Peeps

Chapter 13



HOPEFUL MONSTERS



"Dude, get up."



My brain came awake slowly, appalled at the interruption of its first real sleep in ages. Then I smelled Lace's jasmine hair, heard Cornelius's claws scratching the closet door, felt the rat's infection in the air... and all of yesterday's memories crashed into place.



There was a deadly reservoir bubbling to the surface near the Hudson River. The parasite had jumped to a new vector species. I had betrayed the Night Watch, risking civilization as I knew it. And the most important thing? For the first time in six months I had spent the night with a girl, if only in the most narrow, technical sense.



Suddenly, I was awake, and feeling pretty decent.



"Come on, dude," Lace said, stabbing my shoulder with the toe of her shoe. "I've got class, but I want to show you something."



"Okay." I pulled myself from the bed, eyes gummy, my slept-in clothes clinging to me. Lace had already showered and changed, and a wondrous smell filled the apartment, even more wondrous than hers. "Is that coffee?"



She handed me a cup, smiling. "You got it, Sherlock. Man, you sleep like a dead dog."



"Huh. Guess I needed it." I gulped the coffee, strong and welcome, while crossing to the fridge and pulling out a package of emergency franks. My parasite was screaming for meat, having missed out on its usual midnight snacks. I ripped the plastic open and shoved a cylinder of cold flesh in my mouth.



"Whoa," Lace said. "Breakfast of crackheads."



"Hungry." It came out muffled through the half-chewed meat.



"Whatever wakes you up." Lace sat at the tiny table that separated the kitchen from my living room and pointed to a piece of paper on it.



Cornelius was screaming for food, winding around my feet. On autopilot, I opened a can.



"So I got this out of your coat pocket," Lace said. "And I noticed something weird."



"Wait. You did what?" I looked over her shoulder - spread across the table were the building plans Chip had printed for me. "You went through my pockets?"



"It was sticking out, dude. Besides, you and I have no secrets now." She shuddered. "Except that food; close your mouth while chewing."



I did, managing a necessary swallow.



"This is the basement of my building, right?" Lace continued. "No, don't open your mouth. I know it is." She stabbed at one corner of the printout. "And this is the rat pool below the health club. Did you get these plans from city records?"



"Mmm-hmm."



"Very interesting. Because they don't match reality. They don't show a swimming pool at all."



I swallowed. "You know how to read blueprints?"



"I know how to do research - and how to read." Her fingers traced a grid of little squares that filled one corner of the page. Next to it, the words Storage Units were neatly written. "See? No pool."



I studied the plans silently for a moment - remembering what Chip had said the day before. The pool was a few yards deep, just deep enough to reach the Underworld. Because someone had added a swimming pool, Morgan had been infected. Then me and Sarah and Maria ...



"A simple little change," I said softly. "How ironic."



"Dude, screw irony. I just wanted you to see how clever we journalism students are."



"You mean how snoopy you are."



Lace just grinned, then ran her eyes across my crumpled clothes and up-sticking hair. "Dude, you are bed-raggled."



"I'm what?"



"Bed-raggled. You know, you're all raggled from being in bed."



The gears in my head moved slowly. "Um, isn't it bedraggled?"



"Yeah, no kidding. But my version makes more sense, you know?" Lace checked the time on her phone. "Anyway, I've got to run." She swept up her bag from the table and headed for the door. Opening it, she turned back to face me.



"Oh, I don't have any keys to this place."



"Right. Well, I might get back pretty late tonight - I'm already behind schedule today." I cleared my throat, pointing at the fruit crate by the door. "There's an extra set in that coffee can."



Lace stuck her fingers into the can, rummaging through laundry quarters until she pulled out a ring of keys.



"Okay. Thanks. And, um, see you tonight, I guess."



I smiled. "See you tonight."



She didn't move for a moment, then shuddered. "Wow, all the discomfort of a one-night stand, with none of the sex. Later, dude."



The door slammed shut as I stood there, wondering what exactly she'd meant by that. That she was uncomfortable with me? That she hated being here?



That she'd wanted to have sex the night before?



Then I realized something else: I had trusted the biggest secret in the world to this woman, and I didn't even know her last name.



"There's actually a form for that?"



"Well, not for cats specifically." Dr. Rat tapped a few keys on her computer. "But yeah, here it is. ZTM-47/74: Zootropic Transmission to New Species." She pressed a button, and her printer whirred to life.



I blinked. I had imagined a citywide Watch alert, an extermination team scrambling and heading for the West Side, maybe even a meeting with the Night Mayor. Not a one-page form.



"That's it?" I asked.



"Look, it says, 'Process immediately' at the top. That's not nothing."



"But..."



"What are so you worried about, Kid? You secured the site, didn't you?"



"Um, of course. But does this happen a lot? A whole new species getting infected?"



"Don't you remember Plagues and Pestilence?" Dr. Rat said, disappointment on her face. "That whole week we spent on the 1300s?"



"Yes. But I don't consider once in the last seven hundred years to be a lot."



"Don't forget werewolves, and those bats in Mexico last century." She leaned back in her chair, staring up into the mysteries of the squeaking row of rat cages.



Dr. Rat's lair sort of freaks me out, what with all the rattling cages of rodents, the brand-new textbooks and musty bestiaries, and the shiny tools lined up to one side of the dissection table. (There's just something about dissection tables.)



"You know," Dr. Rat said, "there might even be some history of a cat-friendly strain. The Spanish Inquisition thought that felines were the devil's familiars and barbecued a whole bunch of them. Their theory was that cats stole your breath at night."



"I can see where they got that one," I said, remembering how often I'd woken up with all fourteen pounds of Cornelius sitting on my chest.



"But it's paranoid to focus on a handful of transmissions, Cal," Dr. Rat said. "You've got to keep your eye on the big picture. Evolution is always cranking out mutations, and parasites are constantly trying out new hosts - some kind of worm takes a crack at your intestines pretty much every time you eat a rare steak."



"Oh, nice. Thanks for that image."



"But most of them fail, Kid. Evolution is mostly about mutations that don't work, sort of like the music business." She pointed at her boom box, which was cranking Deathmatch at that very moment. "For every Deathmatch or Kill Fee, there are a hundred useless bands you never heard of that go nowhere. Same with life's rich pageant. That's why Darwin called mutations 'hopeful monsters.' It's a crapshoot; most fail in the first generation."



"The Hopeful Monsters," I said. "Cool band name."



Dr. Rat considered this for a moment. "Too artsy-fartsy."



"Whatever. But this peep cat looked pretty successful to me. I mean, it had a huge brood and was catching birds to feed them. Doesn't that sound like an adaptation for spreading the parasite?"



"That's nothing new." Dr. Rat threw a pencil in the air and caught it. "Cats bring their humans little offerings all the time. It's how they feed their kittens; sometimes they get confused."



"Yeah, well, this peep cat looked healthy. Not like an evolutionary failure."



Dr. Rat nodded, drumming her fingers on the top of PNS's cage. She'd already drawn the rat's blood and attached the test tube to a centrifuge in the corner of her lair. It had spun itself into a solid blur, rumbling like a paint mixer in a hardware store.



"That's not bad - given how many parasite mutations kill their hosts in a few days. But evolution doesn't care how strong or healthy you are, unless you reproduce."



"Sure ... but this brood was really big. Thousands of them."



"Maybe," she said, "but the question is, how does this new strain get into another cat?"



"You're asking me?" I said. "You're the expert."



She shrugged. "Well, I don't know either, Kid. And that's the deal-breaker. If the new strain doesn't have a way back into another kitty final host, then the adaptation is just a dead end. Like toxoplasma in humans, it'll never go anywhere."



I nodded slowly, wrapping my brain around this. If this new strain couldn't find a way to infect more cats, then it would die when the peep cat died. Game over.



I looked hopefully at Dr. Rat. "So we might not be facing a civilization-ending threat to humanity?"



"Look, cats would be a great vector for the parasite to jump from rats to humans, I'll give you that. A lot more people get bitten by cats every year than rats. But it's much more likely this is a one-off freak mutation. In fact, it's even more likely you just got spooked and didn't know what you were seeing."



I thought of the rumbling basement, the awful smell - maybe that had been a hallucination, but the peep cat I really had seen. "Well, thanks for the pep talk." I stood. "Hope you're right."



"Me too," Dr. Rat said softly, looking down at PNS.



I pulled the ZTM-47/74 off the printer. There would be many more forms to fill out that day; my writing hand was sore just thinking about it.



I stopped at the door. "Still, let me know what you think about that video. It looked like the peep cat was being worshipped by its brood of rats. Seems like that dynamic would take a few generations to evolve."



Dr. Rat patted the videotape I'd brought her. "I'm going to watch it right now, Kid." She gestured at the centrifuge. "And I'll let you know if Possible New Strain is a relative of yours. But I have one question."



"What?"



"Does he smell like one?"



I paused to take one last sniff of PNS, catching the little fluffs of joy the rat gave off as he consumed the lettuce she'd given him. Dr. Rat knows a lot about smells, which chemicals give each fruit and flower its distinctive aroma - but she'll never have the olfactory sense of a predator. Her nose has to live vicariously through us carriers.



"Yeah," I admitted. "He smells like family."



"Well, your nose probably knows what it's smelling. But I'll call you when I get firm results. In the meantime, here's a little something that might come in handy." She tossed me a little vial of yellow liquid. "That's Essence of Cal Thompson. Your smell. Might be useful if that brood is related to you. Just use it carefully. You don't want to cause a rat riot."



It looked like piss in a perfume bottle, and holding it gave me an equally unpleasant feeling. "Gee, thanks."



"And one more thing, Kid."



I paused, half out the door. "What?"



"Why did you use a spaghetti strainer? Don't they give you guys cages anymore?"



"Long story. See you later."



Walking down the halls of the Night Watch, I started to feel guilty.



While I'd been talking to Dr. Rat, I hadn't felt so bad about my indiscretions of the night before. We were pals, and I could almost believe she'd understand if I told her about spilling the beans to Lace. But as the implacable file cabinets rose on either side of me on my way into Records, I could feel the weight of my Major Revelation Incident growing with every step. It had made sense the night before, with Lace threatening to go to the newspapers, but this morning I felt like a traitor.



On the other hand, there was no changing my mind. I still didn't want Lace to disappear.



When I reached Chip's office, he looked up at me with a gaze that seemed somehow reproachful. "Morning, Kid."



"Hey, Chip." I cleared my throat and brushed away the guilty thoughts. "I found out what happened. They added a swimming pool."



"Who added a what?"



I pointed at the blueprints for Lace's building still spread across his desk, half obscured by stray papers and books. "A swimming pool a few yards deep, right on the lowest level. That's how the rat reservoir came up."



Chip stared at the blueprints, then at the yellowing plans of the PATH tunnel, his fingers finding the spot where the two intersected.



Finally, he nodded. "Yeah. If the pool had a drain, that would do it." He looked up at me.



"There was a big hole in the deep end," I said. "And I smelled something pretty bad coming from it. And felt a sort of... trembling. Like something big going under me."



"Like a subway train?"



I raised an eyebrow. That explanation hadn't occurred to me. "Maybe. But anyway, that hole is where the rats all disappeared when I cranked up my flashlight."



"The flashlight you broke?"



"Yes, the one I broke. Who told you that?"



He shrugged. "I hear things. Have you - ?"



"Yes, I'll file a DE-37." I waved the growing stack of forms in my hand.



He chuckled, shaking his head. "Man, you hunters. I break a pencil and there's hell to pay."



"I can see how that's deeply unfair, Chip. Especially if that pencil should try to kill you with its teeth and claws, or launch its brood of a thousand deadly paper clips against you."



Chip chuckled again, raising his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. Won't say another word against hunters. But don't say that Records never helped you out. We got some interesting data about your seventh-floor tenants this morning. I think you'll find it useful."



"You know where they are?"



"Afraid not. They've disappeared completely." He pulled out an envelope and removed five photographs. "But this is what they look like, or did last year anyway. Probably thinner now, those of them that are still alive."



I recognized Morgan, her dark hair and pale skin, eyebrows perfectly arched.



"Thanks." I took the photos from him and slid them into my jacket pocket.



"And one more thing," Chip said, unfolding a printed T-shirt across his chest. "This is for you."



I stared at the smiling face, the sequined guitar, the good-natured belly overlapping his belt: Garth Brooks.



"Um, Chip, am I missing something?"



"It's an anathema, Kid!" He grinned. "We found some online posts by a couple of your missing persons - Patricia and Joseph Moore. Both big Garth Brooks fans."



"And you went out and bought that thing?"



"Nope. Believe it or not, Hunt Equipment had it on file."



My eyebrows rose. "We had a Garth Brooks T-shirt on file?"



"Yeah. You know that big outbreak on the Upper West Side eight years ago? Couple of those guys were really into country music." He tossed the shirt to me. "Wear it next time you go down. Just in case our missing persons have gone subterranean."



"Great." I stuffed the T-shirt in my backpack. "Anything else?"



"Nope. But don't worry, we'll keep looking."



"You do that. And if you find out that Morgan was into Ashlee Simpson, don't worry - I've already got it covered."



Dr. Rat had been right about the ZTM-47/74 - it was a form that made things happen. Unfortunately, they weren't the things that I'd wanted to happen. Instead of a well-armed extermination team heading for Lace's building that afternoon, there was only me.



I was not empty-handed, though. I had a vial of Dr. Rat's Eau de Cal, a Ziploc bag of Cornelius dander, the Garth Brooks T-shirt on under my hazmat suit, a new flashlight and some other equipment in my duffel bag, and a work order signed by the Night Mayor himself, instructing me to capture the alleged peep cat. That last one was why I was flying solo. Apparently, a big squad of poison-wielding attackers might scare kitty away, and kitty was needed for testing.



So that meant me alone.



On my way across town, I stopped at a grocery store and bought two Crunchy Tunas and a can opener. Dr. Rat's experimental Cal extract might attract the peep cat, but I prefer the classics.



Manny was back at the door; he gave me a knowing wink.



"You going upstairs or downstairs, my friend?"



"Down, unfortunately." I slapped a fake By-Order-of-Sanitation document on his desk. Manny's eyes widened as he scanned it.



"Whoa, man. You're telling me we're getting shut down?"



"Just the health club. We found rats, a whole bunch."



"Oh, that's bad." He shook his head.



"Hey, there's no reason to make a fuss. You can say whatever you want about why it's off limits. Tell the tenants there's a gas leak or something."



"Okay." He exhaled through his teeth. "But the landlords aren't going to like this."



"Tell them the extermination won't cost anything. The city will handle it all."



"Really?"



"Yeah, I've personally got it covered. Just one thing, though."



He looked up from the document.



"I'll need the keys to the elevator," I said. "All of them. We don't want anyone wandering around in the basement. Not even building staff."



"Really?"



I leaned closer. "These rats ... very dangerous."



Manny looked doubtful about surrendering his keys. But after calling the fake phone number on the fake Sanitation order, he found himself reassured by a fake city official that everything would be okay as long as he cooperated. Soon I was headed down into the darkness again.



First, I dealt with the security cameras, sticking a piece of black tape over each of their lenses. Easy-peasy and some useful information might turn up for my trouble. If anyone bothered to fix the cameras, at least I'd know someone was paying attention.



Opening the locker, I stepped into the cave darkness, flicked on my new flashlight, and crept down the hidden hallway. Lace's and my footprints were still there, preserved in peanut butter, but no new ones had appeared.



I cut open the chained-up door again, and this time when I closed it behind me, I jammed wedges into the cracks, restuffing the steel wool underneath.



The site secured, I descended the stairs, flashlight in hand.



The swimming pool was almost quiet.



In the soft red glow I saw only a few dozen rats and the picked-clean skeletons of pigeons, sitting undisturbed. Apparently it wasn't feeding time. The peep cat wasn't in sight.



I found my abandoned duffel bag and I transferred a few necessary items to my new one, then stepped into the empty pool. My boots trod softly across the pigeon feathers. The few rats perching on the pool's edge watched me descend toward the deep end, mildly curious. A big fat one leaned his chin over the diving board, looking down at me.



Without a thousand panicking rodents in the way, I could see the drain much better. The concrete around it had collapsed, and through the jagged hole was a deeper darkness that offered up a damp and earthy smell. No scent of death.



The hole was big enough for a slender human body to slip through. Hunkering at the edge, I opened a can of cat food. The smell of Crunchy Tuna infused the air, and I heard little noses sniffing around me. But nothing came to investigate.



Dr. Rat has a word for what rats are: neophobic. In other words, they don't like new things. Related to them or not, I was something new in their environment, and Crunchy Tuna was too.



I pushed a chunk of Crunchy Tuna down into the hole. A liquid splat came from below. The space down there was big; I could hear its size in the echoes.



After a few minutes of waiting, I switched off the flashlight completely. Blind in the darkness, I hoped my ears might begin to listen harder. The few rats around me continued going about their business, cleaning themselves and squabbling. A few got up the courage to dart past me and down into the hole. They sniffed the dollop of cat food below, but I heard no little teeth daring to take a bite. They were a cautious bunch.



Rats send chemical signals to one another, emotions carried by smells. One nervous individual can make a whole pack of rats anxious, fear spreading through the population like a dirty rumor. And sometimes, a pack will suddenly abandon a place all at once, collectively deciding that it has bad vibes.



I wondered if the peep cat's brood was still jittery from my flashlight blast the night before. Maybe they had left this basement forever, fleeing far down into the Underworld.



Then I heard the meow.



It reached me from a long distance, sleepy and annoyed-sounding, through a prism of echoes. The cat was still down here.



But it wasn't coming to me; I had to go to it.



The concrete was brittle - a few solid kicks opened the hole enough for me to climb through. I lowered my duffel bag as far as possible, then dropped it. The clunk of metal told me that the floor was about ten feet below.



Holding onto the flashlight carefully, I slipped through and let myself fall. My boots hit solid ground with a crunch of shattered concrete that echoed like a gunshot.



I switched my flashlight on low again.



A tunnel stretched away into the darkness, extending as far as I could see in both directions. Decades of dust had settled in here, filling the bottom with a loose dirt floor. It was lined with uneven stones, century-old mortar barely holding them together. They were cold and wet to the touch - the tons of dirt over my head squeezing the groundwater through them like a fist around a wet rag.



A slight breeze moved through the passage, carrying the smells of rats, earth, and fungus. Still, nothing as foul and horrible as what I had scented the day before.



The breeze felt fresh; it had to be coming from some sort of opening at the surface. I decided to move upwind. With the air blowing into my face, I could smell whatever was in front of me without it smelling me.



I've been in a lot of underground spaces in New York - subway tracks, sewers, steam pipe tunnels - but this one was different. There were no stray bits of paper, no garbage, no smells of piss. Maybe it had lain undisturbed by human beings for the century since it had been built, carrying only air, rats, and the occasional peep cat beneath the city streets. The tunnel inclined slightly as I walked, a winding stain in the center of the floor showing where rain had trickled down the slope for the last hundred years.



Then I smelled something human on the breeze. Well... half human.



Peeps have a subtle scent. Their feverish bodies consume almost everything they eat, leaving few smells of waste. Their dry skin exudes none of the salty sweat of a regular person. But no metabolism is perfect - my predator's nose detected a hint of rotten meat and the whiff of dead skin cells, like fresh leather hanging on a boot factory wall.



The breeze died and I froze, waiting for it to come again. I didn't want my scent to drift ahead of me. A moment later, the air moved again, and the intimate smell of family washed over me.



This peep was a relative.



As softly as I could, I laid the duffel bag on the ground and pulled a knockout injector from the zippered pocket of my hazmat suit.



I switched off the flashlight and began to crawl, a wave of nerves rushing through me. This was the first peep I'd ever hunted who was an absolute unknown. The only anathema I had was the Garth Brooks T-shirt, which somehow didn't seem equal to the task. The darkness seemed to stretch forever before me, until a hint of light played across the blackness. Gradually I was able to make out the stones in the passage walls again, and my hands in front of my face ... and then something else.



What looked like tiny clouds were rolling along the floor, carried by the breeze. They glided toward me, silent and insubstantial, and when I waved a hand close to them, they stirred in its wake.



Feathers.



I took a pinch and held it up to my eyes. This was the soft white down from a pigeon's breast. As the light grew longer, I saw that the whole tunnel was carpeted with downy feathers; they clung to the ceiling stones and to my hazmat suit, rolling across the floor like a slow, ghostly tide.



Somewhere ahead, there were a lot of dead birds.



Larger feathers began to appear, the dirty gray and blue of pigeon and seagull wings, trembling in the breeze. I crawled silently across the carpeted dirt floor, feeling the softness under my palms and trying not to think of pigeon mites.



Ahead I could hear breathing, slow and relaxed for a peep.



The tunnel ended at a shaft that went straight up - light pouring down from above, a rusted iron ladder driven into the stone wall. A pile of feathers had collected at the bottom. A few whole birds lay on top of it unmoving, their necks twisted.



I froze, watching the breeze stir the feathers until a shadow moved across them. The peep was at the top of the ladder.



With the chill autumn air flowing down the shaft, it still couldn't smell me. I wondered why it was nesting up there, instead of hiding down here in the gloom. Placing my flashlight on the floor to free up my hands, I crawled to the end of the tunnel and peered up, eyes slitted against the sunlight.



He clung to the ladder twelve feet above me, staring out at the world like a prisoner at a cell window, the reddish light of late afternoon softening his emaciated face.



I lowered myself into a crouch, gripped the injector, and jumped straight up as high as I could.



He heard me at the last second, looking down just as I reached up to jam the needle into his leg. He twisted away, the injector missing completely. My hand grasped the ladder but the peep screamed and flailed his foot at me, landing a kick in my teeth. My grip loosened ... and I was falling.



I reached out to grab a passing rung and swung inward, bouncing against the stone wall and holding on for a bare second, the breath knocked from me. Then the peep was dropping toward me, hissing, teeth bared. His body struck me broadside, wrenching my fingers from the ladder rung. We fell together, landing in a crumpled heap on the pile of pigeon feathers, his wiry muscles writhing against me.



Black fingernails raked across my face, and I scrambled free and jumped away into the tunnel, cracking my head against the low stone ceiling. Dizzy from the impact, I spun to face him, hands raised.



The peep leaped up in an explosion of feathers, his black claws lashing through the air. I held up the injector to ward him off, and felt his flailing hand connect with it, a brief hiss sounding before the injector flew away into the darkness. The peep's next blow struck my head, knocking me to the ground.



He stood over me, silhouetted by the sunlight, swaying a little, like a drunk. I scrambled backward, crab style. He let out another scream...



Then tumbled heavily to the ground. The injection had knocked him out.



That good old peep metabolism, fast as lightning.



I blinked a few times, shaking my head, trying to force the pain away.



"Ow, ow, ow!" I said. I rubbed at a bump already rising on my scalp. "Stupid tunnel!"



When the pain had faded a little, I checked his pulse. Slow and thready, but he was alive - for a peep, anyway. The injection would keep him out for hours, but I tagged him to be certain, handcuffing him to the lowest ladder rung and sticking an electronic bracelet around his ankle. The transport squad could follow its signal here.



Finally, I sat back and grinned happily, letting a rush of pride erase my pain. Even if he was family, this was my first peep capture outside my own ex-girlfriends. I turned him over to look at his face. Thinner than his photograph, his cheekbones high and hair wild, this was a barely recognizable Joseph Moore. He looked way too skinny for a seven-month-old peep, though, considering the pile of feathers he'd accumulated.



What had he been doing at the top of the ladder, up there in the sun?



I pulled myself up the ladder, noting how smooth the walls of the shaft were. Too slick for a cat to climb, or even a rat - only a human being could make use of it.



At the top, the afternoon light slanted through the steel-grated window. The view was the Hudson River, from only a few feet above the water level. From just overhead I heard laughter and the hum of Rollerblades.



I was inside the stone bulwark at the edge of the island, I realized, right below the boardwalk where people jogged and skated every day, only a few feet from the normal daylight world.



Then I saw the broken black column in front of me, a pylon from an old pier, a rotting piece of wood just big enough for a pigeon or a seagull to perch on. There was bird crap all over it, and it was just within arm's reach.



Joseph Moore had been hunting.



Then a realization swept over me, and I gripped the ladder rungs with white knuckles, remembering the picked-clean pigeon skeletons and feathers back in the swimming pool. Joseph Moore was too skinny to have eaten all those birds at the bottom of the shaft; most had been carried away. He had been hunting for the brood. With his long human arms, he had brought them food that they couldn't reach.



But unlike most human peeps, Joseph Moore wasn't at the center of the brood. He'd been stuck out here on this lonely periphery, the hated sunlight shining in to blind his eyes, forced to give up his kills for the pack to eat.



He was nothing but a servant to the brood's real master.



"The cat has people," I said aloud.