“Maybe radiation killed them?” she said.

“Doubtful,” I said. “You know how they say cockroaches will survive a nuclear bomb? I bet crickets are the same way. I mean, are they much different?”

“Well, yes, Jordan, crickets are different from cockroaches,” she scoffed. “That’s like saying dogs are the same as cats.”

“Well, I bet radiation would have a similar effect on dogs and cats,” I said. “So there.”

Maggie gave me the side-eye, then pondered the matter. “You may be right.”

“I may be crazy,” I returned. “It’s weird either way.”

We lay still a bit longer. The garden stretched back a good fifty yards before it hit the forest, which loomed large and dark against the sky. When we were little, Maggie and I used to play in the forest all the time. We each had a tree fort—or, really, just trees that we claimed for ourselves and called forts. Mine had a branch bent at a right angle just below another branch; I used to sit there and act like it was my control room. One broken limb stuck out like a joystick, and I used it to fire my “guns” at her. Maggie would climb up her tree and throw spiny chestnuts down at me. One got lodged in the crotch of my pants, and I howled as if she’d done some real damage.

“Get it off! Get it off!” I screamed.

She looked alarmed, but when she started reaching down for it, I couldn’t keep a straight face and cracked up.

“Jordan!” she yelled, and fetched another handful of spiny chestnuts and nailed me in the chest with two of them. They actually did hurt.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“Dogs and radiation, still,” she said. “And that bear. I wonder whether radiation can make animals more aggressive.”

“I’m really sorry about Nerf,” I said.

“I am, too. But there was another crazed dog yesterday, and today Mom got a call about a third dog that’s going nuts and biting people. Also, the police shot a wild boar that was walking down the street and charging anyone it saw. It gouged a ten-year-old pretty bad.”

“Is it rabies? Or what’s that other one—distemper?”

She shook her head. “Distemper is a viral disease that has nothing to do with temper. Plus, wild boars don’t get it.”

“Rabies, then.”

“Nope. No sign of that. These are just raging animals, like they’ve all gone bonkers. And get this: When we had Nerf and another dog cremated yesterday, the mortuary guy found two little metal discs in the remains. I’m wondering whether those had anything to do with the dogs turning aggressive.”

“The discs were in the dogs?”

“Apparently.”

“Like they’d been implanted?”

She shrugged. “Since the internet doesn’t work, I went down to the library to research radiation and radioactivity, but I haven’t learned much.”

“Did you find anything about radiation helping people?”

“Aside from zapping cancerous tumors?”

“Yeah, like giving someone extra … power?”

“That’s only if you get bitten by a radioactive spider,” she said, her lips curling upward.