Lincoln, Fox and the Bad Dog

by D Roland Hess

  “You’re kind of an idiot,” she said.

  “This is a known fact.”

  “Lincoln, don’t you get it? I like you. Like like you. But you’re a freaking mess. I’ve been in your head. You’re not fit for, well, for anything. And I’m not either. I can’t add another mess to my life. And you can’t add another one to yours. I mean, look at me. I’m a disaster.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m thirty-one, can’t keep a real job, I dress like a high school dingbat who can’t decide which clique she’s in, and I have two roommates.”

  “A lot of people rely on you,” I said. “You have a lot of people connected to you. That’s important. That’s not a disaster from my perspective.”

  I wished that I could side-skip into a different universe where I had people connected to me and bring her with me. Away from everything that had happened to me. I’d even give up everything I’d learned and worked for. It would be easier.

  “That’s important, huh? Not a disaster?” she said. “What good does it do me? I’d be way better off if I weren’t so damned connected.”

  I’m not sure what look flashed across my face.

  “Oh. Lincoln. I’m sorry -- I didn’t mean it like that. Oh my God, I’m an idiot.”

  Yeah.

  “Okay, so maybe we both are,” I said. “Idiots.”

  And why not take a chance?

  “But I’m glad we’re connected.”

  She smiled a bit.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”

  And she quickly took the two steps separating us and kissed me on the mouth. Just for a second.

  “When you get better,” she said, “and I have my life in order, we’ll talk about this. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  What else could I say?

  “I still want to go home,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  I think my brain was stuck. It wasn’t working correctly. It’s possible that all I could say to any statement right now was “okay”. Do you want a cupcake? Okay. Can I have the contents of your wallet? Okay. Can I cut off your fingers and pee in your shoes? Okay.

  “Your friend’s an asshole,” she said, as she turned and started off down the hallway. Babd and I followed.

  “He’s not my friend. Or maybe he is. I don’t know,” I said. “But yeah. You’re right.”

  “The sand beneath his feet,” said Babd.

  As we walked, I was trying to think of the best way to keep Gwen safe after I drove her home. Nothing was springing to mind. I’d get about two steps down a logical path, and then I’d taste her on my mouth and my brain would turn to mush.

  Why? Why did it work that way?

  Maybe I could get Brigit to disable that part of my brain for me. Things would certainly be easier.

  But even if I was thinking properly, this was still a hard problem. So many unknowns. And this was the wrong move. I mean, I get why she wanted out, but tactically this was bad. When you’re playing chess or doing anything really, you can’t cover all of the eventualities, especially the ones you don’t know about. So you put your pieces in the best places that you can even if you don’t have a plan. It can protect you from your opponent’s plans, and maybe along the way a nice avenue will open up that you can take advantage of.

  It felt like we were breaking that methodology. Splitting up was bad, but I wouldn’t/couldn’t argue effectively with her about it. Dan had screwed up too badly.

  We made our way to the storage room door. We’d have to go back out the way we came in, through the window.

  I put my hand on the knob and was about to turn it.

  “Bide,” said Babd. I waited.

  She walked forward, put her nose at the floor and began to sniff the gap under the door. The fur along the center of her back stood up.

  “Draw your weapon,” she said and began to growl.

  For an instant, it seemed like the door crumpled inward, away from us, like the Big Bad Wolf was inside the storage room and had just drawn in a huge breath. Then it blew off its hinges, across the width of the hallway and embedded itself in the drywall opposite the now-empty doorway.

  Babd had leapt to the side in time to miss the flying door, and she jumped right back into the opening as soon as it had passed.

  I was suddenly gripped by an intense feeling of dread.

  “Lincoln,” I heard Gwen say. “What’s going on… I feel…”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. My hands were trembling. I gripped Fox tightly. I could feel his magical presence giving me the tiniest portion of balance, but the fear was still there. I wanted nothing more than to turn and run screaming from the open door.

  But I was getting used to this, the magic screwing with my mind. It had a certain flavor. A part of me was sitting back behind some kind of protective glass now, observing dispassionately and telling me that it recognized the taste, and that the fear wasn’t real.

  It sure felt real.

  I raised Fox toward the open doorway as steadily as I could, which turned out to not be too steadily.

  Footsteps behind me. Gwen was running. That was worse than bad. Whoever or whatever was coming through this door–there was no guarantee it was alone. But I couldn’t afford to turn my back on the doorway.

  I had five different types of shots ready, all selectable via the thumb switch. The fifty-yard safeties (proven in production!), the kinetic force (newly debugged!), the rubber bullets (hahaha will not be using tonight!), incendiary rounds (fire bad!) and a something very special that acted like a short circuit against magical energy. I hoped. It had worked in testing, but I’d never tried it under field conditions.

  I figured I’d start with the safeties and work up from there.

  Babd was low to the ground, her ears flat against her head. I couldn’t tell if she was feeling the magical fear mojo, but I suspected that whatever it was she had going on would probably make her immune to that kind of thing.

  A long, black limb emerged from the darkness. I couldn’t tell if it was hairy or just covered with very fine scales. From the way it moved, my gut told me what would follow, and I wasn’t wrong.

  Two more of the legs felt their way into the light. Babd backed up until she was right beside me.

  I switched Fox to the incendiary rounds. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was waiting for, so I decided to stop waiting.

  I squeezed off three rounds in rapid succession.

  whump-whump-whump followed by a blaze of heat and orange light. An inhuman squeal erupted from the room. The feeling of fear increased, and I found that I was backing away down the hall involuntarily. I had to force my legs to stop moving.

  A bizarre thing staggered into the hall. At first, I figured it would be an insect-like creature based on the legs, but those were followed by a black, misshapen feather-covered body. Stumpy wings sprouted from its shoulders with what looked like the beginnings of fingers on the ends. And it was partially on fire. It wasn’t huge, but it’s shiny black beak looked big and strong enough to snip my legs off without even trying. It wasn’t happy.

  For a second, I had a mental image of Gwen being ripped to shreds by a dozen of these things somewhere else in the building.

  “Babd,” I said, “I’m going to start backing away and trying to kill this thing. Can you face the other direction and warn me if anything else shows up?”

  “I can do this thing,” she said.

  I started to slowly back away. The fear kept pinging my brain, telling me runrunrunrunrun. I knew that if I turned around, the thing would be on me in a second.

  But as long as it was hanging back, being wary and didn’t understand the concept of a ranged weapon, I’d be happy to take advantage.

  The fire was dying out, and it hadn’t seemed to have done it any enormous amount of damage. I dialed up the safety rounds, which in close quarters like this were the equivalent of a .357 magnum.

  I shot it once, and due to its dark coloring and the dim lig
hting, I couldn’t even see where I’d hit it. It started to move toward me. I shot it again. It moved faster.

  “Badb, let’s step it up!” I started to move backward more quickly, fighting against the panic that was asking me to just turn around and flee. I had the strange feeling that somehow my facing the thing was what was keeping it from just charging at me. Nevertheless, it was still getting closer.

  If the Fox AI were installed and working correctly, I’d be able to ask it for a blade of kinetic force only a millimeter thick. I’d project it at the thing’s legs and cut them off like I’d thrown a samurai sword. But that wouldn’t help me now.

  The part of my brain that wasn’t scared shitless was throwing questions at me: where did this come from? Why was it here? Did someone send it? But at the moment, none of the answers to those questions were available or even guessable with any kind of accuracy, so their value was limited. I could try to figure it out later.

  All I knew what that some kind of mutant magical insect/bird thing was crawling down the hallway toward me, I’d already set it on fire and shot it twice, and it was still coming. Slowly, but it was coming.

  I noticed something else too. Trying to think about where it had come from seemed to fight the fear effect it was throwing off. Maybe if I could consciously keep up a logical stream of thought, it would prevent me from panicking and getting torn in half by that beak.

  I kept moving. Babd had my back.

  I reset Fox to the incendiary rounds and pumped three more into the creature.

  It screamed again. It was way louder in the hallway than when it had been in the storage room. The sound carried an extra wave of the fear with it like the thing had flexed whatever gland was making it, and I felt myself turning around.

  I wanted to dial up the magic disruptor, but my hand wasn’t responding. My legs and body were turning away.

  I knew that I shouldn’t be, and that it probably meant I was going to die, but I couldn’t stop myself. The rational part of my brain had been tied up with duct tape and thrown in the trunk. Lizard brain was squarely in charge, and lizard brain was screaming run for your damned life.

  I was running. How long would it take for the thing to pin me to the ground?

  Two steps. Three. It was like a dream where you know you need to run, but somehow your legs don’t work right. The weight of your sleeping body bleeds into the dream.

  The duct-taped me in the trunk was thinking that it probably wasn’t even fear the creature exuded. The fear had been there to begin with. Maybe whatever it was just suppressed rational thought, and let the animal part come out. So, if I had not been scared of the thing to begin with, but, say really, really hungry, maybe I would have just gone wild and started eating whatever was closest at hand. Duct-taped me thought that was funny.

  There was an odd silence for an instant, and I had time to turn my head to see what it was doing. I’d missed the sound of its pincer-like feet clack-clack-clacking on the tile floor. That’s because it had jumped forward, and was in midair. It’s stubby wings flapped horribly, pathetically, as though they were adding to the effect, even though aerodynamics swore that they couldn’t be.

  But I don’t know. The thing was magic. Maybe they did.

  It landed on my back and drove me to the ground. I managed to twist as we went down so I didn’t just land on my stomach. It was surprisingly light for how big it was.

  There was a blinding, nauseating pain in my left leg.

  My right arm was crushed against my side by the bird-thing.

  It was dark in the hallway. The creature was all black chitin and feathers, and I had no way to tell where that beak was. I twisted my wrist to point Fox, well, anywhere. It was all over me, so I could hardly miss. I started pulling the trigger. If I’d been anything other than out of my mind, I would have dialed up the magic disrupting rounds.

  The backwash of heat from the incendiaries was enormous. What a terrible, terrible idea.

  It was on top of me and on fire. I guessed that I was now on fire too, but there was too much going on too quickly for me to notice.

  Suddenly, my right arm was free. I saw Babd tearing the shit out of the big, black leg that had held me. I hit Fox’s switch, hoped for the best and just started pulling the trigger. Ten? Twenty times?

  It didn’t seem to have an effect, other than to splatter me with sharp bits of shell and wet feathers. Must have been the safety rounds. Some chunks of the creature got in my mouth.

  And that’s all the capacity my brain had left for planning and thinking. Someone had put a chloroform rag over duct-taped me’s nose.

  I freaked out. My arms started flailing. I didn’t have the presence of mind to even shoot anymore. Babd was doing… something. I couldn’t see her.

  The thing was grabbing at me like it was looking for something. The beak that was as big as my head kept darting back and forth, so close to me.

  I lost Fox.

  I think I was screaming and hitting it with my fists.

  And then it had me. It had six legs; I had four limbs. It rolled me onto my back with one of its legs on each of my hands and feet. It stretched me out on the floor. Waves of nausea flowed through me as my left leg made a grinding that I could feel up into my spine. I had a momentary vision of Carol Dee twisted into a piece of horrific modern art.

  In my peripheral vision, I could see Fox on the ground against the wall.

  I was hyperventilating. Maybe going into shock.

  It put its huge mouth right up to my face and opened its beak. It inhaled, a long, deep breath.

  But it didn’t eat me.

  It looked puzzled for a moment, if such a thing was possible, and bent its eye-covered head down even closer. It almost nuzzled me then, down my body like a dog sniffing your pant legs.

  And then it let me go.

  I didn’t move. I didn’t want to give it an excuse. I was trying not to scream again, but the pain in my leg forced an anguished sound from my mouth.

  It didn’t seem to care.

  Instead, it turned its gaze on Fox.

  Delicately, it plucked the gun from the floor with the tip of its beak. Then, it threw back its head and swallowed it.

  Gone.

  Fox.

  There was a new sound. Someone else yelling.

  Dan.

  I turned my head and saw him striding around the far corner of the hallway.

  Because of how I was lying, I saw the whole thing upside down.

  As soon as Dan showed himself, the bug-bird went berserk. It tore down the hallway, making gouges in the drywall as it propelled itself along.

  There was a flash in Dan’s hand, and I could see a length of blue light extending from it. The knife handle he’d taken from Stoneface. Except this time, it wasn’t five inches long like the knife I’d seen. This was almost a foot and reminded me of one of those expandable police night sticks.

  Bug-bird jumped at him–face first, mouth open–and Dan timed his swing perfectly. He’d held the weapon vertically and gave a kind of cross-body cut, then ducked. The front of the creature’s face came off, beak and all. Its body went tumbling over Dan. Dan didn’t wait for it to recover. He dove in and started hacking.

  The knife thing he was using was far, far more effective than anything Fox had thrown out. Also, I hadn’t realized that Dan was any good using hand-to-hand weaponry. The more you know.

  Three seconds? Four, maybe. That’s all the time it took for Dan to basically dismantle the thing. It was hard to see what was going on ten yards down the hallway on the floor when I was on the floor myself.

  And my leg.

  Clearly broken.

  I couldn’t think.

  I tried to roll over onto my stomach so I could army-crawl, but even that didn’t work. I couldn’t muster the leverage. A wave of pain short-circuited my attempt and left me even weaker than I’d been a moment ago.

  I felt myself blacking out, which was really really bad.

  Shock?


  Probably.

  I pushed it away, or tried to.

  I made fists.

  Something grabbed me by the hand.

  I tried to pull away but couldn’t.

  There was wetness on my face.

  And softness.

  Babd was licking my face.

  I opened my eyes and saw that Gwen had one of my arms, and Dan had the other one.

  Okay.

  Brigit was there, too.

  “Please hold still, Lincoln,” she said. “This isn’t going to feel good. Dan, you’re touching him. Can you help us out?”

  Dan went silent for several seconds, then he said some words.

  “That doing anything for you buddy?”

  I noted no change in the amount of nauseating pain, so I shook my head.

  Shameful, honest truth: I wanted my mom and dad. I wanted to try to help out with what was happening to me here, but all I could do was wish for them to be here.

  “Sorry,” said Dan. “It’s too much for me to able to tackle in here without any prep.”

  “Shit,” said Brigit. “Hold him.”

  “Wait!” I said. “Hold him?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I have to fix you up now. And it’s going to hurt. If you’re lucky, you’ll pass out.”

  I looked down and saw a bit of white protruding from my pant leg.

  Panic.

  There was blood on Brigit’s hand.

  I noticed how wet my pants were down there.

  She put her hand back on my leg, and things started to turn red. I was breathing faster.

  After a moment though, she took her hands off.

  “It’s not going to work in here,” she said. “I can’t do it. We have to get him out of this building.”

  They were helping me up.

  “No,” I said, and the sound my ears played back to me was not the kind of sound I’d dialed up.

  “Lincoln,” Gwen said, “we have to get you outside so Brigit can take care of your leg.”

  “Don’t get me up,” I said. I couldn’t imagine what that would feel like, but the pain of them just trying to get me to a sitting position was incredible.

  “Drag me. On the tile.”

  I’ll remember the next minute and a half for the rest of my life.

  They tried their best to balance being gentle with getting me the hell out of there, but every now and then my weight would shift and things down there would grind…