Page 25 of Outfoxed

The buried streets no longer did me any good, although I’d uncover the maintenance cover assuming I could find it. Without landmarks, that would be a challenge. Without cover, anyone nearby could observe my activities. Anyone wise would relocate closer to Inner Tulsa and hide in the back alleys, sheltering wherever they could in search of safety.

Dumpsters would become makeshift shelters, and more bodies would pile up in the streets. Sickness would take root, and Mother Nature wouldn’t need her storms to bring death to Tulsa.

The wise would leave or take shelter in Asylum.

I began the slow hike towards my new landlord’s home, expecting the worst.

Mother Nature, as always, delivered.

I found Carl’s body among the ruins of his house, some of which still stood. From the looks of him, the storm hadn’t wasted its time stealing the old man’s life, and I already missed our planned chats. It hadn’t been the first time I’d dealt with the bodies of those I’d known by name, but it was the first time I’d wanted to do anything like bury one of them.

I could make a pyre. A pyre was a lot like burial, except it served another purpose; the bodies wouldn’t try to kill us with disease after.

Damn it. The Alley should have been a refuge, not a cemetery.

I should have known better. The Alley already was a cemetery. Most of its residents just weren’t dead quite yet.

Sunday, May 3, 2043.

Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Alley.

I left Carl long enough to return to my new home and retrieve the lease he’d given me. In life, he’d wanted me to have a home. In death, he’d made it mine, and I meant to keep that part of him around. Mourning over lost time wouldn’t do anyone any good, but I came close to crying, something I hadn’t done since abandoning home and choosing the streets over enslavement.

When I returned to his cold corpse, the police had arrived, and they took names, recorded the dead, and began the tedious process of notifying City Hall it had more names to register as deceased. I waited for a lull to approach one of the uniformed men. “Excuse me?”

He turned to me, and I regretted I’d bothered one of the old, tired men who’d seen too much death over the years. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

I supposed I looked old and tired, too, as most cops called me miss rather than ma’am. Sighing, I pointed at my landlord’s body. “His name’s Carl, and he was my landlord. I’d like to give him and the others a pyre.”

Requesting for the right to burn the dead startled the man into silence, but while he didn’t speak, he took my lease out of my hand and looked it over. He then, as I expected, checked Carl’s pockets for identification, which he found.

“There are three forms you need to fill out, ma’am. One will claim the leased property as yours, the second is a risk waiver stating you understand you’re responsible if you become sick from handling the dead, and the third is a burn permit for the pyre. It’ll allow you to burn as many bodies as you wish, and the permit will last for twenty-four hours.”

It didn’t take more than a few hours at most to light a pyre and pile the bodies on top of it.

At the cop’s announcement, other survivors came forward and indicated they would help my cause. They got the same lectures about the waiver and the burn permit, which they agreed to without hesitation. I understood that.

It didn’t matter if we caught something from the dead when we’d be joining them soon enough.

It took an hour to deal with the paperwork, which the cops claimed and would take to City Hall on our behalf. He gave me a carbon copy of my lease-to-ownership form, ordered me to keep it safe, and left me to my grisly business of burning the dead.

With so many working to stack every scrap of usable wood, it didn’t take long to surround the corpses. Long-burning logs, a luxury imported from some other quadrant, would help ignite it. Those went around the pyre at equal intervals, and a few went between the cinderblocks in the heart of the pyre to allow air to flow through it.

It took a lot of fire to burn a body all the way down, and the glow from our battered neighborhood would be visible even in Inner Tulsa should anyone bother to look our way. Most wouldn’t. Why would they care about us when death came for them, too?

“It hit so fast,” one of the women who’d helped me build the pyre and drag the bodies whispered.

That it had. Mother Nature didn’t waste her time when she wanted to cut ours short. “Maybe Mother Nature will get bored and leave us alone for a while.”

“Or hit us where we go.” The woman gesture down the ruins of the street. “My cellar’s still good. The rest of the house isn’t.”

“But your cellar is still good. That’s something. Clear off the property, pop up a shack, and City Hall will leave you alone about it. It’s not like they can use the land.” Giving her tips on how to keep her home post-twister wouldn’t do much in the grand scheme, but I’d been in the Alley long enough to recognize a bitter truth. Sometimes, when all that was left was a scrap of land, it was worth living and dying for because there was nothing else.

“You’re right. How long have you been in this hell hole?”

“Too long.”