The Big Miaouw

by Adam Skye

  Schaeffer started howling.

  Better ice-water than that.

  I wished I didn’t have a cat’s touchiness about bein’ the butt of the joke.

  Schaeffer had a big grin on, a lollin’ tongue floppin’ out of it. He was still chucklin’. He was real happy: his tail was waggin’. It was killin’ me. I was thinkin’, Carry on, dog, an’ I’m gonna do the impossible an’ make you uglier. I tried to look dignified as I bent to lick it off, an’ I tried not t’ think about how it was gonna taste.

  “Shit-eatin’ grin, huh?” said Schaeffer, and rolled on the floor.

  I sprang claws. Butt-breath gloated.

  “No point in cleanin’ up yet, Frr. You heard where the rat is: that’s where we gotta go.”

  Wrong, dog, I thought. On two counts.

  “You figure on me goin’ down a sewer, Schaeffer?”

  “Well...”

  The grin had widened. Schaeffer looked dopier than ever.

  “Ain’t gonna happen.”

  Schaeffer sat down. Came over reasonable.

  “Hey, Frr, wait a minute. That’s where Louie is an’ he knows who killed the canary. You wanna crack this case, you gotta go down there.”

  “Why not you?”

  “I’m too big to get down a drain.”

  “And I’m not? Uh uh, you got the hots to go down a sewer, go find a main entrance. There’s one down by the port — ya can’t miss it: it’s where the prawns like t’ hang out. Get in that way. Dogs eat shit so don’t see why ya can’t step in it. I mean, it ain’t like everybody else don’t gotta on account o’ dogs... Knowhaddimean, huh, Schaeffer?”

  I turned to go.

  Schaeffer whined, hangdog expression.

  “Frr, ya can’t just leave it...”

  “Can too, Schaeff.”

  I turned my back and gave him the pink-eye g’bye.

  “Dammit, Frr! Come back here!”

  I stopped, turned round, gave him the real reason.

  “If Louie’s been hidin’ in a sewer for two nights, he’s dead cos that is brown rat world. He’s been sniffed out, been bitten through the neck an’ his brain’s been eaten. Except that can’t ’ve been a very good meal considerin’ how dumb Louie was. Black rat hidin’ out in brown rat territory’s smart like a cat tryna break up a dogfight. Louie’s dead, Schaeffer. Go home.”

  Louie woke from a nightmare to squeals, and the squeals told him the nightmare had come true.

  They’d found him.

  Voices: rats jubilant, thinking Reward.

  Squeals/words: “We’ve found him! The black rat! He’s in there! Smell him!”

  Sounds: Sniff sniff. Sniff sniff.

  And “Yes!”

  Louie didn’t dare look. There were lots of rats down there — the squeaking was intensifying with each passing second. More rats arriving all the time, making more noise, bringing more rats... each one bigger and stronger than Louie. The din said, We are thousands.

  The Voice said, Be brave.

  They said, “Smell his fear! Smell his fear!”

  Louie’d wet himself. He started crying, softly — couldn’t help it. Fat warm tears spilled over and rolled down his nose. He sobbed, once. They heard it.

  Laughter — with teeth.

  “Heeheeheeh! Come on down, little black rat. We want to play with you!”

  “Boohoo! Boohoo!”

  “Crybaby! Crybaby!”

  Fear paralysed Louie, but froze his tears, made him lucid.

  He heard claws scrabbling at the walls, vainly trying to climb up to him.

  The Voice: Be brave. You have to climb out of the sewer.

  Fear: No!

  Them: “We know where you aa-re!”

  The Voice: Look at them!

  Fear: NO!

  Them: “Cissy-fur! Pissy-fur!”

  Louie shuffled to the opening of the crevice, took a peek. There was either enough light or else his eyes had fully adapted. On both sides of the effluent the floor writhed, a shapeless vast furry beast. Louie cried in his throat. Every head turned up towards him, thousands of noses twitching and sniffing: gasps of shock turned to hate — hisses rose up from the boiling river of rats. Rats threw themselves at the sides, their claws in stonework slick with slime that’d crawled out of the waters and was half-way up the wall.

  Failing, falling, rats climbed on each other’s shoulders; ladders of rats reaching up the wall. They couldn’t hold it, toppled, fell into the brown river, splashed and laughed like play-time, long tails only distinguishing them from the fat brown tubes floating alongside.

  A chorus started up.

  “Get him!”

  “Bite him!”

  “Hold his head under!”

  Louie ducked back in the hole, hid his head in his paws to shut the sight out. But the squeals... he couldn’t shut them out. All the hate and incisor-sharp laughter.

  Them: “Crybaby, crybaby, we’re going to eat your head!

  Black rat, scaredy-rat, don’t cry — you’ll soon be dead!”

  The Voice: Look! down the tunnel...

  Fear: Head back IN!

  The Voice: Look!

  Louie, frozen, eyes sparkling, staring in unblinking terror.

  There! Down the tunnel!

  A single ray of light.

  Outside, the sun had hit the plaza.

  The Voice said, Now!

  Schaeffer sprinted through the last of the night, damned if he was going to give up. He tore along the streets dodging the pre-dawn walkers and cars, ignoring the storm of smells, the city’s business floating on the ether. He took stock: partnerless, his only chance to crack the case was finding a black rat in the sewers.

  I shouldn’t have ribbed Frr so hard, he told himself, shouldn’t have tugged his whiskers: cats are a lot more sensitive than dogs, though only when it comes to themselves and their pride. Damn cat, growled Schaeffer to himself. Too prissy: he could dish it out but he couldn’t take it.

  Adios, Partner.

  Schaeffer thought about what Frr was doing right then, grinned, told himself the cat was going to gonna eat some more when he brought Louie in. He pounded on, heading for the plaza, counting on his official partner being somewhere else: he didn’t need to see Fatso right now.

  Back at the station, Schaeffer supposed, he was on a charge. Insubordination? Dereliction of duty? At the very least he’d be busted back to training college, and that was if the Chief was in a good mood. Worst case, the Chief would have his badge.

  Schaeffer ran on, a swift, easy lope, drumming pawfalls, tongue billowing out of his mouth, and ticking off probable scenarios.

  One. Busted: lose the pension and the retirement home. Have to take a security job: round-the-clock junkyard watchdog, a dish-a-day loser chained to a shabby kennel, all mean an’ oily, barking through a wire fence at anything that moved because the job was a full-time whine, all the while knowing your back legs are going while you wait to die.

  Two. The Chief decides you’ve gone rogue. Why not? Cop dogs did, often enough. The badge got to you and you figured you deserved a little more for your sacrifice than the Department would toss you.

  Schaeffer had seen it happen. When he was in training at the Academy, a cop dog had tried to shake down a butcher’s dog for protection, payable in scraps, figuring the meathouse mutt for a soft touch. But the butcher’s dog knew scraps wouldn’t wag the cop dog’s tail for long and that the demands would soon hike up to Best Cuts. He nixed. The cop threatened teeth, but the patsy was fitter than he looked and chewed the cop dog’s ears off then reported him. The cop dog was now a lifer in the Pound, cooped-up twenty-three out of twenty-four with nothing to do, hard-timed by the other cons.

  The Department was real big on Discipline, real hard on cops taking kickbacks and living off the gravy. The thought of the Pound kept most dogs straight. At its hardest, the department had sent dogs for The Big Sleep — lethal injection for biting two-legs.

  Three. Find Louie, question him, find out
what Marcus’s mob had to do with the canary snuff.

  And then what?

  Any which way the stick flew, it landed in cack — splat! AWOL with a street cat felon; moonlighting your own case one thing, but eating police time another, deserting your partner another, the case Zero-priority in the eyes of the Department — yet another.

  Splat! Splat! Splat!

  Maybe I should have toed the line, thought Schaeffer, stayed heelside with my deadweight two-legs, picked up the Golden Bone at the end of my career....

  The plaza was near now. Schaeffer panted and caught its smell on the air: drains, trash, old booze, butts... and another smell, faint but getting bigger. A smell Schaeffer didn’t like one bit.

  The brown rats howled but there was nothing they could do. Louie had his head out of the crack and was reaching up and round for a hold in the wall-face.

  “He’s getting away! He’s getting away!”

  They kept trying to scale the walls, rumps-on-shoulders rat-ladders, but the sides were slimy and they couldn’t hold on. But that didn’t stop them trying.

  They won’t stop, said the Voice. Go, or stay here to hear them taunt you as you starve to death.

  Louie hauled himself out of the hole and climbed upwards and along, limbs spread wide against the wall, claws digging in. He was above the slime-line, clinging on perpendicular to the seething mass of fur and teeth. He saw them at a strange angle: rats stretching, claws extended towards him down a gentle dip, reaching nearer, nearer, and then suddenly yanked back by some invisible force.

  Keep going, said the Voice.

  Louie’s heart throbbed. He snatched uneven ragged breaths, closed his eyes against dizziness, clung. He tried to remember the journey in: one bend? Two? He opened his eyes, and saw that the brown rats had come up with another idea. Ahead, where the tunnel curved away, on the banks of the river rats were simply standing on top of each other. Furious invention, desperate quick-thinking. Piled high, inclining down to the water’s edge for solidity, the mound reached halfway up the wall, almost to the slime-line. As rats lost footing and tumbled into the effluent, others clambered up to take their place.

  Louie started off again, not even needing the Voice to tell him that if the pile of rats got high enough, some of them might be able to climb on the dry rough rock above the wall-ooze. Might be able to cut him off... He shortened his reach, going for quicker.

  “He’s getting away!”

  Beneath him rats jumped up, nipped at the air, hissed, flailed claws, gnashed. Frustration bred more invention. It started behind him, but spread like a ripple through the rats: a song of hate.

  “FALL! FALL! FALL! FALL! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!”

  Individual voices pierced the din:

  “Eat your balls, cissy!”

  “Scream an’ scream, die for days...”

  “Bite through your skull an’ suck!”

  The Voice: They’re trying to break your strength! They’re going to seal off the wall, and force you to climb across the roof.

  Fear: I’m not strong enough.

  Them: “DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!”

  Schaeffer hit the plaza and pelted to the corner where the canary had been found. The sun was climbing fast over the mountain, throwing out its light, spilling orange over the rooftops, spreading warmth. Schaeffer didn’t stop to look. He sniffed hard for where the rat stink was strongest — over in the far corner.

  Procedure: bark into every drain, let Louie know he was a protected witness, convince him to give himself up.

  Instinct: go where the rats are.

  Schaeffer did it by the book. Hoping no-one would see him, he barked, “Louie! BCPD, we want to help!” into the drain.

  Nothing. He dashed to the next.

  “Louie! BCPD. Come out. We can protect you!”

  Nothing. Next.

  “Louie!”

  One side of the plaza barked, three drains. Schaeffer sprinted to the corner drain, barked into it. As never before he could feel the seismic tremble of massed rats surging around down in the sewer. Their squealing was a high, constant whistle, a shrieking din that shivered through the plaza floor beneath Schaeffer’s feet. The squealing was alarm, anyone could hear that. Intruder! Attacker!

  Or fugitive, escapee, thought Schaeffer.

  “Louie! You are a protected witness. Come out!”

  He ran to the next drain down. Barked, “Louie!”

  Look up. Daytime. The plaza getting steadily busier. Two-legs, dogs, pigeons — all looking at me gone-out.

  He crept on, every step like he was carrying a rat on his back.

  His eyes were half-shut with the effort and his lungs burned as he gasped for foul air. The muscles of his legs felt stretched; his bones ached to the core, felt split. He had no feeling in his claws: a sure-thing bad sign of coming cramps.

  Beneath him, against the wall, the rat-mountain had crept higher. It had passed the slime-line. The first summit-rats had taken to the wall. The incline stopped them: they rolled down the hill, splashed into the effluvium, climbed out sodden and streaked with darker brown, started up the hill again, shit-caked, seething and hate-filled, never giving up.

  Louie hauled himself up to the apex, where suddenly the pull became massive, as if the river of shit below him was sucking him. Upside-down, down was up, up was down. Louie was hanging on with everything he had, trying not to fly upwards into the river, into the shit and the waiting claws and jaws.

  The Voice: Be ROCK, Louie... sniff! Clean air... do you feel it...

  Fear: I CAN'T HOLD ON!

  Them: “DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!”

  And something else, faint, coming through the tunnel from behind:

  “Roooooouuuuuuuiiiiieeeee!”

  Louie hauled on, feeling like his tail was holding a string of rats.

  The roof arched up on the other side of the sludge river. Louie tacked across, limbs spread, claws numbly finding their way into cracks. The hate behind him faltered for an instant, like a shock running through the mob.

  Someone said, “We can’t stop him...”

  Someone else said, “Marcus will be angry...”

  Dismay. Shuffling feet. Tails dragging.

  “...”

  “...”

  “We were never here...”

  “Never here...”

  “Didn’t see...”

  “Disappear...”

  Louie turned the bend and saw a fat beam of light up ahead, spilling in through the basin pipe beneath the drain bars. Louie’s heart leaped.

  The Voice said, Daylight outside.

  He kept moving.

  Fear said: Daylight!

  Louie kept moving.

  They said, “...”

  Then that voice again:

  “Rooooouieeee!”

  It’s not real, Louie.

  Louie watched the rats heading away beneath him, heads-down floor-sniffing. No insults now because they didn’t dare admit they’d seen him and let him get away. Ahead the light burned his eyes. It looked hard, solid. It looked as if you could walk up it. Louie reached a claw out, got a hold in the pipe, and scrambled up with his last strength. He sat in the trash-choked basin, looking at the drain bars above him, and beyond them, to the sky.

  The Voice said, Daylight. Be soooo careful. Keep to the gutter...

  Fear said, Don’t go out here! Get out of here!

  Louie gripped the basin side and heaved himself upwards, running on empty. The stench below was still choking him, and the sunshine made him blind-giddy. He shut his eyes, but the spinning didn’t stop. Sick-dizzy boneless-weak, he reached a claw around the bar, clung, hauled himself up, threw his other front leg over, hauled again, scrabbling, and flopped into the plaza, gasping.

  “Rouie?”

  It's not real.

  IT IS!

  Louie opened an eye to gaping jaws, huge teeth and hot dog breath.

  Black rat shit out of luck.

  Louie passed out cold from sheer terror.

 
I cleaned up, went back to the alleys behind the plaza, an’ prowled like a cat’s supposed to. I had Schaeffer on my mind, an’ how he’d rubbed me up the wrong way with his jokes. Most cats would’ve said, Way to go, cat. Don’t take none from a dog — it ain’t as if they can get away with braggin’ about cleanliness. But still, some little voice of conscience told me I’d put pride before what was practical an’ there was a queasy feelin’ in my guts that didn’t have nothin’ to do with what I’d had for breakfast.

  I prowled, no appetite for company or food. I hadn’t had a good nap in days but I didn’t feel like sleep. One word — Marcus — kept makin’ me twitch. Marcus. Like splashes of water on me. The King Rat. Cats dream of it: gettin’ the King Rat an’ rippin’ out his liver.

  Marcus had had the canary killed, I knew that now. An’ it would’ve been on a whim, an’ it would’ve been for fun, because this guy had a million others bringin’ him food. Marcus was my guy now. An’ I knew I would never touch him, never even see him, an’ it messed with my sleep an’ my appetite.

  I crept around the backstreets. Alley cats avoided me, wouldn’t look me in the eye, slipped away. I’d teamed up with a dog, which meant, as far as any cat was concerned, I had fleas, whether I had ’em or not. (Which I didn’t.) Didn’t matter though — my rep on the street was officially lousy, an’ it was going to take a long time to regain the respect I used t’ have. There was a sour taste in my mouth like old fish heads — again, not entirely of Sax’s makin’. Normally I got no pangs of conscience from what I did: I live on the street, it’s tough — a cat gotta do what a cat gotta do. Right then, though, a little voice was tellin’ me I’d given up on Louie before I knew for sure, an’ that ain’t thorough, that ain’t right. I was havin’ a hard time convincin’ myself I did it for the right reasons an’ not just to get away from Schaeffer cos he was cockin’ a leg over my pride an’ laughin’ at me.

  I knew the voice would go on. There wouldn’t be no place in the sun to relax in cos Louie’d be on my mind an’ my conscience. Not a great weight, but there was my canary too.