Malus Domestica

by Hunt, S. A.

The air stank of cat piss and the space they were confined to was only the last couple of feet of the compartment, a gap two feet wide, nine feet tall, and seven feet across. Joel sat down and listened to the officer put a padlock through the handle…which was a feat in itself, because the darkness was a near-unbearable chaos of agonized groaning and keening.

  He leaned back against the wall and rubbed his face in exasperation and fear. The cats were too loud to talk to Fisher, so he just closed his eyes and tried to think of a way out of this mess.

  Prayers seemed trite and useless. Joel thought of himself peripherally as a Christian, but he hadn’t been to church since he was a teenager and was always at a loss for words when someone asked him to say Grace over dinner.

  It was no different today as he rode blind and disoriented back into the hustle and bustle of urban Blackfield, but the irony was not lost on him that if he’d gone to church that morning, he probably wouldn’t be in this mess. Who thinks to look for a fugitive in church?

  Once he’d exhausted his reserve of plans and mental preparations—daydreaming about leaping out at Euchiss when he opened the back of the truck, usually getting shot or Tasered for his troubles—he played around with the reasons for why Fisher’s cat had killed itself, turning the scene over and over in his mind like a Rubik’s Cube. The way the cat had hunkered down and stared at Joel as if he were a piece of string or a laser-dot…the fixed stare of a predator watching for movement, sizing up a target.

  The truck drove a shorter route than the one they’d taken in the police cruiser, but more circuitous. He counted at least seven stops, four of which were at traffic lights (this was determined by the fact that the driver only made a cursory effort to stop at stop-signs). The animals never stopped yowling; if anything, it only got worse and worse, increasing whenever the truck paused and the engine quieted.

  The Tylenol was wearing off, and his leg radiated heat through the bandage, throbbing and aching like a live wire under fabric.

  He had actually started to doze off when the truck’s horn blared. An engine somewhere off to their port side revved, rising in volume, and then, WHAM!, an incredible force slammed into them, throwing Joel onto his hands and knees at Fisher’s feet.

  Someone had side-swiped them. The tires barked a squealing tremolo, EEEEE-E-E-E-E! Dozens of wire kennels toppled over in a riot of metal and screaming animals.

  “Who the hell!” shouted Bowker, his voice almost obscured by the cats. The offending vehicle crashed into them again, partially caving in the wall and knocking down cages. A dozen lasers of daylight streamed in through pinholes bashed into the side of the cargo compartment. Joel scrambled into Fisher’s reach and the man dragged his brother into his lap, clutching his head in powerful arms.

  For a few seconds, Fish’s cologne overpowered the cat-stink. If I live through this I’ll never bitch about keto again.

  A shadow loomed at them from the fast lane, blocking out the light, and beat against the truck—BAM. This time their mystery assailant pressed against the truck’s flank, trying to fishtail them. The sound of their engine reverberated through the wall, bogging down, straining.

  Bowker managed to keep it more or less on the straight and narrow, but some sort of structure collided with the right side and scraped endlessly down the fender like rolling thunder, drumming at regular intervals, a giant metal heart, boom-boom, boom-boom.

  A guard-rail.

  As soon as Joel placed the sound, a tremendous noise—a great shuddering BOOM like the world tearing in half—told him that the truck had broken through, and the entire cargo compartment capsized to the right. Joel and Fisher and a hundred and forty-two cats slammed into the starboard wall and free-floated for about two and a half seconds.

  Instead of crashing into water like he’d anticipated, the truck piledrived itself into solid ground.

  Forward momentum threw every cage into the front of the compartment and tore the brothers away from each other. Joel cartwheeled backward into the pile of kennels, bounced and fell on top of Fisher. The ceiling sheared open with the furious, ear-destroying roar of a hundred thousand dragons.

  ❂

  Blood dripped on the back of his head, an insistent tap, tap, tap. Joel opened his eyes to find himself lying on top of his brother, his face pressed against Fisher’s chest, listening to a chorus of tuneless, defeated howling. He was pinned under a tangle of cages. Dead, dying, and injured house-cats lay in slumped piles of hair all around him, suspended in a masterwork of bent wires.

  Fish groaned. “What happened?”

  “We crashed.”

  A familiar chemical smell tainted the air, overpowering the cat urine. Gasoline. Diesel. The fuel tank had ruptured. “We gotta get out of here,” said Fish, and he tried to stir. Sharp pain needled Joel’s left shoulder.

  “Oww, fuck. Quit movin.”

  Fish relaxed. Joel tried to push himself up, but the cages were too heavy. A cat’s paw groped at his face.

  He shivered as a surge of adrenaline ripped through his core, his heart flaring, and he tried to push again. This time the cage against his back snapped, and a wire bar twanged like a broken guitar string, scratching his side.

  “Hold on!” someone shouted from up the bank, feet thumping through dry leaves. “I’m comin! Hold on!”

  Joel gazed through a galaxy of aluminum wires. The back door was smashed open, and he could see the bridge they’d fallen from, and the guardrail they’d smashed through.

  A Frontier pickup was parked on the shoulder. Ashe Armstrong ran sideways down the slope in an awkward loping gallop. The big veterinarian took hold of the roof where it’d been peeled away and hauled on it, tearing it open further. “Hey,” he called over the howling of the cats, spotting Joel through the twisted bars. “I’ll get you guys out. Hold on.”

  He worked his way down the side, wrenching it down, filling the box with sunlight. Joel called out, “I’m holdin, man, I’m holdin.”

  Reaching into the cargo compartment, Ashe started grabbing at kennels and dragging them out onto the bank. The cats inside them complained, but right now his first priority was freeing Joel and Fish.

  Fisher coughed in Joel’s ear. “You all right?”

  “Yeah.” Joel winced. “Got a wire jabbin me in my back and I got one foot in Hell, but otherwise, I’m aight. You?”

  “You had your tetanus shot, right?”

  “No, but it looks like I’m gonna need one.”

  “How did you find us?” Fish asked Ashe. “Was that you that made the cop crash?”

  “Followed you guys all the way to Glen Addie, but I lost you at a red light.” Pulling on a cage, Ashe lifted it over his head and flung it into the weeds. The cat inside was already dead, flopping around limp and shapeless. “I was driving around the 1800 block, thinking of checking the animal shelter—since it was the only thing out that way that made any sense—when I saw those two cops and followed em.”

  The next cage was stuck fast and the cat inside, a black shorthair with white patches, yowled pitifully. Ashe pulled and pulled until it let go with a twang and he set it aside. “I don’t know why I rammed the truck,” he said, grabbing another one. “It seemed like the thing to do. Those guys are shady as hell and I figured you were in the back.”

  “It’s a good thing you did,” said Joel.

  “Figured they were gonna try to finish the job they started last night. Take you somewhere and kill you. Guess it seemed safer to run the truck off the road and pull you out than try to stop em and get myself shot like they shot you.”

  “I’m glad you believed me.”

  “It’s hard to disbelieve a gunshot wound to the leg.”

  Fisher coughed again. “Come on, man, hurry up. We need to get out of here.” The smell of diesel fuel was growing stronger. “Those two cops. Are they out? Are they out there?”

  Ashe shook his head. “I ain’t seen em. Looks like they’re still in the front.”

  Bracing himself against the wall of th
e compartment, Joel did a pushup and found that the load on his back was considerably lighter, affording him a few inches of wiggle-room.

  “Almost there,” said Ashe. He laced his fingers through another kennel and paused.

  “What is it?”

  Joel blinked. The vet was staring into space, hunched over with his shoulders squeezed into the roof opening.

  “Why’d you stop?”

  “Nnnrrrrrrrr.” Ashe was growling, a weird nasal growl like an impression of an airplane. Choking and snuffling, he shrank away from the opening, disappearing, and daylight poured through in his place.

  Joel met Fisher’s eyes and the two of them struggled with the cages. Ashe had taken enough of them out that they had room to push them out of the way. Fish reached up over his head, shoving the last couple of kennels toward the gap. The cages on top of them shifted precariously.

  Dragging himself underneath them, Fisher pulled his body through the hole and out into the grass.

  Orange light flickered from the back of the compartment. Through the chaos of wires, Joel could see a fire guttering somewhere deep in the pile of kennels. The diesel had leaked into the cargo hold and something had set it ablaze. The smoke was foul, thick and pungent. He shoved at the cages, crawling forward, and Fisher pulled them out from the other side, throwing them away.

  Finally, he was free. Joel dragged his legs out and lay exhausted in the churned-up dirt. The truck had come to rest on its right side at the bottom of a slope, next to a river.

  “Rrrrooowwwwwrrrrll,” said Ashe.

  Joel turned over. The vet was doubled over in a crazy Spider-Man pose on his hands and feet, crawling along the riverbank and staring at them.

  “The hell are you doing?” asked Fisher, and Ashe lunged at him, slamming him against the back of the cargo box.

  Fish bounced off the aluminum sheet and the two men went down with Ashe on top, hissing and growling like a man insane. The vet’s ponytail had come undone and his hair was a wild brown Tarzan mane. Ashe tried to bite Fish and the smaller man pushed at him, fending him off with a bloody forearm.

  One of the cages lay next to Joel, bars twisted in every direction, the cat gone. He grabbed a bar and bent it until it broke free, then scrambled over to Ashe and jammed it deep through his shirt, feeling skin give way.

  “ROOOOWL!”

  Flinching and screaming, the vet rolled off of Fish and spidered backwards. One of his shoes pried free of his foot, stuck in gluey mud, the sock still inside. Joel stared, kneeling in a three-point stance, the wire jutting from his fingers like a knife fighter. That feeling of unreality came back. The man is acting like a cat.

  His brother snatched up a rock and threw it—“Bitch-ass bitch!”—and Ashe blinked just as the rock hit him in the forehead. TOCK! He fell over and writhed like a crushed bug, holding his eyes, his heels grinding furrows in the dirt.

  In the fight, Fisher had been pushed backward on the ground, and his pants were shucked down off his hips, revealing one butt cheek. Joel caught a glimpse of the algiz brand on his ass and got an idea.

  “Hold the man down,” he told Fish, scooping his hand through the mud.

  “What?”

  “Just do it!”

  Fish clambered up and clapped his hands to Ashe’s biceps, pinning him down and uncovering his face. Ashe snarled at the sky and twisted back and forth trying to free himself, a livid purple bruise rising over his right eyebrow.

  Grinding up the mud in his hands, Joel ripped Ashe’s shirt open. A white belly glowed underneath. Joel painted Robin’s algiz on him with the mud—one long smear and two little arms on top—and then Ashe overpowered them, throwing Fish aside. Joel crawled away, using the side of the box-truck to climb to his feet.

  Flames crackled inside the cargo compartment, and when he looked inside he saw the beginnings of a roaring bonfire. He swore out loud and pulled out a cage with a howling cat inside, and another and another.

  God, there are so many, he thought, pitching the kennels into the weeds like a baggage-handler.

  “What’s wrong with him?” shouted Fisher.

  Ashe Armstrong lay on his back, thick spittle-foam collecting between his lips, convulsing violently and thrashing his arms and legs like a man electrocuted. His eyes rolled back in his head.

  Struck by indecision and driven by the smell of burning cat-hair, Joel couldn’t figure out what to do—help Ashe? Save the cats? Yell at Fish to help him get the cages out of the fire? The dilemma was rendered moot when Ashe opened his mouth and the face of a cat pressed itself out between his teeth, eyes squinting, fur matted.

  The vet’s face had become a livid lavender. He grabbed his neck with both hands as if he was trying to pull off his own head and rolled over on his hands and knees. He convulsed again—this time slowly, methodically, his stomach tensing the way a dog sicks. His whole torso inchwormed back to front, his shoulders bunched up to his ears.

  A cat’s head protruded from his mouth like a big hairy tongue. Ashe reached up with one hand and took hold of the cat’s neck with an A-OK gesture, and pulled.

  The cat let out a strangled duck-squawk.

  Standing half-naked in the mud under a cooling overcast sky, black smoke billowing past, Joel lost his handle on the present. Somehow the threads of reality had unraveled to the point that his mind refused to put two and two together anymore, and all of a sudden he forgot what his hands were for. The only thing he could do was watch helplessly as Armstrong struggled.

  Fisher snatched him back with a slap to the face. “Stop screamin and go check on those two cops.”

  He had been screaming? Joel shook his head and a pang of dizziness almost sprawled him in the weeds. The birds were singing in the trees. Why were the birds singing? Look at this shit! What is there to sing about?

  “I said go!” growled Fisher, pushing him out of the way. Fish went back into the cargo compartment and pitched a kennel outside. Smoke was roiling out. A few seconds later, he came out, coughing hard and wet. He didn’t go back in.

  Staggering through the mud, Joel went around to the driver’s side of the truck and was amazed to see a wall of black, dirty machinery. Then he remembered that the truck had fallen over on its side; the door was now on top. He climbed the underside of the cab and pulled himself up and over the running-board.

  Through the window, he could see the two men inside. Euchiss was unconscious behind a deflated airbag, slumped against the passenger side door with blood trickling down the side of his face, but Bowker was dead. He was extremely dead. The steering column had been driven backward, but the Second Chance vest he’d been wearing had prevented it from impaling him. Instead, it had caused the armor plates to squish his torso like a s’more, breaking his ribs and pinning him against the seat. His eyes and throat bulged like a toad and his face was grape-purple, gray viscera flowering from his mouth.

  Luckily, the window-glass was smashed out. Joel reached into the cab and plucked the Glock out of Bowker’s hip holster, jamming it into the back of his jeans.

  Movement on the other side caught his eye. Euchiss’s eyes were open, and he was staring straight at Joel. Without a word, the cop drew his own Glock and pointed it up at him.

  Joel recoiled away from the window and jumped down into the mud, heading back to the rear of the cargo compartment. When he got there, Ashe Armstrong was lying on his back in the undergrowth where he’d fallen, cradling a blood-wet cat in his arms like a new mother and looking thoroughly wrung-out. “Uuuunnggh,” the big man grunted hoarsely, and closed his eyes, exhausted.

  By now, the fire was licking up out of the hole in the roof. Cats screamed inside in a great siren-chorus of panic and agony, consumed by the flames. Fish was on his knees in the mud, his eyes red and streaming down his face, though Joel couldn’t tell if it was because of the smoke or because of the cats.

  “I can’t save them,” Fish sobbed. “I can’t get in.”

  “We got to go.”

  Fish got up, still w
eeping. Ashe lay in Roman repose, his head lolling back, his eyes closed. The newly reborn cat wriggled out of his arms and shook itself, crawling weakly into the treeline.

  Ashe opened his eyes. “My throat. Killing me.”

  “Come on,” said Joel, grabbing his hands. “We got to go. Get up. We got to go.” The brothers helped the vet up off the ground and they headed up the slope toward the highway. Ashe’s pickup truck waited for them at the gap in the guardrail, the right quarter smashed in a way that gave Joel pause.

  A sluggish, raspy voice echoed off the trees. “Where you goin?”

  They all looked up. Euchiss had climbed over his partner and was now standing up in the sidelong driver window as if it were a tank hatch. He pulled the rifle out of the cab hand-over-hand and cycled the bolt, chik-a-chik!

  Joel reached behind his back and came up with Bowker’s pistol, pointing it at the Serpent. It went off as soon as he tugged the trigger, firing with a paper-bag POP!, and the bullet kicked sparks off the side of the truck.

  Euchiss slithered down into the window for cover.

  Reaching the roadside first, Joel went around to the driver’s side of Ashe’s truck. The highway was a lonely country two-lane out in the middle of nowhere, stretching toward the horizon in both directions. Soldier pines made an impenetrable wall on either side of the highway under a sky like stirred milk. There were no power lines or poles, which made the road look naked, unfinished.

  The Frontier’s door was open and the keys were still in it, but the right front of the truck was smashed in and smoke was snaking out from under the hood. Joel twisted the keys and the engine grunted—grrr-unh-unh-unh, grrr-unh-unh-unh.

  It wouldn’t start. “Damn!”

  The windshield imploded with a delicate smash, raining glass all over the dash, and Joel dove out onto the highway. Lying on his belly, it occurred to him that Euchiss could still see him underneath the truck, but when he peered through the gap he saw that the shoulder of the road concealed him well enough.

  Fisher and Ashe came bounding around the back of the truck and hunkered down behind the Frontier’s bed. “Wouldn’t start?” croaked the vet, wincing.