Dog Warrior

by Wen Spencer

  Ru came back with a cocoa blast. "We should get him up if we can, in case Sumpter shows."

  One of the bullets had sliced through a major artery, thus the reason for the body shutting down—to keep the heart from pumping out the entire blood supply. Atticus could sense, though, that the wound was healed over. That was promising in and of itself. "Give it a shot."

  Ru held the beer stein of warm mash under the Dog Warrior's nose. He gave the stein to Atticus to hold, repositioned the boy's head so the throat was one straight column, and spooned some into the lax mouth. "Come on, come on." After a minute, he shook his head. "No, it's not working." He thumped back onto the tile floor. "This is going to soooo suck if he stays dead."

  "He's healing," Atticus said slowly. If Atticus could control the mice, and sense the body healing, maybe he could influence it even more. "Let's get him out of the tub."

  "Hold on." With practiced ease, Ru cut off the soiled underwear, wrapped it in plastic, tossed it away, and cleaned the boy. It was embarrassing to know Ru had learned the skill on Atticus. Washing his hands, Ru spread a blanket out on the floor. "Okay."

  They lifted the body out of the tub and onto the blanket, tucking the flannel around the cool skin.

  Atticus leaned over the Dog Warrior, extending his awareness until the boy's still body seemed like part of his own. He could feel the dormant cells patiently waiting for the return of life. Come on. It's time to be alive. Breathe! The boy's body arched upward as Atticus forced it hard into the first breath. Good boy! He let it go slack and nudged the heart into a beat. Breathe! Again the body bent as the breath rattled into its lungs. Come on. You can do it. Breathe!

  Like a motorcycle being kick-started, the Dog Warrior lurched through the forced breath, gave a sudden half cough, and then gagged as his newly awake stomach decided to eject its contents.

  Atticus levered the boy up and over the toilet before he choked, and the boy's stomach emptied. He was ice-cold, and the vomit splashing over Atticus's arm held the same dead chill. The kid was shivering hard, his teeth chattering.

  But he was alive. There was a heart thumping hard under Atticus's palm, pressed to the kid's chest. The kid took deep, deep breaths, like someone who had stayed underwater to the point of drowning and had now come up for air.

  "Well, that worked," Ru said. "Whatever you did."

  With a wolflike snarl, the Dog Warrior spun to face Ru. Atticus felt the stranger's anger, fear; and despair as the boy started to growl. It was a feral sound, deep in the boy's chest, inhuman in its resonance and savagery.

  "We're not going to hurt you," Atticus said. "We're not the ones that killed you."

  Atticus had been expecting human reactions. As he started to speak, the boy jerked around to face him even while scuttling away from both of them with stunning speed. A moment later, the Dog Warrior was backed against the bay windows, the pit of the tub between them. His dark eyes locked on Atticus in a steady, unblinking stare that seemed to see into him, to his core, and through, to encompass all that he was and wasn't.

  Belatedly, Atticus realized that—because they were physically identical—the boy hadn't realized Atticus was there until he had spoken.

  "It's okay." Atticus tried for a calming tone. "You're safe."

  Ru started to move, and the boy's stare flicked to him, his lips going back into a silent snarl. Of course, Ru took it in stride, holding out the stein of warm chocolate mash. "Cocoa blast?"

  The Dog Warrior sniffed, nostrils flaring to catch the liquid's scent, as he considered the two of them. "Boy" was the wrong word for him. Dead, he seemed a young and helpless human. Alive—even deathly pale, covered with bandages, arm splinted, and shivering hard as his body fought to climb back to normal core temperature—there was no denying that he was something wild and powerful. Slowly, the Dog Warrior uncoiled from the corner, crept forward, and took the large stein in his one good hand.

  He drank greedily, getting a dark brown milk mustache, which he licked off. All the while, he watched them with the all-seeing stare.

  "What's your name?" Atticus asked.

  "U-U-Ukiah." It was forced out between chattering teeth.

  Atticus exchanged a look with Ru; he'd been found as a toddler in Idaho, just over the Blue Mountains from Ukiah, Oregon. "Like the town? Ukiah, Oregon?"

  "Y-y-yes."

  Atticus waited for him to add a last name, but none was forthcoming.

  "W-w-who are you?"

  "Atticus. Atticus Steele."

  "I'm Hikaru Takahashi, but my friends call me Ru."

  Ukiah thrust out the empty stein, the hand trembling, but the eyes locked and steady. "M-m-more. P-p-please."

  At least he had manners.

  Ru took the stein and murmured, "It's going to be easier to feed him downstairs."

  Yes, but the kitchen was full of money and guns. "Go let Kyle know I'm bringing him down."

  Kyle hastily packed away the money as Atticus half carried the blanket-wrapped Dog Warrior downstairs; he gave Atticus annoyed looks as he stuffed stacks of twenties into a brushed-steel briefcase. The guns were out of sight, and Kyle's computers showed only log-in screens.

  As Ru mixed another cocoa blast using raw eggs, pureed liver, wheat germ, and chocolate sauce, Atticus helped Kyle hide away the money.

  "Speaking as someone who has an asshole for a brother," Kyle hissed, "we shouldn't trust him."

  Atticus looked to the stranger with his face and feral eyes. Brother?

  Amazing how one word could explode so much emotion through him. Atticus couldn't even identify all the fragments. Excitement? Maybe something that might have even been joy, but heavily mixed with anger and fear. Family was something Atticus had dreamed about as a child, along with a Santa Claus who would finally figure out which foster home he lived in and deliver several years' worth of misplaced presents.

  The Dog Warrior at least had his keen hearing. "B-brother works."

  Yeah, right. Still, Atticus couldn't deny that they were genetically identical. Younger twin brother? "Who are you? Really?"

  Ukiah eyed Kyle, apparently unsure if Kyle was in on family secrets.

  "These are my best friends," Atticus said. "I don't hide things from them."

  Ukiah picked up a bag of fresh pizza dough Ru had set out of the refrigerator in his search for the cocoa blast makings. "O-our mother was from the Cayuse tribe. Her name was Kicking Deer."

  The Cayuse were a Native American tribe in northeast Oregon, over the mountains from where Atticus had been found. According to his case files, the Idaho state police checked with the reservation outside of Pendleton and no one had reported a missing infant. He and Ru had double-checked the summer of their junior year in college. Atticus controlled a flash of anger—he couldn't assume that the boy was telling the truth.

  Ukiah fumbled open the bag, and shivered while making the dough into a soft, squishy doll. "Kicking Deer was kidnapped and made pregnant by our father, Prime."

  "Prime?" Atticus echoed.

  "That's the English version of his name. He wasn't human." Ukiah laid the doll onto the granite counter, and hugged the blanket around his shoulders. "Kicking Deer had a baby. His name was Magic Boy."

  "Just one baby?" Ru took sausage links out of the microwave and set them in front of the Dog Warrior.

  "I don't get it," Kyle said.

  "One of us was this Magic Boy?" Atticus hoped there was a point to this story.

  They had to wait while the narrator gobbled down the sausages and licked his fingers clean.

  "I-if Magic Boy was hurt," Ukiah continued finally, pinching off a small ball of dough, "what he lost became a mouse." He rolled the ball around on the counter. "Which Magic Boy could recover later by merging it back into him."

  "We know about blood mice," Atticus said.

  "Ah. Good." Ukiah merged the tiny piece back into the doll with trembling fingers. "Got to keep track of them. They're very important."

  Atticus fought the urge to ask why.
Why can't I remember being a baby when I have a perfect memory? Why do I bleed mice? Why do we come back from being dead? There were so many questions. Would he like the answers? "So I'm this Magic Boy?"

  "Well, one day Magic Boy was murdered." Ukiah pulled a cleaver from the knife block beside him. "He was killed with an axe."

  Atticus watched with horror as the Dog Warrior hacked the helpless doll apart, reducing it to bits.

  "It was quite horrible," Ukiah said sadly, letting the cleaver drop. "All the parts ran in terror. Some went this way." A leg rolled into a ball that went right. "Some went that way." The head rolled to the left. "The pieces scattered away, never to be Magic Boy again."

  Ukiah rolled the dismembered torso across the counter to Atticus and then looked at him with the feral stare. "This was you." He leaned back and pointed at the severed leg in front of him. "This was me." His story done, Ukiah ate the scattered pieces of dough.

  "That," Kyle whispered, "is profoundly creepy."

  Ru moved the cleaver and the knife block out of the Dog Warrior's range.

  Atticus stood and walked away. If it weren't for Ru and Kyle, he would have walked far, far away. He settled for prowling the downstairs. This was too much, too soon. This was like the first time he watched his blood turn into mice. This was like the first time he knew for sure that he had died and come back just by the terror on Ru's face when he woke up. This was like the time he blew off the fingers of his right hand and watched them grow back over a week's time. This was one of those huge mind-altering experiences.

  He tried to get a handle on it. He and the boy had been one person. The boy was once his leg or his arm. Someone chopped off his leg and it became the boy. He had a brother. One that bled mice, came back from the dead, and aged oddly too. He wasn't alone.

  In the kitchen, the conversation continued without him.

  "I need to use a phone," Ukiah was saying.

  "The phone hasn't been connected yet," Ru lied. "It should be hooked up tomorrow."

  "What about cell phones?" Ukiah asked.

  "Sorry, I forgot to charge mine," Ru said. "And Atticus doesn't own one."

  Atticus glanced back, feeling slightly guilty; as usual, though, Ru was taking all weirdness in stride, calmly putting out food for the boy while fending off requests that could prove awkward.

  Undeterred, the boy looked questioningly to Kyle.

  "I-I-I forgot mine at home." Kyle made a bad show of patting his pockets.

  There was a reason they kept Kyle out of sight.

  Sighing, Ukiah wearily laid his head on the counter. Obviously the food was hitting bottom, and his body was focusing on putting it to good use. He'd be dead asleep in minutes, waking up only when his body burned through all the food he just ate. "I need to call . . ." He yawned deeply. "Let everyone know I'm okay."

  "I'll plug my phone in after we get you in bed," Ru promised, clearing away dirty dishes. "You can use it when you wake up."

  "Hmm." Ukiah didn't move.

  "Where should we put him?" Ru asked Kyle. "How many bedrooms are upstairs?"

  "There's one downstairs." Kyle made a face over Ukiah's head and pointed urgently downward.

  "Down is easier than up," Ru studied the boy for a moment before saying, "He's asleep already. Atty, can you carry him?"

  Atticus realized that he had actually felt the boy falling asleep; the fading of a presence making him aware of its existence.

  "Atty?" Ru said, meaning, Are you okay?

  "Sure." Atticus said, meaning, I'm fine.

  While not apparent from the driveway, the house was built into a slope, so it had a walkout basement. In one corner was a guest bedroom with glass-block windows. Obviously Kyle thought it made a handy prison; after they tucked Ukiah into bed and shut the door, Kyle produced a latch and padlock, which he installed with a cordless screwdriver.

  "Okay." Atticus eyed the padlock. "You've found something out?"

  "Come upstairs."

  Upstairs, Kyle logged back in to his computers. "The Dog Warriors are one of five biker gangs that make up the Pack. They're not like any outlaw motorcycle club I've ever heard of—not that I'm an expert."

  "Outlaw" denoted the one percent of biker gangs, like the Hell's Angels, who embraced being outside the law. Kyle knew enough to distinguish between the "one-percenters" and normal, law-abiding motorcycle clubs; it was a bad sign that he labeled the Dog Warriors as such.

  "How so?"

  "Well, they don't pretend to be a club. They don't have a clubhouse, membership dues, charter rules, officers, or any of that stuff. They don't even seem to have a base city or state—they're complete nomads."

  Kyle connected with the Internet and pulled Web pages out of his history log. "This is their leader, Rennie Shaw." Under a banner of blazing red that read, "Wanted by the FBI," and a long listing of crimes starting with, "Murder (eighteen counts)," was a slightly blurred photograph of a man with grizzled hair and vivid blue eyes. "His lieutenant, Bear Shadow." Another "Wanted" page, another blurred photo, this of a Native American with feathers braided into his hair and a necklace of bear claws at his throat. "Shaw's girlfriend, Hellena Gobeyn." A compact, dark-haired woman sat astride a fallen log, cleaning a pistol.

  Kyle pulled up one page after another. "There are approximately twenty members of the Dog Warriors. All of them are wanted by the FBI."

  This was the fear that been eating at Atticus since taking the jacket off of Ukiah. Still, it felt like he'd swallowed cold gravel. "Ukiah too?"

  "No." Kyle hated to abandon his fearful suspicions. "He's not listed with the Dog Warriors. The Demon Curs, another Pack gang, has been active in Oregon for the last few weeks, in and around Pendleton and Ukiah; it's spammed all my searches for your brother. Without a last name, I haven't been able to isolate anything about him."

  "Wearing a jacket doesn't automatically make him one of them," Ru reasoned. "If he's not listed with the others, then maybe he got it from a thrift store, or found it and didn't know what it was."

  They looked at him.

  "I'm farting out my mouth here, aren't I?" Ru said.

  "Yes," Atticus and Kyle said.

  "We're sitting on a quarter million dollars, enough guns to take out a police department, and a possible FBI most wanted locked in the basement." Kyle hedged for Ru's sake. "Brother or not, this isn't good."

  "Do some more digging," Atticus said. "We need to know who we're dealing with. What about his killers?"

  "They're just as scary in a totally different way." Kyle closed up the FBI pages. "I tapped into the state police system. There was a shootout after you left. One of the men was killed, the other three hospitalized. They've identified themselves as Byte, Ascii, Coaxial, and Binary of the Temple of New Reason."

  "Ascii and Coaxial? You've got to be kidding."

  "No, it's some New Age cult that seems to be on everyone's hit list of 'loonies to arrest on sight.' The members use computer terms for names. The state police notified everyone from ATF down to NSA." Kyle pulled up some files copied from the state police, and scrolled down through them quickly, knowing that Atticus could memorize an entire screen in a glance. "The cult had a public Web site like Heaven's Gate, but took it down. I found an old cache of it. They have lots of weird ideas about the end of the world."

  ATF had been notified because the cult was suspected of massing large numbers of automatic and semiautomatic weapons and buying explosives. The NSA were seeking the cult for wiretapping and hacking government computers. The FBI wanted them for kidnapping and murdering several infants in the Pittsburgh area.

  "Wait, go back," Atticus said as a phrase leaped out at him. He leaned over Kyle's shoulder to page backward through the reports. He could call it up in his memory, but then Ru and Kyle wouldn't be keyed in to his thoughts. "Here. New York State Police want them in connection with cremated bodies found near Buffalo. Forensics shows that the bodies had been hacked apart with a bladed instrument, probably an axe, and burned, which ma
tches the MO of murder victims found around the Boston area."

  "Buffalo and Boston," Ru murmured.

  "Do you think that's what they planned to do with your brother?" Kyle asked. "I mean, if they hit him with a car, shot him dead, and then tied him up, maybe they knew that the only way to keep him dead was to burn his body."

  Anger flashed through Atticus, surprising him. Certainly no one deserved such brutal treatment, but this was more than general indignation. Why was he enraged? He forced himself to be honest, backtracking to the source of his fury. He found a series of images and impressions that had preceded the anger—like lightning before the thunder.

  The boy lying dormant and helpless in the truck, surrounded by the fearful mice.

  Ukiah licking the milk mustache from his lips.

  His brother in his arms, reduced to helpless and harmless by sleep, so like Atticus that he couldn't tell where his brother ended and he began.

  In his mind he knew there was no reason to trust Ukiah. The boy—no, not boy! Atticus forced himself to remember the snarling young man crouched in the bathroom. He couldn't let himself ignore all facts and suspicions; this was a feral, dangerous stranger. For Ru's and Kyle's sakes, he couldn't harbor any feelings toward this person, not now, and perhaps not ever.

  Probably picking up on his inner turmoil, Ru checked his wristwatch. "Well, the buy is going down in about twelve hours. What do you think? Call it a night?"

  If Atticus didn't go to bed, neither would they. Kyle rarely slept, driven either by insomnia or hyperactivity—Atticus was never sure which. Ru would stay awake, worrying about him—he could be such a mother hen. All things considered, they needed to be sharp in a few hours.

  "Let's lock down," Atticus said, "and get some sleep."

  A storm was blowing in off the ocean. Atticus stood leaning against the glass wall of the master bedroom, watching the darkness rush over the water as clouds obscured the moon. Light eaten by darkness.