The Wild Ones--Great Escape Read online

  ALSO BY C. ALEXANDER LONDON

  The Wild Ones:

  The Wild Ones

  Moonlight Brigade

  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

  Superspecial: Outbreak

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  Text copyright © 2017 by C. Alexander London.

  Map of Ankle Snap Alley copyright © 2015 by Levi Pinfold.

  Interior art and map of zoo copyright © 2017 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 is available upon request.

  Ebook ISBN 9780698174504

  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 Tim, who’s sharing this wild adventure with me

  CONTENTS

  Also by C. Alexander London

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Maps

  Prologue: A Squirrel in Spring

  Part I: The Urban Wild Chapter One: Shadow Trapping

  Chapter Two: Catch and Release

  Chapter Three: Quick of Paw

  Chapter Four: Taken For a Ride

  Chapter Five: A Question of the Q

  Chapter Six: Weird Windows

  Chapter Seven: Follow the Leader(s)

  Chapter Eight: Of Cabbages and Kings

  Part II: There Are No Zoo Animals Chapter Nine: Misnomers

  Chapter Ten: The Once and Future Raccoon

  Chapter Eleven: Falling for Freedom

  Chapter Twelve: Mongoose Law, Mean and Raw

  Chapter Thirteen: Old Friendsss

  Chapter Fourteen: Warm-Blooded

  Chapter Fifteen: Springing Into Action

  Chapter Sixteen: People Say We Monkey Around

  Chapter Seventeen: A Cheesy Problem

  Part III: Going Wild Chapter Eighteen: The Burdens Bears Bear

  Chapter Nineteen: Rivers Roll On

  Chapter Twenty: There Is No I In Queen

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Nose Knows

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Cage Match

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Awful Alliance

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Pride

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Wildest Ones

  About the Author

  Prologue

  A SQUIRREL IN SPRING

  A squirrel makes a plan. That is how a squirrel survives.

  Balanced high on a wire or leaping from branch to branch, even while quietly nibbling on a pilfered peanut, a squirrel is always planning his next move.

  After the wire, I’ll leap to the tree, a wise squirrel thinks. And after the tree, I’ll jump to the garden. If there’s a dog in the garden, I’ll go under the fence. If I lose one acorn in the tree stump, I’ll hide five more behind the shed.

  Climb or jump, dig or sit, scurry, bury, or just plain run: A squirrel who doesn’t think ahead is a squirrel who surely winds up dead.

  That was the saying anyway, but Dax, who considered himself a Squirrel of Action, didn’t like to waste time with planning and worrying and thinking things through. Leap first and let his tail to do the thinking in the air, that was Dax’s way.

  And so he ran across the wire without a plan in his nut-sized brain. He did, however, have a bucktoothed grin splitting his face. He loved to climb up to the highest point he could reach over Ankle Snap Alley, just so he could feel the cool dawn breeze blowing across his fur with the first whiff of spring on its breath. Sunrise was his favorite time, when the sky painted itself pink and the nighttime animals all made their scuttling ways to bed.

  Possum Ansel closed his bakery, and Enrique Gallo, the retired fighting rooster, locked the door of his barbershop. Moles rushed home beneath the dirt and even the wily Blacktail brothers, gambling raccoons of ill repute, closed their games and pocketed their winnings, shuffling off to trade the seeds and nuts for some piping-hot fish-bone broth to put some meat back on their raccoon bones. Winter had ended and spring had sprung at last.

  Folks got skinny while they slept through the cold months, but not Dax. He hadn’t gotten even the least bit hungry over winter like a lot of other creatures did. His mom was a planner and she had seeds and nuts stored all over Ankle Snap Alley, in more hidey-holes than even she could remember. She didn’t use the Reptile Bank and Trust, because she didn’t believe in leaving all her seeds in one spot, so she hadn’t been that worried when the bandit Coyote and his gang of otters tried to rob it at the start of the season. She knew she’d be all right no matter what.

  Other squirrels in Dax’s class sometimes found the hidden nuts and took them home to their parents and Dax’s mother didn’t mind.

  “Most folks in Ankle Snap Alley aren’t as lucky as we are,” his mother told him. “This is a neighborhood with more concrete than grass, and not all animals are so well suited to it. We who have a lot, have a lot to share. What kind of squirrels would we be if we kept all our nuts to ourselves while other folk shivered and starved?”

  Dax liked having such a thoughtful mother because it meant he didn’t have to think quite so much himself. Someone else worried about keeping his belly full, so he could focus on his adventures.

  He did his best to make his mother proud. He was the kind of squirrel who picked the fleas out of someone else’s fur before flicking off his own. He’d even joined the Moonlight Brigade, training after school all winter to protect the wild world, and doing spy missions for his classmate Kit, the Moonlight Brigade’s young raccoon leader. Dax was a soldier in the brigade and he liked following a soldier’s orders, because it meant he didn’t have to make plans of his own. He could have adventures without all the trouble of thinking them up!

  This morning his adventure involved running across the wire on official brigade business. He had to tell Kit what he’d learned from a scurry of chipmunks who had just been to a family reunion in another neighborhood. These chipmunks had cousins who’d told them something terrifying, something that Kit and all the creatures of Ankle Snap Alley needed to know.

  The alley was in danger! It wasn’t Flealess house pets or criminal coyotes this time . . . Their
enemy was far more dangerous, and far more clever, maybe even cleverer than Kit himself!

  Standing high over Ankle Snap Alley, Dax thought about the fastest way to Kit’s front door: scurrying down the pole. He also thought about the most exciting way to Kit’s front door, which meant making the long leap from the pole to the edge of the fence, running across the wire until he got to the rooftop of Possum Ansel’s bakery, flipping to the ground, begging Ansel to give him a delicious gum-and-onion-peel chew pie before closing, and then knocking on Kit’s door.

  Dax chose the pie way.

  No matter the danger, a squirrel will always choose the way that leads past pie.

  Dax bent his back legs and thrust himself into the air, stretching out his front claws and twirling his bushy tail for balance. His whiskers waved and for a moment he was weightless. Then, he caught the fence and swung himself onto its upper edge, scurried along, and jumped down to Ansel’s roof and from there to the ground.

  He knocked, but he was too late. Ansel had closed up shop. The sun was up and just about any animal with any sense was climbing into bed. The day belonged to the People and the moonlight folk did their best to stay out of the People’s way.

  Dax looked down the alley and saw his mother pop her head out from their apartment to look for him. He ducked behind the bakery so she couldn’t see him. He didn’t want to go home yet. He had to tell Kit what he’d learned from the chipmunks.

  Once his mother put her head back inside the tree trunk and closed the window, Dax crept out. He stepped carefully, moving in a zigzag toward Kit’s front door. The first sprouts of spring weeds smushed under his paws and meltwater mud made a sucking sound when he scampered across it.

  His gaze caught on a whole peanut resting in a dandelion patch. Someone must have dropped it on the way home. One of the birds, maybe, or another squirrel? It wasn’t a gum-and-onion-peel chew pie, but it was still something to eat. He thought of his mother and how generous she was. She’d hate to see a peanut wasted. She’d be so proud of him for bringing it home. Maybe they’d even donate it to an orphan mouse. Mice were always losing their parents at winter’s end.

  He scampered over to the peanut and scooped it up without thinking.

  A wise squirrel would have thought before scooping.

  In Ankle Snap Alley, a peanut is never just left lying in the weeds for no reason. In Ankle Snap Alley, a peanut in the weeds is hiding something.

  Something like a trap.

  Just as Dax grabbed the peanut—SNAP!

  A plastic box burst from the dirt and snapped shut around him.

  “Ahhh! Help!” he yelled, but he was stuck inside the box and his little claws couldn’t find an opening. He banged and jostled and scratched and pried, but he was totally trapped inside.

  The People had caught him.

  With all the wild folk headed to bed for the day, no one was around to help him.

  “Helphelphelp!” he yelled, and stomped, crushing the cursed peanut into paste below his feet. He banged and hollered so much, he wore himself out and got drowsy. His eyes shut while his little fists were still banging, and he fell into a stupor. When he came back to his senses, he felt the trap being lifted from the ground and he knew a Person was taking it away with him inside it.

  “But I have to warn Kit . . . ,” he muttered. “Kit needs to know . . . I have to warn everyone . . . about the People . . . the People are coming for us all . . .”

  But no one could hear him inside the trap and that was how Dax the squirrel disappeared during the early days of spring.

  He was the first animal to vanish from Ankle Snap Alley that season, but he was not the last.

  Part I

  THE URBAN WILD

  Chapter One

  SHADOW TRAPPING

  HOW do you catch a shadow?

  Kit puzzled over that question from the safety of the Dumpster where he hid, standing on his back paws, his little black eyes peering through the black mask of fur on his face. His whiskers twitched while his front claws tapped a rat-tat-tat on the Dumpster’s metal edge.

  He had perched himself on a mushy black trash bag, which he had, of course, first torn open to inspect the garbage inside. People, he’d noticed, threw away amazing quantities of lettuce and bread crusts and cheese rinds with hardly any mold on any of it.

  Now that he’d had a snack, he was ready to capture the shadow.

  He squinted against the shimmering sunlight overhead. The shadow was an afternoon hunter, and against all Kit’s raccoon instincts, he had to be wide awake in broad daylight to catch it. Other raccoons were sound asleep, along with the sensible bats and possums and rats. But Kit wasn’t interested in being any kind of sensible. He was interested in catching his quarry.

  Of course, it wasn’t the shadow he was after, but the bird of prey making the shadow, a red-tailed hawk named Valker. Kit had some questions he needed answered and only Valker could answer them.

  However, no one in Ankle Snap Alley had ever spoken to Valker before, or at least no one who was still around to talk about it. Valker was a merciless hunter with a beak like a razor blade and eyes just as sharp. By the time any of the scurrying residents of Ankle Snap Alley saw more than Valker’s shadow, a flash of feather, say, or a grasping talon, it was already too late.

  One moment a little mouse could be standing outside the store considering which sort of cheese she’d like to purchase for a Church Mouse Supper, and the next, she’d be snatched into the sky without so much as a squeak.

  Animals had been vanishing from Ankle Snap Alley since spring began and if Valker wasn’t the one responsible, he’d at least know who was. It was Kit’s job, as leader of the Moonlight Brigade and sworn protector of Ankle Snap Alley, to find out what was happening to his neighbors.

  The Hawk would have to be persuaded to tell Kit . . . and also not to crush Kit’s skull in the process.

  Kit had one advantage, though. He had his best friend, Eeni.

  Eeni was a white rat who was braver than Valker was fast, and cleverer than Valker was deadly. At least, that’s what she’d told Kit when she’d volunteered to help him with his plan to catch the hawk.

  “It’ll be easy as sneaking the socks off a centipede,” she’d said the night before, but now Kit saw her confidence falter as Valker’s shadow passed overhead. Kit had long ago noticed how boasts made in moonlight usually dissolved under a midday sun.

  Still, frightened though she was, Eeni kept her promise. She was a rat of her word.

  She was also the only the creature who hadn’t taken cover from Valker, circling above. While other folks were asleep in their burrows and nests, Eeni was out in the wide-open alley, without so much as a leaf over her back, limping as she staggered between the entrance to Possum Ansel’s Sweet & Best-Tasting Baking Company and the Dancing Squirrel Theater across the way. Her tiny pink paws clutched at the ground and her limp-legged stutter-steps dragged her far too slowly to make a getaway.

  To a hunter like Valker, “fast food” was the food that ran the slowest. Eeni must have looked like a delightful afternoon snack.

  The hawk whirled on the breeze, spreading wide his white-tipped wings, then turned in a slow arc until his shadow was directly over Eeni, shading her beneath his blue-black outline.

  “Ohh ohhh no!” she cried, looking up at him. “Oh no! It’s Valker! Someone help me!”

  She glanced at Kit in his Dumpster. Her little eyes widened as she took a small hop toward him. Her back leg dragged behind her and her limp made her too slow to reach the safety of the Dumpster before Valker attacked.

  She took another faltering step, then another, then one more. “Ow!” she grunted with each step. “Ow! Ow!”

  She was too slow by half.

  “Come on, Eeni . . . ,” Kit whispered. “Come on . . .”

  A screech from above stopped her where she stood. The sh
adow dove, fast as lightning, and Eeni curled into herself, clamping her eyes shut, paws over her ears, prayers to the Great Mother Rat on her lips as the winged raptor bore down, talons grasping for Eeni’s fragile little bones.

  “Ahhh!” she yelled.

  “Screech!” Valker screeched.

  “Eeni!” Kit cried from the safety of the Dumpster. “Now!”

  At Kit’s shout, Eeni darted, her limp disappearing, and the hawk’s talons caught only her paw prints in the dirt. The hawk had fallen for her trick, just as she’d known he would.

  Valker crashed into the ground in a heap of brown and red feathers, then rolled, flapping to a dusty stop. The hawk hopped up onto his legs again, towering as tall as the little shops of the alley. He ruffled and fluffed his feathers, looked around to make sure no one else had seen his embarrassing miss, and then narrowed his pale yellow eyes at Eeni, still all alone out in the open of Ankle Snap Alley.

  A breeze blew down the way, rustling a bag that had snagged in a bare branch of the Gnarly Oak Apartments. The wind whistled through the plastic, making it snap and shush.

  Kit shivered in the Dumpster. Though the spring air was warm, his blood ran cold. From this close, Valker could probably count the hairs on Kit’s best friend’s throat.

  Eeni gulped.

  “Ye think ye can treek me, ratty?” the hawk screeched at her, his birdish accent making all his words sound like ancient curses. He lifted a talon to study where it had whacked into the ground, then swiveled his head to look back at Eeni. “Aye stubbed me toes!”

  “Sorry about that.” Eeni opened her paws. “I just didn’t want to get eaten.”

  “Yer too late fer that, leetle one. Yer lunch meat now!” Valker charged at her, his beak snapping at her tiny face.