DoG by Unknown Page A

the road was covered with miniscule corpses.
    “Did they spray for bugs?” Culann asked.
    “Up here it doesn’t make any sense to. If you sprayed enough to put a dent in the mosquito population, we’d all be dead.”
    “Weird,” Culann said before draining the last of his cup. “I’m empty. Let’s go back.”
    “Okay, but stay away from Gus’s daughter. He keeps a knife in his boot, you know. A big one.”
    Frank led the way back to the party. McGillicuddy was shooting off bottle
    rockets. As they approached the tent, a bird dropped from the sky and landed at their feet.
    “Did that crazy son of a bitch hit a bird?” Frank asked.
    Culann bent down and examined the bird, a gray- and white-striped sparrow. Its feathers weren’t singed and it showed no signs of injury, but it was surely dead.
    “I don’t think so,” Culann said. “I guess its time was just up.”
    They walked farther and found another dead bird on the walkway. On the path ahead, two dogs were fighting over something, something that shed feathers each time they shook their heads. Beyond them, in the clearing ahead, dozens of dogs ran around with birds in their mouths, shaking them savagely and tossing the carcasses around. By now the other revelers had caught sight of what was happening. They lined the edge of the tent and stared out at the field littered with dead birds.
    Theories were of course posited.
    “Maybe they got poisoned somehow,” McGillicuddy wondered.
    “It’s all those oil wells up here,” his wife replied. “Alaska is being raped by those greedy bastards. Who knows what they’re dumping into the atmosphere? The birds could only take so much. This is probably just the tip of iceberg.”
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    “It’s not pollution,” Alistair replied, his eyes, unblinking, focused off in the distance. “At least not in the physical sense. This is caused by spiritual pollution. This is the hand of God. He is visiting plague and pestilence upon us to punish us for our wicked ways. If His vengeance is reaching all the way up here, the rest of the world must already be gone.”
    A few people tittered at Alistair’s gloomy prediction, but the rest at least entertained the possibility they were facing something beyond worldly explanation.
    Whatever it was, people were concerned for their dogs, happily romping through the field of death. The festivities came to an abrupt halt. The dogs and their owners retreated to the safety of their homes. Frank and Culann snatched a keg to take back with them
    “Alphonse, come,” Frank shouted at the dog, who was busy chewing on a bird.
    Frank called again, but the dog ignored him.
    “Goddamnit, Alphonse. Come!”
    Alphonse paused for a moment to scratch his ear with his hind leg, but then he resumed gnawing on the bird.
    “Come on, Alphonse,” Culann said with a clap of his hands, and the dog suddenly cast aside the bird and trotted over to the cousins.
    “What the fuck was that?” Frank asked.
    “I guess he likes me now.”
    “Yeah, well that makes one of us.”
    60

    Diary of Culann Riordan, Day 9
    The last time I’d seen Frank before coming to Alaska had been at his second wedding. He and I drank together at the Holiday Inn bar just outside of the hall where the reception was taking place. We were both drunk and not paying appropriate levels of attention to my date or his new bride. We reminisced about all the good times we’d had as boys, lamented how we’d grown apart and made false promises to spend more time together.
    My date was Darlene, a girl I’d been seeing for about three months. She taught at the junior high school in my district, so we were acquainted through work but didn’t actually work together on a daily basis. This cut down on the awkwardness that I might have otherwise experienced after getting so drunk that night that I wet the bed. Darlene barely spoke to me as we drove home the next morning, and never spoke to me again afterwards.
    Frank didn’t fare much better.