Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

The Jack something terrier shrieked again. The shrieking acted like amphetamines on the bulldog. It shifted and pranced over the churchyard, like it was slowly working itself up. Meanwhile, the big, dark dog growled, an unearthly sound, and in the next lightning flash she saw its face, like one of those African masks, murder sketching its way across its emaciated features. She felt compelled to get back to the relative safety of the car.

“Jake, do you have your safety off?”

His hand roved to the butt of his gun, and he nodded. The air was filled with the smell of dog saliva. The proximity of the animals set Hanna’s lungs off. She wheezed, and after a moment she coughed. The coughing must have enraged the bulldog because it charged the church steps, making a feint all the way to the bottom, then turning away and going back to the yard.

“Okay… walk slowly to the car. Hanna, stay between Jake and I.” She pumped a round into her rifle.

“Don’t make any sudden moves.”

But it was no good and she knew it, because the second they rose from the church porch, the dogs went wild, growling and barking and working themselves into a frenzy. She thought she and her children would be trapped here, and that Buzz might come back, and that they would wind up in a gunfight with the sheriff’s brother. So she tried the church door, but it was locked. They had no choice. They had to go to the car.

She and her kids went down the steps, and it was indeed no good, because the little dog came right up to her and tried to nip her heels. She kicked it out of the way, and that’s when the bulldog tried to get around in back of Jake and rip a chunk out of his thigh, and as much as she liked dogs, and would have owned one if Hanna hadn’t had asthma, she knew she had no choice. She fired at the bulldog, clipping its haunches. It went squealing away, at first not knowing if it had been crippled or not, but then falling over and trying to drag itself through the muddy churchyard with its front paws. The way the white mastiff acted was a horrible reminder of Brennan Little.

The other two dogs bolted.

But the bulldog…

Goddamn that bulldog. Her eyes flooded with tears. The thing yelped in exquisite agony. It tried to crawl away, but it couldn’t move. She remembered a dog up the street from her childhood home in Kansas, and how friendly she had been with it…. She was really a dog person. But now she had to put this one down, and it was breaking her heart.

She walked across the churchyard and got it over with.

Once in the car, they headed up the mountain; and while she had gotten her tears under control, she still felt so blue about the dog that she wondered if she would ever feel unblue again. Jake reached forward and patted her shoulder.

Hanna, meanwhile, was wheezing and wheezing. “Mom, I’ve got to have some.”

“Sweetie, it’s not time yet. And it’s dangerous if you take too much. You know what Dr. Saleh says.”

“Mom, I’ve been taking a few extra hits every now and again, and it hasn’t killed me.”

“It’s only been making you high,” said Jake.

“Jake, you don’t know what you’re talking about, so just shut up.”

“Kids at my school use puffers to get high,” said Jake.

“That’s because kids at your school are stupid, just like you. Mom, can I have some?”

She didn’t want to fight it. She was too upset about the dog. “Does your heart feel funny at all?”

“No, not at all.”

“Jake… dig it out. One puff, Hanna. We’re running out.”

“I’m going to need at least three.”

“Three? Have you been taking three all along?”

“Mom, I know what I need. This nursing home stuff isn’t as good as the usual stuff.”

“Yes, but you’re supposed to take only two puffs.”

“I’m nearly seventeen. I think I can look after myself.”

Jake handed the puffer forward. Hanna lifted it to her mouth like an old pro. She pressed the mouthpiece between her lips, squeezed the plunger, and inhaled. Glenda heard a little burst, but it was weak, and she was indeed afraid that they were running out. Hanna squeezed again, and this time nothing

happened. Her daughter pulled the bronchodilator away and looked at it as if it were a criminal. Then she tried again, but again got nothing. She pulled it away from her lips a second time.

“It’s empty, Mom. These nursing home ones are no good.”

“But that’s the last one we have. It’s supposed to last us to Marblehill.”

Like the drama queen she sometimes was, Hanna flung the empty inhaler over her shoulder into the backseat with the carelessness of Henry VIII tossing away a chicken bone. “Great. What am I going to do now?”

Glenda could have argued with Hanna, underlining for her daughter the foolhardiness of what she had done, especially with the overdosing. But where would it get her? Instead, she simply contemplated their grim, drugless situation. They weren’t a quarter of the way to Marblehill, and Hanna was out of inhaler.

The wheezing would start. The coughing would start. And it wouldn’t let up. And her daughter would weaken. And to be weakened in the new Stone Age was more dangerous than overdosing with Alupent.

So she didn’t rant the way she might have in normal circumstances, but let it go, hoping that somehow, up the highway, they might find an abandoned pharmacy, and that in that pharmacy they might conceivably search out some medicine that Hanna could use.

She gripped the wheel and peered out the windshield, racking her brains for a solution, but the only fix she came up with was getting to Marblehill as soon as she could, where Neil was stockpiling medicine for the long haul.

She glanced up the hillside and saw that her brother-in-law was right: erosion had become a big problem. All the small plants on the forest floor had died a long time ago. Root systems had rotted in the ground, and that’s why the ground had that stinky smell so much of the time. But now the rain was washing everything away, and she saw that many of the dead trees had toppled one against the other, so that the forest looked like a crowd of drunks, all leaning trunk to trunk for support.

And what was this up here? She eased her foot on the brake. Damn. Part of the road had cracked away into the gully below. She stopped. Mud from the hill had washed over the road, but it wasn’t deep, and she could easily get through. What bothered her were the big cracks and how a giant slab of asphalt curved over the hill like a macadamized waterfall.

“I’m going to take the car across this section myself,” she said. “You guys get out and walk.”

They grumbled a bit—kids always grumbled about having to walk—but at last they left the car and trudged down the highway, getting drenched to their skin in the rain. She put the car in gear and proceeded, thinking to herself, day at a time, day at a time, day at a time —and the road held, felt solid under the car, and after a few minutes she made it across the cracked section, the highway became whole again, and the kids got in.

Hanna’s eyes had that glassy look they always had after a hit of Alupent. Glenda gave Jake a glance.

Jake was looking at Glenda as if he were curious about what she was going to do next. And she realized that they were all getting to know each other in an entirely unexpected way, and that they weren’t just a family anymore, but survivors, and that the issues were no longer those of getting to school on time or finishing homework or trying to get more hours at the nursing home, but of simply trying to stay alive.

Jake said, “Mom, I’m sorry about the note. I just thought…”

She continued along the highway. “What’s done is done. And maybe he didn’t even see the note.