James Patterson - Zoo

“Bacon and bacon so far,” Groh says, opening the fridge. “How about an egg?”

“Can I have bacon with Lucky Charms?” says his son, staring at the screen.

“I don’t know. Would your mother let you do that?”

Adrianna is in Baltimore for a few days with her elderly mother, who just had her gallbladder removed.

“Are you nuts? Hell no,” Chris says.

Groh smiles as he brings over the steaming pieces of swine.

“Then have at it, boy,” he says. “She’ll be home soon.”

Groh makes his way across the floor between the kitchen and the front door when he hears a truck pull up outside. He glances out the window and sees that it’s a Lawn Doctor truck in front of the neighbors’ place across the street. A couple of childless yuppie lobbyists who pull down some long green, apparently, judging from their matching Beemers. They certainly aren’t landscapers. Crabgrass and brown spots mottle their sickly lawn like mange. Hence the Lawn Doctor truck.

When he turns from the window, Charlie II is looking out the open front door, panting as he spies with him on the neighbors through the glass of the storm door. Groh galumphs back toward the kitchen on his cane, patting the dog on top of his sleek, brown, dopey head. A flurry of shiny red cartoon hearts is floating out of Charlie II’s expression.

“Okay,” Groh says, scooping up his keys with a jingle from the kitchen counter. “I’m off to work. You’re on your own for another hour, Chris. Mom left Nana’s already and will be here to take you to camp. Love you.”

“Dad, wait. I almost forgot,” Chris says.

Groh watches his son ransack the backpack dangling from a hook on the wall by the front door. He fishes something from the bag and hands it to him—what looks like a red-and-white plastic necklace.

“It’s a lanyard. I made it at camp yesterday,” says Chris. “I thought it could hold your sunglasses, you know, like, around your neck, when you’re working or something. I made it red and white for the Nats.”

Groh looks at it, then at his son, his one eye threatening to fog up.

“Hey, thanks, kiddo,” Groh says. “It’s awesome. Are the Nats playing tonight?”

“At home. Versus the Diamondbacks. Seven tonight. Strasburg’s starting.”

“You want to go?” Groh says.

“What? To the stadium? Heck, yeah!” says Chris, slapping him a high five.

Lucky man, Groh thinks again as he pats his son on the shoulder and then steps into the garage.

“HEY, CHARLIE. WANT some bacon?” Chris says to Charlie II when his dad is gone. “Hear that, boy? The Nats game. Stephen Strasburg throws like a hundred miles an hour.” He heads back into the kitchen. The dog’s claws click on the floor tiles behind him.

No one in the family loves Charlie II more than Chris. They’ve practically grown up together, having been “pups” at the same time. The family has moved three times, following Charles’s new jobs, and each time, Charlie II was Chris’s best friend until he managed to make human friends. Chris remembers how hard it was to make the dog stay home when he went off to play with his friends. Charlie II would whine in sadness, his eyes forlornly watching Chris from the window as he left the house. And if Chris looked back, he might not be able to leave. To not be with Chris seems to be the hardest thing for the dog to do. They are close as brothers.

Chris kills the Verdi on the radio, turns up the volume on the TV, and zaps through the channels with one hand, searching for ESPN. With the other hand he picks up a slice of bacon from the grease-dampened paper towel and offers it to Charlie II under the counter.

A hot shock of pain in his hand. Chris drops the remote.

“Hey!” He yanks back his hand and looks at it. Charlie bit him. There are puncture marks in his hand.

“ Ow! What the fuck? What’d you do that for?”

Chris looks agape at Charlie II, standing beside him in the kitchen. The piece of bacon lies untouched on the floor tiles. Something is—something is not right. There is some weird look in the dog’s eyes—some knowing, almost angry glaze in them that Chris has never seen before. Charlie begins to growl. His jowls flap against his teeth, spit percolating deep in his throat. The eighty-pound Labrador crouches, coiling back, the fur bristling high and stiff as steel wool on the back of his neck. He is growling, sounding like a guard dog, his teeth bared, a gloopy white thread yo-yoing from his lower lip in a pool of saliva.

“What in the hell? What’s wrong, boy? Stop it. It’s me. What’s wrong with you?”

It looks like one of his eyes is messed up. Charlie’s head keeps jerking to one side, as though he were a boxer shaking off a punch. Something is wrong .

Charlie curls in on his hind legs and lets loose with a string of the loudest, most threatening barks Chris has ever heard him make. He sounds like a junkyard dog warning off intruders, not the family pet he’s known more than half his life. Charlie is in a rage—lungs heaving up quick, loud, guttural barks that sound like “WAR-WAR-WAR- WAR — WAR! ”

That’s it. Chris gets scared. He panics. He tumbles from his chair and starts running. He feels Charlie’s hot breath on the backs of his knees, hears jaws snapping behind him.

The closest door is the hallway pantry. Chris dashes inside and slams the door, and feels the whump and rattle of Charlie throwing his weight against it. He leans with his back against the pantry door, holding it shut.

On the other side of it, Charlie smashes his body into the door, the thing shuddering on its hinges under the impact. Charlie scrabbles his toenails at the door, clawing and barking, heaves himself into it in manic thumps, seemingly wanting to rip him to ribbons. In all the years they have owned the dog, he’s never sounded like—like a wild animal .

He’s gone crazy, Chris thinks. He saw it in his eyes. The dog is off his rocker. He no longer seems like Charlie II. He is something else. Another dog entirely. A bad dog.

He feels himself beginning to cry. In the hallway, he can hear the dog skulking in circles, still rumble-jawed, occasionally sneezing, occasionally breaking into a fresh wave of furious barking.

“WAR-WAR-WAR- WAR — WAR! ”

Chris looks down at his hand. The punctures in his palm aren’t huge, but they’re deep, and bleeding. There’s blood all over his shorts.

Chris shakes his head, swiping at his eyes. He has to calm down and think. He’s still bleeding. He has to deal with that.

He crouches down and reaches for a package of paper towels on the bottom shelf. On the paper towel package, a handsome mountain man in a flannel shirt smiles. He tears open the bag with his teeth, wraps a wad of paper towels around his hand, and tightens the makeshift bandage with a strip of plastic wrap.

He sits in the hot, cramped darkness, listening to the dog pace and growl in the hallway. He is thinking about maybe using the broom to beat back the dog for long enough to run for help. Then the phone in the kitchen rings.

The machine bleeps and someone starts leaving a message. He hears Charlie II skitter back into the kitchen.

Chris bolts from the pantry and races up the back stairs. He’s halfway to his room when Charlie arrives on the stairs in front of him.

Chris dives sidelong into his parents’ bedroom. Charlie comes through the doorway a moment later, forcing Chris into the bathroom. He whams the door shut a split second before the dog crashes against it, and Charlie again goes berserk with barks and snarls.

Damn it. His plan had been to call his mom or dad from the cell phone in his room. Now he’s stuck again.