Shadows (37 page)

“Aren’t your arms getting tired?” I said.

He lowered them. “You’ll tell your wolf not to eat me, okay?” he said. “That is a wolf, isn’t it?”

“Er,” I said. “Yes.”

He nodded. “You ever been to that wolf rescue place, far side of West Turbine?”

Of course I had. It’s got critters. After Clare ended up with a bobcat I wanted her to diversify into wolves too.

“I tried to get a job there but they didn’t need anybody. Your wolf is really huge. I’ve never seen such a huge one. Hey,” he said. Mongo was doing his big-friendly-eyes-wagging-tail thing. Mongo wagged his tail harder, went down on his belly, and began to creep in the man’s direction. I could have called him back, but I didn’t. When Mongo got close enough the man sat down suddenly on the floor and Mongo, immediately ecstatic, sat up, and the man put his arms around him and buried his face in his fur. You
so
don’t do that with a strange dog, but Mongo’s tail had gone into blur mode and he had found a piece of the man to lick.

Val walked the few steps to the desk slowly but the man didn’t move. Val picked up the gun, clicked something, and a lot of bullets fell out into his hand. I wondered some more about what Val’s life had been like in Orzaskan.

This time I didn’t even have to open my algebra book: there was a page sticking out between the covers. I slid it the rest of the way out, set the book down, and started folding. The
gruuaa
came to help, pitter-patting over my hands, brushing against my face, and, I guess, billowing out into a quivering—I don’t know, maybe like the curtain at the back of the stage, only wigglier.

“Whoa,” said Arnie. “What
is
that? The shadows?”

“Gruuaa,”
I said briefly.

“Of course,” said Arnie. “I knew that.”

Val gave a little snort of laughter. “They’re Oldworld creatures,” he said.

There was a tiny pause and Arnie said, “You’ll be Val.”

“Be quiet,”
I said. “Please.”

This one went much faster, and the headache wasn’t nearly as bad. It was kind of funny in a not-ha-ha way that lock-picking gave me a worse headache than interdimensional travel. I held up another long spiky thing with a lot of legs and—this time—really almost managed not to think, What if it doesn’t work?, slapped it on the lock between Arnie’s wrists and—I hadn’t heard Val come up behind me, but he grabbed me again when I sagged. The sag wasn’t as bad this time either. And then Arnie was free, and there was more weird crumbly stuff on the ground that had been chains.

“Oh, wow,” said the man with his arms still around Mongo, but he had lifted his face and was watching us. “Oh,
wow.
”

“We must leave,” said Val, as if we’d dropped by for a cup of coffee. “What do you want to do?”

“Run away,” said the man immediately. “I suppose they’ll sue me or court-martial me or something. You couldn’t tie me up, could you? So it doesn’t look so much like . . . at least take the dreeping gun, will you?”

Arnie stood up and stretched. “Thanks, babe,” he said. “I didn’t know you were one of us.”

“Us?”
I said.

“Honey, there are so many of us,” he said. “But I’ve never seen anyone do what you just did.”

“Us?”
I said again.

“Why do you think I run a hardware store?” Arnie said. “It’s a good way to confuse the sweeps. You don’t think it’s all about cobeys, do you?”

“I—” I said. “Well, I
did.
But—hardware? I—er—I mean, the last few days, um, animals—”

“Yeah,” said Arnie. “Animals are good too. It kind of depends on what kind you are. Clare’s one of us. I should have guessed you were, since you’re there all the time.”

“I
wasn’t
one,” I said a little wildly. “Till about three days ago.” Years. Centuries. Eons.

“Poor babe,” he said. “It’s rough when you find out like that. Happened to me about your age too. My mom had tried to tell me it was going to, but I didn’t want to hear. But I’m the cold-iron end. Handling a lot of it every day also means I don’t blow up fancy technology so much, which is kind of a dead giveaway. You still don’t want me using your ’tronics.”

“Maybe I could come with you,” said the man sitting on the floor with his arms around my dog. Mongo had finished with one side of his face and was now working hard on the other side.

“If you’re a friend of Paolo’s,” I said, “you could see how he’s doing. He—er—fainted.”

“Oh, man, Paolo,” said the man. “Paolo’s like my best friend. Even if Watchguard was his idea. I walk his dog sometimes. I babysit his kids.”

“What’s your name?” I said.

“Jamal,” said the man. “Where’s Paolo?”

“We’ll show you,” I said. “We—er—we have to go out that way. I guess.”

“Good luck,” said Jamal. “If you can blow stuff up, the ’tronics for all the barrier stuff to get out of here are in the front office, on your way out.” He stood up, to Mongo’s sorrow. Mongo settled for nibbling delicately on his fingers. I was ready to intervene but apparently Jamal knew (crazy herding) dogs well enough to realize this was a sign of affection.

“Thanks,” I said.

“The office may be empty,” said Jamal. “There’s some kind of whiztizz out front. Bill just told me him and Benny were going to go take a look. You guys weren’t supposed to be here at all”—he nodded at Arnie and Val—“but there’ve been like three more cobeys open up on the deep line and they haven’t got the humanpower to cover everything. So they were blasting on with opening Goat Creek up because this was going to be the big central whatever, and they were sending in some kind of shielded truck to take you away but it got sent to one of the cobeys instead.” He shrugged.

I looked at him. He looked nervously back at me. “I know you had your hands over your head and everything,” I said. “I don’t think you were exactly bluffing. But why aren’t you more afraid of us? And why are you telling us how to get out?”

Jamal’s eyes slid away from mine. “Oh . . . well,” he said. “My mom . . .”

Arnie laughed. “I told you, babe. There are so many of us.”

I heard myself saying, “If there are so
many
of—if there are so many, why are only you and Val here?”

“Huh,” he said, and opened the door. Takahiro tactfully retreated behind me and Jamal went out first. “I’m worried about Clare,” Arnie said. “But most of us are pretty half-volt. Little ’uns. Not me, although I’m stiff as a seized brake. Not your stepdad. Not you. Not you either, whoever you are,” he added, looking at Takahiro.

We all followed Jamal out the door, including Mongo and the
gruuaa
flood, I for one feeling bewildered and rather silly. The corridor was still grey and empty. “There,” I said as we went past the room where Paolo was, and Jamal opened the door and went softly in. “Oh, man,” he said.

“I’ll lock you in, shall I?” said Val.

“Oh yeah, thanks,” said Jamal’s voice from behind the door.

Val’s hand lingered on the knob before he closed it. “If you need to get out,” he said, “the charm will break from your side.”

“Thanks,” said Jamal’s voice.

We went on. The
gruuaa
were still rolling on in front of us but as we went farther down the corridor it was like they were hitting some kind of shoal, and getting humped back toward us.

The corridor suddenly widened, and the ceiling got a lot farther away. From feeling like we were walking into an ambush I felt like we’d just walked out onto the open battlefield and the guys with the cannon and the air-to-rescue-party missiles would blow us away in a minute.

We were maybe all breathing a little hard as we approached a big open door on the left. The corridor was badly lit all along its length, but there was a lot of bright flickering light shining out through that door. It didn’t look friendly. Well, it wasn’t likely to
be
friendly, was it?

“Wait here,” said Arnie. “Let me scope it out. And I’ll leave Jamal’s gun under someone’s desk.”

I began to notice that there was some kind of confused noise going on—I thought outside the building. Some kind of whizztizz, Jamal had said. Maybe Jill and Casimir and the
gruuaa
had found a way to make my non-plan work after all. We were about twenty feet from the end of the corridor, which was barricaded by a gigantic pair of double doors, like they sometimes used this end of the corridor as a garage for their cobey-unit trucks. But I was mostly thinking about Jill and Casimir and Bella and Jonesie and the others. The sick feeling in my stomach, which had mostly gone away while we were talking to Jamal, was coming back, and had brought friends. Uggh.

The light flickered in a different pattern. There were some pinging and popping noises and the double doors cracked open. Not enough to let me squeeze out, let alone Val or Arnie, who was Val-width and a good head taller.

But the crack let the noise rush in. There was crashing like an army getting lost in a lot of undergrowth, and there was shouting like an army getting mad about getting lost in a lot of undergrowth, and there were revving engine noises like army trucks having trouble bashing their way through a lot of undergrowth—and there was one voice shouting all by itself like whoever it was was really mad at someone else for doing something stupid—like maybe getting locked out of their own compound?

And there was barking.

There was Bella’s deep bay, and Bella was not a barker. I’d heard her bark maybe once before—but the noise a wolfhound makes is pretty memorable. There was Jonesie’s no-nonsense not-completely-ex-fighting-dog bark and then Dov’s mess-with-me-at-your-peril warning bark.
No,
I thought. Don’t do it. Those guys have guns. The
gruuaa
can’t protect you from bullets. My sick feeling was getting a lot worse.

Val said, “Wait here,” and followed Arnie through the office door.

Mongo and Taks and I went to the front door and peered out cautiously. It was strangely hard to breathe; it was like there was a giant hand pressing against my chest. I had my own hand on Mongo’s collar. I wasn’t sure what the
gruuaa
who had been with us were doing; in the weak shifting light I couldn’t tell them from the real shadows. Maybe they were swirling out to join their friends in the field. I tried to look for the
gruuaa
-network thing that I’d hoped Jill and Casimir could use—but that had been when we’d been assuming the army guys we had to deal with were inside the buildings, not outside. It was just supposed to look weird. It wasn’t supposed to have to stop anybody.

Yes. There it was. It was all mixed up in the undergrowth that the army guys were having trouble with. And I was pretty sure there were more
gruuaa
weaving themselves into it now—the ones that had been with us, presumably. Somehow my stomach didn’t feel any better.

I jumped back as the doors jerked open a little farther, dragging Mongo with me. I was just thinking, It’s dark out there, and the corridor lights are really showing up that the door is opening—when the corridor lights went out. Then there was the mother and father of all BANGS and the office lights went out too—but at the same time an alarm went off,
WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP,
the loudest thing you ever heard, and a bunch of emergency lights burst on outside as the front doors ground slowly about three-quarters open.

We could get out. But so could the bad guys get in. Or see us trying to get out. And there were a lot of bad guys out there. There was certainly something going on besides picking up two prisoners. I could see three trucks branded with the cobey logo from where I had flattened myself against the corridor wall.

I couldn’t hear anything through the alarm, but I could see the two guys with rifles running toward us.

Then three things happened simultaneously. The guys with rifles stopped like they’d run into a wall of something like extra-strength plastic wrap—invisible in the murky twilight and slightly springy—and I found that I was breathing and blinking and moving more easily.

Not quite invisible. As I stared at it I could see spiky, too-many-leggy, wiggly, faintly sparkling shadows. But there were new . . . strands, like skinny wires, that the leggy-wiggly things seemed to be winding themselves into. Were these what Arnie and Val were doing in the office? I didn’t think the
gruuaa
alone would have that rubbery strength.

I took a deep breath . . .

. . . As a familiar furry shadow that turned mahogany-brown under the emergency lights leaped out from somewhere, raced toward us, and . . . sat down in the middle of the doorway between the three-quarters-open doors.

Majid stuck out a hind leg, examined it carefully, and began to wash.

The lights and siren began doing complicated dropping-out things. The alarm would miss a WOOP and then a light would go out. Then that light would come back on and another light would go out. The alarm would WOOP twice and miss again. Under other circumstances it might have been kind of interesting. Or it might just have made you crazy.

WOOP. Flash. Dazzle. WOOP.

It was hard to see through the plastic wrap. Everything looked kind of swimmy, like looking into a scummy pond. It was pretty manic back there though. In the silences I began to hear voices: “That’s—”

“—
and
all the dogs—”

“—monsters—”

“—damn cat—”

“—shelter—”

“Of course I’m gods’-engines sure!”

Jonesie gave one last sharp bark and subsided—I hoped that meant some human had told him to shut up. And that that meant that the critters and the humans—
our
critters and
our
humans—were okay and
together.
Except, of course, for the one enjoying the spotlight while he went on with his left hind leg.

Majid glanced back at me, as if he knew I was thinking about him. He did that a lot at the shelter. You’d think, Now what we particularly
don’t
need right now is Majid—and there he’d be. The shadows around him in the doorway moved. Some of them were
gruuaa.
Majid turned his attention to his right hind leg.