After a long, hot shower, which for once didn't involve the homeless shelter, and a clean dry uniform, Spike spent the rest of the shift limply sprawled out in the battered office chair in front of the bank of monitors, hair like a used Brill-O pad, head thrown back, mouth open, eyes shut, Mrs. Schnelz's space heater aimed at his feet.
Had he remembered to to breathe, Spike would have snored.
Mike and Jeremy stood mute in one door, Vinnie and Maggie huddling together in the other, eyes wide in the shadows come midnight.
Up on the monitors, the animatronics bumbled mindlessly around the old theatre converted into an indoor playground with silent, fixed smiles as a yellow rabbit with one ear wandered among them, pausing in Parts and Service to stoop down and pick up a small rounded object unobserved in the quiet sounds of an old building settling in on itself for the night.