Free Zhukov's Dogs by Amanda Cyr Page B

neither Val nor Anya looked like the children Grey Men were known to father, Tibbs fit the bill perfectly.
    Tibbs laughed and clapped me on the back, the giant’s hand nearly knocking me down. “I get that a lot. My old man was a cobbler though.” Scrawny Russians came from Grey Men and giants from shoemakers. This city was getting stranger by the minute.
    We turned down First Avenue, and Tibbs told me how this was the western end of the underground, and on the other side of the cement wall was the Puget Sound. Large industrial elevators here were used to bring down cargo from freighters topside. I half expected to be led onto one of the elevators and taken up to the revolutionaries’ base. Instead, we climbed a small flight of stairs along the cement wall and stepped out onto a monorail station. The tracks ran along the wall, curving away and around the boarding station.
    “Does it go all the way around?” I asked, spotting the blue and gold monorail car speeding toward us.
    “Yup,” Anya said with a nod. She dug through her coat pockets and pulled out a handful of change. Seventy-five cents in assorted coins was counted out for each of us as fare, and in no time we were flying around Seattle. We were on the train for five minutes before Anya stood and pulled a cord on the wall. The monorail curved away from the cement as it had before, and the doors along the windowless wall opened. With Anya taking the lead this time, we left the train and hurried down a flight of stairs.
    It was warmer here than it had been by the canal, so much warmer that even I felt comfortable unbuttoning my coat. Two and three story homes with fenced in yards lined First Avenue, and similar dwellings spanned four blocks at least. We walked a block up and turned down Second Avenue. Cozy mini-mansions. Was this where they lived? Sure enough, Anya opened the gate at the third house down on our right.
    257 Second Avenue East was not what I’d expected as a base, with deep red bricks, white shuttered windows, and a lawn covered in layers of imitation grass. I caught sight of something in front of the home which explained why the revolutionaries were able to call such a nice place their base. ‘FOR SALE’ the sign read, complete with a listing for the house and realtor contact information underneath. They were squatters.
    “You look surprised,” Tibbs said.
    Surprised was an understatement. I lingered on the porch next to the giant and looked around the neighborhood. Three out of the five lawns had the same signs in them. From the look of it, the revolutionaries weren’t the only ones living in the vacant houses illegally. Lights were on in houses up and down the street, and there were even a few children playing a makeshift game of soccer in the road.
    Tibbs read the question in my expression and answered it before I could ask. “Yeah, this sort of thing is pretty common down here. Nobody can afford to actually buy swanky places like this anymore.”
    “Nobody minds?”
    “Oh, they mind. There ain’t nothing they can do about it, though.”
    I bit my tongue, but the words came grumbling out anyway. “Isn’t anything.”
    Tibbs looked confused. I should have been more understanding and blind to the grammar of one of my hosts, especially given his size. Unfortunately, there were few things I hated more than the word ain’t.
    “There
isn’t anything
they can do about it,” I said.
    To my relief, Tibbs just laughed. “So, you’re the word police?”
    “Sorry, it’s a bad habit of mine.”
    “Heh, well, there are worse habits to have,” Tibbs said with a gesture toward the door. “C’mon inside, warm up, and meet the others.”
    As soon as he opened the door, we were met with a series of battle cries. Three barefoot children charged down the hall toward us, waving foam swords above their heads. One wore an orange colander on his head, and all three had off-color dish towels tied around their necks. Tibbs gave a great roar which