Cat's Paw

by Nick Green

  ‘Polecats. When I was in chains I found a stone. I broke the chains. I burned the one who kept me caged. Then other people came, but they caged me too. I burned the ones who kept me caged. Now they cage you inside your very own home with their trains and their noise and their stink. But this time we cannot burn them, or break our chains with a stone. I have found another way.’

  He threw back his head and screamed. It was the scream of a child being murdered. The lift shafts hollered back until Ben feared the tower might fall at the sound of it.

  ‘Find it,’ cried Fisher. ‘Bring me what I need. Dig it from the walls and bring it to me.’ As his troops poured past him he added, unnecessarily, ‘It looks like raw bread. Don’t eat it.’

  In his strikingly artistic hand Fisher had drawn new sheets of instructions, with the charge-loaded walls now marked in yellow highlighter. Kevin, ever the organiser, split the gang into yet more groups to tackle each of the blast floors. Squad A, which included Ben, was assigned to the highest. Squad D would scavenge the explosives on the ground floor while the others pillaged the storeys in between. Following Jeep up the stairs, Ben looked around for Thomas and Hannah. Both were in Squad B. Floor nine.

  Barking orders ridiculously, Jeep led his squad to the fifteenth floor and into the first apartment. City lights twinkled in empty window frames, otherwise it was as black as a coal mine. Gary and Antonia stumbled ahead into a room that Ben guessed had once been a kitchen. The wall with the window was creepered with cables that grew from silver roots, planted in oozing foam. His team-mates got busy with pliers, screwdrivers and Swiss Army knives, digging into the holes. Soon Antonia was dropping putty-like lumps into her bag.

  Gary tossed his dreadlocks. ‘Get a move on.’

  Ben started chipping with his screwdriver, filling his bag with chunks of plaster which he hoped would fool them for now. Where was Geoff? Was he even coming? What if they finished the job before he got here? Then, as if in answer, a warm light kindled inside him. Yes. Geoff was out there somewhere. He was close by. Ben’s Oshtis catra pulsed again and he was sure – could it be? – that he sensed someone else too. Tiffany? His tiredness melted away.

  Pretending to finish this wall he entered the shell of the old living room. There he found Jeep, apparently messing around. Jeep had cut loose a snake of cable, still attached to its silver cylinder.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Don’t talk. Work.’

  ‘Aren’t you s’posed to help?’ Antonia asked. ‘We’re getting blisters here.’

  ‘Yeah, stop skiving,’ said Gary.

  ‘Check it out,’ said Jeep. ‘See what shock tube can do.’ He tied the cord into a crude loop. ‘You, Ben. Gimme your hand.’

  Ben folded his arms.

  ‘Spoilsport.’ Jeep crossed to the window, where roosting pigeons huddled out of the wind. Instantly he had one flapping by the neck, while its friends clattered into the night. He twisted its wings one after the other and the bird stopped flapping. Shrill cries gurgled from its beak and it bobbed its head crazily back and forth, as if trying to catch Ben’s eye. Did its stupid bird brain hold out a glimmer of hope? Whatever was happening, Ben would let it happen. He was going to stand here and watch it happen.

  Jeep looped the shock tube around its plump body and took up the end with the silver cylinder attached.

  ‘What you doing?’ Antonia demanded.

  ‘All right,’ said Jeep to himself. ‘Couple of these beauties left.’

  He produced one of his bangers and pushed it deep inside the silver cylinder. He twiddled the firework’s blue touch-paper. Out came his lighter.

  ‘Jeep, don’t.’ That was as far as Gary got. Jeep lit the banger and dropped the loop of shock tube. The pigeon struggled. What happened next was too fast for even Ben to follow. He supposed the banger went off first. Yet between the bang and its echo came a whip-crack, the cord gave a twitch and the air was full of feathers. Then the loop was empty. An odd smell tainted the air, like roast chicken on Bonfire Night. The shock tube itself looked undamaged, but of the pigeon there was no sign.

  Jeep whooped in delight.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he crowed. ‘Watch the birdie! I’m going to zap something else.’

  He looked at Ben. Ben stepped backwards. Then Jeep was slammed into the wall and pinned by something tall, red-haired and furious.

  ‘What–’ Kevin panted, ‘what did you just do?’

  ‘Nothing! Just seeing if a banger could set off a blasting cap. Like it said in my Guns and Ammo magazine.’

  ‘No more magazines!’ Kevin bellowed. ‘No more till you behave! Got that?’

  ‘But Kevin–’

  ‘That’s final. You could’ve blown us up. Be glad it was me that caught you.’

  Jeep continued to protest while Gary and Antonia got back to work. Ben saw his chance. He slipped round the corner, then ran across the landing and down the stairs to the ninth floor. He knew what to do. His friends were out there, Geoff, Tiffany and probably the other Cat Kin too. They would be waiting to strike. But Geoff was counting on him to make their job easier.

  He found Thomas and Hannah in a room by themselves, bickering over the best way to extract plastic explosive from a borehole.

  ‘…barbeque tongs would be the most efficient implement…’

  ‘What we have is a knife, a screwdriver and pliers–’

  ‘Can I interrupt?’ said Ben.

  Hannah flicked the hair from her eyes.

  ‘You’re not meant to be in this team,’ said Thomas.

  ‘No,’ said Ben. ‘And neither are you. None of us are meant to be here. Are we?’ He grabbed hold of them. ‘Are we?’

  ‘Leave us alone,’ said Hannah, but weakly.

  Ben took a deep breath. This was such a risk.

  ‘You remember that guy who came to get me before? Fisher calls him the White Cat. He’s the only person Fisher’s afraid of. And he’s here now. He’s outside.’

  Thomas’s eyes widened. ‘Then we have to tell–’

  ‘Think!’ Ben shook him. ‘Look in your bag. What’s in there? What’s it for?’

  Thomas shrugged.

  ‘You know Fisher’s plan,’ hissed Ben. ‘You helped him drill underneath the Thames. Put two and two together!’

  ‘It don’t matter what we think,’ said Hannah. ‘You got to do as he says.’

  ‘If we refused,’ said Thomas, ‘it would happen regardless. Only we’d be dead.’

  ‘Got no choice,’ sniffed Hannah.

  Ben wrung the cloth of Thomas’s jacket in frustration. His fingers ripped the seams of the grey urban camouflage and he had one final, foolish idea. Oh well – he’d tried everything else.

  ‘Yes you have.’ Summoning his Mau claws he gripped his own jacket and tore it open down the middle. Underneath was no red Superman letter ‘S’, but a pale green pattern of whiskers on black. It would have to do.

  ‘The White Cat will stop Fisher. But he needs my help. And I need you.’

  At last, hope in their eyes. Ben tore at the rest of his polecat gear, casting it off, feeling the freedom of his pashki kit by bouncing on his toes. From his toolbag he retrieved the object he had hidden for so long among his bedclothes. Inking up the cat face-print he pressed the tabby markings onto his skin.

  ‘Tomorrow you’ll see your families again. If you help me tonight.’

  ‘Um,’ said Hannah.

  ‘You can’t expect us to make a decision so quickly–’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas and Hannah together.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Ben mounted the stairs.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be heading down?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘No. Up.’

  ‘But Kevin’s up there,’ exclaimed Hannah.

  Ben set his jaw. ‘Yes.’

  Kevin stopped on the stairs between the deserted twelfth and eleventh floors. A black-clad figure had occupied the landing below him. Its face was whorled with peculiar patte
rns.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s okay. It’s me.’

  ‘Ben?’ Kevin frowned. Hannah and Thomas moved in the shadows. ‘And the Dozy Twins? What is this?’

  ‘Your voice sounds rough,’ said Ben. ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Why don’t you do the talking, then?’

  ‘Does Fisher strangle you a lot?’

  ‘Get to the point.’

  ‘We’re not doing this,’ said Ben. ‘We are not going to drown thousands of people.’

  ‘Who said anything about that?’

  ‘You helped, didn’t you?’ Ben advanced up the stairs. ‘You helped him plan it. Only now you’re not sure. You try to forget it, but it’s in your head. All the time. You make yourself not think about it, but I know…’ Ben stopped two steps below him. ‘I know you dream about it.’

  Kevin looked down with sad eyes.

  ‘Jeep was right about you.’

  ‘I’m not your enemy,’ said Ben. ‘I came to help. You don’t have to stay with Fisher.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘You can leave him tonight. He won’t be able to stop you.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Ben had given enough away. He said nothing.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Kevin. ‘Martin could slaughter us all in a minute. But he doesn’t. Which means he must love us. He doesn’t kill us because he loves us. And I’m telling you, Ben, before I met Martin Fisher, I had no idea what that felt like.’

  His eyes flickered dreamily upwards.

  ‘You’re as mad as he is,’ said Ben.

  ‘Now, Jeep.’

  A plucking noise, as if the tension in the air had snapped. No human eye could have seen the feathered bolt on its way to plunge into Ben’s chest. But feline senses pierced the darkness equally well. His sight and his hearing formed one searchlight beam, tracing the arrow’s flight as a needle of fire, and his Mau body grabbed his muscles like an electric shock, twisting him out of harm’s way. He saw Jeep, one flight of steps above, peering down the stock of his miniature crossbow.

  One movement flowed into the next and Ben’s dodge became a leap. Quite how he did it he was hazy himself; all he remembered was kicking out against opposite walls and bounding vertically up the stairwell, over the heads of Kevin and Jeep to gain the upper landing. Catching his breath he remembered something Tiffany had told him: a cat always looks down on danger.

  Jeep wore the expression of a tennis player served an ace. He folded his crossbow and flicked out the blade of his knife.

  ‘Try not to kill him,’ said Kevin, drawing his own.

  Both were squinting. How well did their training let them see in this faint light? Ben was sure now that his reflexes were faster. And even if they proved stronger than him, he knew something they didn’t: behind and below them, lurking in the gloom, Thomas and Hannah stood ready to help. Although they wouldn’t be his first choice as warriors, Ben had seen their mustel-id skills and reckoned them handy enough. If they could only catch a spark of courage...

  ‘Okay, I’ll try not to,’ Ben replied.

  He let Jeep and Kevin advance to the top of the flight, where the landing opened up to give him more space to move. And then, like a whirlwind, he moved.

  CAT VERSUS POLECAT

  Crowned with watery halos, the streetlights stood guarding the dark tower. Cold signals shivered through her Mau whiskers as the dew descended. Crossly she refused Olly’s offer of chewing gum, then changed her mind and took it.

  ‘Do you think they’re in there?’ said Daniel.

  ‘I can hear them,’ Tiffany replied.

  Yusuf fidgeted on top of a post box. ‘Remind me what we’re waiting for?’

  ‘For them to thin out,’ said Geoff. ‘The explosive is spread across four separate floors. To save time they’ll put a team on each floor. There shouldn’t be more than six in any team.’

  ‘Whereas there are eight of us,’ said Mrs Powell.

  ‘So we can take them one group at a time,’ said Geoff.

  The two pashki masters crouched in the shadow of a van, so much like hunting cats that Tiffany rubbed her eyes to make sure. Geoff’s face was marble in its ghostly cat-paint, and with his hair tied back he looked sharp and lean, a warrior once more. Mrs Powell’s prowl suit bore the grey and black patterns that recalled her cat Jim’s dappled coat, while her vivid face-print was the brand of the ebony mould she had once left behind at her London flat. She’d been touched to discover that Tiffany had kept it safe, in case they ever should meet again.

  Tiffany felt Cecile tremble. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘N-nothing.’

  ‘It’s okay to be afraid.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Cecile gulped. ‘It’s not the polecats. Not really. It’s just that– that place. The tower. It feels… deadly.’

  ‘Buildings packed with dynamite often do,’ said Olly.

  ‘It can’t go off, though,’ said Daniel. ‘Right?’

  ‘Not without a massive electric charge to its detonator,’ said Geoff. ‘No chance of that. The building’s own power will have been cut off months ago. Nothing can happen till the demolition crew come in the morning, by which time –’

  Tiffany heard no more. Her stomach cramped, her Oshtis catra burning red.

  Mrs Powell turned. ‘Tiffany?’

  ‘Ben,’ she gasped. ‘It’s him, I know it. In there.’

  ‘What about him?’ Susie spat her gum out in alarm.

  Tiffany fell to one knee. ‘No. It’s terrible. Make it stop.’

  ‘Let go,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘Tiffany, let it go. Or it will drain your strength.’ Grasping Tiffany’s shoulders she made a purring noise from the depths of her larynx. Tiffany felt the soothing vibrations drill into her bones and found she could breathe more easily.

  ‘Ready?’ said Mrs Powell.

  Impulsively Tiffany held out her hand, like a paw in its fingerless leather glove. The Cat Kin reached out and touched it.

  ‘I heed no words nor walls,’ she murmured. Hesitantly the group joined in:

  ‘Through darkness I walk in day

  And I do not fear the tyrant.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Geoff.

  Dropping in behind him they scaled the tower’s security fence. Spreading out in a ripple of darkness they came on, stealing across the plain of paving stones as stealthy and swift as a killer tide.

  ‘Remember.’ Mrs Powell’s whisper reached their ears. ‘We are the hunters. They are the prey. Although they outnumber us, with pashki we outmatch them. Mustel-id is a crude weapon, a feeble imitation.’

  ‘I can’t really say I agree–’

  ‘Sorry, Geoffrey, it is. Mustel-id is effective, in its way, but brutal. And full of gaping holes. If we pile on the pressure, we will see their clumsy armoury fall to bits.’

  They were too close now for Geoff to argue back. At his signal they climbed the wall, their Mau claws finding cracks in the concrete. Empty first-floor windows offered a way in. Geoff halted them with an upraised palm, then made a cat-ears sign with his fingers: Listen. From below came an exotic brew of sounds: voices, taps and clinks. He sniffed.

  ‘Can’t smell Fisher. He must be on a higher floor. Still up for the plan, Felicity?’

  ‘You know me, Geoffrey. Humane.’

  ‘What’s the plan?’ hissed Olly in Tiffany’s ear.

  ‘You’ll get the hang of it,’ said Mrs Powell.

  ‘The hang of what?’ pleaded Susie.

  ‘Scaring the willies out of them.’ Geoff spun a coin. ‘Heads it is. You get the stairs.’

  He dived into a lift shaft. Mrs Powell was already bounding down the staircase. Tiffany sprang after her and the Cat Kin followed. Down hurtled Daniel, above him Susie, angled on the air in a poise beyond most human gymnasts. Yusuf leapt five steps at a time. Tiffany glimpsed the shade of Cecile, near-invisible around the whites of her eyes, and Olly’s normally friendly face twisted in a tiger snarl. Down they came like the wrath
of Pasht, the scorching desert wind, and the roar of their approach was the deafening roar of silence.

  Touching down on the ground floor a beat behind her teacher, Tiffany found her eyes tangled in the jungle of cords and cables. Then her Mau senses got to work, breaking down the blast-floor’s landscape into passages, escape routes, dangers and mystery zones, scrubbing out the parts that didn’t matter. Any moving object seemed to glow in the dark, the faster the brighter, leaving sparkler trails. Brightest of all burned the three figures rushing from behind a square pillar, their faces masked in black.

  Ptah. The noise detonated in the polecats’ faces, stopping them two strides from Mrs Powell. Their knives and screwdrivers stabbed the air. A growl came from the lift shafts.

  ‘Good evening, vermin. The White Cat is here. I eat weasels alive, and I need my five a day.’

  The masked figures whirled and collided. Outnumbered in front and spooked from behind, they clawed past one another in their dash to escape. But Geoff and Mrs Powell had scared them rather too well. In their confusion they ran to the main door, forgetting it was shut fast. Tiffany, leading her friends in pursuit, realised too late that she had cornered them in the lobby. The trio, two boys and a fair-haired girl, rounded on her.

  ‘We don’t want to–’ That was as far as she got. With a screaming war-cry the polecats charged. Yusuf tackled the biggest to the ground and Olly piled on top of him. The girl leaped over the scrum, only to be grabbed by a sudden Mrs Powell. The remaining boy slashed wildly with a knife until Tiffany kicked it flying and the others brought him down. Pinned on the floor by a dozen knees and elbows, all three polecats thrashed like rats in traps.

  ‘Look out,’ cried Geoff. Two more of the gang burst from a hidden corner and ran full-pelt for the stairs. ‘Don’t let them warn the others!’

  Tiffany wrested free of the pile-up and gave chase. Geoff caught the first quickly, whipping the feet from under him. Tiffany blocked the exit to the stairwell moments before the second boy reached it. He was a hulking teen with a smudge of moustache beneath his huge protruding nose. He glared through his mask at this slender girl who seemed to think she could stop him.