The Wild Ones

by C. Alexander London

  Pack your things! Leave Ankle Snap Alley! The Seven Hundred Seven Seasons have ended, and this turf belongs to the FLEALESS at mid-sun today.

  SAVE YOURSELVES and GO!

  Sworn & Sealed,

  Martyn H. Musculus, Church Mouse

  Kit could feel all eyes in the alley turn to look in his direction. Every creature was sizing him up, trying to decide what to do with him. In a place full of liars, cheats, and thieves, he had just become the worst of the lot. To them he’d done something worse than cheat. He’d given them hope, then taken it away. That was about the most terrible thing one fellow could do to another.

  “The Bone’s real!” he protested. “It’s that letter there that’s fake!” He jabbed his paw at the pamphlet. “Martyn would never use the word vermin to describe us! Can’t you see? They’re just trying to scare you. The Flealess want you all to give up and leave the alley without a fight!” He pleaded with the mice. “Tell them the truth,” he begged. “Tell them this is a lie!”

  “I’m so sorry,” the mouse whispered. “They have Martyn.” Then he shouted so all the alley could hear. “This is the truth. We don’t have the Bone; we cannot prove otherwise!” He whispered again to Kit, “So sorry.”

  But whispered apologies aren’t worth the air they’re whispered with, and the damage of the lie was done.

  The alley turned on Kit.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  HOME IS WHERE THE FIGHT IS

  ALL the animals stepped from their doorways and moved toward Uncle Rik’s apartment. Their morning shadows stretched in Kit’s direction, as if a hundred shadow claws already had him in their grasp. The largest shadow of all loomed toward him, and he saw it was cast by the rooster, Enrique, who strutted across the alley giving Kit a pitiless side-eye.

  Eeni stepped in front of Kit in the doorway. She flashed him a frightened smile. “Howl to snap,” she said, then shouted at the big rooster and the pack of animals forming behind him. “You leave Kit alone,” she shouted. “He’s the only honest fellow I’ve ever met. I saw the Bone with my own eyes.”

  “Then you’re a liar too,” shouted a hedgehog in a dirty bowler hat. He’d already packed his belongings into a sack tied to the end of a stick. “Put them on the train tracks,” he yelled. “All liars tied to the tracks!”

  The other alley animals surged forward behind Enrique the rooster.

  “You’re all liars,” yelled Enrique Gallo, raising his sharp talons in the air, and the crowd behind him fell silent. He leaned down to face Kit. “This paper says, however, that you lied about something very important to us, young one,” the rooster told him. “What do you say, Kit?”

  Kit swallowed. His throat was dry and his voice cracked when he spoke. “I . . . uh . . . didn’t?”

  Enrique sighed. He whispered to Kit. “You have to do better than that, boy. These creatures are scared, and they need to believe in something. Prove it. Prove to us the Bone is real. The Flealess are coming.”

  “I . . .” Kit looked around. Every animal in the alley hung on his words. The turtle popped his head from the Rabid Rascals’ van. “They saw it! The Rascals saw it too.”

  All eyes turned to the old turtle. He shook his head slowly. “Who can say what I saw?”

  “What?!” Kit shouted. “What are you saying? You did see it. Your own snake is the one who stole it.”

  “I’m sorry, kid,” the turtle said. Then he turned to the rest of the Wild Ones. “All who value your lives, pack up and go.”

  “But you can’t say that,” Eeni objected. “Everyone paid you for protection.”

  “What do you want from me?” The turtle shrugged. “They got my snake. I can’t protect this place without him.”

  “Basil sided with the Flealess?” Ansel gasped.

  “Oh, that’s bad,” said Otis. “That’s very bad.”

  “Extra! Extra!” shouted one of the news finches. “Ankle Snap Is Over! Pack Your Nuts and Hit the Struts!”

  “No, no,” Kit shouted. “We can’t just give up.”

  “We can’t prove anything without that Bone,” the rooster said. “We gotta go.”

  He turned away, parting the crowd as he clucked back toward his shop to pack his things.

  “Who cares about the Bone?” Kit yelled, and the rooster stopped. The crowd looked back at him. “My parents died so I could find it, and now I’m saying so what? I can’t prove I found it, and I can’t prove it gives us the right to live here. So. What. No one, not even the Rat King, can really know what happened seven hundred seven seasons ago. But we can know what’s happening now!

  “The Flealess say this turf is theirs, that our time is up. We say we have a right to be here. But if we flee at the first sign of trouble, if we turn on one another and lie to one another when our community is threatened, then what right do we have to claim anywhere as our turf? What right do we have to call anywhere home?

  “A home isn’t made by some deal. It isn’t a promise made by history. A home is made by friends who trust one another.” He stepped out from behind Eeni, stood proudly in front of the crowd. “It’s made by neighbors who share with one another, in good times and bad, even if they don’t always get along.” He nodded to the Blacktail brothers, then turned to Uncle Rik. “And it’s made by family.

  “I’ve lost my home once already,” he told the crowd. “And I’ve lost my family too. But coming here to Ankle Snap Alley, I found a new home, a new family, and I’m not leaving it. So I don’t care if some old Bone says this is my turf. This is my turf because I’m making it mine; I’m living my life here, and I’m growing up here. If the Flealess don’t want to share it, then I’ll fight for it here, because I’m a Wild One and my turf is wherever I say it is!”

  “I’m with you, Kit,” Eeni declared.

  The crowd stared back in silence.

  Eeni frowned. “Hm, I really thought that would work. Like a cheer or something.”

  “Well, I’m with you too, Kit,” said Uncle Rik. “You’re family, and if you’re staying, I’m staying.”

  “Oh, shucks,” cried out Possum Ansel. “That Flealess pussycat broke my bakery. The least I can do is get some payback. We’re with you too, Kit!”

  “We are?” said Otis at his side.

  “Yes,” said Ansel. “We are.”

  Otis smiled. “Good. I owe that cat a punch in the jaw.”

  “If there’s a fight with the Flealess coming, then I’m in it too,” announced Rocks the dog, who usually slept in front of Larkanon’s. He was awake now and standing tall on his four legs.

  “Nicely done,” said Enrique Gallo, stretching out his rooster wings. “I’m staying too. I’ve got some fight left in me yet.”

  “What about you?” Uncle Rik pointed his paw to the rusted old van. All eyes locked on the turtle, waiting for word from the most powerful animal in the alley, whether or not the Rabid Rascals would join the Wild Ones or flee like the Flealess wanted.

  The old turtle cleared his throat. “I’d like to be more circumspect about this,” said the turtle. “It is no small thing to go into battle against powerful foes.”

  Kit felt deflated. The Rabid Rascals were the toughest creatures in the alley. It’d be hard to fight off the Flealess without them.

  “But,” said the turtle, “we will . . . join this fight.” He gave Kit a wink. “We’re no leash lovers.”

  “Boss!” Flynn Blacktail complained. “We really gonna risk our necks to help this raccoon after what he done to us?”

  “He’s a cheat and a liar!” Shane cried out.

  “And a liar and a cheat!” Flynn added. Shane glared at him.

  “And that is exactly why we’ll help him,” the old turtle said. “Because he’s a cheat and a liar, and he belongs here, with us in Ankle Snap Alley.” The turtle gave Kit a respectful nod. “From howl to snap.”

&nb
sp; “From howl to snap,” Kit replied.

  “Don’t make any mistake,” Shane interjected. “When this is over, it all goes back to normal.”

  “We still run this alley,” added Flynn.

  “You mean I still run this alley,” the turtle corrected them both. The twin raccoons blushed for the first time anyone had ever seen.

  Kit couldn’t help but smile. All the animals around him were hungry-eyed cheats, flea-bitten criminals, and no-good, garbage-scrounging liars . . . but they were a community, his community.

  “So, Kit,” Blue Neck Ned cooed, “you got a plan to fight the Flealess or just a lot of big speeches?”

  Kit looked down at his paws, and from one end of the alley to the other. He looked at Eeni and at his uncle Rik and at the big houses of the People where the Flealess lurked, and he thought about his parents and the pack of dogs that hunted them down and the cruel orange cat who ordered them to do it and then he nodded.

  “I think I do,” he said. “We’re going to need garbage. A whole lot of it too. The stinkier, the better.”

  “Stinky garbage?” Eeni questioned him. “How’s that gonna help us beat the Flealess?”

  “They think we’re all no-good dirty-rotten garbage-scrounging liars,” explained Kit. “So we’re gonna show ’em just how dirty we can get.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  BIRDS OF A FEATHER

  THE sun reached its peak at the top of the Slivered Sky. Just as Titus had planned it, there wasn’t so much as a shadow off a garbage can for wild vermin to hide in. He stood on point in the alley, one paw raised, nose working the air. His Flealess army amassed around him.

  Nothing else moved. The closed sign on Enrique Gallo’s Fur Styling Shop and Barbería rattled in a breeze. Leaves brushed against the trash-can lid that shuttered P. Ansel’s bakery. Not even the stray mutt who guarded the door at Larkanon’s was to be seen.

  Had the vermin really heeded the warnings and abandoned the alley to their betters?

  Titus closed his eyes and sniffed deeply. His nose could tell him far more than his eyes.

  He was immediately overwhelmed by the stench of Ankle Snap Alley. He could barely smell any of his prey. There were hints of squirrel and mouse and rat and fox and stoat and skunk on the wind, but none of that particularly musky scent of raccoon.

  Most of what he smelled was garbage.

  There was the sickly sweet smell of rotting meat and the heavy stench of moldy vegetables. He could almost taste the bitter stink of rust and the tongue-tingling wet of old rags left too long in the rain. Food and waste and filth all mingled, and Titus longed for the comfort of his People’s home, with the perfumed linens on the bed and a roasting chicken in the oven . . . but no!

  No distractions now! He had to focus. The animals of Ankle Snap Alley were filthy flea-bitten vermin, and the stench was only further proof that they had to be expelled or destroyed. They would no longer pollute the civilized places of the world, not if Titus could do anything about it.

  His second in command, a fast-talking hamster named Mr. Peebles, stood by Titus’s side, gripping a book of matches to use as both shield and weapon. “You think they ran away, Titus?”

  The dog smiled. He raised a delicate paw from the ground and licked between his toes. The army at his back watched him closely. “I think they fled from us,” he said.

  “You hear that?” Mr. Peebles shouted. “They fled from us! From the Flealess!”

  “FLEALESS!” the army responded, brandishing their weapons in the air.

  The assembled house pets had armed themselves with the best weaponry they could pilfer from their homes. There was a pit bull holding a giant chew toy in his mouth to use as a club. A Shetland sheepdog held a sock stuffed with a baseball, and two Siamese cats gripped a length of colorful ribbon between them, studded with thumbtacks. A parrot held a bag of chili powder to drop from the sky, and a large bearded lizard had fashioned herself a blowgun. Her claws wrapped tightly around a straw, and she wore a quiver of sewing needles slung over her back.

  In addition to all those weapons, the Flealess had the ancient tools of tooth and claw, well maintained and cared for by the People’s kindly veterinarians.

  “Careful, Titussss.” Basil slithered to the dog’s side and whispered in his ear. “They are ssssneaky here.”

  “Don’t worry, Basil,” Titus told him. “You’re on the winning side now. Enjoy it.”

  Titus almost felt bad to see the mangy citizens of the alley go up against his army. It wasn’t fair, of course, but let People worry about fairness. Animals worried about one thing and one thing alone: their turf.

  A French bulldog snorted in anticipation. The tiny snub-nosed dog had armed himself with a board on wheels, a child’s toy, that he intended to use as a battering ram, without having considered that such a toy wouldn’t roll on the broken concrete and dirt of Ankle Snap Alley. “Maybe they’re still here,” he suggested. “Maybe they’re hiding.”

  Titus smiled at the bulldog. He cocked his head to the side. Then he let out one bark, and Mr. Peebles flung himself onto the dog’s head, scratching the space between its ears until the dog fell off his rolling board and cried for mercy.

  “You do not question me,” Titus shouted. “You simply obey. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” the army responded in a chorus of barks and whistles and hoots and yells.

  “Good,” said Titus. “Sixclaw! Report!”

  The orange cat crept forward, his mouth clamped shut. When he stood before Titus, he neither saluted nor bowed nor provided any greeting of respect.

  “Well?” Titus barked.

  The cat spat out one small and terribly frightened news finch onto the ground.

  “The coward heard my bell coming, and he spilled his guts before I could spill ’em for him.”

  Titus looked down at the terrified teen bird, his wings tied with a strand of dental floss and his tiny legs bound in a rubber band. “So? Do you want to go the way of the woodpecker, little finch? Speak! Are the vermin really gone?”

  The finch ignored Titus and met Basil’s eyes. “Chirp, chirp, chirp,” said the bird, which even a house pet knew was a terrible insult from a finch.

  Basil hissed and wrapped his coils around the news finch, but Sixclaw snatched it up with his claws, dangling the unfortunate animal above his open mouth.

  “He’s mine to eat, Basil,” said Sixclaw. “Not yours.”

  “Chirp, chirp, chirp!” A flock of finches hiding in the tree above erupted.

  “There we are,” said Titus. “At least we know the finches stayed behind.” He called up to the tree. “If you want your friend here to live, you will tell us the truth. Where are the others?”

  The finches fell quiet. Titus had never known the news birds to fall quiet. The hair on his back bristled.

  “You may eat the finch,” he told Sixclaw.

  “Wait! I’ll tell ya,” a pigeon cooed from beneath a broken pail lying upside down on a dirt heap. Blue Neck Ned strutted out from his hiding spot and approached the army. “They got a secret plan, see, cooked up by that young raccoon, Kit. Thinks he’s slicker than sunlight, that one does . . . but Blue Neck Ned’s got his number, all right.”

  “Chirp, chirp, chirp,” cursed the little finch dangling over Sixclaw’s mouth again.

  “Oh, hush up,” said Blue Neck Ned. “I’m saving your beak, after all. We birds of a feather got to stick together.”

  “Talk,” Titus ordered.

  “Well, see, I ain’t talking out of the goodness of my heart,” Blue Neck Ned explained. “I wants me some of that good People food. I want a deal like Basil got.”

  “You want to become a house pet?” Titus laughed. “People do not keep pigeons for pets. You’re too . . . filthy.”

  “Then I want fresh bread left out for me every day for a year, ser
ved to me real nice on a platter . . . by a cat in uniform.”

  “A cat serving a bird? Never!” A wave of muttering meows passed through the feline members of Titus’s pack, but he silenced them with a quick bark.

  “Deal,” said the dog.

  Sixclaw frowned.

  “Well, then, what you need to know is this.” Blue Neck Ned preened his feathers. “I never liked that little raccoon or his no-goodnik uncle, but they weren’t no cushy Flealess house pets neither. They’re cleverer than you. They sent this finch out to confound you and to delay you and then they sent me out to talk your ear off. All the meanwhile, they was laying in an ambush.”

  “An ambush?” Titus looked around, seeing no sign of an ambush. The dogs in his pack sniffed the air, but still, all they smelled was garbage.

  “Problem you have,” continued Ned, “is that you think we Wild Ones are at one another’s throats all the time, we can’t work together, but that’s the way it goes with a community, see? We don’t have to like one another to get along. Fact is, I don’t like this here finch much neither, but I come all the way out to risk my blue neck to save his brown one, because he’s my neighbor and that’s what neighbors do.”

  “You haven’t saved anyone,” said Titus.

  “Not yet,” said Blue Neck Ned. “But now I have!”

  With a sudden flap of his wings, Ned was in the air and he snatched the finch from Sixclaw’s grasp, flitting above the cat’s claws as fast as he could. At the same instant, all the news finches in the tree declared:

  “Extra! Extra! Flealess Got Fooled!”

  On the rooftops above the alley, a flock of pigeons assembled around Ned, all munching frantically on breadcrumbs. Behind them, Mrs. Costlecrunk and her hens sat on piles of acorns ready for flinging.