The Last Dog on Earth by Daniel Ehrenhaft Page A

his wildest daydreams would he have imagined
this:
that Harold would call to invite him back to work. It could only mean one thing. Harold was in some kind of trouble. He'd actuallyswallowed his pride and stooped to call Westerly—the guy who couldn't get along with anyone, the “mad scientist of the mountains.” (Harold had once called him that in an e-mail a few years back.) The situation was
that
bad.
    “The disease is spreading,” Harold added, as if answering an unspoken question. “I've had to order the equipment to run fullscale tests for the presence of prions. All the evidence so far seems to indicate that it's a strain we've never seen before. It's stronger and faster. The incubation period is much shorter. Three weeks from infection until death. The evidence also seems to indicate that it can be transmitted through dog bites….”
    As Harold continued, Westerly found he could no longer listen. He could only stare at Jasmine. She'd stumbled on the stairs just now.
    Stumbling was one of the first symptoms of a prion disease.
    Westerly would have thought nothing of the stumble if Harold hadn't called. None of this had crossed his mind in three days—not since he'd looked around for the paper. Not once. This was a gift Westerly had and one that served him well in his work: If certain thoughts interfered with his ability to focus, he simply stowed them somewhere, in some hidden part of his brain, and forgot about them until the appropriate time. Some people called it compartmentalizing. Others—his ex-wife, for instance—said that
compartmentalizing
was just a fancy way of dressing up the truth, which was that Westerly was self-absorbed and rude and thoughtless….
    “… Are you still there?”
    Westerly nodded. “Yes. Yes, I'm sorry.”
    “So what's your answer?” Harold asked.
    “You'll have to excuse me, Harold,” Westerly mumbled, wrenching his attention away from Jasmine. “I didn't hear the question.”
It was just a stumble
, he told himself.
Don't read into it.
    “For God's sake!” Harold snapped. “Can't you listen to me for five minutes? Do you still hate me that much?”
    Hate you?
    Well,
hate
was a strong word … although, yes, Westerly disliked him. But that hardly mattered. This was a crisis. Yet Harold had to turn it into something personal. He had to bring up all the old issues again—issues of not getting along with people, issues that had nothing to do with the matter at hand. In short, Harold had to place himself and his problems over the seriousness of this disease.
    It was politics. Stupid politics.
    Westerly's lips pressed into a tight line. So. Nothing had changed at all in seven years. Not one thing. And in that instant, all the sour memories of the university came flooding back, washing away any temptation he might have had to take Harold up on his offer. There was no way he would go back there. He'd help Harold as much as he could from home, but that was it. End of story. Besides, if the disease was spreading, then a trip to Portland would endanger Jasmine's life. And that was a risk he refused to take.
    “I need an answer, Craig,” Harold said.
    “I'll tell you what you need to know over the phone,” Westerly said. “From day one, my theory has always been that to cure prion disease, you need to synthesize an antidote from an immune animal. Get your hands on an immune dog, and I'll talk you through the process—”
    “That's part of the problem,” Harold interrupted. “We can't find an immune dog. All the dogs at the university are already sick.” His voice rose. “This is an emergency!”
    “You can't be serious,” Westerly said.
    “Dead serious,” Harold said.
    Westerly couldn't answer. He couldn't even breathe. The cabin spun around him like water circling a drain, faster and faster.
    It's happening
, he thought.
It's really happening, just the way I said it would.
    He'd been right all along. But that didn't make him feel any better.
    “I hope you know