Free A Matter of Days by Amber Kizer Page A

drink water first. He’s got to be dehydrated.”
Fever? Do dogs get BluStar? The apes and monkeys in zoos all died of it. Do other animals?
    Rab grabbed a bowl and poured some of our precious bottled water into it. “Come on, doggy, drink it.”
    The dog lifted his head and lapped at the water. He laid his head back down without finishing it.
    “I think he’s given up.” Rabbit sounded near tears.
    God, damn it, you do not give a kid a dog and then kill it. Not fair
. “No, he hasn’t.”
Maybe he has
. “He knows you’ll take care of him and he can rest now. I’m sure it’s been really hard for him and now that he has a friend he can relax.”
    “We.”
    “What?”
    “We will take care of him. Not just me. You promised.” Rabbit stared at me.
    “I know I did.” I sighed.
No sleep tonight
. “We need to clean his paws if he’ll let us, but Rab, if he doesn’t let us he might get sicker.”
And die
.
    “He’ll let us. I know he will.”
    I nodded, not convinced. But I wasn’t going to watch him die without trying. Rabbit couldn’t take much more. I folded the sleeping bag into a mat for the dog. I needed Rab to help. “We need a big bowl, a pot to boil water in, the salt, and find a clean T-shirt we can make bandages with. And tweezers incase there’s something in there we have to dig out. Put your headlamp on, we need our hands.”
    I started building a fire. “And Rab?” I waited until I saw his eyes. “We need a pair of Dad’s socks from your stash to keep his feet clean, okay? None of ours are big enough to fit.”
    I saw the headlamp nod. I knew Rab had packed a few pieces of Dad’s clothing as mementos.
Who am I to judge? I packed perfume and cologne and a dead MP3 player
.
    I got the fire going strong with a fire starter we’d taken from the resort. I wasn’t going to go all flint-and-sticks medieval unless I absolutely had to.
    Dog continued to breathe shallowly and watched all our movements with curious eyebrows and halfhearted tail wags.
    Rab laid a piece of tarp on the ground, collected everything I asked for, and offered Dog another drink.
    I went to the Jeep to find one of Uncle Bean’s survival books. I thought I knew what to do, but I needed all the backup I could get. The early rays of dawn speared the sky.
    When I returned from reading about cleaning and binding infected wounds, Rab spoke quietly while petting the dog. I missed a step, tweaking my ankle. I hadn’t realized quite how lonely Rab was. We weren’t close before. Too many years, too much technology, and too much responsibility got in the way of a close relationship. That was changing.
Needs to change
.
    “Shhh, we’re going to make it better, Teotwawki. Nadia is really smart, she’ll know what to do.”
    The answering whine wasn’t exactly confident.
    “What’d you call him?” I asked, kneeling down next to my brother.
    “Teotwawki.” He shrugged.
    “Where’d that come from?”
English, please?
    “Teotwawki,” Rabbit repeated.
    That’s helpful
. “Which means?”
    “ ‘The end of the world as we know it.’ Teotwawki. I’ll probably shorten it eventually.”
    “Oh.” I needed to remember that Rabbit spent a hell of a lot of time online and watching CNN with Mom in those early days. He probably knew more about the whole thing than I did. “That’s unique. Let’s start with the easy-to-reach. Clean the parts that don’t hurt so he can get used to our touch, okay?”
    Rab took cool wet rags and tried to spit-bathe the worst of the mud and knots off Teotwawki’s coat. “These tangles are terrible.”
    “See if you can just cut them off.” I wasn’t sharing my hairbrush with a dog.
    “Really?”
    “It’s hair, Rab. It’s not going to hurt him, and it probably annoys him to move with all those rat nests.”
    This was a dog used to fluffy beds and special treats and toys. Not used to sleeping in holes and hunting for his food. He was a purebred, and his rhinestone collar wasn’t exactly