The Big Miaouw

by Adam Skye

  I made for the plaza. I sauntered, thinkin’ about a canary in a rat’s jaws. The thought made me shiver. I hated to think of her bein’ my canary an’ I hated the voice in me that said starvin’ was a slower dyin’ than bein’ bitten by rats.

  I thought about Schaeffer’s sense of duty, his obedience to some code he had in his head, an’ about me walkin’ away from mine.

  I’d broken the promise I’d made to the bird I truly loved.

  I strolled. Dogturds littered the alleyways, fillin’ the air with their stink. I wondered about how much worse it was in the sewer than even the street, an’ reminded myself that at least I didn’t have dogshit in my fur — the very lowest a cat can go. I turned the alley, into the plaza. Then there was a flash of black an’ brown an’ a collision that knocked the breath outta me an’ sent me rollin’ down the alley. I rolled for yards, feelin’ every single goddam squelch beneath me, then my balance came back almost as soon as it’d gone, an’ I was back on my feet.

  Clamberin’ up from the ground was Schaeffer, lookin’ dazed, a dumbdog hey what!? whine in his throat, head to one side. I didn’t even have to look to know that I had more dog poop on me than even Schaeffer had in him — which was plenty — an’ I waited for the howls of hilarity.

  But Schaeffer couldn’t speak. There was a rat in his mouth.

  I thought, Louie?

  He put the rat down, real gentle. I could see the rat’s ribs fannin’, knew he was alive, an’ I’d been wrong. I was about to swallow somethin’ much worse than doodoo: my pride.

  An’ a dog was gonna be feedin’ me it.

  I flinched, knowin’ how bad it was gonna taste goin’ down.

  Then a miracle came out of the crap.

  Schaeffer apologised.

  Schaeffer put Louie on the floor softly. The little rat didn’t stir.

  Schaeffer said what he wanted to say. Frr didn’t reply, just nodded.

  “That Louie?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “You guess?"

  “There was about a million of ’em, Frr.”

  The apology had cost Schaeffer nothing. He had some personal pride, but nothing like as much as a cat does. The best thing about dogs is that they can laugh at themselves, and even though police dog training beat the softer side out of a dog — the ball-chasing, play-fighting side — and replaced it with discipline, Schaeffer didn’t have pride so much as a sense of duty, and pride in the execution of that duty. Bringing Louie in alive was enough for Schaeffer to be feeling good: good enough to give Frr’s ego a little stroke.

  He didn’t mention the mess in Frr’s fur, didn’t tell him who it belonged to and what he’d had for dinner like he could have, and Louie hadn’t come round and made any wiseass remarks either. Fat chance: no rat ever lipped a cat and got away with it.

  Frr said, “Let’s get out of the city.”

  Schaeffer picked up Louie and trotted after Frr.

  They went down to the port, and Frr went down the quayside stoop and sat himself on the bottom step by the ocean. Dabbing at the waves as if they were scalding, flinching and occasionally hissing, he washed himself from nose to tail with seawater. When he was finished he looked more like a hedgehog than a cat.

  Louie came round while he was doing it, and for a moment panicked when he couldn’t understand why he was by the sunlit ocean, breathing sea air and not sewer-gas.

  He turned to the dog, whose breath, now, somehow, he associated with safety.

  “Am I dreaming?” he squeaked.

  The dog said, “No,” with a puff of sweet dog breath.

  A miracle from shit, thought Louie.

  Then he heard a cat say, “Louie? Nice t’ meetcha.”

  Louie didn’t do it. Sax had already said as much, but I didn’t automatically believe a toonhead pigeon before my cat’s instinct. I was havin’ a hard time believin’ what I was hearin’ and seein’, but I guess it was a time to put aside everythin’ I believed impossible and possible, an’ accept that anythin’ could happen.

  Such as: a cat with a couple of dead canaries hauntin’ him teams up with a police dog an’ winds up listenin’ to a little black roof rat tell a story about Bossrat Marcus and MOONrats from space plannin’ to turn the world on its head and put rats at the top of the pile.

  The canary was killed because she might — might — have heard.

  There’d been a snuff-shout out on Louie, too, for what he’d heard.

  It was all impossible. It had all happened.

  The sun was hot on my back, an’ my fur was steamin’. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky an’ tonight would be beautiful. We’d see the moon real clear.

  “Tonight,” Louie had said. Some sort of gatherin’, some sort of vote. MOONrats and Marcus. Three terraces in from the corner, next-door to where the canary used to live: the terrace I didn’t get onto.

  I turned to Schaeffer.

  “I can take the rooftops. How can you get in?”

  He said he wasn’t sure yet. Said maybe he had a friend who could help.

  Right then my friends didn’t amount to a couple.

  I told Schaeffer to be ready for night.

  “I’ll be ready. What’re you gonna do?”

  I told him, “Sleep. Ya dummy.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  Get the cat — big comedian: acting cool, steam comin’ off his ass, sidlin’ away with a “Later,” that said, “I ain’t expectin’ ya.”

  Schaeffer looked at boats, smelled the sea. Nix to sleep, too much to do. The next step still not clear, Schaeffer looked down at his first problem — Louie — gazing up at him with wide eyes and an I like you smile.

  He made Louie go through it again, straight-facing the incredible. The terrace tonight meant much more than just Frr’s canary-murderer: it meant rats from the moon and lowlife Marcus planning to take over the city. And for ‘take over’ read ‘k-i-l-l’, and the BCPD had one — one — dog on the case. Louie was the sole witness and this didn’t look as if it was going to trial.

  Schaeffer thought about what to do with the rat now that he was out of the picture. A hit out on him back in the city. Zero chance of getting him onto the Witness Protection Programme. No use on the terrace tonight.

  Schaeffer looked at boats and thought about the disease that killed everything except stones and trees.

  “Louie. Pick a ship. You’re leaving.”

  Louie nodded and sniffed. He made this sad little squeak, “Say g’bye to Sax for me.”

  Then he played the prissy witness card. They spent half an hour sniffing for a boat with a cargo of cheese. Schaeffer watched Louie scramble up the mooring rope then transfer to the anchor-chain and said a silent goodbye, good luck, when the tail tip disappeared inside the ship.

  Schaeffer shook, turned round and started pounding.

  The breeze coming in off the sea ran at his back into the city, and on it the scent of the only escape route. The further in Schaeffer ran, the thinner the smell of the way out became: the city smell soon drowned it out. Now the only way Out was In.

  Schaeffer ran, working scenes out. The terrace, the fifth floor. Rats always wait for dark, so figure midnight. Guards all over the rooftops, VERY security-conscious, no repeats of last time. How many rats not a problem. How the hell do I get up there? BIG problem.

  Flash memory of Frr: he’d been up on the fifth floor inside the building.

  Schaeffer wondered how to get in and decided he needed another partner.

  A rattling tattoo of claws at the door brought Sai back to the present with a start, and the beautiful Florence he had constructed in his mind fell and smashed. The colours it had been dreamed in bled to grey and dispersed, ash blown across a marble floor. Sai blinked and shook his head, startled by the sudden noise and dismayed to find that while he had been reading, night had fallen.

  “Lord Sai?”

  Sai sighed and closed his book. Time had passed so agreeably while he had been hiding in his reading, but now the
hour had come for Sai to face up to what he had been dreading for days. When he replied, his voice sounded weak, despondent and fatalistic.

  “Come.”

  The door opened and Max stepped into the room.

  “It is the appointed time, Lord Sai. Transport to the Convocation awaits.”

  The voice was once again toneless, as if Max did not understand the words he spoke.

  Sai came down the ladder to the floor and waddled towards Max, avoiding eye contact, afraid that his fear was on show in his eyes. Sai stepped past Max, through the door, into the corridor. Max followed him. Sai felt his fur prickle, unsettled at having a killer at his back. The two guards closed the door behind them, returned to stiff attention as Max strode past them, caught up with Sai easily and led on.

  “This way.”

  They walked along the corridor until they came to another door, which two more guards pushed open for them. Ahead of them, rising from the carpet to a hole in the wall, was a ramp leading into a ventilation duct from which the grille had been removed, and where now waited a wheeled sled and a silent line of harnessed rats. Sai waddled up the boarding ramp and took his place on the sled. Max sat beside him, and snapped to the guards, “Take the ramp away!” And to the sled-team, “Move!”

  The rats strained and heaved until, with a lurch, the sled started rolling slowly.

  Sai collected his thoughts as the sled trundled. The walls rolled by and the light from the corridor thinned and then went out. The sled suddenly turned sharply, then again, again, again, in rapid succession. Amid the weaving, Sai kept his balance but lost his bearings.

  They rolled on thus for some time. Sai’s pink eyes adjusted too slowly to the dark, though the confident cornering of the sled told him the rat-team saw perfectly. Sporadically the sled would slow as they passed through the vent-shafts of occupied apartments, stations of light viewed through the meshes of vent-duct covers. Now a glimpse of a sleeping dog, now a skirting board, a cat basket, a flash of ankles, a crawling baby, smiling and gurgling.

  Sai closed his eyes and collected his thoughts: Florence in the grip of the plague; other accounts and instances of the hideous might of P. pestis; the thirst for power and its insatiable parasite, the urge to follow... Domus, Marcus.

  The sled trundled on, grumbling softly through the tunnels. The rats’ panting set a rhythm: the slow pounding beat of an uphill strain, the half-laughter of running downhill, in Sai’s mind a strange, insistent music — the mix of breathing, squeaking axles and the wheels’ echoing rumble. And then the sled slowed, pulled up, and the music stopped.

  Sai opened his eyes.

  The appointed place.

  The appointed time.

  A ramp was hastily pulled up next to the sled.

  Sai set his face like stone and walked down to the Convocation.

  I had about as much chance of sleepin’ as I had of flyin’: my head was boilin’ over tryna understand what Louie had told us.

  An old, old rat story — hundreds, thousands of generations old. Once upon a time, nobody knows when, a disease appeared and killed everythin’ it touched... humans, cats, dogs, rats. It was like this force was an enemy of warm blood. But it wasn’t systematic: it didn’t touch everythin’ but there was nothin’ you could do about it if it did want you. It killed, it spared, and nobody could explain why one died an’ another didn’t. Everythin’ the rats had ever believed in just fell apart... an’ there’s been war ever since. Louie said it was an old, old story, and lottsa rats didn’t believe it... it wasn’t a story you could prove, you just believed it or you didn’t. Louie’d believed, even before he knew.

  “But the ones who don’t believe it don’t believe in nothin’, they believe in anythin’ — like rats from the moon. But the rats from the moon are real,” said Louie.

  An’ four of them wanted to bring this death back.

  Louie stopped makin’ sense then, started gettin’ hysterical, an’ I could see that he was still in the sewer, in a way. When I asked him the big question, he just shrieked, “Security! Security!”, an’ jumped between Schaeffer’s paws, head down and shakin’.

  I left, things to do. No, I couldn’t sleep. I slinked through the alleys, avoided by cats like I had a disease, thinkin’, I can’t even put out the news on The Miaouw: a rat myth from a thousand thousand lifetimes back...

  I went to Sam. I told him why the rats were out on the streets, why the canary was dead. I asked him, “Help me, please, Sam: I think the whole city’s in a pillowcase an’ headin’ for the river.”

  He just said, “Let’s go.”

  Headin’ through the streets, gettin’ hissed at an’ dissed from the walls an’ trashcans, we looked back straight into every fiery eye scopin’ us from the shadows, sayin’ nothin’, starin’ back til the light went out. Lookin’ up at the moon, I thought about what was comin’. I thought about Schaeffer, no use to me because he couldn’t get onto the roof. I needed cats, but when you need them most, they ain’t there: only your friends. I thought about The Big Miaouw closed off to me. Three days past the full moon. Louie said he’d been on the wall and heard them at the full moon. “Three days,” Louie said.

  The moon was waning, but still givin’ out strong.

  So: tonight — the canary, Marcus, the guys who want the city... answers to all my questions.

  Pity Schaeffer wouldn’t be there, I couldda used an extra pair of jaws.

  Sam an’ me, an’ how many rats?

  An alley-war five floors up — blood: so much of it it’d splash the stars.

  Us versus them. Our blood or theirs.

  Sam an’ I slipped through an open door in the opposite corner to the terrace where it was all gonna go down. We waited at the foot of the stairs, talked angles of approach and wind direction, team hunt-and-destroy strategies, signals, tactics... an’ we reminded each other: “Never hesitate,” an’ “Ya ain’t permitted t’ run.”

  Schaeffer crouched behind a car, hidden by the night.

  Night was good: two-legs couldn’t see and you could smell them a mile off. Ears up, eyes wide, panting quiet, Schaeffer was alert. He was way, way off Fatso’s usual beat but he was still wary of uniforms and figured an APB on him by now: Detain. The station, questioning, the Chief in no hurry to get the lowdown on a police dog’s night-owling. A night of the sweats pacing round a pound-outhouse, waiting for the Interview, listening to the cons howl and wondering if the Chief saw a canary-snuff as ok grounds for two days AWOL...

  Schaeffer, still rogue, on stake-out.

  Two-legs were always deadweight on stakeouts: always making ‘I’m bored’ moaning noises, smoking, farting, peeing into cups and throwing it out of the car window. Schaeffer sniffed, looked, listened, double-checked. The coast was clear. He got up, trotted over to the cop car he’d had under surveillance for an hour, and peed over the left rear wheel, then the right. He looked around, trotted back to his spot, all his senses working too hard. He lay down edgy, thinking, Relax.

  He licked his balls. Lap lap lap. Ahhhh.

  Schaeffer’s mind cleared wonderfully. He heard the station-issue boots round the corner, grinding grit half a street away. He crouched low, a sluggish city street breeze taking his scent away from the cop unit. Two cars downwind, snout down between the street and the chassis, Schaeffer scoped. The boots got louder and, as they came nearer, the clatter of claws ticked into hearing, getting louder. Figure HUGE dog. The cop appeared round the corner, then Sergeant Rott crunched into view. Bulls-eye for Schaeffer’s guesswork.

  They strode to the car, the two-legs tinkling keys, while Rott — nicknamed ‘Bone’ but Schaeffer didn’t know why — sniffed the wheels and pricked up stumpy little ears.

  From across the street, Schaeffer watched Rott’s two brain cells collide. Bark, bark. Way t’ go, Rott.

  “Derrr, Schaeffer. Duh... I can smell ya, ya know... duh, huh.”

  ...

  “Duh... I think I’m supposed to take you in, Schaeffer... duh... I think.�
�

  His two-legs rubbernecked to see what the action was, looked out across the street to where Rott was barking. Schaeffer barked back, “Rott! I ain’t comin’ in. You gotta come out!”

  And stayed low, not optimistic.

  Rott was typical of the ’weilers that’d been joining the force in recent years: dumb. The Station’s alsatians ribbed the bonecrusher rotts full-time. Off-the-record they admitted the Crunch Bunch were great on crowd control, but they scored zero, possibly less, for detective work.

  So no shocks from Bone, then. He barked Standard Response.

  “Doooooooooo... No. YOU gotta come in.”

  Schaeffer stayed down, wondered how to manipulate the thinking of an animal that didn’t have any thoughts, and clicked on it: orders.

  “Rott, I’m on a case, deep cover, on Captain Dobie’s orders!”

  Rott sat straight back flat on his ass.

  “Hrowwooo?”

  His ears flopped: too many thoughts in his head to remember to keep them up. Schaeffer made the complex rottweiler-simple.

  “I need your help! This is big.”

  Rott whined.

  “Dermmmm... ... ... Captain Dobie’s orders?”

  “Yeah, but it’s all secret undercover stuff, Rott. Ya gotta believe me. Ya gotta help.”

  Come on, come on, ya dumb son of a bi...

  “Der... ok.”

  Schaeffer heard it all go quiet, heard two-leg What? noises.

  Rott barked again.

  “Now what do I do?”

  Schaeffer double-took. Damn! He’d forgotten there’d be a leash.

  “Bark like hell. Pull your guy over, get him to let you go...”

  “Der... ok.”

  “Rott!”

  “Der... yeah?”

  “Don’t bite ’im.”

  “Duh... no.”

  Two-legs said something to Rott. Rott jumped. A socket-popping yank stretched his partner’s arm. Schaeffer heard, “Yerk!” and saw the two-legs lurch forward, his cap falling off.