The Library at Mount Char Part 26

The dogs were on Dresden now. First one, then three, then a dozen, then two dozen with a hundred more on the way. Together they formed a living wall of muscle and fur. The cab couldn't push through that, Steve thought. A tank couldn't push through that. He slammed the cab door. Now Dresden was buried under them, invisible under a roiling mountain of fur and teeth-Labs, poodles, Dobermans, Rottweilers, black, yellow, brown. The cabdriver's pale face watched all this from the bathroom window. Steve rolled down the van's window, frantic, then drew the pistol and steadied himself. He took careful aim, fired. A dog fell, screaming, and was replaced by three more. He fired again, fired until the pin clicked down on an empty chamber. "f.u.c.k you!" he screamed. "f.u.c.k you, f.u.c.k you, f.u.c.k YOU!"

One or two of the dogs looked up at this. A chocolate Lab barked, then ran for the van. Steve rolled the window back up, but he wasn't quick enough. The dog hung on to the window by furry brown paws, barking and snapping, hind legs scrabbling at the door. There were only about three inches of room between the top of the gla.s.s and the door frame, not enough to get at Steve, but the dog's weight was such that he couldn't roll the window up. He flipped the dog the bird, put the key in the ignition.

The cab started immediately. He backed out of the driveway. The brown dog still clung to the window, blocking his view. Steve leaned back in the seat to check if, by some miracle, Dresden had emerged from the pile.

He had not.

Steve pointed the cab at the exit and floored it. A few seconds later he squealed to a stop at the gate, tires smoking. He put on his blinker, turned right onto Highway 78, floored it again.

The Garrison Oaks sign dwindled in his rearview mirror.

IV.

The cabdriver's name was Harshen Patel. Two hours later, cowering behind a shower curtain in a dusty green bathtub, he heard a woman's voice.

"Steve?"

"Be careful!" Patel said. "I think that they are crazy!" He cradled his left hand, bandaged in a roll of b.l.o.o.d.y toilet paper and what was left of his s.h.i.+rt.

"Steve?" Her tone was doubtful now.

"I do not know who that is. If you're looking for the lying a.s.shole with the two lions, he left."

"He left?" She sounded incredulous.

"Yes. A couple hours ago."

"How?"

"He stole my taxi."

She chuckled. "He's resourceful. I'll give him that."

"You should be very careful," Harshen said. "There are two of them, an old man and a woman. She came to me and said, 'Supper is ready!' and then they both started...started...biting me." He heard the edge of a scream in his voice and clamped down on it. "They have eaten my left pinkie finger. And part of my thumb. They might still be out there. You should-"

"It's OK," the woman said. She rattled the doork.n.o.b. "Can you open this, please?"

Harshen considered this for several seconds, then reached out with a shaking hand and opened the door.

The woman in the hall was on the small side, frizzy-haired, barefoot. She carried a blue duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She looked him up and down, surveying the wounds in his shoulder, his neck, his crotch. Her brown eyes were dark and intense, difficult to meet. "You'll live."

"Do you think so?"

"Yeah. You were lucky. Not a lot of people get to visit in this neighborhood."

Harshen nodded, miserable. "I believe you. I wonder...may we please leave now?"

She thought about it. "Sure." She shrugged. "I'll walk you out. What's your name?"

He told her. They stepped out into the light together.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Carolyn."

"Do you...do you live here?"

"Not in this one." She jerked her thumb down the street. "I'm a couple blocks deeper."

"Oh." He looked at her, horrified.

"Relax. I won't hurt you. You helped Steve." She shook her head, smiling. "He really is ever so good at slipping out of these petonsha, don't you think?"

"These what?"

"Sorry. That isn't English. They all start to blur after a while. I said 'petonsha.' It means 'little traps.'"

"Oh."

They walked in silence for a block or so.

She spoke next. "Still...you did help Steve. I should repay the favor." She considered. "Do you have a family? Do you live in the city?"

"My wife. Esperanza. We have two boys. But no, we're out in-"

She waved her hand, cutting him off. "I don't care at all. When we get to the end of the street, I'm going to disappear. When that happens, put your family in your car and-"

"I can't."

"What?"

"I can't put my family in my car. He stole it. I don't know where it is."

"Who stole it? Steve?"

"Is he the lion man?"

"Yes."

"Yes. Him. He is the motherf.u.c.ker who stole my cab."

"Oh. Hmm." Carolyn thought about it for a second, then handed him the blue duffel bag. "Here. Take this. Buy another one."

He unzipped the bag, looked inside. Money. "Oh!"

"Yeah. Spend it fast. It won't be worth much in a week or two-Barry O'Shea is out of hiding. Once he's established, there will be a sort of, umm, plague."

"What? What plague? Who is-"

"It doesn't matter. Pack up your wife and kids. Buy food, water, weapons. A generator, maybe. Go into the city-someplace with a lot of electric lights, and a good power supply. Get indoors, on the top floor of a tall building, if you can. Stay away from windows. And if you see people with tentacles, stay away. Don't let them touch you."

Harshen gaped at her. She spoke of insanities, but her voice was calm and certain. Her expression reminded him of a painting that frightened him as a child-Kali the annihilator, smiling as small things died.

"It's about to get very dark, you see."

Chapter 10.

Asuras

I.

Two miles west, Highway 78 merged into a four-lane that led into town, such as it was-basically a couple of strip malls between Steve and more empty road. The speed-limit sign said 45. He glanced down and saw he was doing 80, the rattletrap taxi shaking like the magic fingers at a cheap motel. He rolled to a stop at the first red light, a little jerkily.

There's blood on the winds.h.i.+eld, he thought. How did that get there? He squirted wiper fluid on it, hoping it would clean off some of the dog blood. It didn't, just smeared it around a little. He felt dazed.

In the back, Naga lifted her head and looked around, blinking.

"Feeling better?" He thought the second suppository might be doing its thing. "Don't try to move. We're out. No more dogs!"

She twitched her tail a little, then bent around to her hindquarters and sniffed the bandages.

"Well, yeah," Steve sighed. "There is that." Where the h.e.l.l do you take a wounded lion? The zoo?

A black Toyota truck inched to a stop beside him. Steve glanced over at it and found himself at eye level with the mud flaps. It was jacked up so high you'd almost need a ladder to get in and out. Do you call that a monster truck? What's the dividing line? Steve wondered. How big does it have to get before it becomes a monster? Is it just x number of inches higher than factory, or do the tires have to- The truck honked. Steve looked up. Three or four feet up, some guy in the pa.s.senger seat was gesturing for Steve to roll down his window. Steve did. "Yes?"

The pa.s.senger was a kid, about eighteen or twenty. His baseball cap was on backward. "Yo, man," he said. "You got, like, half a dog hanging off your back b.u.mper."

"Do I?"

"Yeah. Did you drive over it? On purpose, like?"

"No. The Buddha teaches respect for all life." Then, under his breath. "I guess I did shoot a couple though."

"There's blood all over your f.u.c.kin' door too, man. You get in a a.s.sident or something?"

"Nope. Dog fight." Something occurred to him. "Hey, is there a vet around here?"

The kid looked at him like he was crazy. "Man, ain't no vet gonna help that dog. He's cut in half, yo!"

"It's not for him," Steve said. "It's for her."

"What?"

Steve jerked his thumb at the backseat. The kid leaned out and down, peeping. "Whoa!" Then, to the driver, "Hey, Frank, that guy got a f.u.c.king lion in his cab!"

The driver leaned forward. "Say whaaaaat? Lean back, I can't-"

Maybe you should work harder on keeping a low profile, fugitive boy.

"Holy s.h.i.+t!" the driver said. "I know you! You that guy from Fox News!"

"Nope!" Steve said. "Not me! I get that a lot, though! Ha-ha!" This G.o.dd.a.m.n light is taking forever. He considered running it, just to get away from the kids in the truck. Nah. Bad idea. Instead he rolled up the window-this actually helped; it was crusty with dog s...o...b..r-and pretended to study the strip-mall sign a quarter mile up. He squinted. There was a Bi-Lo, a Walmart, some restaurant called Monsieur Taco-What the f.u.c.k?-and the Black Path Animal Hospital.

Steve considered. He figured it was about 50/50 that the guys in the truck would call 911. He needed to get off the road, fast. On the other hand, there's Naga. She was nibbling at her bandages. They were saturated, dripping. The suppository had helped, but it wouldn't last.

The light turned green.

"f.u.c.k it," he said. "'The true Buddhist will not be a moral and intellectual coward.'" He waited for the guys in the truck to roll away, then pulled in behind them. Half a block later he turned left into the strip mall, badly. The cab was a Chrysler Voyager minivan, a four-cylinder. It had a lot less power than his plumbing truck. Steve misjudged the gap to an oncoming BMW, obliging its driver to screech to a halt. She and Steve exchanged one-finger salutes. Naga lifted her head up again and roared. That startled him enough that he hopped the curb, clipped a hedge, and nearly T-boned a truck full of landscapers pulling out of the McDonald's drive-thru. "Aaagh!"

Naga roared again.

"Shut up! I'm driving!"

In the rearview, Naga gave him a reproachful look. Steve slowed to a walking speed and crossed the rest of the parking lot carefully, looking both ways at junctions, finally coasting to a stop in front of a vet. A sign out front read GET KITTY A FLEA DIP!

"Wait here," Steve said to Naga. "I'll be right back." He put the pistol in the back waistband of his sweatpants and pulled his concert s.h.i.+rt down over it. Walking around the back of the taxi, he saw that there was indeed half of a dog dangling from the tailpipe. It was too b.l.o.o.d.y to be sure, but he thought it might have been the chocolate Lab that had latched onto his window. Maybe it got wedged under the m.u.f.fler somehow? He vaguely remembered b.u.mps in the road as he pulled out of Garrison Oaks.

Thinking that the veterinarian might not approve, he spent a second trying to get the corpse a little more out of sight, but it was both deeply, deeply disgusting and wedged solidly in place. When gall rose in his throat he gave up, wiped his hand on the back of his sweats, and limped to the office.

The waiting room had a tile floor and smelled like cat food. A fussy-looking man in a bow tie held a Yorks.h.i.+re terrier on a short leash. Opposite him a middle-aged hippie sat with a cat carrier on her lap.

Steve leaned against the receptionist's desk, his hands crusty with dried blood. "I need to see one of the doctors." Panting. "It's urgent."

The Yorkie, small and immaculate, barked at him.

"You'll need to fill this out," the receptionist said, eyeing him cautiously. "And I'm afraid these two people are both ahead of you. Do you have an appointment?"