‘You remember the basement where we spent the night?’ He points to the drainpipe. To the brick beyond, more ruin than building, and thick with the shadows of the fading day.
She nods, assessing his words – her options. She wants the ledger, and I confess to curiosity about that worn black leather as well. Still … she stares at Tick, but he has already turned.
‘Come on,’ he says. She follows.
I keep close as we cross the wasteland, flanking the boy but out of reach. I stay before her, in her sight, ready to react. I will not flee at the unexpected but rather sound the alarm – what alarm I can, with howl and hiss and claw. It is not much of a guarantee, but I owe it to the girl. In truth, my aching side reminds me, I am hunting now on borrowed time, and while I do not understand just how our lives have become intertwined, I respect it – the debt owed from one lone creature to another as the roles of hunter and of prey shift and mutate like the shadows in my dream.
‘This way.’ The boy ducks into the pipe and I steel myself. This is too like a trap, its narrow, unlit passage perfect cover for all manner of evil. A trickle of water, opalescent and polluted, flows out into the rocky dirt and I sniff at it for signs of movement. Signs of life.
‘Don’t, Blackie.’ She has come up behind me and misinterprets. ‘That’s not healthy.’ She bends to touch me – no, to pick me up, and I must leap ahead. I will do her no good couched in her arms. If I am ensnared, so be it: at least I will give warning. But as soon as I descend, I see the graying light ahead. The day is fleeting but this tunnel, at least, is not obstructed and so I dash through it and beyond, whirling as I do to catch sight of any ruse or ambush. There is nothing. An unseen crow mocks us from the lowering clouds, and that is all.
Care emerges behind me, blinking, her trepidation clear as she cranes her head.
‘I told you.’ The boy sounds petulant now, his value doubted. ‘It’s my safe place – mine alone.’
He turns and wordlessly we follow, my guard hairs up and senses keyed for trouble. Down pitted streets where cobblestones show through broken asphalt, we make our way. Only the puddles here give evidence of the passage of machines, their oily stench almost as overpowering as that of the foil-wrapped packet that Care has taken from the boy. It hangs between them, I can see, as he glances back and as she shoves her hand once more into her pocket. But he moves freely, without the cramped and desperate look I remember from their former colleagues – from AD’s crew, almost a child again as he jumps across a pothole and skids on greasy stone.
And then he stops, one hand out as if to still us, too. A trick he has learned from Care. We pause, waiting for his signal. Waiting, too, for the ambush that will finally arrive. Three men. I now have names for two – Brian and Randy – and while I do not share the human’s reverence for naming – my own now lost to time and water – I find some comfort in the knowing. These are the brutes who would see me dead. There is peace in clarity. Satisfaction in my knowledge.
‘Tick?’ The girl’s voice is soft, barely a murmur. After a moment, he responds.
‘All clear,’ he says, stepping into the street. I pass in front of Care, mindful as I do of the superstition about my kind, half remembered, and pause for a second, waiting. No, there is no other movement here, no watchers waiting, and so I turn and follow, freeing her to walk as well. We cross the street to a familiar entrance and descend to Tick’s basement hideaway at last.
‘Here.’ On his familiar turf the boy becomes an eager child again, heading straight for the pile of bricks where once he had his stock of food. ‘I came here when they let me go. When I got away.’
He moves two bricks, one in each of his dirty hands, and then two more, before pulling out a large flat shape wrapped in rags. Peeling the cloth back, he reveals the ledger and hands it, proud as a prince, to Care, who immediately takes it over to where a gap lets in the last of the afternoon light.
‘Let’s see what’s gotten AD all riled up,’ she says and pauses. ‘Thanks, Tick. You did well.’
The boy glows, despite it all. And Care opens the book.
TWENTY-TWO