Devoted(91)
Kipp and Woody were on the Wire.
In the wake of all the recent Bellagrams, they were now at a turning point of history.
They were a turning point of history.
Kipp knew it, and Woody knew it, and everyone on the Wire knew it, and there was no boom or flash.
Although Kipp explained the situation and made the appeal, per the plan that had been devised, Woody was the star.
Many Mysterians, though not all, lived with people who shared their secret.
They had invented clever ways to communicate, similar to what Dorothy had arranged with the alphabet wall.
This was the first time, however, that they were able to speak directly to a human being.
Their excitement level was high, but they didn’t all speak at once.
They were disciplined and considerate. They were dogs.
Each Mysterian’s voice, being imagined and telepathic, was either like that of one of its human companions or was based on the voice of an actor on television.
Woody on the Wire sounded like Woody face-to-face, the Woody released from a lifetime of silence.
Kipp sounded like a certain game-show host on TV.
Historic moments were no less likely to include an absurdity or two than were moments about which historians cared nothing.
When the appeal had been made and responses received, when Kipp and Woody disconnected from the Wire, the dog bit the boy.
It was a play bite, no skin broken.
Woody growled and bared his teeth.
Kipp growled and bared his bigger teeth.
They wrestled with much flailing of paws.
Woody sprang up. He dashed into the adjacent bathroom.
Kipp scrambled into the bathroom after the boy.
Woody pivoted out of the bathroom and pulled the door shut.
Kipp’s black nose appeared at the one-inch gap between door and floor, sniffing frantically.
Woody lay prostrate, teasing the nose with a finger.
When Kipp issued a woof of frustration, Woody opened the door.
The boy leaped onto the bed, pulled the covers over his head.
Kipp sprang onto the bed and thrust his snout into every fold of blanket that he found, seeking a route to his giggling, cocooned companion.
Such were the ways of dogs and boys, even after they had been the lever that turned history on its fulcrum, even as a night of violence was about to end in the dawn of a day that promised worse.
97
As the sheriff and his three deputies waited for two more men, those bearing shotguns, the heating and cooling plant behind the county hospital acquired an ever more ominous air, becoming for Hayden Eckman the repository of all evils, the vault of his fate. Beyond the dark windows seemed to be something more disturbing than lightless rooms, a bottomless void from which no escape could be achieved once you had entered. The bright windows were no more reassuring than the dark panes, the quality of light otherworldly, witchy.
The incessant wind not only stung his eyes and parched his skin and chapped his lips, but also abraded his nerves, as did the memory of Justine Klineman’s ravaged face, as did Thad Fenton’s blood on the pavement below that third-story window. He began to think he had made a mistake when he’d closed his law office. He had needed three attempts to pass his bar exam, and he’d been little more than a slip-and-fall personal-injury shakedown artist, and his income had been limited by the frequency with which his own clients took him to arbitration and won a refiguring of his fees. But at least none of them ever bit him in the face or anywhere else.
In cascades of red and blue pulsations, but without a siren, the expected patrol car arrived. Two men clambered out, fresh-faced and lanky and, in spite of their shotguns, about as reassuring as a couple of Hollywood’s more callow young actors playing at being real men. They were among the hires that Eckman had made, chosen in part because they seemed too slow-witted ever to notice or even suspect their boss might be corrupt. They looked like potential fodder waiting to be mulched.
The sheriff instructed one of them to lead the way, the other to bring up the rear, and he patiently, repeatedly stressed that they were to take special care not to discharge their 12-gauge semiautos if any of their own people were within the arc of fire. He could only assume that their solemn nods meant they understood and were not merely the organic equivalent of the mechanical action of bobblehead dolls.
The small parking area that served the heating-cooling plant contained not a single vehicle, though it seemed there ought to be one belonging to Eric Norseman, graveyard-shift maintenance man.
As a first sign that something might be amiss, the main door to the plant stood open, held that way by the wind, which caused it to thump softly against the exterior wall.
The lighted vestibule offered three doors.
A deputy opened the one on the right and cleared the threshold. Beyond lay a large chamber with boilers, chillers, holding tanks, pumps, a maze of machinery the sheriff couldn’t identify, and a labyrinth of PVC pipes of various sizes running both vertically and horizontally. The room resonated with the humming, throbbing, ticking of exquisitely coordinated machines and with the susurration of rushing water under pressure. The place resembled the set for an action scene in a James Bond film, with too many blind corners to turn, too many hulking objects to look behind.
Sheriff Eckman didn’t want to have to search there unless absolutely necessary, and they wouldn’t know if it was necessary until they checked behind the remaining two doors.