Culdesac rolled his thumb over the wheel. The tiny fire flared in his hand, reflected in Maynard’s wet eyes. Culdesac tossed the lighter. Obeying his involuntary reflexes, the dog stupidly caught the flame in his hands. The orange fire spread to his arms, chest, and neck, making a popping sound. People in the crowd screamed. Maynard writhed in his chair, frantically patting out the flames, which only made them worse. Desperate, he rose from his seat, standing on his hind legs, and dove into the fountain like some comet touching down on the surface of the ocean. When Maynard emerged from the troubled water, Culdesac snatched him by the throat and pinned him against the stone pedestal. The fire barely left a mark, but the air was thick with the rank smell of burnt hair.
The crowd went silent as everyone tried to hear.
“The Change gave you your legs back, didn’t it?” Culdesac asked. “The Queen made you whole again, and you betrayed her.”
“I can explain—”
Culdesac tightened his grip. “So can I.”
Culdesac turned to Mort(e) and ordered him to take five cats and meet him at the church. They had some digging to do. The rest of the soldiers would hold the civilians here.
“There’s nothing in the church,” Maynard gasped.
“What was it you said?” Culdesac asked. “The humans are getting better at hiding their scent?”
Maynard did not respond.
“So what’s all that coffee doing in the church?” Culdesac said. “What is it hiding?”
Maynard swallowed and began to pant. He looked to the other citizens of Milton for help, not realizing that this one move convicted all of them. Culdesac felt the muscles tense in the dog’s neck. He leaned in closer.
“They’re not going to help you,” Culdesac said. “Look at me. When I’m done with you, you’re gonna beg me to burn you alive.”
He let go. The dog shivered in the fountain while the Red Sphinx trained their rifles on him.
“Sir!” Mort(e) called out.
Mort(e)’s soldiers gathered around a person who had fallen on the sidewalk, about two blocks from the fountain. When Culdesac arrived at the scene, he found Dread at the base of a lamppost, clutching an open wound on his ribs. A trail of blood followed him from the blast site at the Royal Inn. Mort(e) shouted for Tiberius, who came running with his first aid kit.
“She pulled a knife on me,” Dread grunted. The other cats told him to relax, that he would be okay. They made room for Tiberius, who peeled away Dread’s bloody hands to examine the cut.
Mort(e) whispered to Culdesac. “Should we send someone after her?”
“She won’t get far,” Culdesac said. “She’s about to run into a wall of Alphas. I want to see what’s in the church first.”
“You think it’s a weapon?”
“I think it’s something worse.”
Dread moaned as Tiberius pressed a gauze pad to his side. The doctor told the others to hold Dread’s arms as he prepared the thread and needle.
“I suppose you were right about Nox, sir,” Mort(e) said.
“Right.” There was little point in admitting how close he had come to being wrong, and how he was almost ready to live with it. Almost.
···
When the soldiers moved the coffee crates in the storage room of St. Michael’s Church, they found the trap door leading to a hidden chamber. The same one used to smuggle contraband, from escaped slaves to alcohol. The door blended seamlessly with the floor, save for a brass handle embedded in the linoleum tile. The soldiers formed a ring around it, and gave Culdesac the honor of pulling it open.
The aperture released a stench of sweat, urine, vomit, and excrement, so powerful that not even the haze of coffee could seal it in. The cats readied their weapons. A dull radiance emanated from the opening, and a set of wooden stairs descended to a concrete floor below. Culdesac led with his pistol, his feet crunching on a fine dusting of coffee grounds. At the bottom, the chamber extended to the south, a tunnel of some sort, with brick walls on either side.
In the glow of a hanging oil lamp, humans stood on either side of the tunnel. They were mostly children, some emaciated and dead-eyed, with ragged clothes and old, rotting bandages in various places. The rest were elderly. Some sat in wheelchairs, others lay sprawled on blankets on the floor. An old man with no teeth and paper-thin flesh clutched an air tank that fed him oxygen through a tube in his nose. A little girl wearing a man’s dress shirt tried to stifle her tears at the sight of these beasts entering their refuge.
From side chambers, more of them emerged, bringing their desperate scent with them, their stunned eyes too exhausted to shed any tears. The last survivors of the nursing home, stowed away until the Red Sphinx left this town behind. Nox and Maynard must have secretly brought them food. Maynard continued his charade as a paraplegic to avoid suspicion—a pointless gamble that merely delayed the inevitable. The Queen saw everything, even a hole in the ground long forgotten by humans and animals alike.
Whatever battle took place in this town was not between humans and animals, but between those who wanted to protect these humans, and those who did not. Some of the humans probably thought that they could repel the Red Sphinx long enough for their people to escape, but changing circumstances forced them to hide instead.
With Mort(e) and several other soldiers behind him, Culdesac walked deeper into the tunnel. None of these humans posed a threat. They shivered as he passed, as if his presence carried with it a chill. At the end of the tunnel, he saw a pile of broken cinder blocks and plowed earth. The passageway ended at the Royal Inn, the speakeasy from the human age. The drone strike was meant to stop anyone from finding the other entrance.
Culdesac tried to imagine the last few days for these people. The grownups probably kept the children distracted with games, with gently whispered songs and lullabies. Perhaps they prayed, or convened nightly meetings with talent shows and poetry recitals. Judging from the smell, at least one of the residents died down here, and the humans held some kind of mourning ritual despite their inability to bury the body. More than one of them must have said that they lived like animals in this cave, a thought that both angered and amused Culdesac.
“Where’s Chandra?” he asked.
The humans did not even bother trying to hide her, or to stall him. The woman stepped forward, slightly shorter than the others, with enormous bags pulling at her black eyes. Gray lightning bolts streaked through her dark hair. Her threadbare nurse’s scrubs clashed with her jangling gold bracelets, her necklace, and her red lipstick. Though this war aged her, shriveled her, she maintained the luxuries of jewelry and makeup while trapped here in hell.
“How do you know my name?” she asked.
“Nox. She tells me you were her favorite.”
A young girl coughed. Her mother—a pale woman with a shaved head—nervously covered her mouth to silence her.
“Is Paulie here, too?” Culdesac asked.
“He died.” Her voice betrayed no sadness, only a seething anger. Perhaps she tried to save his life, or to make his last hours comfortable before he expired.
“The Chihuahua told me about him,” Culdesac said.
Chandra bit her lip. The red lipstick bled onto her still-perfect teeth. “Are you saying they betrayed us?”
“No. They tried to hide you.”
Her lip quivered as a tear rolled off her cheek. “Then we’ve won. You may not see it yet. But there are others like them. They won’t kill for you anymore.”
She spoke with the unnerving confidence of a person who had not seen the sun in a week. These humans told themselves all kinds of stories to keep going another day. Nox loved them for it. Their words became truth, as real as anything that could be seen or touched. Nox chose this over her true destiny. And now Culdesac might never find out why.
He motioned for Mort(e) to begin rounding them up. Then he headed for the stairs.
>
“What will happen to us?” Chandra asked.
Culdesac stopped and cleared his throat. “Something worse than this, I’m afraid.”
His second in command knew what to do from there. These humans would be detained, along with their traitorous allies outside. Some day, Culdesac would count this as a victory in the long war that lay ahead. Some day.
“Wait,” Chandra said. “Nox and Maynard—are they still alive?”
Well, would you get a load of that? This slave master wanted to know if her pets survived.
“No,” Culdesac said.
It felt true. He would make it true.
Chapter Eight
Family
The cat fled into the forest in a panic, leaving crushed grass, scuff marks in the dirt, and broken twigs in her wake. She grew more careful as she slowed, the footprints inching closer to one another. She left the trail when she could, scrabbling over boulders, slinking along felled trees. None of it would matter. She could not avoid disturbing the moss, stepping on a patch of dirt, or shedding clumps of her thick coat. But besides that, her smell dragged behind her, a mixture of coffee, fur, sex, liquor, and smoke. Which was why, instead of detouring to the barren mountains like the human had done days earlier, Nox descended straight into the valley as fast as she could, racing to the river. If she hurried, she might have time to cross—assuming she wasn’t afraid of the water, like so many other housecats. Maybe then she could hide her scent and rendezvous with the humans encamped in the wilderness beyond.
Culdesac would overtake her before all that. There would be no suspense this time, no drama. He knew these woods, and Nox didn’t. He knew the hunt. The hunt was life. While these woods gave him strength, they reduced her to a scared creature, a pet locked out of her master’s home.
Culdesac wondered: Was Nox seeing the forest for only the first time? After years spent as a breeder, this race through the woods may have provided the only chance to see the world before her human friends destroyed it. Spring approached, and the midday sun penetrated the thickening canopy, providing an illusion of warmth even in the breeze. New shoots and saplings poked their translucent fingers through the dirt. A beehive hummed. All of it would have been an alien landscape to Nox. If things had gone differently, he could have shown her all of this. In a way, that was exactly what he was doing.
The scent grew stronger at a steep point on the trail, where a boulder poked out of the earth, forming a small cliff. In a hurry to get around it, Nox tried to slide down the rock face, only to skin a knee or an elbow. Culdesac scaled it on all fours, his nose leading the way to the tiny wet skid mark, sticky with her blood. He licked it, and then rolled his tongue along the roof of his mouth. She was a part of him now, activating all of his senses. A few feet away, a divot in the sparse patch of grass suggested that she rested here, nursing her wound. Culdesac crept over to the spot, hovered above it, letting her smell drift onto him, into him. She would never know how her scent conjured his mother’s purring, his brother’s growling. When he closed his eyes, he saw the female bobcat from years earlier, looking away from him while he took what he wanted. Ashamed but not defeated. And that memory dissolved, as it always did, into the image of the female’s carcass, with Murmur standing over it, his mouth and claws painted bright red.
If he lingered too long in the memory, the female bobcat would turn into Nox.
Culdesac moved on. With no supplies, Nox would be drawn to sources of food or water. Culdesac found signs of her presence near a stagnant pond. Indentations in the mud showed that she knelt down to take a drink, her throat as dry as sandpaper. Taking a cue from the humans, she then urinated in the pond in the hopes it would disperse the scent. It failed—Culdesac caught a trace of it in the breeze. Though refreshed, Nox nevertheless grew exhausted. The footprints revealed a staggering gait, delirious. Culdesac noticed a claw mark on a tree and wondered if she held onto it for support before sliding off. It would not be long now.
A rustling in the trees to the east. A rumbling in the earth. Culdesac hid behind a tree and watched the leaves shake loose and drift to the ground. Three enormous black pods emerged, Alpha soldiers on patrol. They were part of the Queen’s trap for the humans, a pincer movement that would shear off the enemy’s head. Culdesac rose from his hiding spot and held out his hands. The creatures approached and probed him with their antennae. The smaller ones scurried about on the exoskeletons, forming odd symmetrical patterns as they recognized this ally in the war. Though they could not communicate directly, these animals of different species nevertheless shared a common goal, a common enemy. On the hunt, instinct and empathy replaced reason and language. Still, Culdesac regretted leaving the translator behind. He wanted to hear the Queen’s voice. He wanted her to guide him through this, to assure him that she had foreseen this, and that all of it served a greater good. But then he remembered: she wanted him to face this alone, as a sentient being rather than a mere animal, or a soldier following orders. He understood now.
His energy restored, Culdesac bounded through the forest with his sisters. He was one of them, a part of a whole that hunted as a single organism. No talk, no fear, no regret—a feeling of freedom that he never experienced while prowling the forest with Murmur. Culdesac would never understand why the animals in Milton would reject this gift from the Queen. He blamed the humans. Their corruption spread so far, even into the hearts of the very people they enslaved.
Culdesac and the Alphas found Nox a mere quarter of a mile from the river. She heard them coming. Knowing that she would not make it, she collapsed in a clearing, her back rising with each breath, her tail flat beside her. A nearby tree bore her claw marks, but she gave up on trying to climb. It was no use.
Culdesac made it to her first. When the Alphas surrounded them, he raised his hands. One by one, the sisters skidded to a halt and lifted their antennae. They knew that he needed a minute. The Queen must have told them.
Nox gathered herself, got to her feet. A patch of mud stuck to her belly. The fur on her knee tangled around a wet scab. Exhausted and emaciated, she resembled so many of his people in the days leading up to the Change.
“What happened to the town?” she asked.
“Quarantine.”
“Did the people make it out?”
Instead of lying to her, Culdesac merely stared until she understood.
“It’s all gone,” she whispered. Shaking, she took a few steps away from him. She tripped on a root and clutched a tree to steady herself.
“Do you have any idea why I had to do it? Those humans took care of us. We were a family.”
“Family,” he sneered. “They used you. You were their slaves.”
“It might be simple for you. It’s not simple for me.”
“It’s simple for me because I’ve seen what they can do.”
“Well, I’ve seen what you can do. I’ve seen what the Colony did to you.”
One of the Alphas stirred. They would not stand still for long, no matter how much the Queen favored this bobcat.
“What the Colony did to me,” he began. “What the Queen did, was set me free.”
“If you’re free, then prove it. Let me go.”
Culdesac tilted his head.
“Or come with me,” she said. “The Colony is going to lose this war. And then we’ll rebuild. Animals and humans together. We don’t have to fight anymore. It’ll be different.”
He could picture it: The cannons and tanks going silent, sitting dormant in the fields and on the streets. Animals and humans plowing a freshly tilled garden, laughing, singing. Nox standing by his side, her arm around his shoulders. Children chasing one another, giggling. The image came though in blinding primary colors, like some human-made poster. This was his last chance at whatever life the humans offered. And rather than feeling it slide off of him like some great weight, he simply let it slip from his hand and drop into
the abyss.
“I am free,” he said. “This is my family.”
He turned his back on her. As he left the clearing, the Alphas rushed in. He heard clawing and scraping behind him as he walked deeper into the forest. But Nox did not make a sound.
Chapter Nine
The Embers
Culdesac found the Red Sphinx at the entrance to the caves at the Pharaohs. Uzi stood guard and gave him a salute when he got close enough. Culdesac was too tired to reciprocate. She knew him well enough to leave any questions for the morning. Instead, she pointed to the cave that she reserved for him, near the top of the hill.
After their long journey, most of the soldiers had already retired for the day, though Culdesac spotted a few pairs of eyes staring out from the caves. Striker and Gai Den nodded to him as they cleaned their guns. Dread leaned on a boulder picking at the fresh stitches in his side. Logan, still on chow duty, collected the mobile mess kit, making sure to not bang the pots and pans together too loudly. All in all, these caves felt more natural than the supposed comforts of the human village. The Red Sphinx slept in the wilderness, not in beds with fluffy pillows. Even better: they were on their own again, free from watching over civilians who still wanted to be pets. They would have some new stories from the whorehouse to replace their old ones, and to tide them over until they came across the next settlement.
By then, the sunset formed a yellow ribbon along the hills to the west. To the north, a column of smoke marked the location of Milton—what was left of it. Fires burned in the surrounding forest. The humans walked right into the Queen’s trap. Sweeping into Milton, they encountered a newly established clutch of Alpha soldiers. For months, the humans poked at the nest, only to discover a torrent of ants gushing out, drowning the forest. As night crept in, the explosions blinked on the horizon, followed by a thud seconds later. Bah-boom. Bah-boom. Like waves crashing on sharp rocks.
Near the entrance to his cave, Culdesac found Tiberius and Mort(e) sitting on two wooden crates, with a third crate between them serving as a table. As he expected, the logo for Darby Coffee, Ltd appeared on the side, with its image of a circular map of the world. Next to it, a kettle sat on the red-hot ashes of a dying fire, with steam rising from its spout. The two cats leaned on their elbows, each holding a set of playing cards in their hands. They used cat treats for chips. Tiberius showed a pair of kings. Mort(e) drew two more cards, but did not seem thrilled with the replacements. When they saw him approaching, they slapped their cards on the makeshift table and saluted him. He told them to relax, and to continue with their game.
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