Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

Neutering, but how the hell would he pass her off as anything but what she was? The vet would remember the incident at Frankenlab, and all would be up. Another jail sentence for Kevin. Worse for Jonesy: “sacrifice” at the hands of the scientists.

He tried penning her in the trailer while he slept in the Pinto, but she started chewing through the metal window frame. He let her out, and she howled to get inside with him.

Next night, his cell phone rang.

“Kevin, Keith, whatever your name is. People hear that howling, don’t know what it is. But I do.”

Kevin’s heart lurched. Caller ID said: B. Hartley . The scientist. “Doctor Hartley. You plan to ‘sacrifice’ her now?”

“No, you dolt. Do I have to spell it out for you? I incited your stupid Animals Our Brethren people to start that fire so she’d get away.”

He took it in. “She’s in heat. What should—”

“She’ll either go out of heat, or she’ll attack somebody. She may even decide you’re the lucky tom. Give her back to me.”

“Was there another sabertooth? A male?”

“Of course not, you idiot.”

He snapped the cellphone shut and threw it against a wall.

Jonesy disappeared into the woods behind French Lick Creek.

A week later she slunk back. Kevin waited, but she was not knocked up. How could she be?

He was pretty sure Jonesy was keeping down the deer and raccoon population, but nobody mentioned missing any dogs. Cats, maybe.

When he needed to go to work, he had to lock her in the trailer, and she gnawed at the door and chewed the knob. Thank God she didn’t have opposable thumbs; she was smarter than most dogs and cats. And some people.

But heaven, even Kevin and Jonesy’s twisted heaven, can never last.

He had to run an errand. The feed store, which closed in the evening, was the cheapest place to get her dogfood.

How she got out and trailed him wasn’t that hard to reconstruct. He’d been careless. As he walked out of the store, he nearly tripped over her sunning herself on the front steps.

And across the square was Rosebud. Rosebud wasn’t supposed to be out, either, but Mr. Trumbull was pretty lax too.

Rosebud hated cats. And Jonesy smelled like a big, unneutered cat. Rosebud killed cats. Smart cat owners in French Creek Township kept their pets indoors. As to farm cats, thank God Rosebud couldn’t climb trees.

Rosebud was across the square, urinating on a post. He stopped abruptly and put his leg down, tiny ears perked, nose twitching. Then he charged.

Halfway across the square, he suddenly changed his mind. Uncertain, he froze, then turned tail.

Jonesy wasn’t a long distance runner, but she was fast on a sprint.

What Kevin saw next was that weird smilodon leap. Jonesy charged and without stopping, rolled to her back, hugged Rosebud’s neck, then sank her saber teeth into the dog’s throat. The dog heaved into the air, Jonesy rolled over on top of him, and the two struggled. Rosebud had no offensive weapons but his jaws, and he’d never had to defend himself before, so his struggles turned to spasms and in seconds, he lay still.

Jonesy straddled the dog and raised her bloodied jaws in a terrifying roar.Everybody ran out of the feed store, the diner, and the gift shop.

Jonesy lowered her jaws and began to tear pieces out of the dog’s belly.

Kevin fought vertigo and nausea. Somebody yelled, “Anybody catch that on video?”

He charged across the square, screaming at Jonesy. Three guys tried to stop him, yelling, “It’ll kill you!” but he slid to a stop by the scene of carnage and yanked on Jonesy’s collar.

“He’s crazy!” somebody yelled.

Kevin realized he was crazy. Jonesy weighed maybe five hundred pounds by now. He’d read plenty of accounts of people mauled by previously docile big cats. Why did he assume Jonesy was different?

But he had to get the cat away, before somebody with a gun thought to use it.

A small, strong hand gripped his wrist.

Sara. Sara had the rifle her grandfather always carried in her truck. It had been a fixture in the truck for so long he’d forgotten about it. Nor did he wonder why she happened to be in town that day.

She gave him a serious look, then handed him the rifle. “It’s under control,” she yelled at the gathering crowd. “Back off before somebody gets hurt.”

The dog was mangled meat. Jonesy had ripped open its throat and its belly and was standing over it, sides heaving with desire, jaws quivering with hunger and triumph.

The crowd all took a step back.

“Get her in the truck,” Sara said. “You can still control her, can’t you?”

Jonesy roared again, a softer roar.

Very deliberately—he believed that crap about animals being able to sense fear, but also knew he could fake courage pretty well—he took a handful of the loose flesh at the back of Jonesy’s neck and said in a low growl, “Into the truck, bad girl.”

And it was over. Jonesy lowered her head and her stump of a tail and climbed into Sara’s truck. Kevin slammed the door.

Which left Sara and Kevin standing outside.

Sara was shaking. She reached up and grabbed Kevin’s ears and kissed him hard, tongue and all. Breaking loose, she said, “You’re an idiot! But, God almighty, you’ve got guts!”

What now? Kevin couldn’t leave Jonesy inside the truck; first, the sabertooth would demolish the inside. Second, it was a nice spring day, sunny, and heat would eventually build up and kill her.

But he could no longer predict the cat’s behavior. Jonesy’s blood was up; she might boil over.

“We have to get her out of here before the cops come,” said Kevin. He shrugged, grabbed Sara’s keys, and sprang into the truck.

Jonesy didn’t kill him. The rest of his life, he would wonder why. Because he was dominant? Because she loved him? Do top predators know love?

He let Jonesy out of the truck outside his trailer. She lingered, licking his hand and making begging grunts, so he opened one of the dogfood cans. She took it away from him and rasped the horse meat out, then lay down in the grass.

He went inside and wept.

Yes, somebody had videotaped it. Not the two animals running toward each other, not Jonesy’s karate-like attack, but the dog underneath Jonesy, thrashing, then still, and Jonesy pulling out intestines. The video played several times, always zooming on the dead pitbull, then panning to Kevin pulling the cat away. He lay on the bed staring at the ceiling

Thank God the cat looked like a female lion in the video. Some bystanders remarked on its teeth, but nobody connected it with the break-in and fire at the lab a couple years previous.

In the evening, Sara brought his car back. He didn’t know how she started it, but she came in uninvited and lay beside him on the bed.

They kissed. She said, “Lock the door.”

He did, obediently. “It won’t stop Jonesy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Hours later, they dressed and talked about hunting for Jonesy. Did anybody recognize them from the video? It was really jerky. Nobody was knocking on the door. But Kevin’s mind roiled with possibilities: if somebody recognized Sara’s truck, they’d go to her house, then figure she was here. They’d come with guns for Jonesy. Jonesy was tame; she wouldn’t know to run.

Hellfire. Maybe Jonesy should be put down.