P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

He decided on the right-hand door, since that’s where he had ended up. He walked in and levered the big strap out of its hasp and swung it up and over behind the hinges. Then, his. 45 ready, he pulled the door open. It was very heavy, but it moved silently on well-greased iron hinges. The door was at least eight inches thick, which would certainly have muffled any response to his calls. Inside, there was another passageway, but this one was narrower and much lower than the one he’d walked down to get here. He might fit through there on hands and knees, but he wouldn’t want to try it. The air in the passage smelled infinitely better than in the cage room, and it blew toward him in a gentle breeze. The dangling lightbulb swayed imperceptibly on the ceiling, throwing some shadows around the walls. He decided to leave this door open while he checked the other doors, if only to improve the air.

Which one next? He looked down at the floor of the cages to see if he could determine whether the muck was any fresher in one or than in the other. The straw was such a mess, he couldn’t tell. The left one, then. He opened it and found yet another passageway, this one a little higher but just as narrow. This time, he bent down and looked at the mud on the other side of the doorjamb. Were those prints? Yes, they were. Fresh? Who the hell knows, he thought. My tracking skills haven’t improved since the last time I saw some of these. No fresh air moved out of this passageway, however, so he pushed the door shut, not bothering to reset the locking bar. He wondered how far back those tunnels went, and he wished the dogs had been braver. On the other hand, everyone always said they were smart dogs.

Okay, Jay-Kay, wherever you are, this time it’d better be the lady, he thought. You promised. With a grunt, he opened the center door and saw a shallow rock cavity about six feet deep. It was stacked with cardboard boxes. Hunched in the middle of the stacks was Mary Ellen Goode. She was strapped into what looked like a stripped-down clone of the steel chair in the trailer. Adhesive tape covered her mouth, and a damned cell phone lay in her lap. He started to say something but then saw that she was staring at him with a look of pure terror on her face. Actually, he realized, she was looking behind him.

There were two mountain lions standing in the area in front of the cages, glaring at him. When he turned fully around, they both reacted by lifting their lips and exposing far too many teeth. The larger of the two lowered its head and issued a loud growling hiss, while the other one started to slink off to one side, never taking its eyes off the two humans in the storage room. The door he’d left unlocked in the left-hand cage was now ajar.

Cam took out the. 45 and moved as carefully as he could toward the door of the cage. He could see that both cats were in poor shape-thin, almost emaciated, with crud in their eyes and an unhealthy color to their fur. He realized they were starving, which probably didn’t help his and Mary Ellen’s situation any. He kept the. 45 in his right hand pointed in their direction, although he didn’t really want to fire that thing down here in a stone cavern. With his left hand, he carefully reached out to the edge of the door and began to swing it shut. This time, the other cat growled at him, although neither one of them made a lunge for the door as he managed to get it shut. He felt for a latch, then remembered he was inside the cage. Both cats began to prowl back and forth in front of the three cages, although they were keeping their distance. Maybe they’re tame, he told himself. He wondered if starving canceled out tame.

Reaching through the pencil-thick wire squares, he felt for and finally found the middle of the three latches and pulled the bolt across until it seated in the frame of the door. Then he felt secure enough to go back and get Mary Ellen out of that horrible chair. He let her take off the adhesive tape while he kept one eye on those two cats. If they charged the door, the heavy oak frame ought to keep them out.

“Don’t shoot them” was the first thing Mary Ellen said once she got the tape off.

Ever the animal sympathizer, Cam thought. “Won’t if I can help it,” he said. “You okay?”

“Thirsty,” she said. “How did you find me down here?”

“I got mail,” he said. “Jay-Kay sent me GPS coordinates. Are we alone, you think?”

As if in answer to his question, there came a loud thump from the direction of the entry tunnel and a squeeze of air pressure in the cavern. Both cats reacted with low squalls. Cam swore. That was the big trapdoor in the chicken coop. He had laid it all the way on its back when he first opened it. There was no way that it could have fallen back shut. Someone had just closed it. Should have left the damned dogs loose, he realized. Mary Ellen understood at once.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Not the end of the world,” he said. “In a couple of hours, there’ll be people out here looking. I came alone but checked in with Carrigan County along the way.”

The cats were prowling closer to the wire doors now, as if trying to figure out how to get in.

“What’s in the boxes?” he asked.

Mary Ellen, rubbing her wrists, went to check while Cam watched the cats. She grunted in surprise. “Would you believe dog food?”

“A mountain lion eats dog food?” Cam asked.

“Those two would eat each other at this juncture,” she said. “I see deer bones in the straw, so this stuff was probably emergency rations.”

“Maybe if we fed them, they’d lose interest in us,” he said.

“Worth a try,” she replied, and went to work with a rusty can opener that was hanging by the door. The cats stopped pacing when she started opening cans and sat down.

“Nice kitty-kitty,” Cam intoned hopefully. They both hissed at him this time, but they were watching Mary Ellen. She found a steel feed bowl under the straw and filled it with six cans of dog food. “Now what?” she said again, echoing Cam’s own thoughts. How could they get the bowl through the door without losing an arm?

Mary Ellen solved the problem. She carried the bowl to the cage door. Holding the bowl in one hand and working the bolt with the other, she backed out the bolt and then yelled at the two cats, which promptly slunk back away from the door. She opened it, slid the bowl in, and then rebolted the door.

What happened next wasn’t pretty. The larger cat ran to the bowl, as did the smaller one. The larger one whirled on its haunches and attacked the smaller one with a thumping whirlwind of slashing paws. The smaller one shrieked once and then rolled away from the bowl. It lay down on the stone floor and licked its wounds, never taking its eyes off the rapidly disappearing dog chow.

Mary Ellen opened another can at both ends and threw it through the wire to a far corner of the room. The wounded cat pounced on it and began grinding the can in its jaws. It hurt Cam’s teeth just to watch it, but Mary Ellen simply opened up another three cans and threw them in the same general direction.

“Really starving,” Cam said.

“And tamed males,” she said. “And that’s the crime of taming a wild animal. Ultimately, somebody forgets, and they starve, which hurts.” She opened up one more can of dog food and threw it to the front of the cave, where it splashed.

Cam blinked. Splashed?

He stared through the dim light and saw water at the front of the cavern. There was a steady stream of water coming down the passageway. Mary Ellen saw it, too. She didn’t have to say “now what” again, either. The smaller cat was ignoring the water as it savaged the individual cans of dog food. The big guy had licked the bowl clean and was now headed over to the corner where the last can of dog food was being flattened. There was more growling and hissing, but they had evidently reduced the edge of their hunger to the extent that there was no more fighting. The big one started lapping water from what was rapidly becoming a small lake, and the smaller cat joined in. Some of the larger clumps of straw out in front of the cages were beginning to float.