by Lee Deadkeys
Slowly he aimed his heavy-duty flashlight at the group of eyes and clicked it on. Fifty feet away, dozens of dogs sat in front of unit 2060 staring back at him. Dick sucked in his breath. There were about five more tonight, five more added to a number that grew nightly. Hairs stood up on his arms as he ran the light’s beam over the canine congregation. He wondered why they came back each night, why were there more each night for the last three nights?
The first night had been chaos as a much smaller group of three or so mutts snarled and snapped at each other, fighting over who-knew-what, sounding like all hell had broken loose. But something was different now. They were quiet, sitting like statues. Waiting. Or guarding, he thought. Guarding the contents of unit 2060.
The storage unit was up for public auction in the morning. Delilah had tried unsuccessfully for three months to collect on the delinquent rent. As so often happened the customer’s phone had been disconnected and there’d been no response to the delinquency notices that had been sent. The customer just seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth, leaving their possessions behind in a U-Store-It shed. The auction in the morning would hopefully recoup some of the lost rent.
The smell of dog crap made him sick. It got into everything, seemed to inch under the door and up his nostrils. It mingled with Delilah’s cheap and noxious perfume, so that now everything smelled like shit and decaying flowers. He gagged in the doorway, felt his mouth fill with bitterness and spit the mouthful toward the dogs.
He should kill them all, should go fetch his shotgun and open up on them, and then burn the carcasses in the field behind the storages.
A low rumbling met him. After a moment, he realized the sound wasn’t coming from his complaining guts. White teeth glinted as muzzles were pulled into snarls. He barely had time to think, they read my mind! before the pack took to their feet, quickly closing the distance.
Dick took a staggering step back, hand groping for the door. Not going to make it, not going to make it. The pack’s nails clicked wildly across the asphalt. Not finding the door with his flailing hand, he turned, hating to take his eyes from the pack, almost feeling their teeth sinking into his flesh.
Dick let out a startled scream as he ran face first into Delilah, standing in the doorway, blocking his escape. Their heads banged together painfully, bringing tears to his eyes. Hands outstretched, he slammed into Delilah’s chest and sent her sprawling to the floor. His foot found the door and kicked it shut as multiple thuds battered the other side.
Dick stared big-eyed at the door. The dogs yelped as they hit, then began to dig furiously around the frame. Going to get in, he thought but the dogs were already clearing off, heading back to guard the unit.
Delilah slowly got to her feet, rubbing her chest as she shifted annoyingly from one foot to the other.
“Jesus Christ! You could have got me killed!” Dick yelled, advancing on her. She cowered as he pushed past her. In the small kitchenette off the main office, he pulled a beer from the fridge and guzzled it.
“Sorry,” she whimpered from the doorway. “What are we going to do ‘bout the auction tomorra? No one’s gonna come if they get dog bit.”
Dick ran a hand through his greasy hair. He hadn’t thought of that and it pissed him off that she had. He drained the last of the can and tossed it in the trash.
“Don’t you think I know that? What the hell you think I’ve been doing out there, looking at the fucking stars?”
Delilah shrugged meekly, twisting a blonde strand of critically processed hair around a finger. Dick watched as the shattered ends rained down her ratty housecoat. “Want to have sex?” she mumbled, fumbling with the sash. This is like watching a retard trying to tie his shoe, he thought and waved her away, disgusted.
“With this stink in the air, are you kidding? And stop spraying that shit everywhere, it’s making me gag.”
She stopped messing with the sash and threw her hands in the air.
“Fine!” She turned away and instantly turned back. “You know you don’t have to be such a dick, Dick.” Tears stood out in her eyes.
“Go to bed, Delilah, I’m sick of hearing your mouth.”
Dick drained the last of the six-pack in front of the TV, volume muted so he could listen for dogs. There was some strange static pulsing across the screen that was irritating him so he turned it off. He stripped naked and lay on top of the stinking bed sheets. Delilah was snoring and he wondered if he would ever get to sleep.
His alcohol-sedated thoughts turned to the dogs outside and of killing them, of unit 2060 and why it was important to them. After some time with these musings, darkness finally found him.
Dick is outside, wandering through the huge facility. It is still night and he’s chasing dogs, dogs that he only gets a skittering glimpse of before they disappear around a row of units. I don’t want to be out here, maybe I should wake up?
“No, you don’t want to miss The Event,” a dog says before tearing around a corner and out of sight.
He follows the dogs; they are leading him deeper into the maze of units toward the center. He’s moving very fast; the large white rollup doors of the units fly past and even though he can’t read the numbers, he knows exactly what unit he’s being lead toward.
He stops. It’s very still; the night is holding its breath. On either side of him, white doors of the units march off into infinity. He faces forward again; a black square has been cut into the wall of white steel. An almost sexual tremor courses through him as he realizes he’s standing in front of 2060; the door has been rolled up.
A flashlight materializes in his hand and he shines it at the open maw but the beam can’t penetrate the swirling wall of black. The inky, mottled mist wavers and shifts, consuming the light. As he stands there, unable to run or scream, he sees the bile-colored blackness quicken and collide; a form begins to emerge.
Dick’s eyes begin to itch and water. He feels an urge to rip them from their sockets so as not to see what is coming out of the miasma. His hands move up his face and his fingers twitch at the corners of his eyes, hungry to start digging.
A chorus of hellish howls erupts from the pack. Dick peeks through splayed fingers and sees hundreds of dogs facing the murky darkness; their howls rise in pitch and become a scream.
Delilah is screaming, he thinks as he’s ripped from the nightmare. And so am I.
Dick sat up, grabbing at the sweat-drenched sheets as the room danced around him. Everything was vibrating, a deep rattling like he was sitting atop an enormous engine, his teeth and eyes about to jitter from their sockets.
“What the hell is it?” he screamed and suddenly realized the throbbing was in his head, moving through his head. Delilah was still screaming Earthquake! with her hands over her ears when Dick reached over and pushed her face into the pillow.
“What the hell is happe—?” He bit down on something hard, feeling a piece of tooth break off. He spat into his hand, staring dumbfounded at a yellowed chunk, next to it was something silver he didn’t recognize at first. “It’s a damn filling!” Tossing them aside, he jumped from the bed and made for the door. His feet tangled in the sheet and he went down hard, his belly flab slapping painfully against the bare floor. Rolling onto his back, he lay there with eyes pinched tight, waiting for the whole place to come down on top of them. The sound of screaming was deafening in the small room.
He risked a peek, the room sat motionless. He rolled on his side and vomited beer and bile.
“Shut up, Delilah, it’s over,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Oh, God, I think I shit myself.”
Outside, the pack of dogs howled and whined, mocking him.
Day 3, Morning
Jessica Walker
Phoenix Police Station
Detective Hernandez poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Morning,” an officer said as he leaned against the jamb. “Miss Walker is waiting in room two.” Hernandez nodded, pouring a second cup of coffee for the Walker woman.
/> She sat in one of the chairs, arms folded, serious. Her hair was a shade lighter than her father’s but the family resemblance was striking. Unlike her father who dressed down his physique, Miss Walker seemed to exude strength and fitness in her tight-fitting T-shirt and jeans, her body toned through labor and sweat. She was a striking figure of a woman; feminine and pretty, but not in a makeup and nails sort of way.
Hernandez introduced himself and sat in the chair across from her after setting down both cups.
She remained silent, watchful. “I want to thank you, Miss Walker, for coming down to the station. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”
She nodded. Hernandez opened the file in front of him. “How do you know Mr. Philip Dunn?”
She uncrossed her arms and folded her hands on the table. “Look, Detective, I have things to do today. Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know so I can get out of here, and you can get back to crime fighting?” She leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms again.
John smiled to himself, his first impression had been correct, she was a tough nut. Taking a sip of coffee, he laid the pen aside. “Ok, fair enough. How did it come about that Mr. Dunn purchased a handgun from you?”
She smiled. “Well, about two months ago, I was chatting with Phil about how the store three doors down from him got robbed. He was concerned that it could happen to him, and I asked him if he had anything in the way of protection. He said no, and I offered to sell him a nice .357 Magnum that I came across in a deal. I took it to him the next day, he gave me the money, and I wrote him out a receipt with the serial number and that was that.”
Hernandez nodded. “You come across .357 magnums during your dealings often?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “As a matter of fact, I do. This one was in a storage unit I had purchased a few days prior. I called the authorities, this department by the way, and gave them the serial number. It came back clean, so I kept it. You should have a record of this. I called it in on a Tuesday. When I talked to Phil about the other robbery in the area, he seemed to need it more than I did so I sold it to him. All perfectly legal.”
Hernandez jotted down a few notes then inquired, “Storage unit?”
“Yeah. My dad and I buy delinquent storage units and sell the contents at an auction house.” She sipped her coffee but kept her eyes locked on his.
“Huh, I’ve never heard of that. Any money it that line of work?”
Jess seemed to relax a bit at the change of tack. “Actually, yeah, quite a bit. It’s not work for the weak or lazy, but if you have a strong back and a gift for wheeling and dealing, you can make a pretty good living.”
He got the impression she liked what she did. Proud of doing a hard day’s work and the physical rewards that showed on her frame. He tried to picture her at a desk answering phones and couldn’t do it.
“Do you like working for your dad?”
“I do not work for my father, I work with him.”
Hernandez arched an eyebrow. “Sorry. Do you like working with your father?”
“I like it all right,” she said after a moment. “Is there anything else I can help you with detective?”
“Yes. Just a couple more questions if you don’t mind.”
She sighed, “Fine, but I have a storage auction I need to be at in about forty-five minutes. I would appreciate it if we could speed this along.”
“I understand. I’ll try to be brief.” He glanced at the file, “Mr. Walker said you are his only child but when I interviewed Mr. Dunn, he mentioned a Jacob Walker. He said he was your brother.”
For the first time during the interview, she dropped her eyes from a deadlock on his. He watched the muscles in her jaw twitch and he thought her expression became somewhat solemn.
“He’s dead.”
“Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “What happened?”
She took a moment and then said, “He was murdered eight months ago. Stabbed to death.” She cleared her throat of the emotion he mistook for grief, but when she spoke again all he heard was anger.
“My best friend, Angel, was with him. They were newlyweds, married less than a month. They were approached by a man that night as they walked home from a carnival. The guy wanted the giant stuffed rabbit Jacob had won for Angel. Jacob told the guy to get lost and started to walk away. The guy went crazy and attacked my brother with a knife. Stabbed my brother five times during the struggle—twice in the back, twice in the stomach and the last one in the chest. Then the guy grabbed up the blood-soaked rabbit and ran away, leaving my brother dying in the gutter… his wife beside him screaming, trying to push his guts back in….”
She took a sip of coffee and went on, “Angel had a breakdown and moved to Michigan with her mother after the attack. She doesn’t like guns and thinks I blame her because Jacob wasn’t carrying his when he was murdered. We haven’t talked since the funeral. Her mom says she rarely talks at all.”
Hernandez remembered hearing about the case. It hadn’t been assigned to him but he always paid attention to what was going on in the station. You never knew where you’d catch a break, and he knew most criminals tended to commit multiple offenses before they were caught.
He looked at the stony woman before him. He had heard it all before and he always felt bad for the family and the victims, but this was different. She was different. He looked at her again, and this time, really looked. Not at the Jessica Walker he was interviewing, but at Jessica the woman. If not for the hard, protective exterior, she was actually very attractive. He could imagine how she might have been before tragedy had taken her brother and friend from her life. He could see the traces of laugh lines around her eyes and could imagine how those green eyes might sparkle when she smiled. It didn’t look like she had smiled or sparkled in a long while.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Did they ever catch the guy?”
In his experience, anger and bitterness always gave way to grief during these interviews and from the way she sat, arms crossed tightly, her head down avoiding eye contact, he expected to see tears when she looked up again and nearly flinched when she did. He felt a cold rage pulsing behind her tearless stare, a fury that seemed to have eradicated her pain.
“No, you never did,” she said coolly before looking away again.
“That must have been really difficult for you. For your dad too.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“Difficult? Yeah, you could say it was difficult.” She shook her head and huffed. “For my Dad though, it was that fuckin’ rabbit.”
He leaned forward, intrigued. “The rabbit?”
She nodded, “Yeah, he couldn’t get passed it. I’d hear him talking to people about it, his friends and such. It always came back to that…” She chuckled and Hernandez felt his skin crawl. “My old man, nearly undone by a plush toy.”
“Why was the rabbit such an obstacle for your father?”
“That’s why. Because it was a stupid stuffed animal.”
Hernandez tilted his head, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
She shrugged, “Dad always thought Jacob should’ve handed over the rabbit, just given the guy what he wanted. I think in his mind he believes Jacob might still be alive if he’d complied.”
“I take it you don’t agree with your father?” he asked.
“No,” she said and took a frustrated breath. “You and I both know it was never about the fuckin rabbit. It could’ve been anything… drugs, money, a goose who shits a golden egg.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands together on the table. “The facts are the guy wanted what my brother had, and he killed him for it. If my brother had of sacked-up, stood up to his wife and carried his gun, maybe he’d still be alive.
Hernandez set his pen down, “You believe people should start shooting bad guys in the street, Miss Walker?”
Jess rolled her eyes. “The guy pulled a weapon on my brother. Now maybe things would have happened d
ifferently if Jacob had of complied, given up and pleaded for his life, hope the fucker didn’t change his mind and decide to rape his wife while the fucking rabbit watched… But those are shit options, and I think my brother thought they were shit options too. I think he saw something in the guy that made him think he should fight, meet force with force. But unfortunately, he didn’t have anything to balance out the equation, now did he?
“So, the answer to your question would be yes, detective, I believe citizens should be armed and take action… because the only thing that changes the outcome of this sad fucking story, is a gun!”
Hernandez watched her carefully, noted her hands clenched into tight fists, her voice rising to a yell. He cleared his throat and waited. Unknowingly or not, she was challenging him, egging him into a confrontation. He wouldn’t take the bait, wouldn’t let her goad him into a defensive position.
Gradually she began to uncoil, aware now of her outburst. She tilted her head slightly as she leaned back in the chair. He detected a thin upturn to the corner of her mouth and had to wonder what that was all about.
“Look,” she said, calling a truce. “I know you’re out there, and you’ve seen what people are capable of. But I’m out there too, and I’m not blind like a lot of other people. I know you guys do your best, but only a fool believes a cop is going to be there when it counts. Do you get what I’m saying?”
He nodded slowly, wanting to look away. She had a better understanding of the futility of his efforts than most, and it embarrassed him. Ninety percent of police work is reactive and takes place only after some poor soul becomes a victim. It’s cleanup work at best.
After a moment, he reached across the table for Jessica’s hand. Looking her straight in the eye, he said “I shouldn’t have asked. If it makes any difference, I agree with you, but….” he let the rest trail off.
She squeezed his hand infinitesimally before pulling away. “I’m sorry I raised my voice. But if there’s nothing else, I really have places to be.”
