Haardvar then flew to Toronto where he appeared in public just long enough to be assassinated. Conditions across the nation were perfect for Meilgaard’s doomsday cocktail and, by the time citizens began dropping in their own excresences, the Government of Canada, as it was known to exist, ceased to exist.
Mutt squinted in the September sunshine, his senses alive to any sound or movement. This close to the Dome, Mutt was extra-extra-careful about pressing his luck. It would not do to be captured...again. Mutt the Wildkid was, incomprehensibly but nonetheless in fact, the only known wastrel to have once been in the clutches of the Grief Team and now free once more. Blissfully unaware of this fact, as he was of most things, he lowered himself into a squat, tossing a smooth stone from dirty palm to dirtier palm.
He was boney-lean under his ragged T-shirt and shorts with thin sturdy legs ending in decrepit running shoes. The sun had darkened his skin to the point when you couldn’t see the forest of freckles unless you were up close. What you did see were radburns on the tops of his cheeks, angry red crescents which he continued to pick at until they bled.
Mutt scratched his mane of copper hair. The number tattooed in his left armpit, courtesy of his first visit to SkyDome, was a ticket to oblivion and he knew it. Not getting caught was Mutt’s only safety and although he was only nine, he was Outside-savvy. A feral child, Mutt’s instincts had the edge of an X-acto blade. On this fine morning, he was checking vidkam installations to make sure they remained inoperative; it was a scheduled priority for Mutt, for a well-thrown stone or small chunk of concrete meant that the Eye of the Grief Team remained blind to Mutt’s activities and, in particular, his whereabouts. It had been three days since he had last smashed this particular eye along this particular stretch of the Lakeshore; so close, as it happened, to his home.
At ground level, purple loosestrife, beautiful in wave upon wave along the lakefront, was chief of the local weeds and all other manner of vegetation which taken root. In some areas, assisted by crumbling buildings and hundreds of abandoned, rusted cars, veritable walls of vegetation had grown. Each of these natural barriers had been assessed by Mutt over the months since his escape and he had patiently investigated four different escape routes for himself, ready for the day when the first scent of chemicals wafted through the ozone, heralding the imminent arrival of a Grief Team task force. In the meantime, as he did every day, Mutt existed.
Right now he was hungry. The Eye was still blind—a long squinting look picked out the cracked lens—so it was time to hunt for food; his scrawny body hadn’t seen a decent meal in three days and the fish in Lake Ontario had become more adept at avoiding his quick hands. If some canned stuff didn’t show up soon on his scavenger hunt, he was going to go looking for somebody a lot smaller than he was and... Mutt froze.
There were two shadows stretching across a large grey mass of concrete not ten yards from him, shadows that had to be connected to intruders hiding behind what was left of one of the massive expressway support columns. Shadows waiting for Mutt! Waiting for the chance to bash him in and kill him! Wildkids! His bright pink tongue darted out to lick sunburned lips and a grimy fist rubbed at the stream of snot flowing from his left nostril. With a quick jump off the concrete slab, Mutt landed lightly on his feet and went scurrying soundlessly into the weeds along the left of the old Boulevard, approaching the column from the other side where he might see and judge these shadows.
Cathy Latimer had been Outside for seven days. To begin with, she didn’t know where she was except that it was all awful and very, very frightening. Taken by force out of the Children’s Mall, her last image of Mother had been a shattered, bloody face; Father was a crumpled lump leaning against a broken cabinet. These were the pictures stamped grotesquely in her memory, along with a parade of images and dangers in the dark as her abductors, identical blond-haired twins whose names she now knew as Slide and Glide, finally reached their dirty campsite in a derelict bus, not far from the mountain of rubble that had once been the Oakville Ford factory. After two days of maltreatment, Cathy had reached the point where her bruised, tired body just couldn’t produce any more tears. She wanted to be home...home now, please!
Slide and Glide had left Geeto, their red-haired leader, back at the scene of the attack, a victim of Gordon Latimer. Geeto’s name had been harshly invoked numerous times by the twins as Cathy was hustled from one abandoned location to another, always crying, pleading with them that she was too tired, her feet hurt, she was hungry, she wanted her parents...
On the third night, when they had advanced east along the Lakeshore as far as Mississauga, Slide ‘n Glide did bad things to her in the darkness inside a house where the deathstink from a recently-barbequed WK wasn’t too bad. The red sun went down early and the September chill came stealing in. In the morning, there were spots of blood on the faded linoleum where Cathy cowered, shivering, as the twins scratched, snorted, and slept on a nearby mattress. Cathy did not understand. Why didn’t these awful Wildkids honour the child? Where was Daddy? Where was Daddy?
My Daddy’s dead...
That morning, the twins had taken her hand once again, pulling her along as they hustled from building to building, always in sight of a large body of water to their right, a view which she knew must be Lake Ontario. That made her feel a little better, for she remembered the time when she and Mother had looked in a book called an atlas and Cathy had traced a finger around the entire lake. Mother had told her that what her little finger had done in a few seconds on the page would take weeks to do if she had been walking. Was that what Slide ‘n Glide were doing? Were they going to walk around the entire lake? Cathy did not think that she could do that, not if she was going to be hungry and tired and with her feet beginning to hurt so bad.
At the end of the fifth day, Cathy was sheltering in a house on a street where a faded, crooked sign read ‘Robin Hood Lane’. The twins had simply disappeared. Slide had muttered something about Missawga before he and his brother had left to scavenge for food, a usually fruitless exercise which consisted of breaking into houses already ransacked years before by survivors looking for canned goods. A day later, a desperately-hungry Cathy finally screwed up her courage and left the house to look for them.
She went fifty yards before she turned tail and ran back to the house, only to spend another night with strange noises and frightening cries spurring her imagination to evoke terrifying images of enormous, vicious animals prowling outside in the darkness. When dawn came at last, she could stand it no longer and on swollen feet she slipped out of the house and began to walk, keeping the hot sun at her back and the occasional glimpse of blue water on her right. Unlike Slide and Glide, who had made a point of keeping away from the weeds and detritus littering the roadway, Cathy drew some small comfort from the notion that the road, if she followed it long enough and especially if she was a good girl, would lead her straight back to Daddy who was Outside right now searching for her.
But my Daddy’s dead...
“Here kitty, here kitty!” Cathy stretched out her dirty fingers, coaxing the dubious, dirty-grey animal to come closer so that she might pet it. It took ten minutes of patience on her part but she was finally rewarded when the cat, sleek on the plentitude of rats, mice, and other vermin which had long since assumed ownership over what humans had abandoned, inched closer, closer, finally allowing Cathy to run her hand along its back, purring as it adjusted to this stranger. Cathy continued to pat and caress the grey kitty, tears of gratefulness flowing down her bright pink cheeks as it came closer still, mixing scents, identifying her as, if not a friend, then at least not an enemy. All the loneliness inside her reached out and took comfort from the loud purring. She was not alone after all.
“Cat likes you,” said a voice.
Startled, Cathy dropped the grey kitty. She stood, making little fists as she prepared to fend off an attack. There was a boy, older than her, at least twelve. He was standing, arms at his sides, looking at her from a distance of ten yards
, his eyes squinting in the sun. A filthy red T-shirt with a yellow M, at least a size too small, was glued to his scrawny frame, mis-matched with a pair of emerald green track bottoms and a tattered pair of black running shoes. He carried the straps of a small, faded blue backpack over his left shoulder.
“Don’t you try to hurt me! My Daddy is coming to get me soon and... and if you try to hurt me he will... he will...,” she searched for the awfullest thing she could think of, “he will cut off your pee-thing.”
The boy whose pale facial features and mop of tangled, unruly dark hair provided stark contrast for bright blue eyes merely shrugged.
“Wasn’t going to hurt you.”
Cathy studied the boy’s face carefully. He seemed calm, not threatening and unpredictable like Slide and Glide had been. Slowly she lowered her little fists into her lap where they found the grey kitty’s fur again and began to stroke slowly.
“Is this your kitty?”
The boy nodded.
“Does he have a name?”
“Cat, I guess.” Without warning, the boy’s hands flew to his chest, where they pressed against the spasms of a harsh cough. After several long seconds, he released a dark, coagulated spittle, taking gulps of air in short gasps as his hands hugged his body.
Cathy watched in alarm as the boy finally straightened and his breathing slowed to a loud wheeze.
“You need some med’cine,” said Cathy helpfully. “Daddy will take us to the pharmacy in the E.C. when he comes.”
But my Daddy’s dead, isn’t he?
She watched as the boy took several steps toward her and then hunkered down, resting on thin haunches, his breathing becoming gradually less laboured. The grey kitty, reluctant to leave the two warm little hands which continued to stroke it, nonetheless responded to the boy’s proximity and, meowing loudly, crossed the gap separating the two children. It rubbed its sleek body against the boy’s legs, purring loudly.
“I’ve never seen a cat,” Cathy admitted. “There aren’t cats in the malls…only Rhonda.”
“What’s a Rhonda?” asked the boy.
“A cow.”
“Oh.”
“Cat isn’t a very good name,” said Cathy slowly. “If it were my cat, I would call him Grey Kitty.”
“Call him whatever you like, I guess,” allowed the boy, his blue eyes examining her carefully, “but you can’t have him.”
Cathy’s lips formed a pout. “I don’t want him,” she said petulantly, but she held out her hand anyway and Grey Kitty responded by returning to her. “He is nice. He’s a very pretty Grey Kitty.” Grey Kitty meowed in complete acceptance of that fact. “What’s your name?”
“Jason.”
“Jason what?”
“No last name.”
Cathy was silent as she assessed this declaration, finally adopting a tentative smile of acceptance. “My name is Cathy Latimer. I’m a Stage Two.” And, as this admission produced no visible reaction from Jason-no-last-name, she continued, “I was stole by Wildkids. There was shooting and my Mother got…dead. My Daddy might have..,” Cathy shook her head furiously. “My Daddy’s alive and he is coming to find me! Slide and Glide made me go with them out of the Mall...and they hurt me too! Only they went for food and they never came back, so I’m going to meet my Daddy because I know he’s searching for me.”
But isn’t my Daddy...no! my Daddy’s coming to find me!
The boy shook his head and began to rub his chest slowly as if to massage away a deep discomfort. “Don’t know Mall people. You’re the first.”
Cathy stopped petting Grey Kitty long enough to wipe fresh tears out of her eyes. It hurt to think about Mummy lying on the floor of the shop in the Mall, her blood leaking onto the cold marble floor in a red puddle. And Daddy had looked all...dead?
“Hungry?”
Cathy looked at Jason-no-last-name, her eyes bright. “If you give me some food, my Daddy will repay you, I know he will. I’m so hungry and Slide and Glide only gave me a piece of awful fish out of a can they stole. They made me eat it but it was disgusting and oily.”
Jason’s lips wore a glimmer of a smile. “Sardines,” he said, reaching into his backpack.
Cathy, unsure whether she wanted another sar-deen or not, forgot all about them when she saw that what the boy was extending to her was not in a can. Wrapped in plastic, it looked exactly like a sandwich.
“Tuna,” said Jason, by way of explanation.
Cathy peeled open the wrap and lifted the top slice of fresh white bread. There was a pale, thick mound of what she instantly recognized as tunafish. “I like tunafish!” she said happily, biting into it hungrily and, as she did, remembered her manners and managed a garbled “fank-you”.
It made him smile a little again and Cathy responded in kind as she ate, pausing several times as she chewed to select a nice chunk of tuna for Grey Kitty, who took it as his just due, politely waiting until she had set it on the ground before him before reaching out and swallowing it in one bite. He followed by cleaning himself as he waited for the two children to make up their minds about what to do next.
When he saw that Cathy had finished the sandwich, Jason stood and extended a thin hand to her. “Have to move. Mulls are hunting out of Square One.”
Cathy frowned. “Mulls? Mulls won’t hurt us. They have to do what we say.”
“Maybe inside, not here. If the Mulls catch you, they’ll eat you.”
Again he offered his hand and this time she quickly took it, standing beside him, the top of her head reaching his shoulder. Why were Mulls allowed to eat children?
“Where... where are they?”
Jason glanced over his shoulder and her eyes followed his, but there were only rows of abandoned houses fallen into decay. “Square One,” he said quietly, raising his right hand and pointing beyond. “Beyond is Oakville Place.”
Cathy nodded. “Mummy and Daddy took me to see Rhonda at the Children’s Mall. That’s where…” Her eyes welled with tears and she fought them back. She looked at her feet, the soft leather buckled shoes had lost their shine. “My feet hurt.”
Jason-no-last-name shrugged thin shoulders and took several deep breaths. Cathy didn’t like the rattling sound which came from deep inside him, but when he was ready, with Grey Kitty in tow, she allowed Jason to lead her out of the rubble, away from the old road and into the weeds and wildgrowth. She followed him for at least a mile, not speaking but feeling a little better about things now that she had made a friend—two friends counting Grey Kitty — and her hunger pangs had subsided for the moment. When she found Daddy, she would ask him to help Jason-no-last-name and make his bad cough better. And she would also ask Daddy why everybody said cats were extinct when it just wasn’t true!
Behind them, twenty minutes later, where Cathy had dropped her sandwich wrapper, two Mulls struggled with each other for the privilege of licking the smell of tuna off plastic film. The winner, who snapped three fingers on his partner’s left hand to gain the trophy, soon tossed it aside and turned back toward Square One. Lashed to his belt, bobbing obscenely against his thigh as he walked, were two small heads.
Jason and Cathy walked hand-in-hand, keeping close to the safety of houses where, if need be, they could quickly hide. Grey Kitty kept pace with them, sometimes disappearing from sight for ten minutes at a time, only to turn up ahead of them as if he knew where they were going. In fact, Jason’s destination appeared to be the same as Cathy’s, for he kept the lake on his right, though neither of them could actually see it, and once he said something about being extra careful when they reached the area near SkyDome.
Hours later, tired and beginning to exhibit a discernible amount of truculence about proceeding further, Cathy was very glad when Jason selected a house from the neighbourhood they were in and led her inside. Upstairs, they found mouldy blankets in sufficient condition to drag below to use as bedding. Cathy had wanted to sleep on the large bed in the big room upstairs, but Jason had quickly vetoed that, taking mo
re than his usual few words to explain that, if danger came, being upstairs meant being trapped. As it was, he examined every room on the main level before he determined that the kitchen provided, with its two separate exits to the outside, the safest option. There was no sense in looking for canned food, the damaged cupboards and overturned refrigerator spoke of other desperate intruders long before them.
As Cathy lay down on the mound of smelly blankets, another tuna sandwich in plastic wrapping appeared out of Jason’s pack and she ate it gratefully, remembering to thank Jason this time before she took a bite. The bread was so soft and fresh that the smell of it stayed in her senses long after she had eaten it. She was also careful to offer two large pieces of tuna to Grey Kitty who had staked his claim to the softest area of blanket and was now purring contentedly. Cathy felt a whole lot better, especially because Jason-no-last-name was very nice and didn’t try to boss her. He was smart too about where to go and what to do. Yes, he made her feel a whole lot better and, when the last rays of the red sun filtered through the shadows in the kitchen, Cathy’s eyes closed and she fell into a deep sleep, one arm encircling Grey Kitty who, as it happened, did not mind in the least.
ELEVEN
Mutt was what the producers of Countdown to Horror categorized as a terminal Wildkid; completely undisciplined, stupid, and violent. In truth, although only nine-years-old, Mutt had been expressing a natural desire to order his existence for quite some time. There was hap’ness, which meant being on his own and liking it, followed closely by eat (food), here (shelter), and onyas (clothing). Companionship was, as he conceived it, not-alone. Nastylike spoke of darker things. For the last three months of his unusual life, he had laid claim to a small section of the old Harbourfront area as his here, discovering as many WK’s had not that the lake provided the only consistently dependable source of food to be found on the Outside. Gollum-like, he excelled at the art of hand-fishing, especially at night under a full red moon.
The Grief Team Page 9
