Judgment (© E. Meeske)
Page 3 The
Man was not right, no longer a Person. The Cat felt a sudden cold fear and
retreated into the tall bushes on the far side of the lawn. He was unable to
keep himself from purring, not from joy but from nervousness. The
Cat eventually found itself with the other cats of the area. Their colony was
in a two acre piece of undeveloped land in the sub-division. He successfully
fought for a piece of territory. He was not in a pleasant mood, and the fight
was not particularly difficult for him. There in his territory he hunted, he
slept, he made overtures of companionship to his colleagues in the neutral area
of the colony. And he watched, as more and more of the neighborhood was
populated by the Not-People. Part of him thought that the Man would eventually
come back as he was; mostly he felt the same emptiness as when he had been
separated from his mother. That feeling had been supplanted by the attentions
of People, now it was a void partially filled by the simple process of
survival. But his interest in People, and his yearning for a connection with them, still
called to him. The
power had gone out in Wednesday‘s house. She had been listening to music and
it had stopped without warning, lights out, music silenced. "We
need to get out of here!" she screamed at her boyfriend. "Your parents are
safe. We need to get over there!" "I
don’t know. Those things, they’re out there now. They almost got to me when I
came in. I can’t do it right now." His head was dripping with sweat. He was
peeking from the second floor out onto the front. "Look, let’s take it easy
and go over in the morning." "Right,
and then you can sneak off and leave me like my mother! She didn’t care about
me, she ran to god knows where and didn’t even answer her cell phone! You’re
going to do just the same fucking thing and I can’t -" "No, nobody’s leaving you. I just can’t do it now. I’m sc - I’m worn out getting
over here." Something occurred to him, passed over his eyes. "Look, I have
some beer. We take it easy tonight, then we can run out - there might be fewer
of them. The army maybe, you know, maybe the army will have taken care of it.
Look, the moon’s out - you’ve got that big fence out in back. Let’s go out and
have a couple of beers. We’ll relax and in the morning - in the morning we’ll
make it out." When
she finally agreed, angrily and with just a nod, they walked out onto the back
porch, just a few feet off of the ground. Even with the added height the dead
that walked beyond the fence could not be seen. The boyfriend sat in an old
folding chair and drank; Wednesday pattered to and fro on the porch. She
rubbed a hand through her hair, and disturbed, finally started speaking with
him again. "Is my hair sticking straight up?" she asked. The
Cat was wandering, at night, when the Not-People saw even more poorly than
their living cousins. He paused by the side of a fence, hearing People
speaking. The Not-People heard too. They were on another side of the fence.
The Cat could hear their low moans and clumsy shuffling. But lured by the
sound of real People, he made his way under the fence. It
was a large, enclosed backyard, with several fine trees and bushes. It looked
like a small but rich hunting ground. On a raised porch off of the house two
young People stood talking, a male and a female. The female’s voice rose too
loudly, disturbing the Cat and attracting the attention of the Things out of
reach beyond the gate of the fence, a closed metal lever effectively locking
them out. The Cat crept closer to the People, wary as he was hopeful. He
crept closer and closer until he was at the steps leading up to the porch. "Hey
look," the male said. "It’s a cat." Wednesday
looked at it for a minute. Something occurred to her. "Throw your beer can at
it," she whispered. "What?" "Throw
the can at it," she repeated. Her
boyfriend took aim and tossed the quarter-full can at the Cat. It landed just
by him and the Cat, frightened, ran quickly away into the brush beneath the
trees in the yard. Both of the People’s laughter trailed after him. [ Continue to page 4 ] |