Trip of the Dead, page 2
“Oh, Saber save us from psycho-babble please …”
“He’s depressed, Wally!”
“He’s fine.”
“NOT FINE!” bellows Emmy, effectively silencing everyone. Thankfully.
I start to drift off again. The warmth of the fire pit and my burrow of blankets comforting me. Lulling me away from the anxious voices of my friends above.
CHAPTER FIVE
Small gifts have started to appear around The Menagerie. A container of half-eaten Cheetos shows up in my plastic bag. A trail of jerky appears, leading to the door that takes us outside into the compound. I’m sure they are meant to tempt me out of my cocoon. They don’t.
Last night the 4077th surrounded me instead of Wally, and their warm purring bodies should have comforted me — I love a good cuddle — but they didn’t.
The Menagerie is empty now. Quiet. Like a tomb. Which feels appropriate.
I shift my position. It feels like my tail has fallen asleep. I twist and turn, trying to free it, but I can’t feel it, so I can’t get it loose.
“Great galloping garburators!” I curse, throwing off my blanket for the first time in days. I back away from my pile of pillows, taking hold of my tail with both hands and shaking it, trying to wake it up.
For a second, I feel nothing. It’s like a dead thing in my hands and I start to freak out.
“Asleep?” asks Emmy, scaring me.
“Gah!” I squawk, dropping my tail in fright.
Emmy responds by jumping on my tail with all four of her paws, and I feel that, the pins-and-needles feeling filling my tail.
“My tail fell asleep,” I say, my eyes drifting away from the hamster and to my safe cocoon a few inviting steps away.
Emmy is a plain brown hamster with the heart of a Viking, forged in the fires of this zombie apocalypse. She lost her two best friends to zombies, a pair of Great Danes named Vance and Ralph, and it took her a long time to recover from that. I’m not entirely sure she has, actually. But where I still feel lost and alone and cowardly, she deals with her pain with violence and aggression, which seems to work for her. This is why I’m totally shocked when she gets up on her hind paws and tries to wrap her tiny arms around me in a hug. The hug goes on for longer than I thought she could stand still, but ends with a vintage Emmy command:
“Let’s go find that dead raccoon.”
CHAPTER SIX
“So, what do we know?” Pickles asks as we sit gathered around our small fire pit. Pickles is our de facto leader, a calico cat with a smattering of freckles across her pink nose. A cutie pie and the exact opposite of her girlfriend, Hannah, who’s an elegant Abyssinian with limbs as long as my tail.
“Pickles,” calls her young charge as he toddles into The Menagerie, closely followed by his mother. Connor is Pickles’ pet, and the whole family was under the charge of Pickles’ housemate, Wally. Unfortunately, the male of the human family was lost in the apocalypse, making Wally’s assignment all the more important. Or so he tells us. Often.
“Give us a minute,” Pickles says as she and Wally leave our circle to meet their pets at the door.
“The stranger is called ‘Duke,’ and he comes from another camp across a river,” Ginger offers, picking at his teeth with a sharp claw.
“Bad guys?” demands Emmy as she orbits our fire pit at a steady clip. This hamster is terrible at sitting still.
Ginger shrugs. “So far, our humans seem suspicious but curious, so I’d say … neutral.”
I wince, and Hannah notices, her long golden tail wrapping around me protectively. “He can’t be all that good if he’s walking around with that hat on his head.”
Her empathy surprises me. I’m used to being run over by the more assertive animals in our group. Oh sure, they listen to me, but I always feel like they do it out of love, not because they value what I say. At least it’s better than before zombie times when we were chased away and hissed at by most every animal in the neighborhood — from human to hamster. My gaze never seemed to take their negativity to heart, but I worked hard to change hearts and minds. I remember this one time when my gaze was arguing with some tough alley cats behind a restaurant about some fantastic-smelling leftovers. I was holding on to my brother’s leg so that he wouldn’t hurl himself at the sharp-clawed felines, while also keeping an eye on the kitchen door, lest we all get chased away by the humans who would hear this ruckus and deny all of us this meal. Between growls on both sides, I managed to point out that most of the food in the garbage was tainted with fruits and vegetables that cats had no interest in. The biggest cat stuck his head into the bin and agreed with my assessment. That gave me an idea, and ideas make me feel brave. Before my siblings ruined my progress, I suggested that just we two, the top cat and I, would divide up the food equally, with more veggies for us and more meat for them. My gaze made fun of my peaceful solution, but we all ate so well that we slept for a full day. I learned something about myself that day. I’m no fighter. I’m a negotiator.
“Let’s be realistic, Hannah,” Pal says. He’s holding a small stone and sharpening my claws with it. “Your own pet, Rosa, wears a cow-skin coat and has a feather-filled pillow.”
Hannah has a quick and clever tongue, and she looks ready to argue, but then she notices Pickles motioning her over with her tail.
“Sorry, be right back,” Hannah says, joining Wally and Pickles at the doorway with their pets.
“What else?” asks Emmy on her next pass.
“He’s heading back to his camp tomorrow,” says Ginger, distracted by all the signals coming off the other cats’ tails and whiskers. Something about the way their tails are flicking in unison, I think. Feline languages are very subtle, and though I’ve been practicing with Ginger, I’m still not fluent. Whatever is going on, surely they can put it off for five minutes of their nine lives to focus on the possible extinction of my race.
“Good riddance,” Emmy growls.
“Other paw, Trip,” Pal says, his wing extended. I switch paws so he can sharpen the claws on this one, a kind effort to relax me.
Wally, Hannah, and Pickles finally turn away from their humans, but Connor runs back in to give Pickles an extra hug, and then they’re gone. I stuff down my jealousy like a bag of marshmallows and ask, “What was that about?”
“We’re to take on an important new assignment,” Wally announces, rubbing at the bronze star on his collar proudly.
Pickles looks too dizzy to speak, so it’s Hannah who says, “Connor’s mother is very pregnant. With twins, they think.”
“Twins?” Ginger repeats.
“Twins,” Pickles whispers, sitting down heavily, a grin slowly spreading underneath her whiskers.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I can’t wait to see the back of this stranger.
Sitting up on the guard tower level with Ginger at my side, I glare down at the man. He’s still wearing that raccoon-icidal hat. I wonder if he’s noticed me. Noticed how a raccoon tail should look. Attached to a live raccoon.
The humans of our camp stand around in a tense circle. Sarah and Uma are traveling to his camp with him. Something about trade opportunities, which I know a little about, though most of my trading was with other raccoons, chipmunks, and squirrels. Chipmunks are ruthless traders.
Sarah is one of my favorite humans. She always leaves the lid to the small garbage open for me, and she can’t stop giggling when I wash my paws under the water barrel. Uma saved me from a pack of zombies once. I wasn’t paying attention as I picked berries next to a stream and froze in place when they came out of the bushes. That’s kind of my thing when it comes to zombies — freeze and hope for the best. It’s not a great strategy, I know. Only Uma’s quick response saved me from being a tasty dead human treat that day. She’s a tough old bird with an eagle’s beak-shaped nose and eyes that are just as sharp.
I don’t want either of them to go with this stranger.
Wally and his squadron walk by at ground level, the kittens falling out of formation every few steps.
The old gray cat stops suddenly, causing the kittens to bump into each other like somebody spilled a basket of multicolored yarn balls. If yarn hissed.
Usually, Wally would turn into his drill sergeant best, barking orders at this chaotic infraction, but something the humans are saying has his gray ears moving like mini satellites on the top of his head.
Sonar races around the hissing squad, trying to reorganize them before Wally notices.
“What’s up?” I ask Ginger, who is watching Wally’s tail and whiskers like I watch a human eating a drumstick — just waiting on the tips of my toes for them to be done with it so I can get my paws on it before one of the other scavengers.
Before Ginger can answer, Wally glances our way and bowls over his newly organized squad.
I leap down into the dirt, tripping over my own feet, but managing to meet him halfway. “What?” I demand.
“Other raccoons!” he says as he skids to a stop. “Duke says there are entire families of raccoons at his camp.”
“No freaking way,” I reply immediately, pointing at the man’s hat in disgust. “No self-respecting raccoon could live alongside a mammal who wears them as a hat!”
Wally shakes his head. “It sounds more like they’re POWs than members of the community.”
“POWs?”
“Prisoners of war,” Wally explains with a grimace.
My stomach twists painfully, reminding me of the days before I found Pickles and Ginger in that apartment. When dodging zombies and eagles felt like I was on the losing side of a war I didn’t start. I don’t think I’ve had a secure night’s sleep since the dead humans appeared.
“I have to help them,” I whisper, shocking my furry friend. I’m a little shocked myself. I’m no adventurer! That’s Pickles’ job. Or Ginger’s. Or … really, anyone but me. But once the words are out of my mouth, I find I can’t take them back. And the belt that’s been squeezing my heart since Duke arrived starts to loosen.
“I have to go help them,” I say, hoping I sound more confident than I feel and feeling that belt loosen a notch more. I need to find my own kind. It’ll help me figure out my place in this new, crazy world. Maybe I’ll feel like there’s a place for me in this other camp. Or maybe I’ll find a new gaze to be a part of. It would be wonderful to be a part of something again.
“Are you daft?” Wally asks as all these thoughts run through my head.
Duke, Sarah, and Uma shoulder their packs and start to walk towards the east gate tower, where Ginger still sits, so I follow them.
“Tell everyone I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I say to Wally, waving at Ginger as we pass under his guard post.
He leaps down. “Where the Saber do you think you’re going?”
“With Duke.”
“What?”
“His camp has raccoons,” Wally explains, between ordering around his squad, who are seconds away from being trod on by the humans escorting this group out of the compound.
“His camp kidnaps raccoons,” I correct for Ginger’s benefit, grabbing a black kitten by the tail before he can be trampled.
“I can’t stop him,” Wally says. “And I can’t abandon my pet in her imminent delivery. It’s my mission.”
I stop for a second to hand Wally the kitten, and he grabs it by the nape of the neck and tosses it to safety.
“I will be careful, old friend,” I say to Wally, trying to head-butt him as cats do, something Ginger has been instructing me on.
I’m not sure how successful my head-butt was, but Wally sits down at the gate, sparks of frustration coming off his whiskers in the form of static. His duty holds him here. He gathers the 4077th around him with a loud command and all eight cats salute us smartly.
“Are you sure about this?” asks Ginger as he gives a truly terrible salute that makes Wally wince.
“Not at all,” I reply, unhelpfully, as the gate starts to close behind us.
“Then I guess I’m coming too,” Ginger says.
I smile, feeling better with my best friend at my side.
“Now, are we traveling with the humans, or just following them to this other camp?” he asks.
I automatically look behind us for Wally or Pickles to answer, only then realizing that he’s actually asking me. Golden garbage piles, he thinks I’m leading this mission?
“Uh, I dunno, what do you think?” I hedge, pulling at my whiskers.
He blinks in that annoying feline way. “Depends. Do you trust them?”
I look at the dead raccoon tail bouncing at the end of Duke’s hat and shake my head immediately. I may not be sure of much, but I will never ever trust that human.
Before I can answer aloud, Sarah looks back and, seeing us, says, “Hey, you guys better stay close to camp. A herd of zombies passed this way a few hours ago.”
Duke glances back and does a double take. “Are you talking to the animals?”
Sarah gives him a look that shuts him up and I love her for it. She may not be a youngling like Connor, who can still understand us, but she at least tries to communicate with us.
I poke Ginger, and we drift to the left, giving the impression that we’re taking her advice.
“Trees?” Ginger suggests.
“Trees,” I agree, climbing after my feline friend, keeping the humans in sight. It’s a good thing I got that manicure from Pal when I did, because otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to climb as fast as Ginger.
Speaking of the owl, a loud thump signals Pal’s arrival on the scene, as he smacks face-first into the trunk of a tree. He backs up on shaky legs and I leap onto the branch to grab him, tucking him under my arm and swinging to the next branch so we don’t lose the humans.
“Trip,” Pal says from under my arm. “You can’t just leave like this.”
“Says who?” I reply, swatting the first drops of rain I feel.
Pal wiggles free to fly onto the next tree branch and narrowly misses the bough, fluttering back up to try again. I get the sense that Pal didn’t get a lot of flight instruction as an owlet, because his approach to landing on a branch is to fly above it, clamp down his wings to his sides and drop like a stone onto his target, just hoping for the best. It works about half the time.
“Pickles says —”
“Pickles isn’t here,” I reply, cutting Pal off. “And that isn’t a cat tail that man is wearing.”
“We could wait for Pickles and Wally,” Ginger starts to say, but I interrupt him too, stopping to put my paws on my hips, the rain flattening my fur to my body and making me cold as well as grumpy. I spent too many years before this apocalypse being bullied and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of all of this.
“If we wait, that guy might outfit his whole camp in the latest raccoon-tail fashion,” I hiss at the owl and cat on the branch ahead of me. “You two are lucky. There are cats everywhere, and Pal, owls seem to be in every second hollow tree. Remember that nest of newborn owls we found two weeks ago? They’re under a heat lamp being fed human baby formula back at camp. Your species will survive this apocalypse. Raccoons might not! We’re in danger from the dead humans and the live ones it looks like, so if you don’t mind …”
“Look out!” yells Sarah from below.
I whip around to see a zombie crunching through the underbrush, straight towards the humans, and I lose my balance.
I hit every single branch on my way down to the soggy ground.
“Trip?”
“I’m fine,” I grumble as Ginger lands gracefully on the forest floor beside me. The zombie is a huge bear of a former man, with arms the size of lampposts, but Sarah and Uma dodge around him nimbly, even as Duke swings at it with a bat. The impact of bat against bone is thunderously loud and Duke is knocked back onto the ground.
Ginger’s ears are flat against his head, his back arched, his muscles coiled to leap into action should the zombie turn our way. I’m doing everything I can not to run screaming back to our camp, my paws are dug into the soft earth, holding me in place. What made me think I could do this? The snake-like voice in my head immediately kicks in. Calling me a coward. Telling me to turn tail and run.
Sarah is so calm in the face of this monster that I feel all the more guilty for my prostrate panicked position. She carefully measures the distance as the zombie bends towards Duke and takes off its head with one slice of her large sword.
Uma wipes at her forehead. “Good one, Sarah.”
The rain is coming down harder now, making a palpable sound as it hits the ground all around us in a staccato rhythm.
Sarah extends a hand to Duke, who is still lying on the ground, gaping up at her.
“Helluva job,” he agrees, taking her hand and standing up. And then he touches at his head. “Hey! Where’d my hat go?”
Sure enough, the tail of my kin is no longer hiding Duke’s very bald pink head.
“Let’s wait out this rain,” Uma says, ignoring Duke, who has stooped to search for his hat in the mud at their feet. “Do you see a cave over that rise, Sarah?”
“I do,” Sarah replies, squinting in that direction. “Let’s go.”
Pal comes in for one of his rolling landings, his claws clutching something dark and heavy. He swoops low, and as usual, misjudges how close the ground is, hits it and rolls three times before coming to a stop at our feet. In his right claw is the striped tail of a raccoon attached to a hat.
I smile for the first time in a week, and we follow the humans to find our own shelter near their cave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Pal and I share more than just our locomotive clumsiness. We’re also both nocturnal, so while Ginger curls into a ball to sleep away the night in the hollow of a tree I found for us, Pal and I talk.
