17. You really are the reason you don’t get enough sleep. #3
“The rabid gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys un-der-stand English.” I stood my ground despite the gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys coming closer, obeying my command to form up in a nice neat line.
To test if it was just a freaky coincidence, I unsheathed a claw and tapped a row of ten spots in front of me.
“Make lines here. Go safe place, much food. Nice. Bath? Like bath? Food? Good food. And help not be sick?”
For rabid gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys, they possessed a rather phenomenal ability to coordinate themselves as a group, and within ten minutes, I’d created a tiny legion of gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys organized into perfect little rodent columns.
As I’d already plunged into the deep end, I lowered my nose to the first gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys.
The one nearest me offered a little rodent kiss.
I led my gorgon-mice-rat doohickey army to the window. “We adopt gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys? We need new house, make basement for them, but a clean tidy basement with nice house for them.”
“Seriously? You went from terrified to wanting to adopt them?”
I reached for the selfie stick and pointed it at my gorgon-mice-rat doohickey army and waited for the phone to click before setting it down. “They smart, speak English. Good little gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys. Probably scared, probably hungry, probably sick.”
Professor Yale sighed. “That demonstration passes the sentience test, Sam. There’s no doubt.
She talked to them, she lined them up, and they’re following her.
They might not be actually speaking English, but she had zero interaction with them before the test, and they understood what she asked of them.
For all we know, they may be transformative victims. The logs stated they’d done some experiments with that. ”
“Fuck,” my husband announced.
While unfair play, I stared at my husband and sighed. Longingly. With extra longing thrown in for good measure.
“Wow. She’s giving you the mare stare on steroids, Sam.
” Professor Yale chuckled. “You can help be their temporary custodians once they are deemed safe for the general public. The first stop is to somewhere they can be treated for rabies, because my meter is screaming about it from over here, and it’s the bad kind of rabies. ”
“Bad kind?”
“Airborne.”
I froze. “It airborne?”
“We have confirmation this strain is airborne. It takes a long time to kill, but its death rate seems to be equal with the standard disease, and it can be spread through the air.”
Well, that explained the high level of spread in Long Lake and similar areas. “How treat wild animals? All? Many ill?”
“Neutralizer and prayer,” Professor Yale replied.
The sun set long before I marched my army of rabid gorgon-rat-mice doohickeys to the trailer brought in to transport them to a care facility until they could be treated and helped as much as possible.
Someone had gotten the idea to put down blankets, and after each of the little critters underwent a brisk neutralizer bath from volunteers in hazmat suits and given a few spoonfuls to drink, they were put inside to settle in.
Their trust in us to do the right thing hurt.
As I was undoubtedly contaminated with the dust, I waited by the building for the next phase, which involved a lot of fire and burning the entire resort area to the ground. All of the buildings and everything around them would be destroyed before nature was left to regrow as it saw fit.
By the time they began pumping the neutralizer, no sane restaurant would be open. “No noo-dles with sea bugs tonight,” I said to my husband, who stayed closer than anyone else liked to the contaminated building. “Is okay. We get some tomorrow.”
“You’re still getting your noodles with sea bugs, but the husband of one of the CDC reps will be making it for you.
She lives thirty minutes from here, so he’ll start making your noodles and sea bugs once we leave, we’ll eat there, and then head to a hotel for the night.
Then we’ll continue our vacation. Again. ”
“We get to spot on time?”
“We will, but you’ll be tired. We’ll need to skip therapy tonight.”
How sad. “Worth it, even if the gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys scared me at first.”
“Well, to be fair, if a bunch of beady, red little eyes stared at me, I would’ve made it halfway home before stopping. But my beautiful cindercorn will get her noodles with sea bugs tonight. Good behavior is rewarded, and you helped the rodents.”
“Gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys.”
“I really hope that does not become their official species designation.”
“They’re the ones who must deal. Give choice of designation, make vote. Most votes win.”
“For some reason, that terrifies me.”
“Well, they might willfully decide to become gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys, and while awesome, also terrifying.”
“All I will do is hope that they weren’t being fed to gorgons.”
I snorted my alarm. “No!”
“Well, they were getting rabid feeder mice from somewhere.”
“Oh. Maybe because airborne rabies? Hope because airborne rabies? And slow onset in gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys. So it spread to gorgons through normal mice and not these mice. These mice the starter mice.”
“Maybe. And even then, they’ve probably been here for years.”
“Is okay. We let CDC figure it out, we just prepare big nice home for many gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys.”
“Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret this?”
“Because you have rabid wolf soon, rabid puppy, rabid cindercorn…” I bobbed my head. “We all rabid here.”
“Heaven help me.”
At three in the morning, I torched the bed and breakfast. The fires burned blue and white, and I refrained from having more than a bite or two of napalm, only enough to make certain I lit the entire batch and kept the flames going until the CDC was confident in its destruction.
It took me twenty minutes to reduce everything to ash.
While satisfied the gorgon dust would never bother anyone again, I mourned for the males used in its creation.
Ten minutes after the CDC hosed down the rubble, they lowered the shield and my husband braved the destruction armed with one of the CDC’s meters.
It remained silent.
“All right, my beautiful. While you were playing with your favorite treat and making fire, I had a rabies treatment, our pets were treated, the exterior of the rental was treated, and we’re ready to roll.
You get to be treated after you shift back to human, and Yale wants to give you enough neutralizer he’ll be really annoyed if you don’t switch your marker to off.
He wants divine-level purging on you because you’ve had so much exposure to gorgons lately.
Then he glared at me and told me I needed to chill out and stop giving you venom, as you’re now considered to be venom addicted. ”
“Well, duh?” I snorted laughter. “He miss out. Poor Yale. Okay. Be sick and miserable, make grandfather flip switch. Or father? Think father flip switch?”
“I have no idea.”
“We find out soon.”
“That sounds remarkably like a threat, Bailey.”
“Because is? Father scary. Not as scary as swarm of gorgon-mice-rat doohickeys.”
“Yeah. And you invited the entire lot of them to move in with us.”
“Can’t help it, stupid and love animals.”
“You’re not stupid, but if there is someone in need of rescue, you will rescue them. That is part of what makes you beautiful. Now, prepare yourself. Yale is cranky because he’s too damned old for these jobs.”