Catopolis. Part 23

"Easy. Hear the guns?"

He listened. So did the c.o.o.n. "No."

"That's how I know. In fact-" Being too dignified for any display of triumph, I only sighed like I was irretrievably bored. "-I hope you're ready, because here they come."

Getting Inside turned out to be the easiest thing I did all day. The mob of toms scattered when the first wheeler rolled up. It's a natural instinct-wheelers are loud, their face-lights are brighter than street lamps, they stink, and they'll crush you flat without even noticing you-but if you're just gonna follow your natural instincts, you might as well be a dog. Or a human.

I went first, but the c.o.o.n and Hacky, to their credit, were right behind me. Just as the swing-fence started to open we streaked through, which took some timing because the wheelers didn't even slow down. And when the humans started to push the swing-fence shut, the few toms brave enough to make a run at following us found the narrowing gap full of c.o.o.n.

He was puffed out double his already gigantic size, and his tail stood straight up, and he didn't even have to unleash that bobcat snarl of his because the other toms took one look at him and decided they had more important business on the Outside.

Which was more or less the reason I invited him along.

Knifewall's Inside was mostly how I remembered: a big cement meadow where the wheelers screeched to a halt, high stone-faced houses, that kind of stuff. But there had been some changes, which looked to be mostly the result of catastrophic remodeling courtesy of the Calicoes' flying exploders. The Bleach & Ammonia House-the one where feral humans took their hurt and dying packmates-had some major chunks of its front face missing, leaving ragged dark gaps like the eye sockets of a cat three days dead.

The face-lights of the wheelers cast so much glare that I couldn't see into the shadows, and the wheelers were still growling and the humans were shouting and carrying each other and generally creating so much confusion and commotion that I got separated from the c.o.o.n and Hacky, and I couldn't hear the Persian anymore. There was some blood on the ground, here and there, which reminded me how hungry I was, but I stayed away from it. Humans are funny about blood, and if they see you lapping at it sometimes they just snap and come at you with their boots. Sometimes they even shoot their guns at you, which is a lot scarier than you think it's going to be, up until it happens to you the first time.

So I mostly tried to stay out of their way and waited for the wheelers to settle down and shut off their lights, which left me hanging in a shadow at the corner of the sweep-fence. I pa.s.sed the time getting myself cleaned up, which is how I happed to be just sitting there when the first dog hit the fence.

He was big and he came fast and he hit hard enough to rattle the whole fence. "I can see you!" he shouted, jumping up and raking the metal with his forepaws. "

I can see you in there!"

"Yeah? Can you smell me, too?" To help him out with the smelling part, I stood up and showed him my b.u.t.t. If my tail had worked better, I would have given him a good close look at my a.n.a.l glands and maybe a marking squirt in the eye, but I guess he got the point anyway.

"Gonna kill you! Gonna kill you and eat you!"

"Maybe in your next life, pooch." I sat down again and bit at a flea on my haunch, which made him even crazier, of course, and his shouts devolved into wordless yaps of fury, which brought more dogs at the gallop. I stayed where I was and didn't even bother to look as they threw themselves at the shivering fence; the more dogs hanging around out there, the less I had to worry about any more toms sneaking in to cramp my action.

I was making a pretty good show of nonchalance, right up until the barking stopped as though the whole mob'd had their throats slashed at once.

The silence brought up my scruff, and the voice that broke the silence brought up the rest of my back.

"That you in there, Drags?"

I didn't need to look around. I hear that deep, calm, bone-evil voice every day. In bad dreams.

"Drags, look at me when I'm talking to you."

With as much composure as I could summon, I turned toward him. I wanted to stalk carelessly away, but I knew that taking the first step would break my nerve and I'd be scuttling for the nearest storm drain like a sewer rat caught out in daylight. "Bullets," I said. "Been a while."

"Yes." He had the side of his vast dirty tan face pressed against the fence, his good eye gleaming black like fresh blood by moonlight. Even my nightmares had forgotten the sheer size of him-that great box-head of his alone was bigger than my whole body. He had a long, slow, quiet way of talking, almost like a giant cat. "How's the tail, Drags? That is what they call you now, isn't it? Because of what I did to your tail?"

"The tail's fine," I lied. I summoned enough false insouciance to sit, because if he watched me stand much longer, he'd see that my expressionless tone had more to do with how the severed muscle at the base of my tail had left me half-crippled than with any actual calm. "How's your eye?"

"Still gone," Bullets said. "And the socket hurts every time I think of you."

"Flatterer."

"Not as much as my mouth, though. And my stomach. They ache for you, Drags." His tongue was out now, and he was panting that canine thunderstorm of hunger, just as I remembered. "I'm drooling for you, Drags."

"You drool for everybody."

He chuckled, dark as midnight in an abandoned bas.e.m.e.nt. "I know where you are, now. There's only one way out of there. When this fence opens, I'll be waiting."

"You do that," I told him. "Patience is a virtue, y'know."

"In cats." Bullets grinned at me. "So is flavor."

"I think I'm gonna be a house cat again. You want me, b.i.t.c.h, you might as well just whistle."

"You think," he said. "But I know."

"Know? What do you think you know?"

"I know what you're gonna find out, smart cat."

"Hey-hey Drags-" The hiss came from the shadows under a quiescent wheeler; sounded like the c.o.o.n. "Where's Hacky?"

"He was with you."

"He was with you."

I got up. Taunting Bullets was fun and all, but this was business. "You don't think-?"

"Listen!"

The wheelers had gone quiet. All I could hear was a few human voices from inside the Bleach & Ammonia House and the growing thwop-wop-wop-wop of descending thwoppers in-bound. And that's all I could hear.

The Persian had gone silent.

"That sneaky little scab-lapper!" I snarled. "Where is he?"

"That's what I'm askin' you."

"Dammit, she's not even in heat-!"

"Maybe Hacky was right. Maybe Persians're always in heat."

"I'll kill him."

"Something wronnng, Drags?" Bullets drawled. "Somebody messin' your game?"

I didn't even bother to reply, just trotted over toward the wheeler where the c.o.o.n crouched. The Persian had been in that doorway when the wheelers came in, right by that cul-de-sac where the humans kept their metal garbage boxes; if she ran from the wheelers like a normal cat, she might easily have ended up- "Okay," I said. "Let's split up, c.o.o.n. You go that way-over behind the Bleach & Ammonia House, there's a garden where all the Inside cats go. Good mousing there, not to mention chipmunks and even some squirrels. I'll take this side-nothing much here, but after I check it out I can catch up-"

The c.o.o.n's great green eyes seemed to glow as they picked up the belly-lights of the thwoppers slowly dropping from the night sky. "I got an idea. We split up and you take the Bleach and Whatever, while I take Nothing Much."

I sighed. "Okay. We stick together."

Which was when, with a distant bang and a nearby swoosh, a streak of flame reached up from outside Knifewall, hit the incoming thwopper, and the whole world exploded.

I don't remember much of what happened right after that. There were entirely too many explosions and gun shots and screaming people running and shooting and bleeding, and the wheelers were blowing up, and the thwopper was just a pile of burning junk in the asphalt meadow.

When it finally got quiet enough that I could think again, I found myself crouched flat under one of the humans' garbage boxes in the cul-de-sac. The garbage boxes had big wheels on them, which left plenty of room underneath one even for four pretty good-sized cats, of which I was one, the c.o.o.n was another, Hacky was one more...

And there was the Persian.

She was cowering next to Hacky, shivering, filthy with the rotting muck under the garbage box and stinking like week-old fish... and if it were up to me, I would have taken her by the scruff and done her right there in the muck, because she was just that hot. She really was. But it wasn't up to me, and it never will be.

"What's happening?" she moaned. "What is this?"

"That's what I want to know," the c.o.o.n growled, with a look at Hacky that made me really d.a.m.n glad he wasn't looking at me.

"Nothing, c.o.o.n!" Hacky squeaked. "Honest! I was just-I was just showing her where to get something to eat, that's all."

"He's very sweet," the Persian said. "Not like the other toms."

"The other toms?" The c.o.o.n and I exchanged ear-flattened looks. n.o.body likes finding himself pushed toward the back of a line.

"I've heard," she said carelessly. "Ooh, my coat! What you must think of me, meeting me like this!"

The c.o.o.n grunted. "You think anybody cares what you look like?"

"You're horrible!" She had already snaked away from Hacky, closer to him. "What a brute you are-you must be very strong-"

"You'll find out," he said, and I couldn't watch any more. I crawled forward to check what was happening in the slice of the burning meadow I could see beyond the mouth of the cul-de-sac. There were still some gunshots, but they came slower now, in ones or one-twos.

And through the flames, I saw something that made me mostly forget about the Persian. "Shut up, all of you," I said. "We have to get out of here."

"Don't think so," the c.o.o.n said, thick and slow. He was flemming now himself. "That corner behind the box has room enough."

"Ooh, you're horrible!"

"You said that before." He opened those ma.s.sive jaws of his and reached for her scruff. "Didn't sound like you meant it then, either."

I reached over and whapped him, right on the end of the nose. I kept my claws in-because I didn't want to die-but the gesture alone made his eyes pop round and flare like the flames from the wreckage in the meadow. "You back away right now, Drags, and I might just forget you did that."

"Will you haul your brains back out of your ball-sack and look around?"

"I got everything I need to see right here."

"Please don't fight, toms. Not over me," the Perisan purred, wrapping her tail down flat to hide a hint of wicked smile. "The last thing I want is for-"

"Rake yourself, sister. This is serious. We can't stay here. c.o.o.n, Hacky, just come over here and look. Look at the light on the walls to either side-no shadows up above, only shadows down here."

Hacky just shrugged. "So?"

"So aren't you starting to feel a little warm?"

The c.o.o.n spat an obscenity. "The garbage is on fire. In this box, right over our backs."

"It gets worse. c.o.o.n, look."

He snarled something wordless, but crawled on over and peered out from under the garbage box. "So? Don't see nothin'. Just some burning wheelers."

"That's right," I said. "Do you understand that what you're not seeing is Knifewall?"

He seemed to shrink into himself, then.

"The Calicoes must have exploded it. Or at least made a pretty good hole. Does anybody need me to explain what this means?"

What This Means came into view in the form of a long back-lit silhouette stalking across the mouth of the cul-de-sac. This silhouette was as tall at the withers as most cats can jump, and it had a barrel chest bigger around than most humans' shoulders. Each of its paws was the size of my head, and the clack of its toenails sounded like distant gun shots. It stopped in front of the alley mouth and lifted its head, huffing to taste the air...

Then it turned toward us.

"Why, h.e.l.lo there, Draaaaags... fancy meeting you here..."

The Persian sniffed. "It's just a dog."

"Sure it is," I said. "Strut on out there and rake his nose. Maybe he'll run away."

"Don't do it," the c.o.o.n said. "That's not just a dog. That beast has killed more cats than a bucket of rat poison."

"Hey, hey, hey, Drags." Bullets sauntered on into the cul-de-sac and sat down, his vast mottled tongue lolling sideways, trailing a stretching loop of drool. "Is that you under the burning garbage? Getting a little warm, are we, Drags?"

"Why don't you come on over and find out, Bullets? You've still got one good eye. Bring it within reach."

"Oh, I don't think so," he drawled. "Think I'll just sit here and enjoy the smell of cooking cat."

"Bullets?" the Persian said. "That's the dog's name?"

"It's because he's been shot so many times," I said. "I mean, look at him."

In the clearer light from the garbage above us, all the white scar patches showed clearly against his buff coat; he even had a pair on either side of his blackish dewlap. Bullets was bigger than any human I've ever seen, and probably tougher, too. "They say bullets can't kill him. Maybe it's true."

"What's a bullets?"

I stared at her. "d.a.m.n, sister, how sheltered are you?"

"Don't snarl at me," she sniffled. "I just-I don't seem to quite understand how things work on the Outside..."

"Sniffed it out yet, Drags?" Bullets was laughing now. "Sniffed out what I already know?"

"You'd be surprised what I know." I turned to the others. "All right. Get ready to move. I'll go first and draw him off; I'm the one he wants, anyway. When he starts for me, run like h.e.l.l for the hole in Knifewall."

"We'll all go at once. Every cat for himself," Hacky said. "Maybe he only gets one of us, and maybe we all get away."

"My tail how it is, I can't leap very well any more. No balance. And I'd be clumsy enough scrambling over the rubble that he'll probably take me anyway." I sucked in a deep breath. "And he's not the only one out there. You gotta look out for her, Hacky. You too, c.o.o.n. There's other toms out there. You can all pitch in. It's the only way."