Curled up under the old tarp and her jacket, she was mostly warm enough sleeping on the hard metal floor of the Halcyon ’s cabin. Mostly.
It’s not fair. It’s going to be roasting tomorrow. Why does it have to be freezing tonight?
Taziri rolled over and had almost managed to get comfortable when she heard a soft scratching outside, and then the quiet clatter of a few small bits of gravel rolling over and tumbling down.
Was that a footstep?
She sat up and a moment later heard another soft clicking and clacking, so small and quiet that she could barely hear it and couldn’t tell at all where it was, or how far away. As silent as a shadow, she crept to the hatch and squinted through the small armored window. There was a dark rectangle that might have been the neighboring freight car, and a pale line that might have been a bit of a rail. Everything else was a dark gray muddle.
The agonizingly soft crunch of gravel continued, as though a long snake were crawling across the rail yard, sliding its belly over the loose stones in a constant but quiet landslide.
It’s getting closer.
Taziri swallowed as she drew her revolver. She scanned the dark tomb of the cabin around her. There was no other way in or out of the Halcyon. But the skin of the plane wasn’t strong enough to fend off anything meaner than sleet. A bullet would punch straight through, she was sure.
Unless I hide in the back where the wings are folded up around the cabin. The extra layers of the folded wings might protect me. For a minute or two.
Then she heard a mournful meow. Taziri pressed her face to the window and squinted down. The shadows on the ground were rippling around the Halcyon, rolling and hunching. A tail whisked by.
Cats? They’re cats. Taziri blinked. A lot of cats.
She holstered her gun and quietly unlocked the hatch and swung it open. Just below her feet she saw a river of furry bodies marching past, their tails raised and flicking, their ears pricked, and their eyes flashing left and right in the starlight. A few of them looked up at the woman in the open hatch, but most did not.
Taziri stood in silence, watching the cats parading past in a column four or five bodies wide. For three or four minutes, they sauntered by. And then the last one was gone and she listened to the cats calmly wandering across the gravel of the rail yard until she couldn’t hear them anymore.
She shut the hatch and locked it. As she lay down on her tarp and jacket, she found herself just a bit warmer than before, and it was easier to relax on the hard cabin floor.
Cats. A hundred homeless cats wandering through a rail yard. I didn’t expect that.