Dog Days
(Tuesday, August 3, 2016)
13: The Fight in the Clearing
Gideon Gleeful never used to wake up early. In the old days, he'd lie daydreaming in bed until the last possible minute before getting up, getting dressed, and having him dad drive him to school, breaking the speed limit the whole way. Back then in the summers, he'd laze until ten A.M. and more often than not order his parents to bring him breakfast in bed. If he wanted waffles topped with ice cream, he got it, and his daddy would pick out the nuts. He liked pecan ice cream, but couldn't stand the nuts. Good times, in a way. Lazy days, back when he was ten and eleven years old.
Nowadays, though, he always set his alarm for six-thirty. He'd get up, do his weight-training routine (something he'd actually picked up in prison, coached by the muscular Ghost Eyes), follow that with a half hour of cardio on the treadmill, then shower and have breakfast and, in summer, go over and see what his girlfriend Ulva was up to.
That Tuesday morning as he shut off the alarm, he also picked up his phone and checked his text messages, discovering an unexpected one from Stanford Pines. He read it:
Gideon:
Stanley has told me you were familiar with the Journals and were taken in by Bill Cipher back in the days before Weirdmageddon, and I remember how cruelly he treated you. We other survivors need your help now.
You know where the statue of Bill Cipher is in the woods about a mile from the Mystery Shack. Cipher's old allies are now trying to use it as a means of forcing their way into this reality. My brother, Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy are going to go there and try to close it off this morning. We may fail. Just in case, I ask you to get to the Mystery Shack and show this to Soos. I will text him in a moment, and he will be expecting you.
Soos, let Gideon into my laboratory.
Gideon, you'll find copies of all my Journals in the first-level bookshelves, straight ahead and to the right at the bottom of the stair. Middle row of shelves. To have a chance of combating the enemies, you will need numbers 3 and 4. Take them.
I think the creatures will still be confined to the town and its environs by Gravity Falls's weirdness barrier, so the initial urgency is to get the populace out of harm's way. It's up to you to evacuate the Valley. Get as many out as you possibly can. Fiddleford McGucket will help. I've been in touch with him, and if necessary, coordinate with him, but first do these things on your own:
Call the number at the end of this text and ask to speak to Deputy Director Powers. Tell him this is a directive from SFP-1: Code DR, Action TEV. He will understand and will take it from there. See that the Ramirezes and your family are safe. Then call the number for Fiddleford, the second one at the end of the text, and you two decide how to approach the emergency.
Only with Deputy Director's and Fiddleford's help and only after you have followed these steps can you hope to banish Bill's henchmaniacs.
You may not see us again.
May God help you.
Stanford Pines
"Oh, my gracious!" Gideon said. He hurriedly dressed and ran downstairs, taking them two at a time. "Mama, Daddy," he yelled, "I gotta go—somethin' real important's come up. Y'all do me a big old favor and run and get Ulva and her mama and—and take 'em out to the Dalles for today, hear? Tell 'em it's a surprise shoppin' trip or something!"
"Gideon," his mother began.
"There ain't time for questions! Just go, please!"
"All right, darlin'," Bud Gleeful said from where he sat at the breakfast table.
Then, sounding like his old hateful self, Gideon yelled, "Get up, y'all! Do it now!"
Gideon heard his dad say, "Let's go, Mama."
"Thank you both kindly!" Gideon yelled. "I'll call y'all later today!"
And he ran out to the garage and jumped into the shiny, top-condition car that was waiting for his sixteenth birthday—he was still too young to drive it legally. Regardless of age or anything, he started it and roared off toward the Shack.
In the clearing, they lost track of how many monstrosities they had disintegrated. At least twenty, only one that Dipper clearly recognized from before—Teeth, who'd once, together with 8-Ball, pursued Dipper with the intent of eating him. He looked like a giant version of those toy clacking wind-up teeth, and he sounded like the comedian who sat in the center square of that old-timey TV quiz show that Grunkle Stan sometimes watched in reruns.
Now he wasn't laughing any more. Mabel had yelled, "Die, evil dentures, die!" and for the first time in many tries, she scored a direct hit that fragmented the creature. The bits and pieces spun back into the red rip in the effigy's eye like what goes into a toilet spiraling down the drain. Mabel blew on the barrel of the quantum destabilizer pistol. "Hey! Guys, I finally got one!"
"Don't get cocky, kid!" Ford roared as he blasted a smaller creature, a dinner-plate-sized spider with a fanged mouth on the tip of every hairy leg. It ghosted away in filthy-looking streamers of smoke, sucked back into the Nightmare Realm. Some scrabbling tentacles and claws retreated back through the opening. Then, at least for a few moments, calm returned.
The things came intermittently, in waves. So far the defenders had eradicated all that had come within range, but it seemed that when an invasion began, every time they shot one down, two more emerged from the growing red split in reality.
"Quiet again," Ford said. "They're regrouping."
"Ya mean we gotta kill the same ones again?" Stan roared.
"No, no, the ones we've hit are dead. A great many are left, and they're possibly trying to plan a new form of attack. Stay sharp, everyone!"
"Ford," Stan bellowed in exasperation, "ya gotta blow the whole thing up!"
"That is extraordinarily dangerous!" Ford said. "If I disintegrate the effigy, it may implode into the Nightmare Realm, leaving a jagged and growing hole in reality! That could conceivably drag in the moonstones, or even one of them, and then our containment field would fail and the creatures would all spill out again."
"Yeah, but they're eventually gonna fill up that damn purple bubble an' just shove it out until they bust in anyhow!"
The two older Pines Twins stood facing each other. Stan had found his fedora—soaking wet, but he'd clapped it back on anyway. The sun was up, the clouds overhead now sailed past in broken formation, and the temperature had dropped back down to the sixties, promising a much cooler day.
It would have been beautiful if the end of the world hadn't been threatening again.
"Ford," Stan said, "look, we can play defense until we fall over from exhaustion. Sooner or later, we gotta go on the offense."
Mabel thrust a hand into the air. "And nobody can be more offensive than our Grunkle Stan!"
"Thanks, Pumpkin!" Stan said, grinning. "How's about, it, Sixer? Wait for 'em to wear us down, or blow 'em to hell?" He glanced at Wendy. "Don't tell Sheila I said hell, OK?"
"I could try it," Ford said, sounding unconvinced and unwilling. "Kids! You three return to the Shack and if the Ramirezes are still there, you take them out of the Valley—all the way out—and leave Stan and me behind to try this!"
"Not on your life, Ford!" Wendy said.
"We're not leaving you!" Mabel yelled at the same time. "Never!"
"We just need a plan!" Dipper yelled.
Despite his scowl, Stan laughed. "You knuckleheads! You're all jerks and disobedient losers, and I love you! OK, we got two Pines Brainiacs. We'll let them try to come up with—"
"Heads up! Here come some more," Ford interrupted, raising his rifle.
Gideon came running up the stairs from the laboratory, clutching Journals 3 and 4 to his chest. "Everybody ready?" he asked.
The Ramirezes were in the gift shop, Abuelita holding Harmony, who was wailing, and trying to shush her. Melody, looking scared and solemn, held Little Soos's hand.
"Dude, I really hate to do this," Soos said to Gideon. "But Dr. Pines texted and specifically asked me to get my family clear. Tell you what, I'll drive the pickup and Abuelita and you can ride with me. Melody will take the kids in the Jeep. Gideon, dawg, what about Mabel's pigs? Take 'em, yea or nay?"
"Sorry, Soos. Can't worry about them," Gideon said, shaking his head. "Time may be too short!"
"Well—at least they can, like, hide in the Shack. I know the unicorn barrier still works. I just hope they don't mess up the floor too bad! You go help Abuelita get in the truck, and I'll go herd Widdles and Waddles into the Shack. Melody, you take good care of the kids. Let's rendezvous at Dr. P's new school. That's, like, twenty miles from the valley, so it should be safe."
Soos hurried back of the Shack—for his size he could run when he needed to—and Waddles and Widdles obligingly followed him up the steps to the Museum entrance. "You two pig dawgs behave yourselves, now!" he said. "There's a nice patch of sun in the gift shop in the mornings that you can, like, lay in, and there's a box of tissues on the counter there if you get hungry or some junk. In you go—whoa! No, wait, stop!"
Too late. Tripper had dashed out the second Soos opened the door, and the dog flashed across the lawn and down the Mystery Trail, running all-out with no trace of limp or weakness. Shaking his head, Soos got the pigs safely inside and closed and locked the door. Then he hurried to the truck and climbed into the driver's seat. "I just Soosed up bad," he groaned. "I accidentally let Hambone's and Dipper's dog get loose."
"Let's go," Gideon said. "Too late to do anything now. He'll find 'em and probably be OK. Hey, in town we got one stop to make. No, two, but close together. I gotta tell the Sheriff to evacuate the town, and I gotta tell Shaundra Jimenez to broadcast a warnin' to get out in case Blubs won't do it. Go!" He took out his phone and started to punch in the number for Deputy Director Powers.
"Aw, man," Soos lamented as he put the truck in gear. "I hope the little dog dude's gonna be all right."