The Last Free Cat

by Blake Jon

  I returned to Kris and knelt down beside him. As I did, his eyes opened. “I’m cold,” he said.

  Instinctively I pulled him towards me, and he put up no more resistance than Feela. I held his head against my chest, reversing roles from the night before. The sun was up now, although it was invisible behind a sheet of milky cloud. But still the morning was beautiful, and the steady cascade of water into the waiting pools illustrated the loveliness of life with an intensity which was almost cruel.

  Kris caught sight of Feela, reached out, and tickled her chin.

  “All right, beautiful?” he said.

  “Fine thanks,” I replied.

  “Good,” said Kris.

  There was a short silence.

  “It’s quiet,” I said. “They must have given up.”

  “Actually,” replied Kris, “they came over three times in the night.”

  “You were awake?” I asked.

  “I always sleep with one eye open,” said Kris.

  I smiled to myself, having watched him out cold just five minutes before. How he loved to romanticize himself.

  “So what would you normally be doing at home, this time in the morning?” I asked.

  “This and that,” replied Kris.

  “I’d steer clear of ‘that’ if I were you,” I said.

  “I’ll stick to ‘this’ then,” replied Kris.

  “Yes,” I said. “You stick to ‘this.’”

  Unable to prevent myself, I bent down and gave him a little kiss on the mouth. Instantly an animal urgency came into his eyes, and he grabbed the back of my neck. I pulled away quickly.

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to go.”

  Kris gazed at me with level eyes, unimpressed. “You want to get your head sorted out,” he said.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “Whatever,” he mimicked.

  I filled a water bottle from the nearby pool while Kris fed Feela some dried food then put a small bag of it in my jacket pocket for later in the day. Breakfast for us was a few biscuits and a banana, then everything was packed, including Feela, who offered more resistance than she’d done since we left Amelie’s. As we set off she was mewing loudly—not that it mattered, because no one was going to hear her.

  We navigated by the big hill we’d climbed the night before. We knew if we went around it we’d be heading for Bluehaven, but we had to do this without coming into the open. So we stayed on the fringe of the forest, under cover but still in sight of the hill. We walked on a soft carpet of dry pine needles, saying nothing but what needed to be said, moving purposefully, efficiently, quickly. Feela settled back into silence, and for a long while we heard nothing but birds.

  The farther we progressed without coming across any sign of Comprot, the more optimistic I became. It was, after all, a big, big area, and even if there were hundreds of compers, they couldn’t cover all of it and Bluehaven as well. At the same time, however, the woods weren’t half as wild as they looked. Well-worn paths crisscrossed them at regular intervals, and every minor crossroads meant an anxious, hasty glance in at least three directions.

  Finally our luck ran out. A bubble of human voices suddenly competed with the birdsong. They weren’t far away and they were getting closer.

  Kris and I stood absolutely still, as still as Feela stalking a bird, senses working overtime. If we tried to move away from the voices, their owners might hear our footsteps, and in any case, we were as likely to run into them as to get away.

  A twig cracked. The volume of the voices rose sharply. They were right on the path in front of us!

  Instantly we dove for cover. Fortunately for us, there was a great mound of dead pine needles close by, at least two meters wide by a meter high. Behind that the ground dipped into a small hollow, so that we were just about obscured from view. I pulled Feela’s box tight towards me and concentrated on breathing in silent, shallow drafts.

  They were near, desperately near. I pressed in closer to the mound of pine needles, but at that moment made a shocking discovery.

  The mound was alive.

  Before my horrified eyes, a boiling mass of giant ants with red bellies and black heads was swarming over the pile of pine needles, infesting every centimeter with sinister action. One gang was dragging a helpless beetle to its doom, while others fought, greeted, carried, and rearranged in sudden definite spurts, ruthlessly purposeful.

  I gritted my teeth and fought my instinct to cry out. The brutal little creatures were over me, over Kris, over Feela’s box. But their monstrous nest was all that protected us from whoever was on the path.

  By now, the voices were loud enough to hear:

  “How many do you reckon then?” said a female voice.

  “According to the media, could be thousands,” replied a male voice.

  “That comper weren’t saying much,” said the woman.

  “Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” replied the man.

  The couple moved past and their conversation became a distant babble. I leapt up and began furiously brushing ants from my legs. “What are they?” I hissed.

  “Formica,” whispered Kris. “Wood ants.”

  “They’re disgusting!” I hissed.

  “They’re survivors,” replied Kris. Obviously he felt a kinship with the ants, but I felt the opposite. With their black, glinting, helmeted heads they were like an army of miniature compers. It was the beetle I identified with—the outsider they were programmed to destroy.

  The image of that ant nest stayed with me as we pressed on through the forest. I thought of the compers we’d known at home, the friendly neighborhood ones who asked after Mum’s health, and I wondered if they’d be amongst that army the passersby had been describing. I fantasized seeing them amongst the marksmen, calling out to them, having them save us. But deep down I knew this was nonsense. No matter how normal and human they’d seemed at our doorstep, they were the enemy now, and their private sympathies would count for nothing.

  I began to sense that civilization was near—or what I used to think was civilization. The hill had all but disappeared behind us and the noise of traffic was growing. We came on a big wide path with worn tire tracks on either side—obviously a main thoroughfare through the forest. After a short debate, we agreed to head alongside this path, still under cover of the trees, so we could get a better idea of what was awaiting us at the edge of Bluehaven.

  We found out soon enough. The meeting of the path and the road was festooned with compers. Everyone traveling down the road was passing through a checkpoint—some allowed through, some greeted with suspicion and stopped. As we watched from our hidey-hole, a group of young people were ordered out of their minibus and searched. Why, we had no idea. None of them looked like us.

  “The roads are out, then,” I whispered.

  “We knew that anyway,” replied Kris.

  We pondered the alternatives. There was no point in heading back—Comprot would be covering every route out of the forest. There was no way forward—the forest ended at the road ahead. That only left sideways, skirting the trees till we found a weak link in the Comprot lines —if such a thing existed. But it was hard to believe there was a road or path out of here which they wouldn’t have covered.

  We hadn’t moved far when our hopes received another blow. This side of the forest was bordered by a high metal fence, on the other side of which was some kind of park. The fence was a good three meters high and topped by razor wire. Kris gazed upwards and shook his head.

  “I’ve tried to climb one of those before,” he said.

  “And?” I said.

  He pulled up his trouser leg to show an ugly scar which ran the length of his inside calf.

  “Nice,” I said.

  “I work out,” quipped Kris.

  “The scar, I meant,” I replied. It was funny how we could joke in this situation, but it seemed to come naturally. I think they call it gallows humor.

  “We could always cut through it,” I suggeste
d.

  “Yeah,” said Kris. “As long as you brought the oxyacetylene torch.”

  Kris continued to gaze at the top of the fence, but my eyes had turned to the ground. Some ingenious creature had found its own way past the fence by burrowing beneath it.

  “Look,” I said. “That’s what we need to be—a rabbit.”

  Kris followed my gaze. “Badger,” he corrected.

  Suddenly a lightbulb went on. “Why can’t we?” I said.

  “What with?” said Kris. “That ground’s bone hard.”

  I looked around. There were a few broken branches, but they were far too soft and bendy for digging. Other than that, just some large round rocks, like the ones at the waterfall.

  Of course! Stone Age tools!

  I picked up the nearest rock and dashed it with all my strength on to another stone. The rock cleaved neatly into three, each with hard, sharp edges. Before Kris’s amazed eyes, I began chipping the pieces against each other, making my own crude version of a Stone Age axe.

  “Come on,” I said. “You do the same.”

  Without a word Kris picked up a second piece and began hammering it against one of the bigger stones. In a few minutes we had a pair of digging tools—pathetic compared to what ancient man (and woman) made, but good enough to loosen the earth around the badger’s hole. Our hands could do the rest.

  The job was easier than I expected. Beneath the hard surface the ground was relatively crumbly, and soon Kris’s skinny body was testing out the depth of our burrow. After a little more frantic digging and scooping, he’d inched himself under the fence and emerged, filthy and triumphant, the other side. I pushed through Feela’s box and the bags, then did my own scrabbling limbo dance through to the rough grass boundary of a gigantic corrugated iron shed, to the right of which was an equally gigantic concrete yard. To the right of that was another fence and beyond that another yard and buildings.

  We did a quick recon. There didn’t appear to be anyone around. At first we thought it was because the place was disused then it suddenly occurred to me, for the first time, that it was Sunday. Since we’d started our journey all the hours and days had run into one.

  As we set off up the yard, with no view of what lay at the end of it, it became clear that the huge building next to us was some kind of factory. Farther up the yard were monstrous sheets of rusting metal, stacked in neat and meaningless piles next to an equally rusty railway line. We walked silently through this bleak and alien place, as if in a dream, wondering where it would ever end. But the piles only led to more piles, until I wondered if we would ever escape this cold, dead, heavy metal hell. Finally, however, there was another fence, not such a tall one, with no razor wire.

  On the other side of that were cars.

  Cars, as far as the eye could see.

  We hadn’t reached the road, however. The cars, like the sheets of metal, were arranged in military lines, empty of drivers and completely motionless. With the aid of some pallets, Kris climbed over the fence, and I handed him Feela, then made my own way over. Again, there was no sign of life in the yard, nothing but the idle machines workers had wasted their time making. The fact there wasn’t a cloud in the sky or a breath of wind only added to the sense of unreality.

  “What are they all doing here?” I asked.

  “Rusting,” said Kris.

  “But there’s thousands!” I said.

  “This whole plant must have gone bust in the last crash,” said Kris.

  “Why don’t they just give the cars away?” I asked.

  “What?” said Kris. “And drive down prices? You’ll be suggesting they give away cats next.”

  We fell back into silence. It didn’t pay to get carried away in conversation when a helicopter could appear at any second. I’d seen enough Crimewatch episodes to know how fast they could arrive, how far they could see, and how accurately they could shoot. It was strange to remember how reassuring that had once seemed.

  Half hypnotized by the vast army of cars, it almost came as a surprise to see an end to it. But finally we glimpsed a fence ahead. As we drew closer to this our hearts sank. It was just the same as the fence we’d first burrowed under, but without a helpful patch of earth below—just rock-hard concrete.

  Soon it became apparent there was only one way out of the car graveyard: a fortified gate a hundred meters to our left. Overlooking this gate was a gatehouse, and inside this gatehouse was a security guard.

  “Maybe we could overpower him,” suggested Kris.

  “No way,” I said.

  “Why not?” said Kris. “There’s two of us.”

  “He could be armed,” I replied.

  “Security guards can’t carry guns,” said Kris.

  “No,” I replied. “But they carry everything else.”

  Kris weighed up the options. “Got any better ideas?” he asked.

  “Create a diversion,” I suggested.

  “How are we going to do that?” asked Kris. A few days ago he would have said this scornfully. Now it was just a question.

  “How far can you chuck a stone?” I asked.

  Kris was straight on to my wavelength. Not far away the concrete surface was cracked, and with a little effort he was able to pry out a decent-sized rock.

  “If he comes out,” said Kris, “get ready to run like hell.”

  Kris drew back his arm and flung the rock for all he was worth. It landed with a satisfying thud on the cars beyond the gatehouse. Sure enough, the guard was out like a darting fish. His eyes were locked on to the area where the rock landed, but to our intense frustration he moved no farther than the gate.

  Kris yanked up another rock.

  “No!” I hissed. “He’ll see where it came from!”

  The security guard was still scanning the far side of the yard. He lifted a phone to his lips.

  “Shit,” murmured Kris.

  “Listen,” I whispered. “What if we split up … then you attract his attention—he’s bound to chase you. Then I’ll get in the gatehouse and open the gate.”

  “You’ll have to take Feela,” said Kris.

  “Of course,” I replied.

  A flash of doubt crossed Kris’s face.

  “You’ll skin him, no worries,” I said.

  Kris’s mouth smiled, if not his eyes. “Course,” he said. “You ready?”

  “Ready,” I replied.

  Kris slipped off between the cars while I made my way closer to the gate, keeping as low and silent as a huntress. The security guard was still on the phone, to whom was anybody’s guess. But his head shot up at a yell of “Hey!” and the sight of Kris standing on the roof of a car, doing a little shimmy for good measure.

  I could have done without the amateur dramatics. There was no point in winding the guard up as well as attracting his attention. But that was Kris and, most importantly, his performance worked. The security guard marched purposefully towards him, leaving the gatehouse unguarded. I raced towards it for all I was worth, threw open the door and found myself face to face with a picture of the comper we’d had the fight with on the front page of the Daily People, under a headline saying “FIND THE MONSTERS THAT DID THIS.”

  I ripped the paper from the desk and to my relief found the gate controls beneath it. I stabbed the open button, the gate began to rise, and I fled back outside. It was only now, to my horror, that I saw the security guard bearing down on me full-tilt.

  I ducked beneath the gate and ran, but Feela’s box weighed me down and unbalanced me. The guard was gaining by the second, his heavy footfalls hammering the pavement behind me. I chanced a desperate look behind to see, to my fantastic relief, the guard crashing forward to the ground, rugby-tackled with immaculate skill by Kris. Such was the force with which he crashed to earth, the guard was too shocked and winded to rise again, and Kris and I made our hectic escape around the silent and deserted streets of the industrial park until the car graveyard was well out of sight and we could pause to recover.

 
Even in this desperate state, panting for breath, Kris felt the need to explain to me the excellence of his technique and the importance of getting your man around the knees. But my ears were attuned to something other than the sound of Kris’s prattle.

  “Can you hear … drums?” I asked.

  Kris listened. “Yeah,” he said. “I can.”

  The day was so unreal by now, the unexpected seemed almost normal. We set off again, walking briskly, casting anxious glances both behind and ahead. The noise of the drums seemed to rise up and fall back again, eventually becoming completely drowned by the noise of traffic. We were approaching a main road, maybe the main road into Bluehaven.

  Our first sight of this road was not encouraging. The first vehicle to pass was a Comprot armed response unit. We ducked back behind a hedge, thankful the van had been going far too fast to notice us. To our dismay, however, the armed response unit was quickly followed by a Comprot mobile video unit, a Comprot special tactics unit, three mobile detention units and at least eight more Comprot vans, each loaded to the brim with fully tooled-up compers.

  “Talk about overkill,” whispered Kris.

  “That can’t be all for us,” I whispered back.

  Just as I said this there was a breath of wind, and the sound of drums once more rose up. But this time, there was more. Voices. Many voices. And as we crouched in fear of our lives, these voices grew and grew until we could make out the actual words they were chanting.

  The words they were chanting were our names.

  “It’s a lynch mob!” I hissed.

  Kris said nothing, but we both knew our chances were close to zero with the whole town mobilized against us. If the worst came to the worst, could we expect the compers to protect us from a crowd fired up by all the news stories? And what would they do to Feela?

  For a second it crossed my mind to just open the basket and let Feela go. At least then she’d have a fighting chance—or a better chance than us, at any rate.

  “We’ve got to go back,” said Kris.