Bones Omnibus (44 page)

Jesse nodded silently, as if recalling a troubling thought. Mr. Arthur recognized this and didn’t continue along this train of thought.

“Come on, now,” Mr. Arthur said, indicating for the boys to follow him. “Time’s a’wastin’.”

Ryan walked up alongside Jesse but then glanced back at Bones, who was still sniffing around the police cars.

“Come on, Bones. You’ll be a lot safer if you come with us.”

Bones watched the three humans walk away and knew he didn’t want to be left behind. He trotted after them, quickly pulling up the rear, though his right haunch still caused him to limp, which was made worse by the soft mud. Every time one of Bones’s left feet sank into the muck, he reflexively caught himself with his right haunch for balance, sending a shooting pain through his entire body. When he yelped the first time – really, more of a “yip” than a full cry – Mr. Arthur turned, scowling.

“
Shh!
Quiet, dog.”

Bones knew what “shh” meant and moved along in silence, a little more gingerly now.

I
t was only a few minutes’ walk before the three spotted a thin plume of black smoke rising into the sky up ahead. Mr. Arthur indicated for the boys and Bones to move off the road, closer to the woods to avoid being seen, but when they got down to the wreck of Billy’s truck and the beige Taurus, he relaxed again.

“Pheeew-eee!” Mr. Arthur said as he walked around the smoldering cars and dead bodies, including that of the old man whose throat Bones had torn out. He turned to the shepherd, a little surprised. “Your handiwork?”

Bones looked up, as if confirming Mr. Arthur’s suspicions.

“Who is that?” Jesse asked, peering at the body. “I think I recognize him.”

“Charles Harvey!” Mr. Arthur reported with what sounded like satisfaction after he took a closer look. “One of the assholes-in-chief of the local HUD branch. Loved to screw with people by executing foreclosures first thing in the morning before most people even had their coffee.”

But then, Mr. Arthur’s face changed as he looked into the front seat of the Taurus.

“Hell,” he muttered. “Means that’s probably his daughter, Joyce. She was every bit the peach he wasn’t. Sorry, darling.”

Meanwhile, Bones was sniffing around Billy’s truck, but the smell of his one-time master had all but vanished, as the fire had not only cooked him but also the vinyl upholstery, which obfuscated all other scents. Ryan followed Bones around the side of the immolated Bronco and saw the official police markings as well as the “K-9 Unit” designation on the wrecked door. He could just make out enough of the remains of Billy Youman in the driver’s seat to realize there had been a person there at all. He nodded to the police dog.

“I’m sorry, Bones. He was your master?”

This time, Bones didn’t turn when he heard his name. He completed his sniff-around of the truck and then moved away to sit in the nearby grass.

Mr. Arthur looked up and down the highway, scanning for vehicles, seeing none. Overhead, a jumbo jet flew in a northeasterly direction, leaving no contrails in the gray sky, the only sign of life.

“Guess we have to hoof it for now,” said Mr. Arthur. “The good news is it might mean word’s gotten out and traffic’s been blocked from coming out of the city.”

“And back there?” Jesse asked, pointing in the direction they’d come in from.

Mr. Arthur shook his head. “If we see a car coming from that way, I think we find a good firing position in the woods and take steady aim.”

The group began moving down the shoulder of the highway, Bones walking a line between the paved shoulder and the grassy, gravel-strewn fringe that bled out to the neighboring woods. He kept his nose to the air, though they were walking into the breeze, making it easier on anyone coming up behind them. Even so, Bones’s ears, while nowhere near as perceptive as his nose, were still sharp enough to hear a twig snap anywhere within a fifty- to sixty-yard radius, and in his heightened, hunting state, Bones was listening for just that.

The farther they walked, though, the more Mr. Arthur nervously glanced behind them, as if needing to be constantly reassured that they weren’t being followed. Even though they appeared to be well in the clear, it was obvious he wasn’t going to feel safe any time soon. Jesse seemed to be similarly nervous but drew a lot of confidence from the rifle clutched tightly in his right hand and the shotgun clutched in his left. Ryan, for his part, gained the same feeling from his proximity to Bones.

“That looks like it hurts,” Ryan said, eyeing Bones’s beaten-up face. Bones glanced at Ryan but then looked back ahead, whiskers twirling a little in the breeze. “They killed my dog. She was just trying to keep them from getting in our house, but they got her. It was one the neighbors. After they came in through the door, the lady-one bit her in the neck. Then they got in the kitchen and then the bathroom and they got my mom and my sister…”

By the time Ryan said this last part, his voice was quivering. Jesse saw this and walked over, giving him a kind of half-hug, half-nudge.

“Enough of that,” said Jesse. “You know who got out?
You.
Now, you’ve got a reason to revenge yourself on these assholes. Keep that anger in you. It’ll keep you alive, man.”

Ryan nodded, but half-heartedly. Bones looked back at Ryan again, but halfway through the motion he noticed Mr. Arthur stopping in his tracks.

“Boys.”

Jesse and Ryan followed Mr. Arthur’s gaze and saw a large farmhouse appearing up on the left. Very quickly, everything got quiet.

“Think they’d have come this way?” asked Jesse.

“No telling,” replied Mr. Arthur, seeing no sign of life at the farm. “If they’d come through the woods…”

Mr. Arthur looked over at Bones, who had also gone completely still. His nose pointed straight ahead, and it was obvious that the German shepherd had picked up on at least something from the farmhouse, though what was unclear. Bones took a tentative step forward, as if stalking some newly detected prey, his ears straight up and down, his shoulders rigidly upright and squared towards the house.

“What is it, boy?” Mr. Arthur whispered, tightening his grip on his gun.

Suddenly, the woods just beyond the farmhouse erupted with muzzle flash. Leaves were clipped, branches snapped, and bullets began splashing against the gravel and asphalt around Mr. Arthur and the boys.

“Shit!” cried Mr. Arthur as a bullet winged his left tricep. “Get down, boys!!”

Jesse tried to hit the deck but immediately caught two bullets, one in the calf, one in the elbow, and screamed as he was thrown back.

Ryan managed to flatten himself on the ground as Bones bounced around, barking like mad at the incoming fire. Amazingly, he wasn’t hit.

“What the
fuck!?!
” screamed Mr. Arthur from his prone position on the road. “We’re
human
, you assholes!!”

The fusillade kept coming, though, and it was a full ten seconds before it finally abated. As the trio stayed on the ground, trying to catch their breaths, a voice came booming out of the woods, amplified by a bullhorn.

“Toss your weapons away and stay on the ground! Move an inch, and we won’t hesitate to shoot.”

Mr. Arthur did as he was told, pushing his rifle away from him. Ryan did the same, but a quick glance back at Jesse suggested he was already halfway into shock and couldn’t be made to do a thing. Luckily, his rifle had been thrown a few feet away after the first bullet hit, and the shotgun was momentarily obscured behind his body.

“All right! We’re unarmed!” yelled Mr. Arthur. “You’ve got an injured child over here. Maybe two.”

A group of black-clad, helmet-and-gas-mask-wearing SWAT team members emerged from the woods, guns aimed at the little group of survivors. An oddly shaped gun was aimed at Bones, who continued barking at the approaching officers, standing his ground between them and Ryan. The team leader nodded at the man with the gun.

“Knock him down.”

The gunman nodded, stared down the iron sight at Bones, and
fired
.

“
No!!”
cried Ryan, but the rubber bullet was already in flight, smashing Bones in the shoulder before Ryan had finished shouting. Bones smacked into the ground and rolled over but was getting ready to jump right back up as if it was nothing when a second officer with an animal-control pole and lanyard raced over and tossed the loop around Bones’s neck. As he pulled it tight, like a noose, a second officer looked over and stopped short.

“Bones?” said a voice filtered through layers of plastic and charcoal.

But Bones was already back on his feet, gnashing at his tether as the officer at the other end of the pole kept the shepherd at a distance, prodding him ahead by what now looked like a spear jutting out of his neck. The officer who had recognized Bones walked over and took the pole away from the other officer.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got this.”

The pole officer bent to one knee, keeping Bones at a distance but inviting him to look his way.

“Bones?
Bones
. Hey, boy.”

Bones, giving the air a sniff, managed to ignore the leash long enough to manifest some sort of recognition. The cop pulled the pole closer to him, allowing Bones to get within a foot.

“Bones, hey,” the officer said, raising a hand to his gas mask, as if to take it off. “I’m a friend. We’re on the same team. We trained together.”

“You keep that mask on, Purnell!” cried the team leader, a little incredulous.

“Yeah, sergeant – I forgot,” the officer – Purnell - said but then waved the sergeant over. “But sir, this is
Bones
. He’s Billy Youman’s better half in the K-9 unit.”

“No shit?” grunted the sergeant. “Guess we know what happened to Commander Zusak and the others out on 790, then.”

Mr. Arthur stared up at the men as they checked him over for additional weapons.

“You can quit with the stormtrooper act now,” he grunted, though he was still in pain. “You can see we’re not one of them.”

“One of who?” asked the sergeant, as if having not a clue what Mr. Arthur could be referring to.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” grunted Mr. Arthur. “Come on. You’ve seen a movie, read a comic book or two. You got cannibalistic dead guys running around the western Pennsylvania countryside.”

“Sir, all we know is that we’re dealing with an outbreak here,” the sergeant replied. “For all we know, the three of you and maybe the dog, too, are infected.”

“Are you kidding me?” asked Mr. Arthur as a medic bandaged his wound. “There’s a big damn difference between me –
us
– and what we’ve been fighting out here all morning while you assholes sat on each other’s dicks. Do I look dead to you?”

“At present, you may be merely a carrier, but should your ‘status’ change, you would express the characteristics of what we’re currently labeling the ‘Stage 2,’” the sergeant explained.

“Oh, you say that like it wasn’t almost you guys who just about changed my ‘status,’” Mr. Arthur bellowed. “So I guess if you’d shot me dead and then I’d gotten up and run over there to bite your head off, that would’ve been considered what – friendly fire? I’m sure you would’ve gotten a medal for it, but you’d still be dead.”

The sergeant stared at Mr. Arthur through the shaded black eye holes of the gas mask and shook his head angrily.

“Sir, we probably have less of an idea of what we’re dealing with out here than you do. You three are the first survivors we’ve come in contact with, and we have our orders. I’m sorry if that conflicts with your idea of due process, but right now, ‘containment’ is taking precedence. Maybe you’ll come around to understanding that.”

With that, the sergeant turned and headed away, deciding there was no need for further debate. Officer Purnell watched this exchange with a satisfied grin but then turned back to Bones, discreetly taking off one of his gloves and giving Bones a pat.

“You’ve probably been through hell, huh, boy?” Purnell said. “Shit, man. Bet this means Billy’s bought it, huh? He wasn’t too bad a guy.”

Bones gave Purnell’s hand a friendly lick. Ryan, being led towards the farmhouse alongside a patched-up Jesse, saw Bones and cried out. “That’s
my
dog, you jerk!”

Purnell was a little startled by this outburst but then sighed as Ryan scowled at him. He shook his head as he turned back to Bones, stroking him between the ears.

“Sorry, kid,” he said, though out of earshot. “But this guy’s property of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. You’ll just have to find another.”

T
en minutes later, a pair of police vehicles drove away from the farmhouse and headed back down the highway in the same direction Mr. Arthur, the boys, and Bones had just been going, only now they were in custody. Bones rode in the back seat of the lead vehicle, a patrol car driven by Officer Purnell, while Jesse, Ryan, and Mr. Arthur were stuck in the back of a paddy wagon, driven by a pair of SWAT officers with a third riding in back with the “prisoners.” The convoy was making good time, as both lanes of the highway were clear. Purnell set the pace up around eighty miles per hour and kept it there.

When Bones climbed into the back of the car, he had lain down almost immediately, exhausted. Purnell poured a little water from a plastic bottle into a Styrofoam cup that he tore the top half off in order to create a small bowl, which Bones promptly drained in one gulp. Purnell emptied the rest of the bottle into the cup and snagged a second one, continuing the routine until Bones had drunk his fill.

“Now you’re going to have to hold it all the way to the city,” Purnell joked from the front seat as they hurtled down the highway. “Think you’ll be okay?”

Despite his fatigue, Bones was too keyed up to fall asleep and eyed Purnell through the steel-cage prisoner partition as they drove. Purnell grinned at the dog in the rearview, but then his nose inhaled a big whiff of wet dog.

“Jeezus!” Purnell exclaimed. “No offense, Bones, but you smell like you’re carrying about three miles of bad road in your coat back there.”

Bones didn’t look offended. Purnell reached over to the dashboard and fiddled around with the air conditioner, switching it from closed to open circulation to bring in fresh air from outside.