It was still long before dawn and the truckers were unloading the day's fresh produce. The black cat smelled freshly slaughtered chicken; his tongue extended to touch his upper lip. Then he uttered a short growl to his companion. The calico leapt onto a display of tomatoes and began to claw them to pieces.
The proprietor yelled in Chinese and hurled his clipboard at the marauding cat. He missed. The men unloading the truck stopped and stared at the apparently insane feline.
"Worse'n Jokertown," one muttered.
"That's one big sumbitchin' kitty," said the other.
As soon as their attention was fixed on the calico cat destroying the tomatoes, the waiting black cat sprang to the back of the truck and seized a chicken in his mouth. The black was a very large cat, at least forty pounds, and he lifted the chicken with ease. Leaping off the tailgate, he ran into the darkness of the alley. At the same time, the calico dodged a broom handle and bounded after.
The black cat waited for the calico halfway down the next block. When the calico reached him, both cats howled in unison. It had been a good hunt. With the calico occasionally aiding the black in lifting the chicken onto curbs, they loped back to the park and the bag lady.
A fellow street dweller had once called her Bagabond in one of his more sober moments and the name had stuck. Her people, the wild creatures of the city, called her by no name, only by their images of her. Those were enough. And she only remembered her name once in a while.
Bagabond pulled around herself the fine green coat that she had found in an apartment-house dumpster. She sat up, careful not to displace the opossum. With the opossum settled in her lap and a squirrel on each shoulder, she greeted the proud black and calico cats with their prize. Moving with an ease that would have amazed the few street denizens who had anything to do with her, the woman reached out and patted the heads of the two feral cats. As she did, she formed the image in her mind of a particularly scrawny chicken, already half-eaten, being dragged out of a restaurant garbage can by the pair.
The black stuck his nose into the air and snorted gently as he obliterated the image in both his head and Bagabond's. The calico merged a meow with a growl in mock anger and stretched her head toward the woman's. Catching Bagabond's eye, the calico replayed the hunt as she had perceived it: the calico at least the size of a lion, surrounded by human legs much like mobile tree trunks. Brave calico spotting the prey, a chicken the size of a house. Fierce calico leaping toward a human throat, fangs bared…
The scene went blank as Bagabond abruptly focused elsewhere. The calico began to protest until a heavy black paw rolled her over on her back and held her down. The calico stilled her protest, head twisted to the side to watch the woman's face. The black was stiff with anticipation.
The picture formed in all three minds: dead rats. The image was obliterated by Bagabond's anger. She rose, shaking off the squirrels and setting the opossum to one side. Without hesitation, she turned and started into one of the tangential, descending tunnels. The black cat bounded silently past and moved ahead to act as a scout. The calico paced the woman. "Something's eating my rats."
The tunnels were black; sometimes a little bioluminescence shed the only light. Begabond couldn't see as well as the cats, but she could use their eyes.
The black picked up a strange scent when the three of them were deep beneath the park. The only connection he could make was with a shifting creature that was equal parts snake and lizard.
A hundred yards farther, they came upon a devastated rats' nest. None of the rats lived. Some were half-eaten. All the bodies had been mangled.
Bagabond and her companions stumbled on in the wet tunnel. The woman slid off a ledge and found herself hip-deep in disgusting water. Unidentifiable chunks batted against her legs in the moderate current. Her temper was not improved. The black cat bristled and projected the same image as a few minutes before, but now the creature was even larger. The cat suggested they all three back out of this passageway now. Quickly. Quietly.
Bagabond blocked out the suggestion as she sidled along a slimy wall to another ravaged nest. Some of these rats were still alive. Their simple picture of their destroyer was the shadowy image of an impossibly large and ugly snake. She shut off the brains of the mortally injured and moved on.
Five yards down the passage was an alcove that provided drainage for a section of the park above. The entrance was three feet above the floor of the tunnel. The black crouched there, muscles taut, ears laid back, yowling softly. He was scared. The calico disdainfully started for the opening, but the black knocked her aside. The larger cat looked back at Bagabond and sent every negative image he could.
Carried by her anger, Bagabond indicated she would go in first. She took a breath, gasped, and crawled into the alcove.
It was lit by a grating in the roof, some twenty feet above. The gray light fell on the naked body of a man. Heelooked to Bagabond to be in his thirties, muscled but not overly so. No flab. Bagabond noted vaguely that he didn't look as wasted as most of the derelicts she had seen. For a moment, she thought he was dead, yet another victim of the mysterious killer. But as her mind focused on the man, she realized he was just asleep.
The cats had followed her into the chamber. The black growled in confusion. His senses told him the trail of the lizard-snake thing ended here-it ceased where the man lay.
Bagabond felt something strange about the man. She didn't usually try to read humans; it was too difficult. Their minds were complex. They plotted, schemed. Slowly she knelt beside him and extended her hand.
The man woke up, caught sight of the dirty street person about to touch him, and jerked away.
"Wha' you want?" She stared at him.
He realized he was naked and hauled himself to the entry of the cave passage- He heard a deep growl, recoiled, barely evaded a swipe from the claws of the biggest cat he'd ever seen. For a moment, he felt himself sliding into the darkness inside his mind. Then he was into the main tunnel and gone. The cats were crying with questions, but Bagabond had no answers. Almost, she thought. Inside his mind. I almost felt… what? Gone.
Bagabond, the calico, and the black searched for another hour, but they found no more trace of the strange scent. There was no monster in the tunnel.
The transients, derelicts, bag ladies, and other street people began their day early, when the best cans and bottles were to be found. Rosemary had slipped out of the penthouse early as well. She had barely slept, and that morning, knowing what was almost certainly happening behind the closed doors of the library, she wanted to get out quickly. The dons were declaring war.
Central Park with its trees, bushes, and benches was heaven for a certain portion of the street people. This sunny morning, Rosemary was looking for a few she had undertaken to help. As she reached the second park bench beyond the stone ridge, a man in tattered clothing hid a bottle in a bush beside the bench and jumped to his feet. He wore an olivedrab fatigue jacket with a less-faded place on one shoulder where the joker Brigade "cannon fodder" patch had once been sewn. Rosemary had suggested it was not prudent to wear the patch this far uptown.
"Hello, Crawler," said the social worker. Somewhere in his late twenties-Rosemary couldn't tell from the vet's sunburned face-he had taken his nickname from his Army job in Vietnam: tunnel crawler. He'd re-upped twice. Then Crawler had seen enough.
"Hey, Rosemary. You got my new goggles yet?" Crawler wore a makeshift pair-cheap 14th Street sunglasses, the eyepieces built up with dirty white adhesive tope. Underneath, Rosemary knew his eyes were dark and overlarge, extraordinarily sensitive.