Peeps (17 page)

The gears in my head moved slowly. “Um, isn’t it
bedraggled
?”

“Yeah, no kidding. But my version makes more sense, you know?” Lace checked the time on her phone. “Anyway, I’ve got to run.” She swept up her bag from the table and headed for the door. Opening it, she turned back to face me.

“Oh, I don’t have any keys to this place.”

“Right. Well, I might get back pretty late tonight—I’m already behind schedule today.” I cleared my throat, pointing at the fruit crate by the door. “There’s an extra set in that coffee can.”

Lace stuck her fingers into the can, rummaging through laundry quarters until she pulled out a ring of keys.

“Okay. Thanks. And, um, see you tonight, I guess.”

I smiled. “See you tonight.”

She didn’t move for a moment, then shuddered. “Wow, all the discomfort of a one-night stand, with none of the sex. Later, dude.”

The door slammed shut as I stood there, wondering what exactly she’d meant by that. That she was uncomfortable with me? That she hated being here?

That she’d
wanted
to have sex the night before?

Then I realized something else: I had trusted the biggest secret in the world to this woman, and I didn’t even know her last name.

 

“There’s actually a
form
for that?”

“Well, not for cats specifically.” Dr. Rat tapped a few keys on her computer. “But yeah, here it is. ZTM-47/74: Zootropic Transmission to New Species.” She pressed a button, and her printer whirred to life.

I blinked. I had imagined a citywide Watch alert, an extermination team scrambling and heading for the West Side, maybe even a meeting with the Night Mayor. Not a one-page form.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Look, it says, ‘Process immediately’ at the top. That’s not nothing.”

“But . . .”

“What are so you worried about, Kid? You secured the site, didn’t you?”

“Um, of course. But does this happen a lot? A whole new
species
getting infected?”

“Don’t you remember Plagues and Pestilence?” Dr. Rat said, disappointment on her face. “That whole week we spent on the 1300s?”

“Yes. But I don’t consider once in the last seven hundred years to be
a lot
.”

“Don’t forget werewolves, and those bats in Mexico last century.” She leaned back in her chair, staring up into the mysteries of the squeaking row of rat cages.

Dr. Rat’s lair sort of freaks me out, what with all the rattling cages of rodents, the brand-new textbooks and musty bestiaries, and the shiny tools lined up to one side of the dissection table. (There’s just something about dissection tables.)

“You know,” Dr. Rat said, “there might even be some history of a cat-friendly strain. The Spanish Inquisition thought that felines were the devil’s familiars and barbecued a whole bunch of them. Their theory was that cats stole your breath at night.”

“I can see where they got that one,” I said, remembering how often I’d woken up with all fourteen pounds of Cornelius sitting on my chest.

“But it’s paranoid to focus on a handful of transmissions, Cal,” Dr. Rat said. “You’ve got to keep your eye on the big picture. Evolution is always cranking out mutations, and parasites are constantly trying out new hosts—some kind of worm takes a crack at your intestines pretty much every time you eat a rare steak.”

“Oh, nice. Thanks for that image.”

“But most of them
fail
, Kid. Evolution is mostly about mutations that
don’t
work, sort of like the music business.” She pointed at her boom box, which was cranking Deathmatch at that very moment. “For every Deathmatch or Kill Fee, there are a hundred useless bands you never heard of that go nowhere. Same with life’s rich pageant. That’s why Darwin called mutations ‘hopeful monsters.’ It’s a crap-shoot; most fail in the first generation.”

“The Hopeful Monsters,” I said. “Cool band name.”

Dr. Rat considered this for a moment. “Too artsy-fartsy.”

“Whatever. But this peep cat looked pretty successful to me. I mean, it had a huge brood and was catching birds to feed them. Doesn’t that sound like an adaptation for spreading the parasite?”

“That’s nothing new.” Dr. Rat threw a pencil in the air and caught it. “Cats bring their humans little offerings all the time. It’s how they feed their kittens; sometimes they get confused.”

“Yeah, well, this peep cat looked healthy. Not like an evolutionary failure.”

Dr. Rat nodded, drumming her fingers on the top of PNS’s cage. She’d already drawn the rat’s blood and attached the test tube to a centrifuge in the corner of her lair. It had spun itself into a solid blur, rumbling like a paint mixer in a hardware store.

“That’s not bad—given how many parasite mutations kill their hosts in a few days. But evolution doesn’t care how strong or healthy you are, unless you
reproduce
.”

“Sure . . . but this brood was really big. Thousands of them.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but the question is, how does this new strain get into
another cat
?”

“You’re asking me?” I said. “You’re the expert.”

She shrugged. “Well, I don’t know either, Kid. And that’s the deal-breaker. If the new strain doesn’t have a way back into another kitty final host, then the adaptation is just a dead end. Like toxoplasma in humans, it’ll never go anywhere.”

I nodded slowly, wrapping my brain around this. If this new strain couldn’t find a way to infect more cats, then it would die when the peep cat died. Game over.

I looked hopefully at Dr. Rat. “So we might not be facing a civilization-ending threat to humanity?”

“Look, cats would be a great vector for the parasite to jump from rats to humans, I’ll give you that. A lot more people get bitten by cats every year than rats. But it’s much more likely this is a one-off freak mutation. In fact, it’s even
more
likely you just got spooked and didn’t know what you were seeing.”

I thought of the rumbling basement, the awful smell—maybe
that
had been a hallucination, but the peep cat I really had seen. “Well, thanks for the pep talk.” I stood. “Hope you’re right.”

“Me too,” Dr. Rat said softly, looking down at PNS.

I pulled the ZTM-47/74 off the printer. There would be many more forms to fill out that day; my writing hand was sore just thinking about it.

I stopped at the door. “Still, let me know what you think about that video. It
looked
like the peep cat was being worshipped by its brood of rats. Seems like that dynamic would take a few generations to evolve.”

Dr. Rat patted the videotape I’d brought her. “I’m going to watch it right now, Kid.” She gestured at the centrifuge. “And I’ll let you know if Possible New Strain is a relative of yours. But I have one question.”

“What?”

“Does he smell like one?”

I paused to take one last sniff of PNS, catching the little fluffs of joy the rat gave off as he consumed the lettuce she’d given him. Dr. Rat knows a lot about smells, which chemicals give each fruit and flower its distinctive aroma—but she’ll never have the olfactory sense of a predator. Her nose has to live vicariously through us carriers.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “He smells like family.”

“Well, your nose probably knows what it’s smelling. But I’ll call you when I get firm results. In the meantime, here’s a little something that might come in handy.” She tossed me a little vial of yellow liquid. “That’s Essence of Cal Thompson. Your smell. Might be useful if that brood is related to you. Just use it carefully. You don’t want to cause a rat riot.”

It looked like piss in a perfume bottle, and holding it gave me an equally unpleasant feeling. “Gee, thanks.”

“And one more thing, Kid.”

I paused, half out the door. “What?”

“Why did you use a spaghetti strainer? Don’t they give you guys cages anymore?”

“Long story. See you later.”

 

Walking down the halls of the Night Watch, I started to feel guilty.

While I’d been talking to Dr. Rat, I hadn’t felt so bad about my indiscretions of the night before. We were pals, and I could almost believe she’d understand if I told her about spilling the beans to Lace. But as the implacable file cabinets rose on either side of me on my way into Records, I could feel the weight of my Major Revelation Incident growing with every step. It had made sense the night before, with Lace threatening to go to the newspapers, but this morning I felt like a traitor.

On the other hand, there was no changing my mind. I still didn’t want Lace to disappear.

When I reached Chip’s office, he looked up at me with a gaze that seemed somehow reproachful. “Morning, Kid.”

“Hey, Chip.” I cleared my throat and brushed away the guilty thoughts. “I found out what happened. They added a swimming pool.”

“Who added a what?”

I pointed at the blueprints for Lace’s building still spread across his desk, half obscured by stray papers and books. “A swimming pool a few yards deep, right on the lowest level. That’s how the rat reservoir came up.”

Chip stared at the blueprints, then at the yellowing plans of the PATH tunnel, his fingers finding the spot where the two intersected.

Finally, he nodded. “Yeah. If the pool had a drain, that would do it.” He looked up at me.

“There was a big hole in the deep end,” I said. “And I smelled something pretty bad coming from it. And felt a sort of . . . trembling. Like something big going under me.”

“Like a subway train?”

I raised an eyebrow. That explanation hadn’t occurred to me. “Maybe. But anyway, that hole is where the rats all disappeared when I cranked up my flashlight.”

“The flashlight you broke?”

“Yes, the one I broke. Who told you that?”

He shrugged. “I hear things. Have you—?”

“Yes, I’ll file a DE-37.” I waved the growing stack of forms in my hand.

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Man, you hunters. I break a pencil and there’s hell to pay.”

“I can see how that’s deeply unfair, Chip. Especially if that pencil should try to kill you with its teeth and claws, or launch its brood of a thousand deadly paper clips against you.”

Chip chuckled again, raising his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Won’t say another word against hunters. But don’t say that Records never helped you out. We got some interesting data about your seventh-floor tenants this morning. I think you’ll find it useful.”

“You know where they are?”

“Afraid not. They’ve disappeared completely.” He pulled out an envelope and removed five photographs. “But this is what they look like, or did last year anyway. Probably thinner now, those of them that are still alive.”

I recognized Morgan, her dark hair and pale skin, eyebrows perfectly arched.

“Thanks.” I took the photos from him and slid them into my jacket pocket.

“And one more thing,” Chip said, unfolding a printed T-shirt across his chest. “This is for you.”

I stared at the smiling face, the sequined guitar, the good-natured belly overlapping his belt: Garth Brooks.

“Um, Chip, am I missing something?”

“It’s an anathema, Kid!” He grinned. “We found some online posts by a couple of your missing persons—Patricia and Joseph Moore. Both big Garth Brooks fans.”

“And you went out and
bought
that thing?”

“Nope. Believe it or not, Hunt Equipment had it on file.”

My eyebrows rose. “We had a Garth Brooks T-shirt on file?”

“Yeah. You know that big outbreak on the Upper West Side eight years ago? Couple of those guys were really into country music.” He tossed the shirt to me. “Wear it next time you go down. Just in case our missing persons have gone subterranean.”

“Great.” I stuffed the T-shirt in my backpack. “Anything else?”

“Nope. But don’t worry, we’ll keep looking.”

“You do that. And if you find out that Morgan was into Ashlee Simpson, don’t worry—I’ve already got it covered.”

 

Dr. Rat had been right about the ZTM-47/74—it was a form that made things happen. Unfortunately, they weren’t the things that I’d
wanted
to happen. Instead of a well-armed extermination team heading for Lace’s building that afternoon, there was only me.

I was not empty-handed, though. I had a vial of Dr. Rat’s Eau de Cal, a Ziploc bag of Cornelius dander, the Garth Brooks T-shirt on under my hazmat suit, a new flashlight and some other equipment in my duffel bag, and a work order signed by the Night Mayor himself, instructing me to capture the alleged peep cat. That last one was why I was flying solo. Apparently, a big squad of poison-wielding attackers might scare kitty away, and kitty was needed for testing.

So that meant me alone.

On my way across town, I stopped at a grocery store and bought two Crunchy Tunas and a can opener. Dr. Rat’s experimental Cal extract might attract the peep cat, but I prefer the classics.

Manny was back at the door; he gave me a knowing wink.

“You going upstairs or downstairs, my friend?”

“Down, unfortunately.” I slapped a fake By-Order-of-Sanitation document on his desk. Manny’s eyes widened as he scanned it.

“Whoa, man. You’re telling me we’re getting shut
down
?”

“Just the health club. We found rats, a whole bunch.”

“Oh, that’s bad.” He shook his head.

“Hey, there’s no reason to make a fuss. You can say whatever you want about why it’s off limits. Tell the tenants there’s a gas leak or something.”

“Okay.” He exhaled through his teeth. “But the landlords aren’t going to like this.”

“Tell them the extermination won’t cost anything. The city will handle it all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’ve personally got it covered. Just one thing, though.”

He looked up from the document.