Dog in the Manger by Mike Resnick

Author:Mike Resnick
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2012-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

10.

My first thought on awakening was that I was paralyzed. Then my left leg started tingling painfully, and I realized that all of my limbs were either asleep or scabbed over with dried blood, or both.

I took a peek out of the dog house, couldn’t see anyone in the immediate vicinity, and slowly and painfully crawled out, trying not to groan as I scraped my left arm and then my side on the doorway. It took me almost three minutes before I could stand erect, and another couple of minutes before I felt I could walk without falling down.

The sun was directly overhead, and I guessed that I had slept for fourteen or fifteen hours. In retrospect, if I had to walk through the neighborhood, noon wasn’t that bad a time to be doing it. Most of the men were at work, and those women who weren’t working were cooking or cleaning their houses.

I still wasn’t thinking too clearly, and it took me a little while to realize that of course I wasn’t going to be able to walk through the neighborhood. There were no mirrors in the dog house, but I didn’t need one to know what my face looked like. I still couldn’t open my right eye or breathe through my nose, and my blood-soaked clothes weren’t exactly the most inconspicuous outfit one could wear in a quiet little suburban neighborhood.

The one thing I knew I couldn’t do was stand there like a dummy, contemplating what to do next. I didn’t know which house I had escaped from, but it couldn’t have been more than two hundred yards away, and I had no reason to assume they weren’t still looking for me.

I surveyed the houses near me with my good eye, chose the one that seemed the emptiest (though I still don’t know what criteria I used), and quickly limped over to its back door. The door wasn’t locked, and a moment later I was inside, searching through its five tiny rooms for signs of life.

The occupants were all gone, and I rummaged through a couple of closets until I found a tan shirt and matching slacks that I could fit into. They were a little tight, but at least they weren’t covered with blood. Then I went into the bathroom, took one look at my face in the mirror, knew that there was no way I could hide or disguise it, and started searching through drawers and cabinets looking for some Bactine. There wasn’t any, so I settled for emptying a cardboard box of gauze and bandages, stuffing them in my pants packet, and hunting up a large brown paper bag in the kitchen. I put my old clothes into the bag—no sense letting the enemy know I had changed outfits—and walked out the front door as if I had every right to be where I was.

I walked slowly to the street and turned left, hoping that I was going in the opposite direction from Carl and his boss.

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