seventy.
The cat was in a double-thickness shopping bag, tied at the top
with heavy twine. The bag was in the passenger bucket seat. The
cat had been sleepy and purring when Halston put it in, and it had
purred through the entire ride. It sensed, perhaps, that Halston
liked it and felt at home with it. Like himself, the cat was a one-
stick.
Strange hit, Halston thought, and was surprised to find that he was
taking it seriously as a hit. Maybe the strangest thing about it was
that he actually liked the cat, felt a kinship with it. If it had
managed to get rid of those three old crocks, more power to it ...
especially Gage, who had been taking it to Milford for a terminal
date with a crew-cut veterinarian who would have been more than
happy to bundle it into a ceramic-lined gas chamber the size of a
microwave oven. He felt a kinship but no urge to renege on the hit.
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.
