Dean Koontz - Watchers

Einstein nuzzled Travis’s throat and licked his neck. The golden coat was fluffy and smelled clean because Jim Keene had given the dog a bath, in his surgery, under carefully controlled conditions. But as fluffy and fresh as he was, Einstein still did not look himself; he seemed tired, and he was thinner, too, having lost a few pounds in less than a week.

Pawing out more letters, Einstein spelled the same word again, as if to emphasize his pleasure: HOME.

Standing at the pantry door, Nora said, “Home is where the heart is, and there’s plenty of heart in this one. Hey, let’s have an early dinner and eat it in the living room while we run the videotape of Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Would you like that?”

Einstein wagged his tail vigorously.

Travis said, “Do you think you could handle your favorite food — a few weenies for dinner?”

Einstein licked his chops. He dispensed more letters, with which he expressed his enthusiastic approval of Travis’s suggestion.

HOME IS WHERE THE WEENIES ARE.

When Travis woke in the middle of the night, Einstein was at the bedroom window, on his hind feet with his forepaws braced on the sill. He was barely visible in the second-hand glow of the night-light in the adjoining bathroom. The interior shutter was bolted over the window, so the dog had no view of the front yard. But perhaps, for getting a fix on The Outsider, sight was the sense on which he least depended.

“Something out there, boy?” Travis asked quietly, not wanting to wake Nora unnecessarily.

Einstein dropped from the window, padded to Travis’s side of the bed, and put his head up on the mattress.

Petting the dog, Travis whispered, “Is it coming?”

Replying with only a cryptic mewl, Einstein settled down on the floor beside the bed and went to sleep again.

In a few minutes, Travis slept, too.

He woke again near dawn to find Nora sitting on the edge of the bed, petting Einstein. “Go back to sleep,” she told Travis.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she whispered drowsily. “I woke up and saw him at the window, but it’s nothing. Go to sleep.”

He did manage to fall asleep a third time, but he dreamed that The Outsider had been smart enough to learn how to use tools during its six-month-long pursuit of Einstein and now, yellow eyes gleaming, it was smashing its way through the bedroom shutters with an ax.

They gave Einstein his medicines on schedule, and he swallowed his pills obediently. They explained to him that he needed to eat well in order to regain his strength. He tried, but his appetite was returning only slowly. He would need a few weeks to regain the pounds he had lost and to recover his old vitality. But day by day his improvement was perceptible.

By Friday, December 10, Einstein seemed strong enough to risk a short walk outside. He still wobbled a little now and then, but he no longer tottered with every step. He’d had all of his shots at the veterinary clinic; there was no chance of picking up rabies on top of the distemper he’d just beaten.

The weather was milder than it had been in recent weeks, with temperatures in the low sixties and no wind. The scattered clouds were white, and the sun, when not hidden, laid a warm life-giving caress on the skin.

Einstein accompanied Travis on an inspection tour of the infrared sensors around the house and the nitrous-oxide tanks in the barn. They moved a bit more slowly than the last time they had walked this line together, but Einstein seemed to enjoy being back on duty.

Nora was in her studio, working diligently on a new painting: a portrait of Einstein. He was not aware that he was the subject of her latest canvas. The picture was to be one of his Christmas gifts and would, once opened on the holiday, be hung above the fireplace in the living room.

When Travis and Einstein came out of the barn, into the yard, he said, “Is it getting closer?”

Upon being asked that question, Einstein went through his usual routine, though with less exertion, less sniffing of the air, and less study of the shadowy forest around them. Returning to Travis, the dog whined anxiously.

“Is it out there?” Travis asked.

Einstein gave no answer. He merely surveyed the woods again — puzzled.

“Is it still coming?” Travis asked.

The dog did not reply.

“Is it nearer than it was?”

Einstein padded in a circle, sniffed the ground, sniffed the air, cocked his head one way and then the other. Finally he returned to the house and stood at the door, looking at Travis, waiting patiently.

Inside, Einstein went directly to the pantry.

MUZZY.

Travis stared at the word on the floor. “Muzzy?”

Einstein dispensed more letters and nosed them into place.

MUFFLED. FUZZY.

“Are you talking about your ability to sense The Outsider?” A quick tail wag: Yes.

“You can’t sense it any more?”

One bark: No.

“Do you think… it’s dead?”

DON’T KNOW.

“Or maybe this sixth sense of yours doesn’t work when you’re sick — or debilitated like you are now.”

MAYBE.

Gathering up the lettered tiles and sorting them into the tubes, Travis thought for a minute. Bad thoughts. Unnerving thoughts. They had an alarm system around the property, yes, but to some extent they were depending on Einstein for an early warning. Travis should have felt comfortable with the precautions he had taken and with his own abilities, as a former Delta Force man, to exterminate The Outsider. But he was tormented by the feeling that he had overlooked a hole in their defenses and that, come the crisis, he would need Einstein’s full powers and strength to help him deal with the unexpected.

“You’re going to have to- get well as fast as you can,” he told the retriever. “You’re going to have to try to eat even when you have no real appetite. You’re going to have to sleep as much as you can, give your body a chance to knit up, and don’t spend half the night at the windows, Worrying.”

CHICKEN SOUP.

Laughing, Travis said, “Might as well try that, too.”

A BOILERMAKER KILLS GERMS DEAD.

“Where’d you get that idea?”

BOOK. WHAT’S BOILERMAKER?

Travis said, “A shot of whiskey dropped into a glass of beer.”

Einstein considered that for a moment.

KILL GERMS BUT BECOME ALCOHOLIC.

Travis laughed and ruffled Einstein’s coat. “You’re a regular comedian, fur face.”

MAYBE I SHOULD PLAY VEGAS.

“I bet you could.”

HEADLINER.

“You certainly would be.”

ME AND PIA ZADORA.

He hugged the dog, and they sat in the pantry laughing, each in his own way.

In spite of the joking, Travis knew that Einstein was deeply troubled by the loss of his ability to sense The Outsider. The jokes were a defensive mechanism, a way to hold off fear.

That afternoon, exhausted from their short walk around the house, Einstein slept while Nora painted feverishly in her studio. Travis sat by a front window, staring out at the woods, repeatedly going over their defenses in his mind, looking for a hole.

On Sunday, December 12, Jim Keene came out to their place in the afternoon and stayed for dinner. He examined Einstein and was pleased with the dog’s improvement.

“Seems slow to us,” Nora said fretfully.

“I told you, it’ll take time,” Jim said.

He made a couple of changes in Einstein’s medication and left new bottles of pills.

Einstein had fun demonstrating his page-turning machine and his letter-dispensing device in the pantry. He graciously accepted praise for his ability to hold a pencil in his teeth and use it to operate the television and the videotape recorder without bothering Nora and Travis for help.