Christopher Moore - Bite Me

“You can’t just buy one of those off the rack,” Rivera said. “It’s a high-tech fabric.”

“Just give me a hand with this thing, would you?”

Once the Dumpster was in the middle of the alley, the three dogs more or less dogpiled in front of the boarded-up window, Marvin doing his highly trained, “There’s a dead guy in here, give me a biscuit” paw scrape, Bummer barking like he was announcing the big sale event down at Yap-mart and everything had to go, and Lazarus rolling out a long, doleful howl.

“Probably in there,” said Cavuto.

“Ya think?” said Rivera.

Cavuto was able to work his fingers between the sheet of plywood and the window frame and pulled it out. Before he could even set it aside Bummer had leapt through the window into the darkness. Lazarus pawed the windowsill, then leapt after his companion. Marvin, the cadaver dog, backed away, then ruffed twice and tossed his head, which translated to, “No, I’m good, you guys go ahead, just give me my biscuit. I’ll be over here-well, would you look at that-those balls definitely need some tongue attention. No, it’s okay, go on without me.”

Marvin had a nose that could distinguish as many different odors as the human eye could colors, in the range of sixteen million distinct scents. Unfortunately, his doggie brain had a much more limited vocabulary for giving name to those scents and he processed what he smelled as: dead cats, many, dead humans, many, dead rats, many, poo and wee, many flavors, none fresh, and old guy who needs a shower ; none of which would have given him pause. The smell that he couldn’t file, that he didn’t have a response for, that stopped him at the window, was a new one: dead, but not dead. Undead. It was scary, and licking his balls calmed him and kept his mind off the biscuit that they owed him.

Rivera shone his flashlight around the room. The basement appeared empty but for piles of debris and a thick layer of dust and ash over the floor, textured with the paw prints of hundreds of cats. He could see the movement of Bummer and Lazarus just at the edge of the flashlight’s beam. They were scratching at a metal door.

“We’ll need the crowbar out of the car,” said Rivera.

“You’re going in there?” asked Cavuto. “In that suit?”

Rivera nodded. “There’s something down there, one of us has to.”

“You’re a goddamn hero, Rivera, that’s what you are. A real, dyed in the worsted wool and silk blend hero.”

“Yeah, there’s that, and you can’t fit through the window.”

“Can too,” said Cavuto.

Five minutes later they were both standing in the middle of the basement, fanning their Surefire ballistic flashlights through the dust like they were wielding silent light sabers. Rivera led the way to the steel door that the hounds were going at as if someone had duct taped it to a fox.

“You guys, shut up!” Rivera snapped, and much to his surprise, Bummer and Lazarus fell silent and sat.

Rivera looked back at his partner. “That’s spooky.”

“Yeah, and praise Willie Mays that’s the only spooky thing going on here.” Cavuto was a deeply religious San Francisco Giants fan and genuflected whenever he passed the bronze statue of Willie Mays outside the ball park.

“Good point,” said Rivera. He tried the door, which didn’t budge, but it was clear from the arc plowed into the dust and ashes that it had been opened recently. “Crowbar,” he said, reaching back.

Cavuto handed him the crowbar and at the same time drew his gun from his shoulder holster, a ridiculously large Desert Eagle.50-caliber automatic.

“When did you start carrying that thing again?”

“Right after you said the v-word out loud at Sacred Heart.”

“It won’t stop them, you know.”

“It makes me feel better. You want to hold it while I pry the door?”

“If there’s a-one of them-in there, they’ll be dormant or whatever you call it. It’s daytime, they can’t attack.”

“Yeah, well, just in case they didn’t get the memo.”

“I got it.” Rivera fit the crowbar in the door jamb and threw his weight against it. On the third push, something snapped and the door scraped open an inch. Bummer and Lazarus were up instantly, with their noses in the gap. Rivera looked back at Cavuto, who nodded, and Rivera pulled the door open and stepped away.

A pile of shelving and junk blocked the doorway, but Bummer and Lazarus were able to thread their way through it and were in the room, barking in frantic, desperate yelps. Through a gap in the junk, Rivera played the beam of his flashlight around the small storeroom, over barrels, shelving, and piles of dusty clothing.

“Clear,” he said.

Cavuto joined him in the doorway. “Clear, my ass.” The big cop kicked his way through the barricade, holding his flashlight high in one hand and the Desert Eagle trained on a row of barrels on the right side of the room, where Bummer and Lazarus were currently indulging a hurricane-level doggie freakout.

Rivera followed his partner into the room, then approached the barrels while Cavuto covered him. Beyond the barking, he heard a faint metal tapping coming from one of the barrels. The barrel was upside-down and had held some kind of solid, the label said something about water-filtering mineral. It was sitting on its lid, which was only partially crimped on.

“Something’s in there.”

“Plug your ears,” said Cavuto, cocking the hammer on the Desert Eagle, and aiming for the center of the barrel.

“Are you high? You can’t fire that thing in here.”

“Well there’s can’t and there’s shouldn’t. I probably shouldn’t fire it.”

“Cover me, I’m pushing it over.”

Before Cavuto could answer Rivera grabbed the edge of the barrel and shoved with all his might. It was heavy, and fell hard. Bummer and Lazarus rocketed around to the exposed lid and were pawing at it.

“Ready?” said Rivera.

“Go,” said Cavuto.

Rivera kicked the edge of the lid and it clanked off, then landed with a dull thud in the thick dust on the floor. Bummer rocketed inside while Lazarus frisked back and forth outside.

Rivera drew his weapon and moved to where he could look into the barrel. He was met first by a gray storm of hair, then two crystal blue eyes set in a wide, weathered face.

“Well that was unpleasant,” said the Emperor, around the sloppy bath of dog spit he was receiving from Bummer.

“I’ll bet,” said Rivera, lowering his weapon.

“I may require some assistance extricating myself from this container.”

“We can do that,” said Cavuto. Cavuto was fighting back a very bad case of the empathy willies, imagining himself spending a night, maybe longer, upside-down, shoved inside a barrel. He and the Emperor were about the same size. “You in pain?”

“Oh no, thank you, I lost the feeling in my arms and legs quite some time ago.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t get in there on your own, did you?” said Rivera.

“No, this was not my doing,” said the Emperor. “I was roughly handled, but it appears to have saved my life. There wasn’t enough room in the barrel for any of them to become solid. There were hundreds of the fiends around me. But you saw them as you came in, I’m sure.”

Rivera shook his head. “You mean the cats? No, there are tracks everywhere, but the place is empty.”

“Well that’s not good,” said the Emperor.

“No, it’s not.” Rivera was distracted. He’d been playing his flashlight beam around the room, looking for something to help them get the Emperor out of the barrel. He stopped the beam on a spot by the shelves where the dust hadn’t been stirred by their rescue efforts. There, as clearly as if it had been made in plaster of Paris to send home for Mother’s Day, was a single human footprint. “That’s not good at all,” he said.