Chase

Twenty

“He was right here!” Jeff told Emily, pointing at her beanbag chair. “I left him right here in this chair!”

“Uh, huh,” she said dubiously, holding the bag of food she’d taken from her house.

There wasn’t any place for the dog to have hidden upstairs here, which meant he had to have gone downstairs. But the door was closed when they got here. Jeff went back down to the main floor, ran through what was once the waiting room for passengers, poked his head into the former office, looked behind the counter where, decades ago, people once stood selling tickets.

He even looked in the old bathroom where stained and rusted toilets sat disused in stalls.

Jeff didn’t see the dog anywhere.

But he did discover one busted window over behind the ticket counter. The glass had been shattered at some point, leaving teeth-like shards around the edges. There was an old, broken chair and desk in front of it, so it wouldn’t have been hard for the dog to use them as steps to get up to the window.

There was a wisp of black fur, and blood, on one of the glass shards.

“Oh, no,” Jeff said, pointing.

“Crap,” said Emily.

Once outside, Jeff called out, “Dog! Hey, dog! Come on, boy! We’ve got food for you!”

“Shh!” Emily said. “I hear something.”

Jeff went quiet and held his breath. There were the usual forest sounds. A rustling of leaves, a breeze blowing through the trees.

And something else. A kind of grunting.

“I think it’s coming from the truck,” Emily said.

Jeff turned in the direction of the pickup. “Something’s in the back,” he said. “With the garbage.”

They approached the truck cautiously. Jeff knew there were plenty of other creatures that could be in the truck. Raccoons, foxes, a skunk — even a bear was a possibility. Any one of those animals might be interested in feasting on that trash.

The good news was, Jeff didn’t see any big, black, furry bear’s head sticking up over the sides of the cargo bed.

The bad news was, he saw blood on the side of the top edge of the tailgate.

Emily and Jeff moved around to the back of the truck, heard more rustling and grunting noises. “Stand back,” Jeff said, approaching the tailgate. He slipped his fingers under the handle and got ready to pull as Emily took three steps back.

Jeff dropped the tailgate in one swift motion.

The dog, his butt to them, whirled around suddenly. He’d managed to pull one can over and had had his snout deep into a bag of trash. If a dog could look terrified, well, that was how he looked when he saw them. Eyes wide, jaw open. There was fresh blood matted into the fur of his belly. “It’s okay!” Jeff said. “It’s me!” He pointed to Emily. “That’s Emily! She brought food!”

Chipper looked at Emily and tried to assess whether she was a friend or a foe. Dogs, even dogs without a few million dollars’ worth of software built into them, often had an instant sense of people, and Chipper was no different.

He thought Emily was probably okay, especially when she raised the bag in her hand and smiled.

“So you don’t have to eat this yucky stuff, okay?”

Emily dug into the bag and brought out something wrapped in freezer paper. “Wait’ll you see this,” she said. “It was going to be my dad’s Sunday night dinner.” She ripped through tape and unfolded the paper to reveal the steak. “Bet you’ll like this.”

Chipper’s mouth instantly watered. That steak looked even better than those wieners he’d stolen from the barbecue. Emily tore off a chunk of it and extended it in her hand. Chipper gave it a sniff, then gently took it from her palm, being careful not to bite her.

Two quick bites, a gulp, and it was gone.

Not bad, Chipper thought. Better than that cheap stuff they gave him at The Institute.

Jeff put a hand close to the bloody fur without actually touching it. “You did that going through the window — didn’t you, you dumb dog, you?”

Chipper eyed him with tired, sorrowful eyes. He’d found enough strength to get out of that beanbag chair, jump through a window, and hop into the back of this truck for something to eat, but now he felt very weary. He was starting to waver.

“I think maybe you got up too soon,” Jeff said. “Whaddya say we take you back up to the comfy chair and give you a little more to eat and drink and we take a look at that cut?”

Jeff put one arm around his front legs, just under his neck, and the other around his back, tucking his tail in as he did it. Chipper made no objections. Emily followed them back into the train station and up the stairs, where Jeff gently placed him back in the chair, his head resting over the edge.

Emily got out everything else she had in the bag. She’d brought two bottles of water, cracking one open immediately. “I’m an idiot. I should have brought a bowl.” But when she tipped the top of the bottle up to Chipper’s mouth, he managed to drink it. She gave him more of the steak and a piece of cheese while Jeff looked at the cut on his stomach.

“We need to get some bandages and stuff,” he said.

Chipper wanted to tell them it wasn’t that bad. He wanted to tell them a lot of things. Maybe, before too long, they’d find an opportunity.

“I’ll start making a list of the things we need,” Emily said. “Bandages, a bowl, a brush to comb out his fur, which is all natty and totally a mess.” She got out her phone, opened some app she could make notes on, and tapped away with her thumb.

“Write down a board and some nails,” Jeff said. “We don’t want him jumping out the window again, or anything bad getting in.”

Won’t do that, Chipper thought. Want to stay with you.

Emily said, “I can only get so much in one trip. We can fix the window another time.”

The dog had swallowed his steak and cheese, so Emily gave him some more.

His tail softly thumped.

“You said you checked his collar for a tag?” she asked Jeff.

“Didn’t see anything.”

“Let me have a closer look. Hey, fella, just want to check your collar there.”

Emily worked her fingers under the black fur, found the collar and ran her fingers around it.

Emily looked puzzled. “This is strange,” she said.

“What?”

“Well, you’re right, there’s no tag, but the collar is super tight. I can’t get my finger under it anyplace.”

“He must be choking,” Jeff said.

“Yeah, but, his neck doesn’t feel all squished or anything. It’s like — this is totally strange — but it’s like the collar is stuck right to his body.”

“Let me try.”

Jeff got his fingers on the collar and confirmed what Emily was saying. “You’re right. It’s sort of like the collar is part of him. Maybe it’s like, when you wear a ring for years, your finger kind of grows around it. My mom’s finger was like that.”

“Why would anyone put a collar on a dog that tight? That just seems like such a mean thing to—”

“Whoa,” Jeff said. “Hang on.”

“What?”

“There’s something... there’s something weird on this collar. In fact, this whole collar is kind of weird.”

“How?”

“It feels like... metal.”

Emily brushed her hands up against Jeff’s as she gave the collar another feel. “I see what you mean.”

Jeff put her hand in his — and felt a bit of a shiver when he did — and moved it to the part of the collar on the right side of the dog’s neck. “Feel that.”

Emily did. “That feels like a... ”

“Like a what?”

“I’m not going to say. You’d think I was insane. I have to see it.”

She gently moved Chipper over onto his other side, spread the fur apart the way you might part someone’s hair, looking for a bump on the head. She exposed the collar, which was dark silver and had a soft sheen to it, then zeroed in on what she’d been looking for.

“I don’t believe it.”

“What? I can’t see it.”

“It’s an opening,” Emily said. “It’s a port.”

“A port? What do you mean, a port?”

“Like you’d plug a computer into, or an iPhone, or a USB stick.”

Jeff looked closer at what Emily had found. “That is insane,” Jeff said. “It is a port. But where does it go?”

Emily touched Jeff’s shoulder so he’d turn and look at her. “It goes right into the dog,” she said.

“But why... why would anyone do something like that? Why would a dog have a slot to plug a computer into?”

“I guess I’ll go get my computer,” Emily said, “and we’ll find out.”