Free Crawlers by John Shirley

was stupid to feel that way, considering the cop was assuming he was stoned or crazy—and they drove around the cemetery. Saw no one. Not the dog either. They stopped at the front gate and called to Buddy a few times. No response.
    “I’ll find him later,” Dad mumbled.
    Then they drove to the hospital. Wharton went in with Larry, spoke to some nurses in hushed tones, signed some papers. Larry found himself alone in the emergency room, watching late-night TV on the set in the waiting area.
    Eventually he told his story to a lady psychiatrist the cop seemed to have dated or something—she nodded when Larry told her the cop’s name—and the doctor decided Larry needed some kind of anti-anxiety drug for now. Maybe he’d had an epileptic seizure of some kind, so they might have to change his meds later. Larry felt as if he was being treated like a complete lunatic. They acted as if his feelings about the whole thing were off the map and meaningless.
    While Larry was at the hospital, his dad went off with the cop to make some kind of statement. Why that was necessary, Larry couldn’t understand. His dad hadn’t seen anything. Just him. Normally they’d just write a report in their little book.
    But, hey,
Larry decided.
You have to trust someone. You could trust
the cops, after all. Couldn’t you?
    They never found the dog.

4
    November 25, night
    “Why’s she coming here on a train?” Cal asked, staring dully down the tracks into the thin fog. They could just make out the headlight of the oncoming train and the big blunt steely outline of the engine.
    “Sometimes,” Adair said, “you can seem so smart and sometimes you’re just, like, retarded. Why does anybody come on a train?”
    They were on the tarmac near the tracks at the Emeryville train station. Across the tracks, past a chain-link fence torn up at the bottom by tramps, was a shopping center with a movie theater, a bookstore, even a jazz nightclub. Beyond that lay the freeway and the bay.
    “She doesn’t like to fly,” Adair’s mom said. She had girl’s soccer league that afternoon, and she was already dressed in her white short-sleeve Quiebra High shirt, white shorts, and white sneakers, and her silver coach whistle was hanging around her neck. Adair wore a dress she called her gypsy dress under a jacket from American Eagle.
    Adair noticed that Cal wore the same clothes as yesterday.
    The train whistled. Getting that quirky look in his eye he got when something was bothering him he didn’t want to talk about, Cal said, “Whoo whoooooo! Hey, Mom, can we blow your coach whistle back at the train?”
    “Don’t be silly,” she said vaguely, as she shaded her eyes against the sun breaking through the clouds and watched the train pulling up.
    He grabbed her whistle, started blowing on it though it still hung around her neck.
Tweeeeeeee.
    Mom only stared at him, as if she was some kind of cryptographer trying to decode what he was doing.
    Seeing that he wasn’t going to get a rise from her, Cal dropped the whistle, shrugging.
    The train clashed its wheels, squealed its brakes, and came to a grudging stop, reeking diesel. A chubby, blank-faced porter walked up to the first car with portable steps, put them down in front of the nearest door, and waited to help people off. An elderly white-haired woman got off, waving at Adair’s mom—and then looking away in embarrassment as she focused her weak eyes and realized that she wasn’t the daughter or niece she’d been expecting. Wearing a look of disappointed abandonment, the old woman walked past them toward the station.
    Then Mom’s sister Lacey climbed down from the train. To Adair, she looked the same as she had three years ago. An attractive woman with long chestnut hair, bangs cut across her forehead, a Long Beach tan, a softer, more humorous face than Mom’s. But then, she wasn’t married with kids, and she was younger than Mom.
    Lacey wore oxblood dress pants that looked like they might’ve