CHAPTER ONE

First there was fog, then a heavy spring rain. Out on Interstate 95, traffic had been slow and irritable all afternoon. Not until well past 9 P.M. did the flow of vehicles begin to taper off. Crouched in his hiding place beside the eastbound lanes, the old cat Shredder drew his haunches farther under his body and gazed gloomily across the wet pavement.

“Not a bite to eat,” he muttered. “Not a morsel of road food all day.” Inside his bony ribs, his stomach gave a mournful howl.

Usually by this time of night he’d have tucked into a couple of half-eaten hot dogs or a mass of ketchupy french fries. Hamburger Heaven, a popular fast-food restaurant, lay about ten miles down the highway, just far enough for travelers to eat their fill and unload the extras out the window. Bad weather meant slim pickings, though. Shredder had lived beside this stretch of highway long enough to know its ways.

He was soaked through, ready to give up and retreat to the woods for cover, when a pickup truck swerved suddenly out of the line of traffic. It bounced onto the scruffy, overgrown center median between the eastbound and westbound lanes and rolled to a stop.

The driver stepped out. He lifted a cardboard box from the pickup’s cargo bed, dropped it on the ground and gave it a rough shove with his foot so it skidded away into the bushes. Then he climbed back in the truck and peeled out with shrieking tires. The stink of hot rubber lingered behind in the air.

Shredder raised his short cat nose toward the smell and sniffed, warily at first, then with knowing.

“Hey, Murray, wake up—there’s been a delivery.”

A large, bristle-haired alley cat stirred in the roadside bushes nearby. “Whad’s that?”

“A delivery, I said. Over there on the center strip in the brush.”

Murray the Claw raised his ugly head and took in the reek of rubber.

“Don’t smell like nuttin’ to me. Whadya wake me for?” he growled in his nasal twang. “How many times I godda tell you?—I cross over for burgers and chicken, that’s it. Don’t give me any of those nasty egg sandwiches.”

“I know, but…”

“And no pickles. I can’t stand pickles.”

“Murray! It’s a box. Cardboard. I think it might be…”

“Shud up, dope. It’s old paint cans, probably.”

Nevertheless, both cats peered across four lanes of highway to where the mysterious arrival lay, tilted a bit in the bushes. As they watched, the box lurched and pitched all the way over onto its side.

Shredder sat up. He drew his thin, dirty tail closer around himself and narrowed his eyes.

“Something more than paint cans is in there,” he told Murray.

A stream of cars barreled past. A tractor-trailer roared down on them and went by with a blast of wind, flattening their ears. Afterward, there was a break in the traffic. In the hush, a soft, urgent cry could be heard drifting across from the center median.

“I knew it!” Shredder hissed. “Look!”

A small form emerged from under the box and struggled away into weeds. A second form followed, then a third. There was more crying. Or mewing rather, for they were kittens, tiny ones, six weeks old at most. They were staggering around in the center strip completely oblivious to the snap of wheels speeding by on either side. Shredder lowered himself to a watchful hunch while Murray stood up on all fours, showing interest at last.

“So, who’s your man?” Murray asked. It was a game they liked to play, a kind of terrible red rover, red rover. These weren’t the first median drop-offs to come their way. They weren’t even the first kittens.

“Don’t know yet,” Shredder answered.

“You can’t wait till the last second to call it like you did with that chinchilla,” Murray warned him. “You godda put your bet down now or forget it.”

“Okay, I’ll bet on the first one.”

“The one that made it first outta the box?”

“That’s him. He’s got more get-up-and-crawl. Wait a minute, he might be going over to westbound.” Both cats leaned forward to look. “No, no, he’s not,” Shredder went on. “There he is, coming back. Who’s your man?”

Murray purred acidly to himself, calculating the odds of who would and who wouldn’t make it across the traffic lanes to safety on their side. He noted the pace of passing vehicles, the chilling breath of the wind, the expressway’s slick surface. At last he spoke.

“Nobody is my bet.”

“Nobody!” Shredder glanced at him. “You can’t say nobody.”

“I’m saying it. Look at them. They’re pidiful. They can’t hardly walk and they godda get across four lanes?”

“That’s not fair,” Shredder said. “In fact, it’s sick. Part of the game is you’ve got to believe somebody’s going to make it. Otherwise, it’s no fun.”

“I say none,” Murray the Claw snarled, raising the one vicious paw for which he was named. His other three were clawless, victims of a hunter’s trap many years ago.

“Okay, okay.” Shredder backed away. “Anyhow, look. They’re getting ready to come!”

Why young things abandoned in the center median could never sit still and wait for help was a mystery to Shredder. They never could, though. He’d seen enough drop-offs to know. Kittens, puppies, hamsters, turtles, possums, skunks, chicks, rabbits, even a baby alligator one time—they all headed blindly for the highway as soon as possible, without any plan for how to get across. It made you wonder what Mother Nature was thinking to allow her babies to act so stupid.

Tonight, lucky for these kits, Interstate 95 was quieter than on a fair-weather evening. Setting out across the first lane, the three kits hit a surprising lull in the traffic before a string of cars zoomed up and passed them on an outside lane. The after-wind from these vehicles confused the kits. They paused and gazed dimly around. Soon they were moving again. On they struggled into the second lane. Shredder was excited to see that his kit was in the lead.

“Ha! Looky there. My bet’s going strong,” he boasted.

“Ha yourself. He doesn’t godda prayer,” Murray rasped back. “None of ’em does. Here comes another bunch of cars. And a cement truck! Whoa, Sally, that thing’s moving.”

The traffic roared by. Shredder and Murray shut their eyes against flying gravel and road grit. When they looked again, the kits were still in the second lane, huddled down near each other but untouched so far.

“Yay! Yahoo!” Shredder cheered his bet on. “Come on, boy, you can do it. Start walking. You’ve got a lull. Don’t sit there huddling—get up!”

“Looks to me like he don’t want to leave his liddle sisters behind,” Murray the Claw gloated. “Looks to me like he’s gonna sit there and take it in the chops, just like them.”

“No, he’s not! Get up, kitten!”

Another mass of traffic streamed past. Shredder closed his eyes. Afterward, he opened them reluctantly, afraid he was beat. But the kits were still there! They were on the move too, crawling bravely into the third lane.

“Come on, little buddy!” Shredder was up, waving his bet home. “Only one lane to go. Run! You got it! Run for your life!”

In back of him, Murray started snickering because down the road now came two enormous tractor-trailers traveling side by side the way the big ones do sometimes, late at night. The drivers were probably talking on their CBs, kidding around.

Shredder took one look at this advancing wall of steel and knew he was going to lose. The kits had come to a halt in the third lane. They were too frightened to make any headway. Thunderous vibrations from the tractor-trailers were rising up from the road, paralyzing them.

Shredder gulped under his breath. He wondered what Murray would want for his prize this time. The rule was, the winner could ask for one, just one, thing he wanted. The loser had to deliver. The trouble was that Murray always won. Last time, he’d asked for a bullfrog’s eye, a fresh one, and Shredder had spent a week tracking the nasty thing down.

With an earsplitting explosion the trucks went by, double wheels heading directly for the spot where the kittens sat cowering. Shredder turned away at the last minute, unable to watch. He heard Murray chuckle.

“That’s it for your bet, buster. Squashed fladder than a bladder.”

Shredder peeked over his shoulder. The small huddle was gone, pushed so deep into the pavement that there was no sign of where the kits had been. Shredder stared at the spot. Was it possible so little could be left? He saw no remains at all, not a smudge or a wisp of hide.

A sudden movement a few yards down from him on the roadside caught his eye.

“Murray, look! It’s them!”

Murray spun around.

“Well, drad it, I say. Drad and triple drad!”

“They made it! How in the world did they…”

“Wait a minute, there’s something fishy about this,” Murray snarled. “How did they suddenly get all the way over here? They were out there in the third lane frozen to the asphalt five seconds ago.”

“Hello, kits! Congratulations! Greetings! Cheerio!” Shredder couldn’t believe he’d won. He was leaping about, wild with joy. The kits, looking dazed and uncertain, were just beginning to get up and sniff the sandy edge of the road, where they had landed in a heap near some yellow grass tufts. Murray was fuming. He looked ready to finish them off himself.

“It’s not right! Something’s not right!” he protested. “There’s been outside inderference here—I can smell it.”

“You’re just sore you got beat.”

“Whadya want for your prize, moron? A brain transplant?” Murray snapped. He was a terrible loser, probably from winning all the time.

“I don’t know! I can’t think right now. Can I tell you later?”

“Any time, meadball. For the record, though, I’m saying it was fixed.”

“Fixed?”

“Those kiddens were headed for oblivion. Somebody went out there and saved them. I don’t know who, and I didn’t see nuttin’, but I know when something’s fishy.” Murray slouched off into the woods.

Shredder was too glad he’d won to care if anything was fishy or not. He went over to the kits and sniffed happily around them.

“You guys had good luck,” he informed them. They were too little to understand, but he told them anyhow.

“You got a break that most don’t get, so make the most of it, okay? Take care of yourselves. Don’t be hanging around here by the road. Go get some grub. The dump’s over there. There!”

The kits weren’t catching on to this, so Shredder leaned down and pushed them with his paw until their noses were pointed in the right direction. It didn’t help. They turned back the moment he stepped away, sending out a pathetic chorus of mews.

“Don’t follow me! Go that way,” Shredder urged them, pointing one more time. The hour had come for him to move up the expressway to look for early-morning doughnuts near the overpass. “And stay away from that road!” he called as he padded out of sight.

It might seem heartless to some, leaving senseless babies on a roadside like that, but things worked differently out here by the highway. Shredder knew that he had already done more than most cats would in this outcast place. Everyone for himself—that was the only law here. The faster you learned it, the more chance you had to survive.