The Big Miaouw

by Adam Skye

“Where the hell were you, Schaeffer, cos I didn’t see you in the plaza that night? Whaddya do? Stay in to lick your butt?

  “I...”

  “It’s on your breath cos you’re talkin’ it, Schaeffer! Did you see the body? Did you see the damn bites?”

  Schaeffer backed down some.

  “Another officer reported...”

  The cat cut him out.

  “I saw him. He was a pup. Dumb too: he saw a dead canary, took a piss, secured the scene against nothin’ an’ never once even looked up. Ya know, many canaries like t’ hang around on the ground?”

  “I...”

  “D’y’even know what floor she lived on?”

  Schaeffer shook his head, dog tag tinkling.

  “Know what sort of bites they were in her neck?”

  “It ain’t hard to figure...”

  “So what did it?”

  “A cat, obviously...”

  “A rat! Asshole. They were rat-bites! I saw them, you didn’t. An’ your second-hand source didn’t even know what he saw. You been here at night when the rats come out to play, Schaeffer? Lately there’s been more rats than any cat has ever seen. Rats lookin’ for somethin’. Where were you when we drove ’em back into the sewers? I didn’t see you on pest control.”

  Frr’s tone changed: contempt.

  “You think you know the plaza? I wouldn’t bet my next hairball you’re gonna crack this before you get pensioned off. BCPD don’t care about a canary! How much time have ya put in on this case? How many dogs ya got workin’ it? Ya gonna bury it as an Unsolved, maybe dig it up for somethin’ to do when ya retire?”

  Schaeffer wagged tongue, trying to cool down to think. The cat had aced him. Frr nodded to the other side of the plaza: two-legs was whistling.

  “Time for walkies, huh? Gotta go. Still, maybe you can be back on the case sometime next month, hey, Schaeff?”

  Schaeffer flinched. Frr got in his face.

  “The canary — I didn’t do it. I want who did an’ I’m gonna keep lookin’. I know what I got, an’ now I know what you got: nothin’.”

  Frr got nose to nose.

  “The only lead you got is waitin’ for you on the other side of the plaza. Go walkies, Schaeffer. There’s a good dog.”

  Then he turned and walked off, tail in the air as a mark of respect to the BCPD.

  Schaeffer whined, torn. He looked at Fatso on the other side of the square, going purple whistling. He looked at Frr slipping into the darkness of the alley, pink-eye visible like a target. He looked back at the partner, saw the chain of command as a leash around his neck, looked at freedom disappearing into the alley. He thought about the two-legs’ kind of police work, and his own, and figured at worst he’d be busted to the Metro... dereliction of duty... Just a couple of days off to do some real police work... yeaaah.

  The Metro wasn’t so bad.

  It was better than swallowing a cat’s contempt.

  “Hey, Frr,” he shouted down the alleyway, “I know what the rats’re lookin’ for!”

  And he ran after the cat, into the darkness.

  Louie took a deep breath and regretted it. The air smelled foul and felt thin, like you could pant in it all day long and never feel you’d taken a breath. He knew it was working on him, slow but building up. He felt sick in his guts — bitter hollowness and stinging stomach. He’d eaten poison before, like every rat had, but Louie listened to The Voice and ate smart: Sample. Wait. Let your body tell you if it’s good... and taken only a few of the pellets. They were green grains, new to him. He knew within minutes, rode out the cramps and the shivers behind a fridge, learned a new danger.

  Now he was learning about another danger:

  The air down here, said The Voice.

  Louie knew. He felt it in the tiredness that overtook him even though he’d not long woken up, saw it in the images that flickered in his mind — that the air, too, was slow poison, was making him sick.

  Fear building: think Nice Things to keep it back, ignore The Voice.

  The Voice was saying, Time, luck... The Voice was saying that it was kind of funny that Louie should lay low in Brown Rat Central, but spin the joke out too long... The Voice whispered about a bite in the back of the neck like the canary got for just maybe having heard... and the other thing they did to make rats who knew things talk — rats who knew about Marcus taking over the city, rats who knew where the black rat communities hid, rats who knew the god-rats were real, who’d actually seen the MOONrats in the flesh. Louie’d always thought they were a myth, a mommy-rat bedtime story for little black rats going to sleep hungry, again, these rats from the moon who built machines and palaces underground, who understood anything men could. The rats who were going to come down one day and end the war between black and brown, lead them all up into the moonlight to dance.

  Yeah right, thought Louie.

  Fat chance.

  Fat rats who can’t even see their own feet.

  Fat rats split 50-50 on wiping out the city.

  The Voice, urgent. Three days.

  Three days until... what did he call it? Convocation.

  The scene replayed in Louie’s head, burned in there, unforgettable.

  Their voices. Growly, “Thus the proposition: that we use Pasteurella pestis to gain control of the city, King Marcus to assume all executive powers after the... transition.”

  Squeaky, no hesitation. “The bacillus?! I oppose! I utterly oppose... Lunacy! You think you can use the plague to...?!”

  Squeaky, shrill, weak-sounding. “... Domus... all of you...”

  Growly, “Vote, all.”

  Silence.

  Squeaky. “WHAT?!”

  Growly — hear the smile bending his voice, “Four to four. Preliminary Convocation inconclusive. Three days, then. You disappoint me, Sai. Forever the cloister and your dry books? Have you no stomach for your destiny? Eat well, Sai.”

  Black rat shit-out luck, wrong place right time. Louie JUST out for a night-crawl, a bit of scavenging but mainly moon-gazing, thinking, Can’t wait for Zoot’s next gig, maybe I’ll go see Sax tonight, strolling along on a plaza-side roof. Stopped when he heard scurrying, rat voices, he got curious... Even cats knew better than that.

  Edge of the roof. Louie kept his head down, listened, heard it all.

  “Marcus for king of the city,” Growly MOONrat saying. “We can fix it for you.”

  Marcus, hot for it. “Can we pin it on the black rats?”

  Lots of voices.

  Long talking.

  Louie heard it all.

  The equal split, the No-No Squeaky guy sounding flaky... “Three days, then.”

  Then, “Cheep!”

  Growly, no smile, “What was that?”

  Marcus. “Hey, a little birdie. Birds sing. SECURITY?”

  Silence.

  Long time.

  Looong time.

  Then, “Chee...”

  Louie took a peek down at the terrace and saw... the miracle rats, King Marcus...

  And... there’s the BIG rat, mouth full on the balcony edge below, going crazy pointing. “LOOK! There!”

  Bird drops from his mouth, canary falls out of sight like a stone.

  “GET THAT BLACK RAT!”

  Louie. Fear BIG — can’t move. Rats peeling off and coming for him. Then Louie running faster than he’d ever run, wondering where the hell he could hide in a city where you were never more than fifteen feet from a rat: rats that wanted to kill you....

  After they ask their questions, said The Voice.

  Louie, down in the sewer, fever head, slow poison, weak and getting weaker, falling into sleep, falling into dreams, not wanting to.

  Warm air in the sewer.

  Louie, shivering at the back of the crack, scared, cold.

  The dreams kept turning bad.

  I wasn’t surprised Schaeffer asked me to be his partner — a dog can’t do a damn thing on his own, always gotta have someone t’ run with. But dogs, ya know, got a real powerful
sense o’ smell, much better than any cat’s. We can see in the dark but a dog can go by smell — that’s how good a nose a dog got. Dog can smell like a cat can see. So, apart from wonderin’ how they can stand to get so close, ya gotta figure that when they do that nose-to-butthole thing they do, they get to know each other pretty well. Schaeffer knew a lot of dogs. Dogs got big ears. Dogs get around. And I needed help. Just as long as he didn’t pull rank on me, I figured I could work with him: Schaeffer could help get things moving. It looked like I was getting a partner. But I mean — a dog, ya know?

  I could hear the alley whispers already.

  “Frankie Frr teamed up with a dog!?”

  “A police dog, cat!”

  “Oh my good golly! Gimme fleas, p-lease!”

  “I mean, what’s a cat if it ain’t got its independence?”

  “Where is that cat’s prrrride?”

  I’d have to live with it, I guessed.

  Schaeffer caught up with me in the alleyway. He said, “Tell me what you know, an’ I’ll tell you what the rats are lookin’ for.”

  I told him, “Uh, uh, down, boy. You first.”

  He said he needed me to tell him everythin’ so he could add it to his snitch’s stuff to see if it fit. I said I’d rather leave a turd unburied than spill first. He said, “I’ll go this far for some of what you got: the rats ain’t lookin’ for a what, they’re lookin’ for a who. Your turn.”

  I told him I’d been up to the apartment above where the canary lived an’ tried to take a look around, but couldn’t get inside. I told him I’d smelled rat there. I’d been to the balcony terrace on the fourth and checked out the canary’s cage, an’ it smelled of rat. The wall next to the cage smelled of rat, so I figured the rat came down from the floor above, crawled along the wall ’til he could make a jump for the cage. Then he climbed round to the door, got in, did it. He came down the stand an’ hit the ground, I figured with the bird in his mouth: I smelled rat and canary on the floor.

  Schaeffer said, “Brown an’ black rats don’t smell the same.”

  An’ I said, “Both stink.”

  He asked what I thought she was doin’ in the plaza an’ not in the cage, an’ I told him that probably the rat was gonna eat her an’ wanted to do it away from the roof in case a cat came across them. That maybe he had her in his jaws an’ got buzzed by a bird, or chased by a bigger rat, an’ had to drop her. Who could say?

  Schaeffer took that in, then asked, “Who climbs better? A black rat or a brown rat?” An’ I told him, “Black rat, no contest: brown rat’s too heavy to hang on for long. Maybe a strong one could climb a bit, but not much. Black rat can do five storeys no sweat.”

  All the time Schaeffer’s noddin’. He was gettin’ answers to his questions, but I’d given up enough without gettin’ anything back. I told him I wanted his angle there and then or else I was down the alley an’ gone. Schaeffer dropped it: the brown rats were lookin’ for a black rat.

  “Name?” I asked.

  He said, “Louie.”

  I said, “Hot damn! I know Louie, he’s Sax’s friend!”

  An’ Schaeffer said, “Yeah? Well, I make him for the canary snuff.”

  “No way, dog!” I replied.

  But Schaeffer said, “He’s a rat who climbs: I think he did the bird.”

  I wasn’t listenin’. I was thinkin’ of Sax, shooby-doober for Zoot Jackdaw. If anyone knew where Louie was, he did.

  “We should split up,” I said. “I’ll do the alleys, you do Dogsville.”

  Schaeffer nodded. “I’ll meet you back here at the end of the night.”

  I asked him, “What’re you gonna do?”

  He said he would go look up some Houndtown connections — dogs he thought could help — and squeeze whatever juice he could out of it. What was I gonna do?

  I told him. “I’m gonna ask around, try an’ find Louie.”

  I watched Schaeffer pound away.

  I headed for Sam’s. He didn’t look so pleased to see me this time. He wanted to know what I was doin’, smellin’ of dog. I told him about the case, said I needed to speak to Sax Pigeon. Sam told me that Zoot an’ the Combo were playin’ that night.

  “Why don’t we just go on up there an’ listen, try to get a word with the bird after the gig?” he suggested.

  Then I told him why I wanted to speak to Sax.

  Sam said, “Sax won’t sing: he ain’t no stoolie.”

  An’ I said, “Then I’ll have to make him.”

  Sam came up with the old one about what nasty things to expect from hangin’ round with dogs. I was wonderin’ how my favourite singer would feel when I killed his best friend.

  I told Sam fleas were the last thing on my mind.

  Really — the least of my worries.

  Domus had said they should use fleas. Tiny, almost undetectable, they were perfect disease carriers. They would bite the warm-blooded and the bacillus would do the rest. The humans had antibiotics but the bacillus had ways of spreading itself. It caused explosive, wracking, bloody coughs that sprayed it into the air, passing on to anybody who breathed it in. Domus would have to get it into the human environment first; into their homes. Dogs and cats were obvious vectors. Rats, too.

  Domus doesn’t draw the line between species, thought Sai. He just sees what stands in his way.

  It wasn’t only the masters of the overworld who were going to die. Rats were going to die in great numbers too. It was with argument that Sai hoped to use to move the pro-Domus faction and Marcus. Marcus had subjects and, therefore, he had responsibilities. Even Marcus could see that a king ruled over nothing if his subjects were all dead, and surely even he had a conscience to which Sai could appeal. Or could he? Plague historians filled their accounts with statistics of human fatalities, but there was nothing at all about rats.

  Yet the plague killed rats too. It even killed Xenopsylla cheopsis, its favoured fleas. Infected humans could expect excruciating lymphatic swelling on their necks, groins and armpits, subcutaneous haemorrhages and nervous system failure before they died. While the plague raged, their society would crumble under its blows. In the past, in plague times, famine, war and turmoil fed on each other. Latent insanities bubbled to the surface — superstition, ignorance, penitence — producing terror, scapegoats and pogroms. It would not be so very different now. History constantly repeated itself, and rats could expect the same.

  Three pandemics had been recorded. The first in Arabia, reaching Egypt in 542. It spread to Rome and ravaged the Empire of Justinian, ushering in Rome’s fall. It moved to England, became known as the Plague of Cadwalader’s Time. It spread to Ireland by 664, where it scythed through the population. Then it went to ground. In 1347, it returned and took three years to kill one-third of the population of Europe. It went to ground again for three hundred years, just long enough to be forgotten. It reappeared in London, 1665. The city reeled under the stink of corpses and the mass graves at Black Heath and Graves End. Then, again, the plague vanished. Finally, in 1892, it surfaced in Yunnan Province in China. It reached Bombay in 1896: in India it killed six million.

  The world staggered in its wake. Countries shivered, spasmed.

  The plague travelled the world in the belly of a flea and the fur of a rat — though not exclusively a rat. The archaeologist Chwolson traced the plague back to 1338-9, to Lake Issyk-Koul in Semiriechinsk, Central Asia, an endemic zone, where the Manchurian marmot, the jerboa and the sislik played host to the fleas. Yet the plague was associated with rats in man’s mind: an outbreak of plague would usher in a campaign of extermination, as if the rats were responsible for the bacillus, and not just another victim. And how many dead? The seafarers would be blamed, of course: the ship rats, the black rats, the followers of the Crusaders who brought the plague to Europe. They would feel the awesome wrath of the grief-stricken, decimated brown rats.

  Sai blinked. He knew he did not yet fully understand all of Domus’ plan.

  He looked out of the window at th
e people in the plaza. Soon to be dead.

  He closed his eyes.

  The darkness was a comfort.

  His eyes had adjusted to the sewer gloom, but he kept them shut: either he was asleep, or he couldn’t bear to look. It’s night, he thought. Rats at work. He could hear them: lots of activity, breathless scampering along both banks of the sewer, two-way traffic. Rats stopped to talk and trade gossip/info/schmooze/insults. Kept catching

  “...black rat...”

  and

  “...Marcus...”

  and

  “... Max...”

  Louie, tucked-up scared, thinking Nice Thoughts so his fear wouldn’t smell: moonlight, cheese, Zoot, birdsong —

  “Cheep!”

  Tuck up even tighter, screw eyes shut, breathe shallow and fast...

  “Quietly!” said the Voice.

  Tiredness coming on... dreams getting worse... dreams of eating, being eaten — both torture... dreaming of being afraid of being afraid... fearsweat smell, sniffed out = snuffed out.

  NO, DONT WAKE THE FEAR UP! THINK ABOUT ...THINK ABOUT...

  ....THINK ABOUT...

  Sax!

  Think of wings... think of aahhhh

  ... time flies.

  Skiddlybop-doowop!

  How hungry? CHEEP!

  ... soft sewer song slip sofffffffft...

  Marcus

  carcass

  Dark

  Sam an’ me trotted through the alleys on the way to watch Zoot an’ the Combo. Zoot’s place was a free house an’ the gigs were a speakeasy: you left your grudges, gripes an’ appetite down on the ground floor. Zoot’d put together a great crew, everybody knew that, an’ it would’ve been a real shame if some cat figured they was just a musical interlude before dinner. Lotsa cats like to eat birds, but just as many don’t, an’ pretty much all cats like a toon. For this reason every cat in the city had agreed not to eat any of the band, or any of their boyfriends or girlfriends. Zoot an’ the crew made lots of folk happy, so no way were they gonna be some fatcat’s dinner. I could never have eaten a bird — the music meant too much to me. Guess it’s just as well mice can’t sing or I’d’ve starved a long time ago.