Dog Days

(Tuesday, August 3, 2016)

14: Breakthrough

"Think they gave up?" Stan panted. He wiped his face with a handkerchief, even though the morning was relatively cool. They'd had to hustle there for a while.

"I doubt it," Ford said grimly. "That would be uncharacteristic of transdimensional creatures. In my experience, they are relentless and determined."

"Yeah, because they're stupid," Stan grumped. He walked all the way around the effigy. "Nothin' shakin' right now, anyhow."

The six of them had just beaten back a frantic onslaught—mostly smaller creatures pouring out of the rift, zooming around inside the containment bubble like hyperactive fish, evidently trying what Stan had feared, filling up the weirdness bubble around the effigy until the pressure of all those bodies pushed it off the moonstones and deactivated it.

Team Pines had fired into the melee and had disintegrated at least six creatures—it was extremely hard to be sure or to keep count—before the rest retreated. Now they found the waiting tense and almost unbearable.

"Relentless, my foot," Stan muttered. "I think maybe they gave up."

"Unlikely!" Ford said. "On the other side of that rift, they're probably just regrouping and forming a new strategy! But we have a problem. Our energy packs are depleting. Mine's down to less than twenty percent. I'm sure the pistols need recharging, too. Who'll go back to the Shack for something I should have brought but didn't think of?"

"Uh, how heavy is it?" Mabel asked. She had experimentally pointed her quantum destabilizer at the sky and had pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

"About fourteen kilos. And it's small—"

"Whoa, whoa, you lost me there," Mabel said, waving her free hand. "How heavy is fourteen kilos in real weight?"

"Not quite thirty-one pounds," Ford and Dipper said in unison—though to be absolutely correct, Ford had said, "Not quite," and Dipper had started, "It's about."

"Ha!" Mabel said. "Jinx! You owe me two sodas! I dunno, I'd go for it, but that's pretty heavy—"

"I'll go," Dipper said. "I can bring it pretty close in the golf cart, then carry it the rest of the way. Uh—wait, Grunkle Ford, what is it?"

"The Zeepee-Eesocue," Ford said.

"Uh-huh," Dipper said. "And what is that, exactly?"

"Mason!" Ford said, sounding exasperated. "It's simple! It's the Zero Point Energy Source Outlet Cube! Z-P-E-S-O-Cube. I abbreviated the 'cube' for convenience. You know, you've seen them in my lab. One's about yay by yay, electrical outlets in five of the six faces. It has eight regular outlets, six 220-volt outlets, one on the top marked DO NOT USE? Remember? I know there's at least one under my workbench, a cube as I said, metal, sort of black and white and silvery."

"I'm on it!" Dipper said, already running.

But Ford shouted, "Stop! Give your destabilizer to Wendy. It'll be better than her axe, unless one gets loose!"

"Wendy?" Mabel asked. "What about Mabel? Aw, man!"

Dipper skidded to a halt and gave the pistol to Wendy, who gave him a quick peck of a kiss. "For luck!" she said. Dipper nodded and ran.

He normally was a sprinter, not a distance runner, but he could do a mile in a pinch, and the pinch seemed to be on Running full-tilt toward the Shack he saw—yes, it was definitely Tripper—running toward him. Dipper stumbled to a stop. "How did you get out? Come with me, boy!"

But Tripper seemed to suspect that Dipper meant to take him back to the Shack, and he circled widely, looking doggily apologetic, and then sped on down the trail. Dipper hesitated, but only for a moment. The dog couldn't do any harm, and Ford needed the energy cube. He finished the run in a respectable six minutes and some seconds, unlocked the gift shop door, ran in, yelled "Anybody home?" to no answer. So he opened the concealed stairway and hurried down to the second lab table. Sure enough, three of the energy cubes—probably reserves in case one of the cubes Ford used to power all his lab instruments and equipment went blooey—sat piled in a stack.

Dipper had to kneel down to reach them and found that thirty pounds can feel quite heavy, especially if you're on your knees and are leaning forward. But he wrested the top cube out, got a better grip on it, and remembered a time when Soos had warned him, "Be safe, now! Lift with your knees, dawg!"

Of course, on that occasion Stan, who was supervising some repairs involving concrete pavers, had snorted. "What kind of cockamamie talk is that? Don't listen to Soos. Nobody can grip with their knees! Use your hands, Dipper, your hands!"

Ugh, it was heavy. Clutching the cube, Dipper waddled over to the elevator, elbowed the button to ride up to the top level, and then humped the cube up the stairs, going up about six or eight steps, resting it briefly on a higher step, then heaving it up and repeating the process. He grabbed the golf-cart key from behind the checkout counter, carried it by clenching the fob between his teeth, and went out onto the porch. There he set the cube down, locked up the Shack again, and ran across the lawn to fire up the golf cart.

He puttered it around, retrieved the cube, and sat it on the floor in the passenger position. Then he headed down the trail.

Just past the bonfire glade, he saw a Gnome flagging him down. He slowed and the Gnome asked him something in garbled English. Dipper got only the gist: "What's going on?"

"Tell the others that Bill Cipher's henchmaniacs are trying to come through at the stone statue! Get everybody to safety!" Dipper called back.

The Gnome scuttled, and Dipper floored the accelerator, zooming back down the trail at a breathtaking fourteen miles per hour.

At that speed, it took him about five minutes to get to the turn-off for the effigy. He steered into the woods for fifty yards or so until the underbrush defeated him, and he jumped out and grabbed the cube. He had to lug it about the length of a football field plus a baseball diamond, but he made it back, and nothing seemed to have changed much—except Mabel was on her knees, hugging Tripper. "He must've got away from Soos," Dipper panted. "Looks like the Ramirezes got away, though—Jeep and pickup truck are gone."

Ford took the cube and plugged his destabilizer in. It charged in about ten seconds, the power strip changing from an ominous orange to a brilliant green. "Now yours, Wendy, and yours, Mabel."

Dipper collected the two pistols, and they charged as rapidly as the rifle had. "Stanley, yours."

Stan handed his over. Ford had just plugged in its charging cord when Wendy yelled, "Guys! Quick! Something's happening!"

Mom's hand felt cool on his forehead. She smiled, though she looked anxious, and shook her head. "Mm, well, you do feel a little bit warm to me, but I guess my hands must be cold. The thermometer says you don't have a fever." She tried it again and then shrugged. "Ninety-eight point six. But you look like you feel bad. Is your throat sore, baby?"

Billy Sheaffer shook his head. "I'm just real, real sleepy," he murmured. He felt, well, not weak exactly, but not inclined to move.

He didn't know the word lassitude, but that's the one his dad had used that morning before leaving for the college: "Honey, look after Billy. He's got a strange lassitude this morning. Let him rest and call me if he feels really sick."

Now, sitting on the foot of Billy's bed, his mother smiled in a concerned kind of way. "Did you have bad dreams all night?"

He frowned, thinking back. "Um, no, not so much. No, I don't think I did. Just—I don't know. I couldn't make myself go to sleep, is all."

Mom glanced at the tray beside his bed. "Well, you ate all your cereal and banana. How's the tummy? Hurts? Do you feel nauseated?"

He rolled his head from side to side on the pillow. "No. Just sleepy," he insisted.

"Anything you want?"

"To sleep."

His mother chuckled. "I'm sorry to pester you, Billy. I just don't want my boy to be sick without my doing something about it. OK, no symptoms except sleepy. What would you like? For me and the girls just to leave you alone and keep the house quiet while you try to catch up?"

Billy nodded. "That would be great. I just—I just need to sleep."

"All right, baby. It's seven now. I'll go on downstairs and do some housework, and I'll send the girls over to Crissandra's for the morning. Her mom said they'd be welcome. I'll keep everything as quiet as I can for you. I'll peek in every three hours or so to make sure you don't need anything. Or, better, if you do want something, I'll bring you Grandma's bell to ring. How's that?"

"That's fine," Billy said.

She took the tray, went out, and in three or four minutes returned with a handbell, a pretty big one. Years and years before, Mrs. Sheaffer's great-grandmother—they thought, at least, maybe it was her great-great grandmother, even—had started a one-room school for poor children. She had been the organizer, the backer, the principal, and the only teacher, and the handbell had been her way of calling the pupils in at the beginning of the day. The bell and her story had remained in the family all these years. Now it was a treasured heirloom.

Mom set it down on his bedside table. "Now, if you feel sick or if you want anything—anything at all—you just pick that bell up and ring it as hard as you want to, and I'll be right here." She leaned down and kissed his forehead.

She started out, but he stopped her at the door: "Mom? I'll be fine. Thanks. And, uh, I love you."

"I love you, too, baby," she said.

And then, softly, she closed the door.

Billy lay back on his pillow and started to take deep breaths. He thought, Am I doing this right?

And in his head he heard a voice, kind of high-pitched: Yeah, kid. Just let every muscle relax. Feel like you're floating. Hey, I'm sorry about this. It's way too soon, really, but this is important. Trust me, OK? Just let yourself go. When you go to sleep, you're gonna have one really wild dream, but it's OK. Remember, it's just a dream. You'll know it's just a dream. Go on, you're doing it, relax, relax. Just go to sleep and let me take over.

Billy couldn't visualize the voice in his mind, of course, but he had the strangest feeling that he knew who it was. Someone—his consciousness flickered as he slipped closer to the edge of sleep—someone from long ago.

You're doing great, kid. Little bit more, just turn loose, and then I can take over. Is it a deal?

"Deal," Billy murmured, and then he was asleep.

A tentacle, dark purple and gelatinous-looking, had sprouted just outside the weirdness barrier, growing from the earth, or so it appeared.

"One's tunneled under!" Ford said.

"I got it!" Wendy swung her axe back.

"No!" Mabel yelled. Tripper, growling, had squirmed from her grip and now he rushed to seize the tentacle in his jaws.

The tip of it suddenly grew a wicked curved stinger, and it darted down, striking the dog in the side.

Tripper jerked as though hit by electricity, but with a snarl, he shook his head, ripping the tentacle open, and then he staggered back.

Wendy's axe severed the thing right at ground level. It thrashed for a couple of seconds and then began to liquefy, and the stump jerked back beneath the ground.

"Look out! They're pourin' outa the eye!" Stan yelled.

It was like an explosion. The larger creatures came rushing out. Dipper glimpsed Pyronica and Hectorgon, among others. He fired, wounding the Amorphous Shape, and Ford blew Hectorgon to atoms—but more were coming, and the containment field began to flicker—

"We're losin' it, Poindexter!" Stan yelled. "Kids, run! We'll hold 'em back!"

"Not a chance!" Wendy yelled.

Dipper said, "Mabel, you ought—"

He broke off.

Mabel knelt, her head down, holding the limp form of Tripper.

When she looked up, her face was like the mask of tragedy.