Lincoln, Fox and the Bad Dog

by D Roland Hess

I brought up Gwen’s contact and dialed.

  I figured I’d be lucky to even get voicemail.

  She answered immediately.

  “Lincoln?!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  Not entirely true, but from her perspective it was.

  “Oh my God,” she said. I heard her shout, “He’s alive” to someone away from the phone.

  “I’m alive,” I said. “Dan isn’t. There was a Praecant SWAT team there. Things got bad.”

  “But you’re okay? You’re not hurt?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Gwen, I’m sor-”

  “No!” she said. “No. Not right now. Later. I’m just glad you’re okay. I was-”

  And she stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Another time,” she said, her sounding cooler already.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look…” and that’s where it stopped. I didn’t know what to say to her. I had nothing.

  So.

  “The Praecants have a bunch of stuff they need to go over with me,” I said. “I might be working for them now. I’m not really sure. So I need to go. They’re waiting.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

  A moment passed.

  “Lincoln,” she said. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  “Same,” I said. “I really have to go.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I hung up and put the phone face down on the stoop.

  I wasn’t sure what to think about that. It wasn’t good. But at least we were both alive, and that was worth something.

  There I sat. For ten minutes? An hour? I wasn’t sure.

  Just breathing. Letting the cars crash in my mind, then get hauled away to be replaced by newer faster cars.

  I felt alone, like I hadn’t in a very long time.

  I wondered how the things I’d been thinking about all this time applied to me now.

  Biology drives behavior drives biology.

  I knew the things that had happened to me, and I knew the things I’d done, but I couldn’t see the connections between them. I couldn’t even speculate about how those things were going to drive my biology, my brain flexing and growing around and through them like ivy into a trellis. Something coiled there in the back, and I shuddered despite the sunshine.

  Get up.

  Get up, make your way inside and get some water.

  When in doubt, when you can’t will yourself toward the right complex behaviors, go with the simple steps and let the system build itself.

  I stood.

  I could do that.

  “Greetings,” said a voice very near to my right side. I think it was a very bad sign that although it thoroughly surprised me, I barely reacted.

  I turned.

  A collie had silently made its way to the stoop and sat there, looking at me.

  “Hey,” I said. “Hey Babd.”

  She moved closer and pawed at my leg. I put my hand on her.

  “So, you’re a god, huh?”

  She did the strange dog-shrug.

  “I am a hunter and a mother and a friend. What matters it from where I come? What matters it what I have done or what has been done to me? Perhaps the person who told you this simply has a problem with the arrangement of their letters.”

  Haha.

  “Maybe they do,” I said.

  “Will you walk with me?” said Babd.

  “Uh, I’m pretty beat. Big day. I was hoping to go inside.”

  “This body requires it,” she said. “Besides, it is beautiful here.”

  I looked around. The cars in my head were gone, at least for the moment.

  I breathed deeply and tried to concentrate on the smells that came to me. I heard kids playing and shouting, blocks away. I caught the impressions of things I’d seen and barely remembered in dream states with Babd. I thought of the cool alley behind my parents’ house that was now lost to entropy, where a little boy ran with all of his might to keep up with his best friend.

  “Okay,” I said and pushed myself to my feet. “Okay, okay. Give me a sec.”

  Things slithered somewhere in the distance, but they could wait.

  Babd trotted to the sidewalk and stood in the sun, tipping her nose up to catch the warm rays on her snout, ears and neck.

  I grabbed my phone and left the leathers on the stoop.

  I went out to meet her. The second step was easier than the first.

  “Babd,” I said, “tell me a story.”

  fin

  Lincoln, Fox, and Babd return in A Walk in the Park, With Monsters, now available from Amazon.com. Set one year after the first installment, they have been forced into the employ of the Praecants, trying to get the city ready for something big that the Praecants have planned.

  Get A Walk in the Park, With Monsters now!

  Or, turn the page for a free preview of Chapter 1…

  A Walk in the Park, With Monsters

  Chapter 1

  I advanced through the woods, somewhere on the border between wary and scared. The thing wasn’t that big -- only four feet long -- but it had about a million and a half legs and some kind of stinger on its head. That’s a stupid place for a stinger. I guess when you’re created on the spot instead of the result of millions of years of evolution you can’t expect too much in the way of decent design. Still, I’d seen critters less nasty than this one tear a guy’s arm off and swallow it whole, so…

  Wary.

  Scared.

  Wared?

  “Anyone have eyes on it?” said Shar, her voice tinny in my earpiece. Shar was my boss, and a sorcerer, although they referred to themselves as Praecants. Also, she was a psychopath.

  “No,” came Chip’s response. His heavy breathing kept making his mic cut in and out.

  “Nope,” said I.

  Babd, pawing the ground to my left, said nothing. Babd “wasn’t from around here,” as one of the Praecants had put it. I wasn’t sure exactly what she was, but while she was in our world she inhabited the bodies of dogs, and she usually slept on a big pillow on the floor in my living room, and we were best friends. She loped ahead.

  “Where you going?” I said.

  “Over the hill,” said Babd.

  “No, you’re staying with me.”

  “I am?”

  “You are. You’re not going to charge around to draw it out and let it attack you, then jump to some other body when this one is mangled.”

  “That was… not my intent.”

  “Oh no? Remember. No PMD’s. You promised.”

  She rolled her head and slowly blinked. No Puppy Mine Detectors. There had been times in the recent past when Babd had gotten into the habit of treating the bodies she inhabited with less than the respect that I’d have preferred. I knew it shouldn’t bother me -- I tracked and exterminated monsters for a living these days -- but it did. I was fine with scratching one more magical creature from the face of the Earth, but under no circumstances did I want to have to see yet another dead dog.

  But you can’t tell a demigod. They always think they’re right.

  “Perhaps I was not myself when that promise was crafted,” she said.

  “You promised.”

  “Perhaps.” She inhaled and then did something halfway between a dog and human sigh. Not the strangest thing I’d heard all night.

  “Shush for a second,” I said. “Let’s listen.”

  We stopped. I listened. I’m guessing she listened too.

  It was only 6PM, but it was November, so the sun had set an hour ago. Hays Woods are way darker than you’d think they’d be with the city lights all around. Everything’s all pinkish light pollution, and then you walk under the forest canopy, and it’s like someone put a bag over your head. That’s why we were in tactical gear with a night vision system. Of course, I’d fitted mine with my special lenses that revealed anything magical.

  Now that I was resti
ng for a moment and taking stock, maybe I’d see something.

  There.

  I probably wouldn’t have noticed it during the day, but I could make out a faint trail through the woods, spots here and there, painted with a light magical nimbus. Chip had managed to shoot it only minutes ago. We hadn’t been sure.

  In the darkness, the magical blood would show us the way.

  “I’ve got it,” I said. “I can see the blood.”

  “Yessss,” said Chip, in my ear. “I knew it.”

  “Don’t get cocky,” I said.

  “We’ll converge on you,” said Shar. “Hold your position.”

  So we waited.

  I held Fox down at my right side, muzzle toward the ground, finger outside the trigger guard because I’m not an idiot. We’d made a brand new body for the artificially intelligent magical gun after the last one was sliced in half by a crazy ass Praecant wielding the world’s stumpiest lightsaber. On this second build, I’d decided to go with a 1911 semi-automatic frame as opposed to the original .45 revolver. It was an easy call. You can’t go wrong with the classics.

  “You ready?” I said, directing my intent toward the gun. It pulsed an affirmative in my hand.

  I found that I was nervous, and it wasn’t about the thing we were tracking. It was about Gwen. After weeks of not returning my calls and texts and emails, she’d agreed to meet up tonight. Just to talk. It was supposed to be in about two hours. I had no idea where such a conversation was going to go, and that was the problem. If I knew that she was going to say “Lincoln, I’m moving to Wyoming, and you’re never going to see me again” or even “I’m completely over you so stop calling…” it would be easier.

  There was no guarantee that was the kind of thing she was going to say. The rational part of me noted that there were so many others ways tonight could go, and many of them could be good. But Rational Lincoln wasn’t in charge when it came to Gwen, and Bold, Kick-Down-The-Door-And-Start-Shooting Lincoln was likewise nowhere to be found. When it came to her, all I had was this neurotic little Mathematician Lincoln. He sat around, obsessively looking at printouts of numbers, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and constantly worried that he was seeing evidence of some kind of dino-killing asteroid headed toward Earth. He’d shuffle around the lab, muttering to himself about it.

  After about a minute and a half of worry that my phone would ring and Gwen would cancel on me, I heard careful footsteps coming through the woods. Shar from ahead and to the right; Chip from behind.

  “Let’s go then,” said Shar. “And watch out. It can climb trees.”

  Awesome. I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Lincoln, maintain a three meter spread with me. Chip, cover the flank.”

  Her Australian accent made it sound like she was calling him “Cheep,” which I found amazing.

  “Babd, can you see the blood too?” she said.

  “I can,” said the dog.

  “You can?” I said. “Why didn’t you mention that before?”

  “I enjoy watching you have success.”

  “It would have been really helpful.”

  “Shut it,” said Shar. “Babd, you lead.”

  “Hell no,” I said.

  “Orders!” said Babd, as she threw me a look and trotted forward into the darkness.

  Great.

  We moved ahead.

  I don’t exactly like stalking hostile magical creatures in the woods at night, but it could be worse. Way worse. For example, we could be indoors. One of the main benefits of having guns was the ability to deal out damage at a safe distance, where an ugly, magically mutated centipede couldn’t gore you to death with the stubby horn on its head. Being in the same room with such a beasty naturally negates that safety, and I’d rather keep every advantage I could get my hands on, thank you very much. Unlike Chip and Shar, I was not a Praecant and couldn’t cast spells or read magic or any of the other stuff they could do.

  Something in my head laughed at me, and my current situation. Some memory of the guy with multiple post-grad degrees, happy doing research toward a wunderkind career trajectory reached out to me from the past and said “So… is everything really okay at home?”

  Bzzzzt

  The phone in my pocket buzzed. My brain served up all the possible ways that Gwen could be cancelling on me. There were at least forty-seven. I didn’t have time to check it. Later.

  I could see Babd ahead of us, a light aura of magic misting away from her. To my right, Shar walked with a practiced tactical gait, some kind of tiny HK submachine gun in her hands. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her use the same gun twice. She’s a collector.

  And why the gun? Even though she was a powerful Praecant -- an accomplished Ionist -- that didn’t mean a lot right now. Pittsburgh was lousy with enough distributed elemental iron from its steel city history of air pollution that it swallows up a Praecant’s power draw before they can even get a decent spell started. Very small scale, carefully crafted spells still work, but who wants to wait until they’re within hugging distance of Mr. Millipede before they can engage their special abilities?

  Chip (Cheep!) behind us carried an old AK, the fully automatic kind, not one of those made-for-America semi-auto crapfests. He was a nice guy but out of shape and not my favorite person to have along on one of these runs. Not the 100% diligent, watchful type you want bringing up the rear. Then again, on the two previous calls we’d gotten today, he’d done just fine, so maybe I was being too hard on him.

  Babd crested the hill, and we were over it moments later. A long downward slope lay ahead and the trees thinned out as it went. The city light reflected from the overcast sky, painting everything in faint pink tones. It provided slightly better visibility than the night vision system, so I turned off the tech.

  I saw Babd slowly picking her way down the slope, nose to the ground. Tonight, she wore the body of a Belgian Malinois. They’re used as police and military dogs around the world. She usually only goes for strays, so I have no idea where she found it.

  She’s a damned good dog, that Babd.

  Things seemed pretty simple now, the lightly glowing specks of blood making a vague but unmistakable trail for us. We could follow that until we found the thing, kill it, then call for a collection if there was anything useful left. Or maybe it would take us long enough to find it that it would expire on its own. Once an animal mutated to this stage, and if they weren’t able to roll around in the remains of a freshly killed Praecant, they didn’t last too long before kind of… glorping out. Something gross. But we had no idea how long it had been around, so we couldn’t count on that.

  “Everything okay back there?” said Shar.

  “Yup,” said Chip. Still with the panting. Either super out of shape or super nervous. “We’re clear.”

  Babd had stopped where the slope of the hillside steepened, dropping out of sight from my vantage point. She turned to look at us, fired off an excited bark, then disappeared over the ridge.

  “Shit,” I said and started to run.

  “Lincoln!” said Shar, not bothering with the comm system and just shouting after me. “Hold your position!”

  I ignored her. Shar, Chip, and I were colleagues. Babd and I were friends.

  I went over the ridge in a flash, and there was Babd, circling a small hunting shack right before the woods thickened again. The glowing blood trail led right into the dark doorway.

  “Oh, come on!” I said.

  “It does not come back out,” said Babd. “It is there.”

  Which... wonderful.

  I heard the pounding of feet behind me. Shar and Chip.

  “It’s in there, isn’t it?” said Shar.

  “Damn,” said Chip.

  It was a small shack and looked like it was mostly made from reclaimed pallets. It had a corrugated roof and plastic windows. The door hung open, and it was exactly as dark inside as you’d imagine. From the small, rectangular footprint of the place, I guessed it was a si
ngle-room affair.

  “Chip,” said Shar, “cover the back. I’ll watch the roof. Lincoln, you’re on.”

  Excuse me?

  “Uh,” I said.

  “Go in and get it,” said Shar. “That’s an order.”

  We weren’t really military, but in situations where there were monsters and guns, a type of military discipline made sense. Did really have to do it? No.

  But it made sense.

  We all had body armor, and we were all armed, but Shar and Chip’s magic was mostly useless unless they were actually touching their target, which would be… a bad place. And I, well, I had some other stuff they didn’t. Fox, for one. The engineering I’d put into the artificially intelligent gun meant that although it was powered by magic, it was significantly more efficient than even the best of spells that the bestest Praecants in the world could hang. So it worked in Pittsburgh.

  Because I didn’t need to worry about casting spells, my clothes had threading woven throughout that was made of a magically disruptive substance. Pure magical energy could get through, but it couldn’t happen in an organized fashion. If Mr. Stingerhead also happened to sling some kind of coherent magic, it would be less likely to touch me than them.

  And then there was the mild bioengineering I’d performed on myself over the last year. I was a little stronger, a little faster and a little more durable than a person has a natural right to be. Not a lot, mind you. But enough.

  The Praecants didn’t know about that last bit, and I wasn’t about to tell them.

  “Can’t I light the place up with incendiaries?” I said.

  “We’re in the woods, and there are dead leaves everywhere. That’s a terrible idea. Go.”

  “Can I flatten it?”

  “This is the third morph today. I don’t want it escaping. I want answers. Go.” A normal person would have been pissed at me, maybe yelling at me for delaying, but that wasn’t how Shar worked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her raise her voice, let alone get close to blowing a gasket. It didn’t mean that she wasn’t as serious as death. It simply never came out in her voice or her body language. I’d seen people make some grave errors of judgment in her presence because of it. She’s not normal.

  I drew in a breath on a four count, held it for seven, then blew out on eight.