The Last Dog on Earth (8 page)

Instead she headed straight for his closet and clamped her jaws around his baseball mitt.

“No, no, Jack,” Logan whispered. “Drop it.”

He bit his lip to keep from laughing. He didn't want to raise his voice. If Robert overheard him ordering her to drop the baseball mitt (the baseball mitt that
Robert
had wasted
Robert's
hard-earned money on, and why didn't Logan play baseball, anyway—didn't he know it was the greatest sport ever invented?) … well, in a nutshell, that wouldn't be good.

Jack started shaking her head. She bared her teeth, swinging the mitt wildly from side to side—as if the baseball mitt were really just another meal.

“Come on, Jack,” Logan whispered. “Drop it.”

She swung the mitt harder.

Logan darted forward and snatched the mitt from her jaws.

“Play with your toys,” he commanded, holding the mitt high over his head. “Go on. They're all right there for you.”

But Jack sat still on her haunches, staring at the mitt. A low growl rumbled deep in her throat. Maybe the dogs in those books were dumb, but Jack wasn't. She knew exactly what she wanted.

“Come on, girl,” Logan pleaded. “This isn't a toy. Your toys are right behind you. They're all brand-new.”

Jack's growl grew louder. Her eyes flashed to Logan, as if to say,
So what if they're new? That's the lamest pile of crap I've ever seen in my life.

Logan grinned. He shot an anxious glance toward the door. In a way, he could relate to Jack's frustration. After all, he always hated it when Robert tried to give
him
stuff that he didn't want. Like the baseball mitt. Or the model airplane set. Perfect example.
Robert
was the one who thought model airplanes were so cool. He'd bought it so
he
could use it. But after a while, he'd gotten bored with it (the way he always did), so it had been sitting in Logan's closet for months, collecting dust—until Logan had decided to build the LMMRC.

The thing was, Logan had never even
thought
of it as a model airplane set. He didn't see it that way. He saw a box full of raw parts, the beginnings of a master remote control. So if Jack didn't see a dumb baseball mitt, but instead saw something else—a leather chew toy, the head of her worst enemy, a magical being that could spring to life at any time and kill everybody in the house when they least expected it … well, who was Logan to take that away from her just because of what people said a baseball mitt was
supposed
to be?

“You know what, girl?” Logan whispered. “I'm sorry. Here you go.”

He handed the mitt back to Jack.

She snatched it in her jaws and started swinging it again—even more crazily than before. It flew across the room and smacked against the door. She barked at the sound.

Uh-oh.
Logan swallowed.

“Logan?” Robert called from downstairs. “What's going on in there? That dog isn't breaking anything, is she?”

“Uh, no,” Logan said. “She's just playing.”

Jack pounced on the mitt and started banging it against the wall:
thump-thump-thump.

“Stop it, Jack,” Logan begged, even though he was laughing. He grabbed the mitt again and tossed it on his bed. She scrambled after it.

“Logan!” Robert called.

“Uh … um … don't worry,” Logan shouted back. He ran to the door and locked it, then hurried over to the bed and flicked on the clock radio on his nightstand. The tinny, static-blurred voice of a female news reporter filled the room.

Good
, Logan thought. That should drown out Jack's shenanigans.

“… and still, nobody can seem to determine the cause of the disease,” the reporter was saying. “So far, over thirty dogs in Redmont have died.”

Logan's ears perked up.

“We're fortunate to have with us here today Mr. Rudy Stagg, a part-time dog trainer based in Redmont, who's had lots of firsthand experience with the disease,” the woman continued. “Thanks for joining us, Mr. Stagg.”

“My pleasure,” a gruff-sounding man answered.

“So what's your take on all this?” the woman asked.

“What advice would you give the dog owners of southern Oregon?”

Logan stared at the radio. He'd heard this reporter before. He couldn't remember her name. But usually she sounded ditzy and lighthearted. Not today. Today she sounded downright depressed. Either that or angry.

“I would tell them to keep an eye on their pets,” Mr. Stagg said. “And if they start acting funny—shaking, foaming at the mouth,
that kind of thing—don't get near them. Call me immediately. My number is—”

“Don't you think it would be a better idea for people to call the CDC?” the woman interrupted.

“The what, now?”

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the woman said. “They're sending a team of specialists here to investigate the problem.”

“Well, if you ask me, that's about the worst idea I've heard all year,” Stagg drawled. “Once the government gets involved, you lose all control. They come in here with their fancy thugs and their black helicopters and the next thing you know, you're living in a police state. Call me or do it yourself, but—”

Logan flipped the dial to a heavy metal station.

He hated listening to angry-sounding people. He heard enough of that just walking around his own house every day. But still, he couldn't help feeling nervous.
The CDC is coming to investigate the problem.
That sounded pretty serious.

Forget it.
Logan shook his head. He shouldn't worry about it. Whatever the “problem” was, it wasn't
his
problem. Jack was fine. The shelter guys had promised Logan that she was perfectly healthy.

He glanced at her.

She'd gotten back into his closet. Now she was chewing contentedly on one of the loafers that Mom and Robert had bought him for formal occasions.

Logan smiled.
Good girl
, he thought. He'd always hated those shoes.

In less than a week, Jack started getting the hang of peeing and pooping outside the house. Logan couldn't believe it. Sure, she still slipped up every so often (she actually seemed to enjoy going on the floor in Mom and Robert's bathroom, which was sort of comical)— but at the end of day five, it was official: She'd only had one accident.

The bacon bit–LMSCG combo was really paying off. Maybe
he
should write a book about training dogs. It was weird; he felt more proud of himself than he had in a long time—as if he'd just invented the coolest machine ever, like an ultrapowerful miniaturizing ray that would shrink Robert down to the size of a plastic soldier so Logan could flush him down the toilet.

And all he'd done was housebreak a wild mutt. Or come close, anyway. He probably could have trained her completely, too, if Robert hadn't been around.

Robert just didn't understand the “ignore bad behavior” part of dog training. Whenever he came home from work, he would follow Logan and Jack from room to room, waiting for Jack to mess up. It was the same old script every single night. The house was starting to feel like the set of a bad TV show.

The funniest part (or unfunniest, depending on how you looked at it) was that Jack would usually start barking at Robert at this point. Sometimes Jack would bark so viciously that Robert would get a little nervous. Then Robert would start in on Logan again, and Jack would just bark even more loudly. And all the stupidity would have been so easy to avoid—that is, if Robert had bothered trying to learn anything about dogs.

The only reason Jack barked at Robert was to
protect
Logan. Jack thought of Logan as her master. The pack leader. So if Robert yelled at Logan, he was threatening the whole pack order. Logan wasn't just making this stuff up. He'd read it in all those books. He was the one who spent the most time with her; he was the one who disciplined her; he was the one who fed and rewarded her—so
obviously
she would think of him as her master.

Of course, it would never occur to Robert that any creature could possibly consider Logan a master.
Robert
was the master. The All-Knowing Dictator of Everything. Period, infinity, until the end of time.

* * *

“We have to get rid of that dog,” Robert said one morning.

Logan stopped chewing. He glanced down at Jack. She was sitting beside his chair, looking up at him with her bright eyes. Then he turned to Mom, who was concentrating very hard on buttering her toast. He put down his spoon and swallowed, his thoughts racing. Was this something about that dog disease?

“Why?” he asked finally.

“Because you aren't training her right,” Robert said. He glowered at Logan across the kitchen table. “I found bite marks in my tennis racket. Now I'm going to have to get a new one. You know how much a brand-new tennis racket costs?”

Logan stared back at him, feeling a weird rush of both anger and relief. So this
wasn't
about the dog disease. He pushed aside his bowl. “Where did you leave the tennis racket?” he asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Robert asked.

“You just have to be careful, that's all,” Logan said. “If you leave things lying around, Jack will probably find them and chew on them. All puppies chew on things.”

“Otis doesn't,” Robert said.

Logan shot another quick glance at Mom. She was still hiding behind her toast. Typical. Well, maybe Logan would apply some of his dog-training techniques with Robert. He could ignore the guy. If he ignored Robert's stupid behavior, maybe Robert would stop acting like an idiot all the time. Anything was worth a shot.

“Otis isn't a puppy,” Logan said. He stood and rinsed his cereal bowl. “Jack's still less than a year old. I've gotten her some chew toys, but she doesn't really like them.”

“So how come she doesn't ruin
your
stuff ?” Robert asked.

“She does,” Mom said. “Jack chewed up Logan's nice shoes.”

Logan turned to Jack. She was still eyeing everyone's food.
Can you believe that?
he asked Jack silently.
Mom actually stuck up for me! Somebody should call that woman news reporter, pronto, because this is a great moment in history, far more important than any dumb disease; it is a milestone, and will probably never be repeated in our lifetimes.

“Logan hates formal occasions,” Robert said. “He probably gave Jack those shoes on purpose so she could ruin them.”

Mom didn't answer. Today, for whatever reason, she appeared to be fed up with Robert's stupidity as well.

“Why is she so bad?” Robert demanded. “Huh, Logan? Why?”

“Because she's a puppy,” Logan said. “She's only been with us six days. Not even. Six days this afternoon. She's bound to misbehave every now and then.”

All of a sudden Jack hopped up on Logan's chair and started sniffing the table.

“No!” Robert shouted. His face turned red. “No! Get off ! Bad girl! No—”

“Down,” Logan commanded. His tone was calm and firm.

Jack turned at the sound of his voice. She jumped off the chair and trotted over to him.

“Good girl,” Logan said. He patted her head and pulled the LMSCG from his back pocket. With his free hand he fished a few bacon bits from his front pocket and fed them to her. He squeezed the trigger as she licked his fingers:
Brrriiing!

Robert shook his head. “This is exactly what I'm talking about,” he said. “The jumping up on chairs, the—”