African Rabies

Behold the dog, face shoved into the rubbish, tail wagging, hind legs tense, begins to wiggle and twist, and withdraws with some scrap in his mouth, swallows in one gulp and stands there panting in the Indian heat. He is a mongrel, rangy, bones standing out from his middle, the color of wet sand, a resemblance of dingo. Like a dingo he also does not bark. He cannot bark. A scar down his face and beneath his throat thick enough that its visible beneath his fur.

A time before. A dark warehouse at the back of a restaurant. Three days he spent there as a dozen other dogs passed through the doors to the restaurant and never came back. Bitch head boiled. Bread and raisins stuffing her windpipe. Forks pull flesh from her cheeks. Delicacy. Oh the smells. Finally they came for him. Beneath the bright lights. Hand and knife rose and fell. Stuck him. Missed but did not miss his throat. The pain cleared his head and gave him strength and he bit and pulled away and bit and when the hands let go he rushed forward and out the door into the alley and he kept going.

He smells something. Head down he follows the trail of scent through the mounds of rubbish. Then he sees it. Rushes forward. A flash of fur and color. It’s off. He's off.

He has lost sight of the creature but has not lost the scent and again follows it. It takes him to the edge of the dump. Here he can see the people that crowd the streets, the outdoor stalls, the smells of rat meat cooking on rotating spits. For a moment he almost forgets about his quarry but then he is back on the trail.

He follows it to where a tree has fallen and exposed a cave beneath the earth. Something warns him not to but he is still a young dog and he ignores it. He goes down into the crater and begins to dig at the crack that leads into the cave. Its dark and there's all sorts of interesting smells. Suddenly he feels pain. He whips his head back and lopes up out of the crater jumping and dancing in pain. Blood appears on the end of his nose. A bite.

Beneath his paws beneath the earth in that dark tomb leathery wings flap then quiet. The intruder has been pushed back. The bats sleep and wait for the night.

Later that day the dog is in an alley behind the marketplace. He lies down on the ground legs straight out on his side flanks rising and falling. There is foam around his mouth. Then his body begins to spasm and he vomits and then a stream of bile and fluids rush from his mouth and nose then he relaxes and stops moving the fluids just seeping out of his corpse now.

He is dead yet before even his corpse has begun to cool he shudders, muscles ripple in a wave of activity down his neck and flanks and his tail stiffens. He jumps up. He can growl again and he does so now. His body is tense every muscle tense and he has his legs slightly bent and splayed as if ready to attack. Lips drawn back from teeth. Foamy drool coming from his mouth.