Chapter Seven

"What do we do now?" asked Leon. "We crashed the car coming here."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," said Cecil. "I've got insurance."

Leon wasn't sure how this would really help their situation. There was still the issue of actually dealing with the crash, fixing the car, avoiding the authorities while doing this…

Cecil, nonetheless, led them jovially to the place where they had left the car. The car itself was no longer there—though the deep scrapes in the lawn caused by the crash were reminders, the only reminders that it had happened. Cecil walked to this space, Carlos standing to the side and L3eon standing dumbfounded, and picked up a simple letter-sized envelope. Cecil looked at it a moment, and back to the mother two men. "It's from my claims adjuster. Ugh."

"Cecil gets into more than a few accidents a month. His insurance company isn't exactly happy with him," Carlos explained.

"It's rare I meet a worse driver than me," said Leon, chuckling to himself. He didn't understand what was going on, but Carlos didn't seem to be worried, so Leon decided it was one of the benign strange things in Night Vale.

Cecil carefully folded the envelope in half and slid it into his pocket. "I think we should show you around the town, Leon, if you're going to be staying here a while."

"What do you mean?" asked Leon.

"You aren't getting out of here within the day," said Cecil, which, according to some long-standing town ordinances, means you're a citizen of Night Vale, at least temporarily. We can get you a citizen's welcome pack at city hall…"

"Wait just a second," said Leon. "Assuming that I was planning on staying, wouldn't it be dangerous to go to city hall? The secret police is after me, and showing my face in a public building would surely get me found."

"Actually," said Carlos, "the secret police operate here on a kind of panopticon-type system. There aren't too many of them, but they could, and do have the ability to, be watching you all the time. It's a safe assumption, even if you aren't familiar with the work of Jeremy Bentham."

"Okay," said Leon. "So they aren't coming after me, even if they probably do know where I am. Why?" They were walking now, southward, toward downtown.

"Isn't that the million dollar question," said Carlos. "There's always the thought that you might be working within their whims without knowing it, so they're letting you go for the moment."

"There Sherriff's Secret Police does what they need to," said Cecil. "I'm not sure if they City Council or even the Lizard Kings fully control or comprehend the Sherriff's Secret Police."

"Not even a smiling god?" asked Leon.

Cecil went rigid, and Leon thought maybe that his attempt at a joke was ill-placed. "Where did you hear that?" Cecil asked slowly, in his radio voice, his features giving away his shock at the question.

"It was written on the boxes in the corner of the recording studio," said Leon. "I didn't think much of it, but apparently it's jarring. What's it mean?"

Cecil seethed, but Carlos answered for him. "The smiling god thing is just the slogan of StrexCorp. They recently bought out the station, and they've made some changes there that have rubbed Cecil the wrong way."

"Yeah," said Cecil. "That and their 'smiling god'' just creeps me out. That's not how gods work. They're supposed to be fearsome and spiteful…"

"Okay," said Leon. He skimmed the area around him, looking for something to talk about other than the smiling god. His eyes fell of the tall stone walls and electrified fence that were topped with barbed wire across the street they were walking down. "What's that place?" He jammed a thumb toward the compound.

"No!" shouted Cecil. He grabbed Leon by both arms. "That's the dog park!" Leon rolled his eyes to Carlos, who nodded.

"Why?" asked Leon. "Why, I mean, what's wrong with the… dog park?"

"Do not look at the dog park. Do not talk about the dog park. Do not…"

"Cecil," said Carlos. He draped his arm over his boyfriend's shoulder, using his other hand to detach Leon from Cecil's grip.

"Do not think about the dog park," finished Cecil, looking to Leon. "Dana, my former intern, she went in there and… well, she hasn't come back yet."

"She was the one we heard in the studio?"

"Yes," said Cecil. "She's been able to communicate by text message and occasionally by interdimensional speech, but I fear for her. I mean, I fear for all of us, always, but I do fear for her in particular, in the dog park."

They walked in silence, Carlos slipping his arm down around Cecil's waist as they did. Leon tried to make a mental map of his surroundings as they went, in case he needed to have strategic knowledge of the town. The strangeness all around him told him that there was a high possibility that he would need to have quick access to that sort of information.

"Here we are," said Cecil. He gestured to the building in front of them, a sturdy, brutalist concrete building that looked more like a prison or university library than a city hall. There were more than a few cars parked at the curb, but no one was around on the outside of the structure. "Let's go inside!" He turned to Leon. "We're lucky, the mayor's holding a press conference! I wish I brought my portable broadcasting equipment."

"Ah, but you walked it yesterday, Cecil," said Carlos.

"Yeah," said Cecil, already advancing up the front steps of the imposing public building. "Come on, let's go!" The three of them disappeared into the dark building, Leon taking one last glance over his shoulder before he slipped inside.