Smudge didn’t see any security cameras so she reached up and snapped the zip-tie that held her neck to the gurney railing.
She started to stretch the knots out of her shoulders but had forgotten about the remaining darts in her back. They scraped on the gurney’s mattress, and as the barbs dug deeper into her she almost yelped out loud. It took her a few minutes of uncomfortable contortioning to pull them out with her teeth or her paws. The darts finally came out with a twist and a tug, and with more than a little sting.
She settled for a moment to catch her breath and read her body. The dull burn from the bullet wound on her back indicated her earlier focusing had worked. It was healing quickly and she could feel new tissue proliferation and collagen deposition had started. She concentrated for a moment and sent out the same blast of extra platelets and fibrin to the little dart holes.
The last remnants of the tranq’s drugs were also being processed out of her blood. Part of her wished she could have let the high linger a little longer to help the pain but she needed her wits.
She stood up, shook out the last of her muscle kinks, and leapt from the gurney to Kelcy’s bed to give her a quick lick on the cheek. Aside from being unconscious it looked like she was okay. There were no wounds, other than the small holes left by the darts that the nurse had cleaned and bandaged. Smudge wasn’t sure what the sliding scales on the monitors above her headboard were showing, but all of them were in the green zone. There were also two clear tubes running from a panel in the headboard to Kelcy’s arm. Smudge stared at the fluids in the tubes and at the monitors, and wished she could ask Spot what to do.
She jumped off the bed, paused to work out a stinging cramp in her shoulder, and then quickly rummaged around the room. The security guards had policed all of the gear the assassins tossed on the floor and the only thing left was Katia’s bloody t-shirt.
Smudge checked the rear storage cabinets. They appeared to hold a standard array of medical supplies. She pawed through drawers of needles, drugs, bandages, and braces of every sort but saw nothing that would make an effective weapon, other than the scalpels.
She took two of them and hid one under her gurney’s thick plastic covered mattress and one under the sheet next to Kelcy’s zip-tied hand.
She opened the side panels of her high-tech hospital bed. There were small tanks of oxygen and what she assumed to be anesthetics alongside lots of other equipment she didn’t recognize.
Smudge worked out the last of her kinks as she walked to the unconscious Chinese assassin by the door. She jumped up on his bed and noticed he was connected to the same two tubes as Kelcy, and his monitors also showed the same green status.
She felt around in his pockets and found his cell phone. It powered on to a passcode screen but there was no emergency call option. As she stuffed the phone back into his pocket the man groaned, and turned his face towards her. Smudge paused for a moment, staring at him as he continued to breathe steadily and deeply.
She took a long look at the lightning bolt tattoo below his ear. Flexing her paws, she thought about finishing what she couldn’t bring herself to do at the clinic. She looked at Kelcy, and tortured herself for having hesitated. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought as she shook her head, What was I thinking? I should have ripped every last one of them to pieces right there I that lobby. Gifted my furry black ass.
Smudge leapt off the bed. Killing him now wouldn’t help their situation any, and might make it worse. She wondered if there really was a worse as she pressed her ear to the door.
There wasn’t any sounds of people or movement coming from the hallway so she cracked it open and leaned her head out. The wide corridor was empty and ran about fifty feet in both directions. The walls were the same pristine white tile as the treatment room, and she remembered coming through the loading dock’s plastic curtains and turning right, so she knew the rear of the building was to her left.
Smudge saw a pair of security cameras at the far ends of the hallway, and she let the door click closed again.
With her head pressed against the treatment room door Smudge ran through her options, and again wished her brother was there with her. She could move Kelcy to the gurney and wheel her out of the room, and hope they weren’t seen, but then what? She could wait for Kelcy to wake up and they could attempt an escape on foot, but it sounded like that could be hours and Smudge might have her head removed by then for the rabies test. Neither sounded like a great plan.
The black drained from her coat as she slid into the hallway. She hoped the security cameras, and the guards who may be watching them, couldn’t easily detect a white dog against white tiles.
The rooms were only marked with numbers. She paused at each to listen, and sample the air under each door. The first two she assumed to be storage rooms. She smelled cleaners, musty mops, cardboard, and they were dark and sounded empty. The third room was alive with light and the buzz of equipment. There was also the squeaking of chairs, and the movement and breathing of humans. Based on the smell Smudge assumed it to be the laboratory where Marty and Johann were testing the stool samples from Pembury. She moved on past several doors that smelled like offices and were dark and quiet. When she neared the closed double doors at the end of the hallway she paused. The last door on her side of the corridor was open, and the room beyond it was dimly lit.
As she inched forward more of the room came into view. It was the building’s security office, and she could see a pair of booted feet on the desk in front of rows of monitors.
Smudge had gotten a look at the security guards when they cleaned up the assassins’ gear from the treatment room. They were both sturdy women, and had short-barreled automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. The one with her feet up on the desk was wearing apple hand lotion and the other one used a cheap peach shampoo. She wondered where Peach Shampoo was at the moment, it didn’t smell like she was in the office with her partner.
Most of the monitors showed empty rooms or exterior shots of the grounds. The building was surrounded by neatly manicured landscaping and a high solid wall topped in concertina wire. A few of the views swept back and forth. One of them panned past a formidable looking security gate, over a small parking lot, and up to the glass doors at the front of the building.
None of the exterior views gave any clue as to where they were, but Smudge thought they were still relatively close to home. She guessed the tranqs hadn’t put her out for very long. There was snow on the ground in the exterior shots, and her internal guidance system told her they had travelled south, but not too far. Smudge reasoned this site wouldn’t be a great distance from Pembury, if the Mogevichs wanted the family alive they wouldn’t want to risk transporting them far.
She also thought it might as well have been on the moon. Without Kelcy awake and access to a vehicle they had little chance of getting away.
Smudge continued to scan the monitors. She saw the loading dock with its large metal roll down garage doors. The dock looked big enough to accommodate several full length trailer trucks, but aside from the three black vans and a few shrink-wrapped pallets it was empty. The rest of the monitors showed empty or darkened rooms.
She risked leaning in another few inches and saw a rack of weapons behind the security guard. There were more of the same type of automatic weapons the guards carried. The guns were individually locked in place, and there were several large locked mesh drawers under the rifle cabinet with various weapons and gear. Smudge could see the face shield of a gas mask and a belt with grenades.
The security guard’s chair squeaked loudly and her feet hit the floor. The monitor showing the front security gate stop panning. The guard zoomed in on the gate as it opened and a large black SUV drove through it.
As the guard moved the camera to follow the black vehicle into the parking lot, Smudge also heard her pickup a telephone and tap a few buttons. Apple Hand Lotion said, “Doctor Osipoff, Doctor Cori, Miss Mogevich, please be advised they have arrived in the front lot, repeat
, they have arrived in the front lot.”
Smudge stayed close to the wall as she shot down the hallway. She heard the guard’s chair squeak loudly again behind her, and as she neared the lab its door handle started to move. She darted across the corridor when the door flung open and Marty stepped into the hallway.
The tall blonde doctor was looking back into the lab, and before turning around he said, “If you had a second brain I swear it’d be lonely, and you might want to drop that sarcasm. I doubt he’ll be in a jovial mood when we tell…”
Smudge let the door close slowly. The final click it made sounded deafening to her sensitive ears, but it didn’t appear Marty had heard it. He was still busy bitching out Johann.
Smudge had slipped into a pitch black room directly across from the lab. Through the door she heard another pair of boots approaching, and Katia firmly directing the doctors to assemble in the conference room. All of their footsteps faded until they disappeared through the double doors at the end of the hall.
Smudge reached up but paused with her ear pressed to the door before she opened it. She listened for several long seconds and heard the distinct sounds of slightly shifting weight and the rub of boot treads on the floor somewhere near the end of the hallway. She assumed it to be a guard standing in the corridor just outside the security room. A moment later there was another pairs of boots, and the two guards started to chat.
Lovely, Smudge thought as she softly banged her head against the door, Well done ya numpty, now what’re you going to do?
She was worried about her Kels and was really missing her Ben…and her Mimi, and her Dan, and her Aila, and her Hamish, and her coyotes…and especially her brother. She didn’t like being in hairy situations without him by her side. Other than their separation when she had parvo they’d never been apart for so long. And he’d have a plan. Her awesome, smart brother always had a plan.
The horrible stench in the room wasn’t helping to lift her spirits any. She drew a breath, and none of the layers of smells she sampled were good ones. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she saw there were two low metal tables on one side of the room, and two large, empty kennels lined up along the opposite wall. Both of the tables had thick leather arm and leg restraints riveted to their edges. She noticed they weren’t spaced far enough apart to effectively hold down an adult human. It occurred to her they might work well to secure a dog…or more accurately, a pair of dogs.
On the closest table was a pair of heavy rubber gloves and a metal bowl. The red smears on the gloves and the bowl explained the blood she was smelling, and the smears on the floor of the cages explained that other bad smell.
Smudge’s brow creased as her mind wrestled with why there was already blood here. She also tried to interpret the scents. They were familiar, but not exactly animal or human.
Laying across the top of the kennels was a long pole with a rope loop at the end of it, the kind animal control officers used. The thick rope was frayed and smeared with something black that had dripped onto the floor. It too smelled familiar, and also very wrong. She sniffed the trail of droplets, and followed it head down into the dark until her forehead bounced off a glass door. She looked up to see the door was set into a floor-to-ceiling glass wall that divided the room across the middle. The sliding door had two rows of small vent holes a few inches from its top and bottom. Next to the door was a small panel with a red button Smudge assumed to be an electronic opener.
The source of one of the other unpleasant smells became apparent. It was a dead fetal pig. The fresh carcass was in pieces on the other side of the glass door, and the animal’s blood had splashed up and dripped through some of the small vent holes. The top of the pig’s head was missing and it appeared the brains had been removed with some force.
There was another smell lingering in the background beyond the door. Smudge leaned in, closed her eyes, and brought her nose right up to the small vent holes. She pulled in a large draw of air and it fired off a series of terrible memories…Vic LeClerc’s fur coat… the wolf cages… the back of Jia’s van… the breath of the demented rogue wolves… the Dorschstein’s and their kennels…and even the spot under the shed where their mother had died.
The glass door jumped in its track as a mass of gray flesh slammed into it. Smudge came face to face with a bulbous, distorted head. Rings of teeth scraped against the glass. A pointed tooth caught on one of the vent holes and tore out with a sick crunch. The tooth slid down the glass and fell at Smudge’s feet, leaving a red and black slick.
The head made sucking, wheezing sounds as the round mouth constricted and flexed open. Above the mouth were small lumps that Smudge suspected had once been normal human eyes and a nose. Both ears had turned to knots and had migrated to the same side of its head.
The thing let out a horrible shrieking howl.
Smudge took a few steps back as the naked, slurping thing scrambled backwards, stood up, and rushed forward again to bang against the glass. The creature was roughly human shaped and a little shorter than Ben. Its bulbous lower torso was a twisted gray and pink mass, and the folds of its leathery skin were covered in raw sores. There was no clear definition between its bottom half and its legs, there was just baggy lumps of flesh that it kicked out to move forward. Even though its movements were strained and awkward, the thing moved very fast.
The bottom of the creature was corpulent, but the top was emaciated. The skinny shoulders were asymmetrical and had no discernable joints, it was just a stalk with twisted hard fleshy lumps that held up the bloated bag of the creature’s head. The arms canted from the shoulder bulbs at odd angles and thickened as they progressed to fat forearms and bowling ball size hands. The clawed fingers were just rolls of fat with randomly spaced knuckles. The bottoms of its legs and the ends of its round hands were black.
Smudge backed away and the thing shrieked again.
Another creature shot from the dark and slammed into the glass door. It was roughly the same size and shape, but with a different set of lumps and twists to its body. This poor thing’s head was not quite as distorted as its partner. Smudge could make out features that were clearly eyes and a nose. It even had most of its hair left. The wail it let out was equally as horrible as its twin, but even more unnerving as it was slightly more human sounding.
Smudge heard footsteps approaching and a moment later the room lights came on.
The door to the hallway flung open and Peach Shampoo stepped into the room. She looked at the two creatures, and as they grunted and banged against the glass she said, “Hey there kids, what’s got you two so riled up?” The guard walked to the sliding glass door and folded her arms across her chest as she looked down and said, “You didn’t finish your piglet. I know you little fuckers can kinda understand me, and I’ve told you two you can’t just eat the brains. It’s late and I’m busy so shut your round holes, finish your dinner, and go the fuck back to bed. Don’t make me get the prod.”
The two things quieted down, but as the guard turned and walked back to the door the less distorted creature gurgled something as it pointed a clubbed hand at the kennels. The guard didn’t turn around, and as the door swung closed she laughed and said, “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat…”
The lights went off and the door clicked shut. A moment later the wire door on one of the kennels opened and Smudge stepped out. She had turned her coat back to black.
She went to the door to listen to the hallway. Peach Shampoo’s footsteps softly faded away until she stopped at the security room. Smudge heard her say, “Just the twins, I’m doing the perimeter check.” The double doors at the end of the corridor opened and then clicked closed.
As Smudge reached up for the door handle she heard a raspy, smacking sound from behind her. It was a horrible, slimy wheeze but it was clear enough to understand. She even recognized the stuttering voice.
“S-S-S-Smudge,” Allen Cooper slurred.
Chapter 55
“Please Batya!” Katia wailed as Semion dug his fingers into the wound on her back. He had his huge hand wrapped around his daughter’s neck from behind and her face pinned against a painting on Johann’s office wall. Her feet were a few inches off the floor.
He leaned close to Katia’s ear and whispered, “My sweet angel, I sent you because I didn’t want these Tiandihui idiots to fuck up another easy job. I just don’t understand how hard it is to collect a grandmother, an old man, a pair of accountants, and their brats.” He threw her across the office and she tumbled over a leather chair and landed hard on the floor near the door.
Semion’s phone rang, and as he removed it from his jacket pocket he said, “Go collect yourself, and get those lidyaks assembled in the conference room. I’ll be there in three minutes.”
As Katia skulked out of the room holding her arm Semion took a deep breath before he answered the call.
“Gloria,” he said, “have we found them yet?”
Five minutes later Harley was picking his words carefully. He was pissed, but he’d also heard about Semion’s temper, Katia’s secret hand signals, and the Mogevich’s disappearing act for those they lost patience with…and the big man’s face was already pretty red. Harley also knew he wasn’t on home turf and he didn’t want to further disappoint his grandfather.
“They blew their own fucking house up, Semion” Harley said. He looked at Katia and said, “They were well armed and sure as fuck knew how to shoot. They had a federal agent working with them, and their attack dogs were very well trained. It wasn’t something we were briefed on or equipped to deal with, that’s all I’m saying.”
Semion took a long look at the Chinese snakehead rocking back and forth in the conference room chair. He eyeballed Harley’s ripped jeans, Beatles t-shirt, and insane engraved cannon sticking out of his shoulder holster.
He looked at Katia. She subtly signed to him that the debacle truly wasn’t the fault of the Tiandihui assassins.
Let Slip the Pups of War: Spot and Smudge - Book Three Page 24