Strays (37 page)

Kyle saw in an instant who it was, a mass of solid black fur, twisting and turning in the air, screeching like a banshee before landing hard on the grass, bouncing once, and lying still. 

“Molly!”

He ran to the cat at once, stooped next to her lifeless body.  She was breathing, yes, and her deep-blood eyes were open, but so was her jaw, hissing and gasping for air.  He laid a hand on her chest and she screamed in pain, batting at his hands with her claws.  Somewhere behind him, he heard the howls of dozens of cats, rising in a single crescendo, an unearthly, enraged chorus, and mingled in their bawling was a single human voice like a bag of broken glass. 

“Get away from me!  Get away!  Get
awaayyyyyy
—”

Kyle glanced over his shoulder in time to see the first cat strike.  It was Tom, leaping so high that Kyle could have sworn he had wings.  Like a cannonball fired from the earth, his bristling ginger body hit Big Buddy square in the face.  His forelegs wrapped about Big Buddy’s head, and his jaws gnashed hard at Big Buddy’s right eye.  Big Buddy cried out, and a thin jet of blood spurted from his face, staining Tom’s perfect ginger fur.

In seconds, the other cats were upon him. 

One of the smaller Ragdoll cats landed on Big Buddy’s shoulder, gripping with her claws and sinking her teeth into his neck.  Big Buddy groped in his blindness but found the scruff of her neck and ripped her off his shoulder.  Fresh blood poured from where the Ragdoll’s teeth had sliced the skin.  Big Buddy’s arm cocked back and hurtled the cat as hard as he could.  The cat tumbled and turned in midair, and at once, the massive Siberian that seemed to be made of nothing but brown fur was running on the ground beneath her, like an outfielder chasing down a fly ball. 

The Siberian leapt, and the air buzzed and tingled, and his paws extended and stretched, his body widened in mid stride, and the fur seemed to suck into his flesh as he burst from his cat form and landed on fat human feet.   Kyle watched in awe as the naked man, bearded and large enough to go toe-to-toe with Big Buddy on his own, turned and caught the Ragdoll in mid air, clutching her to his chest.  He looked down at her, stroking her carefully, then looked at Kyle and nodded.

She’s fine,
the nod said.

The shaggy naked man dropped the cat to the grass and then dropped there himself, his body already shrinking with atrophy and sprouting fresh tendrils of fur as he returned to his feline Siberian form.

Kyle glanced over at the drive again, and Big Buddy was on his knees, his arms thrashing as if he were treading water.  His body was covered with cats now, screaming, clawing, chewing cats.  His right eye, the one that Tom had blinded, was now a gooey mass of mucous and blood.  Tom had moved to the crest of Big Buddy’s head and was now working on the left eye, his foreleg extended below Big Buddy’s brow, the paw buried deep in the socket and scooping out something like cherry puree. 

There were cats everywhere on Big Buddy’s body, crawling and biting, each ripping its own mouthful of flesh, spitting, and making way for the next.  From the trees behind the house, from under the porch, from the tall grass next to the chicken coop, cats scurried about like insects, each leaping at the filthy, screaming man, taking its own piece of flesh, and howling as if praising its own invisible god.

When Big Buddy teetered forward, the cats on his chest and shoulders sensed this, leaping off and scattering, giving him an open spot in the gravel to fall.  Only Tom held his position, clinging to the top of Big Buddy’s head and ripping bloody rivulets into his scalp.  Once the monster was face down and helpless, the cats returned, growling and hissing, biting and clawing, and even once Big Buddy lay still, they still continued to claw and bite and chew.

Somehow beyond all the screams, Kyle heard the wheezing grind of the Datsun’s engine.  He glanced beyond the massacre to the end of the drive … just in time to see the dingy gray truck back completely out of the drive and into the gravel road, coughing up dust as it did so.  Kyle could make out the oily curls of the tattooed man, cranking hard on the wheel, and the truck sped to the east, leaving a streamer of dirt on the road as it passed in front of the farm—the second monster had escaped.

Kyle looked at the mound of cats, their fur now spattered and in some cases soaked with the blood of the fallen ogre.  A ball of vomit crept into his throat, and he fought it back down to his stomach.  He turned back to the one cat that mattered most, the beautiful black long-hair cat, the one he had rescued from the clutches of the BTB all those years ago, his best friend and his love who had brought him this far on the journey.

Molly was curled in a ball now, fur flat against her rib cage.  Her breathing had slowed, and her nose was buried against the paws of her forelegs.  Her tail lay still as a dead snake.  It had been a hard kick, hard enough to send her flying, and only God knew how much damage she had sustained.

Kyle gently laid a hand on her head.  “Oh Molly,” he whispered.  “Don’t go.”

A light hand fell on his shoulder.  He turned, and Sarah was there, crouching beside him.  He blinked, and the tears in his eyes distorted her face, but he could see that she was calm and almost seemed to be smiling.

She never broke eye contact, but at the edge of his vision, he could see her other hand lowering itself slowly to Molly’s trembling form, lighting on the fur as gently as a butterfly.  Molly did not stir, and she did not complain.

Sarah closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and now what only seemed like a smile before had become exactly that.

“It’s okay, Kyle,” she said.  “I’ve got this.”

The Glaring Rises

Sarah crouched on her knees on the cool grass and gathered Molly in her arms.  She cradled the cat across her chest and lowered her face into its ample fur.  She breathed and closed her eyes, and as she brought her foot out to stand, Kyle was there, steadying her with a hand at her elbow.

“She’s dying,” he said.  “I can feel—”

“I’ve got this,” Sarah said.  Her voice was muffled as she pressed her face in Molly’s fur.  “Trust me.”

Eyes still closed, she took gentle steps toward the porch.  At once, Tom was there, now human, his nude body still dripping with rivulets of Big Buddy’s blood.  He nodded to Kyle, urging him away, and then took Sarah’s arms, guiding her up the steps.  Trudy was waiting to take over.

Kyle watched from the grass, watched as Trudy placed an arm across Sarah’s shoulders, opened the twangy screen door with the other, and led the girl into the house.  She eased the door shut behind her so it did not slam with its trademark booming pop.

When at last he was alone, Tom turned to him, immodest and unashamed of his nakedness.

“She’ll be all right,” he said.  “Sarah has a way about her.”

“I know,” Kyle whispered.

“Molly is fine,” Tom said.  “Sarah just needs to be alone.  You and I need to talk.”

“
We
need to talk.”  It was Strawberry, who was striding toward them from Big Buddy’s carcass, which now looked like the roadkill of a semi-truck.  “All of us.”

“I … can’t,” Kyle croaked.  “Molly …”

“Nothing you can do about that.”  Strawberry stood next to Tom, herself also naked, the last splatters of Big Buddy’s blood painted across her breasts.  In any other circumstance, Kyle might have stared like a child, but he could only watch the house, the narrow wooden screen door with the chipped paint where Sarah had disappeared with his beloved friend.

“It’s not over,” Tom said.  “You still have a lot to do.  We all do.”

“No,” Kyle muttered.  Every muscle seemed to be made of pudding, malleable and shuddering below his skin.  “No.”

“There’s a reason you’re here,” Tom said.  “I didn’t see it before.  Now I do.  Now I’m beginning to see why you were chosen.”

“Chosen by who?” Kyle said.  “By Molly?  She’s dying now.  And if I lose her—”

“If you lose her you go on.”  It was Strawberry who spoke, peering out between locks of hair still matted with blood.  “It’s just that simple.”

“I can’t go on,” Kyle said.  “I’m not strong enough.”

“Yes, you are,” Strawberry said.  She pushed her hair out of her face and wiped the blood from her eyes.  “We saw it.  All of us.”

“That was before,” Kyle said.  “If I don’t have her—”

“You have us,” Tom said.  “Strawberry, me.  And more importantly, you have them.”

He nodded in the direction of Big Buddy’s corpse.  Kyle turned, and the massive man with full hair and beard—the man who was also the Siberian cat—stood at attention, his hands and chest streaked with blood.  At his feet, the horde of cats waited, groaning and purring. 

The air about the large and hirsute man seemed to crackle, the way it sometimes felt in Kansas during a thunderstorm if lightening touched down too close.  Kyle watched as the mass of cats began to boil, how backs arched and elongated, how coats and pelts receded, shoulders popped, small feline heads the size of softballs seemed to engorge and bloat like balloons, shaking off the last of their colorful manes.  Eyes widened and sparkled through the electric mist, the narrow slit pupils fattening and rounding, and soon the massive man who was also a Siberian cat was joined by more of his kind, almost too many to count, sturdy men with rippled chests, elegant women with curves that arched and played in dramatic fashion, all unclothed and wild like Celtic warriors awaiting their tribal paint.

When at last the final transformation took place and those that were like Tom had all assumed their human form, the large man who was once the Siberian cat stepped forward.  At his feet, and all about his army of blood-spattered warriors, the last host of normal cats—the ones Tom called strays—scratched their way across the yard … Maine coons with tufted ears, ragdolls with round and curious eyes, Siamese strutting like show horses, Norwegian forest cats bounding about on oversized paws, all in a mosaic of gray, brown, red, and black.

“You were right, Tom,” the Siberian said.  “He doesn’t look like much.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Strawberry replied.

“That they can,” said the Siberian.  He took a step toward Kyle and extended a hand.  “At your service,” he said.

“Who are you?” Kyle asked.  “Who are you cat people?”

“I told you,” Tom said, and the annoyance had left his voice.  “We’re not cat people.”

The Siberian took another step and put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder.  “We are known,” he said, “as The Glaring.”

Jackal

Big Buddy’s Datsun was old, and it rattled, and it was one of those damn utility vehicles that hit the market long before power steering.  Rhino tried to hold the cheap plastic steering wheel, worn smooth at the ten and two o’clock position from years of Buddy’s sandpaper-calloused hands.  He felt the front tires twisting and spinning and taking on life of their own.

The back end began to flip to one side, threatening a donut-spin, which could surely become a roll-over in this tiny little thing.  Rhino pressed on the brakes and felt the rear bumper gliding to the left, and he turned hard against it.  The gravel road made a grinding sound like a shower curtain being drawn back on its rod.  The truck stabilized and pointed back down the road, and Rhino pressed harder, scraping the truck to a stop.  He snapped forward, bracing himself against the cheap steering wheel.

He sat for a moment, breathing hard and looking in the rear-view mirror.  There was a healthy cloud of dust behind him, obscuring the road he had traveled, and he wondered how far he had come.  He had passed over two hills close together after fleeing the farm, and he guessed it was little more than a mile.  He had seen what the cats had done.  By now, Big Buddy, that grubby old troll who stank of cheap cigarettes, was most surely gone. 
Good riddance,
Rhino thought. 
Better you than me.

And a part of him almost felt sorry for the cats, which had all sunk their teeth in such a rotted carcass of a man.  No doubt they would be sick for days.

Would they come for him now?  If so, how fast could they run?  Were they even now scampering after him like rats hastening to escape the bow of a sinking barge?  Rhino looked at the fading dust-cloud behind him and half expected to see the cats bursting out of it, scrambling to overtake the truck like a flock of cockroaches.  No, not a flock.  What was it that a group of cockroaches was called?  Not a tribe or a herd … an intrusion, that’s it.  And these cats, like cockroaches, were an intrusion, weren’t they?  In Rhino’s life, in Big Buddy’s.  If it weren’t for those cats, those damned cats, this Sarah business would have been settled days ago and Rhino would be $500 ri—

Rhino …

Ryan “Rhino” Schuler looked up.  He had heard the voice as clearly as if the speaker had been sitting in the car next to him.

Over here, old friend …

He turned to his left, looking off into an open field, rows and rows of knee-high plants with billowy green leaves.  Rhino guessed they were probably celery ripe for the harvest.  About fifteen yards away, amid the rows of plants, a dust devil boiled about the earth.  It spun and widened like a fat snake, and then the colors of dust changed and twisted, taking form, and at last out of the cloud stepped a man in faded jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt.  The sun was in front and to the right of the road, and the man’s face was obscured by the backlight, but there was no mistaking that preternatural calm that seemed to ooze from ever fiber of his body.

“Jack?”

Where are you going, Rhino?

“Home, I guess.  As far away from that place as I can.”

Are you afraid?

“They killed him, man.  They killed Big Buddy.”

A macabre chuckle swelled in the air. 
I told you they were no ordinary cats.

“I gotta go, man.  I gotta get out of here.”

And then where?  Back to home, you say.  What’s waiting for you there?

Rhino thought about it.  “My life, I guess.  I gotta job, and I gotta place to live.”