The Battle Begins (9 page)

16

M
EALTIMES WERE USUALLY NOISY, SOCIAL OCCASIONS
where the animals could leave the misery of training behind. It was a time to unwind. And the only time Castor could get water since he still couldn't reach the water bowl in his cell. But when Castor reported to slop that afternoon, there were no boisterous howls, no chatty nickering, no joyful whinnies to greet him.

“That was pretty scary, what you did in the Pit,” Samken finally said. He looked up at Castor from under
thick lashes, a quiver in his voice.

“I had no choice,” Castor explained. After hours of being ground into the floor by Slim's boot, the insistent whistle driving Castor crazy, the unthinkable humiliation of Horace's alpha roll, what else could he have done? “They just kept pushing me harder and harder.”

“Most of us don't want to fight each other. But you have to be careful. That's exactly how they trained the Invincible,” Moss said quietly.

Castor felt the fur along his spine rise. Moss was staring past the group to the poster of the white tiger head and the arching scorpion stinger, and Castor waited for the veteran Unnatural to say more.

Before he could, Enza cut in with a loud snort. “Castor is nothing like Laringo,” she protested indignantly. “Are you all really afraid of a mangy street dog? He doesn't look anything like his poster.” She glanced toward the back of the room. “What a joke! I've never even seen him hold up those floppy wings.”

In her own illustration, Enza's eyes looked crossed, her fur looked matted, and sitting on the ground like that, with her belly roll hanging to the floor, the grizzly was more flabby than ferocious. You couldn't even see her tiger's tail.

Castor knew Enza was cutting him down now to feel
better about herself, but he was relieved that she'd broken the tension. And looking at his poster made Castor remember something else.

“She's right,” he said, trotting over to it. “Even the Whistlers think I'm pathetic, or they wouldn't have called me the Underdog!”

The animals were looking around in confusion, but Deja's glass-like eyes studied him with interest and understanding. “The s-s-shepherd dog can s-s-spell?”

Castor had forgotten that being able to read was anything special, but now everyone was crowding around him, forgetting their trepidation as they asked about their own new identities.

Samken was the most excited about his stage name. He lumbered over to his poster and tried hard to mimic the fierce expression of the illustration. “Could I be the Enforcer?” he asked with a grimace that just made him look constipated. “How about now?” He looked up at the picture and blew out his cheeks. “Hey . . . what's that other writing?” Samken reached a tentacle toward the ceiling.

At first, Castor thought he meant the Unnaturals banner, but then the elephant said, “Right there,” and slapped the upper-left corner of the poster. When he pulled the tentacle free with a wet, sucking sound, it left
a slimy streak over a paw-print sigil that Castor hadn't noticed before.

Castor squinted. Inside the sigil on Samken's poster, he could just barely make out the tiny red letters. “Team Klaw,” he read, and that sent everyone into a frenzy.

“What team am I on?” demanded Rainner, nudging Castor with his horn.

“You're also Team Klaw.” Castor tried not to flinch as he answered the armored lizard.

Deja had snaked up Samken's treelike legs to get a better look. Her head waved out in front of his face like an extra tentacle, reaching toward her own red sigil. “It looks like I am, too.”

Castor nodded. “So is Laringo. And it says I'm on Team Scratch.” He walked along the wall, using his nose to point out the paw prints with the yellow text. “With Enza, Jazlyn, and Moss.”

Jazlyn flashed Castor a quick smile. But not everyone was excited. Samken, for one, looked crestfallen.

“But we're best friends!” He reached a tentacle toward Jazlyn's panther tail, giving it a tug. “We have to be on the same team!”

“You're on the winning team,” Rainner said. “And we're going to crush the competition!”

He shouldered against Samken playfully—as if the octo-elephant were an old buddy and not someone Rainner had recently attacked over breakfast—but Samken flinched away from him. He rubbed the soft skin of his side where Rainner's armor had scraped against it.

Rainner flashed a reptilian smirk. “Like I said before, some animals were born to conquer.” He nodded up at the image of himself, mid-charge. “And others . . .” He smiled at Jazlyn and Castor, his mouth full of pointy little teeth stained with red saliva, and Castor remembered the rest:
And others are destined to fall
.

“The teams don't matter, anyway,” Moss said. The other animals turned to look at the striped bull, who was still standing at the trough by himself.

“OF COURTHH THEY MATTER!” Enza, who'd been strangely silent, roared suddenly, and spit flew in all directions.

Those first few days in the prison, Castor had listened as Enza practiced her
S
's long into the nights. He knew how hard she'd worked to conquer the speech impediment from her saber teeth, so hearing her lisp again now, Castor knew she must be pretty upset.

“I'm not thupposed to be with a bunch of thithies.” Enza swiped a thick paw at her own poster, slashing
through Team Scratch's yellow sigil. Now that she had everyone's attention, she licked her lips and concentrated hard on the words. “I'm supposed to be with the Invincible.”

“You want so badly to be with your hero.” Moss studied Enza for a long moment, his jaw slowly working the cud. “Do you even know why Laringo isn't in here with us?”

“He's superior and deserves to be pampered,” Enza fired back.

But the other animals were watching Moss intently, waiting for an answer. They'd all been wondering, but no one had dared to ask.

The veteran stepped out from behind the trough so that he could address all of them. “The handlers trained Laringo so well, pushed him so hard, brainwashed him so completely, that now he doesn't just fight on command—fighting is who he is. He's kept apart from us because he'd slash into you at the slop. Claw you through the cells. Sting you in your sleep.”

“What about the rules?” Jazlyn asked. “You said—”

But Moss was shaking his gnarled horns. “For Laringo, the rules don't matter. He became what they said he was—Invincible. Unstoppable. And fans come to watch, hoping that someone will beat him. The handlers will
drive us into the ground if it makes us want to fight one another. They want someone to put up a fight against Laringo. Everyone loves underdogs.”

He looked at Castor and then walked back toward the trough, his tail swishing restlessly.

17

You smell the squirrel before you see him. You smell his brothers, too, urging you on your hunt. You follow their nutty scent through rustling grasses and over ground packed with pine needles. You hear the drumming of their little hearts, the catch in their breath. They scramble up tree trunks and dart through the leaves, but you are closing in.

You come into a clearing and see squirrels all
around you, perched in the branches. Soon you will feast.

But strangely, they are not cowering from your slavering jaws.

They are staring. This is a stadium built of trees, and the squirrels are the audience. They start to snicker, a hundred squirrel voices tittering in unison, and your blood runs cold.

Then you feel it. There's something on your back.

Crawling.

You crane your neck behind you, but no matter which way you look, it's just out of your view. It's creeping all over you, and the squirrels laugh and laugh and laugh.

“Get it off me! Get it off!” Castor howled in panic. He was already on his feet and chasing his tail in circles, tripping over his talons and slamming into the stack of metal weights as he tried to get a look at whatever terrible thing had a hold of him.

But there was nothing there. He was still training in the Pit. After dinner at the slop, Slim had made Castor do another two hours on the treadmill at a grueling pace—probably as revenge for Castor injuring his arm.
Castor must've fallen asleep there after the “extra” training. There was no sign of the handlers and, looking around, he saw that the other animals had all gone back to their cells.

Castor's muscles ached. He might as well catch a bit more sleep before the Whistlers came to get him. Castor collapsed onto the treadmill mat and shut his eyes, waiting for his dreams to carry him back to the Greenplains and far away from here. . . .

Then Castor heard snickering, and his eyes snapped back open.

The squirrels,
he thought groggily, but it wasn't a squirrel's voice that spoke to him.

“I heard they brought in another dog.”

It sounded . . . canine.

“Hello?” he asked. He peered between the rows of exercise machines, but there was no movement among their metallic arms.

“I heard he took on an entire pack in Lion's Head.”

The voice was closer now, and it seemed to be coming from above. Castor tilted his head back and squinted against the fluorescent light . . . and almost jumped out of his skin when he saw the starlike shadow dropping down.

It was hanging directly over him!

Castor tried to scramble out of the way, but his
overworked muscles screamed with each movement.

At the first touch on his back, Castor's body went rigid, and when the eight hairy feet traveled over him, his own fur stood on end. It was just like in the dream—worse than in the dream—and Castor shook his body violently, trying to get it, whatever it was, off him. Finally, the creature scuttled onto the floor, where he could get a good look at it.

The Unnatural standing before Castor was truly hideous. It was part arachnid, that was clear, but not like the tiny spiders whose webs Castor had sometimes seen shimmering between buildings back home. This thing was bigger, hairier, creepier.

Its legs were each as long as Castor's tail, and were made up of four fat segments that started rusty brown near the tips and darkened to a deep blue-black near the bulbous body. When Castor saw the size of the red fangs wiggling between the two front legs, a violent shiver ran through him.

“What are you?” he asked.

“I am Pookie!” the high voice squealed happily, and it sounded so harmless that Castor forced himself to drag his eyes up from those menacing fangs to look at the animal's face. Perched over the spider legs was a tiny head that featured a small, delicately pointed snout, two eyes
like brown marbles, and a pair of comically large triangular ears.

“You're a mini!” Castor exclaimed in surprise.

An old mini, which was rare. The fur on the canine face looked like it had once been black, but it was heavily speckled with the white whiskers of age. The hairs that sprouted above the animal's eyes, fanned out of his ears, and dangled under his chin were all white, too, and, instead of the silky texture Castor usually saw on minis, they were long and wiry. He was probably the oldest mini Castor had ever seen.

“I'd prefer that you not use that slur,” the mini—the creature—scolded. “You may call me ‘Pookie the Poisonous, Unnatural First-class Canis Atrax, Undefeated Chihuahua Warrior of the Streets, the Whistlers, and the Arena.' Or you can just call me Pookie.” Pookie's small muzzle stretched into a grin, and Castor saw that he only had a few of his pointy little teeth left. Not that it mattered, though, with those scary fangs. “And who are you?”

“I'm . . .” Castor's talons flexed against the sand. “They're calling me the Underdog. But I'm not even a dog anymore,” he said, lifting and shrugging his awkward wings pointedly.

“No,” Pookie agreed. “What you are is a heap on the floor.”

Castor had felt too tired to get up before, and now he just felt dejected. He sprawled out even flatter on his belly.

“I guess so. Just a jumble of parts that don't work. A mutant. A monster. A freak.” He winced, thinking of Perry the parrot.

“Never mind
what
you are right now. Let's start with
who
you are, shall we? What is your name, pup?”

“The Under—”

Pookie held up a slender leg in protest. “Your real name.”

“Castor.”

“Is that all?” Pookie prompted, bouncing a little to show his encouragement.

“Fine,” Castor sighed. With his chin still resting on his paws, he mumbled, “I'm ‘Castor German Shepherd, Descendent of the Mexican Wolf and Third Dog of the Trash Mountain Pack on the Southside of Lion's Head.'”

“Good!” Pookie lifted Castor's chin with one of his sticky feet, and when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly firm. “Remember who you are, pup. Always remember that first, and you will take away their power. They will try to take many things from you while you are here, but they cannot take that.”

“They already did!” Castor whined. “I don't have any
of that anymore. I'll never see my pack again.” He'd been trying to put his old life out of his mind, and the thought of his pack mates, of Runt and Bill Bull and even Alpha, made his eyes glisten and his heart ache.

Pookie was less sentimental.

“Perhaps you will.” The Chihuahua-spider cocked his head matter-of-factly. “Or perhaps not. But perhaps you must find your new pack in here.” He gestured one of his many legs around the empty Pit.

“New pack?” Castor was indignant. The thought of replacing his family was more than he could bear. “A pack is something you're born into, not something you join.”

Pookie didn't argue with Castor. He just stood there patiently, smiling his little smile, swaying on his legs, and waited. It was maddening.

“Besides, I don't think the animals in here really trust me yet, anyway,” Castor added with a groan.

“Show them, then. Show them you deserve their trust. Show them who you are, deep down inside.” Pookie reached out a long, hairy leg to tap the white patch in the middle of Castor's chest. “Show them how your spirit soars.”

Pookie flexed his eight legs and sprang high into the air over Castor's head.

Castor was about to say that it was too late, that his spirit had already been broken, when he remembered something: Moss had said that he and Laringo were the only veterans. Castor knew there were unchanged animals in other levels of the prison, but he hadn't heard about any other mutants.

“Hey,” Castor called behind him. “Where did you come from, anyway?”

When Pookie didn't answer him, Castor turned around to see where the many-legged mutant had landed. He wasn't on the track or on top of the treadmill. And in the rafters, there wasn't a trace of web.

Pookie had disappeared as quickly as he'd come.