He would do it the courtesy of killing it quickly and well. He
would park off the road beside one of those November-barren
fields and take it out of the bag and stroke it and then snap its neck
and sever its tail with his pocketknife. And, he thought, the body
I'll bury honorably, saving it from the scavengers. I can't save it
from the worms, but I can save it from the maggots.
He was thinking these things as the car moved through the night
like a dark blue ghost and that was when the cat walked in front of
his eyes, up on the dashboard, tail raised arrogantly, its black-and-
white face turned toward him, its mouth seeming to grin at him.
"Ssssshhhh-" Halston hissed. He glanced to his right and caught a
glimpse of the double-thickness shopping bag, a hole chewed - or
clawed - in its side. Looked ahead again..,and the cat lifted a paw
and batted playfully at him. The paw skidded across Halston's
forehead. He jerked away from it and the Plymouth's big tires
wailed on the road as it swung erratically from one side of the
narrow blacktop to the other.
Halston batted at the cat on the dashboard with his fist. It was
blocking his field of vision. It spat at him, arching its back, but it
didn't move. Halston swung again, and instead of shrinking away,
it leaped at him.
Gage, he thought. Just like Gage -
He stamped the brake. The cat was on his head, blocking his vision
with its furry belly, clawing at him, gouging at him. Halston held
the wheel grimly. He struck the cat once, twice, a third time. And
suddenly the road was gone, the Plymouth was running down into
the ditch, thudding up and down on its shocks. Then, impact,
throwing him forward against his seat belt, and the last sound he
heard was the cat yowling inhumanly, the voice of a woman in
pain or in the throes of sexual climax.
He struck it with his closed fists and felt only the springy, yielding
flex of its muscles.
Then, second impact. And darkness.
* * *
The moon was down. It was an hour before dawn.
The Plymouth lay in a ravine curdled with groundmist. Tangled in
its grille was a snarled length of barbed wire. The hood had come
unlatched, and tendrils of steam from the breached radiator drifted
out of the opening to mingle with the mist.
No feeling in his legs.
He looked down and saw that the Plymouth's firewall had caved in
with the impact. The back of that big Cyclone Spoiler engine block
had smashed into his legs, pinning them.
Outside, in the distance, the predatory squawk of an owl dropping
onto some small, scurrying animal.
Inside, close, the steady purr of the cat.
It seemed to be grinning, like Alice's Cheshire had in Wonderland.
As Halston watched it stood up, arched its back, and stretched. In a
sudden limber movement like rippled silk, it leaped to his shoulder.
Halston tried to lift his hands to push it off.
His arms wouldn't move.
Spinal shock, he thought. Paralyzed. Maybe temporary. More
likely permanent.
The cat purred in his ear like thunder.
"Get off me," Halston said. His voice was hoarse and dry. The cat
tensed for a moment and then settled back. Suddenly its paw batted
Halston's cheek, and the claws were out this time. Hot lines of pain
down to his throat.
And the warm trickle of blood.
Pain.
Feeling.
He ordered his head to move to the right, and it complied. For a
moment his face was buried in smooth, dry fur. Halston snapped at
the cat. It made a startled, disgruntled sound in its throat - yowk! -
and leaped onto the seat. It stared up at him angrily, ears laid back.
"Wasn't supposed to do that, was I?" Halston croaked. The cat
opened its mouth and hissed at him. Looking at that strange,
schizophrenic face, Halston could understand how Drogan might
have thought it was a hellcat. It-
His thoughts broke off as he became aware of a dull, tingling
feeling in both hands and forearms.
Feeling. Coming back. Pins and needles.
The cat leaped at his face, claws out, spitting.
Halston shut his eyes and opened his mouth. He bit at the cat's
belly and got nothing but fur. The cat's front claws were clasped on
his ears, digging in. The pain was enormous, brightly excruciating.
Halston tried to raise his hands.
They twitched but would not quite come out of his lap.
He bent his head forward and began to shake it back and forth, like
a man shaking soap out of his eyes. Hissing and squalling, the cat
held on. Halston could feel blood trickling down his cheeks. It was
hard to get his breath. The cat's chest was pressed over his nose. It
was possible to get some air in by mouth, but not much. What he
did get came through fur. His ears felt as if they had been doused
with lighter fluid and then set on fire.
He snapped his head back and cried out in agony - he must have
sustained a whiplash when the Plymouth hit. But the cat hadn't
been expecting the reverse and it flew off. Halston heard it thud
down in the back seat.
A trickle of blood ran in his eye. He tried again to move his hands,
to raise one of them and wipe the blood away.
They trembled in his lap, but he was still unable to actually move
them. He thought of the .45 special in its holster under his left arm.
If I can get to my piece, kitty, the rest of your nine lives are going
in a lump sum.
More tingles now. Dull throbs of pain from his feet, buried and
surely shattered under the engine block, zips and tingles from his
legs - it felt exactly the way a limb that you've slept on does when
it's starting to wake up. At that moment Halston didn't care about
his feet. It was enough to know that his spine wasn't severed, that
he wasn't going to finish out his life as a dead lump of body
attached to a talking head.
Maybe I had a few lives left myself.
Take care of the cat. That was the first thing. Then get out of the
wreck - maybe someone would come along, that would solve both
problems at once. Not likely at 4:30 in the morning on a back road
like this one, but barely possible. And-
And what was the cat doing back there?
He didn't like having it on his face, but he didn't like having it
behind him and out of sight, either. He tried the rearview mirror,
but that was useless. The crash had knocked it awry and all it
reflected was the grassy ravine he had finished up in.
A sound from behind him, like low, ripping cloth.
Purring.
Hellcat my ass. It's gone to sleep back there.
And even if it hadn't, even if it was somehow planning murder,
what could it do? It was a skinny little thing, probably weighed all
of four pounds soaking wet. And soon ... soon he would be able to
move his hands enough to get his gun. He was sure of it.
Halston sat and waited. Feeling continued to flood back into his
body in a series of pins-and-needles incursions. Absurdly (or
maybe in instinctive reaction to his close brush with death) he got
an erection for a minute or so. Be kind of hard to beat off under
present circumstances, he thought.
A dawn-line was appearing in the eastern sky. Somewhere a bird
sang.
Halston tried his hands again and got them to move an eighth of an
inch before they fell back.
Not yet. But soon.
A soft thud on the seatback beside him. Halston turned his head
and looked into the black-white face, the glowing eyes with their
huge dark pupils.
Halston spoke to it.
"I have never blown a hit once I took it on, kitty. This could be a
first. I'm getting my hands back. Five minutes, ten at most. You