Survivor Song(37)
A skinny dog emerges from behind the ice-cream stand and patrols the blacktop. Its chest and belly fur is white; brown and reddish fur color the back and legs. The tail’s length and bushiness is outsized, exaggerated, as though a child drew it.
“I hope someone hasn’t lost their dog,” Ramola says.
Natalie says, “I think that’s a coyote.”
The animal’s face is more vulpine than a dog’s. Fur is matted and rough. Ears are pointed, sharp triangles. Ramola says, “I think you’re right,” without ever having seen a coyote in person.
The coyote is less a confident, vigilant predator canvassing the area than a confused animal listing and wobbling through repetitive arcs. Tail and shoulders are drooped. Legs tremor and shudder. Neck telescopes the weary, swaying snout, hovering parallel to the pavement. White, stringy drool leaks from its mouth.
Natalie asks, “Why are you slowing down?”
“I’m not,” Ramola says, but a quick look at the speedometer reveals her speed has dropped to 25mph. She presses the gas pedal and the engine grumbles.
The coyote explodes into a sprint, one it didn’t look to be physically capable of only a second ago. Its gait is graceless and without rhythm, legs moving of their own accord, heedless to what the other legs are doing, as though running is ancillary to the goal of repeatedly smashing paws against the pavement. An inefficient tornado of movement and momentum, the coyote careens toward the road.
Natalie says, “Holy shit, holy shit. Don’t hit it, don’t hit it . . .”
Ramola jerks the ambulance into the opposite lane. The sudden shift of the vehicle’s top-heavy weight wants to sway them farther left and onto the shoulder and someone’s front lawn. Ramola maintains control and their current velocity. She cannot slam on the brakes, as rapid deceleration would dangerously tighten the seat belt around Natalie and her belly. She squeezes the steering wheel and winces preemptively, anticipating impact with the animal but hoping for a miss.
The front grille noses ahead of the charging coyote. She gives the ambulance more gas, aiming to surge past without the creature mashing into them. It’s running so quickly it appears to be bouncing and rolling, a tumbleweed in a gale-force wind. Ramola loses sight of it, dreading the sickening thump of the tires rolling over the animal.
There’s a loud, jarring bang as the coyote broadsides the ambulance, just behind Natalie’s door. She yells, “Fucking fuck!” and recoils from the door but then presses her face against the window, mumbling indecipherable commentary or judgment.
Ramola doesn’t slow, doesn’t stop, and pilots the ambulance back into its proper lane.
Natalie, still looking out the window, says, “I can’t see it. Is it dead?”
Ramola checks her mirrors. Reflected in the large rectangular passenger side-mirror, the coyote is a lump of writhing fur, flailing more limbs than its four, before flipping onto its paws. It opens and closes its mouth rapidly but if it issues cries or calls, they can’t hear any. As the coyote’s reflected image diminishes in the expanding distance, it limps after the ambulance, following the center yellow lines.
Ramola says, “It got up and is loping after us.”
“Jesus. If I go full rabies, please don’t let me launch myself into ambulances.”
“That would be inadvisable.”
Natalie turns away from the window, lifts her phone, looks at it, puts it back down, as though confirming it is still in her hand.
Despite knowing it’s impossible for the sick and injured coyote to keep up with them now at 45mph, Ramola watches for a reappearance of its scraggly form, checking the mirrors in a clockwise pattern. After looking at the fourth and final mirror, she decides to spin through the circuit one last time. Then she checks them again.
Natalie asks, “You see something back there?”
“Making sure it’s gone.”
Natalie says, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you might want to slow down a little bit. Whole bunch of curves ahead. Coyote Cujo won’t catch us.”
“Sorry.”
As though on cue, the ambulance lurches too fast through a dip in the road, giving Ramola that dropped-stomach, roller-coaster sensation. She slows to 30mph. Bay Road narrows and winds, following a typically New England path that was trod before pavement and town planning. The surrounding forest grows thicker, the houses more infrequent. The northeastern border of the expansive Borderland State Park is less than a mile ahead on their right. Thigh-high, lichen-and moss-colored walls of stacked stones run along both sides of the road for stretches before randomly turning and disappearing into the woods. The walls are a holdover from the 1800s. Farmers would clear the impossibly rocky soil and used the stones to build over 100,000 miles of walls throughout New England.
Natalie prattles on about Coyote Cujo and how it should check its ambitions, downsize to leaping at compact cars or motorcycles, leave attacking ambulances to rabid rhinos or rabid circus elephants. There are elephants at the Southwick Zoo maybe thirty miles west, and Natalie hopes those fuckers are on lockdown.
They pass the torn-up carcass of a raccoon in the opposite lane, supine on its back, paws clenched into black stones, stomach and chest flattened and red. Ahead on the shoulder, another animal, what appears to be a dead opossum, its body seemingly intact. From Ramola’s drive-by vantage there is no way to determine if the opossum is the victim of an accident, animal attack, or has succumbed to the virus.