Peeps

It’s not unusual to see groups of rodents in the city, of course, but wild felines tend to stay alone. That’s just predator-prey mathematics: It takes hundreds of the hunted to keep one hunter in business—there are always lots of sheep for every wolf.

The cats’ smooth movements were so different from those of the scurrying rats—rather than displaying the manic wariness of lunch-meat species, predators always glide along with confidence and grace. Like they belong here and you don’t.

I told myself it was just a statistical fluke, seeing two of them. Maybe it was because Lace lived so close to the meatpacking district, a place with lots of potential rat food lying around, and therefore lots of prey for feral cats. Or maybe with an angry mutant feline in my duffel bag, I was simply paying more attention than usual.

Like the cat I’d noticed the night before, these two followed my progress with cold, reflective eyes. My nerves were shot from the long day, but I got the definite feeling they knew I had a cat in my duffel bag and were not amused.

When I spotted the activity of the Night Watch across the highway, I didn’t wait for the traffic lights to change.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” Dr. Rat called out.

“Other way around: I’m dragging it.”

Her eyes lit up as she spotted the squirming duffel bag on my shoulder. “You caught the beastie?”

“Yeah. And its little friends are going crazy down there. You should warn the transport guys.”

“Loose brood? I’ll let them know.”

As she went to talk to them, I slipped under the orange hazard tape strung around the site. The Con Ed truck was parked on the Hudson River boardwalk, its engine humming to power the work lights in the taped-off area. The sun had almost set, bleeding red into the clouds, but it was still warmer up here than down in the depths. After breathing the funk of the Underworld, a little fresh air felt good in my lungs.

The shriek of whirling metal came from the edge of the river, and showers of sparks erupted into the air. The transport guys had built a platform over the water and were cutting through the grate. As Dr. Rat spoke to the team leader, he and a few others started to get into full extermination gear; the Watch could clean out the tu

Everything was sorted out, more or less.

I wondered about the big thing under the ventilation towers, and if anyone was going to believe me about something I’d smelled and heard—and felt—but not seen.

“Let me put something on that.” Dr. Rat had returned with a first-aid kit, thick rubber gloves protecting her hands. She swabbed stingy stuff onto Joseph Moore’s fingernail marks, then plastered a bandage over the cat scratch on my cheek. Infections don’t get very far with us carriers, but it still feels weird to leave a bleeding wound untreated.

“Okay,” Dr. Rat said when my face was fixed up. “Let’s take a look at your feline friend.”

“All right. Just be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Through the vinyl, she squished the cat into one corner of the bag, then unzipped the top and reached in to grab it. With any other noncarrier, I would have been nervous, but Dr. Rat handles infected rats all day.

The peep cat emerged into the sunlight, growling.

She dangled it by the scruff of its neck. “Not too different from a regular cat.”

I took my first good look at the peep cat and frowned. Up here in the real world, it didn’t seem very frightening—no strange gauntness or peeped-up musculature, no spinal ridge to show where the parasite was wound into its nervous system. Just those weirdly red-reflecting eyes.

“Maybe the parasite doesn’t have much effect on felines,” Dr. Rat said.

“Maybe not on the outside,” I said. “But it had its own brood!”

Dr. Rat shrugged, turning the cat around to look at all sides. It wailed at the indignity. “Rats may just tolerate it because it smells familiar.”

“I haven’t noticed much smell from it,” I said. “And it’s related to me.”

She shrugged again. “Well, so far I haven’t gotten any positive results with PNS. I’ve injected some of its blood into a few test cats, and they don’t show any signs of turning positive. This is an evolutionary dead end, just like I figured.” She looked closer at the peep cat, which took an angry swing at her nose with one claw, coming up short by an inch. “Or maybe this cat is the mutant, and your strain of parasite is the same old stuff.”

“Well, now you can check for cat-to-cat transmission,” I said.

“Sure thing. Just don’t get your hopes up, Kid.” She smiled. “I know it’s exciting to discover something new, and you want to feel like it’s a big deal and everything. But like I keep saying, failure is the rule when it comes to evolution.”

“Maybe.” I looked up the river to where the exhaust towers stood. “But this cat was really smart, almost like it was leading me down. And I think there was … something else down there.”

Dr. Rat looked at me. “Like what?”

“Kind of a huge rumbling thing, and it was breathing.”

“Rumbling?” She laughed. “Probably just the PATH train.”

“No, it wasn’t.” I cleared my throat. “I mean, yeah, there was a train down there. But this was something else, even deeper. It smelled like nothing I ever smelled before. And it seemed like the cat was taking me along for a reason, as if it wanted to … show me what was down there.”

Dr. Rat frowned, looking at the captive cat dubiously, then her eyes swept across my sweat-matted hair, my bandaged face, and my torn Garth Brooks T-shirt. “Cal, maybe you should get some rest.”

“Hey, I’m not being crazy here. That guy Chip in Records says that really big, old, monstery things can get woken up when tu

She chuckled. “I know all about Records. They’re always telling stories that give you hunters nightmares. They spend a lot of time reading ancient mythology, you know. But in R&D we try to focus more on the science side of things.”

I shook my head. “This thing wasn’t mythological. It was really big and smelled evil, and it was breathing.”

She lowered the struggling peep cat a bit and stared at me, trying to decide whether I was kidding or in some sort of shock or just plain bat-shit. I held her gaze steadily.

Finally, she shrugged. “Well, you can always fill out a US-29.”

I nodded. The Unknown Subterranean form, also known as the Sasquatch Alert. “Maybe I will.”

“But not till tomorrow, Kid. Right now you should go home and lie down.”

I started to argue, but at that moment a wave of exhaustion and hunger hit me, and I realized that I could go home to Cornelius and Lace and probably sleep for real again. The orange tape was up, the transport squad was here—the site was secured.

Maybe this could wait until tomorrow.