well enough. They’d thought the way to blend in with humans was to dress like Waldo, since no one could ever spot him. We’d started the story that there had been a Where’s Waldo? fan convention in town. Implausible, of course, but people bought it. UFOs, and even pink blob monsters could be explained away. But dragons?
Dragons look very much like dragons. And they couldn’t be a human in disguise. Not unless the human happened to be fifteen feet tall, have wings, and emit jets of flame from his mouth. In which case he would look uncommonly like a dragon.
Dragon. No, I had to go fight the dragon. But how?
Even as I thought it out, I had a sort of sketch of a plan. I’d have to take Tim, of course. No two ways about it. Not only was that boy capable of getting in endless amounts of trouble all by himself, but he was also a constant temptation to his older sister, who—if she had him on hand—would find new and more creative ways to torture him and get him in trouble.
If he wasn’t left in the house, I could leave Jennie behind. Provided enough crayons, coloring books, and the promise of a box of comic books, she could behave for an hour or so on her own. It ought to be enough.
“Right,” I said. “On my way.”
I could practically hear Bill sigh with relief on the other side of our connection.
* * *
One of the advantages of Wayne thinking he’s dying every time he catches a cold is that he’s less than observant. Had he not been so worried about how feverish he was, and the fact that he kept coughing, he might have noticed how long I’d spent in the laundry room with the door closed.
He certainly would have noticed when I came out, held a whispered conversation with my daughter, which consisted of my offering to buy her her weight in Pretty Princess comics if she would just stay at the kitchen table and color while I went and fixed something in the basement. And had Wayne been his normal self, he would almost surely have realized that it was a very odd thing for me to run towards the basement door with Tim on my hip, saying, “I’m going down to see if the pipes are freezing.” After all, while various strange implements have been used to thaw pipes throughout history, I don’t think anyone has ever tried rubbing a little boy on them.
But Wayne was so out of it, all he did was say, “Dab’s fine,” and cough into a tissue.
I opened the door to the basement, locked it behind me hoping he didn’t try it and find it locked and wonder who had installed a lock on that door and why, and ran fast down the cement steps.
“Weeeeee,” my son said. “Run.”
“Yeah, fun run,” I said, and rushed towards an inconspicuous portion of what looked like unfinished wallboard. I punched a code in just the right place, by memory. The wall slid aside, and Tim said, “Shiny!”
It was. You see, in this space, I kept my armor. It was power armor and had been designed especially for me, right after the incident at Cheyenne Mountain when the lizard people came through, and the nine of us had fought them, and Bill had closed the portal.
It made me as strong as . . . well, much stronger than the average male, and it also kept me from being too easily injured. Though I had the scars to show that it was terrible at protecting people from cuts inflicted by the teeth of creatures that were made of stuff harder than diamond. Stuff that didn’t exist on Earth. This is one reason why I hated dragons.
As for what the armor looked like? Well, it looked like a full suit of shining chainmail. Fitted. Clinging. Don’t judge me. If I’m going into battle, I’m going to look hot doing it.
In mid-change, I thought of what hot might mean and shuddered. Then I realized that Tim had—somehow—managed to punch the code in the wall that opened the other door. The one that displayed my horse. My black horse made of the sort of ceramic they used on the outside of space vehicles, with the laser eyes and the array of weapons built into it. It activated as the door slid away, and the eyes came to glowing red light, while the hooves struck sparks from the cement