Practical FX
an excerpt

Quinn got out of his Jeep and stared up at the structure. The front gate was wrought iron. Its imposing black bars rose twelve feet towards the dark sky. The ended in viscious looking points. While they may have been decorative, they also lookded deadly.
The gates themselves were set into a wall of grayish brick. The sky had become so overcast that it was difficult to determine where the wall ended and the sky began. Sharp spires pierced the sky, visible above the wall. They must be the remnants of the original buildings, fully contained inside the walled complex. They were not visible through the gate. All Quinn could see was the first in a long line of truck trailers.
He reached back into the Jeep and pulled out the bag. He slipped off his jacket and pulled on the old sweater. He looked at the locked gun case, still inside the canvas bag. He fought down an irrational but almost overpowering impulse to bring the gun with him. It was useless, empty. It would be nothing more than an expensive blugeon, but part of him still longed for its reassuring weigh.
He stuffed his jacket into the bag and tucked it back under the seat. He needed to secure the gun before he changed his mind.
As he stood, he began talking to Faolan.
“I do not know what it is like in there. There might be broken glass, all kinds of things you could cut yourself on. You should probably stay here.”
He looked up at the dog as was suprised by the dog’s posture. Rather than sitting up, paws on the door or the dashboard, he was crouched low in the seat. His eyes were level with the bottom of the window. The fur at his colar and down his back stood up, giving him dark brown strip along his spine. A low growl sounded in his throat.
“Are you o k?”
Faolan barked twice. There were not like any barks Quinn had ever heard from the dog. They were not his here is a toy, come on let us play barks. They were not the someone is at the door but I think it is all right because it is probably just the postal carrier barks. They were not even his serious trouble warning barks that usually accompanied his growling.
These were high, shrill, almost yelping barks. It sounded like the yip a small dog would given when seomeone stepped on its tail, high and then dropping in pitch and volume at the end. Quinn reached out and stroked the erect fur. Faolan was tense, his muscles practically quiverring.
“What is it?”
Faolan answered with another series of the skull splitting barks. Quinn frowned. This was a dog that was never afraid of anything. He even liked to go to the vet. Usually Faolan would have bounded out of the Jeep and marked as much of the building as he could. Instead he had crouched down as far as he could while still keeping an eye on the institution. Quinn tried to reasure him.
“It is o k.” This was met with growls. “All right, you stay here and guard the Jeep. I will be back in a bit.”
Faolan stood, spun around in his seat, then began barking again. Quinn grabbed the flashlight from the back, checked again to make sure that he had the keys, and closed the door. The auto glass did little to muffle the big dog’s barking.