Wildcards

"So how did you end up down here?" Jack lay back on the bed, wincing slightly, while Bagabond perched gingerly on the edge.

"You're sure not like those social workers." Bagabond watched the cats outside the door as they chased each other around the room. She turned back to him with an appraising look. "And they like you."

"They let me out a while ago and I ended up back in the city. No place else to go. Met the black, started talking to him, and he talked back. So did a lot of the other animals, the ones that aren't human, anyway. I get along. I don't need people, don't want people around. People always mean bad luck for me. I can talk to you, too, when you're that other one, you know? Out there they call me Bagabond. I had another name once but I don't remember it much."

"They call me Sewer Jack." Jack said it bitterly, in contrast to Bagabond's flat recitation. The burst of emotion she caught held screams, bright lights, and fear, and the haven of the swamp.

"It was here-the creature. What are you?" Bagabond was confused; she had never before met this mixture of man and animal, with whom she could only sometimes communicate.

"Both. You saw."

"Do you control it? Can you make yourself change?"

"Did you ever see Lawrence Talbot as the wolfman? I change when I lose control or when I allow the beast to take over. I'm not cursed by the full moon; I'm cursed all the time. The loup-garou is a legend where I come from. The Cajuns all believe in it. When I was young, I did too. I was afraid I would hurt someone, so I went as far away as I could go. New York was a foreign country; no one would know me or bother me here."

His eyes focused on her now instead of the past. "Why the act? You can't be over forty-five."

"Twenty-six." She looked down at Jack, wondering why it mattered. "It keeps them from bothering me so much." Jack glanced through the open door at the railway clock on the opposite wall. "I'm getting hungry. How about you?"

Rescuing C.C. What had seemed to be a wonderful idea had turned into a nightmare. Rosemary had followed some derelicts into the steam tu

One horrible moment, she was attacked by a filthy creature who clawed at her, cackling. She fought him off but her purse was gone now. Rosemary was hopelessly lost. She heard occasional sounds that seemed to be gunshots and explosions. I'm in hell.

Ahead were two glowing spots that glared at her through the darkness. They receded as she came nearer. The iridescent green lights mesmerized her.

The spots came into focus and Rosemary saw the cat crouched in the darkness. Retreating a few feet and growling, it watched as Rosemary approached a wounded cat, the comrade it guarded. Chest crushed, one leg nearly severed from its body, the injured cat was dying. The guardian would allow no more pain to be inflicted. When she heard the low crying, she ignored the eyes and knelt beside the injured cat.

Rosemary realized there was nothing she could do, but she held it. The cat began to purr before it choked and died. The guardian lifted its head and howled a eulogy before pivoting and ru

Rosemary laid the body on the ground in front of her and placed its head and legs in comfortable positions,. sat back, and began sobbing. It seemed as if she cried forever before she started walking toward the sounds of the guns, gasping from her sobs.

After raiding the refrigerator-Bagabond could understand why Con Ed never noticed the power tap, but how did he ever get the refrigerator down here?-Jack went back into his bedroom to get some sleep. Bagabond and the cats explored Jack's domain, which included making sure they could get out the door he had locked behind them.

They quickly discovered the limits. Bagabond sat down on an overstuffed horsehair sofa. The black joined her while the calico continued her game of crossing the room without touching the floor. Bagabond pondered and, for the first time in years, the black was not invited to join her. Bagabond was amazed at the way Jack lived. It made her life of moving from one temporary home, a pile of rags, to another, suddenly seem wrong and filled with discomforts she had previously ignored.

She and Jack had discussed the probability that they were both aces. What luck. The virus had ruined both their lives. She would never again be the i

Why had she been so open with him? There was no one still alive in the city who knew as much about her as Jack now did. It was because they were alike; they knew what it was like to be different and to have stopped looking for ways to be like everybody else.

The claws across the back of her hand drew blood before her attention came back to the real world. Her eyes met those of the black cat, and horrifying images filtered through others' eyes began pouring into her mind: rat nests destroyed by machine-gun fire; yelling men frightening an opossum, her children clinging to her back as she ran, one falling, dying; cats fleeing, being shot, murdered; a cat fighting to protect her kittens before a grenade destroyed the litter, leaving the mother with a leg nearly blown off; a woman who looked like that damn social worker cradling a dying cat. The blood-more and more of it-of those who were her only friends.

"The kittens. They can't!" Bagabond stood up and found herself shaking.

"What's goin' on?" Jack, awakened by Bagabond's cry, emerged from his room still half-asleep.

"They're killing them! I've got to stop them." Bagabond clenched her fists, turning away from him. Flanked by the cats, she headed for the stairs.

"Not without me." Jack ducked back into his room, grabbed Bagabond's green coat, flashlights, and a pair of sneakers, and followed them up the staircase.

Slowed by tying on the sneakers as he ran, he caught up with them at the first tu

"Not that way." Jack stopped the trio as they entered the righthand tu

"It's how we came in." In her panic, Bagabond had lost much of her trust in Jack.

"It'll just take you to the subway. There's a faster way to get back to the park. I've got a track-car. Follow me?" Jack waited for Bagabond's nod and plunged into the lefthand tu

The scenes of carnage in Bagabond's mind grew sharper as they approached Central Park and abandoned the car. As they came up on the next branching of the tu

"We need to find out who they are so we know how to stop them. Right?" Bagabond wasn't at all sure what to do.

"I bet they're mes amis with the guns, but I have no idea who's the boss."

An image appeared of the calico walking with Jack, the black with Bagabond.

"Far out." Bagabond patted the head of the immense black cat. "Good idea. "

"What idea?"

"The black thinks we should split up until we find out what is going on. If one of the cats is with each of us, we can stay, um…"

"In communication. Yeah. You can at least see what's going on." Jack nodded thoughtfully. "I used to love war movies, but I get lousy reception at my place. Let's go, Sarge."