Whip the Dogs

Whip the Dogs

123,325 words

EXCERPT

Chapter One

Northwest Alaska – mid-October

Daylight grew precious in October and by month’s end, the sun showed its face only for a few short hours each day. By three o’clock in the afternoon, darkness had already engulfed the tiny settlement of rough houses that hugged the coastline.

Every small hut had been erected in the old style, ‘like our fathers’ fathers’, the men had said. Each home was oval, big enough to house three or four of the families that wanted to return to the old ways. The sod had been brought from inland, down to the rocky coast, thick wads of turf stacked high, first to make a long passage that ended at a doorway covered with a caribou skin, then piled into the oval shape that formed the main room of the shelter.

Just inland from the Inuit village at the top of the hill that looked down onto the icy shoreline, stood a lone figure. His body swayed in the wind and pushed back against the blizzard that whipped sheets of ice from the rock sending the cold crystals crashing down the slope, disappearing into the black.

It was the first storm of the month in this cold desert…A perfect setting…Frozen, dark, isolated. He pulled the rifle from his shoulder and drew the telescopic sites to his right eye. Set against the man’s pearl-white parka and the snow in the wind, the jet-black gun seemed to be suspended in mid air, pointed downhill at the settlement.

Through the infrared lens, he watched the opening of the hut closest to the hill, less than three hundred yards from where he stood. “Ah! There you are! There you are!”

A man burst through the opening, stumbled, then fell to the ground. He dragged himself to his feet, and then, as if he had too much to drink, stumbled again. He lay on the rocky ground for a moment, shaking and clutching at the tanned animal hide that he had wrapped around his shoulders. The fingers of his broken, mangled hands were unable to close the bone buttons along the front of the garment.

The man on the hill shook his head, his eye still glued to the telescope. “There is nobody home. They’re out on the ice…Gone! Gone for days, hunting seals.” He sighed. “I suppose you didn’t know that but…You do know that this is bear country. Big white bear country!” He chuckled. “Get up! Get up you fool! It’s where your friend left it. The snowmobile is right behind me!”

As if the wounded man had heard those silent urgings, he dragged his body to its feet and continued his stumble towards the hill. It was a slow and painful climb. His body lurched forwards, clutching at the hard ground with twisted bare hands as he tumbled over the rocks and snow.

“Very good! Very good! Less than fifty yards to go now!” The man in the parka shivered. Even he could feel the cold begin to bite through his clothing. He turned the lens away from the struggling figure that was inching its way towards him and drew in a deep breath. “OH MY GOD! IT’S A BEAR!”

Chapter Two

The telescope zoomed in on the animal. It had stopped to sniff the air, less than forty yards behind the floundering man. Its flat head seemed small against the mass of the body behind it – almost a thousand pounds of muscle, fat and shining, white fur.The animal leaned down and licked at the blood that trailed up the rocky hillside then its pace quickened as if the taste had given it only a small hint of the euphoria to come.

The man on the hill turned the gun sites back onto the fugitive climbing towards him. The desperate figure was moving faster now. He had shrugged off his dopey gait and clawed at the rock, pushing with his feet and pulling hard with each hand.

Near the top of the hill, the animal’s prey stopped, leaning against the force of the wind. He looked over the edge at the lights on the eastern tundra. Suddenly he fell to his knees and began to gather stones. He pulled feverishly at the crumbled rubble, lifted and pushed until he had created a small statue, two stout legs, short torso and rocky head. A long flat rock, slightly curved and tapered at its end stuck out from the left side of the body, pointing at the lights.

The tortured figure completed his work and fell to the ground. In a moment, the anguished body pried itself off the ground then began to scramble across the rock face.

“Faster, Wiebo! Faster!” The yells from the white parka were snatched away by the wind. “As soon as he gets close enough, I can shoot! Faster! Faster!” The infra-red lens switched from the man to the bear and back again. “Faster! Faster!”

Through the telescope, the white shadow was growing bigger as the animal plodded uphill. In the field of view, it was bear then man then bear then man again – then…The man on the hill pulled the trigger.

Even in the howl of the storm, the dry ping of the rifle shot reverberated over the rocks. The shiny aluminum syringe hit its mark and the target collapsed to the ground.

The man slung the rifle back to its resting place on his shoulder, pulled up his wrist sleeve and silently counted the seconds on his watch. He walked over to the body that lay sprawled over a boulder just below the hilltop.

The desperate climber lay flat on his back, his breathing shallow, irregular, his left arm twisted across his face as though he were trying to ward off the slashes of an angry animal.

The white parka climbed onto the big rock and crouched low. Gently, he pulled the arm away then held the bloody paw in front of the face of the fallen figure. “You have lost all the fingers on your left hand, Dr. Collins! Yes…One, two, three, four fingers…And one thumb!” He shook his head. “That is a shame! But here – in the Arctic – according to native legend, each digit – each finger, each thumb – will become a mammal of the sea…A whale, a seal, a walrus.” His taunting voice trailed off into the wind. He sighed, watched a shudder in the limp hand then let the arm fall back onto the man’s face.

“The twitching is just the beginning, Dr. Collins!” He chuckled. “It’s the muscles in your frail body depolarizing – the action of the drug. In fifteen, maybe thirty seconds, you will be completely paralyzed but still awake!..Able to feel every sniff, every bite every ounce of the force of my bear’s jaws!”

For a moment, the man in the white parka stared down at the red hand. The limb had slid off the ravaged body and now lay motionless on a thin patch of crimson snow. He bent closer and shut his eyes against a gust of ice and snow, a twisted smile on his narrow face.

Suddenly, his dreams were torn back to reality by a searing slash across his left cheek. The tormentor screamed and tugged at the talon from the skin of his upper jaw. “You filthy!” He pulled the three digits of his victim’s right hand from his face, the nails embedded in his skin. The hand of the dying man was in spasm, twisted into a claw, its grasp slowly giving way to the forceful prying of his attacker.

He stared again at the dying man while blood oozed down his cheek then dripped down onto the thin snow cover that covered the flat top of the boulder. His contemplation was disturbed by a deep grunt directly behind him.

The white parka turned and looked into the dark eyes of the polar bear. It stood more than three feet below him on the hillside but, perched on its hind legs, the animal’s eyes were at the same level as his.

He jumped off the boulder beside the beast. The bear came down onto all fours, took two steps towards him then lowered its head. It grunted, shook its head then grunted again.

The man laughed. “Patience! Patience, my friend!” He reached deep into his parka and pulled out an air-powered syringe. The man stroked the flat, white head for a moment and whispered, “It’s the anticipation, Wiebo!..It’s the anticipation before your fix that makes it feel…Makes it feel even better!” Then he folded over the fur on the back of the animal’s skull, exposing a small cyst beneath thin, stretched skin. He placed the tip of the syringe against the fluctuant mass and pressed the trigger. There was a loud pop as the drug burst out of the end of the instrument at three times the speed of sound, passing through the skin and into the plastic bulb beneath.

The great bear’s body began to sway but its legs stayed frozen to the ground, its head bent forwards as if in worship of the white parka.

“Now, I must go, Dr. Collins.” The snow had eased and the man was back up on the boulder. He peeled back the hood of his parka and placed his ear against the doctor’s chest. He nodded. “That’s good, doctor. Very good!” He pulled the red-tipped syringe from his victim’s shoulder and waved it in front of the two wide eyes that stared motionless into the sky. “For you, doctor…A special drug. It was difficult to estimate the dose – especially difficult since you have already had so much and now it’s into the muscle.” He leaned over and laughed into the man’s ear. “But it’s perfect! You are at that point, doctor, that patients on the operating table fear most – paralyzed but not yet asleep! At the point where you can feel everything but can tell no one!” He laughed again.

The man jumped back down and prodded the polar bear with the tip of his rifle. “Now, Wiebo!”

The bear looked up and grunted then began to sniff the air.

“Up there!” The man pointed at the boulder.

The animal growled and came down with his two front paws next to its prey. The bear growled again, grabbed the limp body with its powerful jaws and dragged it down the hill away from the village.

“Good boy, Wiebo.” The man in the white parka followed the bear then climbed onto the snowmobile that waited at the bottom of the hill. The animal and its victim had already disappeared into the dark of the day. “Now, perhaps in a few months, Dr. Collins…In a few months, your friend will come.” He sighed. “He will finally come and help me finish my work.” The man started the machine and sped off eastwards towards the lights that twinkled through the dying storm.

SYNOPSIS

DRUG ADDICTION – the unstoppable need for a substance foreign to our bodies. Whether we talk about alcohol, cocaine or narcotics, the term conjures up images of unquenchable desires, weakness of being, a lack of will. For years, drug addiction has been treated as a psychiatric disease, a problem kept in the shadows by society, an illness kept in check by societal structure and social mores.

Today’s research, however, has clearly shown that addiction, like so many other illnesses, is not just a reflection of upbringing. Certain factors exist – in some individuals but not in others – that predispose the unlucky ones to a life of slavery. Modern technologies have discovered the quirk that makes one person an addict while the man next to him, given the same drug, will not feel the craving to take that drug again.

A definitive treatment for drug addiction is on the horizon. But if we discover the the cure, the means to treat drug addiction as the illness it really is, will we not also be able to create that same illness where it had not existed before?

Dr. Michael Andross, specialist in Anesthesia, has already struck out once – caught with a needle in his arm, an accidental overdose of self-administered narcotic. Despite extensive rehabilitation, Dr. Andross is about to strike out for a second time, unable to quit the craving that has gnawed at his brain since his research years in a laboratory funded by the American military.

Over the years, Andross has been watched by the man who guided that research program. Dr. Tom Blanshard, former military physician and a close friend of Michael’s estranged father, is unsure whether the genetics laboratory – controlled by geneticist, Wilfred Tait – was ever truly able to achieve the goal of identifying the gene for addiction before Washington decided to shut the program down.

Now Wilfred Tait has returned, searching out his former laboratory workers, enticing Michael back to the fold – not because of what Michael Andross has become but rather because of who Michael Andross really is.

Dr. Wilfred Tait has created an army of unbeatable soldiers – men who will fight to the death, not for devotion to a cause, loyalty to a country, or belief in a religion. The geneticist has created a weapon, a soldier who will fight because he knows that the only person who can prevent him from falling into madness is the man who holds the needle.

Tait’s technology has been sold to a country previously kept in check by the intimidating power of America’s military. Like an addict hooked on drugs, the country’s expansionist needs remain unquenched unless it can present itself as the victim in a game of nuclear threats.

After his third strike-out, Michael Andross is finally enticed to Alaska where the presence of his father, Wilfred Tait and a nuclear warhead aimed at America’s enemy set the stage for a military assault on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean.