Lantern Sam and the Blue Streak Bandits by Michael D. Beil

really,” I said. I’d had enough water for a lifetime.
    I climbed up the stack of kegs, then leaped onto the roof of the truck.
    “Whatever you do, don’t fall into the back of that truck,” she warned.
    In the bed of the truck were a dozen wooden cages, each with three or four chickens inside, clucking and cooing.
    I had spent time around chickens back on the farm in Linesville, so I wasn’t too worried. “I’m not afraid of chickens,” I said, jumping from the truck roof to a tree branch and then onto the roof next to Marmalade.
    She looked me up and down, frowning. “Rrowww. Why, you’re just a baby. What are you, a whole year old?”
    “Not quite.”
    “And I’ll bet this is your first time in the big city, right?”
    I nodded.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Sam.”
    “Well, Sam, it’s your lucky day. My name is Marmalade and I’m going to show you all the best spots in Cleveland. Do you like oysters, Sam? Because I know a place where—”
    Without warning, a bolt of lightning tore the sky open directly above us, blinding me temporarily. Fagin’s Place shook beneath my feet, and every bit of my hair stood on end from all the static electricity in the air. When I was finally able to see again, a gray tom, three times my size, stood between Marmalade and me. To this day, I have no idea where he came from; at the time, I was convinced that he rode in on the back of the lightning bolt.
    “I thought you were out of town,” purred Marmalade.
    “Obviously,” the tom growled. “Who’s the shrimp?”
    “This is Sam. He’s new in town. Sam, meet Tom.”
    A tomcat named Tom? How
creative
, I thought.
    “Nice to, er, meet you, Tom,” I stammered.
    Tom circled me silently, a lion sizing up his prey.
    “Easy, Tom,” said Marmalade. “Please don’t hurt him. Nothing happened. He’s practically a kitten.”
    “Just a scratch,” said Tom. “A little something to remember me by.”
    I thought I was ready, but the truth is that I never even saw it coming. I’d done plenty of fighting with my brothers and sisters, but they all had one thing in common: they were all right-pawed. Tom, it turned out, was a southpaw.
    And what a paw! The first swipe took a notch out of my right ear, and the second spun me around so hard I sailed off the roof, bounced once on the top of the truck, and then landed with a thump in the back, right smack in the middle of the chicken cages. At the moment I hit the truck bed, the owner hit the ignition, and the engine sputtered for a second before springing to life. As we bounced down the alley behind Fagin’s Place, I heard Tom laughing from the roof above me.
    “Get up, Sam!” cried Marmalade. “You have to get out of there before—”
    It was already too late. I was about to discover why the owner of the truck wasn’t worried about anyone trying to steal his chickens. (I know what you’re thinking: why does anyone drive around with chickens in the first place? I still don’t know the answer to that question.)
    No matter how tough you think you are, you do
not
want—ever—to find yourself between a very protective rooster and a bunch of hens. Now, before you laugh, I’ll just mention that the rooster outweighed me by a dozen pounds, and on top of that, he had the advantage of surprise. The monster came out of nowhere—a spinning, kicking, pecking, slashing, feathered blur—and I was bruised and bloodied in a matter of seconds. I got in a couple of decent hits, ending up with a paw full of feathers at one point, and he backed off momentarily in order to regroup. I wasn’t about to stick around for part two, though, so I climbed up the tailgate and jumped.
    In the midst of the teeming rain and all that rooster fury, however, I hadn’t realized that the truck had sped up to about thirty-five miles an hour, so when I hit the road, I skidded along the edge of the pavement, desperately trying to bring myself to a stop. All my claws were worn down to the nubs and one was