* * *
Out of breathand panting from the run, I found Larry and Donnie at the armory with their heads bowed, deep in conversation when I arrived. At my sudden appearance, Donnie jumped back and glanced over at me with alarm.
“What is it?” I asked. My eyes landed on what Larry was holding in his hands, a cloth of some sort. Yellow. Soft. Stained in blood. I strode forward and grabbed it out of his hands, pressed it to my nose.
Kitten.
“Where did you get this?” I snapped as panic started clawing at my throat. Larry’s face folded into one of sympathy. Donnie turned away.
“Do you know who it belongs to?” Larry asked.
“Kitten. Joshua. Where did you find it?” I said with more urgency. A mounting hysteria ricocheted like a pinball in my skull, so loud that I was having trouble concentrating.
“Outside the gates,” Larry said.
Outside the… how was that possible?
“What do you mean, outside the gates? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Kitten be outside the gates? Did you see him?” My gaze veered toward Donnie who was without any hint of the mischief that normally danced in his eyes. “What the fuck is going on?” I demanded.
“I fell asleep,” Donnie said, head lowered in shame.
“Apparently–” Larry began.
“Let him speak.”
“I fell asleep around two in the morning,” Donnie continued. “Woke up this morning and the goat was gone. I found that on the ground nearby.” He pointed to the shirt in my hands, Kitten’s shirt, stained in blood.
“You’re telling me Kitten, or someone wearing Kitten’s shirt, was outside the gates in the middle of the night and this is all you have to show for it?”
Donnie nodded. Larry stared at me as if trying to gauge my reaction, which was a rising thunderous,murderousrage.
“Show me,” I said.
* * *
I radioed the Assholes,who met us outside the gates. I was trying not to lose it, to stay focused. None of this made any sense.
“Maybe he wanted to free the goat,” Larry offered as a plausible explanation as to why Kitten would sneak out of not one, but two fences, in the middle of the night. The rope had been untied, not something a Rabid could accomplish, nor a tiger. The goat was nowhere to be found either. A quick radio back-and-forth revealed that it was not in the stables or grazing with the herd.
“So, what, they just disappeared?” I said, incredulous and scared shitless.
“I’m not sure how he could have made it through the second gate,” Larry said. “Not without someone opening it for him.”
The secret door I’d constructed and showed to him. Was it possible he’d taken advantage of my being intoxicated and snuck out? But then, how did that explain the incredible coincidence of Donnie having fallen asleep? On the rare night when there was only one guard at the exterior fence?
“Would he go off on his own?” Larry asked at my prolonged silence.
“No.”
Kitten gave me shit sometimes, but he wasn’t reckless, and he didn’t have a death wish. But hehadthreatened to free the goat. Would he have done it out of anger? To spite me? And if so, where was he now?
I refused to believe anything bad had happened to him, not until I found a body. God, I hoped I didn’t find his body, bitten to death by Rabids or gutted by that fucking nuisance tiger.
Stop it. This isn’t helping.
I stared down at the shirt I’d been clinging to ever since Larry had handed it to me. I knew with complete certainty it belonged to Kitten. It smelled like him. There was a ketchup stain on the front from when the bottle had squirted onto his hotdog too enthusiastically and I’d told him it reminded me of the way he came. He’d laughed and gathered it up with his finger, then licked the ketchup to tease me. I tried to remember if he’d worn the shirt to bed but couldn’t. There were smears of blood on it too, but the fabric wasn’t torn or shredded. It might not even be his blood. I clung to that hope as I surveyed the scene.
Teresa was sobbing. Macon was holding her while also trying to keep it together. Gizmo and Wylie were combing the surrounding area, looking for clues. Artemis was tight-lipped as usual, coolly assessing everyone present, and I was spiraling, clinging to Kitten’s t-shirt in one hand with my machete in the other. Fear and adrenaline, the sum of my parts.
