The Squirrel on the Train

  “I was going to take my time visiting you and call before I got there,” she said, “but now I’m wondering if you can pick me up near Eugene. I think someone’s on my tail.”

  “Of course, no question. Can you make it to Island Park on the east side of the Willamette River, near Springfield? We’ll meet you there as soon as possible, maybe forty minutes. We’ll be in an old blue Chevy truck.”

  Orlaith and Starbuck elected to stay and finish Bull Durham while I went with Atticus to pick up Suluk. There wouldn’t have been much room in the cab of the truck if we all went.

  And I have to admit, as much as I love Orlaith and Starbuck, it was nice for just a little while to have the window all to myself. The air rushing past my nose was cool and fresh and smelled of adventure. I may have been romanticizing a little bit, but I couldn’t help it. When Atticus gets his jaw set and clenches his hands like that I know something’s going to happen. He was driving super fast, like barely keeping the tires on the road.

  I asked him when I thought we were halfway there.

  Guilt ferrets, he answered, and I knew what he meant. They’re bastards. Hard to shake off once they start in on you.

 

  Over Kodiak’s death. I don’t want Suluk’s death to be on my conscience too.

 

  No, I know that intellectually. But guilt ferrets don’t care about that. They latch on to your emotions anyway and bite. And since we’re now on the way to pick her up, if we’re too late I’m going to feel like I should have bought a faster car. Or shifted to Eugene and tried to defend her instead of pick her up. Something else than simply doing all I can right this second. That’s how guilt ferrets work.

  But that good feeling slowly drained away as I started to worry maybe we wouldn’t get there in time. Old Chevy trucks don’t move like Camaros or Corvettes. I don’t know what kind of animals are associated with worry, but they were sure chewing on me something awful. Maybe bats! They kind of fly like they’re worried and I certainly worry about them when they fly near me, so that was it: Worry bats were eating at my confidence.

  Island Park was situated around a bend of the Willamette River that sported an island shaped kind of like a dachshund’s body. You could see the island if you followed some footpaths that took you down to the shore, but from the parking lot looking west, the river was screened by a stand of trees. There was one of those modern playground areas with plastic stuff for kids to romp around on to the north, the ground coated with rubberized asphalt to cushion their ouchies when they fell down. We really couldn’t see much beyond the parking lot and playground because of the trees all around us. Suluk wasn’t waiting anywhere in sight. We got out of the truck, leaving the doors open and the engine running, and Atticus called Suluk’s name. The answer he got was a low buzzing noise coming from the direction of the footpath.

 

  No, not enough chop to it. I think it’s—yeah, it’s a drone. And there’s Suluk!

  Suluk was running toward us from the north, parallel to but not exactly on the footpath. She was running a lot faster than I thought she would, more like a pro athlete than someone who had to be super old if she knew Atticus from way back.

  Not this kind. It’s a spy drone, and since it’s mostly plastic and I don’t have line-of-sight to what isn’t plastic, I can’t do anything to bind it. This modern tech can be trouble.

 

  Strategic retreat. Back in the truck, and stay in the middle so Suluk can cram in.

  He was already moving back to the driver’s seat and I jumped in from the passenger side and tried to visualize myself as a compact model hound, like a Yorkie or a Pomeranian, very fuel efficient dogs who could live on like two Vienna sausages per day.

  Atticus hopped in and slammed the door shut, and with him next to me and Suluk approaching fast, I didn’t think my visualization was going to help very much—unless I was the one who got squeezed down to the size of a Vienna sausage.

  We became a chorus of strained grunts when Suluk half-leapt into the truck and unintentionally smooshed us to the left like rebels in an Imperial trash compactor.

  “Go!” she huffed before she even got the door closed, and Atticus peeled out of there, heading back to the road. Suluk wrestled the door shut with an “Oof!” and then took two whole quick breaths before pointing out the front window at a slick black car squealing its tires into the lot as we were going out. “That’s them! I lost them at the other end of the park but they kept tabs on me with that drone!”

  Atticus noted that they had tinted windows and he couldn’t see inside, but they saw Suluk in our truck—or already knew she was there. They fishtailed behind us to give chase and I didn’t think we’d stay ahead very long.

  I said.

  It’s a Dodge Charger with a Hemi engine. We don’t have a prayer of outrunning it.

  “How many in the car?” Atticus asked Suluk.

  “Two. They’re armed with those little crossbows.”

  “No guns?”

  “Not that I’ve seen so far.”

  Atticus had us back on Main Street headed back toward the cabin. It would eventually turn into the McKenzie Highway but while we were in the city it was leading us past businesses and neighborhoods that smelled like waffles for some reason.

  “Are they controlling that drone from the car or is someone else feeding them info?” Atticus asked.

  “I don’t know,” Suluk replied.

  “How do you want this to end?” Atticus said as he began to weave in and out of traffic, pressing down the horn.

  “Well, the crossbow they have means it’s the same guys from the train station and now they’re trying to kill me for witnessing their dirty deed. The police are not an option, and I don’t think they’ll respond to a polite request to leave me alone.”

  “There’s always running.”

  She snorted. “In this old thing?”

  “No, I mean on foot. We get past town and there’s all this wooded area on the right-hand side. We pull over, run in there, and just disappear.”

  “How about a compromise?” Suluk said, peering over her shoulder at the Charger. Her eyes narrowed the way humans do sometimes when they’re ready to deliver some pain. “We run into the woods and make them disappear.”

  I turned to look at Atticus to see his reaction and his eyebrows were climbing to the sky. “You sure you want to play it like that?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. These aren’t people who have a legitimate beef with me. They’re being paid to kill strangers and they’re obviously fine with that. Best thing they can do with their lives right now is become fertilizer.”

  “All right.” Atticus asked me to duck my head down while he checked the mirror. “They’re hanging back a bit. Maybe we won’t have to do this.”

  “They’re hanging back because they have a drone and can’t lose us. Once we get past the city and the road opens up they’ll close the gap.”

  Atticus only nodded, his mouth set in a grim line.

  “Can you take out the drone?” Suluk asked.

  “Once we’re out of the truck and in the woods, yeah,” he said.

  “I’ll go halfsies on the assassins with you after that.”

  “Okay.”

  I asked. Atticus went ahead and answered me out loud, figuring Suluk wouldn’t think he was crazy for talking to a hound.

  “Oberon, we need you to run straight into the woods and just bark the whole time. They’ll follow the sound and won’t be looking for an ambush. When I pull over, we’re all going out the passenger door to keep the truck between
us and them. Leap over the fence and get into cover quick as you can.”

  Atticus did several illegal things on the road and we nearly hit or got hit several times but somehow never picked up any police pursuit. The local law enforcement must have been occupied elsewhere.

  Nobody said anything until we passed the final stoplight, when Atticus broke the silence.

  “How did they even find you?” he said.

  “I don’t know. That’s one of those questions you ask later.” Suluk turned to look out the back window. “Here they come.”

  I don’t really have the trick of mirrors down but I think I saw that black Charger getting closer behind us.

  “That’s fine. I see where we’re getting out.” Atticus pointed to a dense stand of timber coming up on our right. I wish I knew what kind of trees they were but I honestly don’t know what to say except that they had leaves instead of needles—just the small green buds of them, though, since we were in the earliest part of spring and the trees were kind of yawning as they woke up from winter sleep. Atticus pulled off onto the shoulder and the ride got bumpier, and he warned me to brace myself for the hard braking.

  As soon as we stopped, Suluk threw open the door and pelted for the barbed wire fence. She surprised me again because she wasn’t just fast for a big person, she was faster than pretty much every person—like Atticus when he was getting boosted from the earth.

  We were already over the fence by the time the Charger stopped behind our truck and two men got out. We paused to look back at them: Both white guys with sunglasses.

  “Where’s the drone?” Suluk said.

  “I’m sure it’ll be along shortly,” Atticus said. “When we got out of town it probably couldn’t keep up. They’ll send it in after us here.”

  One of the men had a small box thingie in his hands which was probably the remote control and monitor for the drone, but the other one had ducked into the back seat for a second and came out with a gun in each hand.

  “Oh, shit. Into the forest, and bark like I told you!” he said, and we took off just as a couple of shots followed us and whacked into tree trunks. I started barking while Atticus and Suluk started stripping on the run, and I understood what they were up to then. Those guys weren’t going to be following two humans and a hound much longer. By the time the drone caught up they’d probably already be shifted into something else—which meant I was very shortly to be in the presence of a great big bear.

  Atticus only had to take off his jacket and shirt and he was ready to go: He triggered one of those charms on his necklace that bound his shape to a great horned owl and he just sort of flew out of his pants and sandals. He flapped hard and went almost straight up into the branches of a tree where he could watch for our pursuit.

  Keep going, Oberon, and keep barking, he said in my mind.

  Great big bears don’t fly out of pants or anything else, so Suluk had to try to run and undress at the same time, just flinging clothes onto the forest floor. I was barking and taking frequent glances over my shoulder, not really running too fast. We didn’t want to lose them or make them give up. In fact, since I didn’t see any pursuit, I stopped and turned around, shielding my body behind a tree trunk and peeking around to one side, woofing steadily. Suluk passed me, trying to kick free of her pants, and then a few seconds later there was a series of popping noises followed by a low grunt and a whiff of something that wasn’t human anymore. My ears laid back and my tail ducked down by instinct as I turned to look: Suluk had become a Kodiak brown bear, which is not a grizzly bear, but rather the greatest and biggest of great big bears, just like Irish wolfhounds are the tallest of all hounds. She tossed her head at me once and then loped off to the side, circling back toward the road. I stayed where I was and barked some more, turning to face the edge of the woods again.

  The drone was entering underneath the canopy and the two white men entered behind it, one of them with the remote and the other advancing with a gun in each hand. The remote control guy sent that drone flying straight in my direction, and I barked at it like any normal hound would until an owl descended from above and just tore it apart with its talons. The man holding the remote cursed and the man holding the guns joined in after a few seconds, and I chuffed a few times as Atticus flew into the canopy and they watched him go in slack-jawed disbelief. That’s when I remembered I was supposed to keep barking, so I started up again.

  But they were mad now and I was making myself a target.

  “God, will you shut up, you stupid mutt!” the man with the guns shouted, and he fired a couple times in my direction. They weren’t well aimed but at least one of the bullets smacked into the tree behind me and to my left. I was pretty sure that was my job—to keep them annoyed and their attention on me—so I moved my head to the other side of the trunk and kept barking.

  The guy who shot at me really shouldn’t have done that, though. Atticus can be fiercely protective of me at times and I think this was one of those times. While I’d been barking and they’d been cussing and shooting, he’d circled around behind them through the trees, and I saw him swooping down silently on the guy holding the guns, talons outstretched. He shifted back to human in midair so that his feet planted themselves right between the guy’s shoulder blades and he went down with a squawk, holding on to only one of the guns, the other one flying out of his hand. Atticus wasted no time. Before the dude could recover or his buddy could process what happened, Atticus grabbed his head and twisted hard, snapping his neck, no fuss, no mess. Then he stood up quickly in front of the other guy, all naked so his dangly bits were kind of jiggling around, and he smiled and waved in the friendliest manner, as if he hadn’t just killed someone.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Who the hell are you?” the drone pilot growled, tossing away his remote and balling up his fists.

  “You shouldn’t have shot at my hound. Or at Ignacio Medina, for that matter, or Hudson Keane. Was that you, who shot Hudson Keane in Portland?”

  “What? No. We just had the job in Eugene—hey. Screw you, man.”

  Atticus just smiled even more widely at him. “Your buddy got the better deal. Never saw what hit him, hardly felt a thing. You’re going to get torn up, though, by that bear behind you.”

  “Whatever, man, I’m not falling for that—” But Suluk Black charged in roaring at that point, and a genuine Kodiak roar isn’t the kind of thing Atticus could manage through ventriloquism. The drone pilot turned, saw her, and screamed, having just enough time to process that those claws were going to be the end of him.

  A couple weeks back, when we were saving Jack the poodle and a bunch of other hounds from a nasty human in Arkansas, the man got torn up pretty good by a much smaller bear before Atticus could call him off, because that bear was pretty angry, having just been sprayed with shotgun pellets. Well, Suluk was angrier than that, and Atticus couldn’t have called her off even if he wanted to.

  There’s a reason I’m afraid of great big bears, and Suluk demonstrated why perfectly. Every time she took a swipe at that drone pilot, parts of him flew away—and I’m not just talking about blood. I mean chunky parts of him, like limbs or hunks of flesh like pot roasts and soon after that, internal organs. But she left his neck and head alone so he’d know what was happening and could feel it all. She didn’t stop until he stopped screaming, and then she sat down on her hind legs, calm as you please, though she was breathing hard through those bellows in her chest.

  “It’s all right now, Oberon, if you want to come back,” Atticus called. I came out from behind the tree and trotted back maybe halfway before I stopped.

  I said. I really didn’t want to get too close.

  “And stuff, yeah,” Atticus agreed. He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the road as the sound of a big eighteen-wheeler rumbled past. He couldn’t see much, though, so th
at meant the truck driver couldn’t see the carnage from the road, either.

  Atticus turned over the body of the guy with the guns and searched for car keys. Once he removed them, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and soon after that the ground underneath the assassins started shifting. Suluk grunted in surprise and stood up, backing away. My Druid was having the Willamette elemental swallow up the bodies and assorted parts so that there’d be no evidence. I noticed that he buried the drone and the guns too.

  While he was doing that, Suluk lumbered away out of sight and I heard that popping noise again. I guessed she was modest about her shifting process, which was strange because she had no problem walking around naked in front of Atticus. She strolled back to check on his progress, her hands a bit bloodstained, and when the ground stopped moving and Atticus opened his eyes, she nodded at him once.

  “Thanks,” she said, and he tossed her the keys, which she snatched out of the air. “Huh. New car. Thanks again.”

  “It’s later now,” Atticus said, “so let’s ask that question again. How did these guys find you? Who the hell are they?”

  Suluk shrugged. “No idea.”

  “The killer in that stairwell didn’t get a good look at you, right?”

  “He probably saw me okay, but it wasn’t for very long, and he certainly didn’t snap a picture.”

  “Oh. A picture! That has to be it. Not good, though.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I’m still piecing it together, so I’m thinking aloud. You said these guys had those plastic crossbows, right? We’ll find them in the car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So they’re related somehow to that Portland murder. And they wouldn’t have reason to go after you except that you witnessed it, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, clearly these are high tech guys with their weapons and their drones. It’s easy to see how they tracked you once they found you. But if you’re an anonymous bystander, how did they find you? And the answer is surveillance footage.”