by Angela Misri
Part of me wanted to run away (okay, let’s be honest here, most of me wanted to run away), but Wally was beside me, so I followed his lead and made myself as big and intimidating as I could.
“There are no zombie cats,” the third said, returning to his looting, placing cans of our pets’ food in his backpack. Wally hissed at the pack of humans, who ignored him, focusing instead on their nefarious deed. They were worse than raccoons, looting and stealing our pets’ food.
“Pickles, count everything they take,” hissed Wally from beside me, “we will at least report our losses if we can’t stop them, I swear it.”
From the messages flying off his whiskers, Wally was about to jump onto the counter and take a swipe at the nearest human when the first thief pulled out of one of Connor’s little juice boxes. That was low, to steal from a baby animal. I growled low in my throat to warn him to put it back down.
“I hope the kid got out okay,” he said, his eyes sad as he held the small box in his hand.
I felt a chill run down my spine. Did he know something about my pet?
The other two humans stopped their scavenging at his softly spoken words.
“The whole family is probably lying low till we hear something on the radio.”
“Hear what?” I hissed. “Where is my pet?”
They ignored me, their language skills as limited as their eyesight.
“We might even meet them on the road,” said the human, replacing the juice box in the cupboard and hefting his backpack.
They turned and walked past me, their bags full of our food, and it was only at the back door that the sad one locked eyes with me. He bent down and unlocked the cat door, pushing it so it swung, showing me our backyard. Then he was gone.
“THIS IS POINTLESS.”
“What’s pointless?” asked Ginger from outside on the windowsill. He’d been quietly watching us try to turn on the radio for the past ten minutes, and we had done our best to ignore him.
“We have to find out where Connor is, and those thieves said the radio would tell us,” I answered, knocking the black rectangle controller to the floor. Radios were human contraptions, sometimes filling our house with tonally questionable music. Wally claimed to enjoy something he called “jazz,” but its chief attraction seemed to be that it put him and his pet to sleep within minutes in the recliner, leaving us with their loud, matching snores.
“Why are you here?” Wally demanded, stalking to the window, his tail twitching.
“Boooooored,” Ginger answered, rubbing himself against the windowsill and scenting it. “Nothing to do at home. Nothing on TV. So bored.”
“Stop that!” commanded Wally. “This is not your territory. The borders are well-marked. Private Pickles, make a note.”
Ginger wasn’t listening, though. He had turned towards the back fence, where two humans pawed in a vain attempt to gain entry.
Suddenly a new zombie appeared, entering the yard from the corner, groaning and slouching alarmingly quickly towards Ginger, whose back arched like a furry stegosaurus. This zombie I recognized. He used to be called Vish, and he used to care for Connor when the parents were away. Now … he was in no condition to care for anyone.
We could hear Ginger’s hissing through the cat door, filled with dire warnings and threats, but the once-Vish ignored them all, continuing to advance on the orange cat.
Dead humans behind him, a dead human gnashing his teeth mere yards away, Ginger reacted at the same time I realized his intent, scrambling through our cat door and into our house with all the grace of a pug walking a balance beam.
“What is wrong with you?” hissed Wally, his eyes locked on the humans, but his words entirely for the invading cat.
“What did you expect me to do?” he hissed back, all three of us now lined up in a row of hissing, arched anger, our teeth bared at the young dead human on the other side of the glass. The two other zombies had pushed down the back fence and groaned their way to the once-Vish where he pawed at the door. I was more scared than I had ever been in my life and it was this stupid orange cat’s fault.
“You led them right to us,” I said through my chattering teeth.
“Yeah, because they totally missed you before,” Ginger replied, anger and fear evident in the twitch of his tail.
But the humans seemed confused by the door, pressing against it but making no move to turn the handle.
“What are they waiting for?” Wally demanded, his eyes switching between the shambling, groaning threats.
“I … don’t think they remember how to open doors,” I said, as surprised as Wally at their clumsiness. I was sure we were done for.
They spent a few more minutes vainly slamming their bodies against the door and glass and then turned to leave, one at a time, their expressions vacant.
We stood there, tense, unwilling to believe that they would give up so easily.
I was scared to unlock my limbs. Afraid I would collapse onto the floor like some kind of liquid cat and never re-form into a solid.
Predictably, it was Ginger who relaxed first, easing out of his aggressive stance to sit back on the rectangular controller on the floor.
A buzz of static made all three of us jump as the radio came on.
“By the Saber!” Wally cursed, his voice high and surprised.
“Shh!” I replied, willing my heart to stop hammering in my ears and positioning myself right next to the speaker. “I hear humans!”
“ARE YOU SURE?” I asked for the last time.
Wally nodded solemnly from his position at the window. “I won’t leave this post undefended.”
My stomach roiled at the thought of leaving my partner behind, of venturing out into the world outside my home without Wally leading the way, but the radio said the humans were to meet at the local hospital. My heart told me that Connor needed me, and he was my number one responsibility. I needed to know he was safe. Besides, the inside of the house was proving almost as unpredictable as the outside.
Sensing my hesitation, Wally smiled through his teeth. “It is right that you seek out your pet, Pickles. He is young and vulnerable. I will wait here until you return.”
“He’s only two,” I said, miserable at being forced into this choice. “He’s entirely dependent on his parents.”
“And you,” Wally put in.
I nodded, trying to act more sure of myself than I was. “With these dead humans roving freely, I have to make sure he’s all right. We’ll go to the hospital and come right back.”
“So … are we going or not?” Ginger called from the floor, where he was unceremoniously stretched out. “I’m getting bored again.”
“I still don’t like the idea of you traveling with such an unscrupulous furball …”
“Hey, I can hear you, you know!”
“… but it seems to be our only choice,” Wally finished, scenting my left side as he spoke. “This is a scouting mission, Private; find out what you can and return quickly.”
I nodded, trying not to throw up. I followed Ginger as he gave a saucy wink to Wally and then squeezed out through the window opening. He stepped out onto our roof and then leapt across to Cinnamon’s, where he looked back at me impatiently. This was the moment. I looked at the space between my house and the next roof and it seemed to warp and grow too big to leap across. I felt the wind ruffle my fur, an entirely different feeling from the warmth of the furnace, and the light out here was so much brighter than through a window. Could I do this? I had to do this. I had to know Connor was safe.
I took one last look at Wally through the glass and then took a deep breath before I leapt to Ginger’s side.
It was the last time I’d see Wally for a very long time.
“Cinnamon’s been missing for days,” Ginger explained. “I’ve looked in every window, and seen no sign of her.”
Cinnamon was a thin Tonkinese cat I had only really interacted with through glass. As neither of us were outdoor cats, we’d never spoken, but her tail often transmitted scathing messages about the borders between her house and ours that sent Wally into a tizzy. If a squirrel scampered from a tree in our backyard into hers, she blamed us. If a bird dared poop on her flowers and not ours, she blamed us. I really hoped she didn’t fly into a tail-twitching frenzy at my brief use of her rooftop.
Ginger was leaping as he talked, barely stopping between houses. I’d never done this before, so I had trouble keeping up. The rooftops were made of an odd material I’d never felt under my paws before. And they were hot. Like my window seat under direct sunlight, but harder and scratchier in texture.
We leapt from rooftop to rooftop until the end of the block, Ginger punctuating each landing with a description of the inhabitants. I wasn’t sure if he was showing off his worldliness or filling the quiet so as to cover his nervousness. Even an outdoor cat like Ginger had a limit to his comfortable range. As an indoor cat, this was both terrifying and exhilarating. There was so much to see, so much I didn’t know. Every step away from the house brought new questions to mind. What kinds of birds were those? Were there really that many kinds of leaves? What was that smell? What was THAT smell?
“I still don’t know why you’re coming with me,” I said as I tried not to stare at a family of chipmunks wrestling a huge shoe into their home in a tree.
Ginger shrugged nonchalantly before answering, always trying to seem cooler than he was. “Could be an adventure, could be a bust. Whatever. Gotta have something to talk about to the neighborhood mammals, right?”
I shook my head behind his back. This cat was all about the attention.
“A hamster named Emmy and two dogs named Ralph and Vance live here,” he said, pressing up against the window to peer inside. I took a moment to clean my paw of leaf bits. Outdoor living is messier, that’s for sure.
“See anyone?” I asked.
Other than the incessant birds chirping at the sky as if it were a normal spring day, not the fall of an empire, we had seen no other animals.
“Nah, but the hamster is restricted to its pet’s bedroom, so I don’t expect ….”
Ginger was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a large dog’s head rising to look at us from the window we had been peering through.
Ginger leapt backwards instinctively.
“What do you want, male feline?” demanded the mastiff.
“You’re alive,” Ginger said, not moving from the safety of his position.
“Barely,” the mastiff answered with a growl. “What are you doing on my roof?”
“What do you mean ‘barely’?” I asked instead, coming forward despite Ginger’s twitching whiskers and their clear message to keep my distance. I’d seen this dog walking his pets around the neighborhood, but this was the closest we’d ever been. He really was gigantic.
The dog looked over his huge shoulder and then back our way. “The pets have gone mad, female feline. They’ve been trying to get in this room for a week. I’ve not slept in days.”
“Where’s Vance?” Ginger asked from behind me.
“I’m Vance, you dumb alley cat,” he growled with a shake of his head. “Ralph is gone. Went down fighting. Saved Emmy. She survived, but she fled and I haven’t heard a peep from her since.” He howled his sadness at the room. I flinched at the sound. I’d never seen a hamster before in my life, but I could feel this dog’s sadness at her loss all the way through the glass.
By now I was close enough to the window to see into the sunroom, and I could see the door had been barricaded with some chairs tipped on their sides.
“That keeps the humans out?” I asked, running my eyes over the large dog, stopping on the large bitemark on his back.
“They’ve gone mad,” Vance repeated, licking his lips again. “They have forgotten the simplest of activities. Even how to open doors. Or to recognize loyal friends.”
“You’ve been bitten,” I remarked, unable to keep the tremor out of my voice, but feeling Ginger take another step back on the roof.
“Ay, female feline,” Vance replied. “By my own pet. Just one bite. Though it seems to be enough.”
I tilted my head in question.
“It’s like a venom in my blood,” he explained, turning in a circle before sitting down, a slight whine entering his voice. “I can’t eat, I’m shivering with cold, and I’m weak as a newborn pup.”
“We should go,” Ginger said from behind me. I turned around to see what had got his back up; two shuffling zombies were making their way down the street towards us. They hadn’t seen us yet, but their unnatural sounds made it hard to concentrate.
Vance put two giant paws against the window and I leapt back. “Go! Before they catch you. Don’t let them bite you, and for the Great Wolf’s Hide, female feline, don’t bite them.”
I nodded, I really wanted to ask what would happen if I bit one, but Ginger was leaving, his nervousness stoking mine. I followed Ginger as he scampered off the roof and into the branches of the nearest tree. I forced myself not to look back.
“ARE YOU SURE THIS is the right way?”
“The radio told the humans to meet at the hospital.”
I nodded, my fur upsettingly damp and dirty from our night under a trashcan. Another first for me. I napped in the sun of my window seat and slept the night away next to Connor, warm and comfortable. I never knew how good I had it. How did outdoor mammals stand this?
“My pet was a healer. I know how to get to the hospital, I followed him to work twice a week,” said Ginger, who somehow still looked clean enough to audition for a Meow Mix commercial.
We were in yet another alleyway, picking our way through the garbage and dead animals, and I was doing my best to ignore the smells of death.
Hundreds of dead rodents littered the alley, their mouths red with the blood that had poisoned them. Had they died after biting a zombie? Or were they eating other animals and were soon to turn into zombies themselves?
Three large rats crouched over something that had once been alive and wore sneakers, arguing about the spoils, but when I called out to warn them of the dangers of eating these defiled bodies, they scattered to their secretive holes in the walls. No rats had ever dared enter our home, so I had never met one, let alone killed one. Wally would talk about his grand adventure with a rat that got trapped in a wall one summer when he was a kitten, but even then, there was no confrontation between cat and rat. The rat found his way out of the wall and never returned.
“Don’t bother,” Ginger said, leaping from the large garbage bin up and onto a metal staircase.
“Will they die, or turn into zombies themselves?” I asked, mimicking Ginger’s ascent up the stairs, not liking the way the cold metal felt under my paws, or the clicking sound our claws made and seemed to resonate around the alley.
I watched his orange shoulders shrug before he spoke. “There’s so little meat on a rodent that I don’t expect it’s ever come up. They’d just be a few mouthfuls for a human. But the only zombies I’ve seen were human. I don’t think animals turn into zombies.”
I thought this over as we negotiated our way up two more floors of staircases. “And what about Vance?”
“Don’t know,” Ginger replied. “Don’t especially care.”
I didn’t understand that. How could you not care? I barely knew Vance and I cared. Heck, I even cared about the missing hamster, Emmy.
We had reached the flat pebbled roof by now, where Ginger pointed triumphantly to a huge building in the distance.
“There. That big building with the cross,” he said.
“That’s the hospital?” I said, trying not to betray my nervousness. It was so far away and there were so many buildings between us. This entire journey “outside” was basicall
y a trip from one human-made box to this other human-made box. How did humans make so many huge stone boxes? And why?
“That’s where my pet works,” he answered.
“Then that’s where we’ll find Connor,” I said, focusing on my purpose. This adventure was almost over. Thank the Saber.
“I CAN KEEP GOING,” I said, my tail twitching as I spoke, my eyes fixed on our goal.
“Well, I can’t,” Ginger answered. “I’m starving and I’m tired and I need a bath.” He grumpily batted at a foul-smelling cigarette butt. I’d never understand the humans who put them in their mouths, inhaling their nasty smoke. Ginger said it was like catnip for humans, but catnip smells marvelous. Not like these dead weeds.
My stomach growled in response, but I ignored it, walking to the edge of the staircase to look out at the street.
We had made our way leaping across rooftops if they were close enough, and making the more arduous descent and ascent of the metal staircases if the roofs were not close enough. We couldn’t get through doors because of the handles, something cat paws were not made to manipulate. I could sometimes open doors at home that had the long handles, if I leaned on them with both paws, but the round handles were impossible. If Connor was on the other side of that kind of handle, I’d have to meow at the door until one of Wally’s pets let me in. All of this up and down travel was a tiring business, but I was determined to make it to our goal. Walking through the streets directly was more dangerous, as bands of roaming zombies could (and did) appear at any turn.
Looking back over how far we had come, I marveled at it. The human world was a maze of streets and lanes, lined with buildings, some tall with hundreds of windows, some squat and ugly, something that I’d never given much thought to in my past life as an indoor cat. How many humans were there in this city? And how many were still alive?
“There, I see an open window two floors down,” Ginger said, immediately vaulting in that direction. I followed, my eyes scanning for movement inside the apartments. Ginger stuck his face under the open window, taking a big sniff.
