by Angela Misri
All three zombies noticed and turned to look down at the confused raccoon with groans of displeasure. I used my left claw to turn my zombie back, hissing at Trip. “Try again!”
Meanwhile, Emmy was slowly working her zombie off its skewer. Left claw, right claw, left claw, right claw. Pal zoomed around behind the zombies, hooting softly so that they focused on him and moved backwards off the logs.
Emmy freed her zombie first and gave a hoot of her own, then charged off into the woods. I would have called her back, but Pallas suddenly shot off into the camp.
“Pallas!” I called instead.
“Ooof!” said Trip, landing on the ground behind his zombie again.
“Trip, Pal just flew off. What’s going on?” I asked, still working my zombie off its log, starting to sweat at the effort.
Trip climbed the tree for the third time, squinting into the camp. “They’re leaving! Pickles, the humans are leaving!”
Desperation made us work faster. I got my zombie free just as Emmy rode her zombie back to us, its arms extended like the Frankenstein’s monster I’d seen in a TV movie. “Come on!” she yelled.
“Trip, follow us on foot!” I said, turning my zombie to follow Emmy’s, skirting the edge of the camp and following the humans. Pallas flew back our way, hooting in alarm.
“They’re running towards the safe house, Pickles. You have to hurry.”
My paws strained against my zombie, pulling his muscles so that we followed the owl through the twilight, ignoring the hamster who was squealing her delight at her ride, making her zombie turn spasmodically to locate the source of the sound.
I was tempted to chastise her, but the sound of my voice would only make my zombie look for me as well, so I only gritted my teeth instead.
Ahead, I could see the group of humans running towards the safe house, which I could also see in the distance. It too was ringed with sharpened logs, but the lights seemed dim. Had Wally succeeded in rousing the humans within?
I turned my zombie left so that I could come at the humans from that side, hoping Emmy would understand she should attack from the other side.
We were close enough to the safe house that I could see the structure inside: a large cement building with floodlights on the roof and barbed wire around the edges. The attacking humans were moving slower now, edging their way to an unguarded part of the fence that seemed to be under repair.
No matter what I did, I couldn’t get my zombie to move faster, and he didn’t seem to have sighted the humans at all, so I was constantly directing him back towards the safe house. My arms were so tired I considered leaping off my ride and attacking the humans directly, especially when one of them lit a branch and tossed it over the fence. I wouldn’t have lasted a minute, though, even with all of Wally’s training.
That’s when the floodlights came on, all focused on the humans of the camp.
There were yells from within the safe house compound. Wally had done it!
I was close enough to see the faces of the camp humans now, confused and livid that their attack had gone awry. More importantly, my zombie was charging towards them without any prompting from me.
The humans finally saw us and screamed in terror as my zombie and I attacked. It must have been a sight: a dead human barreling towards them, steered by a cat on its back. Whatever I looked like, the hamster version must have looked even crazier. I heard Emmy before I saw her, coming in from my right as the humans hacked at my zombie. They were trying to defend themselves, but were now being struck by our zombies from both sides. I retracted my claws and leapt off my zombie ride, streaking towards Emmy and climbing up her dead human like a ladder.
“Can’t get … free!” she hissed, and I grabbed her paw and pulled at it. She was well stuck.
“Duck!” she yelled and thankfully, I listened, ducking as a human decapitated her zombie with a sword. The zombie fell backwards, and I wrapped myself around Emmy’s struggling body as we hit the ground, trapping us under its body.
“Mmmph,” I said, squished under the two-hundred-pound zombie, unable to move. “Emmy?”
Emmy was free from her zombie, but she was unconscious in my paws.
Somewhere above us I could hear a loud hooting sound. Pallas had joined the fray.
“Hold on, Emmy,” I said, twisting and turning, trying to work my way free of the lifeless body on top of us. My right paw dug in the dirt, my left paw was firmly wrapped around Emmy, and then I felt something grab my right paw.
“Ack!” I screamed, sure we were done for this time.
“Pickles,” said a voice I recognized, and I stopped fighting against the paw, allowing Trip to drag us out from under our dead weight.
“Get her to safety!” I said to Pallas, holding Emmy up to the skies. Pal scooped the hamster up and flew towards the boundary of the safe house, rising up and down as he flew because he was having so much trouble with the weight.
Trip and I dodged falling body parts and screaming humans as they poured out of the compound, closely followed by cats I knew and loved.
“Pickles,” called Wally. “This way.”
I sprinted towards Hannah and Ginger, Trip close at my tail.
“Get inside! The humans can handle this,” Wally said, directing the attack from a raised platform of boxes. We leapt up beside him, pulling Trip up as well when he struggled to climb the side. First chance I got I planned to properly sharpen the claws of my raccoon friend.
“Pallas!” he called, waving at the owl who looked done in at the effort of carrying a senseless hamster.
I didn’t think they would make it, but somehow, Pal did it, dropping like a stone onto the raised platform. Trip cradled Emmy in his arms, I tucked Pal between Hannah and me, and we all stared down at the human battle below.
It wasn’t pretty. The zombies we had rode into the skirmish had done their damage, several of the camp humans wailing at bites to their necks or arms that meant their lives were over. Wally continued to yell encouragement at the humans, looking more proud than a mother corgi in the British Royal Family. The safe house humans surrounded their peers, in numbers that tripled their enemies, but still more than a few refused to surrender and needed to be put down. I turned my face away from the carnage, squeezing Pal harder at my side, and met the eyes of the one mammal I had fought so hard to find.
“Pickles?” asked the sweet voice of my pet. My Connor. His eyes the warm brown I saw in my dreams, his cheeks less full than last time I saw him.
He was pointing at me from his mother’s arms, reaching for me with his little hands, when I nodded at him and he realized he was right. I was his Pickles. His mother did a double-take, running her eyes over the motley crew of animals sitting on a platform above the mayhem below. And then I was in my Connor’s arms, squeezed so tight I could barely breathe and loving every wonderful second of it.
THAT FIRST DAY WAS a blur of reunions and explanations as my small fellowship was integrated into the safe house population. I was determined to keep this family together, no matter what it took, but I needn’t have worried, because my pet had room in his heart for all of us.
Connor introduced the whole fellowship by name to the humans of the compound, relaying our acts of bravery in his limited toddler words. As Wally explained it, youngling mammals were less burdened by the realities of the world, and therefore able to listen and hear the animals around them. As a small animal, he understood about half of what I said to him, and as he grew older, less and less.
That meant that the adult humans around him understood about an eighth of what he managed to communicate, but I didn’t care. The important thing was that when one of the adult humans made a move towards Trip, Connor, understanding his responsibility to my fellowship, threw his arms around the raccoon, and told them he loved him, so they’d better not hurt him.
I could have cried at his loyalty (
I think I might have, in fact, shed a tear), and it was a successful strategy for so young a human. Trip looked around at the staring adults and gently returned the hug, eliciting “aws!” from the audience. He had won them over.
Wally discovered that one of his pets was lost on their journey to the safe house. He took it very hard, becoming even more protective of the human female still in his charge. He took responsibility for communicating Pal’s and Trip’s needs to his female, with Connor and I as influencers. She was a good human, and within a week, she had started to build a small off-shoot loft that led from the compound into a tree where Trip and Pal could come and go as they pleased without fear of zombie attacks.
We called our little home “The Menagerie,” and it became the place where all of us would gather in the evening to share our stories. I still put Connor to bed — that would always be my job — but I spent the wee hours with the rest of my family sharing food and laughter.
Hannah was literally fought over, which didn’t surprise me at all. Two teenage girls were both dying to become her new charge, begging their parents to claim her services. Hannah was flattered by the attention and made the decision herself, choosing to spend half her time with each of the girls. My Abyssinian love was finally changing her own luck and beginning to trust other mammals again. Connor created a little fort out of his own precious blankie for the two of us in our cat house, affording us a little privacy, understanding in his own way that this was the cat I would spend the rest of my life with.
Ginger became the roaming tomcat of the compound, impressing everyone with his ability to alert them to both danger and promise, going on patrol with whoever was on guard duty. I watched him walk the battlements at the foot of a well-armed guard, and he would wink at me reminding me he was still the wise-cracking tabby at heart.
And Emmy? She was carried into the medical room, an anxious owl hooting and flying above, but she would not wake. We dug her a small grave with our paws, and the humans carved her name into a wooden tombstone.
We — the remaining fellowship — stood over her grave, our hearts heavy at the loss.
“What we need here is a reveille,” Wally said, looking around as if a trumpet would present itself, along with a mammal with the fingers to play such an instrument. When none appeared, Wally took the bronze star off his collar and carefully laid it on the grave.
“Should we say something?” Trip said, wiping at his masked eyes.
“She was the best hamster I ever met,” said Ginger. “I’ll never forget how she saved that baby chipmunk. She changed me that day. I wouldn’t be the cat I am today without her.”
We nodded solemnly, and then Wally’s face broke out in a rare smile. “I’ll never forget how mad she was when the chipmunks grabbed us in that treehouse.”
We laughed. “Mad was her default setting,” I murmured, hugging Hannah close.
“Not to me,” said Pallas in his deep voice. “She was nothing but loving to me. From the moment I met her.”
Pallas burst into tears and Trip took one look at him and did the same. They collapsed into each other’s arms and seemed to be competing for who could be the noisiest. Soon the two of them were bawling loud enough to attract zombies.
“Okay, shh, okay,” Ginger said, glancing up at the guards on duty who were now staring down at the spectacle. “Pull it together, mammals.”
I couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed by the display or worried about zombie attacks. Possibly a little of both.
“Pickles,” Wally said.
“I know,” I said, leaning towards the weeping animals. “Trip. Pal ….”
“No, Pickles, look!” said Wally, pointing at the little grave. The dirt on top was moving, the general’s star shaking its way off the top of the mound.
“What?” Hannah exclaimed, her back arching in response.
“Bugs. It’s just bugs,” sniffed Pal, his huge eyes growing wider.
In our defense, we didn’t freak out until a small pink paw poked out through the dirt.
“Zombie hamster!” Trip yelled, tripping over his own feet in his effort to get away. He grabbed Pal and started pushing us all back towards the main house. I think if he had had his precious plastic bag at that moment, he would have tossed us all in it and sprinted to safety like a furry, masked Santa Claus.
“Where?” sputtered zombie Emmy, spitting dirt in every direction as she rose from her own grave.
“Can zombie hamsters talk?” Hannah asked, pushing back against Trip’s frantic movements.
Zombie Emmy snorted, more dirt flying out of her nose. “Zombies can’t talk.”
I stepped forward, and both Wally and Ginger grabbed my tail. “Emmy?”
“Yes?” she replied, still rubbing dirt from her face. “Where zombie hamster? I’d see it.”
I threw my arms around her. “You’re not dead!”
“Not dead,” she confirmed. “Playing dead. Fine. Hungry.”
She stooped to pick up the bronze star and bit into it, testing the metal before looking up at us curiously. Wally looked thunderously angry, his mouth gaping, but Ginger and Hannah burst into peals of laughter. Trip tiptoed towards her, gobsmacked, but it was Pal who had the most unpredictable reaction, fainting right where he stood, his spindly legs sticking straight up in the air. Trip gathered up the owl with a sigh and all seven of us trooped back into The Menagerie, our laughter filling the air, our arms around each other.
Like most books, this one would not have made it out of my notebooks but for some awesome mammals around me. First, a big thank you to my little family for putting up with my time away from them to create Pickles’ world and for being subjected to several rounds of beta reading.
Barry Jowett, my editor at DCB, you are a patient, lovely man, and I appreciate all the work you put into my manuscript.
Emma Dolan is the illustrator who can seemingly take any story I write, be it a 1930s detective or a zombie-fighting cat, and translate it into the most beautiful cover on the bookshelf. I am endlessly grateful to have you in my publishing life.
My little writing group, who have been forced to listen to the exploits of my rag-tag bunch of adventurers for years, Joyce Grant, Alisha Sevigny, Colleen Ross, Bev Katz and Heather Jackson, thank you!
To the indie bookstores like Book City on St. Clair W and the Mysterious Bookshop in NYC, who continue to carry my books and speak of my characters to your readership, thank you!
Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for their repeated support of this series, and to Karen Li for being the first to support and guide Pickles on her journey. And a shout-out to my teacher, Kathy Kacer who helped me make the transition from YA to middle-grade author.
To my first editor, Kat Kruger, who continues to be a huge source of support and love, thank you.
Huge thanks to Shelagh Rogers and Marc Côté for your kind faith and support.
And finally, I must dedicate this book to all the four-legged animals who have called me pet over the years, Princess, Gauss, Mendel, Darwin, Guttenberg, and Copernicus.
Photo by Eugene Choi
Angela Misri is an author and journalist of Indian descent. She was born in London, U.K. and briefly lived in Buenos Aires before moving to Canada in 1982. Angela is the author of the Portia Adams Adventures series and several essays on Sherlock Holmes. She earned her BA in English Literature from the University of Calgary and her MA in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario. As a former CBC Radio digital manager and the Digital Director at The Walrus, Angela is never offline (although she prefers to write long form in notebooks). Angela plays MMORPGs, speaks several web languages, and owns too many comic books. She currently lives in Toronto, ON.
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