Winter Moon. By: Dean R. Koontz

Blood in the ears? Not a rabies symptom. Were they foaming at the

mouth?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Running in a straight line?”

“Circles.”

A pickup truck drove by on the highway, country music so loud on its

radio that the tune carried all the way to the back of Potter’s

property. Loud or not, it was a mournful song.

“Where are they?” Potter asked.

“Got them bagged in plastic in the Cherokee here.”

“You get bitten?”

“No,” Eduardo said.

“Scratched?”

“No.”

“Any contact with them whatsoever?”

Eduardo explained about the precautions he’d taken: the shovel,

bandanna, rubber gloves.

Cocking his head, looking puzzled, Travis Potter said, “You telling me

everything?”

“Well, I think so,” he lied. “I mean, their behavior was pretty

strange, but I’ve told you everything important, no other symptoms I

noticed.”

Potter’s gaze was forthright and penetrating, and for a moment Eduardo

considered opening up and revealing the whole bizarre story.

Instead, he said, “If it isn’t rabies, does it sound like maybe it

could be plague?”

Potter frowned. “Doubtful. Bleeding from the ears? That’s an

uncommon symptom.

You get any flea bites being around them?”

“I’m not itchy.”

The warm breeze pumped itself into a gust of wind, rattling the larches

and startling a night bird out of the branches. It flew low over their

heads with a shriek that startled them.

Potter said, “Well, why don’t you leave these raccoons with me, and I’ll

have a look.”

They removed the three green plastic bags from the Cherokee and carried

them inside. The waiting room was deserted, Potter had evidently been

doing paperwork in his office. They went through a door and down a

short hallway to the white-tiled surgery, where they put the bags on

the floor beside a stainless-steel examination table.

The room felt cool and looked cold. Harsh white light fell on the

enamel, steel, and glass surfaces. Everything gleamed like snow and

ice.

“What’ll you do with them?” Eduardo asked.

“I don’t have the means to test for rabies here. I’ll take tissue

samples, send them up to the state lab, and we’ll have the results in a

few days.”

“That’s all?”

“What do you mean?”

Poking one of the bags with the toe of his boot, Eduardo said, “You

going to dissect one of them?”

“I’ll store them in one of my cold lockers and wait for the state lab’s

report. If they’re negative for rabies, then, yeah, I’ll perform an

autopsy on one of them.”

“Let me know what you find?”

Potter gave him that penetrating stare again. “You sure you weren’t

bitten or scratched? Because if you were, and if there’s any reason at

all to suspect rabies, you should get to a doctor now and start the

vaccine right away, tonight–”

“I’m no fool,” Eduardo said. “I’d tell

you if there was any chance I’d been infected.”

Potter continued to stare at him.

Looking around the surgery, Eduardo said, “You really modernized the

place from the way it was.”

“Come on,” the veterinarian said, turning to the door. “I have

something I want to give you.”

Eduardo followed him into the hall and through another door into

Potter’s private office. The vet rummaged in the drawers of a white,

enameled-metal storage cabinet and handed him a pair of pamphlets– one

on rabies, one on bubonic plague.

“Read up on the symptoms for both,” Potter said. “You notice anything

similar in yourself, even similar, get to your doctor.”

“Don’t like doctors much.”

“That’s not the point. You have a doctor?”

“Never need one.”

“Then you call me, and I’ll get a doctor to you, one way or the

other.

Understand?”

“All right.”

“You’ll do it?”

“Sure will.”

Potter said, “You have a telephone out there?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t have a phone these days?”

The question seemed to confirm that he had an image as a hermit and an

eccentric. Which maybe he deserved. Because now that he thought about

it, he hadn’t used the phone to receive or place a call in at least

five or six months. He doubted if it’d rung more than three times in

the past year, and one of those was a wrong number.

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