Cat Kin

by Nick Green

  This time, when he tried, Mau claws erupted from his fingertips. He reached down and hewed at the rope. The taut cord exploded at his touch, scattering fibres like chaff. The weight cradle crashed to the concrete. Ben gripped the severed rope with both hands, knowing what was about to happen.

  Shorn of its counterweight, the lift car stopped rising and hung motionless for the time it takes to blink. Then it plummeted like a yo-yo. Ben, hanging from the other end of the cable, shot upwards. Down came the lift, unstoppable as a train. Ben let go with his left hand and stretched out as far as he could.

  ‘Tiffany!’ he screamed, not knowing if she could hear him, or was able to obey. ‘Felasticon!’

  The lift twisted on the thrashing cable. Tiffany was suddenly there, throwing herself from its open doorway, reaching for his reaching hand. As the car plunged past with a whump of displaced air, his fingers closed on her wrist and she grabbed his.

  A crash shook the gantry from top to bottom. The lift had hit the floor. Afterwards, Ben would have no clear memory of flying upwards, somehow clinging on with each hand, then tumbling through space as the whiplashing rope threw him off, his grip broken by Tiffany’s weight. All he would remember was being sprawled face-down on the topmost gallery, feeling as if his arms had been torn off. He sucked a painful breath. Tiffany lay beside him, unmoving.

  ‘Uuuuuuuhhhhhhh.’

  ‘Woooo!’ Yusuf danced above them. ‘Tens out of ten all round, my friends!’

  He helped them up. Tiffany seemed not to know where she was. Ben patted at himself, sure he was about to fall into two bits and wondering why it hadn’t happened yet.

  ‘Right,’ he croaked, when he had the strength. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Yusuf. ‘Tiffany, you didn’t come here by yourself? Where’s Mrs Powell?’

  Tiffany hesitated. Ben saw in Yusuf’s face the same horrible thought that he’d just had. When Tiffany spoke it didn’t sound like her voice.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s just go.’

  ‘Okay.’ Ben shook off his sudden paralysis. ‘Back the way we came in?’

  He pushed Tiffany before him. Yusuf, bringing up the rear, glanced over his shoulder and let out a yell.

  ‘Come on!’

  First Susie and then Cecile erupted out of the stairwell, Green Suits breathing down their necks. The girls released the white bundles that they carried in their arms. The dust sheets unravelled and dozens of jars rolled out onto the walkway. Cecile and Susie sped away, leaving their pursuers to slip on the pills and fall in a tangled heap.

  ‘Onto the roof,’ Yusuf panted. ‘We can signal to Daniel. Maybe he can move the crane and pick us up.’

  ‘Crane?’ Tiffany frowned.

  In single file they scaled a ladder into the water tank loft. Cecile walked up a fallen beam and climbed through the hole in the roof. She and Yusuf helped Tiffany out onto the tiles. Tiffany gasped at the cleaner air and stood there, blinking foolishly.

  ‘Say that again? Daniel’s doing what?’

  Ben followed them into the breezy night. It was beginning to spit with rain, cooling his rope-burnt hand. The streets of Hackney had never gleamed so beautifully.

  ‘Yusuf’s pulling your leg,’ he grinned. ‘What would we be doing with a crane?’

  Something swung out of the darkness.

  EIGHT LIVES

  Earth dare not hurt me

  death’s dart misses me

  I breathe thunder

  beware my wrath.

  From ‘Song of Pasht’, Spell 13, Akhotep, c. 1580 BC Trans. Matthew Toy.

  The roof tiles rucked up in a wave beneath their feet and for an instant Ben knew how it felt to be a skittle in a bowling alley. By the time he had recovered enough to be sure he was still alive, he was lying upon damp slates, a boom ringing in his ears. A little way below him, yards from where they’d been standing, the factory’s sloping roof was carved into a crater.

  Yusuf rolled groaning on his back. Susie wobbled to her feet. Fighting dizziness, Ben looked up and saw the crane swinging its club like a giant.

  ‘What are they playing at? Daniel!’

  ‘That’s not Daniel.’ Cecile’s voice was high and scared.

  The cab’s windows were steamed and rain-blurred. It was hard to make out the face of the man who now sat at the controls. Even without night vision Ben could have guessed.

  ‘It’s Stanford!’

  Far below he saw the small figures of Olly and Daniel fleeing the crane in panic. The crane’s boom jerked to and fro like the neck of some decapitated beast, wild and unguided, steered only by mindless rage. The wrecking ball swung around for another pass.

  ‘He’s trying to kill us!’ cried Yusuf. ‘Everyone, down to the ground!’

  ‘You want to make a fool of me?’ Above the engine’s roar and inexpert grinding of gears, Ben’s feline hearing could still pick out Stanford’s furious screams. ‘You think you’re a genius, you think you’re Einstein, you think you’re allmächtiger Gott… You’d be nothing without me! I own you, and I can smash you!’

  ‘It’s not us he’s after.’ Ben felt a stab of delight. ‘It’s Cobb. They’ve fallen out big-time.’

  ‘Come out, you feigling, you coward!’ howled Stanford, grappling the crane’s twin joysticks. ‘Come out and face me with your fancy gun! Don’t fancy this, do you?’

  ‘He’s just trying to destroy Cobb’s factory,’ said Ben.

  ‘The factory that we’re standing on, you mean?’ Yusuf yelled.

  The steel ball walloped the wall, drowning out his last words and shaking the roof.

  ‘This way.’ Yusuf waved them towards the chimney. ‘There are drainpipes we can climb down.’

  ‘Come on, Tiffany.’ Ben took her elbow.

  ‘Wait!’ She hung back. ‘The cats. They’re trapped inside.’

  Oh no, he didn’t need this…

  ‘We’ll come back,’ he promised. ‘We can rescue them later.’

  ‘Ben!’ She knocked his hands away. ‘He’s smashing this place to bits! They’ll be buried alive!’

  She was right. Again.

  ‘Ben?’ Yusuf yelled.

  ‘I’ll follow you,’ Ben waved him on. ‘Take Tiffany. Get help.’

  ‘I’m not abandoning the cats,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m going back.’

  To Ben’s utter astonishment and horror she dashed for the hole in the roof.

  ‘Tiffany!’

  The wrecking ball clove the air between them, forcing him to leap backwards and curl up to shield himself from flying slates. When he looked again she had gone. Had she lost her mind? Much more of this battering and the whole decrepit building would come down. On her head. Of all the stupid, ungrateful, moronic, heroic…

  ‘Go on,’ he shouted to the other three. ‘You can’t help now.’

  Ben drew himself up, shaking off the rain. If there was an answering shout he never heard it. His world had shrunk to the weeping wind and the great steel ball. It rocked to and fro on its wire, gathering itself, feinting like a boxer. As if in answer, there appeared in his mind a cat’s eye, smouldering six different colours. The ball rushed out of the night, an immense, solid ghost. Ben dodged aside, ran up the roof in its slipstream and leaped on.

  She had promised. Nothing else mattered any more. She had come here with Mrs Powell to save the big cats and she was not leaving without them. Though how she would herd a pack of tigers, leopards, lionesses and pumas to safety, she hadn’t the foggiest notion. Anyway, a pack? A pride? A pantheon? She hardly knew what to call them, never mind how to control them. But she couldn’t let it all be for nothing. For Mrs Powell’s sake, she had to try.

  By now she knew the factory’s layout better than the corridors of her own school. She wound her way down from gallery to staircase, guided as much by scent as by memory. The green-suited security guards had ceased to notice her; one of them even brushed past her in his frantic search for an exit that wasn’t loc
ked and bolted.

  The thunder of the wrecking ball had abated. That was a tiny relief. Tiffany stalked down the last flight of steps into the hall of cages. She was in a nightmare playing on a loop. Ben had risked his life to save her from this place and now she was back. Maybe in her imprisonment she really had lost her mind. No. She was back because she had promised. She clung to that thought.

  Gooseflesh on her arms and neck told her she was being watched. Half turning, she stared into the mahogany face of a tiger. It was Shiva, Cobb’s first, oldest, most terrible acquisition. He squatted in his cage, the plastic tube pulsing weakly beneath his flank. Looking at her. The heat from those eyes could have set a forest on fire. Yet (she thought, numbly) they had never even seen a forest.

  An amber blink. Her trance broke.

  ‘Hold on,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to take you away from here.’

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up, pussy cat.’

  An arm hooked like a snake across her neck. A cold, withered arm. She struggled as if drowning in a sack. Metal rammed against her temple.

  ‘Keep fighting, why don’t you.’ Cobb dug the gun in harder. ‘I’ve never shot anyone so close before. It’d be an interesting experiment.’

  Terror sapped her strength. Cobb’s grip was choking. This was supposed to be his weak arm.

  ‘You think you’re a match for me?’ he hissed, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Panthacea may not be ready yet, but I’ve been drinking a glass of cat bile every day for the past five years. I’m strong enough to break you in half.’

  Tiffany writhed round and, instinctively, in sheer revulsion, spat in his face. Cobb recoiled with a cry of disgust, flinging her away. She crashed into a leopard’s cage and fell to her knees.

  ‘You—revolting—beast,’ he howled. He raised the pistol and fired.

  It had seemed such a simple plan in the split second it took to hatch. Grab onto the wrecking ball, climb up the cable, slide down the crane’s steep steel neck and fall upon John Stanford like a thunderbolt. But it wasn’t always good to have reflexes that worked quicker than common sense. Cat claws, he discovered, were no use for climbing wire. Ben had to resort to clumsy hands-and-heels shinning, as if he were ascending a rope in PE. A wet steel rope that hurt his burned right hand and thrashed back and forth like a live thing.

  The building site swayed below him, a stormy sea. The hawser stretched up into the night, dividing into three separate cables. He’d climbed just a few feet. It took all his willpower just to cling on. Then, as if in one of his bad dreams, he was gazing down, down across the rainy void, into the triumphant expression of John Stanford. Stanford’s face was lit with pure, demonic hate. If Cobb was his prime target, here was the unexpected bonus. He knew Ben, he knew what Ben had cost him, and now he had his victim just where he wanted him: jerking on a line with no hope of escape, waiting to be crushed like an insect. But was this such a surprise? Hadn’t it always been this way, right from the beginning?

  Ben gripped the hawser with aching hands. He could climb no further. The crane’s neck turned and, casually catching up with it, the demolition ball knocked into the side of the factory. The shock of the impact almost shook him off. Slipping down the cable he grabbed at something, anything—and swung back over the building site hugging the wrecking ball itself.

  A series of jolts almost shook him loose. Looking down (a bad mistake) he saw Stanford pummelling the levers like a man possessed. The wrecking ball swept up in a wide arc that passed right over the control cabin. A nasty instinct made Ben look behind him. At the other end of the arc, where the ball would soon be hurtling, was the factory’s solid western wall.

  Let go, an inner voice begged him. Let go. Fall. It’s your only chance.

  He couldn’t. Weak though his grip was he physically could not unlock it. Could not, or dared not. What did it matter? Pounded into a wall or plunging fifty feet onto asphalt—either way he’d be dead.

  No, no, the voice gibbered. The wrecking ball had paused on the upswing and was beginning to drop back. Let go and you’ll survive. You’ll fall on your feet. Cats always do.

  But he wasn’t a cat. He was Ben, and he knew that sometimes, when you fell, you just kept falling. There was no handy lake or bathing pond to save him here—only the crane’s steel carapace and the even harder ground.

  ‘Tiffany,’ he whispered, ‘you’d better be right.’

  He let go.

  Cobb levelled the pistol and took aim a second time.

  ‘Impressive,’ he sneered. ‘Are you up to dodging five more?’

  The gun roared again. Tiffany was already airborne, flipping herself over the leopard’s cage. Touching down feet together, she rolled before the third bang, hearing the shriek as the bullet clipped the bars. She hadn’t breathed yet. A tremendous crash made Cobb look round; the crane had torn down a strip of the western wall and the night was pouring in. Seizing her chance she ran, diving behind a drowsing puma that had woken with a snort of fright. Cobb jumped on top of another cage and fired down at her. Concrete dust bloomed close to her hand, leaving a white streak.

  Which way? She was dizzy, utterly spent. She dragged herself out of view as another shot deafened her. And another. She crawled. No more, no more. Leopards turned their heads to follow her, crouching, in spite of the gunfire, eerily silent. Sobbing for breath she slumped against a pillar. Cobb advanced, pointing the gun. It was over. If another bullet flew she couldn’t dodge it.

  Wait a minute…

  She got to her feet.

  ‘You fired all six,’ she whispered.

  Cobb stood still. Then he smiled.

  ‘Sorry. I lied. I had eight rounds left.’

  The black hole of the barrel seemed to bore through her. She had no power to move. Before Cobb’s sickening grin she shut her eyes and waited to be killed. The brickwork froze her shoulders. There came a strange sound. Creaks. A rumble. Mostly out of curiosity she opened her eyes. Cobb wasn’t looking at her any more. He was staring around the hall in absolute terror.

  Every door of every cage stood wide open.

  The wrecking ball crunched into the factory’s western flank, collapsing a section of brickwork around it like a wave striking a sandcastle. Ben noted this dreamily, as if half-watching a TV programme, while unbidden his head turned, his trunk twisted and his legs followed, pivoting his falling body on its axis until it locked, sure as a heat-seeking missile, in perfect line with the earth rushing to meet it.

  But he wasn’t going to hit the ground. In the split second before he struck, he registered that he was going to land right on the crane cabin’s roof.

  Both feet and hands took the impact, all four together. The shock travelled up the long bones and met in his spine, which melted in that instant into liquid rubber. All in all it felt no worse than missing a couple of stairs in the dark.

  But the crane’s windscreen crazed, the glass falling in like a sheet of frosted snow that splashed in John Stanford’s lap. Then Ben was staring in and Stanford was staring out. Their eyes locked.

  With a wail of fear Stanford scrambled out of the cabin. Flinging himself towards the metal steps, he tripped. Ben guessed correctly that, not being a cat, Stanford was not going to fall on his feet. A moment later the businessman was writhing in the mud, suit glittering with glass, both hands clutching his broken hip. Ben stood over him, breathing hard, then more evenly, feeling the rain cool his head as, in inky drips and drabs, it washed the cat face print off his skin. Out of the night rose the sound of sirens.

  The cages were open. Lynxes were slinking from their steel coffins. Wary pumas padded forth. A jaguar, sinuous sculpture of living granite, forced its body through the too-narrow opening of its prison. Cobb spun and spun again, aiming his gun everywhere and nowhere. On every point of the compass a big cat sat, stretching or scratching, and yet more moved with leaden velvet paces towards him.

  Tiffany gaped, too astonished to feel fear. How had they got out? Tubes still jutted from their side
s. Disconnected. Could the cats have torn these free themselves, with their teeth? No, someone must have set them loose. With a key. Someone…

  ‘Get away! Get away from me!’ Cobb fired his pistol at a lioness, missing. He caught Tiffany’s eye. ‘Call them off!’ he begged. ‘Make them go away! Tell them, tell them!’

  The hall echoed with a roar. From between rows of cages glided something of fire and black, the size of a small horse. The tiger, Shiva. With a tail-swish he pivoted ninety degrees. Philip Cobb stood at the focus of his stare.

  ‘Back!’ Cobb shrieked. He fired. His shaking hand sent the bullet wide. The chamber clicked and clicked. All eight rounds were spent. He turned to flee and met a fence of bared teeth. No way through. He ran back the other way. Shiva came on. Cobb screamed.

  ‘Help me!’

  Tiffany fled across the factory floor, her heart hammering not with fear anymore but with a fierce, mysterious joy. The snuffling sea of cats parted to let her pass, as if at some intangible signal. Ahead, through the break in the wall, flashes of blue light were tinting the rubble. Far behind her, Cobb’s dreadful cries rose to the vaulted roof and then, abruptly, they ceased.

  THE FINAL CURTAIN

  His fur ruffling in the breeze, Rufus lay draped along the arm of the bench, surely the most uncomfortable bed he could have chosen other than the barbeque itself. Supporting a column of shimmering air, the grill rocked on its legs as Peter Maine turned the chicken wings.

  ‘That one’s mine.’ Stuart prodded the brownest one with a fork.

  ‘Hands off,’ said his father. ‘These have already been reserved.’

  ‘Stuart, you’ll be burnt,’ warned his mother.