Catnip (16 page)

“Hey, you, freeze!”

Harry turned around just in time to see three
uniformed policemen enter the room with guns drawn. One of the cops
yelled out, “You in the raccoon suit! Get away from those
freaks!”

He wanted to explain that they weren’t
freaks, they were his friends, but the crowd kept rushing by and he
got knocked off his feet by the frantic exit-seekers. A few brave
souls decided to stop for some phone-pics. “This is going on my
social site!” someone called out.

Bad decision, for while the cops urged
everyone to get clear, the bear-man had other ideas. It shook Doug
off his leg with a quick, economical move that sent the little man
flying across the room and then grabbed Anastasia and tossed her
into the buffet table twenty feet away. With another roar, it
turned its wrath on the picture takers and ripped two of them apart
with one swipe of its hand-paw. The victims fell like bowling pins
and then the creature decided to charge the police on all
fours.

It moved incredibly fast and bore a great
resemblance to an enraged mutated grizzly on a search-and-destroy
mission. It mowed down guests without a care, tearing right through
them like so much tissue paper, and when it slapped down one of the
cops it caught the man’s leg in its powerful jaws and started to
rip it open. The cop screamed in agony. “Get it the hell off
me!”

The other two policemen started firing and
they hit the mark every single time, blowing holes in the
bear-man’s torso. He bled, but the bellows continued and
unbelievingly ratcheted up a notch in intensity. He let go of his
victim, and stood up to take on the other men in blue.

“We gotta go,” Doug urged, wiping the blood
from his mouth. Harry had been staring at the scene like a baby
watching fire and started when Doug smacked him on the arm to get
his attention.

“What the…?”

Harry woke up from his momentary stupor. Like
a thunderbolt, truth hit and hit hard. Doug was one of them, too!
“Who experimented on you?” he asked.

Doug waved off the question with his paw. “No
time for questions, pal. Move your ass!”

He pointed to an exit at the back of the hall
and Anastasia joined them, rubbing her head. Harry got bumped
around by the panic-stricken crowd, but his girlfriend and Doug
easily slipped through the throng of people, took the lead, and
guided him to the emergency exit. They ran down three flights of
stairs dodging frightened people all the way and out into a back
alley. “You got a car?” Doug asked, panting. “We gotta split and I
do mean now!”

Harry shook his head and wished he’d asked
Jason to stick around. Doug grunted in frustration. “Okay, we do it
the hard way.”

They cautiously crept to the entrance and
were greeted by the sight of more than twenty police cars which had
magically appeared on the scene. “Not this way,” Doug said, and
dropped to all fours. It was dark out and no one noticed the dog
with human hands moving along the sidewalk.

Anastasia was still bleeding from her wounds,
but had strength enough to grab Harry’s arm. She held onto her torn
clothes with her other arm and managed a few steps before she
started to stagger. He caught her around the waist and urged her
forward. “Hang on,” he said. “We’ll make it.”

Doug took point, hurriedly shepherding them
away from the carnage. He stayed on all fours and seemed to
effortlessly slip through the frantic onlookers that swirled in
every direction. People pushed, screamed, cried, and bumped into
each other, and everyone was asking questions and no one could give
any answers.

Finally, the trio managed to make their way
downstairs and out onto the street. It was dark outside, rapidly
getting darker, and in the confusion, no one had bothered looking
at them directly. Instead, the injured headed over to a few
ambulances that had arrived on the scene. Doug stopped in his
tracks, pointed at the medical personnel disembarking from the
ambulances and shook his head. “We’re not going that route.”

“She’s bleeding,” Harry started to say.

Doug snarled a warning, cutting him off. “Not
here and not now. I know she’s hurt, but we can’t ask anyone for
help. Follow me.”

Harry had no idea what Doug was up to, but he
followed his ally’s lead and they walked as quickly away from the
disaster site as possible. On their way, they passed a couple of
policemen and Harry nervously asked for directions on how to get to
the nearest hospital.

“Are any of you injured?” one of the cops
asked. “We’re getting more ambulances in, but it’s gonna take some
time. Traffic’s pretty heavy…”

“She got slashed by that thing,” Harry
interrupted. He pointed to Anastasia and no, he didn’t have to act
scared. He was frightened not only for himself but also for his
girlfriend. Her torso was soaked in blood, the elixir of life
matting down her hair and staining what was left of her clothes a
deep red.

The cop took a quick look at her and pointed
south. “We’ve got the next two blocks cordoned off,” he said. “If
you cut over to Seventh and take the back streets, you should find
a clinic there.”

“Thank you, officer,” Harry said as calmly as
possible. They hurriedly continued on down the block, dodging the
injured and the curious. Good thing it was dark as the night hid
most of her features.

Doug waited until they were out of earshot
and then muttered softly, “Man, there’s a first time for
everything. Who said New York cops are rude?”

Anastasia’s injuries soon took their toll.
The crowd continued to move wildly in every direction, people
banged into them and impeded their way, and the situation got more
violent with the bystanders gawking and the frantic people who’d
been at the party trying to escape. A few fistfights broke out, and
Harry took his girlfriend’s hand and pulled her close to him. “I
can make it,” she gasped out.

“Yeah, I know,” he answered, aware of the
clichéd response. “Stay with me.”

However, the situation got more desperate as
between the costume, the general heat of the night, and the fact
that more and more of New York’s finest had arrived on the scene
and started to search everyone including those who’d been wounded
by the arrival of the bear-man, Harry wondered if they’d ever make
it out of there without someone finding out who they really
were.

So much for his plan of sneaking into FBI
headquarters, he thought. They’d have the place on lockdown
twenty-four-seven. He sighed and scanned the area, but the whole
city seemed to have turned into one large trap. And it seemed they
were the ones in the cage.

As they made their way along the sidewalk, he
also wondered how anything so large had gotten into the FBI
headquarters without being spotted first. Where had it come from
and how had it stayed hidden? Would it get away this time? He heard
shouts in the distance as well as the crack of gunshots and hoped
the nightmare would soon be over…

“Over here,” Doug barked. The shout rose over
the crowd and interrupted his musings on monsters and mutants.

Harry whipped his head around just in time to
see Doug point to an alleyway. “Move it bud, I don’t have all
night!”

They hurried inside, and Anastasia collapsed
against the wall. Her breathing was shallow and her head lolled.
She needed help and she needed it fast. “Gotta rest for a bit,” she
said, her voice faint. “I’ll be okay.”

No, she won’t, Harry thought and asked, “Do
we have any options?”

“We’re not getting out of the city tonight,”
Doug responded. “The cops will be checking everywhere soon and
they’re going to do some kind of lockdown in order to catch
Ivan.”

“Who’s Ivan?”

Doug blinked. “That’s…the name of the thing
that jumped us.” He gave a short, barking laugh. “I just
remembered. Yeah, he’s called Ivan.”

The way he pronounced the name, it came out
as
Ee-Vahn.
Another Russian name…Agent Farrell had been
right. There
was
some kind of connection going on. “Do you
remember anything else?” he asked.

Doug waved his hand as if dismissing the
question. “No, that’s it for now. My memory’s coming back, but just
in little pieces here and there. I don’t know when something else
is going to surface.” He shook himself all over as if to jog his
memory. “Anyway, we’re going to have to stay hidden.”

“Couldn’t you go somewhere, uh, where there
are others…?” Harry started to offer.

“You were going to say others like me, like
an animal shelter or the dog pound,” Doug finished for him. He
snorted and spat something out of his mouth. It was a piece of
Ivan’s clothing. “No way would I go to either of those places.”

Actually, Harry
had
considered the
idea, but the look on his ally’s face radiated total distaste and
so he dropped the suggestion. “You got something against other
dogs?” he asked.

Doug nodded rapidly. “Yeah, I do. Just
because I
look
like one of them doesn’t mean I
am
one
of them. You can’t really talk to a mutt. Some of them bark or
whine all night, and finally, a lot of the males are in heat. So
are the females. It’s the season.

“And I am
not
going to the zoo,
either. Your girlfriend also isn’t the best candidate for a
shelter, so I suggest you think outside the box for a moment. The
cops are going to be frisking everyone from now on. If they stop
us, you can kiss our furry butts goodbye.”

Anastasia had passed out by this time and lay
in a heap on the cement. Her breathing was slow but regular and the
bleeding seemed to have stopped, but even so, she’d already lost a
lot of blood. Harry started to panic. “So what do we do?”

Doug already had the answer. He went over to
a manhole and with a sharp tug, pulled the cover off. He was a lot
stronger than he looked. “We go down. The room is waiting and we’re
the guests.”

Between the two of them, they managed to get
Anastasia’s limp form down the steps, and at the bottom, Harry
awkwardly picked her up in his arms. A series of overhead lights
gave off a faint yellowish glow which illuminated the rushing
sewage water as a fast-moving black mass. He waded across it to the
other side and the smell of rotting food, excrement, chemicals, and
other odors he didn’t want to think about hit his nose and made him
dizzy. He breathed through his mouth in order to avoid passing out
and kept going. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he made out
ledges on both sides that looked relatively clean.

After making his way over to a ledge, he
carefully put his girlfriend’s body down. Doug pulled the manhole
cover into place and soon joined them, sniffing the air. “No rats,”
he said.

“They have rats down here?”

“Oh, ya think?”

Doug’s sarcasm made Harry curse himself for
being so naïve. Talk about being a shut-in! “Sorry, I didn’t figure
on, well, you know…” His voice trailed off as he searched for a
suitable excuse. Nothing came to mind so he clammed up.

Doug gave him a look of indignation. “Yeah,
they gotta live somewhere besides the streets. I didn’t have any
food for a few days last week, so I ended up coming down here for a
snack. They won’t be coming back.”

Harry felt ashamed his newfound friend had
been forced to live this way. “Sorry, I didn’t know…”

“Nah, you wouldn’t. Don’t worry about it.”
Doug didn’t seem to take offense at the idea of doing what was
necessary in order to live. Instead, he scanned the area and then
gave a brief nod. “Anyway, we’ll be safe down here.”

Anastasia briefly stirred and lapsed back
into unconsciousness. Harry gently stroked her hair and attempted
to breathe through his mouth. It didn’t help. “It stinks!”

“It’s a sewer,” Doug explained patiently.
“It’s not going to smell like a bunch of flowers.” He glanced at
the unconscious form of Anastasia and shifted his gaze to the water
rushing by.

Harry figured he had to be grateful for some
small miracles. “So what do we do?”

Doug grunted. “What’s your lady’s name?”

“It’s Anastasia.”

“Well, you and Anastasia stay here for now.
I’ll go up topside and see what’s happening. We need food and
water, and you can’t go anywhere.”

He climbed the ladder and pushed off the
manhole cover. Harry heard the sound of the cover being put back
into place and hoped his ally would be back soon. He booted up his
computer in order to send a quick e-mail to Jason, but couldn’t get
through, so clambering up the ladder he shoved the manhole cover
off with his shoulder, sent the message, and spent five fitful
minutes waiting for a reply. Fortunately, Jason didn’t appear to
sleep, and the answer flashed on the screen.

I can’t do too much
.
FBI came
around this morning. The cop who came around yesterday got
suspicious about the cat hair and contacted them. Some guy named
Farrell talked to me, threatened me with jail if I was hiding any
information. They’re watching me. Sorry.

Harry shut down the computer and went down
the ladder after tugging the manhole cover back into place. At the
bottom, he went through their options and unfortunately, he
couldn’t think of what to do. They were on their own. At least
Farrell had survived the attack, but he wouldn’t stop until he
managed to make an arrest.

Sighing, Harry turned his attention back to
his girlfriend and touched her face, thinking about everything and
nothing at the same time. She murmured something in her sleep he
couldn’t make out and fell silent.

A few thoughts ran through his mind at light
speed. One, how could the bear creature have hidden himself so
well? Okay, at the party, yes, everyone was in costume, but how had
he managed to infiltrate FBI headquarters so easily the night
before without anyone either spotting or taking him down?