by Angela Misri
We scratched at the door, yowled our frustration, and eventually slunk away to the stairs. Ginger angrily wiped away his tears as we descended to the floor below. My reaction was worse: I was hoarse from calling for Trip and sick to my stomach with guilt. I kept hiccupping away tears, annoying Ginger to no end. I had told Trip he could go back to that comfortable apartment when we found Connor. I knew that even when I found Connor I would still feel terrible about losing Trip.
The door on the floor below was the same design as the one between us and Trip and I began to fear that we had traded one prison for another.
Another two floors and we were getting desperate when Ginger stopped suddenly, his ears cocking to the side. I listened too and realized I could hear voices.
“Humans,” I said, my despair falling away like winter fur in the spring.
We raced down the flight of stairs to see a door wedged open with a bucket. I leapt over it and into the hallway, looking everywhere for the source of the voices.
“Pickles! Wait!” I could hear Ginger calling, but I was in a frenzy. Connor was close! I could almost scent him!
I careened around a corner and into a large room filled with couches, stopping short. Ginger caught up to me and we stood there, shoulder to shoulder looking at the two humans sitting in front of us. They looked terrible and smelled worse, hovering somewhere between alive and dead.
They sat on either side of a door holding large weapons and talking quietly between coughs and wheezes. Human backpacks, clothing, and toys were strewn here and there all around them.
One noticed us and raised his weapon our way, but his partner put a hand on his shoulder. “They’re harmless, Eli. Leave ’em be.”
“You sure?” The one named Eli coughed doubtfully.
“What could they do to us worse than these bites?” the partner said, pointing to a chunk of flesh missing in her leg.
Ginger and I backed up: they were bitten.
“See, they’re smart enough to understand we’re dead anyway,” she said, nodding at us. “Keep running, kitties. Nothin’ here but the soon-to-be dead.”
“Pickles, let’s go,” Ginger said.
But my eyes were on the pile of human toys. I slowly sniffed towards them. Something in here was familiar. I took a look at the wounded humans and decided it was worth the risk. I stuck my head in the pile and pulled out a stuffed horse, backing up with it between my teeth until I was beside Ginger again.
“Pickles, what in the Saber has gotten into you?”
“This is Connor’s,” I declared, allowing my pet’s scent to wash over me. “He’s had it since I was a kitten.”
Ginger knew better than to ask if I was sure. “Then he was here.”
“Yes,” I agreed, wishing I could carry this to my pet. He must be so upset to have left it behind. I looked around; where could he be? What would compel him to drop his stuffed horse like this? Who are these humans? Do they know Connor?
Ginger was looking at the door between the humans. “They’re guarding this door. Like lions at the entrance to a cave.”
I cocked my head, confused. Why would they be guarding the door? Where did the door lead? “They were bitten, so they were left behind?”
“Or they stayed behind and got bitten for their noble act,” Ginger answered. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that your pet, and perhaps mine, are down that path.”
I pawed at the stuffed horse thoughtfully. “What do we do?”
“We go back to Wally, like we said we would,” Ginger said.
“Yeah,” I replied, the idea of home so powerful I could almost smell my favorite pillow, and Connor’s ratty old blankie. But thinking about Connor made me look through the doorway again. If he was just through the open door, shouldn’t I keep going?
GINGER AND I SAT on the topmost shelf of a laundry closet, directly facing the open door and the dying humans guarding it. We had decided to get some rest, and then make our way back home. Actually, Ginger had decided that. I was still on the fence. The darkness of that doorway was calling me. Telling me Connor was still within reach.
The humans lost interest in us as their deterioration continued, but we learned a lot about the zombie condition by observing and listening to them. There was a radio broadcast advising all surviving humans to unite at their local hospitals, which for Connor and his parents, was this location. Eli and Bree spent a lot of their night speculating about family members, making excuses for why they weren’t here already. I’d watched enough horror movies from under the couch to think that maybe they weren’t coming. My own small spark of hope was kept alive by that stuffed horse. I knew Connor had made it this far at least. But what should I do now?
The humans were attacked by a shuffling zombie wearing a white mask late at night and they dispatched it by hacking at its head. I hid under a large towel and backed so far into the laundry shelf that my tail hit the back of the closet, Ginger right beside me. I could still see the fight though, and as terrifying as it was, I learned something. Despite the chaotic way the humans fought and their ill-advised screams of anger, it seemed a more effective attack than the one I witnessed from my window seat last week, because this zombie stayed down. We waited hours for it to rise again, and when it did not, we talked about the significance of dealing a blow to the head.
The female human was in the last stages of her death, barely able to drag herself back to the doorway after the battle. Eli did his best to help her, but he was not much better.
“Ginger,” I said coming to a decision and waking the orange cat up.
“I want to keep going,” I said, massaging my towel between my paws. “I want to look for Connor through that door.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ginger answered, his eyes snapping open wide.
“We don’t have to go far, but I know if I go back now, I’m going to spend the whole walk home wondering if Connor is just through that door,” I said, the words coming out in a nervous jumble. I took a deep breath before I continued. “I have to know. I’m really scared, and I totally get it if you can’t come with me, but I have to know.”
“That’s crazy,” Ginger said, shaking his head at me. “You can’t just go off on your own. Connor might not even be down there.”
“Or he might be. With your pet. And Wally’s pets,” I replied. “I have to know.”
The humans, meanwhile, had settled in to discussing how they would seal the doors against their eventual transformation into zombies.
“No one else is coming, Bree,” Eli gasped, pulling a couch in the direction of the doorway,
“We’re locking them in the sewers,” she replied, trying to catch her breath.
“That’s what we all agreed to,” he grunted. “To hold this position until no one else showed up and then close it behind them.”
“We don’t need to do much,” Bree half sobbed. “Once we’re zombies we won’t remember how to use doorknobs.”
Eli kept pushing the couch. “Might as well be sure.”
I stood up. “I’m going, Ginger.”
When he made no move to stop me, I realized I had to make a move: follow through with this plan or tuck my tail between my legs and follow him home. I remembered how Ginger had leapt onto Cinnamon’s rooftop and waited for me to take my first step. I could do this. I had to do this.
I leapt down from our safe haven and brazenly walked towards the doorway, not even trying to disguise my destination. If the humans tried to stop me, I was going to bolt through their legs and make for the door.
Eli huffed, arming sweat off his brow. “Turns out we have two last customers.”
I looked behind me to see Ginger had leapt down too and was following my lead. I smiled at him, feeling better and worse about this plan. Better because I wouldn’t be alone. Worse because last time I had convinced a mammal to come with me, we lost him in the ceilings of the ho
spital a few floors up. I meowed up at the man named Eli, explaining our mandate.
“No way he understood that,” Ginger said through his teeth.
“Do you think they’re following a scent?” Bree asked, sliding to the floor beside the door. Eli didn’t answer — he was using all his energy to move the couch — but as I passed Bree, I purred up at her.
She smiled — understanding, I believe — and closed her eyes for the last time as a human. Then we were on the other side, standing on a darkened staircase. I looked back to see Eli closing the door behind us, the couch finalizing the act with a definitive thud.
It turns out that through that doorway were steps that led down to something humans call sewers. Ginger was happy to explain the use of sewers in the human litter process, and yes, they are as disgusting as you think they are. Like the streets and buildings above, humans had created maze-like designs below the earth. Sewers are a special kind of hell for a cat. Not only are they filled with our two worst enemies — rats and water — but they smell like wet dog and cucumbers. Numbers three and five on the worst list. Don’t ask what number four is.
“I don’t know how much longer I can stand this,” Ginger said, stepping carefully around what we could only hope was a sodden pile of leaves. It was fortunate that we had rested in the comfort of clean towels, because neither of us would close our eyes down here.
“Just a few more minutes,” I replied through chattering teeth, glancing at the ladder and manhole cover just ahead of us. We could see the pale sunlight drifting down to us through the holes in the iron covers that punctuated our subterranean journey. Surely we could escape this situation through them. I had to hope that we would find Connor soon.
Ginger sniffed, and I wondered how many more manholes we would pass before he took me up on my suggestion and left me alone to this hell. I couldn’t blame him. He had never felt about his pets the way I felt about Connor. Actually, I don’t think Ginger felt this way for anyone but himself.
“Have you sniffed anything from your pet?” he asked.
“Not since the stuffed horse,” I admitted, allowing sarcasm to sharpen my tone, “though it’s hard to discern any one smell down here. They’re all so lovely.”
“Didja hear that, Harold?” said a voice that made us jump. “She sounds like she’s insulting our hospitality!”
I couldn’t see where the voice came from, it echoed all around us. Ginger jumped up and onto the ladder, raising himself up, so I followed, sitting tensely on a rung directly below him. My fur was damp but still managed to stand on end in reaction to that spooky voice coming out of the darkness.
“Who are you?” he called out.
“Who are we?” replied the voice, sounding like many voices. “What a riddle!”
“What riddle?” I replied, my hackles so far up my back that I must have look like I’d been electrocuted.
“Capital idea, a riddle before you pass,” the voice continued with a cackle. Ginger took another rung up, so I followed. This was bad juju. And that was saying something considering the zombies, insulting eagles, and dying humans we had just passed through.
“Here’s one: what can you swallow, but also swallows you?” the voice said, and then shushed its own echo. Creepy much?
We kept moving up the rungs of the ladder, hoping to outrun the voice. “Uh … not sure,” I said, my teeth chattering so hard I don’t think I could have formed complex words. “Any idea, Ginger?”
“Darkness?” Ginger tried, only a few rungs from the manhole cover now. What we were going to do at the top, I had no idea. There was no way two cats could lift a manhole cover, but that was the next problem.
“We’ll give you a hint,” the voice cackled at us from below. “Harold? A hint for our guests!”
Too late, I realized there were eyes all around us in this tunnel. They leapt as one, hundreds of rats dragging us into the watery answer below.
I WOKE SHIVERING AND soaking wet in a cage.
“Water,” I spat out. “That’s the answer to your stupid riddle!”
“Thank the Saber, I thought they’d drowned you,” said Ginger from his own cage.
I shook myself, spraying water and who-knew-what-else at Ginger, who cringed.
“Sorry,” I said, glad Wally wasn’t with us. He would have sent me to the stocks for that. I took a better look at our situation. We were in two cages, the kind humans would use to keep a bird, suspended from the ceiling of the sewer, winched up with ropes. This was so much worse than the stocks. I pushed at the bars of the cage. Except for the small cat carriers our pets used to transport us to the vet, I’d never been in such an enclosed space. I hated it. I hated everything about this situation. The water, the cages, but especially that creepy voice.
“How did rats raise us up here?” I asked, astonished.
“Oh, we helped Harold out,” said that disembodied voice out of the darkness below.
Many voices chuckled at us and I saw the beady eyes of the rats staring up at us raptly.
“What do you want?” Ginger asked, his voice shaking slightly, though from the damp or fear, I could not tell.
A ghostly white figure stole out of the shadows below. “Want? We have what we want! Entertainment for Harold!”
“Who is Harold?” I asked the speaker, trying to get a better look at the animal. It was either a huge albino rat or some kind of opossum. Either way, I was creeped out. Have you ever read a book where an opossum was a good guy? Yeah, me neither.
The animal snickered, waving its pink paws all around. “This is Harold,” he said. “Naming each of them was tiresome, so they are all Harold.”
A splashing sound was followed by a groan I recognized all too well. From the recess of one of the walls, a zombie strained against his bonds. I froze in my cage. This was their entertainment? The zombie was wearing a long, white coat and something around its neck was holding it fast, not allowing it to move any closer to us. It stretched its arms towards us and gnashed its teeth though, clear about what it wanted to do.
“What kind of monsters are you?” I whispered, looking down at the white devil who was giggling fit to burst. “Let us go!”
“So demanding!” the opossum declared, clapping its paws. “Perhaps you will be more entertaining than our last few visitors.”
He pointed at his feet where the bones of small mammals could be seen. “The humans took the last trains south. No one left to sport with but this fellow.”
“We have to get out of here,” I said, turning to look at Ginger, hoping he had a brilliant escape plan. But Ginger was cowering in his cage, sobbing big gulping tears as he stared at the zombie reaching for him.
“Ginger!” I called, shocked at his response. “Ginger, it’s okay! We’re going to be okay!”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” the opossum corrected, pressing a paw to his chest dramatically. “I have a soft spot for filthy felines such as yourselves, but Harold does enjoy scaredy cats, it’s true! Why, I remember that pernicious skunk we caught two nights ago … Or was it three nights …?”
I felt my cage moving up and looked around for the source of the motion. The rats were raptly listening to the opossum’s monologue, but I was moving half an inch at a time towards the ceiling, away from the zombie, the rats, and the crazy supervillain leading them.
“Ginger,” I called, trying to draw his eyes from the zombie, “focus on me instead.” For some reason, Ginger’s fear was giving me strength. I had to be the brave one. I owed him that.
He finally turned his face towards me, his whiskers shaking as he spoke. “I failed, Pickles.”
His cage started moving up, as well, as I realized this was no random zombie. This was Ginger’s pet. The one who worked at the hospital. My heart thudded dully for him. He did care for more than himself! His mission had failed. No wonder he was distraught. I would be a puddl
e of cat tears at the bottom of this cage if that were zombie-Connor tied to a wall.
“Hey! You! Let go of those cats!” the opossum shrieked, as my cage hit the ceiling of the sewer with a bang. Deft black paws pulled the locks apart and I looked up into a masked face I never thought to see again.
“Coming?” Trip said with a cheeky grin.
I was so surprised it took me a moment to leap up into the round pipe where he stood, pulling at Ginger’s cage now. All around, rats scampered towards us, but now I was angry, and I felt Wally’s instructions on self-defense take me over. Leaning out of the pipe, I swiped left and right, knocking them off the sewer walls and sending them screaming down into the hands of Ginger’s once-pet.
The opossum was losing his mind down there, shrieking and cursing his falling army, but even when Trip pulled Ginger free and called me to follow, I kept up my attack on the rats; I was so angry at the way they had treated Ginger’s pet. How many had they killed for their sport as the world fell around them?
I smacked a rat full in the face and she hit one of the cages hard enough to knock it free. It dropped with a loud crash and it must have connected with whatever was holding the zombie in place because, with a great surge, he broke free and grabbed the opossum with both hands. That was enough for me. I took a last swipe at the rat army and turned tail, running up the pipe after Trip and Ginger.
Trip led us up a drain pipe into something he called a “convenience store,” popping the cover off with a triumphant grunt. As soon as I was through, we slid it back into place, and Trip pushed a heavy box of tinned vegetables over it. There was no way anyone was going to be able to follow us up that drain pipe.
We sat puffing with exhaustion for a moment and then I threw myself at the large raccoon.
“I’d scent you if I didn’t stink so badly!” I said with a grin, wrapping my tail around him.
He gave a huge belly laugh. “Well, I know how you cats hate the water, but there is a sink over there, if you want to use it.”
With Trip’s help, we filled the sink with lukewarm water and sank into it despite our aversion to the liquid. Ginger just followed our directions without speaking. After a complete immersion, we sat him down on a heating vent, where I began licking the both of us clean as Trip filled us in on his story.
