“Send me that location,” Daggert said.
“Yes, s—”
Daggert ended the call. “Leave your coffee,” he said to the other two. “We’re going to the dump.”
Eighteen
Jeff remembered that when Emily first showed him the train station, she’d pointed to a narrow, overgrown road that led in from the main one that went to Canfield. He trolled slowly along that route, and when he was roughly between the turnoff to Flo’s Cabins and Shady Acres Resort, he kept his eye out for a possible way in.
Before long, Jeff noticed a rusted gate hanging between two wood posts and pulled off to the side of the road.
Jeff said to the dog, “You wait here. I’m just going to check something.”
Chipper moved his head slightly at the sound of the boy’s voice. He found comfort in it. He’d been watching him closely as he lay on the seat next to him. He saw features he recognized in the boy’s face. The way his nose turned up slightly at the end. His blue eyes. Something about the way he held his head.
Yes, this is the one, Chipper thought. He hadn’t wanted to get hit by his pickup truck, but it had saved him a lot of time tracking him down.
Jeff leapt out of the truck and walked across the gravel shoulder to the gate. A length of chain had been looped around a hook to hold it in place, but there was no lock. He unwound the chain to free the gate and pushed it back, which wasn’t easy, since it had to be forced over grass that had grown two feet high. And the rusted hinges didn’t help much, either. This gate hadn’t been opened in years, that was pretty clear.
Jeff got back in the truck, drove down the lane far enough to clear the gate, then went back and closed it, hooking it back up the way he’d found it.
Chipper sat up far enough in the seat to watch him do all this. He wanted to find a way to talk to him, explain things to him, but there wasn’t any way he could do that right now. He’d have to give that some thought.
Jeff took the road very slowly. The tall trees on either side more or less defined it, but it didn’t look like anyone had been down here in years. Parts of the road had washed out, exposing large rocks. It must have been quite a trick, years ago, getting that train station down here. It would have to have been on a flatbed truck, and taken off with a large crane. There had to have been enough room to get all that equipment down here at one time, but in the intervening years the forest had nearly reclaimed this road. And Jeff was guessing the road itself had been in a lot better shape back then. It was a good thing he was in a truck with lots of clearance; otherwise the undercarriage would have bottomed out on the rocks and bumps.
The road curved gently through the woods, and when Jeff didn’t see the station after two hundred yards, he started to wonder if he’d taken the wrong laneway in. But then, there it was!
The trees opened up and the railroad station was there before him.
“Okay, pal,” Jeff said to the dog. “We’re here.”
He jumped out of the truck, came around to the other side, opened the door and once again carefully scooped the dog into his arms. He was a dead weight, totally limp, but he probably wasn’t much more than twenty or thirty pounds, so he wasn’t hard to carry.
While he felt even more comforted in the boy’s arms, Chipper now wondered whether he had made a mistake. He didn’t want those people from The Institute finding him here and putting the boy in danger. But when the truck had bumped him, he’d sensed that anything The Institute might be using to track him had been disabled.
He hoped so.
Jeff got the station door open. As he stepped inside, a tiny, grey mouse scurried along one of the dirty baseboards and out of sight. He slowly carried the dog up the stairs to the second floor, careful not to press hard on the steps Emily had said were weak, and set him in the oversized beanbag chair that Emily had told him was her special place. Jeff reshaped the chair slightly so the dog wasn’t curled up in a hole.
“You just take it easy,” he said. “I’m going to get you something to eat and drink and try to find out who you belong to.”
Chipper studied the boy with his brown eyes, which Jeff noticed had an odd quality about them. Chipper knew his eyes would appear strange to anyone who looked at them closely, that they did not look entirely natural. He blinked his eyes — something he didn’t actually need to do — to break the boy’s attention on them.
Chipper felt, for the first time since his escape, not just happiness. He felt a sense of hope. Without even having to think about it, he managed to convey that to Jeff.
“Hey!” said Jeff. “You’re wagging your tail!”
Just a little, Chipper thought. You should see how much I can wag it when I’m feeling better.
“Yes!” Jeff said. “This is great!”
He dropped to his knees, cradled the dog’s head in his arms, felt the soft fur of his ears on his palms, and put his face right up to the dog’s. “I am going to do everything I can to help you. But I have to go now. I’m going to be back real soon.”
Do you have to go? Chipper thought. Can’t you stay here with me? After all I’ve gone to, to find you?
Jeff raced down the stairs and out of the station. He decided to leave his aunt’s truck by the station, and hightailed it through the woods to Emily’s house at Shady Acres. He put his nose to the screen door, peering inside, as he rapped on the frame. When no one answered, he ran towards the lake, where he found Emily sitting on the end of a dock, dangling her feet in the water.
“Hey!” he shouted. But she didn’t turn around. As he got closer, he could see that she was listening to music, but when he ran out onto the dock, she pulled the buds from her ears, wound them up and tucked them into her pocket.
“You have to come with me!” he said.
“What? Where?”
“To the station.” He took a couple of deep breaths. “You have to come.”
“What is going on with you?”
“We need water, and some food. Like, do you have any hot dogs? Or some raw meat? Like some hamburger? And water! Yes, we need water!”
“Are we having a picnic? Because if we are, I am definitely not into raw meat.”
“No, not a picnic. Come on, come on. You’re wasting time!”
“Stop talking and tell me what’s happening!”
Jeff blinked. “Which do you want? For me to stop talking, or to tell you what’s happening?”
Emily gave him a look of total exasperation. “Just tell me.”
“I found a dog. He ran in front of the truck. I don’t think I hit him hard, but he’s hurt and I took him to the station.”
“Whoa,” Emily said. “Why didn’t you just take him to your place?”
“My aunt hates dogs.”
She thought a moment. “We could tell my dad.”
Jeff shook his head. “Do you think, if we can’t find the owner, he’d want to adopt a dog?”
Emily slowly shook her head. “He’s got like a huge dog allergy.”
“Then he’s either going to tell my aunt, or make us take it to the dog pound.”
“What’s all this us stuff?”
“Are you going to help me or not?”
She took a moment to think it over, then said, “Fine. Let me see what I can get from the fridge. Wait here.”
Emily got her feet out of the water, slipped her shoes back on, and ran back up the hill to her house. Jeff stood on the dock and gazed out over Pickerel Lake.
Aunt Flo was going to wonder why it was taking him so long to do a simple run to the dump. There were times Jeff wished he could put her in the truck and leave her there.