They’d started the evening off at a bar on the riverfront, staying only long enough for a quick drink and a round of introductions. After that, they relocated to a racetrack just north of the city, where Len’s cousin was driving in a demolition derby. There were live bands and plenty of food and drinks, but the show’s entire atmosphere reeked of redneck testosterone. Mia hated it, and so did Greg, and their mutual distaste of the event made them instant allies. About twenty minutes into the first melee of eardrum-splitting automotive battle they ducked away and took Greg’s car back to Minneapolis. By then, his initial bout of shyness had passed.
This being their first date, Greg steered clear of movie theaters and bass-booming nightclubs, preferring to find an activity that facilitated one-on-one conversation. They visited several exotic stores uptown, chatting while they window shopped, sharing summaries of their lives and desires. And they got along great. The conversation went so well, in fact, that the busy shops and crowded walkways soon became nothing more than background noise to their words, blurring into static. There were no uncomfortable collisions of interest, no lack of topics. The two of them seemed to fuel each other, keeping the dialogue going.
Their journey took them to a coffee house featuring live jazz, where they got double espressos and huddled together within the crowd, continuing their exchange using both words and body language amid the aroma of java, incense, and pipe tobacco. Around midnight, they ended the evening with a late-night stroll through the Walker Art Garden, where their mouths met on more than one occasion.
Greg had already replayed the entire evening three times in his head, now hoping to hang onto that euphoric sense of delight he’d felt while in Mia’s presence. They’d kissed long and meaningfully before going their separate ways, and he found himself content with the fact they’d not ended up in bed. He knew she was interested in him, there was no doubting that, but she wasn’t easy, and he found that appealing. They had another night planned for tomorrow—today, rather—and the anticipation of seeing her again was an experience of its own.
Greg ascended the front steps to the porch, thumbing through his keys, when he was startled by the sounds of the neighbor kid across the street. The surprise struck him like an icy hand coming down on the back of his neck.
“Damn!” he said, looking over his shoulder.
Ghost pale in the darkness, the young mentally disabled boy sat on the front stoop of his home, gleefully clapping his hands and keening, “Eyeee, Eyeee,” into the night.
Greg shook his head. He’d heard the eight-year-old late at night countless times before, but this particular instance clashed with his upbeat mood and made tonight’s display seem utterly disgusting. Yet again he found himself wondering how the neighbors to either side could stand it, or how the boy’s parents could allow him outside at such a time, especially given his condition. Not that Greg knew what his condition was, precisely. All he’d heard was the local rumor that alcohol had played a part during his mother’s pregnancy.
The boy continued clapping unabated.
“Eyeee, Eyeee.”
The disharmony of that noise had doused Greg’s ability to keep the pleasant memory of his evening with Mia alight, and he hurried to get inside, leaving the boy’s howling at his back.
3.
Despite the late night, Greg awoke early the next morning, just after seven, and the sun was already giving a preview of the glorious day ahead—the kind of day God had probably meant for humanity to enjoy on a regular basis before some asshole invented money. Thankfully, it was Saturday, the one day he allowed himself to take a break from his work.
He got up and made toast and eggs in the kitchen. Eating by the window, he compiled a mental list of possible activities for tonight’s date with Mia, fervent in his mission to recapture the feel of their previous outing. If he played his cards right—
Greg’s train of thought suddenly derailed when he glanced outside and spotted a dead dog in the backyard.
The sight of the hulking gray shape slumped against the side of the garage left him stunned, half a crust of toast still pinched between his teeth. He’d been thinking about the house and yard, about what he needed to do to make the place presentable in case Mia came over later, and that’s when he saw it.
Fur. Ears. Paws. Tail.
He got up and went to investigate.
He wasn’t even halfway across the lawn when he recognized that it was Gracy, his neighbor’s five-year-old German Sheppard.
“Ah, shit,” he whispered to himself.
He glanced to the Jacobsons’ house next door, guessing that Tom and Angela were still fast asleep, probably unaware that the dog was missing. He wondered if he should tell them now, even if it meant waking them up.
His mental debate tapered off when he got closer to the animal and saw the full extent of its condition. The dead canine lay on its back, legs up, jaws open. In life, Gracy had been a healthy, stalwart specimen, but now her emaciated body looked ancient, her skin shrunken tight around her bones as if vacuum-formed to her skeleton.
“What the hell?” Greg muttered. He recalled seeing her playing outside just the other day.
Bright white fangs smiled up at him where the dog’s withered lips had peeled back; her nose had become a fleshless cavern in her skull. Both her eyes were missing, the sockets dark and empty, and Greg’s eggs and toast seemed to come alive in his belly when he noticed the flies that had already begun to explore those twin ovoid cavities.
How on earth was he going to break the news to his neighbors? He didn’t have a clue. Even to him it was obvious that the dog hadn’t died of natural causes, and he found himself fearfully wondering if it had caught some kind of abnormal disease.
As he pondered that thought, he suddenly realized that the green-gray mass of flesh that jutted from the Sheppard’s gaping maw wasn’t a bloated tongue, but rather a distended length of regurgitated intestine.
“Oh, God!”
He retreated to the driveway, away from the corpse, when he caught a glimpse of the garage door in his peripheral vision.
It was open.
He hadn’t opened it last night when he’d come home. And he was pretty damn sure it was closed when he’d arrived.
Collecting himself, he moved to the open doorway and examined the inside. The overhead light bulb remained dark, but the sunlight streaming in over his shoulder easily illuminated the single car space.
There was blood on the floor.
He saw it right away, a red trail of quarter-size droplets leading clear to the back wall, vanishing behind the collection of scrap lumber he kept stacked in the far corner.
He snatched up a long-handled shovel from the tool rack mounted near the main entry but didn’t dare go inside. What if the thing that made the bloody trail was the thing that killed Gracy? Maybe it was a wounded animal, something infected with a germ or virus that caused the ghastly deformities he’d seen on the dog?
He decided that his best bet was to close the door and call animal control.
He was about to back his way to his car, intent on retrieving the automatic control box for the door, when his eyes spotted something protruding from where the crimson stains disappeared behind the wood.
He squinted, focusing on the sight.
And suddenly he realized what he was looking at.
Without another second of hesitation, he strode inside, marching straight to the end of the blood trail, where he found the bag sitting behind the lumber.
Sure enough, it was the plastic bag his computer had come in, the one with the warning. It was half-full of clotted dark blood, some smeared across its transparent plastic skin.