NECROMIMESIS

            It was late before Dylan came dragging home. His tie hung loose, and his wheat-brown hair was running amok. He slouched into the house, his long arms dangling, his blue eyes drooping.

            “Bad day?” I asked. Clichés were the last thing he needed just then.

            All he said was, “Reinhart.”

            Reinhart was the head of the sociology department at the University, and figured the more meetings they had, the better it looked on his reports. He expected teaching assistants like Dylan to attend every meeting or be writhing on death’s doormat.

            Just one more reason I’m glad I’m in astronomy.

            For supper, Dylan warmed up the meatloaf he had fixed two days before. While I graded exams at the table, he pushed food into his mouth.

            He finally finished, piled his dishes in the sink, and ambled out of the kitchen. Dylan’s my best buddy. He’s my friend, and I hate to see him so down. I followed him into the living room. “Come on,” I said. “It’s a nice night. Let’s go for a walk.”

            “Don’t you ever get tired?” He put on a Leonard Cohen album and lay down with his head on one arm of our sofa and his feet on the other. “I don’t feel like even breathing tonight.”

            Pushing and shoving like an elephant trainer, I finally got him up and heading for the door. “I don’t know about this,” he kept saying. “Why do you always have to take a walk after supper?”

            “Helps your digestion,” I said. “Settles the stomach. Trust me.”

            “Okay.” He finally gave in. “Okay. Okay.” He pulled a nylon windbreaker out of the closet, and followed me outside.

            The harvest moon was bright as a lighthouse, and the lunar seas and cliffs, mountains and lakes shone as clear as etchings. Mars was rising just this side of Canis Major. Shadows lay piled thick as snow against the sides of houses.

            “Fine night for werewolves,” Dylan said. Mom always warned me to be careful what I wished for. No sooner than Dylan had made the remark than there came a low, raspy growl from the rhododendron bushes next door.

            “Just kidding.” Dylan raised his hands and backed away with a smirk, still not realizing it wasn’t a joke. Once invoked, though, forces of nature can’t be turned aside so easily. Out of the bushes crashed a dark mass that seemed as big as a bull, with eyes as red as lasers, and a smell like a backed up sewer.

            This was a familiar monster, though. Months before, our neighbor’s Neapolitan mastiff, Angel, had vanished. Mr. Terrick, whom we had never met, had been beaten to death years ago by burglars, and ever since, Mrs. Terrick, a beefy woman who could have bent steel, had been scared to open her door even on Halloween for kids. She kept the biggest, meanest dogs she could get. Angel, her latest brute, like the others before it, had been kept penned in the back yard, but one day it dug its way under the fence and disappeared. Now it was back. With a vengeance.

            “Too bad Mrs. Terrick didn’t have a Chihuahua,” Dylan said.

            Angel’s short fur was black and dull as asphalt. Flecks of spittle gleamed on its jaws. Its teeth glowed luminous. Its head swayed back and forth. It stiffened, and with a sudden roar, leaped at Dylan.

            He was ready, though. He stepped aside with his fist cocked, and punched the creature on the side of its head. The hound hit the ground rolling, sprang to its feet, and leaped again. That’s one thing about mad dogs: they don’t know when to quit.

            Dylan was off-balance for the second attack, and all he could do was throw his arm in front of his face. The dog’s jaws clamped down, and its teeth tore through jacket, shirt, and skin. Blood sprayed, bright as oil and quick as silver in the moonlight. Dylan stumbled backwards, and he and the dog both fell.

            As soon as my surprise waned, I waded in, kicking Angel as hard as I could. Through my cowboy boots, I could feel ribs crack, and the hound folded in half. It collapsed like a beached jellyfish, and I kicked it again. It tried to crawl away, and I kicked it again. It whined, and I kicked it again. Each time, I felt something inside it crack, and more blood gushed out of its mouth. It jerked. I kicked it again. The glow in its eyes went out. I kicked it again. There was no resistance this time; it was like kicking a sack of wet laundry.

            “Wow,” Dylan said behind me.

            I spun, ready to kick again, but there was nothing. Dylan just sat on the ground, looking up at me.

            He cradled his bleeding arm. He lifted back the torn sleeves of his jacket and shirt. He said, “Wow,” again.

            I looked down at Angel. Its eyes were bloody and bulging, its fur glistened with blood, and the stench smelled worse than a slaughterhouse.

            “I thought I was dead for sure,” Dylan said. “I thought I was dead.”

            I hauled him to his feet, and helped him limp over to his motorcycle. Only once before had I attempted to drive his cycle – and that was without a passenger – but I figured this was emergency enough. He held on tightly with his good arm, and we managed to get off to a good start. Meaning that we didn’t fall over.

            I didn’t have anything to worry about, though. The fear flushing through my veins kept my head clear and my balance perfect. We wove between cars and trucks, vans and buses, and zipped past other cycles. It was like playing a video game: we were outside time and the world; we were untouchable.

            The University Medical Center stood in its own floodlights like a beacon lighting the way to itself. We scooted around the skeleton of a new wing where scaffolding still clung – maternity wards or operating rooms or broom closets; who knew what? – and we skidded into the parking lot of the emergency room.

            When I helped Dylan inside, the admitting nurse bolted up from her desk. “What happened?”

            “A dog attacked us,” I said, expecting her eyes to go wide. They stayed tight and controlled, though, which made me feel a lot better.

            She led us to a bed behind some curtains, stuck a thermometer in Dylan’s mouth, and strapped a blood-pressure cuff around his arm. The nurse began cutting away the tatters of Dylan’s sleeve, her hands as deft as hummingbirds. With water from a bottle marked “Sterilized,” she washed the wound, then dabbed at it with a cloth soaked in what smelled like alcohol. Dylan flinched and pulled back. The nurse tightened her grip on his arm. “Nice biceps,” she said.

            Dylan smiled for the first time that night. “I work out,” he said. “At the gym.”

            “You’ve heard,” she said lightly, “about the bison that Indians used to hunt on the Great Plains?”

            Dylan nodded and I said, “Sure,” wondering why she was asking that.

            She covered the wound with gauze. “A hundred years ago, men working on the railroads said there were so many buffalo, it might take days for one herd to pass. Now, there are as many dogs as there used to be bison.”

            Dylan watched her face. “I wish there’d been one less,” he said around the thermometer.

            She smiled at him, not one of those ‘I’m glad you have such a good sense of humor in such a bad situation’ smiles that patients sometimes get, but one of those ‘You’re quite right to joke about it’ smiles. Her name tag said “B. Nicholas,” and she wore a wedding ring. Her white shoes squeaked on the tile floor as she moved around the examination table. The room smelled of disinfectant.

            Finally, the doctor came in. His shoulder-length hair was white, and it was hard to guess his age. He moved with the air of a man exhausted, plodding as if his shoes were hollowed out of bricks. His name was ‘G. Hunter,’ and for the next several minutes he did exactly the same things B. Nicholas had already done: he took Dylan’s pulse, checked his eyes, and lifted the gauze to poke the rips in his arm.

            “Temperature?” the doctor asked.

            “99.1.” B. Nicholas was calm and sure.

            “Blood pressure?”

            “130/90.”

            “Understandable.” G. Hunter tugged at his sideburns. “So what’s the story?” he asked, looking at Dylan.

            I told him about the dog.

            “You kicked it to death?” He seemed dubious.

            “Yep.”

            “What would you have done if it had bitten you?”

            “Me?” The possibility hadn’t really occurred to me. “But it didn’t.”

            “Did you bring the body with you?”

            I could have kicked myself. “No, but we know where it is.”

            “We’ll send someone to pick it up,” the doctor said, “but I think it’s safe to assume it was rabid. Fifty years ago,” he said to Dylan, “you’d have died a very painful death within a week.”

            I looked at Dylan. He was shivering, and his teeth chattered. I put a blanket around his shoulders while G. Hunter, that soul of tact, went on.

            “Medicine’s a little better now, though, and you’ll probably live.” His voice sounded gruff as if he thought the whole episode were somehow Dylan’s fault. He said, “The treatment is so painful, though, you may wonder if living is worth it.”

            “I doubt that,” Dylan said. “I doubt that very much.”

            As I drove us home, weaving and teetering, the night breeze was heavy with the smell of late-blooming jasmine. An airplane droned somewhere overhead, and Orion strode above us.

            The next Monday, Dylan was later than ever getting home. This time, though, he boiled spaghetti, mixed up a white clam sauce, and tossed a salad with blue cheese dressing. He toasted garlic bread and poured red wine. After eating, he showered and shaved and brushed his teeth, and when I said, “How about a walk?” he said, “Let’s go.”

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