“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 basement. “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, bitch, 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 Coon. “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 Coon 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, Coon. 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 Coon’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 Coon 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 Coon growled, with a look at Hacky that made me really damn glad he wasn’t looking at me.
“Nothing, Coon!” 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 Coon and I exchanged ear-flattened looks. Nobody 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 Coon 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 Coon 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 massive 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. Coon, 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 Coon spat an obscenity. “The garbage is on fire. In this box, right over our backs.”
“It gets worse. Coon, 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…