Hounds-Chapter02

approximately 3000 words

The Hounds of Hollenbeck
Chapter 2
Monday, October 8

         Allen's sneakers squeaked against the polished terrazzo flooring of the post-modern lab that housed Browning College's Army CHIP contract.  He stopped at the stainless steel door to the kennel that was the heart of the project and punched in his security code. His heart lifted at the cacophony of cheery doggy banter greeted him on the other side. 

         Allen didn't care how valuable or dangerous these animals were, dogs should be kept outside, not in a sterile lab.  Half a dozen cages lined each side of the kennel like jail cells.  The dogs yipped in their joy at seeing him, standing with their forepaws on the stainless steel bars of their enclosures.  Allen grinned back and wished he could free them all. 

         Allen walked through the kennel, stopping at each cage and greeting each animal. Officially, they only had numbers, but he'd named every one of them.  They all looked pretty much alike, but not to Allen.  Sure, they were almost-but-not quite golden retrievers.  Silver flecks marred their yellow fur, and their heads were outsize for breed standard.  Not surprising, since they were a new breed altogether, genetically engineered for the Army.  They weren’t even dogs, at least not entirely.  They were super-dogs, canine Einsteins. 

         The smartest, subject CHIP.13.5, could understand over three thousand words.  When he finally arrived at her cage, she gave him a woebegone look.  Arf? 

         Allen was sure her bark was a question, probably asking where he'd been.  "Teena! How's my best girl?"  He knelt next to her and let her sniff at his outstretched hand.  "I bet you'd like a treat, wouldn't you, Teena?"  He'd named her after her generation number, thirteen. 

         She wagged her tail and nodded her head up and down, her eyes riveted on her best friend. Woof!

         He pulled a doggie snack from the stash in his pocket and held it through bars.  Her tongue slipped the morsel from his palm, and she hunkered down to crunch on it.  He waited for her to finish and then let her sniff his fingers again.  Finished with her greeting, she sat on her haunches, her tail thumping in glee. Her brown eyes never left him, as if waiting to find what her pal wanted to do today.  She pressed her nose through the bars and nuzzled at the pants pocket where Allen stashed her treats.

         He tousled her ears through the cage.  "No more treats for now, girl."  She might never win a dog show, but that didn't matter to Allen.  To him, she was beautiful, and smarter than any dog who ever lived.  Best of all, she loved him for what he was.  Skinny, geeky, spiky hair all a-tangle--none of that mattered to her.

         Memories of being dumped last Saturday night at the Tool Box made his mouth turn down.  Why had that guy hit on him if he was just going to walk away without explanation?  Was he that unattractive?

         The lab door opened, breaking his reverie.  Good thing.  Self-pity never got anyone anything.

         "Allen, honey, what you doing here so early?"  Trish Samson, a sturdy, middle-aged African-American woman, stood in the doorway in her pink lab scrubs.  "Tell me you had a date this weekend."

         His face heated. He stood and averted his eyes.  "No date.  I'm a perpetual lonely heart." 

         "Sweetie, you ain't never going to get a boyfriend with that attitude."  She scowled at him.  "You got to try, you hear me?"

         "I do."  He hated the whiny tone of his voice.  Why couldn't he be more confident and masculine, like those guys at the bar? 

         "I suppose you went cruising again.  Did you got to that bar?  Child, that's not safe.  Edna Willoughby told me at church that her cousin went to that den of sin, and now he's done disappeared.  No one knows where he's at."  She put her hands on her hips.  "And he's not the only one I've heard about.  There was this nice boy from over in Halsted who was in our Bible study--"

         Allen held up his hands, palm forward.  "Okay, okay already.  I'm safe, believe me.  No one even looks at me.  Besides, I'm busy with classes and our work here. I don't need a boyfriend."

         Her eyes softened.  "Everyone needs someone to care for them, hon.  You should come to my church.  We're open and affirming, and there's some nice boys there." 

         A Baptist revival was the last thing Allen wanted.  "I'll think about it, I promise."  He also didn't want to hurt Trish's feelings.  Time to change the subject.  "What brings you in so early on a Monday morning?  I've some protocols to run before class this afternoon."  Hey tilted an eyebrow at her.  "I thought lab techs kept regular hours, not like us lowly graduate students." 

         She snapped her gloves in place and opened a supply cabinet next to the door.  "I've got some tests for the good Dr. Sarnok: a CBC on specimen 12.6 by 9 AM sharp, or he'll have my be-hind."

         Allen cast a wary glance at the door. "Dr. Sarnok's here this morning?" Allen had hoped to evade the man's poison tongue for at least one day at the lab.

         "He's prowling around.  You watch yourself, you hear?  You know he eats doctoral students for breakfast."

         "I guess I better get busy then."  He reached for the latch on the cage.  Maybe if he could escape with Teena to the test range before Sarnok had a chance to slam him over some imagined failing.

         "Hey!  What you doing?"  Trish pointed to a sign on the wall. Notices about animal safety plastered the walls of the lab: precautions about leashes and warnings to be alert for violent behaviors.  "Put the leash on her first, okay?"

         "Teena would never hurt anyone."

         Her face softened.  "I know that, child.  But after that incident three years ago, Dr. Harzig's been nervous as cat in room full of rocking chairs." She pointed to the surveillance camera in the hanging near the ceiling in one corner.  "He'll fire your ass if he catches you breaking protocol, don't matter how cute it is."

         Harzig was the creepy staff veterinarian.  Allen snorted.  "He's no threat.  I'm more worried about him grabbing my ass than firing it." 

         "True that. He's kind of creepy, that one."

         "Besides, there's not been an incident in three years, not since Dr. Sarnok reduced the non-canine genetic material in the dogs."

         "You just follow the rules, y'hear?"  She turned her back and pulled supplies from the cabinets.

         He grinned and winked at Teena.  "Shall we get some work done, girl?"

         Her tail stopped thumping and her head shook the other way, an emphatic no.  She licked at his hand again and nuzzled through the cage at the pocket with the treats.

         "Not now Teena.  After we finish our tests, then you can have another treat."

         She looked at him, her head tipped to one side.  Then she woofed, nodded her head and signaled readiness for the task ahead.

         "That's a good dog."  He hooked the leash through her collar and then opened the cage.  "Okay, girl, we'll go outside and you can play for a bit before we get to work."

         Her ears perked up and she padded to the door to the lab, Allen following.  She led Allen down the hallway toward the experimental test range.  She cast from one side of the hallway to the other, nose to the floor, stopping now again to sniff out some interesting new odor.  Allen waited for his friend to satisfy her curiosity.  "Don't take too long, Teena.  We've got lots of work to do today."

         An older man dressed in a prim, creased white lab coat entered from a side corridor and blocked their way.  "Hello Mr. Leclerc."  He peered into his phone without look up.  He was handsome enough to be an aging movie star, with the precise diction of a Shakespearean actor.  Gray flecked the temples of his flaxen hair, and his shoes probably cost more than Allen made in a month.  A delicate scent of cologne hovered about him.

         Allen's heart sank, and he mumbled, "Hello, Dr. Sarnok." His short, skinny build, worn blue jeans, T-shirts, and spiky hair, he always made him feel like a stick figure around his glamorous adviser.  He braced himself for the inevitable scolding. Everything he did was always wrong.  Except breathing.  His advisor had never complained about how Allen breathed. Yet.

         Allen jerked at Teena's leash, and edged down the hallway toward the door to the test range. Maybe he could still escape.

         "What tests are you running today, Allen?"  Sarnok continued to flip through screens.

         Too late.  "We're going to do a couple of the new search protocols today, sir.  Eighteen Bee and Cee if we have time."  Teena sniffed at Sarnok's shoes, her tail wagging.  "Teena!  Stop that!"

         Sarnok finally looked up.  "Mr. LeClerc.  That is an experimental animal."  He stooped and tugged at the red tag clipped to her ear.  "CHIP.13.5."  Sarnok pronounced it "chip dot thirteen dot five."  The same code was tattooed to her other ear.

         "I know.  I'm sorry, Dr. Sarnok."  Shit.  He didn't even know what he'd done wrong and already he was apologizing. 

         "You know it is not good to anthropomorphize these specimens.  They are neither our pets nor our friends.  They are CHIPs, Canine-Human Inter-genetic Prototypes." 

         That again.  God, could he be more of an asshole? Be careful.  He can screw you. "I know that, sir. I'll try to do better."  Teena tugged at her leash, tracking some new scent down the hall, jerking Allen's arm about.  He snapped on the leash, wishing for the power to make Sarnok go away, like the little boy in The Twilight Zone episode.  Then it really would be a good life, or at least a better one.

         Sarnok sneered at him.  "See that you do."  His grim gaze glowered over his glasses.  "If you don't have proper scientific detachment, your results won't be valid."

         "I understand, Dr. Sarnok."

         "If your results are not valid, then your dissertation won't be valid."  He licked his lips with a thin smile.  "We wouldn't want that to happen, now would we, Mr. LeClerc?"

         Allen flushed.  "No sir, not at all sir."  What an eff-ing bully.  It's too late to choose a new advisor.  Allen was screwed no matter what.

         "Just so we understand each other."  Without another word, Sarnok pivoted and walked away. 

         Teena stood still, her head tipped to one side, looking back and forth between Allen and the departing Sarnok. She whimpered and planted a doggie kiss on Allen's hand. 

         He chewed his lip and forced a grin. "Don't worry, girl.  He can't really do anything to us."

         She considered that for a moment, nodded her head, sniffed, and put her nose to the floor.  She was off again, on an endless doggie quest for new smells.  Allen let her lead him the rest of the way down the hall and out the door to the test range.

         Once in the fenced area outside, he released her.  He sat and watched while she romped in the grass, scouting out new smells.  He knew Sarnok would disapprove, but Teena hated being in the cage and so loved being outdoors.  It wouldn't hurt to let her have some fun before running the protocols.  She was a good dog and was always diligent with the tests.  She liked puzzling out the scents and clues and finding the right trail.  Allen knew this was due to a combination of instinct and engineering, but he was sure at least some of her joy in the running tests derived from pleasing her friend Allen. 

***

         At noon Allen walked from the lab to the main campus, the morning’s test results stuffed into his battered briefcase.  He didn’t rate an office at the gleaming CHIP facility and instead had a cubbyhole in the attic of the old Zoology Building.  As he passed by the Union, he decided to have lunch in the cafeteria.

         He wove his way through the crowds of jabbering undergraduates, juggling his tray and his briefcase.  At the front of dining area, some Navy ROTC cadets sat in their crisp white uniforms at three tables they had pushed together.  Allen's eyes locked with one good looking cadet who had a dark tan and piercing blue eyes.  He was familiar, somehow.  Then Allen had it: the cadet was the guy who had bought him a beer at the Tool Box last Saturday night before dumping him.  Pete, that was his name.  Pete's caught Allen's gaze, his face flushed, and he lowered his eyes to his half-eaten burger. 

         Allen looked away.  Fantastic. Now I've been rejected in the Union, too.

         Three coeds vacated a table in a far corner, and he dashed to it.  He swept aside the newspapers and plates they had left behind and wedged the contents from his tray onto the table.  He loaded his now empty tray with the mess the coeds left behind and snaked his way back through jammed tables to the waste bin on the far side of the room.

         Just as he dumped the tray, someone else put their tray on his table.  His heart sank as he fought his way back through the crowd to confront the table thief.  "Excuse me."  He stood over the usurper and cleared his throat.

         The young man looked up at him and an impossible, infectious grin burst across his face.  "I’m sorry, I saw you come in and it looked like you were alone, too. It’s so friggin’ crowded in here.  Do you mind if we share?"  He wiped his hands on his napkin and stood.  "I’m Sam, by the way."  He stuck out his hand.

         Allen accepted it out of reflex.  "I’m Allen."  His gaze roamed around the room and then returned to the other’s handsome face.  He had a neat goatee, and from the stubble on his cheeks it looked like he hadn't shaved today.  His dark, almond-shaped eyes loomed over with his sunny smile.  Something mysterious lurked there.  Something deep and alluring.  Allen repressed a tingle in his loins.  "It is crowded.  Glad to share. Nice to meet you."  Another good looking guy, another chance to be rejected.  The story of Allen's life.

         Sam stripped off his black leather jacket and plopped back down in his chair, muscles flexing on his arms.  "That’s great.  I really appreciate it."  He took an immense bite out of his hamburger.  "These frigging freshmen really get on my nerves, y’know?"

         Allen slipped into his seat.  Sam wore a tight-fitting black t-shirt that exposed his lithe form to perfection.  No one had a right to be this sexy.  Allen was glad that the table hid his physical reaction.  This guy had ebony hair, buzzed short to his scalp, and muscles on his muscles.  Allen was sure he'd seen him someplace before, but he couldn't quite place where.  Careful, boy.  He’s probably straight, and would beat you up if he knew how turned on you are.

         Allen lowered his gaze.  "I know exactly what you mean, about the freshman I mean.  Entitled.  Always babbling and pushing.  Superficial and self-centered."  He stirred his soup.

         Sam used a French fry as a ketchup shovel.  "You must be a graduate student too?  I’m a first year criminology student." 

         So they hadn't met in class.  "I’m a doctoral student in Zoology."  Allen’s heart quickened.  The discomfort that always plagued him while talking to a good looking guy washed over him.

         "Wow, a doctoral student. I’m impressed."  Sam chewed on a wad of fries.  "I’m just working on a lowly masters.  I think I'd like to work for VICAP, with the FBI.  You know, profile serial killers and the like.  How about you?"

         "I’m working with the CHIP project.  It’s a big Army contract that Dr. Sarnok has."

         Sam nodded.  "Oh yeah, I think I heard of it.  Seems to me I know someone who works in the zoo department.  Lizzie Bateman.  Maybe you know her?"

         Allen’s heart sank.  So, he’s straight after all.  "Sorry, no.  Is she your girlfriend?"

         That got him a strange look.  "Not hardly."  Sam took another hefty chunk out of his hamburger. "Say, haven’t I seen you around?  Maybe at the Tool Box?" 

         Allen’s face flushed, and he averted his eyes.  "Maybe."

         "Yeah, yeah. I’m sure I saw you there last Saturday night.  I was going to ask you to dance, but I got called away."  More hamburger disappeared into his mouth.

         No one ever asked Allen to dance.  Ever.  "Really?  I wish you had hung around. One guy bought me a beer, but I guess I wasn't his type.  I wasn't with anyone."  Shit!  What am I doing?  He’s way out of my league.  He remembered now.  He had seen Sam staring at him from across the bar when Pete had been not-hitting on him. 

         "Well, I wish I could have hung around.  Now that we've met, I bet we’d have fun together."  He drained half his soda.  "Look, I’m late for class, but I’d really like to get to know you better."  He pulled a card from his jacket and scrawled on the back.  "Give me a call, okay?  I'm not working tomorrow night, so maybe we can we can go out for a show or dinner or something."

         Allen gave him stunned stare.  With trembling fingers he slipped the card into his shirt pocket.  "I’d like that."  He opened his briefcase, tore out a sheet of notepaper, and scrawled his name and cell phone number on it.  "Look, here’s my number too.  You can call me anytime, okay?"

         Sam swiped at his mouth with his napkin, having made his meal vanish.  He creased the paper and slipped it into his jacket.  "You can count on it, Allen."  He flashed another of those dazzling grins while he slipped into his jacket.  He bussed his dishes and strode away.

         Allen pulled Sam’s card from his pocked and scanned it.  Adrenalin tingled through the fingertips that clutched at the card.  In neat letters it announced, "Sam Sondergard, Detective Sergeant First Class, Hollenbeck Police Department." 

         He's just made a date with a cop. How hot was that?