“Yeah, I heard it. Those radio guys are crazy.”
“Why didn’t you phone me, Parker? You knew that I would hear it—”
“No, how could I know? I was busy. I had a lot of things to do. I found Atwood and he broke up into bowling balls and caught him in a sack and there was this dog waiting in the car—”
“Parker, are you all right?”
“Sure,” I said. “Sure, I am all right.”
“Parker, I’m so scared.”
“Hell,” I said, “there’s nothing to be scared of now. It wasn’t me in the car, and I found Atwood and—”
“That isn’t what I mean. There are things outside.”
“There are always things outside,” I told her. “There are dogs and cats and squirrels and other people—”
“But there are things that pad. They are all around the place and they are looking in and—please come and get me, Parker!”
She scared me. This wasn’t just a foolish woman frightened by the darkness and her own imagination. There was something in her voice, some restrained quality fighting to hold out against hysteria, that convinced me it was not imagination.
“All right,” I said. “Hold on. I’ll be there as soon as I can make it.”
“Parker, please . . .”
“Get on your coat. Stay by the door and watch for the car. But don’t come out until I come up the walk to get you.”
“All right.” She said it almost calmly.
I banged up the phone and swung around to Stirling. “The rifle,” I said. “Over in the corner.” I saw it leaning there and went to pick it up. Stirling rummaged in a drawer and came up with a box of cartridges and handed them to me. I broke the box and some of the cartridges spilled onto the floor. Stirling bent to pick them up.
I rammed shells into the magazine, dumped the rest of them into my pocket.
“I’m going to get Joy,” I told him.
“There’s something wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
I pounded out the door and down the steps.
The Dog followed at my heels.
Joy lived in a small house out in the northwest part of town. For years she had been talking, ever since her mother died, of selling the place and moving into an apartment building closer to the office. But she had never done it. Something held her there—perhaps the old associations and sentimental ties, perhaps the unwillingness to take the chance of moving somewhere else and then not liking it.
I picked a street where I knew the blinking traffic lights would be to my advantage and I made good time.
The Dog, sitting in the seat beside me, with the wind from the partly-open window plastering his whiskers smooth against his face, asked one question only.
“This Joy,” he said, “is a good companion?”
“The very best,” I told him.
He sat considering that. You could almost hear him considering it. But he said no more.
I cheated on the lights and went fasterthan the law allowed and wondered all the way what I would tell a cop if one came roaring after me. But none did and I pulled up in front of Joy’s house with the brakes full on and the tires whining on the pavement and the Dog piled up against the windshield quite surprised by it.
The house sat back some distance from the street and was surrounded by an ancient picket fence, which enclosed a yard half choked with trees and shrubs and zigzag, wandering flower beds. The front gate stood open, as it had stood ever since I’d known the place, sagging on its rusty hinges. I saw that the porch light was on and that there were lights in the front hall and living room.
I jumped out of the car, dragging the rifle with me, and raced around the car. The Dog beat me to the gate and went tearing through it, plunging madly into the shrubbery jungle off the brick-paved walk. I caught one glimpse of him as he disappeared, and his ears were laid back tight against his skull, his lips were parted in a snarl, and his tail was at full mast.
I went through the gate and pounded up the walk, while off to the left, in the direction in which the Dog had gone, there suddenly erupted a most unholy and bloodcurdling racket.
The front door came open and Joy ran across the porch. I met her on the steps She hesitated for a moment, looking off into the yard from where all the noise Was coming.
The racket had grown louder now. It was a hard thing to describe. It sounded something like a calliope that had gone raving mad, and intermingled with it Was the undertone of something large running angrily and swiftly through a field of tall, dry grass.
I grabbed Joy’s arm and shoved her down the walk.
“Dog!” I shouted. “Dog!”
The racket still kept on.
We reached the sidewalk and I pushed Joy into the front seat and slammed the door.
There still was no sign of the Dog.
Lights were going on in a few of the houses up and down the street and I heard a door bang as someone came out on a porch.
I ran back to the gate.
“Dog!” I shouted once again.
He came charging out of the shrubbery, tail tucked tight against his rump and slobbery foam streaming from his wetted whiskers. There was something running close behind him—a black and knobby 0methinig with the entire front of it a gaping hungry mouth.
I had no idea what it was. I had no idea what to do.
What I did I did instinctively, without any thought at all.
I used the rifle like a golf club. Why I didn’t shoot, I don’t know. Perhaps there was no time to; perhaps there was another reason. Perhaps I sensed that a bullet would be useless against the charging maw.
Before I knew what I was about, I had hands around the barrel and the butt was back behind my shoulders and was swinging forward.
The Dog was past me and the knobby shape was coming through the gate and the rifle was a vicious club that almost whistled as it swung. Then it hit and there was no shock. The black thing spattered and the butt went though it—I mean through it, like a knife through butter—and there Was a gummy mess running on the sidewalk and the pickets dripped.
There was a floundering in the shrubbery and I knew that there were others Coming, but I didn’t wait. I turned and ran. I ran around the car and tossed the rifle into the seat alongside Joy, then leaped in myself. I had left the motor run fling and I gunned the car out from the curb and went up the street with the accelerator tight against the floor.
Joy was huddled in the seat, sobbing softly.
“Cut it out,” I told her.
She tried to but she couldn’t.
“They always do it short,” the Dog said from the back seat. “They always do it half. They do not acquire the intestines to do it as they should.”
“You mean the guts,” I told him.
Joy stopped her bawling.
“Carleton said you had a talking dog,” she said half angrily, half frightened, “and I don’t believe it. ‘What kind of trick is this?”
“No trick, my fair one,” said the Dog. “Do you not think I enunciate most clearly?”
“Joy,” I told her, “drop everything you ever knew. Get rid of all convictions. Forget everything that’s right and logical and proper. Imagine yourself in a sort of ogre-land, where anything can happen, and mostly for the worst.”
“But—” she said.
“But that’s the way it is,” I said. “What you knew this morning isn’t true tonight. There are talking dogs that aren’t really dogs. And there are bowling balls that can be anything they choose. They’re buying up the Earth, and Man, perhaps, no longer owns it, and you and I, even now, may be hunted rats.”
In the glow of the instrument panel, I could see her face, the puzzle and the wonderment and hurt, and I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her close and try to wipe away some of the puzzlement and hurt. But I couldn’t do it. I had a car to drive and I had to try to figure out what we would do next.
“I don’t understand,” she said, and she kept her voice calm, but there was strain and terror just beneath the calmness. “There was the car . . .”