ancient tales that are part of every puppy’s life, whispered in the darkness to bring hope and drive away fear, to instill responsibility and conduct. Both First Dog and Anubis had once been real dogs, separated from each other by thousands of years, but each had in time become much more. From First Dog, the dog who came to the fire, they learned of their responsibility to care for, protect, and befriend companions, even when they were undeserving. In Anubis, they had the template for living in a civilization, of the ways of cities and farms, but they were also given the new charge to always seek the light, and to be a guide to companions whenever possible, especially at the end.

  “If Iblis…” Sunny started to say. “Oh, I hate using that name for him, now that I know what it means, what it really means.”

  “We could call him Baron,” Yoda suggested.

  “Good idea,” Levi said.

  “And he may be right,” Little Kitty said from the couch, where she was still doing an imitation of a dying cockroach.

  “If Baron is called Iblis by a dog who adopted Arabic culture,” Sunny continued, “then Baron must have been there himself.”

  “No one ever listens to me,” Little Kitty moaned.

  “You’ve got the floor, Little Kitty,” Levi invited.

  She partly turned over and raised her head. “I’m on the couch.”

  “He means they’re listening for what you have to say,” Kim snapped. “And you know that full well. Now, stop channeling your inner Eeyore and tell them what we found out about the disc.”

  “You mean what I…”

  “Little Kitty!” Kim snarled.

  “All right, grandma, don’t cough up a hairball,” Little Kitty said as she untwisted herself, arched her back and languidly climbed atop the couch again.

  Kim’s eyes flared and her fur bristled, but she kept her words behind her sharp little teeth. Later, she promised herself. The words she had for Little Kitty were not fit for the ears of dogs.

  “You may be right about that dog’s name being Baron and him having been in a place where someone would call him Iblis,” the Calico said. “The first letters on the disc he wore, USA…”

  “I was thinking United States of America,” Yoda said.

  “Well, you’d be wrong, wouldn’t you?”

  Yoda growled softly.

  “Take it easy,” Levi cautioned. “Continue, Little Kitty. Please.”

  “I found out they mean United States Army,” she resumed.

  “Atlas was right,” Sunny murmured.

  “I figured the best place to go for more info about your German Shepherd was the Army itself,” Little Kitty said. “I sent an e-mail to Lieutenant Colonel Alayne Conway, Media Relations Division, in Washington DC.” She smiled at the expressions on their faces. “It’s all right. You know the Internet is anonymous. This stuff happens all the time—you think you’re chatting with a Siamese tom and it turns out to be a very confused Chihuahua. Anyway, as far as the Colonel knows I’m just curious…you know, a curious journalist, not a curious cat or anything like that. Anyway, that third line of letters and numbers identified the First Infantry Group, Second Battalion, Second Reconnaissance Company. That unit uses dogs as scouts and sniffers and it is currently deployed to Afghanistan in the Zabul Province.” She smiled smugly. “Which is just north of Kandahar.”

  “That’s the city…”

  “It’s also a province,” Little Kitty said.

  “Whatever,” Yoda continued. “It’s where Ib…Baron asked me if he was.”

  “What about the other?” Levi asked.

  “K63875,” Little Kitty recited from memory. “Not much luck, I’m afraid. It’s a control number of sorts, like our ID numbers, I guess, but I could not find out any name or unit. But I did find out it is an inactive number.”

  “Inactive?” Yoda murmured. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we know where Baron is and the Army doesn’t,” Sunny said, then added, less triumphantly: “Well, at least we know he’s somewhere in Chula Vista.”

  “It also means,” Yoda added, “that we know he is alive and the Army may not.”

  “Yes,” Levi agreed, “we know he is alive and needs help.”

  In the silence that followed, there came the sound of a heavy paw scratching at the kitchen door.

  Chapter 5

  Once Zain reached the northern limits of Broadway, where it intersected C Street and passed over a wide estuary, he made his way through a break in a chain-link fence and down a weed-choked slope. Away from the paved streets and the discordant sounds of traffic, he could almost forget he was in a cursed land.

  Almost, but not quite.

  This blasted region, where dogs were ignorant of the Dog at the Well, and coexisted intimately with companions, not to mention treating cats as anything but prey, had about it a stink that forever separated it from the holy lands. Iblis thought he could escape Anila and her vengeance by fleeing into the darkness, but they would drag him back into the light of judgment.

  And then honor would be restored, for all.

  Or would be, once they found him, again, Zain thought grimly.

  Zain made his way along a dry gully filled with tall reeds that whistled and whispered in the late afternoon breezes. He emerged on a low dirt berm that wound along the channel and he followed it till it declined toward the shore of the estuary.

  At one time, the estuary had been a natural channel from the sparsely watered lands of the east to the western sea, with nothing but a simple bridge for Broadway’s passage over it. Now, the slopes were lined with concrete and crossed with bike and jogging paths. Just north of the estuary was Highway 54, shooting eastward. The need to connect that roadway to surface streets and to Interstate 5 necessitated the construction of a complex series of spiraling ramps that in places arched high above the ground.

  Zain left the path created by the berm, trying to ignore the rush of traffic high above him. He approached the low, long bridge over which the trolley train flew according to its schedule. Fortunately, the ebb and flow of tidal water through the marshy estuary forced the b
ridge’s builders to use support posts that created wide passages beneath it. Zain had no problem crossing under, even though the tide was coming in.

  The sea’s musty scent was strong here, so different from his arid home, as was the sharp tang of salt deposits laid down through untold decades. He was not alone in the salt-marsh for it was home to reptiles and amphibians, to fish in the deeper spots, and to birds of all sorts, especially cranes who stood like solitary sentries.

  None of them posed any danger. If they noticed him at all, he was just a feral dog passing from one area to another. In his casual dismissal of all the other animals around him, he did not see the Scottish Terrier, garbed in a tartan vest and tam-o’-shanter, walking his companion along the path on the National City side of the estuary. The Scott watched the oddly formed brindle dog slink its way through the underbrush and vanish into a flood channel portal beneath the freeway. He filed the fact in his steel-trap mind as he pretended to mark a bush, then allowed his companion to continue.

  By the time Zain had crossed the estuary the sun was low to the west, and he picked up his pace. He did not think the cargo ship would dock until sometime after dark, and certainly Anila and the others would not chance disembarking until the port was still and shrouded in night, but he had to be ready for them.

  He clambered up the weedy bank and found himself at the edge of National City’s industrial and waterfront area. Some efforts had been made to construct a marina, refurbish buildings and use fences to hide the more dismal and squalid huddles of houses, but there was no disguising that this was the wrong side of the tracks.

  Zain felt almost at home in the industrial wasteland.

  He made his way through alleys and crawlspaces between the rotting houses, assaulted by strident angry voices that hurt his ears and spicy clouds that made his mouth water. Metal clashed upon metal in dozens of small manufactories, tools roared, and heavy vehicles growled like primitive beasts. And everywhere he went he found traces of the sleeping dust so prevalent in his homeland.