The cat and his companions ran to the stairway. Meanwhile, the ones surrounding Culdesac tensed up, awaiting his next order.
“Move!” he said. “Take cover behind that building!”
“Incoming!” someone screamed. Several others repeated it.
“Come on!”
“Run!”
“Leave it, let’s go!”
The bobcat looked up to Sebastian. “I’m sorry,” Culdesac said. And then he ran with the others.
The buzzing was getting louder, growing into a full roar, a thunderstorm.
Sebastian rocked the pole forward. Then the momentum reversed. Sebastian put all his strength into it, letting out a scream, lifting his shoulders into the wood. The sky scrolled through his field of vision before stopping at the horizon behind him, the pole bending as far as it could go. It remained there, the wood splintering. And then, like bones shattering, the pole broke, rattling his skeleton. The wood cracked, creaked, groaned, until Sebastian felt himself in free fall. The wires popped free from the top, snapping upward with a loud thwoop. He landed on his back, feeling his teeth clack together with the impact. Upside down at a forty-five-degree angle, Sebastian worked his way to the top of the pole, now partially implanted into a patch of grass. Once he pulled the first loop over the top, the entire knot fell apart like a shedding cocoon. He freed his legs, his arms, his tail, feeling the blood again and the air through his fur.
The buzzing sound was deafening now. Stiffly, Sebastian ran toward the building where the human had camped out. An object streaked across the sky. The municipal building erupted in a ball of flame and smoke. Windows of the nearby buildings burst open like a million discordant bells. The shock of the blast sent the sidewalk leaping up at Sebastian. Broken glass landed on the pavement around him, tinkling on the street like tiny diamonds.
Shouting echoed throughout the street. Amidst the rubble, Culdesac called out to his people to see who was still alive. The fire lit up a snowfall of ash.
Sebastian heard footsteps. Not padded cats’ feet, but human boots. Lifting his head from the cement, he saw the human running through the intersection. Sebastian got to his feet and sprinted after him. The human had a walkie-talkie held to his ear and was frantically shouting code words. He did not hear Sebastian pursuing him until it was too late. Sebastian tackled him, slamming him to the ground so that the man’s body skidded across the concrete. Sebastian gripped the man’s oily hair and pulled his head up.
“Who are you?” Sebastian said.
“Lord,” the man said.
“What?”
“Lord, forgive these wretched creatures,” the man said in a sobbing voice. “They know not what they do.”
Sebastian could not get enough of the man’s smell. It was so much like Daniel. Even though this man was his enemy—able to summon fiery death from the heavens—Sebastian wanted nothing more than to lose himself in the scent of the past, of deodorant and sweat and bad breath and coffee and cigarettes. Something inside him would always be broken, would always long for dead friends and capricious masters and a phony slave life.
Before Sebastian could say anything, the Red Sphinx had arrived. They formed a circle around the human.
“Good job, No-Name,” Culdesac said from somewhere in the crowd. “I think you’re cured.”
“He’s clean,” another voice said.
“Let us take over from here,” Culdesac said. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?”
Sebastian wanted to ask the man more questions—about what was out there, about why this had happened. About any dogs he may have seen wandering about. But the man continued reciting his incantations. He was in some kind of trance, speaking to people who were not there.
Sebastian stood up. The cats’ guns were still raised, but Sebastian was so tired, hungry, and sore that it did not seem important if they decided to shoot him.
“Can you hear me, human?” Culdesac asked. The man kept rambling, pretending that he could not see any of them. “You just lit your own barbecue,” the bobcat said, motioning to the smoldering building.
“This animal may still be symptomatic, Captain,” Luna said. “We may still need to put him down. I recommend we—”
“Luna,” Culdesac interrupted.
“Yes, sir?”
“You are relieved of command. You’re no longer my Number One.”
Her rifle lowered a bit. “Yes, sir,” she said.
“Take three soldiers,” Culdesac instructed. “Prepare our feast.”
“Yes, sir.”
Luna and two other cats dragged the man away. Plumes of vapor extended from their nostrils.
“No-Name,” Culdesac said. Sebastian eyed him. Culdesac seemed to like this defiant body language. “We talk now,” Culdesac said. “You and I.”
CULDESAC AND SEBASTIAN walked along the waterfront. The moon reflected off the water, sending shafts of light into the sky and turning Culdesac’s face into a silver jack-o’-lantern.
The odor of roasting meat wafted toward them, occasionally interrupted by the breeze blowing along the river. Tangy and thick and delicious, it lingered in Sebastian’s mouth and nostrils.
“You’ll have to indulge me,” Culdesac said. “I grew up eating rats and grubs. Raw. And now the Colony is supplying us with protein rations from their organic farms. They do the job, but they’re boring. Cooked human meat has become a delicacy for me.”
Sebastian nodded to show that he understood. He was still unsure if he would partake in the meal, no matter how hungry he was.
“You’re a house cat,” Culdesac said. “A house slave. Locked away from all of this. So you must be wondering: Why all the destruction?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s because the humans are dangerous,” Culdesac said. “And I don’t just mean their technology or their plague. It’s their philosophy. It’s poison.”
Sebastian nodded.
“You must have observed it,” Culdesac said.
A concrete railing separated them from the river. A breeze disturbed the water.
“I suppose,” Sebastian said.
“These humans,” Culdesac said, “they’ve placed themselves at the center of the universe. You and I could have a mate, with a brood of kittens, roaming about the hilltops as nature intended. And the humans would consider it a nuisance to be terminated. The Queen fixed all that. We owe her everything.”
“Why did the Queen do this to us?” Sebastian asked.
“We are her experiment,” Culdesac said, extending his arms to illustrate the magnitude of it all. “Everything she does is in pursuit of knowledge. Of truth. She chose to raise us up so that we could replace the humans. She guides us while letting us choose our own destinies.”
“How will we be any different from the humans?”
“Well,” Culdesac said scratching an itch on the side of his neck, “in a lot of ways, we’ll be the same. We can’t live exactly as we did before, killing one another for food and land. We’re going to have a society very similar to what the humans wanted. We’ll have houses and jobs. We’ll raise families. We’ll even watch television, once the electricity gets turned on again. But there will be one difference.”
Culdesac allowed for a pause. Sebastian felt the tension build. “We won’t think that this world is ours alone.”
“Is that what the humans really believe?” Sebastian asked.
“It’s worse than that,” Culdesac said. “Many of them believe that there is a human in the sky, an old man with a beard. He made the earth a garden for them. And he made us their slaves. You must have noticed your masters chanting to this old man, asking him for favors and trinkets.”
Sebastian told Culdesac about Janet whispering to no one.
“They believe that there is another world waiting for them when they die,” Culdesac said. “Of course, not all of them think this way. And even among those who do, there are many who do not take it seriously. But the belief has corrupted all of them. I’ve se
en this evil up close. I’ve seen what a human can do when he is cornered and praying to his god for deliverance. There is nothing more dangerous. Nothing more cruel. More animal.”
Culdesac allowed this to settle. In the distance, there was muffled laughter from the Red Sphinx as the human carcass turned on a spit over the fire.
“That is why we fight,” Culdesac whispered. “To reclaim a land overcome with evil. The evil of men who believe that they are our rulers, men who cannot be reasoned with. Who are insane enough to spread a disease so dangerous that it could wipe out everything, including themselves, all to please a father in the clouds who doesn’t exist. We don’t need a god because we have the Queen. And she doesn’t make promises that she cannot keep. She doesn’t ask us to worship her. She merely asks for us to live in peace, to live for today and for one another.”
Culdesac asked Sebastian if he knew what cats had been like thousands of years earlier. Sebastian said that he knew enough about evolution to understand that felines had once been much larger, and that they had lived in the wild.
“Before the humans seduced and kidnapped us,” Culdesac explained, “we were hunters. We saw the world as predators. It is our way. The humans wanted to turn us into their little slave dolls. But the ants—they are hunters like us. I’ve seen them stalking the plains, an army acting as one. They see freedom in the hunt, the way our people once did. They are our liberators and our natural allies. That is why we fight. We fight for our future and for the generations that were lost.”
“I cannot join you,” Sebastian said. “I have to find my friend.”
“Nothing could survive out here for long,” Culdesac said. “I’ve been at this for longer than you know. I’m sorry, but your friend is almost certainly dead.”
“I have to find out.”
“But you’re both different now. You don’t have to hold on to these things anymore.”
“I am not that different,” Sebastian said. “This is what I want. It is what I promised.”
“What if I were to tell you that the reason why we waited to see if you had EMSAH was because the Queen herself told us to do so?”
Sebastian tilted his head, incredulous.
“The Queen sees everything,” Culdesac said. “Even a lost house cat. She knows who you are. She knows that you were meant to fight. With us.”
“How do you know this?”
“I speak to the Colony,” Culdesac said. “Which means I speak to the Queen.”
“But how?”
“They gave me a special device, actually,” Culdesac said. “It allows me to interpret their chemical signal. And it converts my voice into their language. Perfect communication, if you can master it. I’ll show it to you one day.”
“You’ve seen her, then?”
“Not exactly,” Culdesac said. “The collective knowledge of the Colony flows through their chemical signals. If you communicate with one ant, you communicate with them all. It’s a giant loop of information, constantly updated, constantly corrected. And they know about you. As they know about me. And Luna. And Socks.”
“I am no good to you as a soldier,” Sebastian said.
“Listen,” Culdesac said. “I’m sorry about your friend. But there is more to your life than your little patch of sunlight.”
Sebastian could not hide his emotions upon hearing this. Culdesac, meanwhile, nodded in approval. Somehow this bobcat and his insect friends had intercepted this dream, hijacked it. That was the moment Sebastian died. There had been a time when he understood that people would go away. Now the person he was had gone away. He was trapped in this present with these strangers who already seemed to know who he was, and who he was going to be.
Culdesac continued to speak about the Red Sphinx, about the difficult days ahead. Perhaps, Culdesac said, once the war was over, Sebastian could continue his search. Or maybe in their travels they would come across a lonely dog also searching for a lost friend. There was still plenty of living to do, regardless of what had happened to Sheba, or how far away she was. Sebastian would have to keep going, no matter how tired he was, or how hurt, or sad, or alone.
“You have a choice,” Culdesac said, “but you don’t really have a choice. Whatever you want to do, you can’t do it alone. We can be your family.”
Another warm breeze laced with the charred odor of the dead man filled Sebastian’s nostrils.
He told Culdesac that he would join him.
“Excellent,” Culdesac said. “Now what shall we call you?
Sebastian chose to be called Mort(e). Names were such an important thing. For some of these cats, choosing a new identity was the first act of independence. It was not long before Mort(e) learned the significance behind every one in the Red Sphinx: Cromwell, Dutch, Bentley, Gai Den, Dane, Rookie, Anansi, Seljuk, Stitch, Rao, Biko, Dread, Texan, Riker, Striker, Sugar, Logan, Bin Lydon, Foxtrot, Folsom, Hanh, Jomo, Uzi, Le Guin, Brutal, Bailarina, Hennessey, Juke, Bicker, Packer, Ironhawk. Only Red Sphinx members knew the origins of one another’s names. No one else could be told.
Sebastian based his name on a word he had come across in one of the old libraries. A word meaning death. He had died. He had killed. And he would kill again. So the name fit. But it could also be a normal name, the name of a regular guy named Mort who was meant for a life surrounded by loved ones. That life was still out there, but it would have to wait. Hence the need to keep the letter e in parentheses. Things could go either way. They could always go either way.
Culdesac soon chose Mort(e) as his Number One, the executive officer who carried out his commands. Luna was not happy about it, but she knew she was not cut out to be a leader. Before Mort(e) joined the Red Sphinx, she had had to euthanize many EMSAH-infected animals and was never the same. Thus, when she turned out to be wrong about Mort(e) having the virus, she second-guessed her actions. Her mind became distracted by memories of dead comrades, along with living ones who would soon be dead. It was not long after Mort(e) joined the band that she was unceremoniously killed during a seven-minute firefight with army deserters who had sought refuge in a fire station.
The battles continued. Sieges of small towns that had somehow held out, where old men and twelve-year-old boys fired rusty shotguns from freshly dug trenches. Raids of bunkers in which starving humans appeared ready to beg for death. Weeklong chases through forests, through city streets, through the bowels of abandoned factories and warehouses, hunting prey in the dark where only the felines could see. Burning entire villages to the ground to make the humans scurry out like vermin, and then cutting them down, or pouncing on the slow ones to save for later. Enormous pitched battles fought on plains with the Alphas as cannon fodder. Culdesac was right—their species was meant to do this. Although Mort(e) was sad to find he was so good at something so ghastly, he learned to extract some pleasure from it. Each murder was revenge for his loss. Every human who pleaded for mercy, every man or woman who whispered a prayer to the old man in the sky, had to pay for Sheba. Any one of them could have tried to kill her. Or infect her with EMSAH. Or enslave her again. Every human was his enemy. And for years, he never came across a single one who acted otherwise.
Mort(e) surprised himself with his toughness, with his willingness to shed Sebastian the House Cat so quickly. The Red Sphinx traveled light, slept in ditches and fields, drank water from puddles, ate worms and overripe berries to stay alive. They were lean and angry. Always reminding one another, the way Culdesac did, to aim true, to stay on the hunt.
Tiberius would eventually earn his chosen name, even saving Mort(e)’s life on a few occasions. Mort(e) returned the favor. There were three straight missions in which they led the way. The first involved scaling the side of a building to toss a sniper from a rooftop. The second required them to swim to an anchored boat and plant a bomb on her hull. The other cats were too scared of the water and watched in awe as Mort(e) dove in. The third was a suicide mission, a frontal assault on a machine-gun nest that turned out to be operated by three teena
ge girls whose families had left them behind. After that, the rest of the Red Sphinx begged to be among the first for such missions. They had been shamed by their skepticism of Socks the medic and the choker-house-cat-turned-warrior. Their new Number One was somehow charmed, chosen by the Queen herself. Even those who had allied themselves with Luna had to agree that Mort(e) was the fearless, competent leader they needed. He laughed at death as it slid off him again and again. He was death.
The Red Sphinx recruited other stray cats to replace the ones they lost. Some came looking for the Red Sphinx, driven by growing legends among the animals. Tales of Mort(e) the Fearless. So many wanted to join that Culdesac would force them to audition by fighting one another. The matches were sometimes so vicious that Mort(e) would intervene and tell both contestants that they had qualified.
The months bled into years, and the years folded into one another until Mort(e) found himself wondering if it had been two years or three since he had killed his master. Had it been three years or four since he had last seen Sheba? One morning, he woke from a dream realizing that he could not remember the last time he had thought of her. Weeks? Months? He wanted to beg her memory for forgiveness. Forgetting her was just as bad as killing her.
Thanks to Sheba, Mort(e) was able to learn about pain—and then to switch it off—so much faster than the other Red Sphinx. Thus the memories of those awful years became buried, a series of fragments seen through a foggy glass. It was the best he could hope for.
SOMETIMES, HOWEVER, THE past came looking for him.
For all Mort(e)’s acts of bravery over those eight years, none compared with the time that he and Tiberius defied Culdesac’s orders and went snooping around in a town decimated by the EMSAH syndrome. Tiberius had been clamoring for an opportunity to study the effects of the plague. As company medic, he had been beset with recurring nightmares about being caught in an EMSAH outbreak, surrounded by corpses that could walk upright.
So there was a noble, selfless goal. But the opportunity to search for Sheba was the real motivation. She could be in some infected town, waiting to die, wondering if she would ever see him again. Or perhaps she wasn’t wondering at all. In his most sullen moods, he thought that it would be better for Sheba to be dead than for her to forget him. And then he hated himself for thinking such a thing.
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