Chapter 5 - The Drive to Rockland
The rain started forty miles north of the city, heavy gray sheets that slammed against the windshield of Earl’s 2004 Ford F-150.
Rocky sat in the middle seat between us, his nose pressed against the defroster vent, watching the wipers sweep back and forth. Every time the truck hit a deep pothole on the highway, his ears would swivel toward me, checking my face before settling back down.
"He's a good boy," Earl said, keeping both hands glued to the steering wheel. "He doesn't ask for much. Just wants to know where the perimeter is."
"He spent five years guarding perimeter fences in Helmand," I said, reaching over to scratch Rocky behind his left ear, where the fur was thin over an old shrapnel mark. "He saved my squad three times. First time was a wire under a culvert. Second time was an ambushed courtyard in Sangin. Third time... third time he took the blast himself."
Earl nodded slowly, staring through the rain. "I served in seventy-one. Infantry. They didn't have dogs like him back then. Just young boys carrying radios that weighed forty pounds. When we came home, nobody gave us a care ledger either. They just told us to go back to work and stop twitching when the doors slammed."
"He didn't get to go back to work," I said, looking at Rocky. "They threw him away because he was too broken to sniff bombs and too expensive to feed."
We pulled off the state route onto a gravel road lined with dense pine trees and rusted chain-link fencing.
A wooden sign sat half-tilted near the treeline: Northbridge Agricultural & Canine Research Facility - No Trespassing.
Beyond the sign sat two long, low-slung steel buildings surrounded by an eight-foot perimeter fence topped with razor wire. There were no manicured lawns, no agility courses, no play yards. Just gravel, mud, and the sound of heavy rain hitting tin roofs.
As Earl slowed the truck to a crawl near the padlocked front gate, Rocky suddenly stiffened in the middle seat.
His ears slammed forward. His black nose began to twitch violently against the glass.
Then, from somewhere deep inside those steel buildings, carried on the cold wet wind, came a sound that made my chest collapse.
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It wasn't a roar, and it wasn't a bark.
It was the low, muffled, collective crying of dozens of dogs whining through concrete walls.
