Dog Eat Dog Read online

  Dog Eat Dog

  By P. H. Cooper

  Copyright 2019

  Prologue

  Geoffrey Braxton sat at his desk as was his customary practice in between tests. It had been a long day, and he was beginning to feel the oncoming brain fog as was his customary practice for this part of the day. Those five-hour energy shots his friends had recommended to him were most certainly not doing the trick as they had promised. He should have just stuck to what he knew and trusted to work before. If he had learned anything from climbing the ladder to tier 1 advising analyst in the CDC, he knew it was to listen to what the evidence told him was tried and true above all else. This applied to everything in his life he found; everything from the effects of food, drink, and his occasional exercise routine. Which he had not had much time for at present, due to their heavy testing schedule lately. The lab and his office had so much become his second home that he had taken to sleeping on the small imitation leather excuse of a couch that they had seen fit to put in his office. It was more of a love seat really with only two places to sit, and its confined frame, which made it a truly purgatorial experience to attempt any sort of sleep. He figured they had taken to placing such things in their offices, like the fake plants and the acrylic paintings of scenery, wildlife, and still life plants and food, to make it more homey for their doctors and analysts. Much like the supposedly calming matte powder blue paint they had dressed the walls with instead of the stark and sterile white paint of the past. All it served to do was create an air of dreariness, which he believed more than ever contributed to the fact he now felt so very exhausted and depressed; rather than energized, alive, or mentality invigorated.

  Geoffrey let out a heavy exhale that sounded more like a growl and tussled his black as night thick curly hair that sat in an utter state of dishevelment on top of his head. He also vigorously rubbed at the rough and sandpaper like stubble that now covered his once chiseled and well-defined jaw; that he now felt was more saggy and lax. For a man of only thirty-four, he had begun to feel exceedingly elderly. This is why he had taken on a great contempt for the saying, “You are as young as you feel”. Because, if that were truly the case he was more a man of ninety-eight nearing his death bed, and the loud complaints of his weary bones, and popping of the sinews in his muscles never failed to tell him they thought so as well.

  He let out another groan as he pulled himself to a standing position from the obviously reduced price rolling chair behind his desk. He would have to probably shell out a bit of his own very slim salary to invest in a new and better chair. One that didn’t threaten to toss him in the floor every time he attempted to sit down in it. They told him it was supposed to help support back health and comfort for the long hours that he would be sitting in it. But, it had proven itself to be quite unworthy of either claim as he felt the soreness in his legs and a new sensation of sciatic pain that he had never experienced before ever using the cheap imitation of a sitting apparatus. He had contemplated many times tossing it out the window of his third-story office, but the devils that ran their department had seen to it that the windows were sold sheets of bulletproof paned glass that they were unable to open. So, that option was completely out of the question. He figured they had also fashioned the windows in such a way to keep their employees from suddenly tossing themselves out of the windows after long hours in the lab that eventually would drive them mad enough to commit such an act of self-harm. If nothing else, he could take solace in the fact that the glass was solid enough for him to bash his head against and give him a fatal case of blunt force trauma that would truly suffice.

  After standing at his desk for what he could only guess was quite some time in the blackout of his contemplative thoughts, he made his way over to the small black and chrome mini college fridge that sat in the corner in his office, shielded only by the insufficient camouflage of his basket planted fake ficus that draped its leaves over the top of the microwave that also sat precariously atop the refrigerator. He had to very carefully and strategically open the small door while holding back the microwave and pray that it wouldn’t come tumbling to the floor every time he opened it. Once he had opened it and sighed his customary sigh of relief that there were no horrendous disasters, he was happy to find that he still had several cans of Monster still inside. They were his tried and true poison of choice, his giver of life and vigor that he knew would surely get him through the rest of this tedious and maddeningly annoying day of rigorous tests.

  He retrieved several cans of the delightfully cold citrus flavored nectar of the gods and made his way back to the rickety untrustworthy chair behind his desk. He told himself that if all else failed, he would just take to bringing his medicine ball to work and sit on that instead. At least, he could be working on his core while working these long hours and receive a two-fold benefit. A somewhat rewarding number in his bank account as an appeasement for all of his long hours and a set of six-pack washboard abs. A nice surprise for both him and his boyfriend.

  Geoffrey took a long draught of the cold liquid from the first can and let out a satisfied gasp as he placed his hands on the top of his dark cherry wood desk. Pressing the space bar a few times on his keyboard, his desktop screen finally submitted and came alive. Nothing in the world made him miss his Mac at home more than this piece of shit Windows 10 operating system. You gotta love bureaucracy and their endless affinity for finding places to cut corners. Especially when it came to the tools they expected them to use to do their jobs, he thought to himself. One of the greatest cases of asking someone to empty a lake into a bucket with a slotted spoon.

  Geoffrey reopened the packet of articles and studies they had sent for him to read by the end of the day. They had come across a new strain of a very old enemy, and he needed to understand all of the consequences that could come of it getting out, if god forbid, it ever were to do so. He had opened the file folder to see that there were several studies of different breeds of dogs and the differing effects of rabies on each one. He took solace in the fact that his lab always practiced humane ways of testing on animals, especially dogs. They only tested on dogs that were already confirmed for having the disease. They never gave the bacteria to dogs who were tested as clean because it was a certain death sentence. He thought about how he had rescued many dogs from his previous lab assignments and adopted them as his own furry four-legged children. He and his boyfriend Travis had already had to move to a different part of town that was most definitely more than they could afford. But it was truly well worth it to make a good home without the fear of an astronomical pet fee or deposit. It was well worth it, though, he thought to himself as he lovingly readjusted the small framed photo of his little four-legged children and the happily smiling Travis, that he looked forward to coming home to more than anything. They had no idea how much of a healing salve they were to his mind and heart against the burning raw abrasiveness of this maddening job. The only things in his life that were holding the threads of his ever shredded sanity. This was something he made sure to tell his students while they were in residence here, to make sure that they set up some sort of off switch back home that they could use to wash their mind out and recharge after a long all too often harrowing week at work here. Or else they would most certainly find themselves in a downward spiral of mental and physical exhaustion that would ultimately lead to burn out and the end of their career, or spending the rest of their life on uppers and downers just to live every day like a relatively normal human being.

  He turned his meandering exhausted mind back to the matters and priorities at hand. He looked over the many charts, notes, and level graphs that he had been sent from other departments and he had to take a moment to rub his dry, scratchy tired eyes to see if what he was looking at was truly accurate or if it w
as just the oncoming fog of delirium that was now plaguing his exhausted brain cells. And, to his great dismay, it most certainly was. He cautiously took the mouse that sat stationary to the right of him on his printed mouse pad on his desk and began to slowly move the cursor over to the video file he saw at the bottom of the file folder. Even though he had been a member of the medical community a very long time and had become quite accustomed to seeing all manner of disturbing things, he still felt a slight lurch within the pit of his stomach and a tiny clinch of his throat muscles every time he said they had documented a case for him to look at through video or photos. Some times he found himself even becoming frightened or cautious at the prospect of coming across audio files because even then you never knew what kind of distressing or gut-wrenching sound you were going to come across in the background noises.

  Geoffrey clicked for the file to open and pushed back his untrustworthy office chair as he expected something to come lunging at him from out of the screen of his well worn HP desktop monitor. Once the familiar face of doctor Felicia Haslett came on the screen, his muscles unclinched from their feared and anticipatory grip, allowing him to relax for a moment in the pleasantness of her kind soft tone and demeanor. Geoffrey took a moment to observe the young doctor’s beautiful long locks of red hair that were pulled back as best as she could manage, after what looked like a longer and harder day than he had had of clinical, into a loose fishtail braid. Or what resembled one at an earlier time in the day, perhaps. Her pale skin looked very patchy and unflattering in the harsh lighting of the lab as well as the foggy and pixelated grainy quality of the terrible cameras they were forced to use to document their trials. It was all they could spare in the budget, they would tell them. But of course what they didn’t tell them was how much of the budget they were actually spending on retreats to Vegas; where the literal fat cat corporate and board committee leaders were treated to free Zumba classes, live concerts, and the opportunity to try their hand at terrible comedy making parody videos. All on the tax payer’s dime. And, all on money that could be put to better use for research on other things such as a cure for cancer, autism, or Alzheimer’s. But no, they felt it necessary to take the opportunity to show everyone how hard they could play while the rest of them here on the front lines actually slaved away doing the hard grunt work on projects that the fat cats would later take credit for. Gathering all of the fame, fortune, and Nobel Peace Prizes for themselves for work they didn’t lift a finger or stretch a single brain cell to accomplish.

  Geoffrey continued to watch the video as Felicia tiredly walked and nonchalantly gestured with her hand to the test subject on the table. It was a boxer mix, faun colored, he couldn’t have been any more than three; the poor thing. Felicia said on the report that they had been treating him with the antibiotics and the antivirals, but they didn’t seem to be doing anything to irradiate or even barely treat his symptoms. He was chained to the post adjacent to the table, and they had to put a muzzle on the dog. He had very clearly moved into the aggressive stage of the madness. But Geoffrey was surprised to discover from the chart open in his other tab that the animal apparently had made it past the three day kill switch that usually comes as a merciful feature of this particular strain of rabies. This was not a disease like he had ever seen before that wasn’t made for weaponized purposes. He needed to get to the bottom of this, and he needed to get there right now.

  Geoffrey began to wonder, as he hurriedly got up from his desk nearly forgetting to close down all the open tabs on his desktop in his great haste to make it down to the lab. He wondered if he was to end up like the man who discovered that aids was some sort of weaponized version of a nearly untreatable disease contracted from eating undercooked monkey meat; that someone discovered could be used to rid the world of promiscuous heathens. Or so they thought, mistakenly. But then again, he found himself thinking this way every time he came across a strain of something that even slightly reeked of any kind of weaponized mutation. And, this most certainly appeared to have all the earmarks of a deliberate modification of the infections genetic makeup.

  His mind began to scramble through an entirely new set of possible worst-case scenarios, as he quickly made his way down the narrow hallway to the elevator. He thought about the packet of articles, studies, and statistics he had just downloaded into the vast collection of filing cabinets in his mind. The image of the dog behaving aggressively replayed in his widely opened eyes as he stared at the back of the elevator doors that slid closed a little too slowly for him. Geoffrey began to think about the fact that there were currently nine hundred million dogs on earth right now and that at the very least two hundred million of them were stray dogs. Many of them having been thrust from their previously cared for existence as house dogs because they were abandoned by people too irresponsible to care for a dog much less a child. The rest of the population of the world’s dogs, making up about seventy-five to eighty-five percent were classified as feral or wild. He could only imagine the cascading catastrophic effect something like this strain of rabies could have on them if it were to get out. If it wasn’t out already, that is. Something of this proportion would be at the very least a reason to declare a national emergency, if not an eventual international one.

  Geoffrey finally made it down to the lab on the ground floor. He walked briskly down the glass window-lined hallway. All panes behaving like little frames displaying various forms of research related activity. He stopped at lab eleven, the lab that currently housed Doctor Felicia Haslett and her research assistants. There was no sign of any live test subjects just now, which caused him to let out a slight sigh of relief. The research assistants standing behind their designated microscopes didn’t even look up to meet his gaze as his eyes panned over the quiet yet busy scene. He looked over their heads into the partition of the lab behind them where he found the target of his visit, Doctor Felicia Haslett, working away at dissecting what appeared to once be the poor dog from the video he had just watched.

  Geoffrey stood at the locked door and waited for her to shift her focus a moment to notice him loitering their anxiously. Finally, she stopped for a second to shoot a glance into the closed doorway, and he waved at her to get her attention. She smiled slightly and held up a blood-covered gloved finger to indicate she would be just a moment. He watched as Felicia took out a vile and drew a substantial amount of blood from the deceased specimen. Bringing the vile up to eye level, she flicked the side to get all the bubbles out as she put the lid on carefully. She placed it in the caddy on the tray adjacent to the table and took her purple nitrile gloves off inside out in the customary fashion of their training. Felicia donned another pair of gloves and collected her full caddy of various samples as she made her way around the small obstacle course that was her lab before opening the door.

  “What’s up, doc?’ Felicia asked, with a cheerful tiredness in her now quiet voice. She sounded as if she had even less energy than she had in the video, and her long beautiful hair was now reduced to being stuffed into a disposable hair cap. Only the stray frazzled wisps of baby hair peeking out over her ears. “What brings you to my neck of the woods this late? I thought you would have gone home by now. You’ve been here, for what, three days straight now?” she said, making her way to set the samples by her own much larger, more high tech microscope.

  “Well, to tell you the truth, it was not just for the pleasantness of your company that I stayed,” began Geoffrey. Felicia made a pouty face and returned to gathering some slides from the drawer below her. “I saw the video clip you sent me and went over all of your notes and quite frankly… they terrified me.”

  Geoffrey punctuated his words by placing the file folder under his arm on the table beside the microscope. Felicia slowly turned to look at him before replying. “So, you are thinking what I am thinking, possibly?” she asked.

  “If you are thinking that this appears to be some sort of man-modified strain of this disease, then yes,” Geoffrey responded, the look in her eyes
told him that he was merely confirming what she had been thinking all along. Felicia nodded. “Alright, well as long as we are on the same page. However, disconcerting that may be,” she said, letting out a slow, ragged breath under her words.

  Geoffrey watched as she pushed a swab into one of the vials and pulled it out of the cap sphincter, then smearing the goo onto a glass slide; before placing it under the viewer on the microscope. She looked through the scope for a moment before motioning him over to take a look at the image himself. He scooted in next to her and hunched his tall frame over to the scope as he peered through the small eye holes and what he saw caused him to shudder and take a second look. “How is this even possible?” he finally uttered in a shocked tone. “The white blood count alone here would have killed him sooner than the usual three days. Are we sure this is actually rabies? Because what I am looking at here would have taken him out before he was even able to make it to the maddening stage of the virus,” he asked, leaning back to look at his colleague who seemed as perplexed as he was.

  “I can’t honestly tell you. And, believe you me, I have been wracking my brain to try and figure what this could possibly be. I’ve never seen anything like it outside of some sort of biological warfare. But most animals are impervious to this kind of weaponized disease,” Felicia said.

  “Well, that is because they are usually not the target. Whoever synthesized this was one sick motherfucker,” Geoffrey injected.

  “You have that right, but, who would do something like this? And why?” Felicia responded, almost asking herself as much as she was him.

  “My dear, I think we are way past the time in history where we can really ask ourselves such questions, honestly. Our main concern right now is to figure out whether it can be passable to human hosts. If so, then we’re truly fucked,” Geoffrey answered.

  “Yes, as far as I can tell the answer to that equation is out of the question. But you know how nature will always find a way to surprise you. So, we can’t take any chances,” Felicia stated.