The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach Read online

  Then I heard a single sharp yelp and looked back to see Kyle fall in a heap on the ground. Instead of running away from the attackers, he and the other alphas ran toward the men to cut them off. Kyle was the fastest of the males. He must have gotten there first. He took a massive hit with a machete across his shoulder and deep into his rib cage. I saw him struggle to get up, but he couldn’t. The sounds of his yelps of pain mixed with the hollow thuds of metal pipes hitting flesh and bone. I could do nothing to help him.

  I reached the truck, the rest of my escorts still surrounding me. Not one dog had abandoned me. They’d either defended or attacked.

  Tears and sweat stained my shirt as I fumbled with my keys to start the vehicle, then laid on the horn. The moment the dogs heard the honk and the sound of the engine, they vanished into the jungle.

  The men stopped and looked in my direction. I looked through the windshield at the carnage. My eyes stung with sweat and tears.

  Dogs lay dead in the gravel ten yards away. Two of them were still moving, but dying fast.

  I gripped the wheel and stared at the butchers. I felt more rage than I knew what to do with. These savages had just killed my dogs, whose trust and love I’d worked so hard to earn. I couldn’t let them get away with this.

  I put the truck in gear. If I gunned it now, I could mow them down before they reached the boathouse. I could end this.

  I shook my head clear and watched the men disappear back into the shadows from which they came.

  “Cowards!”

  It was quiet now except for the sound of the engine and the cold air-conditioning blowing through the vents. I gripped the wheel to stop my hands from shaking. I wondered whether to stay or go. If I got out of the truck and the men came back, then my dogs had died in vain. They gave their lives to save mine, and my head was spinning trying to make sense of what the hell just happened.

  I drove the long road from the beach back to civilization. I wasn’t afraid anymore, just angry and more hurt than I could have ever imagined.

  Out of sheer desperation, I went to the police station. Did I really expect anything would be different this time? Isn’t that how they describe insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

  I hoped that this time, when there was a human being threatened instead of a dog, I’d get a different reaction. I was sure that killing island visitors was much worse for tourism than killing stray dogs on the beach. However, the policeman at the counter only shrugged his shoulders.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Your job! Or is that too much to ask?”

  “Maybe you don’t belong here. You should go home before someone gets hurt.”

  The combination of the smart-ass grin he wore and the sarcastic tone in his voice made it obvious I was getting nowhere, so I left the station before I said something I’d likely regret. After my pointless visit to the police, I called Pam to tell her what happened.

  “Please don’t go back, hon,” she pleaded. “Enough is enough! I don’t want to lose you. Not to this.”

  I called my brother Barry, who said the same thing.

  After talking to them both, I sat in my truck in the middle of town. I felt confused and slightly disoriented. My enemies, whoever they were, they weren’t just threatening me anymore. They were actually taking action against me. Was the right to abuse animals so important that they would have killed me?

  Finally, I had to go back to the beach, to my friends. Real friends don’t run away; they support each other. I had only witnessed Kyle being wounded, but as I had driven away there were others on the ground. Maybe they were still alive. Maybe I could save them. At the very least, I wanted to bury my friends before nightfall. I owed them that.

  Despite Pam and my brother’s warnings, I couldn’t get there fast enough.

  Back at the beach, I walked over to the dogs. Kyle was hacked clean through. Two others were also gone.

  I dug graves for them. And then, one by one, I carried these heroes to their final resting place. The dogs, including a couple that had been injured in the fight, filtered out of the jungle and fell in behind me as if to pay their respects. My dogs had chosen to die so I could live. They could have run, but they stayed to protect me. They died as dogs, not as discarded trash, destroyed by some pathetic drunk or a sick thug looking for entertainment. This had to be better. I needed it to be better.

  My body went through the motions of burying them, but my brain shut down until the last grain of sand filled the final grave. When it was done, I collapsed, two words running through my head: Now what?

  The body being buried could have just as easily been mine.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  I tried the police one more time after the attack at the boathouse.

  “I tell you already. Don’t go there no more,” the cop said.

  “I’m burying two or three dogs a day, man. You’ve got to do something! Please!”

  “It is illegal, what you are doing. You cannot bury any animal on the island without proper authorization. We could have you arrested.”

  They were going to arrest me? What was wrong with this place?

  I felt like I was losing another piece of myself every time I buried another dog. If I didn’t do something drastic, nothing would ever change for them. In the meantime, Pam and I were fighting more and more the further down this spiral I traveled. She was watching the man she loved drown in a cause that was likely going to kill him.

  I also put her job at risk after a run-in with one of the security guards at her office one evening when I went to pick her up. They usually allowed me to drive inside the gates to spare her walking across the dark parking lot alone, but one night a new guard wouldn’t let me in and I lost it. The guard reported me to the company for threatening him, and Pam was called in to speak to HR and her boss.

  That night, she was furious. “It’s like you can’t control yourself anymore,” she said over dinner.

  “The guy was an asshole, Pam. He’s lucky I didn’t kick his ass.”

  “This is my job, Steve! You were out of line.”

  “All you care about is that damn job!”

  “That job is our bread and butter, Steve! What do you think pays for all that dog food? For our house?”

  She was completely right. The old me would have handled the situation differently.

  I hung my head. “I’m sorry, Pammie. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m losing it. I can feel myself slipping further and further away.”

  She reached across the table for my hand. Her eyes filled with tears. “Steve,” she said, her voice quiet now, “my biggest fear is that I’m going to get a call at my office one day telling me you’re dead.”

  While she had accepted years earlier that she’d likely lose me to a climbing or flying accident, she never imagined it could be a homicide instead.

  To save me, to save us, Pam decided to call in reinforcements. She still had contacts at a shelter in California where she’d volunteered years earlier, but they told her that they couldn’t take dogs from Puerto Rico because of local rabies laws. After a little Internet research, she found a group called Save a Sato in San Juan. Save a Sato was founded in the midnineties by two women who had basically done what I was doing now—fed strays on the streets of San Juan. They teamed up and started a small animal shelter that had partnerships with a network of no-kill shelters in the States. Pam sent them an e-mail asking for advice or help.

  She heard back from Betsy Freedman, Save a Sato’s outreach coordinator, who was based in Boston. “Talk to Isabel Ramirez,” she suggested. Isabel was a director at Save a Sato in San Juan. Pam and I felt hopeful for the first time in months.

  Sadly, that hope didn’t last long.

  “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you,” Isabel told Pam when they spoke on the phone. “We’ve got our hands full here.”

  Clearly we were on our own.

  Meanwhi
le, the situation was getting worse on the beach. A few times I saw what appeared to be locals, just regular guys hanging out with their families at the beach for the day, throwing food to the dogs. The dogs would grab the meat and run. Within minutes the dogs would be staggering like drunks until they fell down convulsing and died. A few times I was able to get the scraps before the dogs took them. I could see the beads of rat poison concealed inside the food.

  Most weekends there were so many families that the dogs were always at risk of injury or worse. People would get angry when the dogs approached their barbecue pits and would shoo them away. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I’d find one or two dogs with half-eaten hot dogs in their mouths. The poison was so fast acting that they’d hit the ground dead before they could take a second bite.

  During the week, it was the guys driving the refinery trucks I worried about. A couple of times I witnessed men jumping out of the trucks and pouring antifreeze into puddles of rainwater or the water dishes I’d set out for the dogs.

  I was losing this battle, and I had nowhere to turn.

  And then in April, Pam received an e-mail from a woman in Florida named Martha Sampson. She explained that she worked at the refinery several days every month, and that during her last trip to the island she’d noticed a new mom with her puppies by the main gate and was concerned for their welfare, so she contacted Isabel Ramirez, who then put her in touch with us.

  She asked if we could help rescue the dogs and get them medical attention, and said that “maybe” she could find them a home.

  What the hell was I going to do with the mom and her puppies even if I was able to capture them? The refinery plant’s security guards weren’t going to let me anywhere near the property. I had several dozen dogs of my own at the beach that needed better medical attention than I’d been able to provide. And even if we could afford to bring the dogs to a vet for treatment, the vets in the area had already made it pretty clear they wanted nothing to do with them.

  I wasn’t sure we’d be able to help Martha, considering we needed so much help ourselves.

  “Martha’s in town,” Pam said one afternoon a few days later when she called me from her office. “She wants to meet you at the plant. Will you call her?” She gave me Martha’s number. I didn’t know what the hell I could do for her, but I dutifully called and we arranged to meet.

  At the appointed time, I drove up to the main gate, but Martha wasn’t there.

  A couple of imposing security guards approached my truck. “This is private property. You need to leave now,” one said in a way that didn’t invite discussion.

  “Please, I’m picking up an employee.”

  Just in time, a freckle-faced, auburn-haired woman came bouncing along in a bright orange jumpsuit. She had the kind of complexion that didn’t fare well in the Puerto Rican sun. It had to be Martha.

  “Jump in!” I said, pushing open the passenger door for her. My plan was to show her the dogs already in my care, so she would understand where I was coming from before she asked for any favors.

  When we got to the beach, the sight of the dogs had her in tears. “I’ve been working with these dogs for months now,” I explained to her.” “I’m barely keeping them alive, and new strays turn up practically every day.”

  “What you’re doing here is amazing, Stephen. I don’t know how I could handle it.”

  “Caring about them isn’t enough, though,” I replied, hoping to enlist an ally to my cause. “There’s an entire culture that needs to be changed. It’s the people who dump them, the vets, the politicians, the businesspeople who ignore them and worse. To most of the locals, they’re not even dogs, they’re rats. The way the dogs beg for food is just an annoyance to them. Martha, I’m not making this up. Pam’s coworkers, people who have lived here their whole lives, people who actually admire what I’m doing here, have told me that I’m fighting a losing battle. The only way to make a difference is to do something.”

  “Will you please come back to the plant and help me get that mother dog and her pups?”

  Clearly she had her own cause. I appreciated her faith in me, but I couldn’t take on another cause. I had to pick my battles.

  “It won’t be easy to do. A scared mother isn’t going to want to be caught. And I don’t know if you noticed, but the security guard wasn’t too receptive when I arrived to pick you up. What makes you think they’re going to let me help some stray dogs?”

  “Can we please try?”

  “What are you planning to do with the mother and the pups if we get them? Have you thought about that?”

  She glanced at my pack nervously. “Can’t we bring them down here?”

  “Martha! You realize the locals call this place Dead Dog Beach, don’t you?”

  “I know, I know! But they’ll kill her if she stays at the plant.”

  “They’re probably going to kill her if she comes here. I lose dogs every day.”

  “Don’t you think they have a better shot with you and your dogs?”

  “Martha, my wife and I are already shelling out nearly a grand every month to feed these dogs. We’re stretched pretty thin financially.”

  She smiled and nodded like she was listening to me, but I knew she wasn’t.

  “I’d like to get the dogs to a vet,” she said in a singsong voice. I imagine she thought it would somehow sway me.

  “Even if we were able to catch these dogs, there’s no vet I know of who will take them. Do you know of someone who will? Maybe I missed one?”

  Nope, nothing. She was full of hope and not much else.

  As much as I was trying to resist Martha, I couldn’t say no. I knew it from the moment I received her e-mail. These were innocent lives, and if I didn’t do something about it, they faced certain death. I took Martha back to the plant to see what I could do.

  Martha went in the gate herself and made her way to a rotting wooden foundation shielded by thick undergrowth where she thought the mother had made her den. She was only forty or fifty feet from where I stood on the outside of the fence. Watching her crawl through thick brush in her orange jumpsuit was a sight to see. She thrust her head into a narrow space between the foundation and the ground, then pulled out and yelled back at me, “I saw her for a second!”

  “Forget it, Martha. It’s not gonna happen now. You’ve scared her. She’s going to move her pups all the way under the building. She has to want your help or you’ll never get her. She’ll just run, and I don’t want her to abandon her pups.”

  Martha came back out, crying, her hands clenched. “She’s all alone in there.”

  I asked Martha to stay by the truck for a few minutes. I walked over to the guards and asked if there was any way possible that they might let me in for a few minutes to get the dog and her pups. They wouldn’t budge and insisted it was time for me to get in my truck and drive away

  “I’m sorry it didn’t turn out better, Martha. Sadly, I deal with this stuff daily, and there’s nothing we can do right now.”

  “I feel so helpless, like I failed her,” she said.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for her, okay? If she does relocate her pups outside the plant, I’ll do everything in my power to get them to a safer place. It’s the best I can do for now. The guards have pretty much tied my hands.” I knew this wasn’t the answer she’d hoped for.

  I left Martha standing at the gate, tears still flowing down her cheeks. As I drove away, I felt bad. Not for Martha, but for the dogs.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  I was driving down the road to the beach one day in the spring when I turned the first corner after the long straightaway to find a car coming straight at me in my lane. The crazed driver had his head out the side window and was looking backward, so he didn’t even notice he was driving in my lane. Over his screams and the wail of his horn, he couldn’t hear me either. I swerved at the last minute, slammed on the brakes, and managed to avoid a collision.

  As he passed by me (I admit it
, I gave him the finger), I turned to see the reason why he was angry: There were two very large dogs staggering like drunks in the middle of the road. Their front legs were splayed in a wide stance as they braced themselves, trying not to fall over, but it wasn’t working. First one would take a step, fall down, and struggle to get back up, then the other dog would do the same.

  I pulled my truck diagonally across the middle of the road to block traffic until I could help the dogs make their way to the shoulder. Several cars pulled up to my roadblock, honking and shouting with indignation. I ignored them as I tried to help the two dogs. They were both so disoriented that I eventually picked them up one by one and carried them to the grass a few yards off the side of the road. They lay down and stayed there until I could move my truck out of the way of traffic. For the moment, they were safe.

  In the few minutes I was gone, they hadn’t budged. They were terribly skinny, and it was obvious they were deliriously ill. Up close, I could see that once upon a time they had been a full-bodied Rottweiler and a German shepherd. I grabbed all the cans of wet food I had in the truck along with some water, and got them to eat and drink as much as they could handle. I waited with them a little while until they seemed more alert and coherent before I headed to the store for more food and dewormer.

  When I returned, the two dogs were hiding in the bushes along the side of the road, as though waiting for me. The moment I pulled up, they greeted me with wagging tails and as much spring in their step as they were able to muster considering their physical condition. But within moments they were exhausted again, and I led them back to the edge of the jungle. I sat with them, hand-feeding them cans of wet food for about an hour before they fell asleep in my lap.

  My heart was broken. I had seen some skinny, sick dogs in the last months at the beach, but not like this. I couldn’t believe these dogs were still alive. The shepherd’s skin draped off her bones in loose folds like wet paper towels over sticks. She had no muscle mass, only bone structure and mangy skin. The Rottweiler was in slightly better shape, but not by much. They both had collars hanging loosely around their necks. When I removed the collars, I noticed there were still a couple of links of broken chain dangling from them. They must have used the last of their strength to break free from the hell they were living in before they arrived here. And yet I thought they were strangely lucky, as this was the first time I didn’t have to cut off a collar that had become deeply embedded in a dog’s neck. Their starvation had likely spared them the long suffering of strangulation or serious infection I’d seen in so many of the dogs from whose flesh I’d had to cut out rusted bits of old restraints.