arm. "That dog needs to be put away."
"You got it, lady," drawled one of Torbellino's men.
She turned on the boss man after stepping daintily over his bull-hide tail. "You, sir, look like a man of authority. I want you to put that dog in a cage and that stupid girl Dorothy who let it bite me in jail."
The thug who'd shot at Toto lifted the gun, but Torbellino raised a lazy hand.
"Don't waste your ammunition. These things aren't real."
"They're real nuisances," the guy answered, taking a bead on Miss Almira Gulch's hat.
"I said, don't," Torbellino ordered through gritted teeth. "This isn't a carnival shooting gallery. This is our Armageddon, ass. Either grow or die, and those snoops on our Kansas drug-drives are threatening my operation going international. We'd be outa here with our prize if some damned necromancer hadn't turned all the elevator wires to silver."
"But, boss, you want this silver thingamajiggy."
"I want the power of the ultimate Silver Zombie. I've had these cheap Mexican models for the digging up, sure, for decades. But the Silver Zombie would be able to find and dig up whole armies of new undead meth-heads. I'd be King of the Zombies. I could run this continent. Hell, I could run this hemisphere with that one heavy-metal piece on the crime game board."
"I still don't get it."
"You don't need to. If the weather witches' storm doesn't knock those holdouts out of their pretty glass tower, our zombie cattle-drivers will finally reach the top and throw them off. It's just bad luck some rich guy made off with the Silver Zombie before we did."
"Won't all this throwing off and knocking off lose you the Silver Zombie?"
"Nope. No more than your bullet can kill these kinky CinSims running around here. They're zombies too and already dead."
"But they ... look normal and talk and wear clothes and don't eat anybody's brains. That one there acts just like my Aunt Clara and I'd really like to clean her clock. One shot, boss, please?"
Almira was heading through again, like the clockwork CinSim she was and would be until she became a full-fledged hotel-casino attraction and some of the actress underneath her, Margaret Hamilton, a perfectly nice lady, came out to soften the film persona.
"Shut up," El Demonio shouted, "or you'll end up in my local body farm and get raised to run with the cattle, like these stupid zombies. Don't push me. I really need a better grade of zombie."
Thanks to the broken door, I'd heard everything. I parted my Green Room - permed hair and pulled it forward into two pigtails. The silver familiar obligingly split and clipped each tail into place.
I played director and gave Quicksilver a short but key nonspeaking role.
The moment Miss Gulch vanished, I nodded at my dog.
Quick padded silently through the broken door and slunk around the furniture so he could appear right behind El Demonio's chair.
Toto zipped out again, thanks to Miss Gulch's absence. While the men's eyes were automatically drawn to the streaking little dog, I eased on down the lobby's trashed yellow brick road and into the armed thugs' view.
Interacting with them at just the right level was the biggest difficulty.
"Where has my little dog gone?" I said sadly. "That awful witch in the even more awful hat wants to take him away to be killed."
"Say, are you Dorothy?" one guy asked. "You came through here before. You should be in the storm shelter."
"Oh, dear, I've got to find my dog first. And then I'll go."
By now I had edged over and past Torbellino's whip and was even with his chair.
Quick whisked out from behind the chair and ran into the hall.
"There he is," I cried, dashing after him.
"Hey, boss," the dazed thug was saying. "This whole scene looks more like that Alice down the rabbit hole thing, only with dogs."
I heard the real Toto following our trail, arfing all the way.
"Say I can shoot this one, please."
No one or no thing guarded the elevator bank. I pressed a button and hoped.
"You, there. Dorothy. I want that dog!"
Miss Gulch didn't seem to notice Toto had added a hundred and forty-six pounds. Or that Dorothy had added a bust and a business suit. Like feral zombies, feral CinSims seemed to degrade. I was getting a whole new insight on CinSims, but probably wouldn't live long enough to come to any conclusions but my own.
"Shaddup in the hall," came from the office area. This order was followed by a sharp crack of a