Stephenie Meyer - The Chemist

Alex was surprised when Einstein stopped short of the laundry room and pawed at a closet in the hall. Daniel pulled the door open, and Einstein jumped past him and tugged at something inside. Alex crept closer just as a weighty pile of fur fell out on top of her.

“What is this?” Daniel breathed in her ear.

She felt her way through the pile. “I think it’s a fur coat – but there’s something else. It’s too heavy…” She ran her hands quickly over the coat, along the sleeves; there was something stiff and rectangular under the fur. She stuck her hand inside the sleeve, trying to understand what she was examining. Finally, her fingers made sense of it. She wasn’t sure she would have put it together if she hadn’t recently cut Kevin out of a Batsuit.

Einstein pulled another dense bulk of fur down on them.

“They’re lined in Kevlar,” she whispered.

“We should put them on.”

Alex struggled into hers as she worked through it in her head. The Kevlar made sense, but why the cumbersome fur? Had Kevin trained the dogs during cold weather? Was this just preparation for the elements? Did it even get that cold here? But as she yanked up the arms – too long, of course – to free her hands, she saw how Daniel’s coat was blending into Einstein’s fur so that she couldn’t see where one stopped and the other began. Camouflage.

The coat even had a Kevlar-lined hood, which she pulled over her head. Now she and Daniel were just two more furry shapes in the darkness.

Einstein went directly through the doggie door at the far end of the laundry room, and Daniel went right after. She could feel Khan’s heat close behind her. She got through the door and saw Einstein pulling Daniel back down as he tried to rise into a crouch.

“Crawl,” she explained.

It was frustratingly slow; the coat got heavier and hotter with every foot she gained, and the gravel was like knifepoints under her palms and knees. Once they got onto the stubbly grass, it was a little less painful, but she was so impatient with the pace that she barely noticed. She worried, as Einstein led them toward the outbuilding where the dogs lived, that he was trying to take them to the truck that she’d instructed Arnie to move. But the truck wasn’t such a great escape. The shooter might be holding his position, just waiting for someone to try to drive out on the only road. Or this could be a new variation, where the shooter had friends to sweep the house and flush his victims out while he waited.

She could hear the restive dogs penned in the outbuilding ahead, none of them happy with what was happening. They’d made it three-fourths of the way when another sharp thud kicked a cloud of dirt into her face. Einstein barked sharply, and Alex heard one of the dogs behind her thunder off from their little pack, growling in a low bass. The heavy sound of his paws combined with his compact stride made her sure it must be the Rottweiler. Another thud, farther out, but the growling didn’t change tempo. She heard something, maybe a muffled curse, and then a hail of bullets rattled out from what was most definitely not a sniper rifle. Her muscles tensed, even as she crawled as quickly as she could in Daniel’s wake, waiting for the inevitable sound of the Rottweiler’s yelps. The sound didn’t come, but the growling vanished. Tears pricked her eyes.

Khan moved into position at her side – the shooter’s side – and she saw Einstein was providing the same protection to Daniel. Kevin had said the dogs would give their lives for Daniel, and they were proving it. It would probably irk Kevin to know they were doing the same for her.

Kevin. Well, the odds were now better that he was alive. The news broadcasts hadn’t cut off because the Agency had found Kevin but because they’d successfully located Daniel.

They made the outbuilding. She crawled gratefully into the obscuring dark. The dogs inside were whining and barking anxiously. Fighting the heavy mass of the lined coat, she struggled to her feet, still bent over but able to move faster. Daniel copied her, keeping an eye on Einstein to see if he would insist they get back down. Einstein wasn’t paying attention to Daniel at the moment, though. Both he and Khan were doing a stuttering race down the line of kennels, stopping at each door and then bounding to the next. At first she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to run, too, but then she realized what they were doing. The closest kennels swung open, then the following set. Kevin had taught his prize pupils how to open the kennels from the outside.

The freed dogs were immediately silent. The first pair was a matched set of standard German shepherds. The two dogs raced out the barn door, heading north. Before they were out of sight, three Rottweilers sprinted past her toward the south. A lone Doberman followed, then a quartet of German shepherds, each group heading in a different direction. The dogs started flooding out of the building so quickly that she lost count entirely. Easily more than thirty animals, though some of them were still very young. Part of her wanted to cheer, Tear ’em up, boys! while the other part wanted to tell them, Be careful! She saw Lola’s pups run past, and her eyes teared again.

In the dark night, someone shouted in panic. Gunfire, then screaming. A tight, mirthless smile stretched her lips.

But it wasn’t entirely good news. She heard shots from another direction. Definitely multiple attackers.

“Gun?” she whispered to Daniel. He nodded and pulled it out from the waist of his jeans. He offered it to her. She shook her head. She’d just wanted to know he hadn’t dropped it. She was dripping sweat inside the thick fur. She pushed back the hood and wiped her forearm across her forehead.

“What now?” he murmured. “Are we supposed to wait here?”

She was just about to say that as an escape, this didn’t quite answer, when Einstein was back, tugging Daniel down again. She got on her hands and knees and followed as Einstein led them out the door they’d come in. Khan was still there, bringing up the rear again. This time Einstein led them due north, though she didn’t know of any additional structure that way. It was probably going to be a long crawl, she realized, and her hands were already deeply scratched from the dry stalks of grass. She tried to protect her palms with the cuffs of the coat’s sleeves, but that part wasn’t lined, so it only helped a little. At least there were too many furry shapes in the night for a shooter to bother with four that weren’t attacking. She looked back toward the house in the distance. She didn’t see any new lights on. They hadn’t started clearing the house yet. The dog sounds continued, faraway growling, the baying of Lola’s pups, and random staccato barks.

She lost track of time, only aware of the amount of sweat she was producing, the rasping sound of her panting, the fact that they’d been going slightly uphill the whole way and now Daniel was slowing some, and that her palms were being pierced again and again, despite the coat. But she didn’t think they’d gone very far when Daniel gasped quietly and stopped. She crawled up beside him.

It was the fence. They’d reached the northern boundary of the ranch. She looked for Einstein, wondering what they were supposed to do next, and then she realized that Einstein was already on the other side. He looked at her, then pointed his nose down to the bottom edge of the fence. She felt her way along the place he indicated and found that the earth dropped away from the line of chain link; what she’d thought was a shadow was actually a narrow gorge of dark rock. The space was easily big enough for her to slip through. She felt Daniel grab her ankle, using her for guidance. After they were both through, she turned to watch Khan struggle his way into the gorge. She winced, knowing the bottom edge of the chain link must be gouging into his skin. He didn’t make any audible complaint.