Chapter Text

Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t really move . Blood loss, combined with a broken femur and all of my cuts and burns catching up to me, meant that I was weak as a kitten for the time being. Haley might have some kind of berserker constitution, but I was still very very human.

Kevin refused to participate in moving me again, either. “If I give you some way to get out of here you’re going to go right back out and get yourself killed. I am not your doctor but I won’t help you kill yourself.”

I was feeling a little funnier, at least. “You can say that all you want, but you’ll always be my Leonard McCoy. Thanks for saving my life, doc. Also, if I stay here I’m probably dead anyway when the army rolls back up. If you find me a wheelchair I promise not to enter any armed standoffs for at least three days.” He glared, but he knew as well as I did that I was right about the army. None of the infomorphs were leaving- where would they go? But the humans scattered around the refugee camp were increasingly nervous. Kevin wandered off, hopefully to go find me some wheels, and the rest of the gang gathered around.

I shook Delmutt’s hand-claw-thing. She’d swapped back to the mantis, overnight. “I’m glad you’re okay, miss D. The rest of you too.” Ayen, Larmutt, and Dainbex all nodded glumly behind her. Bet you’re regretting signing up now, eh? “And, uh, Skylar, was it? Thank you , most of all. You saved all of us last night.”

The dragon-girl, poking her head in from the much larger hallway outside the VIP box, looked abashed. “It was the right thing to do.”

Haley smiled at her. “It was, and it was very brave of you to do it. Whatever Aslan saw that made him put you in that body, he was wrong . You’re an incredible girl.” Guess dragons can blush a little bit after all. We all kind of took that spectacle in for a moment, before Delmutt gave a start.

“Oh yeah! How’d you turn into a dragon? Gimme.” She raced over the big lizard and began peppering her with questions. The girl seemed bemused but I tuned them out before I heard the answers.

“Okay, everyone who’s left , we need to make plans. What I’d like to do is sit here on my butt until our resident superhero gets Cure Light Wounds, but I think time is pressing on us a bit. We have three priorities. Haley?”

She was downshifting to her human form to make more space in the box, the Lara Croft cosplay outfit reasserting itself. And the vorpal sword, I noted. Glad that’s still around . She ticked points off on her fingers. “Number one: we need to escape the cordon that’s about to close on this place. Number two: we need a place to hunker down and prepare whatever Sean’s ‘Cunning plan’ is. Number three: we need a way to keep in touch with the stadium refugees and rescue them when the time is right.”

I waved my left hand at her until she took it and held it. Human contact was kind of rare for us these days, I wanted her to have more of it. Said nothing about me, no sir. “She’s got it. Now, number one is simple. We just move out before they get here. Number two, I’ve got solved, I hope. I met some folks yesterday with a bunker out in the country. They gave me the address.”

Skylar spoke up, over Miss D’s continued pestering. Guess she’s got those draconic senses too. “Won’t they be using it?”

I leaned my head back. “No, they… didn’t make it, yesterday. One of them did. I’m hoping he got to a hospital.” There was a bit of silence after that. It was hard to process, all the chaos that we’d been through. Any pause risked letting it crash down on us. “Anyway. That’s number two. Number three, I’m up for suggestions.”

Delmutt translated for the other three, while Skylar and Haley thought a bit. Finally Haley perked up. “The phones!”

Ah, true, we did have a few of those. And they wouldn’t be able to search ten thousand or more infomorphs before they processed them, not thoroughly. I thought about it. “We hide a phone among them, then call it or use the GPS to track their movements. Assuming the networks and power hold out. If the Guard’s in control, I imagine they should. Yeah, that keeps us in touch. Now how do we rescue them if something goes wrong before my plan can be executed?”

Haley frowned in thought. “Well, we can’t know for sure until we know where they are . But… I had Detect Evil running last night, as well as Sense Motive. Some of my skills are getting a little nuts- I felt like I could almost read Captain Kitchener’s mind, by the end. He was sincere that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. Whatever happened in Blackwood I don’t think it was under his complete control. But he was also telling the truth about shooting first, if we resisted. I think… the only way to keep everyone safe right now, is to not resist . If he sees they can be non-violent, it might open up a path to talk him around towards our side.”

Delmutt didn’t like it. “So we don’t leave any guns? We give them nothing to defend themselves with but a, a phone and a promise?”

I agreed with Haley, but it was Sherriff who spoke through me. “<You haven’t seen the things I’ve seen in Sean’s memory, Delmutt. The weapons they can make. They could wipe this whole place out in the blink of an eye, if it came to it. Putting a gun in every hand in here wouldn’t make a difference on that scale. We have to change their minds.>”

The trio behind Delmutt spoke among themselves in low tones, then to her. She clacked her mandibles angrily at them, but finally translated back to the rest of us. “They say they will stay behind, and keep the phones, and organize resistance. I think this is a terrible idea and you’ll get everyone staying here killed. We saw what humans did to us, in Blackwood. Maybe that didn’t have such an impact for you, maybe you can trust their intentions, but-”

I held up a hand. “All of this is contingent on my plan not being enough in the first place, miss D. Trust me, it’s a great plan. Absolutely going to work.”

Skylar piped up from across the room, “Oh yeah! So what is it?”

I was about to explain when Kevin elbowed his way past her, with a wheelchair. My savior! There followed a relatively short struggle to get me sitting upright in the thing, aided in no small part by my wife the hulking amazon woman with strength somewhere between ‘Horse’ and ‘Grizzly Bear.’ She was surprisingly gentle, for all that. But by the time we were done I was still feeling awfully faint. Then Skylar and Haley both perked their ears up and glanced toward the ceiling.

A few tense seconds later, the rest of us heard it. Kevin called it: “Helicopters.” More than one, approaching fast from the south. Our window for escape without a confrontation was closing.

Things moved a bit too quickly for my addled brain to really process. Ayen, Larm, and Dain got a quick primer on mobile-phone use, and a send off from the rest of us with instructions to follow. Skylar and Delmutt ran out into the stadium, heading to the parking lot and the truck- to get it ready, or in an absolute emergency, to physically carry it away- Skylar was reasonably sure she could pick it up. Haley busied herself scooping her miniature hoard of gold and jewelry into a series of canvas sacks that the infomorphs had made her, and slinging them over her shoulders. There had to be at least a hundred pounds of metal in there, and she slung it like a day-bag. I made a mental note not to squeeze her too tight any time soon, she might squeeze back.

We were out on the deck-slash-hall, heading to the stairs, when Skylar came winging up in a rush, Delmutt clinging to her back. “They’re here, we’re too late!” The group trundled over to the edge of the deck and looked through the partially-enclosed scaffolding down into the lot. Sure enough, a convoy of armored trucks- a lot more than the day before- was pulling in. Overhead I could see at least two of the helicopters that I pretty much always thought of as “Black Hawks” even though that was almost definitely not their actual name. At the front and back of the convoy were actual, honest-to-god tanks. They had moved with some speed, and I could see the pavement of the highway off-ramp that had been partially devastated by their presence.

My head was swimming with all the motion, but I tried to call the group to order. “Okay, new plan- jolly cooperation, but we keep Haley out of sight somewhere in the building-” there was a not-so-subtle ahem that I couldn’t place to any of our group. I looked around, puzzled. Kevin, Haley, Delmutt, Skylar, me… there was a new face in our midst, literally forming out of mist. First it was just the extended smile of canine teeth, floating in mid-air, but they were quickly obscured by the head and body of a large hound. It was blue-and-black striped, and big , and looking about with a disdainful intelligence completely at odds with the doofy grin I expected to see on a dog’s face.

I groaned. “Wiltshire Dog, I presume. We’re full up on madness at the moment, could you check back later?”

It sniffed me, as though I were something particularly distasteful, then turned to Haley and spoke in a rumbling masculine baritone. “I see the latest fashion in husbands is as gauche now as it was in my day. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to trade up? I found a lovely piece of roadkill on the way in here.”

I couldn’t take that lying down, or sitting, as it happened. “You sure you couldn’t send one of your other friends? Really been wanting to meet the Sussex Llama and the Dorset Giraffe.”

Haley held up hands, placatingly. “Both of you quit it. This is a crisis. Cecilia, I’m assuming you’ve been following long enough to know what’s happening. Why speak up now?”

The Dog shook itself a little, one of those nose-to-tail waves that I’d always thought looked immensely satisfying. “Just call me Dog, please, Cecilia isn’t in at the moment. I find myself without many places to go, these days, and I thought sleeping under a bridge somewhere was living a bit too rough even for someone of my… furry disposition. I… happened to be in the area, and heard your dilemma. I thought I might be able to help.” Though his voice was low and even, there was an undertone of fast-talking desperation to it. I could understand the anxiety- we hadn’t parted on the best of terms. He must really be in hard straits to come to us now.

I pointed this out. “When you last saw us, you tried to burn me to death. Along with the entire population of downtown Midland.” The Dog’s tail drooped a little and it hung its head, like I was shaming an actual dog. I must have been programmed to respond to it, because my tone shifted a bit even as I recognized it was playing me. “But circumstances make strange bedfellows, I guess. Can you help us out of here? Pull us into Wonderland, or something?”

It perked up slightly. “No, there is a… veil , I suppose you would call it, between me and that place. I was drawn from there, and I can draw from there, or send your minds to it, but cannot move between this world and that one freely. But I have other abilities, as you have seen. I believe I have a way. But I would have your answer, first.” It continued to look at Haley.

She shrugged, and squeezed my shoulder. “What else can we say? Of course.”

Kevin held up his hands and stepped back. “Nope, no, sorry, not interested in this, talking invisible dogs is where I draw the line. I’ll take my chances with the army.”

Haley nodded at him. “Thank you for everything, from both of us.” She took over the wheelchair handling. The bags slung over her shoulder clinked and bumped against my head. “Look after the cat for us, okay? It’s still in the VIP room. Take it with you if they move you, we’ll pick it up off your hands as soon as we can.” He grimaced, but nodded.

I could see the trucks unloading, outside. Armed soldiers were pouring out at all points, presumably securing the perimeter before they ventured inside. We had minutes at best. “So,” I said to the Dog, “What are you pulling out of your hat for this one?”

“Oh no,” said the Dog, grinning. I assumed it was grinning, that or it was about to eat my head. “You quite mistake me for another denizen, dear fellow. No hats here, merely tales, and tails, I suppose. One kind you must avoid stepping upon, and the other you must step into .”

We all took a second to track this, but to my surprise was Skylar who got it first. “Oh! You want us to join your story? How do we do that?”

The Dog looked delighted when it realized it had a young girl to befuddle with awful wordplay. “Oh, but you already are, my dear. What is the story of Wonderland but a series of delightful vignettes between a clever little girl and her fantastical, fantabulous animal friends?” He began to walk for the stairs again.

Haley got it. “Why it is many things, Dog! It is a lesson on culture, and a mocking treatise, with a mock tortoise , to boot!” She looked very pleased with herself for this little pun. I groaned, loudly. How was this going to help us? She poked me in the back of the head.

Delmutt voiced my question for me. “Not to be difficult or anything but aren’t they just going to shoot us? How is this helping? I’m confused.”

The Dog rose to the challenge, turning to face her while moonwalking backwards, a truly uncanny feat of canine dexterity. He was clearly getting into this. “In Wonderland , one may come by help in many forms, many of them quite literal . What is confusion but a lack of distinction? Being thus confused, it seems, might make one easily confusable .” We began to descend, Haley taking time with the chair on every step. The bumps still shook my world.

I heard footsteps rushing up from below. My head was still muddled, and I was reasonably sure the Dog had done nothing. “Well, thanks for nothing, fleabag. You want to talk about literal help? You have literally walked us to our deaths.”

The Dog moonwalked off the stairs and into the air, gliding down alongside me. “ You are not walking anywhere, twenty-first century cowboy. Literalness is itself a relative concept, in literature , where we tread . We walk the littoral here, the shore between concept and reality. You are muddled, and so-”

The first soldier on point rounded the corner, rifle at the ready. He swept it over all of us but did not pause, then gave an “All clear” gesture to those on the staircase below him. We froze, perfectly still- even Skylar, so massive she took up three quarters of the wide stadium stairs. He swung right around and stepped carefully by us, followed by the rest of his squad.

The Dog continued his speech, grinning. “And so, being indistinct in your thinking, you become indistinct in your being .”

Skylar sighed in wonder. “Invisible. We’re invisible. ” We began walking again. There were other soldiers, but they appeared not to hear or see us, instead parting easily as we passed.

Haley was feeling poetic. “O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.”

“And therefore as a stranger give it welcome,” said the Dog, shaking its large head. “You can be vis’d quite easily. But so long as we banter, you ride my tale, as it were. They register you as a dream, a fleeting fancy- indeed! A talking dog, a woman with horns, a man in a wheelchair and a mantis riding a dragon? We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

Haley laughed, lightly, as we rounded the corridor to the front gate. “You’re mixing your plays.” I understood her joy. Somehow, this is going to work. We could see the truck now, through the rumbling mess of the armored convoy, still pulling into position. They appeared to be using the trucks as part of a makeshift barricade around the building. But an opening appeared for us, a truck momentarily pulled aside as we strode out the front gate.

I felt a bit of remorse for my accusation earlier. “I apologize. You really did come through for us. I don’t quite understand how, but I get that my not understanding may be critical, so I’ll try not to question it.”

The Dog faded from sight and reappeared, chihuahua sized, poking a head out of one of Haley’s burlap sacks. “Oh, question as you like, and I’ll give you three answers, each one true and maddening to know.”

We’d reached the truck. The guns were still in the bed, under a tarp. Haley deposited the bulging sacks, and then manhandled me into the passenger’s seat before heading around to the driver’s door. She and Skylar exchanged words- I assumed some instructions- and then she got in and turned the key. Somehow we were really doing this, but I felt a tug to continue our conversation through the back window of the truck. “Okay, taking it literally then. Why are you the Wiltshire Dog? Why the knockoff Cheshire cat routine, why not the actual creature?”

The Dog, still chihuahua sized, leapt through the back window into the middle of the cab bench. “It didn’t fit Cecilia, of course. Whatever paired her with Wonderland, it was her brain doing the calling. She seemed in need of a canny familiar- why not canis familiaris? ‘A dog’s not mad,’ said the cat, most famously. She needed a little sanity. You did not summon Lini the Druid or Seoni the Sorceress for your games, why hold my creator to some higher standard?”

I started at that. “Wait, are you implying that Haley is someone I-” I shared a nervous glance with my wife. “That doesn’t make any sense, we’ve been together for a decade , you’d have to rewrite half our life story to make that fit-”

The Dog just chuckled. “I said nothing of the sort. Now ask your questions, Seeker of Knowledge.”

I cut myself off. “You’re fucking with me on purpose . Alright wise guy, you want to do the oracle routine, how’s my ‘Cunning Plan’ going to play out?”

He paused, and peered into the distance silently. Haley pulled the truck onto the highway on-ramp, in the south-easterly direction of our presumed shelter for the night. The dragon-girl, I assume wary of the helicopters still circling over the stadium, crept along behind us. Eventually the dog spoke again, sounding… resigned? “If you don't know where you want to go, then it doesn't matter which path you take. If you give Luke Skywalker a lightsaber, you must give Darth Vader his Death Star. But it all depends on perspective- who’s the villain, and who’s the victor? The question hangs in the air. Either way, pour out a pint for Guinness- revision did him no favors, in the end.”

Star Wars metaphors? Really? I didn’t phrase my incredulity as a question. “Okay, final answer, all the marbles. Try to spout confusing bullshit about this one. Do you want to join us?” I asked with a smile.

Finally I caught it off guard. I think it was expecting more barbs, not a genuine invitation. It looked taken aback, then a little sheepish. Haley smiled encouragingly at it. “We did always want to adopt a dog. Don’t worry, we’re all mad here.”

The Dog harumphed and looked away. “Don’t quote scripture at me , young woman.” He paused again, considering. “I’ve only had one master, and she lives in my head. Now I look for shelter, and find you two instead. I suppose I could insist that I was holier than thou. But I find I am agreeable. I’ll be your Dog for now.” With the little ditty, he started to fade again, skin first , and only a dog’s skull still floated between us as he spoke the last line before disappearing entirely.

Haley looked at me as the open highway rolled on before us. Behind, Skylar finally took to the air, looping and circling overhead as we made our way. “I, uh, hmm. Hope he plays well with the cat.”

I sighed. “I hope he doesn’t set the house on fire as a grooming ritual . Oh well, I’m glad he’s on the team. I’m going to pass out now, wake me when we get there please.”

---

“When we get there” turned out to be a couple hours later, mid-morning. Haley shook my arm until I woke up, and Skylar whumped to a landing behind us. We were deep in the heavy woodland that made up most of southern Missouri, at the end of a dirt road with a single postal box. In front of us there was a gate to a large field, and in the middle of that- “Well I’ll be damned,” I said. “It is a bunker.” A literal, honest-to-god low slung concrete monstrosity. It spread out over half the acreage in front of us, full of gun slits and forbidding-looking portholes. The whole thing was painted green and covered in sod, to make it less visible from the air. There was a single iron-banded barn door on one side, big enough to allow a car to enter, unbarred and standing open. There were no signs of habitation beyond still-fresh tire tracks, presumably from the ambushers we’d encountered the day before.

Haley got out of the truck and began shifting back to her draconic form “I’ll check it out, you wait here.” Like I was strong enough to get out if I wanted to. She was truly big now, I saw out in the open. Large in Pathfinder terms was such a weird space- a medium creature was a human, or thereabouts. But a Large creature was anything from one foot taller, to 16 feet tall . Haley was rapidly approaching the top end of that scale- she stood much higher at the shoulder than a horse now, still not quite rivaling our youngest hanger-on, but getting there. “Skylar, you and Delmutt stay here with the truck. Dog, if you’re here, stick behind me please.” She rolled forward in an easy lope, and I saw the grass of the field part behind her- something was following her, presumably our erstwhile mutt. She stuck her head inside the garage, called out. Eventually she ventured inside, out of sight.

Delmutt walked over to my side of the truck. “What is this place?” She gestured at the concrete.

I blew out some air. How to explain doomsday preppers to an alien? “Ah, well, a lot of people over the years came to the belief that the… world was going to end, or the government was going to declare war on its citizens, or we’d get in a foreign war so bad that people weren’t safe even here in the heartland. Some of them, those with a lot of money and time, built places like this to come and live in if the apocalypse ever hit.”

She nodded. “Sensible, given the circumstances. But how would this have helped them? If bombs are as powerful as you’ve said, they’d still starve, eventually. At best they should have cultivated farmland.”

I agreed. “It wasn’t really about survival, in the long term. I think it was about having a place to feel safe. It wasn’t rational, it was largely driven by fear of change and a desire for control, I think. They could sit inside and point their guns out and feel like nobody would bother them. Of course, anybody really intent on killing them would have just blown up their infrastructure and moved on. But it will make a good hideout, in this short term survival situation.” Haley poked her head back out, human again, and waved us on. I scooted over along the bench, and Delmutt got in the passenger side. With Skylar following along behind we drove through the field and into the garage.

It wasn’t that bad inside, to be honest. Rough, but functional. They’d got themselves a generator, and there were lights strung up in the place. The floor was untreated lumber, and a metal door stood open, leading further into the facility. Skylar scooched to one side of the four-car garage, giving us enough room to fit in, barely- She pulled the door closed behind us. I was still incapable of standing, so I relied on Haley to pull me out and set me in the wheelchair. Then we held conference one more time.

Haley started- “I walked the upper floors, the place is uninhabited. There’s a ladder leading to a lower level, a pantry, an armory with not much in it, a barracks, and a few rooms with gun slits facing outwards. Skylar will have to stay out here, but there’s a lot of room for the rest of us. Whatever you’re wanting us to do, I hope you brought the means to do it because the truck’s basically out of gas and we’re a long way south of the city.”

I smiled. What did she take me for, a guy who’d never been through armageddon? I closed my eyes, and took in the mood of the place. Stillness . Silence. Room to breathe, to think . Perfect. “Get out those Pathfinder books. In the truck bed, next to the canned food. We’ve got a few days here, I hope, and it’s time to metagame like we’ve never metagamed before.”