Paws

by Stefan Petrucha

  I said this chapter would be a bummer, didn’t I?

  It’s also the last place you’d want to see some freaky monster, like A the Living B, or C the Thing from D—so I can’t keep hanging out here getting all weepy.

  Spotting the only rough collie is easy. She’s got that narrow head and long coat with shades of tan and a band of white. Extricating her without a fuss will be the hard part. The sweet thing’s a favorite— the belle of the ball getting passed from lap to lap.

  First step: ask her out and treat her like a lady.

  Wait.

  That’s the MMFF.

  Right. First step: Get inside. Already mentioned the lack of security. The nearest side door is propped open by a brick—probably by some orderly planning to grab a smoke, or a resident who thinks a last few ciggies won’t make a difference anymore. Walking in puts me in a dark, empty hall right outside the main event.

  Second step? Dunno. I’m out of my comfort zone. I want to impress S.H.I.E.L.D., so I can’t go in guns blazing or making clever comments on how short life is. But there is something that might work.

  I take off my mask.

  I already mentioned how I’d hoped Weapon X would cure my cancer, but it didn’t. The big C can’t make my organs fail anymore— but it regenerates, too, leaving my mug a colorful combo plate of scar tissue and pulpy lesions. Some people can wiggle their ears. I can make my face ooze. Without the mask, I figure I can pass as a particularly ugly hospice resident. Once I talk my way in, I’ll take a turn with Lassie Jr., offer to walk her in the courtyard, then vanish into the eerie stillness of the night.

  I shove the mask in a pocket, cover the costume with a hospital gown and booties, and step into the community room.

  I thought it’d smell bad—like the pet store, or at least puppy pee. Nope. Other than a faint antiseptic odor, it mostly feels warm. At first, no one takes their eyes off the puppies. I clear my throat, but everyone’s doing that.

  Finally, the old man who was slapping his knees spots me. He waddles over, either nearsighted or doing his best not to look horrified.

  “You must be Jeff, the new resident. I’m Bill Sloan, pleased to meet you. Sit! Sit down!” He mutters the next bit under his breath. “You poor, poor man.”

  Hands on my shoulders, he gently pushes me into a chair. “Say hello to Jeff, everybody!”

  Slowly, they pivot my way, everyone trying to be polite, everyone trying to hide their reaction—except the little girl. She shrieks and grabs her German Shepherd like she’s afraid I’ll drip on it.

  It gets real quiet. Guess no one feels like asking, “So how you doing?”

  The sooner I’m out of here, the better, so I break the awkward silence. “Uh…can I get a puppy?”

  Bill moves fast for an old man. He grabs the nearest dog and shoves it into my lap.

  “Here.”

  “Actually, I was hoping to have some time with…”

  The woman with the Labrador wheels up and gives me her dog, too. “Take two. You need it more than me.”

  “She’s a cutie pie, all right, but I’d really like…”

  “Here, take mine, too.”

  One after another, they pile on the puppies until I’m buried in cold, burrowing noses, warm foreheads, and tickly snouts.

  They’re probably trying to cover up your face.

  Nah, I really think they’re just being nice.

  Heh. It does feel pretty good, being surrounded by all this squirming, fuzzy, tickly goodness. The puppies don’t care what I look like, who I am, or what I’ve done. And all this attention from oversized eyes on little bodies isn’t a delusion, or even a bunch of Big Eye paintings.

  I feel…

  Happy?

  Dad, can I have a dog?

  Where’d that come from?

  Dad was a son of a bitch, a military man with a fast hand. Didn’t understand me—or like me very much. Did I ever dare ask him for a dog? Do I remember him saying it’d help me learn some discipline? Or am I imagining that?

  Between the yips and nuzzling, I almost see his face, almost hear “yeah” coming from his lips.

  A dog? Really? For me?

  No! Must be strong! Must…escape…sense…of joy!

  Hey, where’d the damn collie go? Crap! It was here a second ago. See what I mean about distractions? See?

  I jump up and send the dogs flying. Can’t say it feels good to shed the puppy love, but this baptism of callousness is definitely more familiar. I scan the room. The door is closing, but before it does, I catch a glimpse of the collie trotting down the hallway like she knows I’m after her.

  I hop around the puppies, pushing them out of the way when I have to. The girl shrieks again. A male nurse moves up to me, talking at me like I’m a rearing horse.

  “Whoa! Easy, fella! I’m not sure you should be walking.”

  He gets a good look at my face and backs off.

  I hit the door so hard, the force hurls it off its hinges. There’s a chorus of gasps and barks behind me, but I can’t worry about that now. Matter of fact, I doubt I’ll worry about it later. As the door hits the ground, the collie looks back, sees me, and dives out an open window.

  She does know I’m after her. Or it could be my face.

  Either way, I follow. Throwing myself out the window and into the courtyard, I land on an attendant and a doctor. Both are knocked out by the impact.

  Lassie? Oh, Lassie? Where’d she get to?

  Common sense will tell you dogs can’t climb trees. Their legs are too long. They don’t have claws to speak of. They’re not like cats. YouTube says different, though, and so does the collie. Moving like the dickens, she scrabbles up a Japanese maple’s low-hanging branch and in a burst of flying bark jumps the brick wall.

  Skipping the tree, I hit the wall and try to spot her course. From here there are only two basic choices. Dead ahead you’ve got four lanes of Hoyt Avenue, followed by six lanes of 278 and another four lanes of Astoria Boulevard. That’s a grand total of twelve lanes, all packed with jockeying Friday-night traffic. Escape route two? Treelined streets to the left and right—all with tight-packed family housing, and a rat’s nest of interconnected alleys and backyards. Smart dog could hide there for weeks without being found.

  And which way does the nimnode go? Straight into the big, bad street. Could be that narrow skull pinching her brain, but I’ve made better choices with an arrow in my head. She ducks the first few screeching cars, and keeps going until a couple of heedless SUVs make her scramble back a lane and wait for an opening.

  It’s just like Frogger.

  Now what? If I knew she’d change into something ginormous, I might be inclined to think, “Would it be so bad if I let a car hit her while she’s still vulnerable?”

  What would that be, morally?

  A sin of permission?

  But I don’t know. So I run into traffic after her.

  All the honking and flashing headlights nearly start up the hallucinations again. I get a flash of faces: my dad at home, Sophie at the basketball game, a broken phone. I don’t get the connection.

  Further complicating things is the dog’s desire to flee from me at all costs. When she sees me catching up, she throws caution to the wind and dives into the next lane. A speeding New York cabbie, who you’d like to think wouldn’t be thrown by a sudden obstacle, swerves so quick his cab nearly goes up on two wheels.

  The brakes squeal like Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web if he’d lost that fair and wound up being “some” dinner. The cabbie skids across not one, but two lanes. The first is occupied by a fancy new Acura, the second by some junker I can’t imagine getting past inspection even if you bribed the guy. It all makes for a great three-vehicle fender bender. Or as we say in the comics:

  Fun’s not over. Car bits are flying, airbags deploying. I spot a tractor-trailer heading straight for my little doggie. I want to say she’s frozen like a deer in headlights, but she’s a dog—so, really, she’s frozen like a dog in headli
ghts.

  I leapfrog along, crunching hoods as I go, until I get to the trailer-truck cabin and yank the wheel hard. This surprises a very sleepy driver. When his scruffy cap falls from his scruffy face, he looks at me, I look at him, and we both scream.

  The tractor-trailer doesn’t stop—because, you know, momentum— but it does jackknife, making a nice V shape around the collie. The moan of creaking metal and screeching rubber snap her out of her high-beams staring contest. After nearly getting ground into—that’s right—dog food by the wheels, she leaps up onto the grill.

  When the truck finally does come to a halt, she looks so much like a cute hood ornament that the driver and I smile at each other. Then he starts screaming again. Before he can compare me to some nightmare, I conk him.

  It’s better this way. Now he won’t have to see all those cars smashing into his rig. There are so many, I won’t even bother with all the sound effects. As long as I’m waiting for all the crashing and shaking to stop, I pull my sporty red-and-black mask back on and lose the hospital gown.

  As one of the few costumed types who looks less freakish in his suit, I’m hoping this will calm the pup long enough for me to get my paws on her. I kick the windshield just right so it flops forward and slides to the street. As I’m crawling onto the hood, the dog does this acrobatic leap onto the roof of a westbound FedEx truck—because, you know, it absolutely, positively had to be there.

  As it speeds off, she looks back at me. She’s pleased as can be— ears perked, fur ruffled, tongue lolling. She thinks she’s smart, but I’m one up on her. I know dogs are communal animals, engineered by evolution to be part of a pack and obedient to the alpha dog. I put on my most commanding voice and shout, “Get over here, now!”

  Didn’t work with Gorgolla, doesn’t work here.

  “Yip!” she says, turning away to enjoy the breeze.

  The tractor-trailer driver, awake again, crawls out on the hood toward me.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not you!”

  Now I’m chasing a freaking truck, like I’m the dog. I stop—partly to maintain my own dignity, partly because I can’t run as fast as a truck. A taxi squeals to a halt behind me. The cabbie, face sour as a grapefruit, sticks his head out.

  “Hey, buddy, what’s your problem?”

  I put my hand on his hood. “I don’t have a problem, buddy. You do.”

  I climb onto his roof and hold onto the “Off Duty” light like it’s a surfboard tip. I howl to the driver and the world, “Follow that collie!”

  You’d think cabbies wait their entire lives to hear something like that, but this guy goes so slow that—well, choose one:

  a) The zombies will catch up.

  b) It’ll take us two hours to watch 60 Minutes.

  c) We’ll get a parking ticket.

  I shake the suspension. “Faster, you fool! The villain is getting away!”

  “I’m already twenty over the limit!”

  “Speed limit? We don’t need no stinking speed limit!”

  I drive a katana through the roof, avoiding the driver (except for a little of his pants leg), and stab the pedal to the metal. The engine revs; the axles turn.

  Now we’re moving! I roll my mask half-off so I can loll my tongue out the side of my mouth. Always wanted to try that. It tastes like…victory!

  Below me, something wakes within the dormant cabbie. Summoned by a law far deeper than speed limits, he obeys. No longer afraid, a mad glint in his eyes, he wheels wildly from lane to lane, cutting off Audis and Hondas alike.

  Trouble ahead? Not for this man. Despite seemingly insurmountable odds—and a pair of pimped-out Humvees—he bounces up on the median and back down mere yards from the FedEx truck.

  We pull up alongside. I can see the driver. He’s just a kid, fresh out of school, trying to do the right thing, caught up in this lousy, stinking war. His eyes stay dead ahead, his mind on his job.

  I have the cabbie give the truck a little nudge to get his attention.

  Now he sees me. “Slow down and pull over! It’s really important!”

  But being a one-handed guy in a black-and-red costume riding atop a speeding cab doesn’t get you the same deferential treatment it used to. Instead of slowing down, the truck driver speeds up, veering toward an exit ramp marked “Ditmars Blvd.”

  All the while, mini-Lassie is looking at me, smug, satisfied, doubtless thinking:

  Woof! Woof-woof!

  Pulling ahead, the kid makes the exit without so much as tapping the brakes. We stay with him as he tries for a left on 23rd. Fans of the NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority will recognize the Ditmars Boulevard Station as the last stop for the N and Q elevated trains running along 23rd Street. Fans of physics will know that taking a sharp turn too fast while speeding in a top-heavy vehicle runs the risk of a rollover. And boy, are we all surprised when it happens!

  The FedEx truck flips sideways. Screeching, sparks flying, it rams right into one of the El supports. Behind him, headed straight for the truck, the cabbie laughs madly.

  “Good a day to die as any!”

  What a loon.

  I yank my katana from the accelerator and stab the brakes. Deciding to steer, the driver narrowly avoids the crash. But I go flying over the FedEx truck—and into the girder.

  Ow, oh, ow! I sing an ode to ow!

  For nothing hurts like pain itself.

  And so, I sing to ow!

  I’d like to say I leave a Deadpool-shaped outline in the steel, but it’s more like there’s a girder-shaped outline in my skull. The freaking puppy, meanwhile, is utterly unfazed. She rushes up the steps to the train platform.

  I toss the cabbie some bills from Jane’s envelope—probably ten thousand—pinch his cheek, and hightail it up to mass transit. Train’s cheaper than a cab, anyway, especially when you hop the turnstile. Of course there’s a train waiting. Yes, the puppy gets on. And yes, the doors close right before I reach them. I bang on the windows, but that never works. She looks at me, panting, then pretends to read a paper like I’m not even there.

  With that weird elephant-fart hiss, the train starts to move.

  I run along the platform ahead of it, jump on the track, and run backwards frantically waving my hand. The operator’s pretending to read a paper, too. The big hunk of steel on wheels picks up speed. In short order, I’m turning around and running forwards, trying to keep the choo-choo from running me down.

  No. Wait, wait, wait. Screw this. No dog’s making a monkey out of me. I force my blade into a track and pry a rail from its rivets— just enough to be a pain.

  Seeing this, the conductor goes wild-eyed.

  “Paying attention to me now, huh?”

  The brakes engage. The train doesn’t go all screechy-sideways like in The Fugitive. By the time it hits the bent rail, it’s slowed enough so that it only creaks and twists like it’s tired and needs to lie down for a minute.

  It’s still moaning along a bit, but I climb up on the side and pry a door open.

  The collie looks up at me through the flickering lights.

  “Nothing personal, but I gotta get you someplace safe in case you turn into a monster.”

  She twists her head, all Why didn’t you say so? And hops into my arms.

  Sheesh.

  Pup under one arm, I climb out and take in the scene. There’s a little more metal-on-metal squealing and a few sparks before the train halts, but no one’s hurt. In the streets below, the cabbie’s gone, off with his next fare, our time together just a memory. I do see a certain young FedEx driver jumping up and down as his truck bursts into flames.

  To the east, I see smoke and a few fires from some of the wrecked cars.

  And I hear a sound, one I hear so often it should be on my playlist: sirens wailing.

  But at least the puppy’s all right.

  “Isn’t that right, girl? Who made this big mess? You did! You did! But you’re such a sweetie, I’m gonna put you in a box and gift wrap you for Preston. If I
forget the airholes you just tell me, okay, baby? One look at you, and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s gotta take me back, right?”

  Right.

  You bet!

  CHAPTER 10

  AS I pat the doggie—mushing her fur, wriggling her head, walking my fingertips along her snout—I wonder how long it will take S.H.I.E.L.D. to notice the carnage we’ve caused. With street cameras everywhere and folks giddily uploading everything they pick from their noses (#checkoutmysnot), it shouldn’t be long before they figure out it’s not just any ten-car pileup/subway derailment. Don’t like all that surveillance? Chuck out your cell phone and cancel your Internet. Can’t blame Big Brother if you keep yanking your trousers down in front of him while he’s trying to read, now can you?

  I can imagine how it’ll play out back at S.H.I.E.L.D.: A pimply-faced MIT grad, black shoes clicking against the hard floor, puffs his way down an insanely long hallway with recessed lighting and the hum of bad electrical wiring. Arriving at the last office and grasping a paper file as a prop, he shouts to his beleaguered section chief:

  “I think I’ve got something, sir!”

  They’ll be here any minute now.

  Any minute.

  Huh. Guess all that TMI is tough to sort through. But hey, the DP—meaning me—can’t be waiting around all night with a rough collie in his hand. I’ve things to be, places to do.

  So I ’port over to Preston’s office at the NYC branch. The room’s so dark and cool, compared to the smoking train station, that the collie practically falls asleep. The room’s also a little on the austere side. The only personal touches are a family photo of Em with hubby Shane and son Jeff, and a tasteful two-tone print that says, “BREATHE.”

  Ironic, since I don’t think LMDs breathe.

  Em, sitting at her desk in an ergonomic chair, is focused on the multiple screens her brown robot eyes project in the air. Hot cup o’ Java in one hand, scratching her cheek with the other, she hasn’t even noticed me. I tiptoe up and shove Li’l Lassie’s wet nose right into her ear.

  “Aiee!” she says.

  I love it when she says “Aiee!”