13
D enton was dead set on Ingold not being alone with Fragment and since not even I believe that I’m more competent than Angus, he stayed with them while Kent took the mare back and I accompanied Denton to check on his patient with the mangled arm.
It was a lovely crisp fall day. The leaves, already brilliant, were glowing in shades to eclipse even the most extravagant dye. Elijah was glad to see us, and Denton went inside the shed while I sat on the step and petted the hound again.
In daylight, it was clear that she was female. I had just found the spot to get her hind leg going when she suddenly leapt to her feet and gave a thin thread of a whine, then vanished under the steps.
“Something wrong, girl?” I leaned over to look at her.
She came out of her hiding spot, barked almost soundlessly at me, then retreated.
(In Dog, this means, Yes, something is wrong, and you should be hiding .
If she’d meant Something is wrong and you need to fix it , the bark would have been much louder.)
A moment later, my ears caught the crunch of feet on gravel, and I watched Roger and his dog approach.
Christ’s blood, but that beast was enormous.
For a moment, I wondered—but no, dogs bite out the throat and the belly, they wouldn’t leap onto a horse’s back.
And even as gigantic as Thunder was, he wasn’t the size of the thing I’d seen the night before.
Roger waved to me and I lifted a hand. Thunder didn’t look in my direction, which was just as well.
It wasn’t until they were gone and the brown hound had emerged, ears flattened, that I wondered if the reason I found Thunder so unsettling was that his ears didn’t move at all.
***
Denton’s patient was recovering better than he expected, so he was in a good mood as we returned, but it faded as soon as we reached the mine. He saw Fragment and Ingold together and his lip curled up as if scenting something rancid.
“He hasn’t done anything hostile,” I said.
“I don’t trust him. He’s not human. What’s to say he won’t just turn on us without thinking twice? Not out of malice but because ... I don’t know ... it’s the season where they all murder each other.”
“I suspect Ingold would have learned if a season like that existed by now.”
Denton hunched his shoulders deeper inside his coat. The thought crossed my mind that some of Denton’s hostility was not directed at Fragment so much as at Ingold and Fragment together .
Which was a thought that tied back to some other things I’d half noticed, and made me wonder ... No. None of my business .
Nevertheless, an hour or two later, when Fragment wrote that he wished to visit the wholeness, I volunteered to go with him before Ingold could.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
I couldn’t help but notice that Denton didn’t object to Fragment and I being alone together. Possibly he thought that I could defend myself more effectively. Or possibly ... no, still none of my business.
ARE YOU UPSET WITH ME, ALEX EASTON? Fragment wrote after we’d threaded our way into the tunnels on the third level.
“Eh? No.” Which was true. Overall, Fragment seemed so harmless that it was hard to stay frightened.
My gut kept insisting that he wasn’t a threat.
Denton would probably say that my various body parts had no experience with something like Fragment, and he wouldn’t be wrong, but it was still hard to overrule the feeling. It had kept me alive too many times.
I APOLOGIZE. I STILL DO NOT READ HUMANS WELL.
“Oh.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “No, it’s not you. It’s all the weight overhead. It bothers me.”
He stopped. SHOULD WE GO BACK?
“No, no. I’m used to it.” I kept walking. “Sooner we get there, the sooner we get back up.”
WHY DID YOU COME IF YOU DO NOT LIKE THE STONE?
“To prove a mountain can’t tell me what to do.”
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
“Neither do I,” I said, sighing. “But I’m here anyway.”
***
I did let Fragment go down that undulating tunnel of a crawl space without me. Denton could yell at me if he didn’t come back. But it’s not as if Fragment was our prisoner. How do you keep a prisoner that can ditch his bones and turn into goo?
He returned an hour later, re-forming himself out of the narrow opening. I caught a glimpse of clear wet slime sliding into the coat and filling it out, and looked away. My skin crawled, but my gut said, It’s only Fragment . I wondered which one of them I should be listening to.
“Ready?” I asked.
YES. THANK YOU. Fragment paused, then added, I CANNOT TOUCH THE WHOLENESS, BUT IT COMFORTS ME TO KNOW THAT IT IS STILL THERE.
“I feel the same way about Catholicism,” I said, and explaining that kept me talking until we reached the main shaft.
Voices came from above as we made our way upward. It took me a moment to place one as Roger. “... an’ I thought on what you said, Doc, and Mister Oscar, he never would have given up on me, and here I was givin’ up on him and myself, too.”
“Stay human,” I murmured to Fragment, who nodded.
“I’m glad you’re doing better,” Denton said.
Fragment stepped out of the shaft ahead of me. I was looking up, seeing his shape silhouetted against the light, when something happened.
I heard a roar, the sound of running feet, and a shout, and came out of the shaft at exactly the wrong moment. Or exactly the right one, depending on how you look at it, I suppose.
Fragment half turned, his body starting to melt away, and all I could think was Christ’s blood, don’t let Roger see! I jumped in front of him, and then something huge and heavy barreled into me, knocking me backward. It felt like I’d stepped in the way of a galloping horse.
I don’t think it was expecting resistance, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to be hit, so neither of us were in control of the next bit, where we fell back into the shaft, rolled over several times, and then I somehow wound up on top, straddling ... a dog?
It was Roger’s dog, Thunder. Teeth gleamed white in the dark, snaking toward my face.
I shoved myself back, still not certain if I was injured from the initial blow or not.
I didn’t want to hurt a dog, but Thunder clearly didn’t feel the same way about me.
Those teeth snapped shut an inch from my face.
Christ’s blood , I thought, it’s rabies . I jammed my arm into the dog’s throat, trying to pin him to the ground, but the beast heaved and nearly threw me off entirely. How was it so big? I would have sworn Thunder was a large dog, but the animal under me seemed as big as a pony.
“No!” someone was saying. “Bad dog! Bad dog!” I recognized my own voice after a moment, for all the good it was doing. I managed to get my arm across Thunder’s neck and threw my whole weight against it. The next snap of the teeth was farther away from my face, although not nearly far enough.
“Fragment, get out of the way!” Angus shouted, and I thought, Oh thank God, Angus can shoot it before I get rabies, too , then remembered that I was fighting a black dog in a dark mine shaft and any relief was probably premature.
The dog heaved again, and then something happened in the vicinity of his chest. Something very bad.
I was still wearing my headlamp, so I saw, with horribly clarity, how his sternum pushed upward and then split in half.
Long black strings unbraided themselves from bone and the bones themselves pushed forward.
I had a sickening glimpse of Thunder’s ribs, and then they were no longer ribs but jagged teeth in a vertical maw, knitted together by slick black flesh that writhed away like gums.
I would like to tell you that, in that moment, I knew that it was no dog at all but the missing Sentry.
But clearly I didn’t know, because I could still hear myself screaming, “No! Bad dog!” and the horror at what I was seeing was all mixed up with a horror that I had somehow caused this, had broken the poor beast’s ribs myself and sentenced him to a lingering agony.
This lasted right up to the point where the new mouth flexed upward and bit into my gut.
The thick oilskin coat saved me. I felt the jagged bone ends clutch at me, seeking purchase, felt them slide along the fabric, and then a gun went off so close to me that powder burned my skin and I fell backward off the thing that clearly wasn’t a dog at all.
(Fine. You had probably figured that out already.
My only defense is a fundamental belief that dogs are inherently good and Thunder must therefore be good and if he hadn’t liked me, it was probably a failure on my part.)
I have a great belief in the stopping power of bullets.
Mostly I believe that they don’t stop nearly enough.
Certainly this one didn’t. The bullet went through not-Thunder’s head and blew out the back, trailing black strings behind it.
But by the time I had scrambled to my feet, the strings were already reknitting themselves, and though the head looked as if one side had been crushed, the rest of the creature didn’t even seem to notice.
At that moment, I should have run away. I was aware of that even at the time. But I was furious—deeply and unexpectedly furious—because how dare this monster impersonate a dog ?
I think I screamed something to that effect, but probably it was in Gallacian.
Nevertheless, Sentry faced me, even as it reared up on impossibly long legs.
Christ’s blood, it really was huge. Thunder hadn’t been that big before, I would swear it.
It shook itself and the mouth in its chest flexed again, and in a voice that was half-bark, half-gurgle, it cried, “ I—will—not—be—whole! ”
Angus—of course it was Angus—fired again, and the creature staggered but didn’t fall. It turned toward him, snapping both sets of teeth, and gathered itself to spring.