The Last Dog on Earth (12 page)

“You got some time to kill until the maggots and the other officers get back from the orientation hike, Private Moore,” Sergeant Bell said. He opened the door to cabin three, then stood aside to let
Logan go in. “Your new home. Get settled. I'll inspect your quarters later.”

With that, he closed the wooden door, shutting Logan into the dimness.

Logan sniffed. Oddly, the air in here smelled of cigarette smoke. It must be some weird trick of the wind—no way would Sergeant Bell permit one of his maggots to smoke.

His duffel bag lay on the floor beside him. He could feel that annoying lump in his throat again, though he tried to ignore it. He tried to ignore the numb, queasy emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He tried to ignore the annoying voice in the back of his head that kept whispering,
What are you doing here? You don't belong here. This is a mistake. A really bad mistake—like when an innocent guy gets picked out of a lineup for some crime he didn't commit and winds up in the electric chair.
Logan tried to ignore it all because if he paid attention to it … well, actually, there was no point in saying
if
again.
If
would get him nowhere. He was stuck. This was real. So he wasn't going to drive himself crazy.

Right. No craziness. No
if.

There were four bunk beds inside. All of them were neatly made, with yellow pillows and yellow sheets turned down over scratchy-looking gray blankets—except for the bottom bed of the bunk farthest from the steps. That hadn't been made yet. The folded sheets and blankets lay in a pile in the middle of a grimy mattress.

Logan figured the unmade bed was his. He shuffled toward it— then jumped as a light flared from the top bunk against the opposite wall.

He wasn't alone. A kid lay on the top bunk. As Logan stared,
the kid lit a cigarette and blew a white plume of smoke at the ceiling. Then he turned his head toward Logan.

“Watcha looking at?” he said.

Logan shrugged.

The kid's face was the color of chalk, except for dark circles under his eyes. He was very, very skinny, with blue eyes and spiky black hair.

“Aren't you supposed to be on the orientation hike?” the kid demanded.

“I was late,” Logan said.

The kid took another drag off the cigarette. He had a tattoo on his right forearm: the word
tomb
etched in scary, old-fashioned Gothic lettering.

“What's your name?” the kid asked.

“Logan. Logan Moore.”

“I'm Perry,” the kid said. He exhaled. “Just Perry.”

Logan attempted a smile. “Hey.”

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” Logan said. “How about you?”

“Thirteen,” Perry said.

“Really?” Logan said, surprised. “You look older.”

Perry's eyes darkened. “When I lie, you'll know it,” he said. He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and sat up straight. Then he stuck his cigarette in his mouth and tapped his tattoo. “See this?”

Logan nodded.

“
T-o-m-b.
Know what that stands for?”

Logan shook his head. He was pretty much fed up with tricks involving letters of the alphabet. He decided not to mention that to Perry, though.

“It stands for âtake out my brothers.” Cuz that's what I'll do if I have to. You could be my brother. You could be my best friend. But if I'm in a jam, I'm going to bury
you
in my place. I'm going to take you out.” Perry puffed out another big, white cloud. “Get it now?”

“Yeah.” Logan began to feel queasy again. But that might have been the cigarette smoke. “So how come
you
aren't on the orientation hike?” he asked.

Perry shrugged. “I wasn't allowed. I got in trouble.”

“Wow,” Logan said. “Already? It's only the first day.”

“Bell busted me for smoking,” Perry said.

Logan's eyes narrowed.

“What's Bell going to do if he busts me again?” Perry asked. He sucked hard on the cigarette. “Send me to the Blue Mountain Camp for Boys?”

Logan cracked a smile. That was the smartest thing he'd heard anybody say in a long time.

Perry didn't smile back.

The most remarkable thing about the Blue Mountain Camp for Boys was that the daily schedule turned out to be exactly the same as the Things I Hate list in Logan's head. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Somebody should have called
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
or maybe
The National Enquirer
because it truly was an unprecedented and historic development, and everything would have been different forever—not just for Logan, but for all people and society at large.

Or not.

Still, Logan was pretty amazed. Life was so much simpler now. There was less to keep track of. The list always read as follows, even on weekends, because there were no weekends at the Blue Mountain Camp for Boys:

The work crew with Perry definitely won first prize for the most hate-worthy part of the day. Perry would just sit in the kitchen and smoke while Logan feverishly slaved to prepare dinner for all twenty-eight maggots—as well as Sergeant Bell, his lieutenants, and the rest of the staff: a bunch of faceless “officers” who didn't really seem to serve any purpose other than storming around the camp and shouting at the kids.

Perry never lifted a finger. He said that he had no good reason to help. Personally, dinner didn't matter to him. He was fine with skipping it every night.

“It's no sweat if I don't eat,” he told Logan. “I can go for days without food.”

Logan didn't doubt it. Perry was all skin and bones.

During the work crew, Perry was usually joined by two other smokers: Freeze and Wack Man. Freeze was a chubby black kid with short dreadlocks who swore that he'd killed his principal by impaling him on a water spigot and that he would be happy to impale Logan on any one of the hooks, knives, and other sharp objects in the Alpha Base kitchen. Wack Man was like a shorter version of Perry, only without the tattoo. He had the most demonic-looking green eyes Logan had ever seen on a kid. Logan wondered if Wack Man wore those special colored contact lenses, but he didn't ask. Wack Man also had a nose ring—a slim silver hoop that he would take from his pocket and wear in his left nostril whenever none of the camp staff were around. He told Logan that he liked to store other people's boogers in it.

Freeze and Wack Man were on the “camp maintenance” work crew. While Perry and Logan were supposed to be preparing dinner, Freeze and Wack Man were supposed to be pulling down the vines on the cabins and clearing the dense undergrowth that choked the grounds. They never lifted a finger, either, though. They didn't really have to. Sergeant Bell and the staff always disappeared during the work crew hours. They claimed that they were patrolling the area for diseased wild dogs. According to them, the strange dog disease was spreading fast.

Logan had no idea if this was true. Nobody did. And nobody was interested in asking, since it meant that the campers had the place to themselves and they didn't have to do their assigned work.

It was no wonder the Blue Mountain Camp for Boys looked the way it did.

From what Logan could tell, the only camper who absolutely
had
to do his work was Private Moore. There was supposedly a real cook to help him—a guy named Mr. Frasier. He bought the food and decided what was on the menus. But if he ever did any cooking, Logan didn't know about it. And if Logan didn't make enough dinner in time, the entire camp would go hungry. Then they'd be mad. Then they'd take it out on Logan.

“You better work harder, crap-for-brains,” Perry would say as he and Freeze and Wack Man puffed on their cigarettes.

“I don't know what they taught you in dope school,” Freeze would add, “but any dope who works that slow is going to get his dopey butt whupped later on. You got mouths to feed.”

“Tell us,” Wack Man would chime in. “Were you always such a crap-for-brains?”

Logan usually found himself thinking about Jack when they yelled at him. She always knew the perfect way to deal with morons. With Robert, she would pee on his bathroom floor. With Devon Wallace, she would growl at his stupid purebred dog. And with these imbeciles … well, knowing Jack, she would probably eat their cigarettes and then maybe bite off their hands and gobble them up for a little snack—and afterward, while they writhed on the floor in agony, she would take a nice nap. And then Logan would finish making dinner and ignore their tortured screams because ignoring bad behavior was the best way to stop it.

But he supposed he should look on the bright side. At least dinner wasn't complicated. There were only three meals. Beef stew one night, spaghetti and meatballs the next, and hot dogs and beans after that. Then the cycle would repeat. It was always the same and in the same order, day in, day out. To help pass the time, Logan also daydreamed about chopping Perry, Freeze, and Wack Man into tiny bits and adding them to the night's recipe. That way he'd have both more food
and
fewer mouths to feed. He could kill two birds with one stone. There might even be enough for Jack to eat the leftovers.

“You know, that hamburger doesn't come from cows,” Perry said one afternoon. He blew smoke in Logan's direction. “It's dog meat.”

Logan was busy rolling raw hamburger into balls for spaghetti. His hands were moist and gooey. Red juice dripped from his fingers.

“Yo, dope, did you hear what Perry said?” Freeze asked.

“Answer the man, crap-for-brains,” Wack Man commanded.

Logan concentrated on the work in front of him. Freeze, Perry, and Wack Man were sitting on a bench on the other side of the counter. All three were smoking. If Logan didn't pay any attention
to them, after a while they usually went back to talking among themselves—mostly about how many people they had beaten up or ripped off or impaled. Besides, Logan was too busy to make small talk. He had a lot of cooking to do. He'd only made ten meatballs. Dinner started in an hour and fifteen minutes. He had at least another eight pounds of raw meat to go. He needed about sixtyfive balls in all. Then he had to fry them.

“Yo!” Wack Man yelled. “Are you deaf ?”

Logan slapped the meat together in his palms:
thwack, thwack!
Ball number eleven was done. It was a fine-looking ball, too, if he said so himself.

“Logan's not deaf,” Perry said. “He's just dumb.”

That cracked them up for a while. Then Perry went on: “Dog meat ain't so bad. Bell ate it in Iraq during the Gulf War, and he says we should, too. He says it'll toughen us up. A man ain't a man until he eats dog meat. Know what? For once, I think he's right.”

“Me too,” Freeze said.

“Me three,” Wack Man said.

The three of them exchanged high fives.

Logan tried to resist the urge to smile, but he couldn't.

“What's so funny?” Freeze barked.

“Nothing,” Logan said. He placed meatball number twelve on the counter next to the other meatballs, then glanced up at the bench. “Hey, can I ask you something? Did you guys all know each other before you got here? I mean, are you, like, old friends or something?”