The Wild Ones--Great Escape

by C. Alexander London

  “Kit,” Eeni whispered. “Wind it up . . . you’re losing them.”

  Kit slouched. He was no good at speeches. “I just thought we looked after our own in Ankle Snap Alley,” he said. “I guess I was wrong.”

  Eeni put her paw on his back to comfort him. “You all should be ashamed of yourselves. You’re selfish, cowardly folk, and you aren’t worth the sneeze of a flea in Kit’s fur. You don’t have the right to scold him or to tell him what to do.” She stepped up to the hawk tied to the counter and started to tear the knots that held him. “Come on,” she said. “Let it never be said the Moonlight Brigade breaks its promises.”

  In a flash, the hawk burst free of his tethers and cast a vicious gaze around the room. All the little creatures tensed. He narrowed his eyes at Eeni, unsure if he should eat her for tricking him or thank her for freeing him. But he was terribly outnumbered and terribly confused, so he flew out with one mighty beat of his wings and left the little animals standing in silent shock behind him.

  “There!” said Eeni. “What’s done is done. He’s gone.” She turned to Kit, and the rest of the Moonlight Brigade stood with her. “Now let’s get out of here and investigate this place called the zoo ourselves. We don’t need all these scared scurrying scalawags to help us anyway. We’re the Moonlight Brigade and no one tells us what to do!”

  They all turned to leave together with Kit, but Blue Neck Ned flapped in front of them, blocking the door. “Oh no you don’t!” he yelled. “You don’t storm out on us after what you did, letting that hawk go! We storm out on you!”

  Eeni rolled her eyes, but let Ned turn and storm out through the door first. Kit looked back over his shoulder at the adult animals.

  Uncle Rik looked so sad, like he wanted to help Kit but just couldn’t bring himself to hope that Kit would actually find his mother.

  And Mr. Timinson looked like he wanted to help but couldn’t defy the rest of Ankle Snap Alley because they paid his teacher salary.

  The others looked away from Kit because they knew they were wrong to scold him for keeping his word and they knew they were wrong to criticize him for wanting to find his mother, but they also knew they weren’t brave enough to help, so they looked down at their paws and claws in shame.

  Kit shook his head at the whole sorry scene, and had turned to leave Larkanon’s when he heard a terrible squawk from outside, followed by the ringing of high-pitched bells.

  Everyone rushed for the door and out into the sunlight. It was morning. They’d been arguing about Valker most of the night and they hadn’t noticed new traps being set outside.

  But right there in the center of the alley was Blue Neck Ned, flapping his wings furiously, but not getting anywhere because his ankles were snared in a trap.

  Chapter Three

  QUICK OF PAW

  BLUE Neck Ned panicked. His wings beat uselessly against the air and he tugged and pulled on the cord that held him to the ground. With every flap, the knot around his ankle drew tighter and tiny little bells on the trap rang out. The ringing bells made the Flealess dogs in the houses all around Ankle Snap Alley bark and howl.

  “Quiet, Ned!” Kit warned. He rushed across the alley to Ned’s side and started working his clever fingers over the trap. He was a raccoon of some trap-springing skill, but couldn’t do much with Ned’s wings flapping in his face. “Stay calm and I’ll get you out!”

  “I’m trapped! I’m trapped!” Ned shouted, not staying calm at all. “They’re coming for me! They’ll take me for sure! I’m too pretty to be in a zoo!”

  “Quiet, feather face!” Eeni scolded him. “You’ll call down every Person in the whole city on us!”

  Kit found the bottom of the trap buried below the dirt of the alley. There was a stake in the ground with a loop of rope on a spring tied to it. Ned had set the spring off when he’d stepped on a hidden switch and the string had zipped itself tight around his ankles. The string was made out of a kind of People material, the same stuff they used to make the bags that always got stuck in trees—plastic. He couldn’t loosen it and he couldn’t break it.

  “Work faster, Kit!” Ned yelled. Kit looked up and saw that all the house pets were at the windows, howling like mad to get their People’s attention. He heard one voice above all the others, even through the window, the miniature greyhound, Titus, leader of the Flealess and sworn enemy of all Wild Ones, most of all Kit.

  “It’s that nasty raccoon!” the dog shouted. “He’s attacking a pigeon! It looks like he’s got Foaming Mouth Fever! You should put him down!”

  The dog winked at Kit from behind the glass. Though the dog’s People couldn’t understand him, it was still a nasty thing to say. You didn’t joke at a raccoon about Foaming Mouth Fever. Foaming Mouth Fever had ended the lives of many noble raccoons, and it was a sensitive subject.

  Kit scowled and focused again on setting Ned free. He couldn’t get the plastic cord off Ned’s ankle, so he had to wriggle his little claw into the knot and try to untie it from the stake. He worked at the knot, twisting and loosening, then trying to chew it with his teeth. The other animals watched in amazement. Kit hadn’t yet found a trap he couldn’t undo.

  Well, except for one . . . the one that had trapped his mother all those seasons ago.

  “You got it, Kit,” Eeni whispered in encouragement. “But maybe get it faster?”

  His ears perked and twisted in the direction of the far end of the alley. Faintly, he heard the screech of brakes and the crunch of tires. He turned to see that one of those rolling boxes that People rode around in—a car—had pulled up outside the alley. This was a big square car and Kit’s instincts screamed at him that it was bad news. A wise raccoon would listen to his instincts and run away. The People inside the car got out and headed straight for the alley.

  “Scatter!” Rocks barked.

  “Run!” Shane and Flynn Blacktail cried.

  “Don’t leave me, Kit!” Blue Neck Ned squawked.

  Kit was kinder than he was wise. He stayed and kept fidgeting with the trap. “Almost got it,” he said, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth as he concentrated. Eeni kept looking back at the approaching people, who had bags and crates and nets with them.

  “This doesn’t look good, Kit,” she said. “I think these are the People who’ve been scooping everyone up.”

  “Kit?” his uncle Rik added. “We really must get out of here now.”

  “Squawk! Squawk! Squawk!” cried Blue Neck Ned. “Don’t leave me!”

  The People drew closer. Out of the corner of his eye, Kit saw them point at him, heard them say something to each other in their language. Heard their footsteps getting nearer and nearer.

  “Got it!” he cheered as the plastic cord slipped from the spring. Ned leaped away, flapping into the air.

  “Oh, thank you, Kit!” the pigeon cried. “I won’t forget what you’ve done for me!”

  “Yeah, right,” Eeni grumbled. “I bet he’s already forgotten.”

  “Let’s go!” Kit said, and he turned to run away with Eeni, but something was wrong. Uncle Rik wasn’t following them.

  Kit stopped, looked back, and saw his uncle standing still, just a few steps from where Ned had been trapped.

  “I’m sorry, Kit,” said Uncle Rik, pointing down at his own leg. A trap had snapped around his ankles. And the People were nearly on top of him.

  “Go,” he said. “There is no time. Hide.”

  “But—” Kit took a step in his direction, eyes darting to the trap. It was the same kind that had trapped Ned. He could undo it if he had time.

  “Eeni, we need to distract those People,” Kit said.

  “How?” she asked.

  “We could . . . um . . .” Kit had no ideas. His mind was jumbled. Even while he was standing there looking at his uncle, his brain had pushed him backward in time, to the memory of his last moments with his
mother. She was caught in a trap a lot like this one. A pack of hunting dogs was bearing down on her and Kit couldn’t set her free.

  He tried to get out of the memory, but when he looked at Uncle Rik and the People walking toward him, he saw his mother and the hunting dogs too. Sometimes seeing his mother’s face in his memory made him smile, but not right now. Why did memory sometimes act like a cool swimming hole and sometimes like a pit of quicksand?

  Kit had panicked when he’d lost his mother, but he was younger then, two seasons younger. Now that he was the leader of the Moonlight Brigade, he would not panic.

  “Get the finches to raise a ruckus,” Kit told Eeni. “We can send them swooping down to drive the People back.”

  “Kit,” Eeni said. “The finches are hiding. Everyone is hiding. Everyone but us.”

  “Then we’ll do this ourselves,” Kit said, and took another step toward his trapped uncle.

  The People could clearly see him, just as he could clearly see them. They wore matching beige uniforms with hats on their heads and big heavy brown shoes on their feet. It amazed Kit how much People dressed like animals—except for the shoes, of course. Animal folk would never put on shoes. People didn’t notice how much they were just like the animal folk, didn’t pay any attention to their clothes or stores and definitely didn’t learn their language. People thought the wild world was theirs and they were the only ones who mattered in it.

  But Kit wasn’t about to let them get away with it, not this time.

  “Don’t worry, Uncle Rik, I’m going to get you out of this trap. There’re no paws faster than mine when it comes to springing traps.”

  “No, Kit,” said Uncle Rik. “You need to run. You don’t have time. I’m an old raccoon and the alley will be fine without me. But you . . . they need you, Kit.”

  “But I need you, Uncle Rik,” Kit said.

  “Please, do what I ask, and go,” his uncle said. The People had stopped nearby and were watching them.

  Kit turned and looked at the People, hesitated. He even thought about charging at them with his claws out, hissing and barking every curse word he could think of. They wouldn’t understand him, but they’d at least know he was angry. Even clueless People could tell what a fella meant when he showed his fangs.

  But he never got the chance.

  “Go right now!” Uncle Rik shouted, showing his own fangs. It made Kit jump.

  He and Eeni scurried beneath the nearby Dumpster and watched in horror as the People shoved Uncle Rik into a crate. They didn’t even notice he’d lost his robe and glasses. People never noticed that sort of thing. They just set their traps and took what they wanted.

  Kit seethed beneath the Dumpster, hot anger burning from the tip of his tail to the points of his whiskers. They’d trapped his mother and taken her from him and now they’d trapped his uncle too? No! He wouldn’t have it.

  “What are you doing, Kit?” Eeni saw him creeping forward. “The People aren’t gone yet.”

  “I know,” said Kit. “That’s why I’m slipping out.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to follow them,” Kit said. “And I’m going to get my uncle back. If they’re really taking him to the zoo, then I’m going to get all the other animals back too. And my mother. You can help or not, but I swear from howl to snap that I am doing this. You with me?”

  “You know I’m with you,” Eeni answered. “Howl to snap.”

  Kit smiled at his friend, and then raced out from underneath the Dumpster without looking over his shoulder to check if Eeni was with him. She was his best friend. He knew she’d be right by his side.

  For the first time in either of their lives, the rat and the raccoon weren’t being chased by People. They were the ones doing the chasing.

  Chapter Four

  TAKEN FOR A RIDE

  BY the time the People loaded Uncle Rik’s crate into the back of their car and got inside the front, Kit and Eeni had caught up to them and were huddled just behind the metal beast, out of sight. The car made a roaring noise and belched something black and stinky from its behind, right into Kit’s and Eeni’s faces.

  “Ugh, gross!” Eeni groaned. “What do they feed this thing?”

  Kit had no idea, but he wasn’t really worried about what People fed their cars. He was worried about how he was going to follow one. He wished he had more of a plan, because when you’ve got a best friend trusting you, you owe them your very best plan. But for now, any sort of plan would have to do.

  He scanned the trash-strewn alley and his eyes settled on the rusty bicycle wheel that had been lying in the dirt for as long as Kit had lived there.

  He ran to it and dragged it behind the car.

  “Help me balance this,” he asked Eeni, who scurried underneath it and heaved it up on her back. Kit lifted it by the spokes from the other side until the wheel was standing upright. Eeni steadied it while Kit jumped on, setting his back paws on the hub of the wheel and gripping around it with his nimble toes. His front paws grabbed the rear bumper of the car.

  The wheel wobbled and Kit nearly toppled sideways, but he held himself up. He’d invented a unicycle.

  Now he just had to ride it.

  Eeni looked up at him and shook her head. “You’re crazier than a hummingbird in a hurricane.”

  The car shuddered and began to roll forward, and Kit’s wheel turned beneath him. His paws started to slip from the back of the car, so he dug his sharp claws into the hard plastic bumper. It made a terrible noise and made his palms hurt with the effort, but he was moving now, being towed behind the People’s car.

  The car pulled out of the entrance to Ankle Snap Alley toward the great river of pavement the People called a road.

  “Come on!” Kit called down to Eeni. She ran after him as fast she could, her white fur lit red by the rear lights of the car. “Jump!”

  Just as the car sped up, Eeni leaped and caught Kit’s long bushy tail. The car turned and she nearly lost hold as she swung out sideways, but she dug her claws in and held on.

  “Ow!” Kit yelled.

  “Sorry,” Eeni replied, climbing up his back to perch in the fur on his shoulder. It took all Kit’s focus to keep the wheel balanced upright as the car went faster and faster. The pavement raced below the deflated tire that spun with a thump thump thump.

  “Ahh!” Kit yelled, while the car snaked its way into high-speed traffic. Every bump and crack in the road made them bounce and jump.

  Kit teetered on the wheel and thought for sure he’d fall.

  “Don’t let go!” Eeni shouted into his ear.

  “I won’t if you won’t!” he replied.

  Kit’s claws ached and the strong wind rushed through his fur, while the stink of fumes from the car stung his nose and eyes. His back paws burned against the wheel below and it took all the strength in his legs to keep his wobbly unicycle balanced. He didn’t know how long he could keep going like this.

  Suddenly, another car zoomed up behind them, flashing lights from its front end. It honked and honked and Kit looked over his shoulder to see one of the People in the car pointing at him.

  “I think they see us,” he shouted at Eeni over the loud honking.

  “Why are they making that terrible noise?” she wondered.

  “I guess they’re not used to actually seeing us?” Kit said as the car behind them sped up and moved around. A group of young People in the backseat gawked at Kit and Eeni. That was when Eeni did something Kit had not expected: she stuck out her tongue.

  The People in the car yelled something over at the People from the zoo and Kit’s stomach twisted in knots as the car slowed and pulled to the side, rolling to a stop while other cars zoomed past them.

  “Why’d they stop?” Eeni wondered.

  “They know we’re here!” Kit cried, and let go of the bumper. He jumped off the wheel and
let it clatter to the ground. At the same instant, they heard the car doors open and the People get out.

  “Quick, go underneath!” Eeni tugged his fur like she was steering him. He took the signal and dove underneath the car, curling behind one of the big car tires and holding his breath as the People’s brown shoes strolled around to the back. One of them picked up the old bicycle wheel and said something to the other one. It sounded like a question because the voice rose at the end of the sentence. Kit strained to make out any words that were the same in their language and his, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of their words. He couldn’t believe People actually made sense of all the weird sounds they made at one another.

  The People stood there for ages, until finally, they left the bicycle wheel where it was and got back into their car.

  The machine rumbled and shuddered and began to move again, slowly pointing its nose back onto the road. He had to find something to hold on to, and fast!

  He reached up to grab a pole on the underside of the car, but it was scorching hot and he barked in pain when he touched it. He tried something else but it was spinning so fast it nearly shaved the skin off his paw.

  “It’s dangerous under here!” he cried.

  “We gotta go up,” Eeni said. “To the roof!”

  As the car rolled forward, exposing Kit and Eeni to the sunlight overhead, they scampered up onto the rear bumper and waited until the exact moment that the car heaved itself into traffic and zoomed forward. The People were paying so much attention ahead, they didn’t notice the raccoon and the rat scramble over their rear window and scurry onto their roof.

  The moment his claws scritch-scratched across the roof, Kit wished they were still riding a unicycle off the back. It was one thing to be up high—Kit didn’t mind heights at all—but it was another thing to be up high and moving faster than any animal was meant to move, with nothing but your claw tips and a prayer to the First Raccoon to keep you from falling under the wheels of the rushing cars all around.