Mort(e) surprised himself with his toughness, with his willingness to shed Sebastian the House Cat so quickly. The Red Sphinx traveled light, slept in ditches and fields, drank water from puddles, ate worms and overripe berries to stay alive. They were lean and angry. Always reminding one another, the way Culdesac did, to aim true, to stay on the hunt.
Tiberius would eventually earn his chosen name, even saving Mort(e)’s life on a few occasions. Mort(e) returned the favor. There were three straight missions in which they led the way. The first involved scaling the side of a building to toss a sniper from a rooftop. The second required them to swim to an anchored boat and plant a bomb on her hull. The other cats were too scared of the water and watched in awe as Mort(e) dove in. The third was a suicide mission, a frontal assault on a machine-gun nest that turned out to be operated by three teenage girls whose families had left them behind. After that, the rest of the Red Sphinx begged to be among the first for such missions. They had been shamed by their skepticism of Socks the medic and the choker-house-cat-turned-warrior. Their new Number One was somehow charmed, chosen by the Queen herself. Even those who had allied themselves with Luna had to agree that Mort(e) was the fearless, competent leader they needed. He laughed at death as it slid off him again and again. He was death.
The Red Sphinx recruited other stray cats to replace the ones they lost. Some came looking for the Red Sphinx, driven by growing legends among the animals. Tales of Mort(e) the Fearless. So many wanted to join that Culdesac would force them to audition by fighting one another. The matches were sometimes so vicious that Mort(e) would intervene and tell both contestants that they had qualified.
The months bled into years, and the years folded into one another until Mort(e) found himself wondering if it had been two years or three since he had killed his master. Had it been three years or four since he had last seen Sheba? One morning, he woke from a dream realizing that he could not remember the last time he had thought of her. Weeks? Months? He wanted to beg her memory for forgiveness. Forgetting her was just as bad as killing her.
Thanks to Sheba, Mort(e) was able to learn about pain — and then to switch it off — so much faster than the other Red Sphinx. Thus the memories of those awful years became buried, a series of fragments seen through a foggy glass. It was the best he could hope for.
SOMETIMES, HOWEVER, THE past came looking for him.
For all Mort(e)’s acts of bravery over those eight years, none compared with the time that he and Tiberius defied Culdesac’s orders and went snooping around in a town decimated by the EMSAH syndrome. Tiberius had been clamoring for an opportunity to study the effects of the plague. As company medic, he had been beset with recurring nightmares about being caught in an EMSAH outbreak, surrounded by corpses that could walk upright.
So there was a noble, selfless goal. But the opportunity to search for Sheba was the real motivation. She could be in some infected town, waiting to die, wondering if she would ever see him again. Or perhaps she wasn’t wondering at all. In his most sullen moods, he thought that it would be better for Sheba to be dead than for her to forget him. And then he hated himself for thinking such a thing.
Mort(e)’s act of insubordination took place after the war had turned in the Colony’s favor. The humans were nearing extinction, off to meet the imaginary creator who had promised them everything in this world and the next. Those who remained were growing more desperate. With virtually every human city on the continent now occupied or destroyed, guerrilla tactics and suicide attacks replaced pitched battles. The animals began to resettle the scarred lands, picking up where the humans had left off.
Even so, the Colony continued to preach vigilance of the signs of EMSAH. These blooming civilian centers were prime targets for a human terrorist. It was in this climate that the first “celebrity” of the war emerged, a chimpanzee doctor named Miriam who had escaped from a zoo. As the leader of a team of scientists searching for a cure, her image was everywhere. Miriam appeared in a number of public service announcements, warning of the symptoms, giving updates on her team’s progress. One of the early attempts at humor among the animals involved impersonating the dour Miriam. “Remember,” people would say, arms folded, eyes squinting, “if you see something, say something.” And then they would imitate a wild monkey: “Oooh-oooh-oooh-aaahh-aaahh!”
The term EMSAH, Miriam explained, meant nothing — it was a corruption of an acronym the Colony had used when they first discovered the disease. Over time, her team concluded that the virus had mutated, making it harder to cure. Its effects were equally confounding. Different species had different symptoms. Felines suffered skin lesions. Hoofed animals tended to have allergic reactions that closed up their throats and swelled their eyes shut. Dogs experienced a form of narcolepsy accompanied by hallucinations. Regardless of the physical symptoms, all the victims ended the same: unhinged, often irrationally violent, and pleading for death. They were somehow reduced to a state of savagery. Perhaps that was exactly what the humans wanted. The Queen could create, and they could destroy.
Thanks to Miriam’s eagerly awaited quarterly reports, the disease remained a sinister word, whispered by pups and kittens to frighten one another while telling stories at night. Newly founded schools even banned games in which the young animals tagged one another, declaring in singsong, “You have EM-SAH! You have EM-SAH!” Rumors spread of rebuilding sectors being quarantined and exterminated, with every building leveled and every living thing burned away, down to the last microbe.
When Tiberius and Mort(e) asked Culdesac if they could see an infected town for themselves, the captain told them that the topic was off-limits. They had a war to win. Bad news would be a setback to the effort. Tiberius asked how the hell he was supposed to diagnose someone when he hadn’t seen the effects firsthand. Culdesac insisted that Miriam’s reports were more than enough and that they were getting better. If the animals could defeat the humans, then they could stop a virus.
Tiberius asked if Culdesac would shoot him if he tried to investigate one of the settlements.
“Yes,” Culdesac said.
One night, Culdesac gathered all the Red Sphinx together. They were camped in the woods near a newly established town. They had been patrolling the countryside for a few days, responding to reports of humans smuggling weapons, but found nothing. It was a welcome relief.
But Culdesac’s news was grim. The town was infected, he said. A bioweapon attack. Every settler was dead. The ants were on their way to clear it out, to devour and destroy every last trace of the town. The land would be indistinguishable from the wilderness around it.
“If you needed a reason for why we are fighting this war, this is it,” Culdesac said. “The enemy is barbaric. We must be strong in response. Slavery and death are the alternatives.”
They would leave in the morning for a nearby army base. Culdesac wished them a good night and then headed for his sleeping spot.
In the middle of the night, Mort(e) roused Tiberius and told him that they were going into the town. Tiberius stretched theatrically in order to show his annoyance with being woken up.
“Did the captain give you permission?” he asked, yawning.
“Yes.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“All right, he didn’t.”
“You can’t order me.”
“You’re the doctor. You want to see what’s down there even more than I do.”
“I don’t want to get shot even more than you do.”