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With the puppies, he loses track of time. They play at attacking him, try to catch the branches he moves through the air. They nip at his hands with their tiny teeth and it almost tickles. He grabs their heads and shakes them carefully, as if his hand were the jaw of a monstrous beast who was after them. He tugs gently on their tails. When they whimper and bark, he does too. They lick his hands. All four of the puppies are males.
He gives them names: Jagger, Watts, Richards and Wood.
The puppies run around the terrarium. Jagger bites Richards’s tail.
Wood appears to be asleep but gets up suddenly, grabs one of the branches with his mouth and shakes it in the air. But Watts is mistrustful, and sniffs at this man in the terrarium, then plays around him, smells him and barks, before climbing up his legs with clumsy movements. He attacks Watts, and the puppy cries a little and nips him on the hand, his tail wagging. Then Watts jumps onto Richards and Jagger. He attacks the other puppies but then they chase after him.
He thinks of his dogs. Pugliese and Koko. He had had to slaughter them knowing, suspecting, that the virus was a lie invented by global powers and legitimized by the government and media. He’d considered abandoning his dogs to avoid having to kill them, but he was afraid they’d be tortured. Keeping them could have been much worse. They could have all been tortured. Back then, injections were sold to prevent pets from suffering. They were for sale everywhere, even at the supermarket. He buried Pugliese and Koko beneath the biggest tree in the yard. The three of them would sit under its shade on afternoons when the heat was intense and he didn’t have to work at his father’s processing plant. While he sipped on a beer and read, they were by his side. He’d bring his father’s old handheld radio and listen to a programme that played instrumental jazz. He enjoyed the ritual of having to tune in to the station. Every so often, Pugliese would get up and chase after a bird. Koko would raise her head, drowsy with sleep, and look first at Pugliese, then at him, in a way that he always thought meant, “Pugliese is mad, stark raving mad. But we love him just as he is, bonkers,” and he’d always pet her head, smiling and saying softly, “Sweet Taylor, my beautiful Koko.” But when his father came by,
Koko was a different dog. She couldn’t contain her happiness.
Something lit up inside her, a dormant engine, and she began to jump, run, wag her tail, bark. When she saw him, no matter how far away he was, she’d bolt in his direction and jump on him. He always greeted her with a smile, hugged her, picked her up. Koko would wag her tail differently for his father, that was how he knew his dad was near. She only did this for the man who had found her on the side of the highway, curled up and dirty, a few weeks old, dehydrated, on the verge of death. His father had kept Koko by his side twenty-four hours a day; he’d taken her to the plant and looked after her until she began to respond. He thinks that slaughtering Koko was another of the reasons for his father’s mental collapse.
Suddenly the four puppies go quiet and perk up their ears. He becomes tense. At no point has the obvious occurred to him. The puppies have a mother.
He hears a growl. On the other side of the glass, two dogs are baring their fangs. It takes him less than a second to react. In this instant, he thinks he’d like to die here, in this terrarium, with these puppies. That way at least his body could serve as food and these animals could live a little longer. But then the image of his father in the nursing home comes to him, and so quickly it’s instinctive, he drags himself to the door through which he entered. He pushes the door shut and locks it. The dogs are already on the other side, barking, scratching, trying to get in. If he leaves the door locked and escapes through the one that connects to the adjoining terrarium, the puppies will die. But if he opens this door with the puppies inside, he won’t have time to escape before the dogs attack. The door to the adjoining terrarium is closed. He tries to open it but can’t. The puppies are whimpering. They curl up to protect themselves. He decides to cover them with his shirt, though he knows it won’t keep them safe. He lies down on the floor in front of the door he intends to leave through and starts to kick it. After several kicks, the door gives. He breathes. The dogs bark and paw at the glass more forcefully. He makes sure that the door leading to the adjoining terrarium is completely open and knows he’ll be able to escape that way because the glass is broken. The growling intensifies. He thinks there are now more dogs. Either that or those already out there are getting more enraged by the second.
The puppies are curled up, confused, poking their tiny heads out from under his shirt. He picks up a medium-sized stone and props it against the locked door, the one the pack is trying to get in through.
Then he unlocks it. He knows that eventually the dogs will be able to push it open, though it’ll be difficult. He finds another stone that’s a little bigger and, on all fours, drags it to the adjoining terrarium. He jams the door in place with the large stone because his kicks destroyed the latch. Then he leaves through the broken glass, carefully, without jumping or making any loud noises. When he’s on the ground floor, he starts to run.
He runs without stopping or looking back. The sky is heavy with dark clouds, but he doesn’t notice. It’s when he sees his car that he hears the barking more clearly. He turns his head slightly and sees a pack of dogs getting closer and closer. He runs as though it were the last thing he was going to do on earth. Seconds before the dogs reach him, he’s in his car. When he catches his breath, he looks at them sadly because he can’t help them, because he can’t feed them, wash them, take care of them, hug them. He counts six dogs. They’re scrawny, probably malnourished. He’s not afraid, though he knows they could tear him apart if he got out of the car. He can’t stop looking at them.
It’s been a long time since he’s seen an animal. The alpha male, the leader of the pack, is a black dog. The six of them surround the car, barking, dirtying the windows with white froth from their snouts, pawing at the closed doors. He looks at the fangs, the hunger, the fury.
They’re beautiful, he thinks. He doesn’t want to hurt them. They follow him until he presses the accelerator, and in his mind he says goodbye to Jagger, Watts, Richards and Wood.