The Wild Ones

by C. Alexander London

  The boss of the Rabid Rascals lived at the end of Ankle Snap Alley in an abandoned van the People had long ago mounted on cinder blocks and forgotten. From the outside, it looked like a rusted heap with wooden boards for windows and vines covering the roof.

  On the inside, however, it was a mansion for vermin. The walls were draped with quilts of scrounged fabric; there were upholstered burrows for sleeping, decorated with ribbons and coins and all kinds of stolen bits and baubles.

  The boss lived in the way back, behind a beaded curtain where a plastic pool had been filled with cool, clean water pilfered from the People’s homes. He lounged in the water or on the sand scattered around the pool, which had also been hauled from some distant beach by his loyal minions.

  No one knew how old the boss was or how long he had been the boss at all. In fact, no one knew much about him except that he was a turtle and that he’d made his first fortune fixing bird fights and rigging the bets. Some said he had escaped from a pet store as a baby, others said he’d been born in the sewers, and a few said he’d come from the sunny country down south and arrived in the city before the People’s buildings had cut the sky to slivers.

  On a few things all the stories about the boss agreed: He was old, he was tough as his shell, and he was ruthless. He had enemies, but he never had them for long.

  “So don’t bother begging for mercy,” Shane told Kit, shoving him toward the curtain. “You won’t get any.”

  Two bright green parakeets fluttered their wings and drew the curtain apart so Kit could pass through. He stood in the soft sand outside the pink plastic pool and saw Uncle Rik in a metal birdcage.

  “Don’t hurt the boy!” his uncle cried out when he saw Kit. “He’s innocent in all this!”

  “Innocent?” Flynn Blacktail cried. “He lost a bet, and instead of paying up, he tossed us on the train tracks!”

  “You cheated him, so he cheated you,” Uncle Rik replied. “It’s the way of the wild.”

  “Not . . . our . . . way,” a creaky old voice spoke slowly from the water. The wrinkled head of a turtle popped above the edge of the pool and peered at Kit. Its pale green face sagged, and its eyes were hooded with heavy lids. The turtle looked sleepy and not particularly menacing.

  “That’s right,” said Shane. “We cheat.”

  And Flynn added, “We don’t get cheated.”

  “The boy hassss to learn,” Basil said.

  “Yes . . . ,” the turtle agreed. “He will learn . . . a . . . lesson.”

  “No,” said Uncle Rik. “Not a lesson.”

  “Yes.” The turtle nodded. “Time to call . . . the teacher.”

  Eeni gasped. “You can’t. That’s not—”

  Basil squeezed her tighter, so no sound came out even as her mouth formed a scream.

  “Wait? What?” Kit looked up at the turtle. “Who’s the teacher?”

  “Why, my boy, I am the teacher,” a little porcupine in a bow tie announced as he came rolling out of the glove compartment. He carried a small satchel on his back, which he carefully removed and set on the ground before him. “Delighted to meet you, Kit.”

  The porcupine stuck out his paw for a shake, and Flynn jabbed Kit in the back with the fork to prod him forward. Kit shook hands with the porcupine.

  “You’re a teacher?” Kit wondered, looking back at Eeni squirming helplessly in the snake’s grip. His uncle had crumpled into a ball in the cage, sobbing quietly. Martyn stood defiantly with his paws folded across his chest, but the little mouse’s eyes darted nervously. Why was everyone so afraid of a teacher?

  “I am not a teacher,” the porcupine corrected Kit. “I am the teacher. You see, when someone needs to learn a lesson, I teach it to them.” He smiled politely, then puffed up so his sharp quills flared out around him. “I fear it will be a long lesson for you, Kit, and you will not enjoy it. Shall we begin?”

  Shane grabbed Kit from behind and held his arms tightly behind his back. The porcupine pulled one of his own quills from his side and tested its sharpness, then stepped up to Kit, tapping his snout with the glistening point of the quill. “Shall I pierce his ears or his nose first?”

  “I would never . . . tell you how . . . to do . . . your work,” the turtle said. “I ask only . . . that his screams . . . echo. The lesson is for all . . . of Ankle Snap Alley . . . to hear and . . . to fear.”

  Kit looked around for help, but saw only the merciless stares of the Rabid Rascals gang. There were cruel Basil and the angry Blacktail brothers. The creepy frog who’d tried to sell Kit weapons was there, and so was the stoat who’d urged him to place his unfortunate bet on the shell-and-nut game. There was the skinny pigeon from Ansel’s bakery, Blue Neck Ned, pecking at a plate of grubs. While he ate, he watched Kit with his side eye. The turtle climbed lazily from his pool, to stretch out on the sand while Kit got tortured. Kit’s uncle was in a cage; Martyn was on the wrong side of two dogs’ snarling snouts, and Eeni couldn’t move in the merciless hug of the python.

  No one but Kit could save Kit.

  He felt the sharp point of the porcupine quill rise against his snout. “We’ll start with the nose,” said the teacher.

  “Wait,” Kit cried. “I know the Flealess are coming to kick you all out of the alley, but I can stop them. I can find the Bone of Contention.”

  The animals fell silent. The boss cocked his head, and then burst out laughing. The other Rabid Rascals laughed with him.

  “It’s true!” Kit shouted over the laughter. “I saw the Rat King.”

  “The Rat King . . . is a lunatic,” the boss said.

  “That Rat King has . . . uh . . .” Kit searched for the word. “Perspective. The Rat King sees more and remembers more than anyone could!”

  “You want some free advice, lad?” the turtle asked him, but gave the advice without waiting for Kit’s answer. “Never trust a nest of rats. If a hundred rats agree on something, you can be sure they’ve lost their minds. Ain’t nothing in this wide world true for the same hundred. We’re meant to be individuals, Kit, who do what we want and think what we want and get what we can get before some other guy gets it from us.”

  “But if you don’t let me find the Bone of Contention, all the wild animals who live here will suffer.”

  The turtle stretched his long turtle neck from his shell. “Well, it looks like you’ll be the first then.” He nodded toward the porcupine to begin Kit’s torture.

  “So you’re a leash lover?” Kit yelled out.

  This time, the crowd of animals didn’t laugh. The room fell so quiet you could have heard a mole cough on the other side of the world.

  “Did you call me a leash lover?” the turtle snapped.

  “Oh, you’ve done it now, lad,” the teacher muttered and straightened his bow tie.

  “You are a leash lover,” Kit yelled again. “I could help you prove that this land belongs to the Wild Ones, but instead of listening, you do the Flealess’s dirty work? You’re worse than a house pet. You’re a dumb old sewer-stinking leash lover!”

  All eyes shifted from Kit to the turtle, whose pale green face looked paler and greener than ever. After a pause that felt as long as winter and twice as cold, the turtle spoke.

  “Brave words for such a young lad,” he said, suddenly speaking as fast as anyone. His whole slow-talking thing was just an act that fell away when he got mad. “I’ll need some proof you can do what you say.”

  “I told you what the Rat King said,” Kit explained.

  “Words ain’t much good as proof,” said the turtle. “Words are cheap as dirt and twice as useless. Anyone can use words to say anything they want. But deeds, Kit. Deeds are a rare thing. A deed doesn’t lie. A deed, when done, stands against a lie. Let the mice have words. It was deeds that made the world.” The boss cleared his throat. “I propose another bet. If you win, you can go free with your friends. If
you lose, I kill you all.”

  “But we can kill ’em all anyway, Boss,” Shane objected. “We don’t need no bet!”

  “Shut your snout,” the turtle snapped at him. “I’m talking to the young fella here. What do you say, Kit?”

  “What’s the bet? I can’t agree before I know what it is.”

  “Simple,” the turtle told him. “You go into the sewers and bring me back the Bone of Contention before sunup. If you succeed, I’ll let your friends go free. If you lose, well . . . school’s in session.”

  The porcupine tapped his quill on Kit’s snout and smirked.

  The turtle waited for Kit’s answer. Everyone waited.

  “Is there really a beast down there?” Kit wondered.

  “Of course not.” The turtle laughed. “It’s just Gayle.” Kit exhaled with relief. “Although Gayle is an alligator,” he added. “The biggest alligator ever to live in the sewers beneath the Slivered Sky.”

  “An alligator?” Kit gulped.

  “And she’s a mean one,” the turtle said. “Best get going, Kit . . . The rooster will be crowing bedtime before you know it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  TOOTHSOME

  THE Blacktail brothers walked Kit to the sewer entrance by the train tracks, taunting him all the while.

  “You ever seen an alligator, young pal of my paw?” asked Shane.

  “Teeth sharper than sunlight,” said Flynn. “And a bite so fast it’ll snap your head off while your paws keep walking.”

  “Don’t scare the lad, my brother,” Shane replied with a sarcastic smile. “Alligators can smell fear. You aren’t afraid of giant teeth that lurk below the sewer filth, are you, Kit? You aren’t afraid of massive jaws and terrible fangs, are you, you mole-faced tick-for-brains?”

  Shane and his brother laughed and laughed.

  “Will you two be quiet?” Kit grumbled as he walked. The purple night was already starting to swell with red, and Kit knew that morning would be along soon. He wasn’t looking forward to climbing down into the deadly sewers, but at least it would get him away from these two foul-mouthed raccoons.

  “Look, Kit is scared,” Flynn said. “Oh dear. Well, now he’ll be eaten for sure.”

  “Serves him right for what he did to us,” said Shane. “And we, who merely tried to play a friendly game of chance.”

  “Like Ma used to say,” added Flynn, “in a game of luck, you test your pluck, but in a game of chance—”

  “You can lose your pants!” Shane finished the rhyme.

  Kit did his best to ignore the jabbering brothers the rest of the way to the sewer grate. It was an unassuming hole in the ground. Bits of trash and leaves had clumped up over the entrance, and Kit had to pull the filthy mess away with his paws, while the Blacktail brothers watched.

  When Kit had cleared the opening enough to squeeze inside, he took off his hat and set it beside the hole. He didn’t want to lose it down in the sewer.

  “If I don’t make it back, could you give that to Eeni?” he asked.

  Shane Blacktail leaned down over him. “We’ll sell your hat to the birds to decorate their nests.”

  “You guys really are jerks,” Kit said, and lowered himself halfway into the hole.

  “Tell Gayle to save your head,” Flynn snarled. “We’d love to hang it on our wall!”

  “It would look lovely on our wall,” Shane added.

  “I just said we’d love to hang it on our wall,” Shane told him. “Why’d you have to repeat that?”

  While the brothers bickered, Kit lowered himself the rest of the way through the hole and let himself drop deep down into the murky water to face whatever dangers lurked below the surface.

  •••

  The sewer was cool and dark, and the gentle moonlight was far, far above. Kit’s nose worked the stale air, which smelled of rainwater, ammonia, old lettuce boiled in sweat socks, and the rotting waste of a million souls up above. It might have turned some creatures’ stomachs, but it wasn’t an unpleasant smell for a raccoon who loved garbage casserole.

  Still, Kit’s fur prickled with fear. Through the stinky fog of sewage, he couldn’t smell if some giant reptile was smelling him too.

  Kit paddled himself over to the edge of the slow-moving stream of sewer water and climbed onto the stone side. Pipes and waste lines crisscrossed one another like a spider’s web overhead, carrying water to and from the People’s homes. The People had no idea that below them a small raccoon in a patchwork jacket held the fate of the city’s wilds in his tiny black paws.

  Kit shook out his fur and wrung out his hands. The underground river was cluttered with leaves and sludge, great tangles of plastic bags, and other bits of garbage. As he crawled along beside it, he found himself scampering around even more refuse, huge piles of it. There were broken toys and plastic trays and more balls than he could count. As he walked, he knocked a soccer ball into the river, where it made a splash that sounded to Kit like a clap of thunder.

  He froze, fearing that even the smallest noise would alert the alligator to his presence. He watched as the ball bobbed on the surface, drifted a moment, then got hopelessly tangled in a mass of plastic bags and hung forlornly against the opposite bank of the artificial river. The bags, Kit realized, could be just as dangerous as any metal trap. He would have to be careful not to get tangled in them himself. That’d make him easy pickings for an alligator.

  Kit started to walk in one direction, began to doubt himself, and turned another way. His ears swiveled, trying to make out a stray splash or misplaced ripple in the water, even though he knew that by the time he heard the alligator’s attack it would be too late.

  Kit stopped and tapped his fingers on the wall, wondering how he would find one particular spot down here in the huge network of tunnels. Suddenly, his fingers stopped and he looked up. The entire wall was covered in colorful graffiti. The wall opposite too.

  He pulled the small stone from his pocket and held it up against the wall. The colors didn’t match. This wasn’t the right place, but now he knew what to look for. There would be a missing spot in one of the graffiti murals where the Footprint of Azban had broken off.

  He started to run along the river, holding up the stone as he ran, comparing it with the swoops and swirls left by countless seasons of young artists who’d braved the sewers before him. The farther he ran, the more despondent he became. None of the artwork seemed to match the shard of stone he had. He saw faces and colors and scenes and words, but not a single paw print. He thought about Azban’s riddle: too low to dig and too high to reach, caged with iron light and locked in threes and was no closer to understanding it. He knew he’d never find the place by himself.

  Well, he thought, there must be one animal down here who knows every swoosh and curl of paint in this place; he just had to figure out how to get the creature to help him instead of eating him.

  He took a deep breath and then he whistled. When nothing happened, he sang a song as loud as he could: “Loo-loo-loon, I’m a juicy plump raccoon; lo-lo-lone, in the sewers all alone.”

  He stopped singing and listened. He heard the gentle trickle of the river, the drip-drip-drip from the pipes, and the constant rustle of plastic tangling in the current. His keen eyes saw only the river and the garbage floating by on its surface. Except one strange piece of garbage wasn’t floating by. Even as the river moved, it stayed put.

  It was brown and knotty, like a branch broken off an oak tree.

  Except there were no oak trees down in the sewers for a branch to break off from, and tree branches didn’t usually have two yellow eyes, blinking in the dark.

  “I see that you see me,” the alligator spoke, popping her head above the water. Her voice was as deep as the sewer itself, and flowed as smoothly as the water around her. “If you try to run, or move so much as a hair on your tail, I’ll swallow you whe
re you stand.” Her long snout broke into a toothy grin. “Now tell me, raccoon, who are you and what are you doing down here?”

  “I . . . I’m Kit,” Kit said. “And I wanted to find you.”

  “To find me?” The alligator gasped. “No one ever wants to find me. In fact, when someone does find me, I am the last thing they ever find. Don’t you know that? I am Death and Destruction and Despair!”

  The alligator reared back her head, bursting her giant body from the water and opening her mouth so wide that Kit could have stood on his tiptoes on the alligator’s tongue, stretched out his paws, and still not touched the roof of her mouth.

  “I thought your name was Gayle.”

  “Yes, well, it is. I am Gayle, but I am also . . .” She cleared her throat and yelled so loud the water rippled around her, “Death and Destruction and Despair!”

  “Okay,” Kit said, trying to act unimpressed. “Can I just call you Gayle, though? It’s much easier.”

  “You can call me whatever you want,” said Gayle. “You won’t call me it for long.”

  “I won’t? Why not?”

  “Because I am going to eat you!”

  “Me? You’re going to eat me?” Kit pointed at himself with his paw. “But I’m not much of a meal.”

  “You’ll be a snack.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Too bad for you!” She lunged at Kit, her jaw slamming shut as she flung herself from the water. Kit dove to the side, and Gayle’s jaws caught only a wisp of fur from his tail. It stung tearing out, but made the alligator cough. Kit ran, and Gayle chased him along the stone walk beside the sewer. He turned a corner, and Gayle shot like a bee’s stinger back into the water.

  She swam with tremendous speed. Overtaking Kit, she jumped out and opened her mouth directly in front of him.

  Kit skittered to a stop and turned down the nearest opening, another stream of the sewer, into which the alligator dove again. “You’ll never escape, Kit. I’m gonna chew you up, bones and all!”

  “Please don’t,” Kit yelled. “I’d like to keep my bones. In fact, I need to leave here with one more bone than I came in with.”