seemed to get a little hesitant at the sound of his voice, but they didn’t take off and retreat to a safe place. “Come on, man! We’re on the second rung of the food chain, Talbot,” Mike said, trying to steel himself for what needed to be done. “Third, if you include sharks.”
“Has Tracy been nominated for Sainthood yet?” Gary asked.
“Just watch my back.”
“From the zombies or the cats?” he asked.
“The cats, definitely the cats.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
They moved a foot forward, the cats yielded half that, seeming to grow bolder as they stepped deeper into the house.
“They’ve got in behind us, Mike. What the hell is going on?”
“I’d say that they’re pretty hungry.”
Mike’s trepidation increased as he got closer to the kitchen opening. The cats seemed very reluctant to yield the ground to their front. They were almost protective, like they had a prize they were unwillingly to share. A cat actually bit his boot as he crossed in, Mike gently kicked it away, not quite willing to add animal cruelty to his list of transgressions. He had never been a huge cat fan, but he’d never had reason to hate them until he walked into that kitchen.
“Oh God,” Mike said softly. Gary retched behind him.
A shredded human, bones glistening wetly with the remnants of bodily fluids and cat saliva stared back at them with an eyeless gaze. Its jaw bone was missing as was a portion of its lower leg. All that remained was a shock of hair on top and strips of blue denim. It was the white gold wedding band, lying a few feet from the body that brought Mike to the full realization of who lay before him.
Mike whirled, quicker than any of the cats could respond and lashed out with his heavy boot. The crack of ribs as he launched a cat into the far wall was only superseded by his satisfaction as he came down heavily on the spine of another. It wriggled its head uselessly from side to side, its legs now a useless jumble of spare parts.
The cats were mewling and scurrying about, some running, some defending.
“What is going on, Mike?” Gary asked. He was as scared as Mike had ever seen him.
“That’s Paul on the floor there and these fucking things did it!” Mike screamed as he lashed out at anything that was foolish enough to get within striking range. Within five minutes, he had killed or wounded at least a dozen of them. The rest had seen the folly of trying to tackle two full grown, healthy, armed and defensive men. Mike had received more than a few razor-sharp claw slashes, but that had only added fuel to the fire that the cats had ignited.
He didn’t know if Gary had gone on the offensive at all, but he had protected his back as some of the cats tried to launch themselves at him from varying pieces of furniture. Mewls of pain and rage echoed from around the house. They’d be back, most likely waiting for the cover of darkness.
“Cowards!” Mike screamed. He was shaking with his emotions, that fluctuated wildly from pain to rage to mourning. Gary grabbed him in a big hug.
“It’ll be alright, brother,” he kept saying over and over.
But it wouldn’t be, now or ever. This was one more hard stop marker in life that Mike would never be able to step back over. There would be life with his best friend of almost thirty years and then there would be a much dimmer life with him after. Mike sobbed into his brother’s shoulder to the point where his head ached and a good dry cleaner would never be able to get the snot out of his jacket.
“We need to bury him,” Mike finally managed to get out.
“I feel the same way, but I don’t really want to stay here long enough for the zombies to leave so that we can do that. Maybe we can head out the backyard and come back.”
Gary’s idea was valid in almost every way, but Mike could not leave his friend here with the cats to pick through whatever remained of him.
“The backyard it is, but we’re burning this fucker down,” Mike said with rage-fueled words.
Mike scoured the house, looking for some sort of accelerant to make sure this house would burn hot enough to rival the depths of hell. The best he could do was a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol. The cats did not come out, but there was not a room in that house that they were not observed by multiple eyes. The only thing that was stopping them and barely, was the size discrepancy.
“Mike, you should come here,” Gary said from the other side of the house, back from the kitchen Mike was doing his best to avoid.
Mike braced myself and did his best to remember his friend as he had been in life, not the carcass that lay on the floor. Mike almost sobbed when he went in. Gary at some point had draped a blanket over Paul. There would never be any way Mike could thank him properly for that.
“What’s up, brother?”
He handed Mike Paul’s wedding band. “I think you should be the one to give this back to Erin.”
Mike would rather hammer nails through his toes than have to give her back her dead husband’s ring. She would never forgive him. He lost two friends today. Mike nodded as he took the ring from Gary’s palm.
“The stove is gas,” he said.
Mike was still staring at the ring now in his hand, Gary’s words merely a jumble of mish-mashed sounds.
“Did you hear me?”
Mike nodded only because he heard the uplifting sound of a question and it seemed appropriate. But he hadn’t, not in any cognitive way. Mike was shutting down, the accumulated stress of the entire ordeal was beginning to break him. He had always thought those people that claimed they had an emotional breakdown were weak-minded. That was until he began to suffer through his own, and then he pitied each one of them, because if they had been pushed that far to the brink, something had gone horribly wrong in their lives.
“Mike!” Gary said on the verge of a yell.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Mike said like a little kid lost in the woods.
“Where the hell else would you be?” Gary asked.
“Sorry, bro, this is just…”
“I know, Mike, I know. We’ve all lost ones we love, but there isn’t time, not yet. You’ll have to grieve later. Can you do that for me?”
Mike stared at him through watery eyes. “When did you become the leader type?”
“You like that?” he asked.
“Not bad and thank you,” Mike said. He wasn’t better, not by a long shot and maybe not ever, but he was functioning. Mike was still at the abyss; except now it was to his back. He was not sure if this new precarious position was the best place to be, but it gave him a chance to make this fucked-up world pay, starting with the damn cats.
“The stove is gas,” Gary repeated. “And I found matches.”
The cats were back at the kitchen entrance. Hunger is a powerful motivator, even more so than the need to breed. And how many species killed each other for the right to do that?
“Do you think they know something is up?” Gary asked as he pulled the stove out to get access to the gas line.
“I wouldn’t doubt it. I’ve read that cats have an open gateway to the spirit world and I bet their ancestors are telling them that these shit birds are about to join them in the afterlife. I would imagine that news isn’t sitting too well with them.”
A large gray tom strode into the kitchen, emboldening the rest of his clowder. Dozens of cats were behind him and back out of eyesight, in the living room.
“How’s that going?” Mike asked Gary, never taking his gaze from the large gray, and the accumulating throng. He knew if he broke contact with him or them, they would attack. Mike knew they had size on the cats, but the combined weight of the small predators most likely outweighed them both.
“Got it!” Gary said with a grunt as he stood up with one end of the disconnected piping. The noxious gas fumes combined with the ammonia smell almost put Mike on his ass. Something about the hissing of the escaping gas or the smell triggered the cats into action. Mike noted that the gray had not moved as his minions streamed past.
“Gary, get out of there! We’ve got to go.” Mike hoped his voice wasn’t approaching falsetto, but he was
