Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“A trifling detail, Louise. That is why there are two of us. One to dare the frigid freezer and one to keep watch outside, ready to release the other.”

“Who does what?”

“We will see when we get in.”

At that moment, we hear the low peeling sound of a Band-Aid being ripped off. Tires turning onto sandy asphalt. We duck behind the nearest thicket of pampas grass.

Sure enough, a big black van, all its windows blacked out, is grinding our way, its headlights poking nova-sized holes in the night. I feel my eyes switch to built-in infrared night vision mode. No bulky headgear for yours truly.

Las Vegas is one of the few metropolitan areas where we still have a “coroner” as opposed to a “medical examiner.” As far as I can see, dead is dead and one title will do as well as the other to deal with it.

Out of the now-stopped vehicle comes the clatter of a collapsed-for-travel gurney being uncollapsed.

It is a chilling sound. This process smacks of a ritual, and humans and dogs are big on those. Our kind is so much more independent, which implies we need no care, and are likely to retreat on our own to some elephant graveyard to fade away never to be found. Of course, if we are lucky enough to have a human base, we too will benefit from last rites and memorializing.

I am sure my Miss Temple would provide some suitable stately urn if—Bast forbid!—I should ever lick my last flake of koi. Perhaps something classic in lapis lazuli stone, or no—malachite. That is green to match my eyes.

“Old dude!” Louise whacks my whiskers. “It is time to do the limbo under the dead departed’s skateboard. Hustle.”

“That is ‘dear’ departed, Louise.” I manage to get in one last jab, verbal and physical, before we whisk into place and atune our slowest trot to the pace of the gurney. These workers are wasting no time and muffling no noise. I guess their passengers cannot complain of a bumpy ride. I could complain of a distinct odor of decay, but it is not my place.

Momentarily blinded once we hit the fluorescent lights of the receiving area, we are happy to stop with the gurney.

It is hard to describe the condition of the air inside a morgue. Of course, Louise and I are more fitted to detecting undertones and overtones, to analyzing stages of decay, than your usual human.

But there is the dominant whiff of Febreze to overcome. Which, I find, tends to make me want to … sneeze!

Catastrophe!

I feel Louise holding her breath next to me to resist the same overpowering instinct. At least the people are talking.