The X-Files: Antibodies by Kevin J. Anderson Page A

should be more than sufficient.
    If the dog’s owners ever came back, they would find the notation “PTS” in the records, which was a euphemism for “Put To Sleep”—which was itself a euphemism for killing the animal . . . or putting it out of its misery, as veterinarian school had always taught.
    Once he had made the decision, Hughart didn’t pause. He bent over the dog and inserted the needle into the skin behind the dog’s neck and quietly but firmly injected the lethal dose. After its enormous injuries, the black Lab didn’t flinch from the prick of the hypodermic.
    A cool, clammy breeze eased through the cracked-open door, but the dog remained hot and feverish.
    Dr. Hughart heaved a heavy sigh as he discarded the used syringe. “Sorry, boy,” he said. “Go chase some rabbits in your dreams . . . in a place where you don’t have to watch out for cars.”
    The chemical would take effect soon, suppressing the dog’s respiration and eventually stopping his heart. Irrevocable, but peaceful.
    First, though, Hughart took the blood sample back to the small lab area in the adjoining room. The animal’s high body temperature puzzled him. He’d never seen a case like this before. Often animals went into shock if they survived the trauma of being struck by a motor vehicle, but they didn’t usually have such a high fever.
    The back room was perfectly organized according to a system he had developed over decades, though a casual observer might just see it as cluttered. He flicked on the overhead lights in the small Formica-topped lab area and placed a smear of the blood on a glass slide. First step would be to check the dog’s white blood cell count to see if maybe he had some sort of infection, or parasites in the blood.

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    T H E X - F I L E S
    The dog could have been very sick, even dying, before he’d been hit by the car. In fact, that could explain why the animal had been so sluggish, so unaware of the large automobile bearing down on him. A fever that high would have been intolerable. If the dog suffered from some major illness, Hughart needed to keep a record of it.
    Out in the adjoining operating and recovery area, two of the other dogs began to bark and whimper. A cat yowled, and the cages rattled.
    Hughart paid little attention. Dogs and cats made a typical chaotic noise, to which he’d grown deaf after so many years. In fact, he’d been surprised at how quiet the animals were when thrown together in a strange situation, penned up in a cage for overnight care. They were already smarting from spaying or neutering or whatever ailments had brought them into the vet’s office in the first place.
    The only animal he was worried about was the dying black Labrador, and by now the Euthanol would be working.
    Bothered by the distracting shadows, Hughart switched on a brighter fluorescent lamp tucked under the cabinets, then illuminated the slide under his microscope with a small lamp. Rubbing his eyes first, he gazed down at the smear of blood, fiddling with the focus knob.
    The dog should even now be drifting off to perpetual dreams—but its blood was absolutely alive .
    In addition to the usual red and white cells and platelets, Hughart saw tiny specks, little silvery com-ponents . . . like squarish glittering crystals that moved about on their own. If this was some sort of massive infection, it was not like any microorganism he had ever before laid eyes on. The odd shapes were as large as the cells and moved about with blurred speed.
    “That’s incredible,” he said, and his voice sounded antibodies
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    loud in the claustrophobic lab area. He often talked to the animals around him, or to himself, and it had never bothered him before.
    Now, though, he wished he wasn’t alone; he wished he had someone with him to share this amazing discovery.
    What kind of disease or infection looked like this?
    After a long career in veterinary medicine, he would have thought he’d seen just about everything. But he