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I froze in my tracks as I stared into the lens. There was no cameraman, no Jonah Zappa handling the contraption. Instead, it was mounted in the corner of my cage, swiveling while it registered my every single move.

Next to me, a cage door was opened, and Dooley was dumped in.

“Max!” he cried. “What’s going on?”

“I think this is the Peppard Pet Food Program, Dooley,” I said sadly. “We’re test animals now. Guinea pigs. And whatever we do is filmed and presumably analyzed by the Peppard Pet Food people.”

A hatch in his cage opened and a ration of kibble dumped in. And as he took a tentative sniff, his face contorted.“This is horrible. What is it?”

“Miracle Cure,” I said. “Better don’t eat it. It tastes horrible.”

“But maybe it has all the essential nutrients and life-affirming vitamins your growing kitty needs?” he said, quoting from the commercial.

“I doubt it,” I said, as I plunked myself down on the metal floor of my cage.

“They’re not going to keep us in here for three days, are they, Max?” he asked. “That’s not what it said in our contract, right?”

“What contract? I didn’t sign no contract.”

“We’ll tell Odelia when she comes to visit us in the morning,” he said. “We’ll tell her and then she’ll take us home and write a strongly-worded letter of complaint to Mr. Peppard. She could even write a front-page article about the way we’re being treated.”

He was right. The pet food people didn’t know we could talk to our human, and so when Odelia showed up tomorrow morning to check on us, we’d blow the whistle on the pet food people and this would all be over.

So all we had to do was survive twenty-four hours in this horrible place and we’d be saved.

Soon we were joined by Brutus, Harriet, and the others. Harriet screamed bloody murder when she was tucked into her cage. The gang was complete, even though separated by iron bars.

“Twenty-four hours, you guys,” I told them. “Just take a twenty-four-hour nap and when you wake up this will all be over.”

At least I hoped so.

Chapter 24

Returning from Peppard Pet Food headquarters, Odelia decided to drop by the hospital and see how her dad was doing with the zombie they’d found in her bathroom.

She called him on her way there. He said the zombie was in good hands, and was receiving all the medical attention she needed. The doctors hadn’t figured out what was ailing her exactly, but they had determined she was suffering from extreme dehydration and was confused and disoriented, and couldn’t speak or give them any indication who she was or how she’d gotten into this terrible state.

She arrived at the hospital and parked her car, then went in search of the ward where the woman was being treated, and soon discovered that whomever she asked about her grew a little shifty-eyed and evasive.

Finally she decided to check the ICU, where presumably she would have been taken, and found that no one would allow her to see the woman, or even acknowledge she was there.

And as she approached a doctor and asked him straight out where the patient was, he said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss the case with her and directed her to the hospital’s director.

Starting to get a little hot under her collar, Odelia stalked over to the director’s office and knocked on the door. She was admitted by a nice secretary, who said, when she heard why she was there, that the director wasn’t giving any statements and told her to come back the next day.

“But… my dad was here. He worked with your staff!”

“I can neither confirm or deny that such a patient was ever admitted to this hospital,” said the secretary, still in the same professional and friendly tones.

“Look, I’m the person who found the zombie—for lack of a better term—in her bathroom, all right? I called the ambulance that brought her here. I think I have a right to know what’s going on.” She was tapping the woman’s desk with her index finger now, feeling a little annoyed about being given the runaround.

“Oh, I totally understand, Miss Poole,” said the woman in the same unctuous tone she’d been using for the past five minutes, “but like I said, I can neither confirm or deny that a patient like the one you’re describing has been admitted to our hospital. But I’m sure that if you put yourrequest in writing, we will get back to you promptly.”

“When? When will you get back to me?” she demanded.

“Promptly,” repeated the woman with a smile.

She clearly wasn’t getting anywhere, so she decided to leave it and do as the secretary suggested. Still, she had a feeling something very fishy was going on and she vowed to get to the bottom of it… promptly.

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At the library, Marge hadn’t been able to attain her customary equanimity. The events of the previous day were still going through her mind, and she hadn’t slept well. Not least because her mother had been keeping her up with her fertility dance, causing all the cats and dogs in the immediate vicinity of Harrington Street to break into an hour-long howling concert.