Strays (4 page)

Sarah realized she had forgotten to breathe, and she sucked a sharp gasp into her lungs.  It burned in her chest, and she panted and breathed in through her nose to steady herself.

“Okay?” Jack asked.

“Yes, fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I just need to—”

Roll down the windows.

Sarah started.  It was as if the voice was there in the car with her, indistinct, sexless, just a presence that spoke to her from just beyond her right ear.

Roll down the windows, Sarah.  Do it now.

“Can we roll down the windows?” she asked.  “I need …”

“Of course,” said Creepy Jack.  He arched his eyebrows and smirked with good cheer, but the black shark’s eyes showed not even a hint of joy in them.  “Here.”  He turned the key in the switch and pushed the buttons on his armrest, and both windows, driver-side and shotgun, hummed as they glided down, the glass panes easing into the panels of the doors.  “Better?”

Sarah nodded.

“Good.  I want you to be comfortable.  I want you to enjoy this.  A girl like you needs to enjoy this.  You ready to play?”

Despite a thoroughly empty stomach, Sarah felt that gorge of vomit again in her throat.  “What did you say?”

Creepy Jack grinned, and his eyes seemed to engorge into black holes, the detached ogle of the shark when it is starving.  “I said
let’s play
.” 

That was when the creature fell upon him.

It came screeching out of the night, somewhere near the back of the strip mall on the driver side of the car, angry, swift and terrible.  Its shrieks were something from the darkest of hells, echoing across the lot as it rocketed through the open window on the driver’s side, landing on the dash, then skittering, turning, and leaping at the face of the man called Creepy Jack.  Creepy Jack let out a scream, and his body thrashed, and the beast, not much bigger than a newborn baby, dug its claws deep into his cheeks above the beard line, snapping its jagged teeth at those awful shark’s eyes.

“Get it off me!” Creepy Jack cried.  “Jesus!”

Sarah screamed and pressed against the shotgun-side door, her fingers groping for the handle.  The thing on Creepy Jack’s face continued to claw and scratch, biting and shredding his skin.  At last Sarah found the handle.  She pulled, and the door clicked open, swinging out with her weight as the dome light flickered on.  She could see the thing now, latched onto Creepy Jack’s head now like a mask, its orange fur bristling as it shrieked and clawed.

It was the ginger cat she had met behind the C-store.

“Son of a bitch!” Creepy Jack screamed.  “Get off me, you bastard!”

His right arm flailed, and he balled his hand into a fist.  The ginger cat’s forelegs were now wrapped about Creepy Jack’s head, its front claws curled and piercing the dura of his scalp just above the ears.  Its back paws burrowed into that beard and dug at his jawline alongside his chin, and it pressed its white chest into Jack’s black and empty eyes.  Creepy Jack’s fist came up, arcing wildly as if punching himself, and he caught the cat square in the ribs.  The cat howled and then paid the pain back in kind, sinking its teeth into Jack’s forehead just along the hairline.

“
Aaaaaahhh!
” Creepy Jack bellowed.  “Get off me!”

Sarah tumbled out of the car and rolled on the pavement against the concrete barrier.  She had wondered if she could clear that wall, and now was her time to find out.  Pushing herself to her feet, she raced to the wall, which came just below her chin, and threw her arms up to the top.  One of the imbedded steel poles was right above her, and she caught it with her right hand, then added her left, pulling herself up to wrap her arms about it.  Her feet scraped against the concrete wall, and she swung her left leg to the side, up and down, up and down, until she swung it high enough to catch the edge of the wall with her foot.  With a rush of something unearthly in her hunger-stressed body, she crooked her leg, flipping herself up onto the wall.  She paused long enough to take a breath, and then took another moment to look back down at the scene of the crime.

Creepy Jack had swung his own door open and was stumbling out of the car.  By the glow of a security light along the back of the strip mall, Sarah could still see the ginger cat, digging in for the duration.  Creepy Jack staggered into the side of the car, his back now to Sarah, giving the ginger cat full view of her.  The cat’s teeth were gnawing at Creepy Jack’s scalp, but Jack’s hair was beginning to change.  In fact, all of Jack was changing, quivering and wobbling under security light, as if he was melting into a blob of something as black as his ugly shark’s eyes.  The cat seemed to sense it too, and it peered over the top of the Jack’s pulsating head, across the top of the car and up at Sarah, who still lay sprawled and wheezing atop the wall.  The cat’s green eyes widened. 

“No,” Sarah gasped.  “No more …”

The cat released its hold on Creepy Jack, digging its back claws into his cheeks for one final push and leaping over his head to land on the roof of the car.  Creepy Jack whirled as the hind claws sloshed through his cheeks like knives in mud.  The cat darted to the edge of the car’s roof, its eyes watching Sarah all the while, its hind legs coiled to pounce at her.

“Not me!” Sarah cried.  “No …”

But the cat was already in mid-leap, soaring off the roof of the car, its body arched, then extended, its front paws catching the edge of the wall, body folding again for the hind paws to follow.  With another spring, it was on the concrete wall, then up and over, landing in the tall grass on the other side of the barrier.  The grass was a shroud of an incline that led down to a tree-line that extended back into the darkness.  Sarah turned to watch as the cat tore through the weeds, making green blades ripple like water.  She caught just a glimpse of its white haunches and candy-stripe tail as it emerged from the grass and disappeared into the forest beyond.

“You little bastard!” Creepy Jack cried.  “Little bastard!”

Sarah recoiled at Creepy Jack’s screams, and her balance went south as she flipped and followed the cat, rolling off the opposite side of the wall as well.  She screamed as she fell, but the ground on the other side was soft with grass as tall as her waist.  It was still a rough landing, and she tumbled and rolled down the incline, her exhausted body thrashing through the brush.  She found herself on her back, thin strands of grass all about her face, and somewhere above the black sky filled with countless stars. 

“Sarah!”

It was the voice of Creepy Jack from the other side of the wall.  Sarah pressed her wrist against her mouth to force a shriek back down.  He knew her name.  Somehow, he knew.

“Hey Sar
ahhhh
?” Creepy Jack sang into the night.  “Where are
yooouuuu
?”

Run
.

Sarah cocked her head up, looking around for the voice.  She was quite alone, tangled in the tall grass that skirted the edge of the forest.

“I know you’re there, Sarah!  I’m going to find you, and I’ll
make
you be nice to me!”

Don’t think.  Just run
.

Sarah sprang to her feet and dashed down the side of the incline, the tall grass whishing around her.  She found the edge of the forest and darted in, her hands out in front of her.  Here, her pace slowed—the last thing she wanted was to run face-first into a tree—but she nevertheless
moved
lest Creepy Jack, his shadowing shark’s eyes peering out of a bleeding mass of hamburger meat that was no doubt his face, decided to climb the wall and barrel in after her.  Branches flickered in her hair, and the darkness was so thick you could taste it, but she kept moving forward, arms outstretched, feeling about in her blindness for a clear path.

She was not sure how long she moved—it felt like hours—nor where she ended up—there were ample wooded areas below South 200th and west of 99, so it could have been anywhere—but when she could move no more she fell against the trunk of what smelled like an old pine.  She eased herself down into the grass and discarded needles from the tree, and at last she slept. 

It was her best sleep in a long, long time.

Enter Tom

Sometime in the night, she heard it padding softly across the pine-needle bed where she slept.  It moved like a predator, each step testing the earth as if walking on a rotted floor.  When at last it found her, a wet nose pressed against her temple.

Sarah stirred.

She felt the cat’s whiskers, flicking at her eyes and cheeks as she fought to stay asleep.  She could hear the soft snuffing sound as it took in her scent.  She could feel the thin fur alongside its eyes and just below its ears as it marked her with its scent.  After a moment, it curled up next to her head, pressing its warm body against her cheek, and its purr began to idle, softly at first, then building its low rumble, soothing her back to sleep.

*   *   *   *

The sun ricocheted off the spiderweb of branches above her, specking her face with its tepid glow.  She lifted her head to the morning light, blinked, and looked about her surroundings.

The orange cat was a few feet away, resting on its back haunches, white chest thrust out as it watched her.  The way the sun hit its back made the ginger of its coat glisten like copper across its head, and Sarah could see that the tips of its ears were extended with thin tufts of fur like those of a bobcat. 

When it was sure Sarah was watching, the ginger cat blinked its eyes and dipped its chin slightly, almost as if it was nodding.  It extended its forelegs and raised its hips in a lazy yoga stretch.  Shaking out the last of the night, the cat turned in the direction that Sarah thought had to be south judging from the position of the sun.  It did not move in a hurry but almost seemed to saunter like an old gunslinger.  About three yards out, it halted, looked back over its shoulder at Sarah.

It grunted.  It was not the sound most cats made, not a hungered meow or an angry growl.  It was a grunt, frustrated and impatient.  Sarah half expected a cartoon bubble to appear next to its head with a stylized
HUMPH!
in it.

“What?” Sarah asked.  “What do you want?”

The ginger cat turned back to face her, slanting its head to one side.  Its eyes blinked again, lazy as a hipster’s, and then it shook its head and
humph
’ed again.  It sounded less like a cat and more like Ivan, that gorilla they kept in that cage at the B&I Circus Store in Tacoma.  Sarah got the message.

“All right,” she muttered.  “Just let me freshen up.”

It took her less than a minute.  Reaching for a low branch jutting from the tree that had sheltered her through the night, Sarah pulled herself to her feet and had barely dusted the pine needles off of her jeans when the ginger cat was off.  She twisted her head low, peering in through the branches just in time to see its orange candy-cane tail darting in through the trees like a shark’s fin.

“Wait up!” she shouted, pushing branches aside as she tramped after the cat.  But already, the candy-cane tail was growing more distant, blending in with the foliage and the brush, moving to and fro, catching fawn-speckles of light as it moved about.  Sarah tried to track it, but the branches were in her face, and it was harder to move, and soon the cat was lost in the forest.

“Hey!” she shouted.  “Hey, where’d ya go?”

She had no idea why, but suddenly, she had to find this cat.  Maybe it was to thank it for rescuing her from Creepy Jack, or maybe it was because the cat’s rescue had been the first real act of kindness she had experienced on this otherwise friendless voyage.  Whatever the case, the cat had been there when no one else had, and now it was gone, and there was something so very wrong about that.

Onward Sarah marched, bulling through the dark branches that brushed against her face.  She held her arms in front of her head, cupping them around her face to protect her eyes.  The branches poked and scratched her forearms, irritating at times and other times with something like real pain.  Every so often, she ventured a look forward, hoping to see a glimpse of that candy-cane tail, but it was gone, the cat was gone.

At last, the branches stopped pocking her arms, and she stumbled into a clearing.  It was broad, maybe 50 yards in diameter and ringed by the edge of the tree-line, and here the grass was thick, its tendrils reaching for the sky. 

Sarah stumbled a few steps out of the trees and bent over, hands on her knees, gasping.  She stared at the floor of the meadow as she breathed, and she watched the way the grass seemed to shimmer as it caught the shards of sunlight that made it into the clearing.

It was beautiful.  And it only lasted a moment.

The shimmering points of light began to fade like lit streets lamps easing to morning black.  Sarah stood up and looked at the skies.  Of course.  This was Washington after all.  Fresh clouds the color of cinderblock were rolling in from the Puget Sound, filtering out the sun.  Soon, another Seattle-Tacoma rain would begin to fall, that soft drizzly kind that seldom made much noise but always left you feeling sticky.  And Sarah would be stuck in it, her clothes clinging and heavy.  Wet, hungry, tired … and still alone.

Alone
.

Of course she was alone, wasn’t she?  No way Creepy Jack would have followed her into the woods, would he?  It had been blindingly dark, and was it really worth the effort for him just so he could—

But what if he
had
followed?  What if he was out there in the woods right now, and here Sarah was, standing out in the open, an easy mark to follow?  But no, that couldn’t be right, could it?  If Creepy Jack had come in after her, he surely would have found her by now.  Surely.  She had been tired, and she had been weak, but Creepy Jack was healthy and well-fed and probably well-rested, and surely if he had come, it would be over now. 

That had to be it. 

If Creepy Jack had come after her, he would have found her rather easily, even in the dark—hell, he probably had a flashlight or two in that big blue car of his.  He would have taken whatever he had wanted, and there would be no steaming bag of food for Sarah at the end of it.  No, she would be dead by now; she was sure of it.  He was
not
out there, no, he was
not
.  There was no way he could be out there, still tramping about the woods trying to pick up her trail.  Sarah was alone, all alone.  She had to be.  Even the cat had abandoned her.  She was safe now, safe because she was …