Wilson showed up at the house early Saturday morning, eager to go. A little too early for my liking as I was only half a cup in on my coffee.
I opened the door just in the nick of time before he could get another ring of the doorbell off and wake everyone. Butch looked on indifferently from his little dog bed up on the landing at the top of the stairs.
It started as barking, then turned into growling. Now I heard howling mixed in. I glanced around the table in the conference room. Big Mike, Suck-Up Andy, and Wilson all had their ‘best to ignore it’ looks going.
Roz was going through a slide of a bar chart with numbers and dates on it, and hashing out how many of our colleagues were expected back in the office, and exactly when we’d be welcoming them back from remote work.
The lights in the office dimmed. Again. It was the third time in the last ten minutes. This time I found myself sitting in a yellowish glow while the lights flickered and came back to full strength.
I pushed back from the desk and went to investigate. The hall was dark and quiet. We were still a few weeks away from the first wave of colleagues coming back from their remote set-ups. Maybe the IT guys were testing the grid, making sure everything was in working order for the big day.
It was dusk and the vehicle, if that’s what you’d call it, was sitting outside our house. It was a short, squat box-like thing with a splashy paint job and some logo I couldn’t make out. Then again I was behind the couch peering out through a half-inch wide slit in the drapes.
I glanced up and down the street to see if there was any interest in it. None. A couple of kids had been by ten minutes ago and made a fuss over it, but no one since then. I went across the hall to the dining room to take a look at it from another angle. As soon as I did, the thing backed up slowly, like it was tracking me.