Bad Glass

a moment to place my location. Not California … Spokane. The city.

“Seven. Seven-fifteen.” Amanda sat down on the sofa and turned toward the window. In profile, I could see the skin hunched up on her forehead and the worried downward curve of her lips. “Just before sunrise.”

I waited for her to continue. The look on her face was the look of someone staring out over the edge of a building, gathering up the courage to jump.

She took a deep breath. “They were out there again last night,” she said. “The dogs. The wolves. They’re looking for something. They’re doing … something. I know it. I just know.”

“What are they doing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have the specifics, but it’s got to do with the city. It’s got to do with what’s happening here.”

I nodded. There was a certainty to her voice—a desperate, beleaguered certainty. Confronted with that, there was absolutely nothing I could say.

“I have to find them,” she said. “You … you have to help me find them.” She fixed me with sad, pleading eyes; where before I had found innocent, bubbly curiosity, there was now nothing but desperation. She was exhausted. Dispirited. Emotionally drained.

“Okay,” I said. “Just tell me what to do.”

We left the house just as the sun touched the horizon. The day was cold, and our breath hung frozen in the air. I regretted not grabbing my gloves and an extra sweatshirt.

“Why me?” I asked as we headed west on the residential street. “Why didn’t you want to take Mac?”

“He doesn’t see them,” she said, watching her feet. “I’ve dragged him to the window, pointed them out— clear as day—but he just doesn’t see.” She glanced up, fixing me with bright blue eyes. “Christ, I thought I was crazy! I thought I was suffering a psychotic breakdown, seeing things that just weren’t there. But that’s not true, is it? You saw them, too. They’re real … Right?”

“I saw something. A pack of canines. Only different. Their paws …”

At my words, Amanda’s face brightened noticeably, relief breaking through that mask of exhaustion. “Right! Exactly.”

“How many times have you seen them?”

“I don’t know. A couple dozen?” She shrugged. “The first time was at the park, right before the evacuation. I was looking for my own dog, Sasha. She escaped from the backyard—I was living in a house close to the university back then. The city was crazy—everyone confused and terrified, no idea what was going on. But the park was empty. We used to walk there a couple of times a week, Sasha and me, and I figured that that’s where she’d end up.”

We rounded a corner and headed south. As Amanda talked, the Riverfront Park clock tower rose into view, peeking up over the line of buildings at the river’s edge. “There were three of them, and they started following me … just these huge canines. I was on one of the paths, moving through the center of the park, and they were about a hundred feet away. At first, I didn’t notice anything wrong with them. They were just dogs, German shepherds, maybe—too fluffy to be Great Danes, although that’s about the right size. They kept pace with me, following along in a stand of trees.” She shrugged, dismissing her initial impressions as no big deal. “I was a bit scared, but they didn’t act threatening. No barking and growling. No posturing. They seemed content to just follow … but they moved so smoothly, almost like they were floating over the ground. Not like dogs at all.

“I stopped, and they stopped. They didn’t circle around and sniff, doing all of the little things that dogs do. Instead, they just froze in their tracks—three dogs, lined up single file. Staring at me. Just … staring—like I was the most important thing in the universe.”

Amanda stopped and turned toward me, a confused look on her face. “They were so still. And even though they were pretty far away, I swear I could see the look in their eyes. So focused!” She shifted her feet, swaying awkwardly, then lowered her eyes. “I stood still for a while, watching and waiting, and finally, after about a minute, the dog at the front of the pack raised his paw and leaned up against a tree.” She shook her head. “And it wasn’t a canine movement at all. It was like something a human would do—resting his palm against a wall, taking the weight off of his feet.

“And that’s when I noticed the odd legs.” She raised her hand and pushed her palm all the way forward, trying to illustrate. “Not normal canine joints; these dogs had an extra bend, like a knuckle. And this dog was using it like a human hand! It was eerie. Eerie and far too human. I got out of there as fast as I could.

“It’s not that I was scared,” she added, shaking her head. “Not really. Surprised and confused, maybe, but not scared. I was just … just … profoundly unsettled.” She glanced back up into my eyes, and I could tell she was happy with that word—unsettled—happy she’d been able to provide such an accurate description of her state of mind.

“And you’ve seen them a couple of dozen times since?” I asked.

She nodded, then turned and resumed walking. I hurried to keep up. “I saw them a lot at my old place, a house I shared with a couple of other students, out east. And as soon as I moved in with Taylor, I started seeing them there, too, in the backyard or on the street out front. A couple of times a week, at least. I asked Taylor and some of the others if they’d seen anything doglike and strange—trying to be coy about it, trying to hide my insanity, if indeed that’s what it was—but they hadn’t. I was the only one.” She glanced over at me and smiled, moving close to grasp my hand—the uninjured one. “And now you! Thank God! Now I’ve got you.”

Her grip on my hand was unnerving. I could feel the intensity of her relief—all that bottled up desperation channeled into a strong clench. She was hanging on to me for dear life.

“Why didn’t you leave?” I asked. “Why didn’t you evacuate with everyone else?”

“Sasha,” she said. “At least …” She trailed off, a confused look appearing on her face. “I know she’s out there somewhere—I’ve been looking. But that can’t be it, can it? Waiting around for a missing dog? I was studying psychology before all of this started, so I know that there’s probably something more—some deep-seated reason buried in my unconscious mind. Maybe it’s just that I don’t have anywhere else I want to go?” She looked at me questioningly, like I might actually be able to give her an answer. Then she released my hand and shook her head. “Everyone else in my life—my friends, my housemates—they all just went home, back to their parents, their hometowns. But I didn’t want that. I really didn’t want that. I think, given the choice, I’d prefer Sasha.”

“Even if this place is driving you mad?”

“But it’s not,” she said, flashing me a broad smile. “I know that now. They’re there, right? You’ve seen them, too.”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t quite sure. Were we seeing the same thing? I’d seen a swarm of animals in the middle of the night. What she’d seen … it seemed like something different, something more. I could tell.

In those animals, she’d found meaning. She’d found some type of promise, something that drove her, that dragged her out of bed in the middle of the night and carried her here. With me.

We rounded a corner, and Amanda raised her hand, pointing to a slash of green on the other side of the river. I recognized the empty pathways and rolling, leaf-scattered hills from my first day in the city, when Weasel had pointed them out to me.

Riverfront Park.

Riverfront Park was a small park, just a couple of blocks of greenery trapped in the middle of downtown. It would have been a crowded place back before the quarantine, or so I imagined. There would have been families here—when the weather was nice—and come noon, there would have been office workers with bagged lunches and buskers performing for change. But now there was nothing. Just Amanda and me and the sound of the wind playing through the trees.

An offshoot of the Spokane River stretched around the south end of the park, a wide, slow-moving trough that transformed the land into a thumb-shaped peninsula. The clock tower was on the tip of the thumb, looming up over the east end of the park.

It was peaceful here. Now that the city was dead, there was nothing to drown out the muted roar of the river