The dog tried to follow her through the tunnel, just as she'd hoped he would. He got stuck halfway through. He squirmed and growled and clawed at the commerce center, but still he couldn't budge. He bucked with the strength of desperation. The roof collapsed and buried him. He thrashed in the dusty dark and bucked some more. The building's cardboard shell split in two. The dog threw the two halves over on their sides and clawed his way clear of the wreckage. He shook the dust from his floppy checkered ears, slid down the mound of debris, and ran west again, sniffing for the scent of his dinner.
A yellow plaid monster squadsman positioned his flatbed for an artillery assault. His partner was manning the gunnery chair. They'd loaded their cannon with an experimental harpoon dart that had tacky glue all over the suction cup. They fired on the dog as he ran past, but he caught the dart in his teeth and kept running. Resultantly the flatbed was dragged three blocks on its side and wound up in the lobby of the Eyeglass Bank Building. So little was left of the two squadsmen that the surgeons uptown had to sew it all together just to keep any of it alive.
The cat was looking for a tree to climb. She settled for the el tracks. She scampered up the scaffolding and crouched on the tracks, spoiling for a fight. A toy train rounded a bend and came at her. She derailed it.
The dog was no climber, but he managed the el tracks and pounced on the cat again. The scaffolding crumpled beneath them. Some power lines came down as well, spitting blue sparks. The cat got a nasty electrical shock, which inspired her to a new burst of speed.
She careened south on Embroidery Boulevard and climbed the side of the Angora Stadium in one great scamper. The domed roof was too high for the dog to reach. He raced around and around the stadium, first clockwise then counterclockwise, trashing everything that got underfoot.
The cat was still nervous, looking around for higher ground. She crouched down on the stadium and launched a heart-stopping leap across the intersection of Flipflop and Suede. She landed on the northeast corner of the tenth story of the famous Argyle Pleat Building, Plush City's tallest skyscraper. While the dog yapped helplessly at street level, a million stuffies gaped up at the cat. She climbed the APB higher and higher.
Far above her, at the APB's cloud-capped summit, was the penthouse floor and the notorious Polar Club, the speakeasy where high-rolling Antarctic types came to blow their rolls in style. On the bandstand, a five-piece seal combo played hot jazz, while jitterbugging penguins covered every square inch of the open-air dance floor. Bootleg hooch, dizzy heights, and jitterbugging under the stars were all the rage with the well-connected penguin set this summer.
Besides the dance floor, the club provided a lounge, a skating rink, and a refrigerated pool. The rink was full of sea lions tonight, prosperous bulls in cravats and spats, with their flippers wrapped solicitously around the thick waists of their diamond-dripping cows.
The cat announced her arrival by darting onto the dance floor and devouring three penguins at one swallow. They really hit the spot too, after all that running around. The clientele evacuated the speakeasy with all due speed. Curious, the cat trotted around the facilities. She drank from the pool, sniffed at the ice rink, chewed on the bandstand. Then she lay on her side on the dance floor and licked her calico flanks with her red velour tongue. First her flanks, then her forelegs, then her haunches. Then she tested her claws on a white shag carpet. She could hear the dog barking down below. Let him bark. The night was young.
The dog took a run at the skyscraper's base and slammed himself into it. It trembled. He rammed it again. It tipped. Again. It fell over like a tree and devastated seven city blocks. A fire broke out in the rubble. Red tin fire engines rushed to the scene, clanging their bells. Dalmatians in fireman's caps attached hoses to hydrants.
The cat leapt from the rapidly descending Polar Club to the pyramidal roof of the Stitch Museum. After that her bad leg was broken as well as ripped. She clung to the apex of the roof, leaking scarlet ribbons as if they grew on trees. Wads of her cotton stuffing tumbled down the roof and showered the tanbark paths of Tassel Park. Cotton floated on the ornamental pond. Then the cat herself skidded down the roof and fell like a sack of bricks to the pavement of Ping Pong Plaza.
At once the dog was on her, slavering and nipping. He sank his teeth into her broken hind leg. He shook her like a rat. The leg came clean off.
"Now you've done it," said the cat, lying woozily on her back.
"Oh there's worse to come," said the dog, whose mouth was full. "Shall we?"
"I really couldn't."
"I insist."
"But I can't even stand."
"Allow me." The dog clamped his jaws around her belly and carried her, dangling from his mouth, west up Suede Street to the bridge across Seam Expressway. He dropped her over a railing into the westbound traffic. An ambulance and four passenger cars piled up against her ribs with a squealing of toy tires and a crunching of painted tin.
The dog jumped down beside her, causing wrecks in the eastbound lanes. He heaved her into his jaws again and carried her along the expressway toward the river. He was tired from his long day of hunting. Now what he yearned for was a quiet place where he could eat his dinner in peace.
Police dogs arrived in their prowl cars and fired mortar shells after the monsters, who by then were out of range. The ambulance teams from Pattern General turned up next and began the work of removing crushed citizens from their cars. Minutes later the biplanes of the Civil Defense & Crop Dusting Corps arrived at the wreck of the Argyle Pleat Building with stink bombs and sneezing powder.
Edna had finally made it home from the hospital, hours late of course, thanks to the monsters. Now Teddy was slapping her around. He was bellowing. She was screeching. He'd been waiting all day for this.
He was working her over pretty good. He threw her into a wall, picked her up by her ears, dragged her into the kitchen, closed a drawer on her paw, and pushed her insipid pink face into the drawer knob for good measure. The noise from the neighborhood poured into the apartment — the screaming, the shattering of glass, the honking of toy auto horns, the endless rise and dip of the sirens. The noise level seemed to encourage Teddy.
He crumpled up an empty soup tin and used it for brass knuckles. The ragged metal edge opened up some nice deep cuts in Edna's face and tore loose tufts of pink fur when his blows struck her forearms. Afterwards he let her sit in the armchair and catch her breath. He even brought her a wet towel and let her wash her face. Then she said something that really pissed him off, and he was forced to go to the closet for his putting iron.
While Teddy had his fun in the den, Fang was amusing himself with Cuddles in the kitchen. The mischievous hamster was wearing his little chef’s apron. He'd battered the parrot with egg whites and bread crumbs, trussed her up in aluminum foil, and arranged her on her back in a casserole dish, with some baby potatoes and parsley. He'd also preheated the oven. He tasted the marinade in the dish and applied it with a basting brush to Cuddles's exposed parts. She kicked feebly at the aluminum foil. Fang rummaged through a drawer and found the meat thermometer.
Back in the den, Teddy advanced on his wife with putting iron uplifted. You could break a little pink bunny's ankles with a putting iron. If the bunny had any bones, that is. No bones in Edna, sadly. But there were still things inside her that Teddy could break. And Teddy was ready to break them all tonight. He demonstrated his golf swing, whistling the putter's head through the air over Edna's head. She held her ears over her eyes and wailed in fear.