Iron Mike

by Patricia Rose

  “Expecting maid service?” he asked her with a teasing smile.

  Kari grinned back, shrugging one slim shoulder. “What can I say? It’s habit.”

  They let Hershey out to relieve himself while they ate breakfast, and then they were off for another glorious day of motorcycle riding!

  The sun was high in the sky when they stopped for lunch, barely pulling off the side of the road. Hershey bounded off into the woods for a short jog to stretch his legs and water the undergrowth, but he came back when Kari whistled for him. He could smell her worry. If he had language the humans understood, he could have told her they were safe; there were no Bad Things anywhere even close to them. But he didn’t have words, and she didn’t understand Dog. Hershey felt a moment of pity for his human’s mate; not only was she crippled with a tiny little button of a nose that didn’t work, but she also couldn’t understand the subtle nuances of body and muscle that communicated danger or, in this case, the “all clear.”

  Hershey didn’t let it bother him. It was another beautiful day in the sidecar next to his human and above Yippyface, with the warm sun shining down on him and the cool breeze blowing over him. Hershey was happy to share another delicious meal with his humans when they stopped. He was allowed to eat the remains of their meals rejected by Ethiopians, but Yippyface was only allowed kibble. Ah, well. It was just another benefit of being the top dog.

  After eating, Hershey and Yippyface played, which mostly consisted of Yippyface trying to get Hershey’s toy away from the smarter, stronger dog and falling over her own feet in the attempt. It made Kari laugh, and the sound was as soothing to Hershey as wind chimes in a summer breeze, so he encouraged the pup’s efforts by dangling the toy in front of her before pulling it away. Pleasing humans was important, and it had obviously fallen to Hershey to teach the younger dog her job in that respect.

  Mike finished talking on his toy and carefully packed it away. He worried about that thing, making sure it was as well-protected in the sidecar as Hershey himself! Hershey would have been offended, but he understood humans and their toys. Mike was talking into that toy pretty regularly, at least twice each day.

  “So what’s the status?” Kari asked.

  Mike frowned, but Hershey could also smell excitement and a sense of anticipation in the human. “Three Resistance cells – including Knox – are actively engaging now. They’re taking it to the Trois, based on the information we were able to pass on. They’re positioning snipers in trees near each encampment. Well, except Knox, of course, since the closest tree is more than a mile from camp. The old man has snipers in the guard towers, and he is apparently ordering more towers built as we speak.”

  Kari snorted and finished cleaning up the trash from their meal. That’s when Hershey heard it. He stood, a low growl in the back of his throat and his hackles raised.

  “What is it, boy?” Mike immediately got to his feet. Hershey liked that about Mike; for a pathetic human who didn’t understand a bit of Dog, he actually tried. He paid attention, for the most part, and tried to puzzle out Hershey’s intent. Hershey growled louder, his sharp gaze focused on the tree line.

  He saw it come out of the woods long before his humans did, of course. They were still scanning close to the ground, looking for the Bad Things. Hershey barked once, sharply, as the small black orb finally floated close enough for his humans to see. He heard Kari gasp and smelled the adrenaline suddenly pouring from Mike. Good. His job was done. They knew.

  With a content sigh, Hershey settled back down for a quick nap before it was time to ride his sidecar again. He cocked his head, puzzled, when the humans neither relaxed nor started the “moving out go-go-go, soldier!” game Mike liked to play with Kari whenever he was ready to leave and she wasn’t. It dawned on Hershey – his humans were afraid of the black orb he had growled at! Once again, Hershey wished his poor slow humans could speak Dog. He would have easily reassured them with a quick tail wag. This orb wasn’t a Bad Thing – it was only another toy, like the ones the humans used when they wanted to play talking games.

  The orb came up to Mike and did nothing, simply floated there about a foot away. Hershey yawned, settling his head between his paws. Yippyface was already snoring softly next to Hershey’s side, her tiny paws kicking a bit as she dreamed.

  “Mike –?” Kari asked, a warning clear in her tone. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Mike wasn’t backing away from the orb but was instead slowly reaching toward it. He didn’t reply, just stretched out his hand. Hershey heard a sharp pop! and everything went black.

  Hershey

  Hershey’s nose twitched. The mouth-watering aroma of a cooking steak, lightly seasoned with pepper and garlic, filled the air. He heard it sizzling and sighed in contentment. He also heard his human - Clare - walking around in the kitchen, humming to herself as she wrapped baking potatoes to put into the microwave and then went back to mixing a green salad. She wasn’t just cooking for herself, Hershey knew. If she were, she would have popped one of those tiny trays into the microwave and he would have been allowed to lick the bottom when all the food was gone. No, company food was much, much better! He hoped it was his human’s best friend, Tatianna, who would be visiting. Tat always stayed at least a week, and she always brought Hershey the best treats and took him for long walks on the beach! She was his third favorite human ever!!

  The smell of the steak seemed to come closer and one of Hershey’s paws inadvertently twitched with his nose. This was a wonderful dream! He didn’t want it to end.

  “Come on, Hershey, wake up,” Clare said softly. “I cut the meat away, but there’s a little bit still left on the bone for a good boy.”

  He couldn’t help himself. Her voice was so real. With a sigh, knowing everything would vanish as soon as he did it, Hershey opened his eyes.

  He absorbed everything with all of his senses as quickly as possible. Clare knelt before him, the slight scent of her basil and lime scented fingertips holding out the largest steak bone Hershey had ever smelled in his life! There was more than a “little bit” of meat left on the bone - there was a full, happy tummy waiting to happen! Hershey grabbed the bone quickly but carefully, as he always did. And then he dropped it, remaining dead still.

  “Don’t you want your bone, boy?” Clare-who-wasn’t-Clare asked cajolingly.

  Hershey curled his upper lip disdainfully, as if to say, “I know you aren’t my human. Where is she, and where are my other humans?”

  Clare-who-wasn’t-Clare sighed, a bit sadly. “The Badness took your Clare human away, Hershey. She has gone to wherever it is our souls go when our time is over. Your other two humans are right here, sleeping on that bed.”

  Hershey looked and, sure enough, there were Mike and Kari, curled around each other. Hershey felt a brief flare of jealousy because Yippyface slept between them, but he returned his gaze to the bone.

  Clare laughed. “Of course you may eat it while we talk.”

  Hershey took her at her word, although he fully intended to be all about the eating and not about the talking. The bone was as delicious as it had promised to be, and he gnawed and licked with enthusiasm.

  “I am Researcher-Xenohistorian,” the woman who looked like his human said to him. “You know that I came with the Badness that is here on your world now, but I didn’t bring it to you, and I am trying to stop it. I need your help.”

  Hershey stared at her as he nibbled a delightful strip of marrow from between two tight pieces of steak bone. “I’m a dog,” he thought at her. “I want to help my humans, but they’re the smart ones. You need to talk to them. Can I have some water?”

  “Of course,” she said, pushing a bowl of water next to the plate that had held the bone. The bowl of water wasn’t in her hand a moment ago. Hershey lapped politely - it was clean and cool, just below room temperature. Perfect, like the steak.

  “Hershey, I don’t know if you can help us or not. If any of your previous humans was very, very religious, you
might hold something in your memories, maybe even in your early puppy memories, which would be of help. Would you let me look?”

  Hershey licked and nibbled the bone for a long moment, then lifted an ear in agreement. “My last human liked hailmary,” he offered. Then another thought occurred to him and his brow furrowed in worry. “Will it hurt?” he asked. It didn’t matter if it would hurt or not - he already gave his word - but he still wanted to know.

  “Not at all,” Clare-who-wasn’t-Clare promised. “You are a very good dog, and I won’t ever let anything hurt you, if I can help it.”

  Mike

  Mike felt the mattress sag a bit under Gran’s slight weight as she sat down beside him. She positioned the tray comfortably and he could smell the savory spices of her extra-everything hearty chicken soup. He must have injured himself somehow, although he didn’t feel any pain. The extra-everything soup meant he was getting Gran’s own version of Sheldon Cooper’s “Soft Kitty” therapy.

  “You’re propped up enough to eat, boy, but don’t move about too much,” Gran’s firm voice said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mike replied and opened his eyes to assess his wounds. He was in his bedroom at Gran’s house, propped up on about six pillows, and his ribs were bandaged tightly. He wasn’t in any pain, though, not even when he inhaled. That was a pleasant surprise. He’d had a broken rib before, and it had hurt like crazy, with or without breathing.

  Gran leaned forward to hand Mike a tablespoon, and he accepted it eagerly, dipping it into the bowl and barely blowing to cool it before swallowing. Gran’s “extra-hearty, extra-healing, extra-loving, extra-everything” soup was for momentous occasions, better or worse, such as the team winning the Final Four, or someone being ill or seriously “down and out.” The savory flavors exploded in Mike’s mouth, just as perfect as he remembered. As Mike remembered the taste of the soup, he remembered the rest of it, too.

  “I died?” he asked quietly. There was a slight tremble in his voice, and he felt immediate shame for the show of weakness.

  Gran looked surprised. “Why on Earth would you say that, boy?” She paused a moment, considering, then nodded once in understanding before shaking her head firmly. “The avatar you see in front of you is the image of your dead grandmother, son, but you - no, you are most definitely alive.”

  “Then how -”

  Gran held up her hand, and a lifetime of respect and obedience silenced him. “I’ll answer as many questions as I can, Ryan,” she promised quietly. “But I will need to ask you some questions first. Feel free to eat while we talk. I’m actually kind of proud of myself for making that soup.”

  Suspicion filled Mike’s mind but ... damn! The soup was perfect! It was as delicious as any Gran had ever made, but it was more than that. Something about the soup, his bedroom, Gran, the whole situation he impossibly found himself in ... was soothing. Everything seemed to work together to calm him, to reassure him that he was, at least for now, safe.

  The Gran avatar’s question, when it came, was as far out of left field as anything he could have possibly imagined.

  “Transubstantiation?” he repeated, his blue eyes puzzled. “Yeah, I know what it means. It’s the belief that the bread and wine used in the Eucharist actually become the body and blood of Christ. You - I mean, my Gran - told me about it when she wanted me to think about getting confirmed - that's like baptized, but for adults. I just don’t understand why you’re asking the question.”

  “Is transubstantiation something your grandmother believed in, Ryan? Did she truly believe the wafer and wine became actual human flesh and blood?”

  Mike shrugged uncomfortably. “Well ... yeah, I guess so,” he said.

  The avatar with the face of his grandmother looked very, very somber. “Ryan Michael Sanderlin, this is a matter that is much too important to be determined by a guess,” she said, her voice gentle but firm. “You need to think about this - really, deeply think about it. What did your grandmother believe?”

  Mike considered the question as he slowly finished the bowl of soup. He didn’t know why it was so important, and a vague part of him wondered why he should care. His grandmother’s beliefs wouldn’t bring her back from the dead. He himself was obviously in the middle of an unconscious (or dying) hallucination. The answer shouldn’t matter, but for some reason, his grandmother’s face told him that it did. It very much did.

  “I can’t say either way,” he finally said quietly. “I know Gran believed most of what the Church said. She believed in Jesus and she believed in miracles. She believed in Heaven and Hell, and in God and the devil. But I also know there were a bunch of things the Church said she didn’t believe at all.”

  “Elaborate, please?” the Gran avatar asked quietly. Her words were another sharp reminder Mike was delusional. Gran would never have spoken like that.

  “Holy Communion ... made Gran feel happy,” Mike said, frowning thoughtfully as he remembered countless masses he had attended with his grandmother. “After she took the wafer she would always have this soft, peaceful smile on her face, like she just knew some wonderful secret. And then she would sit in the pew very quietly and pray until everyone else was finished, and the mass moved on. She was never showy about it, like a lot of the parishioners were - she never acted smug or ‘more saved’ than anyone else. She just seemed ... quiet and happy. She said she always felt peaceful when she took Communion.”

  The Gran avatar nodded thoughtfully. “And the other teachings of the Church? There were some teachings she did not believe?”

  Mike nodded. “She didn’t believe some of them at all and some of them actually made her angry at the Church. Like no birth control. She told us one time that she saw too many babies go hungry during the Great Depression to think birth control was always a bad thing. She always said it was better for the baby to never be born at all, rather than to be born and then murdered inside its mother’s own body. She was really against abortion but she understood sometimes a woman feels like she has no choice. Gran blamed the Church’s old-fashioned rules about birth control for a lot of the abortions Catholic teenagers were having.

  “And also ... well ... my Uncle Phil was gay, but everyone just pretended not to know it. Gran loved Ortiz, Uncle Phil’s buddy, as much as she loved Phil, or my mom, or my Aunt Karen. So ... there were a lot of things the Church is pretty adamant on that she didn’t believe.”

  The avatar sighed heavily. “I don’t know how to analyze this data,” she said, as much to herself as to Mike. “Your grandmother sounds like too much of an open thinker to believe in some of her religion’s more anachronistic teachings. However, the sense of peace you describe her experiencing after partaking of the Eucharist lends itself to the belief it holds great tangible, as well as spiritual, power. Within the tenets of the religion’s teachings, one would extrapolate she believed in the act of cannibalism.”

  Mike’s head snapped up, his eyes blazing blue fury. “The Catholic church is not about cannibalism!” he snapped, his voice hot and uncompromising. “And my grandmother would have never believed in that! She would have died before eating human flesh!”

  The absolute conviction in Mike’s eyes and, even more, in the dark red and black lightning streaks of anger in his aura, startled the avatar. There was no doubt - none - the boy believed what he was saying. But ... would that be enough?

  Kari

  Kari smiled as the sun baked into her skin, warming her body with its delicious, penetrating rays. The smells of suntan lotion and chlorine and the familiar sensation of the towel under her body soothed away all of her worries.

  “Well, you look as happy as a lizard on a rock, little girl,” Daddy said, his voice warm and pleased.

  “Mmhmmm,” Kari agreed, the moan as close to one of ecstasy as she ever expected her father to hear from her lips. She adjusted her bikini, making sure she hadn’t untied the top string, before opening her eyes and looking up into her father’s smiling face. Someone had adjusted the umbrella perfectly - i
t gave her and Daddy enough shade to be able to talk comfortably, yet still gave the warm sunshine access to most of her body. Her dad held out a frosted glass of lemonade and Kari’s eyes lit up with pleasure as she accepted it.

  “Thank you!” she smiled, taking a greedy sip of the icy sweet tartness. She shivered in delight - it was perfect! It was just tart enough, exactly like Mom used to make it. Between them, she and Daddy got it right about twenty percent of the time.

  “I’m so sorry I missed your retirement cere -” Kari started, and froze, her mind spinning into an almost panicked overdrive.

  “It’s all right, baby girl,” the fucking imposter who dared to look like her father said calmly. “It didn’t go off as planned anyway.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Kari hissed. The hand holding the frosted glass of lemonade trembled slightly as her grip tightened around it. She wanted to smash the glass on the table in front of her and hold the jagged shards to the motherfucker’s throat!

  “Calmly.” His quiet voice had the same tone her father used to soothe her nightmares away when she was a child. Kari tried to make her hand move sharply, to force it downward, but instead she found herself taking another sip of the lemonade. It was so sweet and tart, just dancing on her tongue --

  “NO!” she gasped, struggling for control with everything inside her. The lemonade glass shook in her hand, cold liquid sloshing over her fingers. “Who are you?” she growled again, the words harsh and demanding.

  “I am Scientist-Farmer,” the man with her father’s eyes replied, and, just like that, it - whatever “it” was - was over. Her fear and anger vanished as completely as if they were never there in the first place. Kari tentatively probed at her own mind, feeling for a hint of brain bruise or some leftover adrenaline. So much fear and rage, and now ... simple calm. Way too weird.