by Mike Nappa
And so, to take my mind off the dog’s eatin’ habits, I now begin to translate, listening to Marelda Gregor’s voice unspool before me.
The personal account of Marelda Gregor, psychiatrist, biologist, mystic.
It is October, the month of revealing, and for the first time I begin to have second thoughts. I feel this child moving within me; she hiccups and it tickles my insides, makes me smile. She rolls and kicks. She presses on my bladder, and even that fills me with an unnatural zuneigung, a fondness for what is hidden to all but me. I long to hold her in my arms and smell the sweetness of newness in her skin.
Johannes Schmitzden is a genius. A dazzling mind. Yet Dr. Schmitzden would never understand what I am feeling right now. Never allow it. He has
There’s a sound that pulls me away from Marelda Gregor, distracts me from her voice speaking in my ear.
Choking. Coughing? What is it?
I glance up from my work and find the dog looking my direction, eyes glazed, staring but unseeing. It coughs again, like a chicken bone has got stuck in its throat, like it needs to get that bone out or it’ll choke to death right here on this floor.
“Dog?” I say. It don’t hear me.
I see the animal’s body tremble, starting in its neck and shuddering all the way back to its hind legs. Another tremor and it hacks again, choking harder on whatever is choking it.
My hands feel sweaty. My heart thumps hard inside my chest. It never occurred to me that I might be trapped in this bunker with a German shepherd carcass for a roommate.
“Dog,” I say. “Komm her.” My voice sounds thin in my ears. Come here. I don’t know what else to do, what else to say.
The dog cocks its right ear my direction. Its eyes seem filmy and blank, pupils dilated. But its ears still seem to work. It recognizes my voice and struggles to move.
“Komm her,” I say again.
It trembles to its feet, unsteady, looking almost woozy like it’s drunk alcohol and is now feeling the effects. A strand of drool slips from the back of its jaw, lingering in space for a magnetic moment, then breaking off and disappearing into the carpet.
A tremor hits. The dog stands, unmoving, as the shaking takes over; its head dips downward. A slight whimper escapes. Whatever this is, it hurts the dog.
I’m caught in uselessness, frozen to my chair, unsure of what to do, unable to do anything I can think of to do.
“Bitte, komm her.” I whisper it this time, pleading. Please, come here, I think, and I realize it is a prayer of sorts. To that unnamed deity I keep turning to when I’m afraid or overwhelmed. Please let it come here.
The animal moves. One shaky step. Another. Its hind legs seem to have difficulty working, like they’s now just two sticks of wood attached to the back of its body. Another rope of saliva drips, and this time I see blood mixed with it. Is that the dog’s blood, or mine? A step, its living front legs pulling the dead back end of itself toward me. Pulling again.
The dog is beside me now, the entire back half of its body frozen in crippling disuse. Another tremor hits, and it lowers its head pitifully into my lap. It closes its eyes while its muscled frame shakes and shivers. A soft whimper slips through its clenched jaw.
Its head is heavy on me, heavier than I expected.
The dog is helpless before me. Something I never knew was possible.
I feel the vibrations of its seizure tingling into my own bones. The soft hum of battery-powered lights reaches my ears. I wonder if Truck promised a triumphant return for this dog too. I wonder what Truck would do with this dog at this moment. What Truck would do for this dog.
I’m trembling myself now, but I do what’s next anyway. I rest a hand against the animal’s cheek. I stroke around his blinded eyes, behind his ear. I take his face in both my hands, then lean close to wrap an arm around his neck.
“Es ist okay,” I whisper to him. “Du bist okay.”
His body feels like trembling stone beneath my touch. He don’t move his head from my lap, don’t move at all except to tremor and shake.
“Du bist okay,” I say. “Es ist okay.”
The dog remains captive to his own body.
But, for now at least, he stops whimpering.
20
The Mute
Wednesday, September 16
It took nearly a week before The Mute discovered the tunnel entrance behind what used to be Truck’s red barn.
To say it was covered in rubble and refuse would be an understatement. To say he could have dug for weeks and still might have missed it was to state the obvious. To say he knew he would find it, he knew faith would win out, well, that was something more of a stretch. But he hoped the hiding place would show itself to him sooner rather than later, and that hope endured through long days and short nights of digging, aching, planning, working, digging more, laying out grid lines in his head, and most of all, refusing to give up.
When he found the opening, the sun was just entering twilight before another night swept through southern Alabama. At first he wasn’t sure what it was. From where he stood, it looked like a piece of scrap metal buried under wood and rock and blackened dirt. But the corners were still noticeable, and unlike other rubble in this area, it still lay flat to the ground. So The Mute picked his way over to that spot and began uncovering what lay beneath. When he was done, he found a flattened, scorched square of lead fused to what he guessed used to be a small hydraulic system. In his mind, he rebuilt an image of this spot from before the fire.
The doghouse, he said to himself. Underneath the doghouse.
It took a little time, and a crowbar he’d hauled over from his Jeep Wrangler two days before, but The Mute finally got the metal cover off. Down below, he could make out narrow steps that jutted inside a tunnel, going downward deeply and quickly to a wide landing area. From there the tunnel floor ramped down, curving off and around to the right. In spite of everything that had happened aboveground, pale yellow lights still glowed underground, at regular intervals in the tunnel, giving it an almost haunted appearance.
The Mute felt new energy flowing through his weary bones. Had he found it? Had he found Truck’s hiding place?
Was the girl still alive?
There was only one way to find out. He stepped into the tunnel.
The air down here was dry, with hints of stale smoke, but generally usable once you got used to it. He stepped carefully through the curves that wound out and down and back in again, breathing shallowly, listening. He heard no sound except the soft scrape of his boots on the path below him. He noticed that the temperature lowered slightly the farther down he walked. Partway down, he stopped.
What if Truck had booby-trapped this place?
That wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a man like Sergeant Truckson. He was terribly protective of his secrets.
The Mute scanned the walls in the dim light around him, then turned his attention to the floor below. There were still prints on the path, messy and sometimes indistinct, but prints nonetheless. He knelt low to the ground and followed the story they told. One pair of large feet. One pair of smaller feet. And animal tracks. All had been running toward the low end of the tunnel, with wide spaces occurring between each footfall. Only one pair of tracks showed a return trip, walking briskly, but not as much space between them, not running.
So, this was it. Truck had brought the girl, and apparently the dog, down this tunnel. To where? To what end?
Judging by the pace of the tracks, The Mute figured that Truck had been in too much of a hurry to set traps this time. That he’d probably been more concerned about getting in, getting out, and facing down the attackers headed toward his farmhouse.
The Mute felt his stomach clench suddenly. Nervous? You? he thought. And he had to admit that he was. It had been two weeks since the attack on Truck’s farm, two weeks since Leonard Truckson had finally been pulled, kicking and shooting, off the face of this earth. Two weeks since a little girl had been deposited deep underground with, The
Mute knew, a very dangerous animal.
If I keep going, he thought, what will I find?
He took a breath and stepped forward. Then another step. Then he broke into a light jog. Two weeks was long enough for any little girl to have to wait for a rescue.
A moment later, he found his way blocked by a narrow metal door. Reinforced and built into rock. Impenetrable without heavy digging equipment or small explosives. Of course, explosives in this tunnel could bring the whole place crashing down.
No place left to go.
The Mute stood very still and listened. Maybe he could hear signs of life on the other side of that door. He held his breath and waited, but there was nothing. The only sound that filled his ears was his own heartbeat. He pressed the side of his head against the heavy steel and still heard no sounds whatever.
Dead? he thought, but quickly dismissed that notion, simply because he didn’t want to believe it. Sleeping, he decided. Resting.
He began inspecting the door more closely. There were three dead bolts situated strategically along the edge, and that made The Mute start cursing the stupid Samuel Hill character all over again. Besides the one Truck himself kept, there was only one other key for those locks, he knew. It had been hidden in the collectible book of Edgar Allan Poe works, and Sam Hill had managed to lose it in the angry wash of a woman scorned.
The Mute ran a hand along the edges of the doorframe and was surprised to discover it was an airtight construction.
On the one hand, that would be good for keeping toxic fumes—like, say, smoke and ash—out of the bunker on the other side of the door. On the other hand, how would anyone inside get clean air? Was that part of the plan? Had Truck intended for his girl to either be rescued or, if that weren’t possible, to slowly suffocate down here, deep underground?
Maybe there’s an underground stream pulling air and water into this place, The Mute thought. Then he had to face the obvious. Or maybe not.
The Mute knelt down in front of the door, forcing himself to be patient, to think.
He considered simply banging on the door, hoping to get the attention of the little girl inside, but he soon dismissed that notion. If Truck had locked his girl in this place, he’d given her strict instructions about getting out. She was a smart kid, The Mute knew that. She probably wouldn’t answer unless she heard Truck’s voice accompanying the pounding. And even then she’d demand a safe code, even from Truck. Being unable to speak was a distinct disadvantage in that regard. How to call out a safe code through a steel door when heavy breathing was the loudest noise your throat was able to make? If the edges of this door weren’t airtight, he could’ve written the safe code on a slip of paper, slid it underneath the door when he knocked, as a means of allaying the girl’s fears. But that too was not an option, and that meant banging on the door had to be ruled out as well.
No, he thought, pounding on the door would just scare the child. Possibly make her do something desperate, or dangerous, or both.
He needed the key, the one that Truck left specifically for this purpose. The one that Samuel Hill was supposed to deliver.
The Mute placed a hand on the Kahr handgun strapped to his thigh and briefly entertained the idea of simply blowing a bullet through each of the three dead bolt locks, but that too he dismissed quickly. For starters, if they managed to burst through the locks, there was no telling where the bullets would end up on the other side of the door. One could just as easily lodge itself in the girl, or the dog, as it could in a wall or floor. Also, a quick study of the satin nickel plating on these heavy dead bolts made The Mute suspect that Truck had had enough foresight to use bulletproof door locks for his bunker. The Mute didn’t want a slug ricocheting off the door and back into the tunnel where he was kneeling.
He let his head drop. This was starting to seem hopeless, impossible. Truck should have known better. Should have sent someone better, someone who at least had a voice to speak with.
In his head, he heard one of Truck’s lectures from back during their time in Iraq together. Truck always grinned when he gave those lectures, an expression that gave both encouragement and a challenge. He saw Truck’s face grinning at him now.
If it were easy, anybody could do it. But you’re not just anybody, and nobody can do what you can do. So stop crying for Mama and get the job done, soldier. That’s an order.
The Mute felt like crying anyway, not because he couldn’t break down the door, but because he remembered what a difference that ornery old man had made in his life. Saving him, and resaving him. Making him more than he thought he could ever be.
De Oppresso Liber.
Truck had lived by that motto, and he’d taught The Mute what it meant to do that day by day, hour by hour.
Cursed old man. The Mute grinned at the memory. Cursed, wonderful old man.
He settled back on his heels and took new stock of the obstacle in front of him. He knew where the girl was hidden. He knew she had the dog with her, a risky move, but also one with a potentially high upside. That dog, under Truck’s command, was as much a soldier as any man he knew. And that dog was smart. Smarter than a lot of men. If Truck had taught the girl how to control the dog, then she had a powerful ally beside her in this bunker. Plus, she was in a place that would be nearly impossible for Truck’s attackers to find, let alone break in to.
For the moment, she was safe.
The Mute stood, never taking his eyes off the door.
He needed the key, so he would get the key. Samuel Hill’s ex-wife had it. It would be short work to find out who that woman was, where she lived, where she worked. So instead of waiting for the key to come to him, he would go to the key. He’d find Ex–Mrs. Samuel Hill and convince her to give it to him.
He turned and began walking back up the tunnel, making plans for how to disguise the entrance once more, to hide it from others who might be trying to find it. And then he had an uncomfortable thought.
Others were trying to find this hiding place, and that meant that eventually their search would lead them to the key that Ex–Mrs. Samuel Hill had stolen from her husband. What if they got to her first, got to the key first?
The Mute frowned.
Then he started to run.
21
Annabel
Date Unknown
I can’t sleep, not while that dog is still sleeping. Not while he refuses to wake up.
After the final tremors of the seizure finished with him, the animal sunk his head off my lap and slid into a heavy mess on the floor. He breathed hard a few times, then scootched next to my chair and curled to keep warm. The dog’s eyes were opened now, focused on me, blinking slowly. He made no sound.
I thought about gettin’ up, gettin’ one of them sleeping bags, and covering the dog over with it, but he kept looking at me like it was a comfort that I was near, like he just wanted to rest but didn’t want to have to worry about me or what I was doing. So I just sat there and watched him breathe. Some minutes later, the dog’s eyes shut tight and stayed that way. The tenseness in its forepaws and shoulders loosened, and it slept. He slept.
No, he didn’t just sleep. This time that dog went away in sleep, like he was knocked out or drugged or absent from the body that kept him.
I got up from my seat and, by accident, bumped the animal with a leg of my chair. Thumped him right in the middle of the rib cage curled outward while he slept. I expected he’d jump up, alert, ready to attack, ready to find out what had so rudely smacked his side while he was sleeping. But the dog didn’t budge, didn’t even respond. It was as if he didn’t feel the intrusion, or if he did, he weren’t capable of doing anything about it.
Normally this dog sleeps so light that just about anything makes his head pop up to survey the circumstances before he returns back to sleep. Normally all it takes is the rustle of my clothing or the clink of the water bucket or sometimes even just the sound of me turning a page in a book. But not now, not this time.
“Dog.” I said it out loud
, normal voice. He didn’t move.
“Dog!” I shouted it this time. Same result.
“Geht!” I said. Then “Komm her!”
But the dog was dead to me, dead to the world, lost somewhere in the between-places that happen when you sleep. And now I knew that something was seriously wrong with that dog. The seizure was frightening, yes, but this inanimate animal scared me more. Was he in a coma? Was he gonna die?
Had my blood poisoned my dog?
I finally did go get a sleeping bag, finally did cover it over the dog just to keep him warm in this cool place. Then I sat on a bunk and pulled a sleeping bag over myself too, waiting, watching to see what would happen with that dog. But he didn’t move, didn’t even seem to dream. No twitching. No flickering behind his eyelids. No low growls lost in some nighttime vision. If I hadn’t seen the slight rustle of the sleeping bag each time he took a breath, I might have thought he was forever gone already.
What do I do if this dog up and dies on me? I thought.
That was something that Truck surely hadn’t prepared for. How long would it be before a dog carcass would smell up this room, before it would make me sick just to be near it?
I almost laughed at that thought. Honestly, wearing these clothes for as long as I had, living in this place with no shower or bathtub, I was pretty sure I wasn’t no sweet daisy perfume myself. But again, you get used to yourself and your own smells. And I tried to keep things clean as I could with just a bucket of cold water and a few rags.
It could be worse, I decided. I could be knocked out in a coma like that dog.
So I waited. So I still wait. Hoping that dog don’t die, and surprised that I’m hoping that. It wasn’t too long ago I was wishing death on him rather than having to be locked up in here with a crazy animal. Now I’m having second thoughts.
Thinking on that brings Marelda Gregor back to mind. She’s always nearby down here in this lost place. I’ve done translated a good patch of her journal so far, and it seems like I’m doing it right, but some things she talks about are still confusing.