The Wisdom of Evil (12 page)

Jumping back in the car, Mickey wasted no time putting pedal to the metal
; they peeled away.

Both
were stunned into silence at what they’d just done. That they were forced to do it was of little solace to either of them. Justified or not, it was still murder.

“M
om?”

“
Yeah?” she sighed, rubbing Haley’s ears lovingly, allowing the tears to well up in her eyes.

“Do you ever think things will return to normal?”

“Honestly, Mickey, I’m not even sure what normal is anymore. I hope so, though. That’s one thing I do know for sure; we can still hope.”

“Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome; the good, the true, the tender, these form the wealth of home.” – Sarah J. Hale

Part 2: The Way Home

Chapter
16

Michael’s police cruiser was already parked at the far end of the parking lot to Mainely Paws, right by the entrance. Mickey pulled the Jeep in. Glory jumped out before he’d even stopped the car. She ran to the back and between her and Mickey, they brought Haley to the door.

When they walked in
and the reception area was totally dark. A faint light gleamed from the back where the actual exam room, surgery room and kennels were. They heard the shuffling of feet, a gun being cocked.

Mickey put his finger up to his lips
. Glory nodded, knowing they needed to be quiet until they knew that Michael, Kate, or Dr. Moulton was the owner of the shuffling feet and cocked gun.

Mickey backed up against
the front reception wall, one hand on the gun’s trigger, the other on the barrel of the shotgun he’d brought in. He peeked out. Seeing his dad, Kate, and Dr. Moulton, he let out a breath of relief, signaling to his mother to that it was okay to move.

“It’s us,” Mickey said softly.

“Bring the dog back here,” Dr. Moulton whispered. They all whispered. Michael and Mickey, both armed, stood posted at the front and back doors. Michael also had a rifle with a scope on it propped up on the wall beside him. Mickey had the shotgun leaning on a wall beside him as well.

Glory,
Kate, and Dr. Moulton focused on tending to Haley.

The doctor’s
eyes said it all without as much as a word spoken. Haley was indeed in poor condition. Taking blood from the back of the dog’s forearm, he left to process it in the lab while Kate and Glory comforted the dog, rubbing his ears, talking softly to him. Haley’s eyes were closed. He gave them no trouble during the exam or the blood draw.

Dr. Moulton
’s face was grave as he returned with news Glory didn’t want to hear. Haley had suffered congenital heart failure due to complications of Lyme disease.
Lyme disease
! He’d gotten the limevax vaccination for years, but that was not always one-hundred percent effective. Lyme disease was prevalent in the Northeastern states. His CBC—complete blood count draw—indicated a dangerous presence of white blood cells. His body was trying to fight off the infection, but it was a losing battle. His age alone worked against him. The dog was already on the high end of his life span as it was.

“
So, what can we do?” Glory asked.

“Make him comfortable or…put him down now,” Dr.
Moulton said. “He’s suffering, there’s no doubt about it. His lung capacity is at forty percent. I’m sure the joint pain is agonizing at this point as well. It’s your call, Glory. I’m sorry.”

She nodded
and staggered out into the hallway. The sound of triumphant laughter echoed in her mind; she ignored it.

Calling Mickey over to where she stood with Michael, she told them the news.

“Make the call, Glory. You know this stuff beddah than we do. You work with it all the time,” Michael said.

“Do
not
leave this decision to me alone, Michael! Yeah, I do help clients make these very decisions every day. And I am heartbroken for them; still, I try to maintain a professional detachment, which isn’t always easy. But this? It’s
Haley
! I can’t be objective. It’s just…not the
same
. I say, we vote on it as a family. He’s going to…going to…die either way. The only question is how long and in how much pain he’s in. Or do we end it for him right now?” She could barely say the words.

“I’m sorry, babe, you’re right. Mickey
, whadda yah say?”

“Let him go, Mom. If not for us, for him. He’s sufferin’.”

Michael nodded in agreement.

Glory left them, walking again to the back of the hospital where Haley lie on a fleecy warm blanket wrapped up,
Kate still rubbing his ears. His chest barely moved up and down. And he was seizing again. His body shook; although now weaker, the shaking wasn’t as intense as the first one. She knew as much as Michael and Mickey would rather be at her side, they couldn’t be. They had to keep watch for safety. There was always the chance that the dim lighting would attract the crazies themselves, seeing an opportunity to steal something or worse.

“Do it,” she told the veterinarian
.

Dr.
Moulton prepared the shot and injected it. Glory took a deep breath, holding onto the dog’s front paw, her arm around his neck as she crouched down to be as close to him as possible, her face resting against his.

Haley’s eyes were half open, his tongue hung to the side. Within a matter of minutes, the muscles in his body relaxed
; his breathing became slow and easy. He lifted his head weakly, and licked her face.

“I love you, my bestest buddy,” Glory
murmured. “You’ll always be my soul mate pup.” She stayed with him, wouldn’t think of leaving him until he drew his final breath. He exhaled, seemingly letting out all the air left in his lungs. He was gone.

“I’m not ready for this
!” She buried her face in the warm fur of Haley’s neck and cried.

“I’m so sorry,
hun,” Kate said, her arms around Glory, holding her gently as she sobbed her very heart out. Glory was well aware of how quickly an animal died once the shot was given, but it just wasn’t the same! No matter how many animals and sorrow-filled owners she’d dealt with, the pain of it was even more unbearable than she could’ve imagined.

A thought flashed in her mind, and was gone as quickly as it’d come.
He’s won again
!

Of course, that was an irrational thought; Haley had lived out his life span
. That was the truth of it, and yet, it seemed this was too much, too many deaths in such a short time. As if the Reaper knew that he, as well as her own fear of death, would eventually be the ruin of her.

“Sorry, my
dear,” Dr. Moulton said, leaving them swiftly, going out the back door where Mickey escorted him to his vehicle. His eyes darted everywhere, making sure no one was waiting to ambush them. The doctor lived a few blocks from the hospital. After he left, Mickey went up the embankment toward the woods, checking with his flashlight for intruders. Nothing but the sound of the wind through the trees; he went back to his post.

“Glory? We need to…decide what to do with the body. Do you want to put him, you know
, in the, uh, freezer for cremation?” Kate asked awkwardly. It was a truly touch subject, especially since Glory was aware of the procedure of disposal after an animal was put down.

They placed them in large plastic bags and p
ut them in the large freezer to be picked up by the crematorium.

Glory shuddered at the thought. To leave him in the cold and dark, alone
, without his family repulsed her.

“No! I can’t leave him.”

“So, a country burial then?”

“Yeah.”

Kate went to get an oversized, heavy cardboard “casket,” which was given to those who chose to take their pets home for burial. That’s what she’d do. She didn’t even have to ask Michael or Mickey, knowing they’d want him with them, on their own land, always.

Michael helped Glory and
Kate load Haley into the police cruiser, a sad and silent task.

The three of them froze on the spot.
They heard the unmistakable sound of brush and branches underfoot from the wooded field beyond the parking lot.

“Maybe it’s a deer or somethin’,”
Kate whispered.

There were m
ore sounds of something or someone moving stealthily along the ground, closer now.

Noise
was a funny thing at night in the woods. It was difficult to accurately determine distances. Michael thought it better to err on the side of caution and they booked it for the door.

Once back inside, Michael pulled
his gun from the back holster, checked the chamber, and slammed it shut. Glory stared at the glitter of steel. She made no pretense that she knew much about guns, but she’d swear she’d never seen this one.

T
hey stood, silent and alert.

All
was dead quiet for the span of about thirty seconds, and then everything happened all at once with the speed of lightning in a particularly fierce thunderstorm.

Michael yelled
, “
Get down
!” just as a barrage of bullets whistled over their heads. Whoever was shooting must have had a silencer on their weapon because the only sounds were a whooshing noise and then the impact of where the bullets landed. Glass shattered at the windows. But the bars were there, preventing whoever was out there from getting in.

“How are we going to get out of here?”
Glory asked Michael. “We’re trapped!”

“
Sounds like only one shooter from what I can make out,” Michael said.

“Dad?” Mickey came
around from his post in the back.

“You ‘n me are
gonna go out the front and back and circle the place. If it’s only one guy, we should be able to trap him between us. Glory, you and Kate stay under the reception desk and
do
not
move until we call yah. Got it?” The ladies scrambled under the desk.

“
What if there’s more than one of ‘em?” Mickey asked, looking brave at the moment, not at all scared.

“If there is, we’ll deal with it. Just don’t wait to see who it is
. Shoot and keep on shooting. Do not, I repeat,
do not
hesitate for even a second!”

For a split second, Glory looked at her son without the eyes of a mother. The grown man that stood at his father’s side was the man everyone else saw. She’d watched him grow up, but in her heart, he’d always be ten years old. He was her fearless child. Now, he’d grown to be a man of strength, bravery and honor, just like his father. Even while she grieved for Haley, she knew how very fortunate she was to have these two men in her life.

This moment in time, this memory so short and fleeting, would be held and locked in her heart for the rest of her life, which might not be very long.

Glory
felt as if pieces of her heart were being ripped from her body as they left the safety of the hospital. After they left, so did her last bit of bravery. She was no longer just afraid; she was downright petrified! Not so much for herself; she was scared of Michael of Mickey being hurt, or worse.

A memory
flashed in Glory’s mind for an instant of an old seventies B grade movie she’d seen as a child. It had given her nightmares forever. A chauffer at the door of a house with dark sunglasses, the sunlight of a picture perfect day in the background and that crazy organ music used in many horror movies back then. The chauffer in the movie grinned like a sinister Cheshire cat against the even higher pitch of organ music as he revealed to the audience his true self, that of death himself!

Sometimes the subconscious
attempted to protect the conscious mind from unpleasant truths it would rather not face. Thus, an old memory, while frightening, was recognized as an invalid danger. However, it may pop up in the face of real danger. That part of the mind that can’t face its own mortality surfaced as a defense mechanism for the simple reason that one could not fully grasp the fact that they would die. That was a huge part of her phobia; she sought to grasp it!

She
assumed incorrectly that the intruder would go after her husband and son as they posed the greater danger. She was wrong.

She
wasn’t a cop like Michael. She wasn’t even very adventurous, really. Just a wife and mother living in a small town in Maine. Driving through a blizzard or camping out at night in one of the campgrounds up in the Sebago Lake region was about the extent of her adventures.

“Glory,”
Kate mouthed wordlessly.

“Yeah, I see ‘im.”

Black boots, visible from underneath the desk, no more than a few feet from them; neither Michael nor Mickey were wearing black boots. The shooter had gotten in!

Footsteps, slow and steady
, moved toward the desk. The boots disappeared; in their place was a face. The man crouched down, looked at them under the desk. They’d been found!

“Hi there
," a filthy man with long, unwashed hair hanging in his face and bloodshot eyes said slyly. He reached one dirty hand out and fixed it around Kate’s throat, yanking her out from under the desk.

Glory didn’t hesitate for a second, she ran for the front door.
“Michael
!” she screamed.

And
there was Michael with the .357 Magnum. Mickey stood slightly behind him. Two other men, both with a crazed look in their eyes, came from the back. How they’d gotten in, who knew? What did it matter anyway? They were inside…with them!

“Let her go,” Michael said coldly to the man holding
Kate. He held the .357 Magnum in both hands, legs wide, in the standard police stance.

The man
tightened his grip around Kate’s neck, producing a knife and holding it to her throat.