Pickles vs. the Zombies

by Angela Misri

  “Feline?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Feline,” he confirmed before shimmying under the window. “Hopefully we’ll find some allies.”

  But a search of the small apartment yielded no one, human or feline. The food in the dish was a few days old, but neither of us cared. We finished it in minutes and then I collapsed under a couch with a sigh, feeling safe for the first time since we left Wally and my lovely house.

  I WOKE UP TO a thud at the window. I bounced to my feet, hearing Ginger do the same behind me.

  A very fat raccoon was struggling his way into the apartment through the half open window.

  “Well? Don’t just stand there gawking,” he hissed at us. “Help me!”

  I glanced at Ginger, who shrugged. His disregard for all other beings was starting to grate on me. Slowly, I made my way to the window. “Who’s chasing you?” I demanded, trying to see behind the raccoon’s girth.

  The fat mammal was now spinning, trying to negotiate its way in by whatever angle worked. I hopped up next to him, not close enough to be grabbed by his clever paws, but near enough to see a few eagles in the lightening sky.

  “Come ON,” he said, sucking in his belly fat.

  I looked down at Ginger. “What should we do?”

  “How do I know?” Ginger replied.

  I hated that Wally wasn’t here. What do I know about raccoons? I’d only ever encountered them through a pane of glass as they invaded our pets’ garbage bins. The eagles screeched again and I jumped back. The raccoon wrapped a paw around the window, trying to push it up. I couldn’t let him die like this, could I?

  “Hey! Look at those paws!” I said, looking at the raccoon’s paw as he flexed his fingers around the window. “I bet he could open the human doors at the hospital.”

  “Huh?” answered the raccoon, his masked eyes flicking between us and the eagles through the window.

  “Could come in handy,” Ginger nodded with a grin, understanding. “You’re going to owe us, raccoon, if we help you.”

  One of the eagles gave a screech that set all of our teeth on edge. No matter where you sat on the food chain, that sound made you want to dive under the covers.

  The raccoon was sweating now, freaking out, so I held out a paw. “Say it.”

  “I owe you, yes, please, my oath,” he blathered, his paws extended my way.

  I grabbed both his paws with mine and leapt to the floor … and hung … in mid-air. Even my added weight didn’t dislodge him.

  “Ginger!” I yelled, seeing the eagle making his dive, sensing our vulnerability.

  Then Ginger pounced right on the raccoon’s belly, deflating it enough to tumble us to the floor in a heap of fur and whiskers. Ginger flipped mid-air, but the raccoon howled, and held me to his chest like a scared kid with a teddy bear as he fell. The eagle hit the window with a bang and screeched some very creative cuss words at us as he pecked at the window.

  I extricated myself from the pile of raccoon as gracefully as I could, immediately relocating to beside the orange cat on the table nearby.

  Ginger was already licking himself clean and started on me as soon as I was in reach. Normally, I would have hissed at him, but being hugged by a raccoon was totally gross, so I allowed the very personal bathing to my ears and cheeks while I took care of my paws.

  Meanwhile the raccoon was huffing on the floor, running his paws all over himself as if to make sure all his parts were still attached.

  “Holy biscuits, that was close!” he said, finally rolling from his back to his front and then onto his ample backside to stare at us. “You guys! Seriously! I was almost bird feed!”

  “That eagle was crazy,” Ginger agreed. “I doubt he could have lifted you.”

  “Didn’t need to lift me to tear me apart, did he?” the raccoon answered with a shudder that ran all the way down his striped tail. He pulled at his black whiskers as he spoke, a nervous habit, I guessed.

  “Are they scavengers?” I asked, staring at the eagle who had given up pecking at the window and took to the sky with one last insult about our fathers. “Couldn’t they take their pick of the dead animals on the streets?”

  “No one is safe scavenging these days,” the raccoon said, hooking one of his paws towards the window. “You must have seen the trail of rat bodies below.”

  We both nodded, and then sat there, awkwardly looking at each other.

  “So … you got any food?”

  “THE HOSPITAL IS TRICKY,” Trip said, his mouth full of Cheetos.

  The raccoon was a font of information once you got some food in him. He’d told us what felt like his entire life story, from how he’d earned the name Trip (exactly how you’d imagine) to losing his pack/gaze to eagles and zombies. Or at least that’s what he thought happened. The truth was, he’d fallen asleep one morning with his gaze of raccoons, and when he woke up that night, he was alone. Ginger communicated his interpretation of that story through his whiskers, and I couldn’t disagree. This raccoon was a series of unfortunate events, most of which seemed to originate with his innate clumsiness. But he was the first raccoon I’d ever spoken to, and that was pretty cool.

  “I was there yesterday, in the bins,” he said, licking his powdered fingertips with a sucking sound that made me a little nauseated. “The doors have handles and they’re very heavy.”

  “But you’ve seen humans going in,” I pressed him, desperate to believe Connor was safe inside.

  “Affirmative, pretty kitty cat!” he said, stuffing more Cheetos into his face. “And the live kind, not the dead kind. Though there are plenty of the walking dead between us and the hospital.”

  “I think we should go now,” Ginger said from the window, where he had been watching for the eagles to come back, “in daylight.”

  Trip looked back and forth between us before giving the half-finished bag of Cheetos a forlorn look.

  “Once you get us into the hospital you can come right back here,” I said, leaping up to the window to Ginger’s side.

  “I’ve never seen a kitty as pretty as you,” said Trip, holding up his orange dusted paw for comparison. “Orange and white and gray and black. You’re like a buffet of pretty colors!”

  Cats are basically colorblind, but we can see shades of colors, so I know I have a coat of many shades, and I know that Ginger’s main shade is called orange, like the patches on my ears.

  That said, being called a “buffet” in this age of dead humans that ate anything that moved was not a compliment.

  “Here, help me,” Ginger said, putting his shoulder under the window and slowly standing up. Together we managed to open the window another five inches so that Trip could slide out more easily.

  He led the way up the metal staircase to the roof, sniffing the air and watching the sky for the dreaded eagles. We crossed the roof single file and reached the edge of the building.

  “Uh oh,” whispered Trip, staring down between the buildings. The hospital had no external metal staircase, just a flat glass side. I looked at the alley between us and wasn’t surprised to see bands of roving zombies pacing back and forth.

  “Are those your bins?” I asked, pointing at the large containers in the alley below.

  “Yup, humans throw out all kinds of tasty things. It’s why so many raccoons live in the city,” Trip said, pulling at his whiskers, “though yesterday those bins didn’t have quite so many dead humans circling them.”

  “I’m starting to feel like this adventure is exceeding the value of the story I will tell,” Ginger said, pacing along the edge of our building.

  I squinted across the rooftops. “Wait, do you see that vent?”

  Trip stopped pulling at his whiskers, “Yeah! Good one! You could slink down the vents from the roof.”

  “You mean ‘we,’ right raccoon?” Ginger said, looking at the vents too now.

&
nbsp; “Ha!” Trip laughed and then lost his smile, “You’re kidding, right cats? How would I ever get to that roof top?”

  Instead of answering with words, Ginger backed up, measured wind resistance with his whiskers, and launched himself into the air, landing neatly on the roof of the hospital.

  I grinned at him, “Easy peasy, nip and cheesy!” Once I’d seen it done, I knew I could do it too.

  “I can’t do that!” Trip said, aghast.

  I leapt before Trip was finished speaking, landing perfectly beside Ginger and then giving him one of his patented twirls like I was posing for the cameras.

  “Yes, you can!” I called. My paws were itching to find Connor now, he was so close. And then we’d be home before Wally had a chance to miss scolding me.

  “No, I can’t!” Trip replied, backing up more. “I can’t!”

  “You owe us, raccoon,” Ginger hissed, his ears flattening against his head. “We have many doors ahead of us that we can’t open.”

  “I can’t, I can’t.” Trip was gibbering, and I felt my patience ebbing away as Trip and Ginger argued. I was ready to let the raccoon go at this point. He was becoming more trouble than he was worth. I walked over to the vent, sure I would hear Connor’s voice echoing up through the pipes. We wouldn’t need a raccoon. Humans would open the doors for us because the humans made the doors. A long coil of rope, some lumber, and several human tools sat beside the vent. More stuff to build with, humans really never stopped changing the outside world to suit them. I put my two front paws on the vent and stuck my head in. All I could hear was mechanical clunking sounds.

  Disappointed, I pulled my head back out just in time to hear the screech of an eagle.

  “Pickles!” I heard Ginger yell as I flattened instinctively. The gravel of the roof was hard and cold under my cheek as I felt the talons of the bird pass within an inch of my shoulders.

  I rolled to the side and dove under the pile of lumber, listening to the eagle screech. That bird had the vocabulary of a drunk seagull! Ginger squeezed in right beside me, so we were staring out at the opposite roof, our hearts hammering in unison as we watched Trip scramble. Correction, this is the most scared I’d ever been in my life.

  “He’s got no cover,” Ginger hissed.

  “We have to help him,” I replied, wincing as Trip nearly fell off the roof dodging the eagles as they dove and screeched.

  My eyes lit on the rope and I got an idea. “It’s crazy,” I said to myself. “Completely crazy. Ginger will never go for it.”

  “Look for cover, you ridiculous raccoon,” Ginger yelled, his claws coming out in frustration.

  “Here, help me,” I said to him, zipping out of our hiding place to grab one end of the rope. The eagles didn’t seem to notice, they were so focused on their prey. I was back under the lumber in a flash.

  “Find a way to secure this, it needs to support Trip,” I said, spitting out the rope at Ginger’s feet.

  He gaped up at me, but I didn’t give either of us time to think about it. I zipped back out onto the roof, grabbed the other end of the rope, and leapt across the alleyway to the opposite roof.

  I landed badly, the adrenaline and fear making me skid across the rooftop, drawing the attention of the fowl creatures circling above.

  “Trip!” I yelled, running straight at him as he scurried here and there. “Grab this and follow me.”

  Somehow, he understood my words despite the rope in my mouth, and he chomped on the rope as I ran by. I dropped the rope as soon as he had it and led the way to the edge of the roof. I looked back once. “You have to jump!” I yelled, and then I was airborne again.

  I turned mid-air to watch Trip leap over the edge of the building, an eagle arcing down towards him.

  He wasn’t even close.

  Trip fell, his masked eyes wide and I prayed to the Saber that I hadn’t just killed him.

  The rope went taut beside me with a “sproing” sound and I heard the raccoon hit the side of the building with a splat. The whole thing would have been kind of comical if not for the death-from-above birds that continued to screech inappropriate things about our litter processes.

  I raced to the edge, calling down, “Trip! Climb!”

  Trip shook his head to clear it and did exactly that, using those skillful paws of his to climb hand over hand up towards me. It wasn’t going to be enough. What else could I do? I looked at the sky and hissed, leading the birds away with my catcalls.

  “Hey! Feather brains!” I yelled, zipping all around, under the lumber, behind the vents, loving the humans for all this convenient cover out here in nature, “Stupid dodos! Beeeeeee-agles!”

  They screeched their curses at me, but I dipped and dodged as fast as I could, somehow staying clear of their deadly talons until I saw Trip sprint by on all fours and throw himself into the vent.

  Ginger raced in after him, calling for me as I hurled myself in behind them, hoping for a soft landing, even if that ended up being a rotund raccoon.

  “WE’RE GOING IN CIRCLES,” Ginger declared finally, sitting down at a junction of three tunnels.

  I wanted to disagree but was far too tired. It seemed like days since we’d rolled and slid down the ducts to this level. Trip said humans used these vents to move air around the building — cold in the summer, warm in the winter. We were in the ceiling of the building, that much we could tell because every hundred yards or so along the duct a vent with slits would appear and we’d all crowd around and peer into the hallway below. So far, every time we did that all we’d see were groaning, shuffling zombies.

  Trip was suffering the most; he had to squeeze and squish his body through these tight spaces, but he wasn’t complaining at all.

  I sat down over a vent, peering down to see a number on a door: “Seven hundred eighty-five. You’re right Ginger, we’re going in circles.”

  Trip leaned back against the wall of the duct, the most relaxed position he could find in such close quarters.

  “We should rest here,” I suggested, taking pity on the larger animal. “Trip, why don’t you lie down flat there. We can fit over on this side of the duct; the rest is yours.”

  Trip started to do that, gingerly spreading out to full width until that part of the metal duct was entirely filled with raccoon. He sighed with relief.

  Next to me, Ginger was looking through the vent.

  “What does that sign say?” he asked, pointing a claw at a human pictogram.

  I squinted at the human figures inside a box. “Not sure. A litter box?”

  “Humans don’t use litter boxes,” Ginger said, condescendingly.

  “They don’t use our kind of litter boxes,” I responded defensively, “but they litter inside a room that looks like a box.” Connor was still being trained by his parents to litter in that room, so I often kept him company in there, encouraging him and distracting him.

  Trip was snoring quietly now, so Ginger whispered his response. “We have to get out of here.”

  I wasn’t sure what we should do. We had arrived at the hospital, but Connor was nowhere to be seen. This building had more floors than our house, so maybe he was on a different floor.

  “What about that?” I asked, pointing at another human pictogram, this one with right angles stacked over each other. “That could mean stairs.”

  Ginger nodded slowly. “But how do we get down there? And through the door?”

  I pawed at the vent underneath me, but it was Trip who answered.

  “Those little screws in the corner of the vent cover, I bet between your claws and my paws we could get rid of them.”

  It took some work, but we came up with a process where I would wedge my claw into the metal screw and turn until the edge of the head peeked up. Then Trip would take over and turn the screw until it was all the way out with his fingers. He said that the screws were holdin
g the vent cover in place. We did two screws and scared ourselves when the vent cover suddenly dropped open.

  We sat there, claws out, ears on alert, waiting for a zombie to notice the noise, but none of them did.

  I poked my head down through the hole in the ceiling, amazed that we hadn’t been discovered. A look down the hallway answered my question. The zombies were gathered around some unfortunate mammal, eating it. I wondered if it was alive when they caught it. Despite my predator nature, I hoped it wasn’t.

  Ginger’s orange head poked down next to mine, “They’re busy; we should go!”

  I silently agreed, though this vent felt way safer than the laminate floor below us. “Trip, wait here until we get the door open,” Ginger said and leapt down the ten feet to the grimy tiled floor. The zombies didn’t move, so when Ginger looked up at me, I swallowed my fear like a too-large piece of kibble and jumped, landing soundlessly beside him. We carefully edged our way to the door beside the stair pictogram.

  On my hind paws, I walked my front paws up to the metal bar and put my weight on it, pushing. It moved infinitesimally forward. Ginger mimicked my stance and I felt it give way.

  “Now, Trip!” Ginger hissed, falling to all fours and scooting into the stairwell. I streaked in behind him and we both stared up at the raccoon head poking down through the vent.

  “Ok!” he said as the door started to close behind us. “On the count of three. One ….”

  “Hurry!” Ginger yelled, giving up on stealth.

  “Two ….”

  My paws scrabbled for purchase on the smooth door. “Trip!” I wailed as the door slid shut with a whooshing sound.

  We called and called through the closed door but couldn’t hear anything on the other side. No squeals of terror from our friend nor shambling sounds from the zombies. The door handle on this side required thumbs, which was frustratingly ironic because of the raccoon on the other side who was the only one (zombies included) who could open it.