A Private Little War(60)

Carter opened his mouth to speak, closed it, looked up curiously. “What do you mean, ‘not Morris’? Why not Morris?”

“I just mean no one expected Morris to be the first to go.” Fenn paused. His brows came together to make a single straight wrinkle in the middle of his forehead. A fresh topography, as though no wrinkle had ever perturbed that place before. “Or next to go, rather.”

“But why’d you say it like that? Like ‘of course, not Morris’?” Carter stretched, popping joints from toes to fingertips, and it felt good. He wanted to sleep just two or three more years, he thought. Two or three more years and then maybe he’d be able to find the energy to get up and fight this war in proper good humor. “You’re talking like there was a pool going or something.”

“There was,” Fenn said.

“What?” Carter pushed himself up on one elbow, actually facing Fenn. “Why didn’t you tell me about it? You know I would’ve kicked in.”

Fenn stood. “Because you were on the top of the list, Kev.”

Carter thought about that for a moment, then bounced to his feet all in one quick motion—a trick he had for fooling his brain into accepting a new orientation before the lingering hangover could make him all dizzy and nauseated. And it worked, more or less. At least he didn’t fall over.

“You should’ve told me about it anyway,” he said. “I would’ve put fifty bucks on me, too.”

It hadn’t been what he’d wanted to say, but it was what he said. Then he clapped Fenn on the shoulder and led the way through the door and out into the world.





Carter’d taught Cat a trick a while ago. It hadn’t been much of a trick, but it was something. If Carter could get the thing’s attention—and if Cat was feeling frisky—he could throw a ball, a sock, a wadded-up bit of paper across the tent and, no matter where it landed, Cat would pounce on it and destroy it, shredding it to pieces. It didn’t matter what Carter said once the object had left his hand, but he usually said something like “Kill it, Cat! Kill!” just to feel like he was involved somehow, like this was something he’d accomplished by long training, not just the exploitation of instinct and Cat’s own murderous temperament.

If it rolled into the mess under Fenn’s rack, Cat would pursue it. If it bounced out the door, Cat would rocket off after it. And when the little monster was done demolishing its target, it would return like a dog to exactly the place it’d been when Carter started the game and wait, expectantly now, to see if he’d do it again.

One night, not paying attention, Carter’d absently thrown a crumpled ball of slick photo paper that had ended up between the legs of the potbellied stove, resting in the scorched dirt beneath the blazing hot body of the thing. And Cat had gone after it, of course. Only it was too large to fit, even slithering on its belly.

The creature had screamed as it dragged its back along the underside of the stove, snapping at the paper with its jaws and howling like nothing Carter or Fenn had ever heard before. And even as they’d both leaped up, they could smell Cat burning—a stink like flaming hair and charred meat and some greasy filth.

Fenn, in a strange instant, had panicked. Carter remembered him standing, bouncing on his toes, and waving his hands up and down in front of his chest, squealing, “Help it! Help it!” It was so unlike him that it’d stuck in Carter’s mind. For his part, Carter’d grabbed Cat by the back legs and dragged it out, yelling the whole time. Not words, just unintelligible noises of fear and anger.

There was a bloody chunk missing from Carter’s hand now that’d scarred terribly. Cat’d bitten him, had torn the flesh from his arm in ribbons that required dozens of stitches from Doc Edison who’d been so happy to have something to do that he’d made most of a day out of it. Eyes rolled back, terrified, Cat had thrashed and fought and finally squirmed free of Carter’s blood-slick hands, hit the floor, and then went right back under the stove again, right back after the paper. In the end, Carter and Fenn had had to hold Cat down, wrap it tightly in a blanket to quiet it, get the paper, and throw it out the door. Carter’s first instinct had been to feed the paper into the stove, but Fenn had stopped him.

“Cat’ll go after it,” he said. “It will. Just throw the paper away.”

So Carter had, tossing it out the door. And as soon as they’d unwrapped the blanket, Cat had gone after it, just like Fenn had said. And when it was done, Cat came back—burned and meaty, scales blackened, panting from pain—to sit right in the spot where it’d been when Carter had first thrown the paper. It’d stared up at him with wide, rolling eyes, waiting to go again. There were wet, red stripes on its back where the stove had burned it raw.