TWO

 

 

It took us exactly sixteen minutes to get to The Diner downtown from the MGM Grand on the Strip. Screamer was already there and he was sitting in our normal booth, but I indicated we should move to the big table in the corner. The idea of sitting next to the Bookkeeper in a tight booth was nightmarish at best.

Madge, the slightly overweight waitress with far, far too tight slacks walked up, popped her gum, and said, “Well, looks like the Weird Bunch is back in town. And with a new member as well.”

“Great seeing you again, Madge,” I said. I didn’t blame her for being sort of curt with us. Over the years some strange things had happened in this restaurant around us, and we had left unfinished more meals than we had eaten here.

“Milkshakes around?” Madge asked, her gum popping again.

Screamer, Patty and I nodded. The Smoke simply said, “Water. Hamburger very rare, no onion or pickles or anything green on it. Hold the mustard and any other sauce.”

Madge took it all down and glanced at The Smoke. “You fit right in with this group. Anyone else?”

We all shook our heads and after Madge left, I introduced The Smoke to Screamer. They didn’t shake hands, just nodded at each other.

“I’ve heard of you,” Screamer said, sitting back in his chair. You’ve rescued more animals than Poker Boy here, and that’s going some.”

“And I’ve heard of your ability to get inside someone’s head,” The Smoke said, nodding in respect. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

The Smoke was talking about Screamer’s superpower. He could transfer what one person was thinking to another or read their minds just by a touch. He got his nickname by making a serial killer scream in horror by digging up his worst fears and making him see and live them to get him to confess. His methods never would stand up in court, but it gets the really bad guys off the streets.

Screamer turned to me. “I assume we’re dealing with a problem with animals if The Smoke is joining us.”

I nodded and quickly outlined what we already knew. I had just finished when the sounds of the restaurant vanished and Stan and The Bookkeeper appeared.

Across the small restaurant, Madge was frozen bending over to pick something off the floor near the cash register. Luckily for all of us, she was slightly behind the counter so we didn’t have to see frozen all that her tight outfit exposed.

Suddenly a wave of purple smell hit us. Intensely purple lilac smell.

The Smoke got up and moved quickly to the other side of the table away from Stan and The Bookkeeper, while the three of us instantly covered our noses. I wasn’t sure which was worse: the intense smell of rotting food and trash The Bookkeeper used to smell like, or this intense perfume smell of lilacs, so thick I wasn’t sure I would ever taste anything but purple again.

“Hey, Poker Boy, Patty, Screamer,” the Bookkeeper said. “I never did get to thank you for saving my ass with Lady Luck.”

“No problem,” I said, then started to say something else and choked on the smell and couldn’t speak.

“We’ll make this quick,” Stan said. “Screamer, would you touch the Bookkeeper and then connect him with Poker Boy.” He glanced at Patty and The Smoke. “You two touch Poker Boy so you all get what he knows exactly.”

I’d been inside the Bookkeeper’s mind once before and I wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. I could tell that neither were Patty and Screamer. I had no idea what The Smoke was feeling.

Stan faced the Bookkeeper. “Focus on everything you know about the coming death of the dogs, including how you worked it out.”

The Bookkeeper nodded and Screamer touched his shoulder and then my arm as Patty and The Smoke both touched my shoulders, one on each side.

Like a movie run in fast forward, I could instantly see the Bookkeeper sitting at a computer, his fingers flying as he worked out some sort of equation that I didn’t understand. I tried to focus on what facts he was plugging into the equations, but none of it made any sense to me.

At the same time I could sense Patty’s mind and Screamer’s. Both of them I was used to, but The Smoke was like a dark place in the connection, his mind not really part of the group for some reason or another.

Screamer broke the connection and I shuddered, glad to be out of the Bookkeeper’s head once again.

The Bookkeeper looked at Screamer. “That’s just so weird.”

“Come on,” Stan said, and an instant later he and the Bookkeeper were gone and the noise of the restaurant and the street outside flooded back into the silence.

I took a napkin and blew my nose, trying to clear some of the smell without success. I could taste lilacs, and it felt like my skin was coated in the smell, like someone had dumped an entire bottle of cheap perfume over me.

“Anyone get anything out of that?” I asked, “Besides the need for a shower?”

The Smoke came back around the table and sat down again as we all tried to piece together the thing we had seen in fast motion from the Bookkeeper’s mind.

“He seemed to only be working with probability equations,” Screamer said.

Patty nodded.

“So what in the world made him even start on those equations?” I asked. “A person like the Bookkeeper just doesn’t come up with ‘all dogs dying’ out of the blue.”

We all sat in silence trying to dig back through the wave of information we had all gotten from the connection with the Bookkeeper’s mind. It was like trying to sort through a library of information. The closer you looked, if you looked in the wrong spot, the deeper you got into the wrong details.

Like rewinding a DVD, I ran back over the Bookkeeper working on the problem until the moment he first sat down at a computer with the idea. Then I slowed down what I was seeing, still in reverse, until I finally got to the trigger point.

“Oh, no,” The Smoke said softly.

He must have gotten to the same point I had managed to get to in the information in our minds.

“How is that possible?” I asked The Smoke.

“What possible?” Patty and Screamer asked at the same moment.

“Please,” Patty said. “I don’t want to play around in that guy’s mind anymore than I have to.”

“Basically,” I said, glancing at The Smoke, “At noon today all dogs are going to become human. Sort of.”

He nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”

Before I could ask him the dozen questions I had for him, Marge said, “What’s that smell?”

She was waving her hand in front of her face while carrying a tray of milkshakes with the other.

“Sorry,” I said. “A little perfume bottle accident.”

She half-dropped the milkshakes and tray on our table. “Smells more like a perfume factory disaster,” she said, heading for the door at full speed. She opened it and blocked it open, then headed for the back room. “Got to get a cross-breeze in here.”

I glanced at the milkshake in front of me, but had no desire to drink it at the moment. Not only would it just taste like purple lilacs, but with what we had discovered by putting all the pieces together, the Bookkeeper was going to win his bet.

“Is it possible for a dog to become human?” Screamer asked. “Isn’t that something like being a werewolf?”

“Wolves become human, yes,” The Smoke said. “I am a werewolf, actually.”

I was so startled, I just opened my mouth and then closed it again with no words coming out.

Patty just stared at him.

“Full moon stuff and all?” Screamer asked.

The Smoke, smiled, sort of, without showing his teeth. “No, I can turn at will and have complete control over both forms.”

“So is that what’s going to happen to all the dogs?” Patty asked. “Are they suddenly going to have your power?”

The Smoke shook his head sadly. “I was a human first before my power came about. Dogs have much smaller brains and would not understand their new form or how to live as humans. They would still have the minds and actions of dogs.”

“This is a disaster,” Screamer said. “Millions of new humans are suddenly going to appear. Humans that need help and can’t take care of themselves as humans. This is going to crash our entire economy.”

“So what’s causing this?” Patty asked. “Or who? And why?”

“Back to what triggered the Bookkeeper to figure it out,” Screamer said.

“No one is causing this. We have no villains,” I said and The Smoke nodded.

“Radiation spike,” I said. I could see clearly how the Bookkeeper had read a study on a coming short, intense burst of radiation from a cloud in space that the Earth would pass through. The focus of the hit would be the North American continent and it would only last for a fraction of a second exactly at noon Vegas time. Scientists believed it would be harmless and were just planning on studying the coming burst. But when the Bookkeeper learned of the exact frequency of the burst, he started to work the probability equations.

The Smoke just nodded. “The Bookkeeper somehow knew a secret very closely guarded among the animal gods on how to turn an animal human.”

“Are more than just dogs going to be changed?” Screamer said. “I’m having a hard time imaging mouse-sized humans running around.”

“Luckily, no,” The Smoke said. “If the Bookkeeper is correct on the information he has on the frequency and duration of the burst, it will be only dogs. All dogs.”

“So what are we going to do?” Patty asked.

I knew exactly what needed to be done. I didn’t think it was possible, but I sure hoped it would be.

“We’re going to call in the big guns,” I said, smiling, remembering what had happened outside of the Bookkeeper’s home when it blew up.

“Big Guns?” Screamer asked, looking at me with puzzlement.

I turned to The Smoke. “What level are you over in your world of deities?”

“I’m a superhero like you three,” he said. “I can change my shape at will into a dozen different animals, pass through walls like a ghost, and hear and smell things from a great distance.”

“And your bosses?” I asked. “What can they do?”

The Smoke made a poor imitation of a shrug in his expensive suit. “I do not know. They are gods, they can do about anything as far as I know.”

“And they are working on this as well?” I asked.

“They are,” he said.

I nodded, then turned to Patty and Screamer. “Seems we need a God Summit to fix this problem.”

“A what?” Screamer asked.

Patty just laughed. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”

I smiled. “I am.” Then I turned and shouted into the lilac-smelling air, “Stan!”