Back in his office, Larry shut the door and pulled the blinds. He dumped the water from his kettle and poured in the mess he’d brought from the farm. Last, he tore open the pack of needles and shook them into the pot and put the pot on the hotplate he kept for coffee and lunches. He opened the window, trying to let in some clean air.
As the coil began to glow, Larry noticed movement outside. He looked out, and his neck hairs started to dance again.
The sidewalk below his window was filling with dogs. A dozen or more already, and more coming down the street. Hound dogs. Shepherd dogs. Dana’s beagles. Homeless mutts. Dogs of every breed and no breed. They came and either sat or paced, but all looked toward the road. Not toward the window. It wasn’t the foulness from his kettle they were smelling.
It’s the magic, he thought. That’s what called them.
A reek of boiled rankness was rising from the kettle. He heard the contents bubbling, then heard an enormous crash of metal and masonry from down the street. He looked that way and saw Miz Sheila’s bus had plowed into the Kendrick General Store.
Car alarms brayed. People screamed. Someone in the bus howled in agony.
The dogs just watched.
Out the back door of the bus Miz Sheila hurtled, her chin and torso covered with blood.
He thought it was all from the gash on her forehead, but as he watched she vomited a great scarlet gout, not slowing as she ran shrieking toward his office, blue eyes blazing in her too-young face.
Sheila never made it. Judging from the stain growing in her slacks, she was pouring her life’s blood from both ends.
She slowed, stumbled, and fell. Finally, she stopped twitching and lay silent.
The dogs began trotting toward her still form.
By then, Larry was running himself. What the hell happened? But he knew. Miz Sheila, the beloved driver of children since his own childhood…
He got there in time to smell the stench of urine and feces added to coppery blood as her body relaxed completely, letting bladder and sphincter go. Dead, just like that.
He started to wave people back as an ambulance came wailing up from the Rescue Squad depot.
Larry was nearly knocked over as the crowd of dogs bounded past him toward Sheila’s body.
She was moving. Arching her back somehow. Mouth gaping as a shimmering haze breathed out of her.
Barking and growling were the only sounds apart from the siren. The people stood with mouths hanging open as the dead woman continued to exhale.
A big German shepherd, one of Deputy Foyle’s, jumped over Sheila and snapped at the wavy air.
Another dog, a stray redbone hound nearly as tall, snapped almost nose to nose with the first.
Together they worried the seemingly empty air until Larry heard something tear, like old blue jeans ripping in the seat.
There was a split second when Larry heard that keening again, loud enough to make everyone clap hands to ears, then everything went stone quiet.
The crowd on the street was frozen.
The dogs sniffed noses for a minute, then the whole pack began to scatter, walking or trotting back where they’d come from, not a care in the world.