Catnip (17 page)

Two, where could they go now? He felt tired
beyond belief and was clad in a ridiculous costume. His face
itched…damn makeup. In a fit of sudden fury, he ripped off his
glued-on whiskers and yelled “Crap!” as the pain hit him. He used
his sleeve in order to wipe the makeup off. Frustrated and hot, he
sat down to think. Every law enforcement official probably had his
mug shot handy. There had to be some way of disguising himself
other than in this dumb suit.

Three, he was…

A grating sound interrupted his checklist. A
second later, Doug entered. He pulled the metal cover back into
place and descended the ladder holding a plastic bag in his mouth.
“I got food,” he said, and ambled over to them.

Inside the bag Harry saw a number of
sandwiches along with two bottles of water. “I am seriously
impressed. How’d you do it?” he asked.

Doug gave him a wolfish grin. “I just walked
into the nearest convenience store with an empty bag and a note. I
use this trick all the time to get freebies. Check this out.”

He pulled the note from his pocket. Harry
read, “
My owner is blind and homeless. He needs help. Please
help
.” He looked at Doug. “It’s pretty clever.”

Doug sat on his haunches and begged, just
like a canine would. His large brown eyes pleaded for understanding
and affection, and then he gave a faint whine and panted. It was
the greatest performance Harry had seen in a long time…only it
wasn’t that funny. “Okay, you’re an actor,” he said.

“Aren’t we all?”

The haul amounted to six sandwiches, two egg,
two tuna, and two of some kind of mystery meat which Doug
immediately claimed. “I don’t care what the meat is, it’s what I
like. Fish is too bland for me.”

Anastasia woke up and said in a faint voice
that she wanted the tuna. “No meat,” she said. “I don’t feel like
eating the bread, either.”

She was too weak to hold the food by herself
so Harry propped her up against his knee. “You don’t have to,” she
said.

“Feeding time,” he answered. “It’s okay.”

He had to separate the pieces of bread and
used his finger to wipe off the tuna. She licked his fingers
gently, nibbled the food bit by bit, and inadvertently took tiny
chunks of his flesh along with the tuna.

“Ow!” he exclaimed. “I thought you didn’t
bite,” and glared at her in mock anger before shaking his head and
adding, “I’m okay.”

A tiny smile emerged from her lips. “Guess I
got too eager,” she said softly and added, “Thanks, boyfriend. I
never thought I’d be in a situation where someone had to feed
me.”

Embarrassed by the attention but also pleased
at being called her boyfriend, he shrugged and wiped his hands on
his costume. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

She beckoned him closer. When he leaned in,
she kissed him gently on the mouth. Her breath smelled light and
sweet and not of fish at all. “Thank you.”

If the eyes were the window to the soul, he
saw what lay there—love. It had to be, and then her eyes closed.
Soon, she started breathing quietly. Harry stroked her hair for a
few seconds and then swiveled to Doug who was still feeding on the
sandwiches and sneaking furtive glances at them. “What do we do
now?”

Doug finished off his meal and gave a rather
large and satisfied burp. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to
crash.”

He wandered down the tunnel and found a spot
to lie down on. After giving a contented sigh, he started to snore
almost immediately. Harry decided to catch some sleep as well and
lay down beside his girlfriend. He hoped Doug had been right about
no rodents inhabiting this part of the underground system, but
sleep came up to catch him and his eyes closed.

Some minutes or hours later, Harry abruptly
woke up, his heart pounding. His head hurt due to a combination of
the smells of the sewer, the hardness of the cement, and the fact
he’d had a dream of something monstrous ripping his internal organs
out and holding them up for the whole world to see.

Disoriented, he looked around, breathed
through his mouth to avoid the stench as much as possible, tried to
calm his racing heart, and noticed his girlfriend and Doug talking
quietly to each other a few yards away.

If anyone else had seen this, they would have
laughed. Cats and dogs did not usually get along. In fact, they
were mortal enemies, yet his girlfriend and guide seemed to belie
that long held belief.

After considering everything, though, they
weren’t completely animals and had human intelligence. The whole
thing was just too weird, but still, Harry accepted the situation
most readily. He’d been part of it—however unwillingly—and since
the impossible had indeed become possible, he knew there would be
stranger things ahead.

They seemed to be deep in conversation and
for a very brief second, jealousy ruled. It seemed like they were
discussing more than where to go, and then reason took over. They’d
both been real people once and were the only two of their kind.
And
Anastasia had already said she was into him, so he kept
his emotions in check and walked over. “Do we have a plan?”

Doug nodded slightly. His ears, formerly
human in shape, had somehow grown longer and floppier, and the hair
on his hands seemed coarser. “We were both comparing notes and it
seems our memories are the same. I don’t know if they’re implants
or real, but we remembered the wooden room right away.”

Anastasia chimed in. “I also remember cables
along the walls. That’s all I’ve got.” Doug said he recalled the
same thing…but couldn’t figure out what it meant, either.

Cables were used for electricity, Harry
mused. Perhaps they’d been hooked up to a generator. Then there was
the matter of the wooden room…lights overhead…could it have been a
lab of some sort? He thought hard about it and was interrupted by
Doug who tapped him on the knee.

“Hey, we gotta move.” He went over to the
ladder and started his ascent. “I’ll check things out.”

Harry felt his girlfriend’s breath on his
shoulder. He turned and saw her eyes shining in the darkness, and
also saw the slashes on her shoulders and torso. He wanted to tell
her he’d been worried, but she interrupted him by putting her hand
to his lips. “If you’re going to ask me how I’m feeling, then
don’t. I’ll be fine,” she said and leaned against him. “You have
nice fingers.”

She didn’t wait for him to reply, just kissed
him hard and their little canine ally turned around just in time to
catch the action. “Save it for a room,” he grunted, “will ya?”

He clambered up the rest of the way and
cautiously pushed the manhole cover off. “What’s going on up
there?” Harry called softly.

Doug dropped back to the ground below. “It’s
dark out, maybe around midnight. The way’s clear. If we’re gonna
move, then we gotta go now.”

Once on the surface, Harry inhaled the
semi-fresh air of the city. Anything was preferable to the stink of
the sewer. Doug shoved the metal cover back into place and they
crept out to the edge of the alley. The streets were empty for the
moment. Maybe there was a curfew going on. “What do we do now?”

“We look for some transportation,” Doug
answered.

They crept down the block, kept to the
shadows, and on a quiet side street Doug stood up and pointed at a
vehicle a few feet away. “That’s our ticket out of here. Do you
know how to drive?”

“Yeah, I can drive.”

Doug nodded. “It’s a good thing you do,
because I’m too short to reach the gas pedal. You don’t know how to
hotwire a car, do you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, merely leapt
up, head-butted the driver’s seat window, and after it shattered,
jumped in and hotwired the steering wheel column. Soon the engine
caught and he opened the back door and the passenger door. “Get in
and drive!”

Anastasia suddenly let out a moan. Moving had
been a mistake, and the blood start to soak through her clothes
once more. Harry caught her in his arms just before she hit the
ground, carefully loaded her body into the back seat, closed the
door and ran to the driver’s side.

Hurriedly, he flicked the glass to the floor,
and after putting his computer bag down and making sure his two
passengers were secure, threw the car into gear and they headed out
onto the street. “Where are we going?” he asked. “Yesterday the cop
said we should head south.”

Doug crouched down in the backseat alongside
Anastasia. Mercifully, she’d passed out. “South isn’t our
destination, not this time,” he said. “Just go where I tell you.
Head north. We’re going north.”

“You still haven’t told me exactly where
we’re going,” Harry stated. Confused and frightened by the ordeal,
he had absolutely no idea of what would happen next. It also didn’t
help that he was a fugitive in league with two other half-human
fugitives, one of them with some serious mechanical skills and the
other whom he’d fallen for.

“Just keep driving,” Doug ordered. “We’ll
find a place to stop and then I’ll tell you what I know.”

He called out instructions from the back seat
as Harry got underway. “Go over to the east bank of the Hudson. Get
on Route Nine as there will be less traffic and less chance of
being spotted. Soon Route Nine will merge with the number
twenty-three thruway. Have you got all that?”

“Yeah, I think so.” All of the terms confused
Harry at first, so he kept a sharp lookout and hung rights and
lefts where his backseat driver indicated. He only hoped Doug knew
where he was going and if he was correct, maybe when they arrived
at their destination they’d get a few answers.

Soon the traffic behind them stopped except
for the usual late-night commuters. Harry looked in the rearview
mirror, not bothering to check on the traffic but rather on the
condition of his girlfriend. She lay motionless and quiet in the
backseat. “How is she?” he asked Doug.

“She’s still breathing,” the answer came.
“She’ll be fine.”

Harry wondered how it could be possible.
She’d lost so much blood… “What makes you so sure?”

“You remember me mentioning Ivan? You know,
gigantic, looks like a bear, enjoys tearing people in two? That’s
Ivan.”

“I’m surprised he’s got a name…or can
think.”

Doug grunted. “Don’t be surprised at
anything. It’s just the name I heard when I woke up. Don’t ask me
where, though.” He paused for a moment. “Hey, you’d be surprised at
what we can do. We’re both pretty special that way. You saw me
hotwire the car, yes? That’s an implanted skill. It has to be.”

“Do you feel like sharing how you know all
this?”

A barking laugh came from the back seat. “I
couldn’t tell you. Anyway, your girlfriend’s gonna be fine. You saw
Ivan get shot, right? He lived. I bit his leg, and my jaws are
almost strong enough to bite through iron. He’ll recuperate. That’s
how they made us. It’s got something to do with an enhanced immune
system and augmented regenerative capacity, that’s all I know.”

The monster had been beyond tough. Farrell
had pumped six bullets into the bear creature and it kept on
coming. Whoever had engineered these people, along with his
girlfriend, they’d had a plan in mind. “You don’t remember anything
else, do you?”

“No, not really,” Doug replied. “I remember
getting up, looking at myself in the mirror and smashing it. Guess
that’s gonna bring me seven years of bad luck, right?” A bitter
laugh escaped his lips.

“How long ago was all this?” Harry asked,
curious about the other man’s origins. Glancing in the rearview
mirror, he saw Doug scratch himself with his hind leg as if he had
fleas.

“Near as I can tell, all of this happened
about a month ago,” Doug said after he finished scratching. “There
was the lab…the lights…and then I remember running through the
trees. Next thing I knew I was in Manhattan. It was pretty rough,
lemme tell ya. The
rough
part wasn’t a joke,” he added.

Harry didn’t get the joke the first time.
After it filtered through, he laughed in spite of the seriousness
of the situation. “Sorry, but that was sort of funny.”

Doug grunted. “Yeah, you try running away
every single time someone wants to pet you or chain you up. I had
to tell everyone I belonged to the circus, like Jo the Dog-Faced
Kid or whatever they used to call those people.” He snorted. “I
learned to get up early to avoid the cops. They’d heard about me,
figured me for some bum or mutant. I lived in the back alleys and
got burgers from the fast-food joints…I made do.” He paused to
clear his throat and asked, “So what’s your story?”

Harry rehashed his bio and his passenger
said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem kind of young to
be a researcher.”

Harry sighed and wondered why people couldn’t
accept the fact some kids were smarter than others. Then he checked
himself. He’d been lucky enough to have been born smarter than
pretty much everyone else, yet he had no physical skills, was
socially inept, and had lived most of his life in isolation, partly
by his own choice and partly by circumstance. It somehow balanced
out, but right now he wasn’t sure of which side the heavier weight
was on. Finally, he answered, “My father was a researcher and I’m
sort of good at it, too.”

Doug grunted softly. “So did the FBI bring
you in just to examine your girl or cure her?”

Harry decided to tell him the truth. “They
wanted me to examine her. I don’t think they cared about a
cure.”

“It figures,” he spat out and then started to
rant. “Look at the monsters, watch them eat and drink and play, but
God forbid you try to help them!”

Abruptly cutting the rant short, he
apologized for his behavior and then leaned forward to touch
Harry’s shoulder. “Do you think you can cure us? I don’t care what
I looked like in real life or who I was. I just want to be normal
again.”