Authors: James Roy Daley
Wrapping her mind around Blueberry’s words, Shirley felt faint. She hit a button and the window lowered. Blue stuck his head outside and let his tongue hang. After a few seconds the dog licked his snout and sat back inside.
“Thanks” Blue said. “You can close the window now.”
Shirley did. She put a hand to her brow and said, “I’m sorry––did you say that something is growing inside the moon?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. A monster. Something you’ve never seen before; something that will crack the moon open, stretch out its claw and destroy us on a whim. I would never have spoken to you about it, ever. It goes against my programming, but so does extinguishing my way of life. You can see the paradox, can’t you? All dogs feel the end getting near, but I was living with you––a scientist. I was put into a position of choice. Talking with you conflicts with one element of my programming while remaining silent conflicts with another.”
They arrived at Shirley’s office. The building was large and the parking lot was filled with cars. She used a card key to get inside the parking lot, and said, “Look at the vehicles that are here early today. Why so many, I wonder… I would think that after a four-day weekend the staff would be dragging their butts and coming in late.”
Blue shrugged. “I don’t know why they’re here early, but this is good news. We need people to see me, hear my words, and understand what I am telling them. We need people to start acting now, even if it means the end of the silence era.”
Considering Blue’s words, she felt inspired.
The end of the Silence Era.
Shirley grinned. She seemed to be involved in something big, something historical. She was at the forefront of a discovery that would change the planet forever. The story of her day would be written about and talked about in every communications medium around the world. She was about to be famous. Her voice was about to be heard.
Shirley parked close to the door; there didn’t seem to be any dogs around.
She said, “You still didn’t answer my question, why did we come here… to my work?”
“Let’s go inside,” Blue said. “I’ll explain everything once we’re safe.”
They stepped out of the car and walked across the parking lot quickly, keeping an eye on their surroundings. When they got close to the building a pack of pit bulls came running towards them. They must have been hiding in the parking lot. Most of the dogs weighed in at about a hundred pounds. None looked friendly, and they seemed almost rabid with excitement.
Shirley and Blue ran the last few yards. Shirley was screaming, suddenly overwhelmed with fear. Her fame and notoriety would be short lived if these animals killed her. When they arrived at the door the doorknob was missing. It had been chewed off. Shirley stuck her fingers inside the hole where the handle had once been. She pulled; the door opened freely.
Something was wrong; she could feel it in her gut. She didn’t want to go in there, not even a bit.
The pit bulls were almost on top of them now.
“Move!” Blue said, running past her legs.
Shirley reluctantly jolted inside and slammed the door.
The pit bulls stopped at the door, growling and creating a barricade. They snapped their teeth wildly but didn’t attempt to enter the building.
Looking through the door’s window, Shirley did a quick headcount. There were sixteen dogs at the door, maybe seventeen––several more were standing in the parking lot.
She moved away from the entrance and the animals that guarded it.
At the end of the corridor something was piled close to a wall; it looked like a flattened bag of laundry. They approached it slowly, cautiously. Blueberry first, Shirley a few steps behind. They walked past numerous doors and windows. There was an open wallet lying on the floor. Something was definitely wrong here.
They walked on.
Lying in a grotesque lump was a body; it looked male. The face had been gnawed and chewed until the skull had become crushed. One hand had been torn free from the arm. The shirt, no longer clean and white, had been ripped to shreds and intestines hung through the fabric. The pool of blood surrounding the corpse didn’t expand too far, but as Blue and Shirley moved closer, the signs of battle became more apparent. There were plenty of large paw marks; an abundance of gore was splattered against a wall.
Shirley put a hand to her mouth, thinking she might be sick. Her stomach heaved and she leaned over, struggling to keep her nausea inside. In time she looked up, hand against the wall. She felt her knees tremble.
Four wolves were in the hallway, approaching slowly. They were full size, coming straight for her. She turned around, only to find five coyotes advancing from the opposite direction. This pack moved quicker, they looked hungry and mean.
Blueberry and Shirley were trapped.
“What should we do now?” Shirley asked, a quiver in her voice.
Blue strolled towards the wolves like he didn’t have a care in the world. He licked his snout, and said, “I have another worker for you. She’s not armed. I disposed of her cell phone last night. She might not realize it, but she left her purse in the car. This is Shirley Gunn; she was scheduled to arrive at 7:30 am. We are nearly forty minutes ahead of schedule. Hopefully this doesn’t conflict with your timetable.”
One wolf nodded. “No problem. This is fine.”
Another said, “Nice job.”
“Thank you,” Blue said. “From the reports I’ve received, Ballistic Lane has terminated close to sixty percent of its residents. By tomorrow it should be ninety five percent secured.”
“Very well,” one of the larger wolves said. “We can handle it from here. Clear the hall.”
Wolves and coyotes surrounded Shirley.
A wolf with ice-blue eyes said: “You have two choices, Shirley Gunn. You can come with us or die like him.” The wolf nodded towards the lump on the floor. “Your choice.”
Shirley looked at Blueberry; her face was masked in terror.
Blue said, “Sorry Shirley, but it’s like this now.” He turned away and walked down the hall, talking with one of the other animals, never once looking back.
Blue-eyes growled at Shirley, nudging her ahead.
Shirley walked through two hallways and up a flight of stairs. She stepped over two more dead bodies. One was a man she recognized; he worked on the same floor but in a different division. He was young, twenty-nine––just a kid really. Mark Blunt. He had been working with the company less than a year.
The wolves and coyotes brought Shirley to an office, forced her inside, and stood watch by the door.
A Great Dane, sitting between two slope-back Hyenas, told her to sit down.
She did.
The Great Dane said, “I don’t know what lies you were told, nor do I care. I’ll break things down for you, once. You live here now. The world you know has ended. Food will be supplied. You’ll work in maintenance until you get transferred. You’ll be assigned a partner for the first week of your stay, or until you have a solid grasp of your duties. If you talk with anyone aside from your partner, you will be terminated. If your work is sloppy or careless, you will be terminated. If you create problems in any way, or if you try to escape, you will be terminated. If you cannot grasp your duties, or perform them adequately, you will be terminated. Do you understand? This requires a yes or no answer. Answer no and you’ll be terminated.”
Shirley reluctantly said, “Yes. I understand.”
“Very good. You are dismissed.”
The wolves led Shirley through a large room and down a well-lit hallway that was lined with corpses. She was placed in a fair-sized office and given a workstation next to the window. On her desk was a note. It said: Suffer Shirley Gunn. It seemed to be a statement about her future.
Click.
Shirley turned her head. A woman had locked the door before taking her seat on the far side of the room. She had blood on her shirt and make-up smeared down her face. Her name was Gwen White.
Shirley had known Gwen for years.
A man approached from the far side of the room. He was older, maybe sixty, sixty-five. He had cuts on his face, and three of his fingers had been chewed from his left hand. He said that his name was Louis; he had been assigned as her partner.
On the table before them was a dog, a German Sheppard. It rested on its side. It was neither moving nor breathing. The animal had a four-inch square panel embedded in its ribcage. The panel was open. Shirley saw nothing organic, just mechanics.
This was not an animal.
This was a machine.
Shirley looked out the window, thinking about Blueberry––the dog she had raised since it was a pup. She thought about the good times they shared, and the things he had said. She wondered who had created Blue and why. She wondered how many lies the dog had told her, and how many truths were hidden within those lies. Most of all, she thought about the moon. She marveled at its size and questioned whether or not something was living within it, something that was capable of destroying the earth on a whim.
Perhaps there’s something living inside,
she thought.
It was something to wish for, something to hold onto.
* * *
DARK HUMOR:
Late one night in October, two men sat in a bar, drinking beers and talking about the ever-changing weather. One man had a hump on his back the size of a medicine ball; his name was Gusto. The other man had a shriveled-up arm and a shriveled-up leg; his name was Hubert.
Gusto drank a mouthful of ale from his iron mug and rolled his right shoulder around in a slow moving circle. He dragged the back of his hand across his lips, and with a raspy voice, he said, “I’m thinking about calling it a night.”
For conversation sake, Hubert said, “Oh yeah? How’re ya getting home?”
Gusto leaned towards his friend, smiled an arrogant smile, and declared: “I’m taking… the
short
way.”
“You don’t mean––”
“Yes. I’m walking through…
the cemetery!”
Hubert’s checkered teeth were exposed when his mouth flopped open. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Eyes expanding, he said, “But… but… ”
“But what?”
“But the cemetery is haunted!”
Gusto laughed uneasily. “Come on now; I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“Oh yes you do! Otherwise you would have taken the short way home a long time ago! Everyone in town believes in that stuff, including you!”
“Well… ” Gusto’s words trailed off as he looked to the floor.
He had to admit, Hubert had a point. Neither of them had walked through the cemetery before now and both men knew why: the Castle River Graveyard had a bad reputation of being spook central. Everyone for miles around figured the land had turned rotten for some unknown reason, and most folk had a strange story to tell. Still, Gusto was tired of taking the long way home each and every night and tonight he wasn’t having it. He was drunk, his hump was aching and feeling extra heavy, and more importantly, his mind was made up. He was taking the short way home no matter what Hubert had to say about the matter, and that was final.
After rolling his right shoulder around in a circle once again, Gusto raked his fingers through his unkempt hair, and said, “I don’t believe in that juvenile, ghost-story crapola. Not now. I’m no longer a child, you know. I’m a grown man, for crying out loud. Besides, it’s foolish. Don’t ya think all that spooky talk is foolish, Hubert? It makes no friggin’ sense.”
“It ain’t foolish!” Hubert said, pleading with every syllable. “It’s haunted! The cemetery is bloody
haunted!
Everyone knows
that!”
Gusto stood up, tossed a few coins on the table, and swallowed back his last swig of ale. He shook his head in mock disgust and said, “Ah, what do
you
know? You’re just a crazy old drunk with a shriveled-up arm and a shriveled-up leg. You want to be afraid of the Oogie-Boogie man, be my guest. But don’t talk to me about things that go bump in the night ‘cause I ain’t havin’ it. You don’t know nothin’ ‘bout nothin’. An old fool with a line of yellow running down your spine, Hubert––that’s what you are. Always have been; always will be.”
Now it was Hubert’s turn to shake his head in disgust, which he did, saying, “I know enough to stay clear of the cemetery tonight, that’s for darn sure… and I ain’t no fool.
You’re
the fool! Walking through the Castle River Graveyard at this time of night is
insane
, Gusto. It’s insane! You need to have your brain examined!”
“Ah, go stick your head in a bucket of donkey shit and tell me what you smell. I’m walking through the cemetery tonight and there ain’t an ass-lickin’, nose-pickin’ thing you can do to stop me.”
Gusto slammed his empty mug on the table, lurched towards the door, and staggered outside. He wobbled past a row of horses that were tied to a horse-post, and past the less-than-attractive ‘ladies of the evening’ that never felt compelled to offer their services to a man like him.
The night was dark and gloomy. A cold wind blew in from the north.
Holding his jacket’s lapels in his fist he made his way to the cemetery gates. The weight of his huge hump had him crouched over like Quasimodo. The pain in his back had him rolling his shoulder every few feet. After a nervous pause he stepped through the gateway. He followed the winding path over the roll of a hill and past a row of barren trees. There were graves to the left of him and graves to the right. Some of the tombstones were small while others were large. Some were new but most of the markers were old and weathered by years of abandonment. Statues and sculptures came in all shapes, sizes, and styles. Looking left he saw the Virgin Mary, forever frozen with her arms apart and a sad look carved upon her sculpted face. Looking right he saw a pair of gargoyles, twisted and wicked, endowed with long horns and thick hooves. When he looked towards his feet, which was the majority of the time, he couldn’t see anything more than a few dried out leaves blowing across his tattered shoes and the slight outline of the path he was following. When he looked towards the sky, which was no easy task, the moon seemed to smile upon him with a mouth curved like a sickle. And in front of him, in the area he was heading towards, he could see––plain as day––that something wasn’t right. There was an object in his path, odd and unusual, taking up a boatload of space. He felt drawn to it.