The Case of the Monster Fire. John R. Erickson

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СКАЧАТЬ crunching gravel outside. His eyes grew wide and he muttered, “Good honk, somebody just pulled up!”

      Duh.

      He rushed to the front window and peeked through the dusty, barf-colored curtains that had been there since the Civil War. “Oh great!”

      Apparently it wasn’t good news, because he was transformed into some kind of wild man. Maybe he didn’t want to fight the intruder in his undershorts.

      Wait, that doesn’t sound right. I didn’t mean to say that the intruder was showing up in his undershorts. That would be ridiculous. Intruders don’t do that. I meant to say that Slim…let’s just skip it.

      As we’ve discussed before, Slim is usually not a ball of flames first thing in the morning. Sometimes we need to check his pulse to be sure he isn’t a corpse. Remember that only minutes before, I had mistaken him for a mummy.

      Give him two cups of coffee and thirty minutes of solitude, staring at flies on the wall, and he’ll come around, but this deal had wrecked his train. He became an explosion of arms, legs, and desperate expressions.

      He made a dash down the dark hallway and vanished into his bedroom. There, he tripped over the boots he’d left in the middle of the floor. I didn’t see this with my own eyes but heard it, and knew the story: He never puts a boot into the closet if he can leave it in the middle of the floor.

      Then I heard him say, “What in the cat hair is that old man doing over here at this hour of the morning?”

      Who?

      Bam Bam Bam!

      Yipes, somebody was banging on the door! Well, we’d gotten an Alert from DC and our procedures were very clear: Make no assumptions about intruders until we see some ID and clear them through Security. As far as I was concerned, we had come under attack.

      I went straight into Sirens and Lights. “On your feet, Drover, battle stations, Red Alert, we’ve got Charlies on the porch!”

      You know, I get a kick out of waking him up. Hee hee. I mean, he started running before he got his eyes open, before his feet even hit the floor, and all four legs were pumping air.

      “Help, murder, mayday, Charlies on the porch!”

      “On your feet, soldier, and load up Number Three Warning Barks!”

      He finally scrambled to his feet, got traction, and ran smooth into the coffee table. Down he went. “Help, they got me! Dog down! Oh my leg!”

      There was more banging on the door, then a booming voice. “Slim? You in there?”

      That raised the hair along my backbone, I mean, no more laughing at Stubtail. We’re talking about a deep, snickister voice that didn’t even sound human!

      “Drover, the Charlies must have sent some kind of robot probe to break down the door!”

      “Help!”

      “The only thing between us and destruction is us!”

      “Help!”

      “Take weapons and ammo and three of your best men, and crawl to the door!”

      “I don’t have three men.”

      “Perfect. You’ll be harder to see.”

      “Yeah, but…”

      “Move out and set up a firing position.”

      “Yeah, but…”

      “If they bust through the door, let ‘em have it, give ‘em the full load. Any questions?”

      “This leg’s killing me!”

      “That’s not a question and nobody cares. On your feet, let’s get this job done and go home.”

      “Can we go home first?”

      “Negatory. Boots on the floor!”

      “Hank, you might have to help me up. This old leg’s really giving me fits.”

      Oh brother. “Okay, stand by for Assisted Lift.” Using my nose and enormous neck muscles as a prying device, I managed to get his front end off the floor, then went to work lifting his bohunkus. “Okay, trooper, that’s four on the floor. Get out there and unload some ordinance!”

      “How ‘bout you?”

      “Fine, thanks. Go git ‘em!”

      He took two steps toward the door, stopped, glanced back at me, and…you won’t believe this. Drover is such a little chicken liver! I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.

      You know, my biggest problem in this job is that I’m a foolish optimist. I keep hoping to see progress in the men, a little sign that says I’m not wasting my life. I place too much faith in my fellow dogs and my heart gets broken every day. I keep hoping I can turn their lives around, but they keep turning mine around and upside-down and backwards.

      I should have known he would weenie out of this mission. Do you know why? Because he’d done it a thousand times before, that’s why.

      Okay, let’s get this sad situation out of the way. The King of Slackers marched two steps toward his combat assignment, cut a hard right turn, and went streaking down the hall to Slim’s bedroom, where he vanished. I didn’t see him slither under the bed, but I knew he did.

      This was so predictable and so sad. You give your men a chance to prove themselves and this is what you get. Now, I would have to convene a court-martial and he would have to stand with his nose in the…

      BAM BAM BAM!

      “Slim, get out of bed!”

      Holy smokes, we had problems bigger than Drover. Had you forgotten the intruder? If you don’t start paying attention, we’re going to drop you from the next assignment. One Drover on this team is all we can stand.

      Chapter Three: Not a Robot

      Slim was coming down the hall, tucking in his shirttail. Good. He could take the lead on this deal and I would provide backup. I dived under the…that is, I found myself beneath the coffee table and started pumping out some cover fire. Awesome barks.

      He went to the door and yanked it open. There stood…hmmm, it wasn’t a robot, as you might have thought. It was an old guy: white hair, bushy eyebrows, smoky gray eyes, and red suspenders holding up khaki pants that bagged in the seat. I sent this info to Data Control and got an ID: Woodrow, Viola’s daddy.

      See? What did I tell you? We’ve never had a robot show up at Slim’s place and probably never will. I’ve tried to drill this into the troops: stick with the facts and don’t let your imagination run wild. Drover is the very worst about making a mountain out of a mohair.

      Anyway, СКАЧАТЬ