Moonlight Brigade Read online

  ALSO BY C. ALEXANDER LONDON

  The Wild Ones

  An Accidental Adventure:

  We Are Not Eaten by Yaks

  We Dine with Cannibals

  We Give a Squid a Wedgie

  We Sled with Dragons

  Dog Tags:

  Semper Fido

  Strays

  Prisoners of War

  Divided We Fall

  Tides of War:

  Blood in the Water

  Honor Bound

  Enemy Lines

  Endurance

  The 39 Clues:

  Doublecross Book 2: Mission Hindenburg

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by C. Alexander London.

  Map and interior art copyright © 2016 by Levi Pinfold.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Philomel Books is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: London, C. Alexander, author. Title: Moonlight brigade / C. Alexander London. Description: New York, NY : Philomel Books, [2016] | Series: The wild ones ; 2 Summary: “Kit has saved Ankle Snap Alley from the Flealess, but more danger is on the way. It’s time for him to step up to fight off Coyote’s threat, and to restart the Moonlight Brigade in the process”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2015049437 | ISBN 9780399171000 (hardback) Subjects: | CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Raccoon—Fiction. | Animals—Fiction. | Fantasy. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Animals / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories. Classification: LCC PZ7.L8419 Moo 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015049437

  Ebook ISBN 978-0-698-17461-0

  Edited by Jill Santopolo.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To the squirrels in my yard who attack my tomatoes:

  I know what you’re really up to.

  Contents

  Also by C. Alexander London

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Part I: THE SONG OF ANKLE SNAP ALLEY Chapter One: MUSKY MO HEARS THE MUSIC

  Chapter Two: PALS OF THE PAW

  Chapter Three: NIGHTFLIGHT INCORPORATED

  Chapter Four: RACCOON IN THE MOON

  Chapter Five: SHARP EYES

  Chapter Six: THE CLAW WITHIN THE PAW

  Chapter Seven: HIDE ’N’ HUNT

  Chapter Eight: DINGBATS

  Chapter Nine: EVERYONE’S A CRITIC

  Chapter Ten: THE SONG OF TOOTH AND CLAW

  Part II: FLIM-FLAMMERY Chapter Eleven: THE BAMBOOZLE

  Chapter Twelve: DEALING AND STEALING

  Chapter Thirteen: OUTNUMBERED

  Chapter Fourteen: THE CARNIVAL OF CROWS

  Chapter Fifteen: APPRISED OF A PRIZE

  Chapter Sixteen: BEETLE BAGGING

  Chapter Seventeen: WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?

  Chapter Eighteen: DANGER TOES

  Chapter Nineteen: AN INSIDE JOB

  Chapter Twenty: PAW-TO-PAW COMBAT

  Chapter Twenty-One: DOG’S DUEL

  Part III: THE BLOWOFF Chapter Twenty-Two: THE POETRY OF FOXES

  Chapter Twenty-Three: TRUST AMONG THIEVES

  Chapter Twenty-Four: WASP WALLOP

  Chapter Twenty-Five: ALL OF ONE PAW

  Part I

  THE SONG OF ANKLE SNAP ALLEY

  Chapter One

  MUSKY MO HEARS THE MUSIC

  BRIGHT leaves fell from tired trees, and day by day they browned on the forest floor. Cool air sharpened its bite and nipped at the skin of any animal who hadn’t begun to thicken his fur or fortify his feathers. Winter was on its way.

  On a riverbank near the giant city of steel that the animal folk called the Slivered Sky, a gang of otters had gathered, huddling to keep warm, while the brittle ground crunched below their claws. They sat in front of a traveling coyote, who had an old tin-can guitar strapped to his back.

  “If you think this winter will be cold, let me sing you a song of the real winters in the Howling Lands, where the sun shines but gives no warmth, where the lakes freeze over thicker than a turtle’s shell, and a sneeze shatters when it hits the ground. These are the hungry winters and a fella without supplies surely goes cold and dies.”

  The coyote’s voice was scary and soothing at the same time. It slid from his tongue like gravel coated in gravy. The otters held one another’s paws as they listened to him.

  “You ever sneezed an icicle?” the coyote asked.

  The otters shook their heads no in awed silence.

  “Want to hear a song about it?”

  The otters nodded their heads yes.

  No one had ever seen this gang of otters this quiet before. These were the Thunder River Rompers, twenty in all, and they considered themselves the toughest, tightest, and most terrible of all the river otter gangs around.

  Weren’t they the ones who knocked over the big beaver dam three seasons back?

  Yep, sure as sunshine, they were.

  Weren’t they the ones who chased off a full-grown hawk just this past summer?

  Everyone knew they were, especially that frightened hawk.

  Weren’t they the gang that rumbled and raised a ruckus with any passing creature, and considered themselves the only pals o’ the paw worth palling around with anyway?

  Yep, that was the Thunder River Rompers, best of brothers and brawling-est of beasts.

  So why were they sitting here, drop-jawed and wide-eyed, listening to some mangy coyote tell a tall tale instead of pounding him into the dirt, flaying his fur, and using his pelt to cozy up their riverbank holts?

  That was the question their leader, Musky Mo, put forward with a snarl, just as the coyote was about to start his song.

  “I could use a coyote-fur couch this winter,” Musky Mo said. “Looks mighty warm to me!”

  The coyote sat back on his haunches and looked the leader of the otters over lengthways and long ways and up ways and down ways. He had a smirk on his gray muzzle and a devious twinkle in his eye. There were scars that cut through the brown-and-gray fur on his back, and he wore not a stitch of clothes.

  Even the otters, freer than any folk, wore wrist cuffs woven from seaweed and green knit watch caps with their gang insignia emblazoned on the front: a terrible otter claw bursting from a frothy river, a fish in its fist.

  They also wore glasses, every one of them, because when otters were on land, they were nearsighted.

  Once, a passing skunk shouted that the Thunder River Rompers were more like Thunder River Rubes. The skunk had a good stinking laugh over that, because a rube was a foolish fellow. Mu
sky Mo, never one to let an insult pass, dragged that skunk into the river and held him down so long, he washed the stink right off him. No one ever disrespected the Thunder River Rompers after that.

  But the coyote didn’t seem to care a whisker for the Rompers, or Musky Mo’s reputation as a drowner of skunks. He’d stepped from the dark brush and settled himself in front of them without so much as a “beg your pardon,” and then he’d offered to start singing songs like the riverbank was his very own turf.

  Musky Mo was not having it. “So how about you get up out of here, coyote, before I make it so you can’t never get up from anywhere again.”

  Coyote liked his winter song and did not like to be interrupted when he was about to sing it. Confronted with Musky Mo’s demand that he “get up out of here,” the coyote licked his lips.

  “I didn’t mean to bother you fine fellows,” Coyote said, the gravel in his voice getting rougher. “I know you otter folk have a lot of ruckus to raise before winter sinks her teeth in. I’m only a weary traveler seeking some rest and some good company. I’ll be off shortly. But first, perhaps, might I sing my song?”

  “You’re not welcome here,” Mo grunted at him, flexing his webbed front paws for a fight. “And none of us want to hear your howling. Right, boys?” He grimaced to show off his otter fangs. The rest of the gang stood up behind him and grunted.

  Coyote was bigger than all of them, but grossly outnumbered. He sighed as he swung the guitar off his back. “Why don’t I play you just one song before I go? It’s a short song.”

  Musky Mo laughed when he saw the guitar. “You ain’t got no strings on your guitar,” he said, pointing. The other otters laughed along with their leader, because indeed, the coyote’s tin-can guitar didn’t have a single string on it. “What good’s a guitar without any strings? It won’t make a sound!”

  “Well, you best listen closely, then,” the coyote said, and began to strum the invisible strings. The otters stopped laughing and furrowed their brows at this strange coyote. Perhaps he had Foaming Mouth Fever? He wasn’t actually foaming at the mouth, but he was acting stranger than any canine the Thunder River Rompers had ever come across.

  The coyote plucked and played his stringless guitar with passion, closing his eyes and tapping his back paws, nodding along to a tune that only he could hear.

  After a moment, he opened his eyes and looked at the dumbfounded gang of otters. “Ya like my song, boys?”

  “We don’t hear nothin’,” Musky Mo grumbled.

  “Listen a little closer,” the coyote said. “I wrote this song for you Rompers, after all.”

  The otters leaned forward to listen closer, bending their thick necks and lowering their little heads toward the guitar. Their tiny ears twitched in anticipation of the music.

  The coyote looked down at his audience and adjusted his grip on the musical instrument . . . and then he turned it around and smashed its heavy end down onto Musky Mo’s head!

  He flattened the otter’s face into the cold mud with a splat, then swung the guitar along the line of other otters, knocking them into one wet otter heap.

  “Ooof! Ooof! Ooof!” they grunted.

  Musky Mo tried to get up and grab the coyote’s tail, but the coyote jumped away, tossing his stringless guitar as he spun. The guitar knocked three more Thunder River Rompers back into the mud, and the coyote landed behind Musky Mo. Before the otter could turn around, the coyote lifted Musky Mo off the ground by the scruff of his neck and faced him toward his own gang.

  The otter’s paws scrambled uselessly in the air, and the coyote grinned through clenched teeth. Musky Mo’s eyes widened as his gang froze in place, unsure how to help their boss.

  The coyote shook his head ferociously and flung Musky Mo head over tail into the Thunder River.

  “Swim away, Musky Mo!” the coyote yelled after him. “If I see your furry face again, I’ll turn your bones to toothpicks!” Then he lowered his head and growled at the gang of otters whose leader he had just sent swimming. “I think you all need a new leader . . . unless you want to hear me sing again? I’ve got enough song in me for each and every one of you.”

  The otters were bruised and banged from the coyote’s first song and had no desire to hear another. One by one, they brushed themselves off, put their busted glasses back on their faces, and one by one, they opened their paws and lowered their heads to the coyote.

  “We surrender,” they said.

  “What’s your name?” one of the otters—a burly brute named Chuffing Chaz—looked up to ask, then lowered his snout back down toward the dirt.

  “My name doesn’t matter,” the coyote told them. “You can call me Coyote. And I welcome the Thunder River Rompers to my band.”

  “Band?” Chuffing Chaz asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Coyote, panting with glee. “You’re my band. And together we’ll make beautiful music.”

  The otters smirked, because they now knew what the coyote meant by music, and this time, they’d get to help him with the singing.

  “Now.” Coyote cleared his throat and picked his guitar up from the mud. “Who can tell me which way it is to a place called Ankle Snap Alley? That’s where we’ve got a concert to perform.”

  Chapter Two

  PALS OF THE PAW

  IT’S not right to be awake so early,” Eeni grumbled. Her tiny pink nose sniffed the chilly air, while her tiny pink paws scrambled along the pavement to keep up with Kit. The dry leaves crackled under her toes, snapping with the season’s first frost.

  Kit had to slow down for Eeni because just one of his raccoon steps was about six steps for a rat of her size. He looked over at his small friend, whose complaining, he had learned, was part of her waking-up routine.

  Some creatures did jumping jacks, some stretched or groomed themselves, while others took a moment to give thanks to their ancestors, to the ground, and to the sky.

  Eeni, however, could not fully wake up until she had complained about something for at least two hundred steps across Ankle Snap Alley. She was a street-smart, runaway albino rat who was slick enough to pick a kangaroo’s pocket, but she was not a rat who suffered in silence.

  If she was going to wake up early, she was going to whine about it.

  “The sun’s barely started to set!” she declared. “It’s too bright out! It’s too cold! The hedgehogs are getting ready to hibernate! Why don’t rats hibernate? Or raccoons? We should hibernate! We should all hibernate.”

  “Looks like some folks are starting early,” Kit observed.

  Across the way, Brevort the skunk lay sprawled on the ground, snoring and drooling onto the rock he was using as a pillow. His drool had frozen into a long icicle on his furry face. His quick breaths made misty clouds in the air in front him.

  Kit and Eeni crossed the broken concrete to the side of the Dancing Squirrel Theater. They clambered over the old tires and broken bicycles that littered the alley, charged through whitewashed heaps of trash and freezing weeds that prickled and tickled their tummies, and they stood in front of the skunk. He lay on the ground just outside the door of a place where no self-respecting animal ever set claw or paw. It was called Larkanon’s, and luckily for the stray dog who owned it, there weren’t a lot of self-respecting animals in Ankle Snap Alley. He did a brisk business in cheese ale and moldy snack crackers.

  The sleeping skunk had on a dirty pair of striped pants that matched the stripe down his back. He snored louder than a bear, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. His pockets lolled out of his pants the same way. Some citizen of Ankle Snap Alley had emptied the sleeping skunk’s pockets of every last seed and nut he had.

  “Wake up, Brother Brevort.” Kit nudged the skunk with a paw, using his other to hold his nose from the skunk’s pickle-and-graveyard stench. The skunk groaned.

  “The Bagman’s coming!” Eeni shouted, and Brevort sat bolt uprigh
t.

  “Where? Where is he?” the skunk shouted. His tail shot up, ready to spray his stinky spray.

  Eeni laughed, and Brevort frowned. “That’s a lousy trick,” he grumbled. “Telling a sleeping fellow the Bagman’s coming.”

  “It woke you up, didn’t it?” Eeni said.

  She knew it wasn’t nice. Every animal in Ankle Snap Alley was afraid of the Bagman. He was the Person who came to empty the ankle-snapping traps when animals got caught in them. When a fella went into the Bagman’s bag and went away, he never came back. Some animal folk wouldn’t even joke about the Bagman.

  But not Eeni. There was nothing off-limits to her sense of humor.

  Brevort rubbed his head, only noticing then that he had a single acorn clutched in his paw. He stared at it like a snake studying a shoe.

  “Time to go home,” Eeni told him. “You’ve been robbed, but they left you an acorn. Use it to buy yourself breakfast.”

  “Or eat it for breakfast,” Kit suggested.

  “Oh.” The skunk looked down at his pockets, not seeming the least bit surprised that they’d been picked bare. “It was kind of them to leave me this acorn.”

  On the trees above the alley there weren’t many acorns left. Even now, so early in the evening, the squirrels were busy above, bringing the last ones down to deposit in the bank.

  The skunk stood, brushed himself off, and tipped his hat to the children, although he was not wearing a hat. “See you at the First Frost Festival,” he said.

  “See you,” Kit and Eeni replied. The skunk stumbled his wild way back into the dark door of Larkanon’s and disappeared.

  “How many times has he had his pockets picked?” Kit wondered.

  “I dunno,” Eeni said. “I stopped doing it to him when I was just a little ratlet. No sport in robbing that fellow. You almost feel bad for him.”

  “Almost,” said Kit. “But folks make sure he survives the winter.”