Last Update: 9/18/13
The building was a rather unimpressive looking structure in the middle of an undesirably kitschy shopping complex. He'd driven past the place twice, and checked the address three more times before coming to the understanding that this indeed was the location of the office on the job posting.
The name was all wrong, and so was its front facade. The dingy, Spartan quality of the place made him embarrassed for being so over dressed for the occasion. And the name! Ratberger Transit Systems. It almost sounded like a restaurant. This didn't even remotely resemble the job description.
His pointy black ears flattened against his head as he pushed a white paw against the door handle.
A bull terrier sat behind a giant gray desk with the company's logo on it, absorbed in a long call about supply orders.
The black wolf leaned over the counter. "Um, excuse me..."
Without looking up from the phone and computer, the secretary handed him a log book and a pen.
"Um, is this the DOGWOOD Institute?"
The bull terrier nodded, but she had nodded this way numerous times during the course of the phone call. With a sigh, the wolf signed in and took a seat in an uncomfortable office chair, thumbing through a Fortune 300 Magazine.
A few minutes later, the secretary waved a clipboard and a stack of paper at him.
"Here," she muttered. "Fill these out."
The wolf stared at the packet, thumbing through the pages. It looked like a stack of unused Xerox paper.
"They're blank," he said.
The secretary just shrugged and handed him a pen.
With a sigh, he sat down again, staring at the white page with dismay. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
The secretary didn't reply.
He pushed the clicker button on the pen and wrote his name.
AARON GALETON
Below this, he wrote:
THERE IS NOTHING ON THIS PAPER, SORRY.
But there was still leftover space, so he added:
IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND THERE LIVED A HOBBIT.
And then he doodled a picture of a spaceship.
When he turned the page, he noticed the paper had a raised texture to it, and when he held the paper at a certain angle, he seaw boxes for his job history. The previous page, to his chagrin, was where he was supposed to put in his contact information and social security number. When he asked for a new copy, he was told to "Forget it and keep going."
He attempted to write on the back of the first sheet, but then he found they had printed it double sided. In desperation, he wrote the information on the back of his resume and squinted his way through the rest of the packet.
After the usual job questions there was a battery of math questions, then, inexplicably, pattern and shape recognition exercises, logic puzzles, and something that looked suspiciously like soduku.
As he was finishing the last science question three quarters into the stack, he heard a female voice say, "The rest of those are blank."
He looked up and saw a female panda in a crisp gray suit dress.
Aaron stood up. "Is this the DOGWOOD Institute?"
The stranger just nodded her head. "Follow me."
Aaron thought the voice didn't match the squinty eyes and Oriental hairstyle, but such is the nature of stereotypes. With a shrug, he followed this female around a corner, and down a narrow hallway lined with doors leading to cramped offices.
They turned the corner again, and they were stepping through a security gate the panda opened by pressing her tongue to a device and typing in a code that sounded like the James Bond theme song.
After passing a row of closed doors, his guide opened a door at the top of a staircase, gesturing for him to enter.
The room beyond was a drab, colorless affair, lacking even the paltry inspirational posters of the previous rooms. The place contained only a shiny brown boardroom table with a glass top, some leather chairs, and a big gray cabinet, which the stranger promptly opened, setting a mahogany box and a timer on the glass surface.
"Take a seat," she said without accent.
Aaron did what he was told, and the panda shook the box vigorously and slid it in front of him.
He opened the box and found about fifty cylinders of various colors scattered about in a series of tiered slots.
"You have five minutes to arrange these colors in order. Go." And she set the timer.
Aaron only got half the box arranged in a rainbow before she called time.
The next thing this strange female did was take out a deck of playing cards. Shuffling it once and setting the timer, the panda held up a card with its back toward the interviewee.
"What am I holding?"
"A card?"
"What's on the face?"
"How should I know?"
"Guess."
Aaron sighed. "Queen of spades."
She turned it around. The card was actually an eight of diamonds. She turned over a six of clubs, a queen of clubs, then an eight of hearts, and he didn't get any of them right.
The timer rang after six more minutes of this, and the stranger stepped out the door and shut it without a word, and there Aaron sat for what seemed like an eternity.
Before he could get up and set the timer to see precisely how long his interviewers were taking, he saw the door fly open, and he heard voices arguing about the matter of a magic mirror and something called the Bloodstone.
A moment later, the panda returned to the room with another stranger, a sassy looking peacock with a small, tight fitting black suit dress and a wild mane of feathers.
"Hi," this newcomer said in a flat disinterested tone. "My name is Trish Featherstone, operating director for the DOGWOOD Institute." She rolled her eyes knowingly at the panda, waving a wing in that direction. "I believe you've already met Sook Kim, our administrative aide."
Sook bowed.
Aaron shook their hands, and he found a pair of bored eyes locking on his, the corners of the owner's wide beak turning downwards.
"How much do you know about our organization?"
Aaron shook their hands, and he found a pair of bored eyes locking on his, the corners of the owner's wide beak turning downwards.
"How much do you know about our organization?"
"I don't know much," he said, looking away from the peacocks eyes without looking nervous, tail held nearly horizontally. "It was hard to find anything on this place other than rumors, which I have to say have me worried, especially since nearly everyone of them has to do with employee death, though I'm guessing there's a reason for that." He looked the bird in the eye for a second, then returned his gaze to the wall.
"Bad eye contact," the panda whispered. "I don't understand. Why would he want to work here?"
"Quiet!" Trish hissed. "You aren't an investigative reporter, are you?"
Aaron shook his head violently.
The peacock sat back. "That's good. `Cuz we fed the last reporter to the Hungry Beast."
Aaron squirmed in his chair.
"This is a covert operation." Sook leaned over the table top. "You will be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement upon completion of this interview."
"The non-disclosure agreement does in no way suggest or indicate future employment of any candidate."
The wolf swallowed.
"First question. Why are you here?"
Aaron nervously cleared his throat. "My contractor contacted me about an offer from this address, saying they needed someone with `Fresh country eyes' as he put it."
"Country eyes..." The peacock frowned. "Now who in the world could have made a job description like that?"
Sook shrugged. "Nobody I know."
Trish shook her head. "To the best of my knowledge, we don't need no country bumpkin." She narrowed her eyes. "Why do you want to work for DOGWOOD?"
"I did a bit of research, though I didn't find anything much. But if the rumors are true, this will be as exciting as I hoped the city would be."
The bird rolled her eyes, seeming to be biting back a snide remark about him being a socially backwards country boy. "Were you applying to be a customer service representative or a field agent?"
"Field agent sounds fun enough."
She frowned at him. "We got plenty field agents already. What we need is someone with customer service experience to handle all the calls."
"Are you flexible?" the panda asked.
"Flexible!" Trish snapped her head at the bear. "Will you shut up! We don't need any more field agents!"
"So you just want me to keep running out to Quicktrip every day and getting you Slurpies and Mountain Dew in addition to all the other crap you've got me doing twenty four seven!"
The peacock scowled at her. "Would you like to do anything else unprofessional while we're here? Perhaps you'd like to chew some gum and drop your pants! Go right ahead! Apparently no one's stopping you!"
Sook backed away, becoming sulky. "I'm only saying we should redefine the meaning of field agent."
Trish scowled and rolled her neck. "Hmmm." It sounded like a growl. "Do you have a CDL?"
Aaron nodded.
The panda leaned over his chair. "Does wolfbane cause or cure lycanthropy?"
Aaron took out his phone and did a quick search. "Wolfbane is not a cause nor cure of the dreaded lycanthropes, and acts rather as a preventative or allergen to the monster. If brewed correctly, with the ingredients, and preventative potion can be given to suspected lycanthropes without killing them due to the allergic reaction it tends to give them. Note: It tastes god awful."
Sook frowned. "You cheated."
"Do you know the difference between a platform wedge and a heel?"
"Um..." Aaron furrowed his brow.
"CHIK has a sale on wedges. I'm trying to see if the Electric Rainbow Pumps are marked down. If you get me any rainbow shoe but a wedge, I'll stab you to death with the heel." She waved a credit card at him.
"They sold out yesterday," the panda muttered.
Like lightning, Trish jammed the card back in her purse. "Dammit! Why don't you ever tell me these things!"
"I'm sorry. I just thought you were too busy trying not to get killed by that giant amoeba.."
"Shut up!" She stuck her face in her feathery paws for a moment, then frowned at her interviewee. "What ingredients can be combined together to cure a stone curse?"
"My mother once used mandrake juice to fix my third brothers arm when he was bit by a rock rattler, though it took weeks and I've heard there are better methods, but it became usable after the first two applications, so I'm good for now."
She snickered a bit and shook her head. "Did they use the leftover mandrake juice to make moonshine for the big square dance at the end of the year?"
"What?"
"Nothing." The peacock cleared her throat. "After some careful consideration, we have decided not to hire you for the field agent FA position or the customer service C22 position."
Aaron's stomach sank. With a heavy sigh, he grabbed his things, preparing to leave.
"But!" Trish blurted. "It has come to my attention..." She scowled at the panda. "That we are currently in need of a level T3 field support agent." Her eyes rolled back in her head as she rattled off an obviously impromptu job description. "The T3FA is responsible for any and all courier duties, answering inbound calls in a rapid succession, calling employees about payroll and cooking dinner..."
The panda stared at her in disbelief. "You want a complete stranger to cook dinner."
"Can't be any worse than a woman who thinks that pizza should be made with ketchup as a sauce base!"
"This is coming from someone who thinks spicy cheese dip is a meal."
"It's called RO-TEL, and it contains all four food groups."
The panda rolled her eyes and sulked again.
"Anyways," the peacock said. "As I was saying, this position entails secretary work, sanitation, babysitting, data transcribing, research and development, skip tracing, archiving and bill collection."
"Babysitting?" Aaron stammered.
"It's part of the job description," Trish said matter-of-factly. She stood up, thumping his application down on the table. "Tell you what. My colleagues and I will review your application, and we'll call you back in a few days with our decision. If you hear back from us, we'll likely be setting up a second interview. If you don't hear anything within a week or so, it means we've moved on to more qualified candidates, so good luck with your future endeavors."
Aaron swallowed. "So I just wait for a call?"
She nodded. "You do know the way out, don't you?"
He shrugged. "Do I have to lick a door?"
"No," Trish frowned. "That's just the outer lock." Her beak twisted in a grimace. "Did she spray down that little window after she was done licking?"
"Um..." He didn't want to get anyone angry, since he feared it would affect his chances at getting hired. "I...don't remember."
Sook looked very pleased, but Trish wasn't. She frowned at the panda. "Don't be thinking you're slick! There's antibacterial cleaner right in the little cabinet!"
"It tastes like baby vomit."
"And you'd know what that tastes like."
"Based on what that cleaner tastes like, I'd make an educated guess and say baby puke probably tastes better. I could make other comparisons, but they wouldn't be office appropriate."
Trish cleared her throat. "Sook will..." She cast the panda an irritated glare. "Never mind. I'll walk you out."
And so the wolf was led back out to the lobby, where he was left alone by the door, staring into the adjacent room, where animals in a cube farm dispatched truck drivers to pick up stranded train operators. His interview had nothing at all to do with trains, and yet here was this busy call center occupied with nothing else. Shaking his head in bewilderment, he pushed his way out the door, getting back in his car.
The wolf returned to his car, driving back down the road to the freeway.
Checking his clock, he concluded that he wasn't going to make it to the other interview. He'd made arrangements to interview at a large pharmaceutical company, but a glance at the dashboard showed him he was cutting it close.
Desperate to find some sort of job before rent was due, he decided to risk it, and followed the convuluted instructions of his GPS. After losing the signal twice, and doubling back through an abandoned Perkins restaurant parking lot, he found a big glass and concrete building with a two story parking garage situated at the intersection of two shopping centers.
When he had finally parked and found the entrance, it was already past the scheduled time.
The door didn't open. He stared through the glass doors at a bandaged figure seated behind a gray desk for a minute, then swallowed his unease, waving at the door lock.
"Can I help you?" said a raspy voice on the door intercom.
"I'm here for the interview."
The door clicked open, and he stepped into a pristine gray lobby lined with plastic chairs. He nervously shuffled up to the desk, frowning as he caught a glimpse of the shrivelled flesh peeking out between the bandages.
The thing had two dull yellow eyes, shrunken and ill set in their sockets, a smashed in muzzle with a shrunken nose concealed with bandages, and it grinned at him with a mouthful of crumbling black and yellow teeth.
He thought about running out the door, but he was more afraid of being evicted than working next to a gross zombie, so he said, "Is this Paragon Pills?"
"It is," the creature croaked.
"I'm here for the interview."
A skeletal hand passed him a clipboard.
When Aaron signed it and gave it back, the thing leered at it a minute, then rasped, "You're late." And it pointed a bony hand at a security gate.
Shrugging, Aaron marched through it, and when he turned around and looked back, he saw that the creature wasn't a zombie anymore. It didn't even wear bandages. It only looked like an ordinary feline in a security uniform. Its coat was a smooth and shiny black, the picture of health. He shook his head several times, thinking those DOGWOOD characters had warped his mind.
It turned out it didn't matter he was late. He came in near the end of a session of filling out applications (apparently his first wasn't good enough, so he had to redo it). They did a test, took a tour of the office (the standard maze of drab gray cubicles), and watched a video, concluding with a signup sheet for the real interview, which couldn't be scheduled for that day.
When he returned to the front desk, it was empty.
After this, he stopped at a hole in the wall restaurant for a quick bite with some live music. An artichoke, summer sausage and pineapple pizza and a beer later, and he was back on the road, still staying within the lines because the restaurant did pizza a lot better than it did beer.
About ten minutes later, he was rolling into a dingy looking apartment complex with rows of crooked buildings painted an awful shade of yellow, perched upon dead lawns framed in crumbling retaining walls. He parked and marched down a musty staircase to Unit 3C, carefully dodging a small mound of animal poop as he dug out his keys.
Opening the door, he walked in sluggishly and flopped onto a couch on the back wall of the room, listening to the hollow quiet. The unit next door was still vacant and half renovated, so the only noises came from some guy upstairs with a head cold. Tolerable.
A few motor cycles rumbled past his window, causing him to wince.
He decided to do laundry. And as the machine commenced its forty five minute tumble, he returned to the apartment and sat down with a pica pencil, sharpened it with a knife, and set it on the table, gazing at the engraved blade.
"ZIBNI WUD SEDNER"
He smiled at the foreign inscriptions, muttering their meaning to himself. He put the knife down, taking up the pencil. He grabbed some paper and sketched.
Time went by, occasionally grabbing a meal from the small kitchen arrangement, and the
sketch evolved.
He brought in two baskets of toasty warm laundry, tossed them in the corner, and picked up the pencil again.
He finished, erased the last of the smudged graphite, then cracked open a beer, gazing at the scene he
remembered so well. Generations of family and friends gathered in the living room
around a large tree adorned with various crystal ornaments. He put it down, smiling
as he curled up in his bed, drifting off to sleep.
At two in the morning, his phone rang.
He jumped up with a start, staring at the flashing light. He cursed under
his breath as he rubbed his eyes and pressed the phone to his ear.
"Kemgin?" He spoke accidentally in his native tongue.
"Lal tosac Aaron?"
"Sail lalgio. Yomnoblal tosac?"
"This is Trish from DOGWOOD. Why didn't you tell me you could speak Palwoz?"
"I didn't think it was that important."
The peacock sighed. "Never mind. Listen. The team is away on a covert operation, so I need a T3 Field Agent to carry out a secret mission. How fast can you get over here?"
"Um, thirty minutes?" he said as he put on his shoes.
"Good. I need you here ASAP. The fate of the world is at stake!"
Aaron swallowed. Before he could utter a word of protest, he heard the phone hang up.
Filled with worry and excitement, he threw his belongings together and dashed out the door, forgetting his cel phone and a few other relatively important items as he ran out to the car.
Halfway to the building, he got pulled over by a cop for going sixty in a forty five mile area. After sitting in the car for ten minutes as he watched a mallard in blue run his plates and license, he heard quacking laughter outside the window, and a beak poked in.
"Do you realize you were breaking the speed limit for a babysitting appointment?"
Aaron scrunched up his face in bewilderment. "No?"
The cop burst out laughing.
"Wait. How did you know that?"
"Because," the duck laughed. "I'm a field agent!" He leaned on the roof as he let out another hearty guffaw, tears rolling down his beak.
Aaron noticed the cop suddenly trying to look serious. "Ordinarily, I'd write you a ticket, and then take you downtown for blood alcohol content, but since you're new to DOGWOOD, I'll let you off with a warning. Arm please."
"What?"
"Give me your arm."
"I don't know why you..." He didn't finish. The moment he stuck his limb out the window, the duck grew fangs like a snake, and he was sucking on his arm.
"Hey! What the hell!"
The duck pulled away for a second, his eyes glowing bright orange. "Chill! I'm draining out your blood alcohol!"
"But that was hours ago!"
"You had another before bed." He sucked the arm some more. "Samuel Baggins Honey Mead, I believe."
"I just had one!"
The duck frowned. "Haven't you seen those commercials? Buzzed driving is drunk driving?"
Aaron shrugged.
"A beer is the shortest distance between your car and a toddler's head. Believe me, I've pried enough tricycles out from under semis before...And drained enough drivers of all their blood." And he buried his fangs back in Aaron's arm.
"You're not..."
"No. As this is just a warning." The duck retracted his fangs. "There. Down to point five blood alcohol, I should think."
The wolf frowned. "What about you? Don't you get `buzzed' by drinking alcohol filled blood?"
"Not really." The cop turned his head, blowing a huge fireball. "You're free to go. Just keep it under forty five and stop thinking you're an exception to DWI." He sighed. "I'll let Trish know you're coming."
Aaron stared at the puncture wounds in his arm.
"Those should go away in a couple weeks." The cop slapped a bandage over the spot. "The bleeding should stop in a few minutes if you leave it alone."
And then he threw a handful of Nutter Butters into his lap. "Eat those so you don't faint."
By the time he reached the Ratzenburger building, he'd eaten all of them, which was unfortunate because he didn't have anything to wash them down with.
The door to the building was locked, the lights all switched off.
He tapped on the glass, and a pair of shadowy figures appeared, one with a long neck, the other with feline ears and pigtails.
The door clicked open, and he was led back through the office to the security door, the panel of which was licked, then sprayed with a weird smelling chemical of some sort as the door popped open, and his eyes were hit with blinding light.
As his eyes adjusted, he noticed the peacock had on a sort of Lycra racing suit, a skanky black and yellow tube dress that cut off at the shoulders and showed off a considerable amount of ridiculous looking tail plumage. She had a little cat with her, a tabby, roughly ten to twelve years old, in a black puff sleeve dress, little combat boots, and a spiky collar.
"Is he the new babysitter?" the cat said as they marched down the hallway.
"Um hum."
The little one wrinkled her nose. "I smell Nutter Butters."
"Drunk driving. Mmmm hmmm. Betcha won't do that again!"
"I wasn't drunk," Aaron protested. "I-"
"Can it."
They walked past the interview room, the peacock's wedges making resounding clomping sounds as they made their way down the metal staircase at the end of the hall.
What lay at the bottom of the stairs resembled a scaled down combination between NASA's Mission Control and the war room of the Pentagon. Big fancy desks, rows of computers, and a huge wall monitor displaying a map with blinking red dots and video displays of parking lots, abandoned buildings and empty parks.
"What's this?"
"DOGWOOD Command. Don't touch anything. These computers are all precisely calibrated for the needs of this operation."
"And...what needs might that be?"
"Boy you're nosy!" Trish put a paw to her hip. "Orientation's tomorrow. We'll fill you in on all the details then. Suffice to say we deal with the unexplained."
"I see."
She led him through a large archway to a lounge crammed with sofas, recliners and bookshelves, with a giant round table in the middle, and a flat panel TV that took up an entire wall.
Aaron frowned at the animated drivel on the screen.
"When's the last time you babysat?"
The wolf swallowed. "It's...been awhile." He stared at the tabby. "Is she...housebroken?"
"What do you think!" the little one spat.
Trish rolled her eyes. "And we're off to a great start!"
"Who dis?"
Aaron looked around and saw a big hairy creature with no eyes standing beneath the archway. The thing stood about six feet in height, with large muscular arms and an oversized Hawaiian shirt.
"Chunk, this is Aaron. He's the new babysitter."
"I thought I was the babysitter." Its teeth looked like a shark's whenever it opened its mouth.
"I'm sorry, honey, but the last time I let you babysit Shelby, all the toilets upstairs exploded, my credit card had a 5000 pog charge from something called Tactical Death Zone Online, and I had to explain to Mr. Vladimir Putin why one of our country's unmanned drones was lying belly up in a pile of shattered glass in his living room."
"I was just having fun!" Shelby pouted.
"Me sorry."
"I know you are, but I'm sorry too. I can't trust you with my baby."
*My baby?* Aaron frowned at the kitten. He didn't see the resemblance.
The peacock slapped a paw on his back, sliding it around his shoulder. "It's real simple. Just keep Shelby busy and out of trouble. There's DVDs and games in the cabinet. Keep her out of The Vault. She can use computer B-6, but not any of the other ones. She's already been fed, and if you can get little miss into her *coffin* at a reasonable hour, you're a saint."
"Coffin?" Aaron stammered.
Trish put both paws on her hips. "Honey, you really need to get out more. Do you see the collar and the boots? She's a goth nut, all right? The coffin's a bed. And don't go playing games by chaining or nailing it shut, `cuz then she'll never sleep. It's happened before."
Aaron gave the kid a forced grin.
"There's food on the other side of the command center." She rubbed his shoulder again. "Welcome to the team." And she walked off, leaving him with the tyke and the big guy.
The kitten looked up at him with a mischevious grin. This was going to be a long night.
"So..." Aaron said rubbing his hands together and raising them to his mouth, "What games do you have?"
Looking bored, the kitten said, "Zombie Slayer 1-10, Zombpocalypse Z1 to Z3, the Portal To Hell series, all the Ghetto Wars games, including Bourbon Street Bordello...and a bunch of crappy kids' games." She stuck a cigarette in her mouth, clicking open a silver flip lighter.
"I'm pretty sure Trish doesn't want you doing that."
"What? Smoking?" She lit up and took a puff. "I know. When she caught me, she made me smoke a whole carton. You see what good that did."
"Bad!" Chunk shouted, smacking the cigarette out of her paw. "Shelby not smoke!"
"Dammit, Chunk, you're messing up the carpet!" She rolled her eyes at the wolf as she picked up the cigarette, dropping it into a Hello Kitty ashtray.. 'Chunk do you want me to smoke my funny cigarette instead?"
"No. Weed stinky."
"Then leave me alone when I'm smoking!"
Chunk slumped his shoulders, muttering something in complaint.
The little cat lit up another one.
Aaron took a deep breath, which proved to be a mistake. He coughed. "So, uh...Trish knows that you smoke, then."
Shelby nodded.
"Trish bad parent," Chunk grumbled as he shuffled away.
"And you, uh, smoke pot?"
She shrugged. "Want some?"
He shook his head violently. "Does she know about that too?"
"Um...kinda."
"What do you mean, kinda?"
"I mean, if you tell her, I'll kill you."
The wolf frowned. "So, um...do you want to play a game?"
She tapped her cigarette on the ashtray. "Let's go to the gun range."
"I'm pretty sure we can't leave the building."
"We're not leaving the building, stupid. It's around the corner."
She led him past the command center to a brick tunnel lined with archways, turning into a darkened room with a long table and rows of shooting targets. She took another drag and flipped the lights on, marching over to a locked metal box on the far wall.
"I'm...not sure this is a good idea."
Shelby unlocked the box with a key on her necklace. "Relax. I know the rules of gun safety. I'll wear the dorky ear protection and everything."
He cleared his throat. "I guess I'm technically adult supervision...but I think I'm supposed to have a license."
The cat furrowed her brow. "You're telling me you're from the country and you've never fired a gun."
"Laws are different where I come from, you're allowed a gun so long as you can shoot straight. Here you need a license for everything, all because one apple goes rotten. Hell, my village nearly went bankrupt ten years ago because *one* batch out of thousands caused a ban because of the wrong mushrooms being added, I nearly got sick of jerky by the time the sales started again."
The cat stared at him in confusion.
"At the point I was at when I got here, I was too discouraged to bother with it, too much work for something I might not ever need."
She twisted her lip. "Um...so you...don't have a license because someone banned mushroom flavored applesauce?"
"I'm surprised someone with your experience in 'delinquency' wouldn't get a 'shroom reference."
Shelby scrunched up her face. "I would have understood if you said it in English. What you said was really vague and I wasn't sure that was what you were talking about."
"Sorry. Anyways, to make a long story short, a hallucinogen accidentally got put in with the spices of some of the
jerky we exported to this country, the result was a couple of season wide bans and a massive hole in our wallets. If this 'license' is needed because of one person being an idiot, I don't think it's worth my time."
She shrugged. "That's cool. But for the record, if you ever get busted, I don't know you." She snickered.
The kitten pulled a pair of pistols out of the cabinet, handing him one.
Shiny and gray, the guns had sort of a comb on the top instead of a normal sight, and its muzzle resembled a beak. He frowned at it, turning it over in his paws. He wasn't familiar with this model.
"It's a Bawk Nine Mil." She set her cigarette in an ashtray and showed him how to load the clip.
"You know, you should cut back on the smoking thing. Your lungs will never grow stronger
if you don't. Try those new e-cigs if you need a place to start."
"I don't understand why those are any better than a normal cigarette. You're just lighting it electronically. Plus I've heard it stinks a lot more, and it tastes bad."
"Heh! What have you been buying into, the magazine that comes with your ten-pack? E-cigs are liquid based, no tobacco, no smoke, all harmless vapor, *and* it's odorless."
Her bored expression reflected a mild flash of curiosity. "Got any?"
"Sorry. Not at the moment." He briefly considered offering to order her some, but right now wasn't a good time for his finances.
"Whatever." Shelby climbed up on a chair a little too tall for her, adjusting the seat height with a stack of gun catalogs.
After donning their safety equipment and clearing the range, they fired a few rounds, both hitting the paper targets fairly in the middle.
"Don't lock your elbows," he shouted as she set up another shot.
The cat smiled. "For a babysitter, you're kinda cool."
They fired a few more rounds. Glancing back, Aaron noticed the monster lurking in the doorway, plugging his ears, edging further and further back with each gunshot.
"He hates loud noises!" Shelby yelled. She fired two more shots at the target, then set her Bawk on the table. "Hey, wanna see something?"
He shrugged.
Shelby hopped down from her chair. "C'mon. I'll show you."
The two locked up the equipment, walking back down the tunnel.
A second tunnel lay on the opposite side of the command center, behind the lounge, this one lined with rows of security doors.
"What's this place?" Aaron said as he attempted to peer through a porthole window.
"It's a storage area," she shrugged.
Thump! He saw a slimy six legged creature slam up against the porthole, suckering the glass with its toothy leech mouth. He jumped back in surprise.
Shelby laughed. "Don't worry. It's harmless. C'mon."
She led him to a staircase overlooking a big catecomb-like warehouse filled with crates of various sizes. In between them all, he could see various arcane looking objects, like crystal balls, cauldrons, and ornately decorated staffs. "Let's play hide and seek!"
The wolf frowned. "Wait. Is this that Vault place we're not supposed to be in?"
"Maybe?" she said with a look of feigned innocence.
"Are there any other types of guns at that range?"
She shrugged. "I don't have the keys for those."
"Are any of those video games any good?"
She rolled her eyes. "They're cool, but I've beat them all. You can go play them if you want."
"What about that computer you've got?"
She sighed. "What do you think I've been doing all day? There's only so much instant messaging and gaming you can do in a day without throwing the monitor across the room."
Aaron frowned. His distraction tactics had flopped. He took out his phone, showing her a picture of his knife. "See that?"
She shrugged. "It looks like a crummy lock blade with an engraving. You can get knives like those for twenty pogs at S-Mart. And there's a shop down the street that engraves for ten."
"Uh, I saw swords hanging on the wall in the den. Wanna fence?"
The cat smirked sardonically. "They're welded to the frame. All the good swords are either locked up in one of these rooms, or in a box downstairs."
Aaron's tail curled between his legs. "Can we...play hide and seek at the other end of the building? We're not supposed to be in here..." He realized she could easily run to the vault from there, so it wasn't the best distraction.
"What, you afraid?"
"No," he stammered. "It's just a mess down there. You might get injured or something."
She laughed. "Please. I sleep in a coffin." She rolled her eyes. "You want some pot? I think you might need some. Might help you relax a bit."
Aaron shook his head violently. "Hold off on that for a while, `kay?" He stucking out his tongue, pushing on his nose with his thumb in a childish expression, attempting to show himself as an equal. "Just 'til your brain is done doing its thing. Don't want your brain to spoil, do ya? We don't need another grump like that old peacock."
Shelby grimaced. "See, that's really the trouble. She doesn't do any, and that's why she's so stuck up all the time. She really needs to chill!"
Aaron suddenly got an idea. "Did Trish say anything against field trips? Or does she lock you inside all the time?"
The kitten frowned. "Not that I'm complaining, but it's almost three in the morning. The only things open right now are clubs and The Waffle Iron, and I think the clubs aren't open on weeknights. What did you have in mind?"
"I'm sure there's something we can do!" And he swiftly marched out of the room, tail wagging behind him.
Shelby rolled her eyes. "Seriously?" But then she shrugged and followed him out.
Once in the car, the wolf buckled his seatbelt, then stared at the dashboard.
"What's the matter?" Shelby said as she climbed in the passenger side.
The truth of the matter was, he couldn't really think of a good place to go to, but he didn't want to say that because she'd be poking around in the vault again. "I...could show you around my neighborhood, but I was wondering if there were any interesting places around here we could visit."
She shrugged. "There's Maven's Crypt up the street, Oak Bark Mall is probably closed right now...Or.." She dug a small notebook out of her dress pocket. "We could check out a few unexplained mysteries that the guys have put on the back burner..."
Aaron raised an eyebrow. "That sounds fun. What's Maven's Crypt, by the way?"
"It's a club. Lots of cool guys, goths, vamps, that kind of thing. There's a custom coffin store right next to it. If you go there, be ready to `donate'."
"Well, We could go there quick like then, or do you mind if we 'get lost' for a bit first?"
"I didn't say we had to go to Maven's," Shelby said. "It was just a suggestion. If we go there, I know people who can make you cool. If you want to get lost, it's your prerogative."
"Its just rough translation of my cure to *actually* getting lost, basically I wander around a new town for a couple hours, enjoying sights and scents, eventually creating a map of forms in my head. Personally much more reliable than trying to carry a map around all the time, and more fun!"
"So we're basically going on a joyride," she said.
"Yep! You never know what you'll see on a joyride."
He started the car up, turning down the road in front of the Ratzenburger complex, eyes searching back and forth for points of interest. They passed a train track and crossed through a factory district. Here was the regional distribution center for Brownmail, and next to that, the factory that made Cowpoke Chili Seasoning.
It looped around to a far section of the track and they followed it to an elbow bend that took them away from the track past a Quicktrip and the regional warehouse for Jon Nichols department stores.
"Did you see those silver men?" Shelby asked.
"Was this on TV?"
"No. I saw them marching single file past that printing plant we passed a few blocks ago.
He put on the brakes, causing the car behind him to honk. "I didn't see it."
"It's just as well. We're by ourselves and we didn't bring any weapons, kind of, so they probably would have killed you."
"Next time tell me when you see something," he said as he rolled past a row of darkened suburbs.
She pointed to a Victorian mansion with a telescope on the roof and a yard full of decaying plants. "Like that?"
Aaron shrugged. "I dunno. Yeah, I guess." He stared at the house for a minute, but didn't think it the type of place to stop and visit, so he kept going.
As he crested a hill, a pack of dark figures on black bikes with dark jackets and lowered black visors rolled past him, a couple helmets turning his way as they drifted by in a surprising absence of sound.
"Now that's unusual," he said as he watched them disappear.
"The Wrath is always unusual," she said.
"What's the Wrath?"
"It's a biker gang. People only see them late at night."
"What, are they vampires or something?"
Shelby shrugged. "Nobody's gotten close enough to find out what they are, or what's under those helmets."
"Oh."
They passed an office supply store, a restaurant and some car dealerships, all closed for the night.
As they neared an overpass attached to an interstate ramp, Shelby said, "You know that bust stop back there? The one where people park their cars and take the bus into town? I've heard that there are spook lights. I almost thought I-"
Before she could get out the next word, a giant bug the size of a Volkswagon bus came flying at the windshield. Aaron slammed on his brakes, and it took off into the air, leaving him shocked and panting for breath.
Shelby jotted a few notes into her notebook. "Yet another strange event. Do you want to keep driving, or do you want to get some practice being a Field Agent?"
"What do you have in mind?"
"We've seen a number of weird things tonight. The first job of a FA is to observe and report incidents. We could pick something unusual we've seen and double back to investigate it." She shrugged. "Just a suggestion."
"So, it's usual to see this many oddities in one trip?" he asked rhetorically.
"No, it's not usually this weird. I've heard that the planets are all in alignment tonight, and not in the usual pattern. It's like a giant letter L. On Zone of the Unknown last night, they were saying that our planet is like the little door on a cosmic kookoo clock, and that `door' is supposed to open tonight."
Preferring to pick something relatively safe, and not wanting to lose his quarry, he asked, "Which way do you think the..." He temporarily forgot the word. "...insect went to?"
She pointed at a spot down the street, so he made an illegal u-turn, trailing the giant insect back up the street.
He briefly considered going back home to get his knife and some drawing supplies, but then he realized the gesture would be foolish if the thing got away and he didn't know where to find it.
Careful not to exceed the legal speed limit, Aaron pressed down the gas pedal as low as he could muster, trying to keep up with the thing. "So what's behind this so-called kookoo door?"
She shrugged. "That's up for debate. Some say another universe, or a point in which all other dimensions converge with ours. Or it could be a time vortex or a wormhole to another planet. They say it happens only once every century. For one night, there's a spike in ghost sightings and incents related to the paranormal."
Aaron swallowed. "I...take it this door closes sometime?"
"Yeah. Midnight of the following day. You might want to go left."
He made a quick turn. The bug was flying fast now, and he was nearing a traffic light. "So the paranormal stuff is the kookoo?"
She shrugged. "That's the theory."
"When the door closes, does it all go back into the clock?"
She frowned. "I don't know. Nobody can agree on what the door is. It's only a theory. Who's to say what belongs where? If it were that easy, DOGWOOD wouldn't exist."
Aaron reached the light and slammed on the brakes, watching the bug zoom over the trees across the street. It was rapidly getting away, and the light hadn't changed yet.
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