Page 56 of Outfoxed

Then again, any bolt hole might work, especially if I could control my transformation and mimic a mundane fox. Some red foxes lurked in the outskirts, surviving in exposed, abandoned cellars and creating their dens within them. They avoided people, instead scavenging the dead neighborhoods for anything they could find.

Mother Nature couldn’t beat the persistence of her wildlife, something I admired.

To trick Carlos into believing I headed for the questionable safety of McCoy’s or the martial arts center, I began my trip heading towards Inner Tulsa, sticking to the wider streets more likely to remain unobstructed. Six blocks in, with the man’s incessant cursing trailing behind me, I backtracked, taking advantage of questionable alleys with enough rubble and refuse to make it harder going for someone of a larger build.

Like Carlos.

I scrambled over broken scraps of wood, abandoned and rusting trash cans, and an overfilled dumpster before hopping the makeshift fence meant to keep the trash in the alley rather than spilling out onto one of the nicer streets. I landed hard, grunting before resuming my sprint.

Bolting down the street drew unwanted attention, but during the aftermath of the storm, everyone either shook their heads at me or shouted curses at me if I came too close. I opted against caring.

I ran like a madwoman, and I couldn’t blame them for their reaction. Every now and then, a vagrant would get into a fight with a sick animal, contract rabies, and turn the outskirts upside down as an outbreak added to everyone’s problems. Without access to Asylum or a hospital, rabies led to death, and the last outbreak had killed fifteen people before someone in Inner Tulsa had decided it might be a good idea to treat the remaining survivors before it spread further.

In the East, any half-decent toxin witch could handle the disease; it acted a lot like a poison in many ways, making it our domain. Thanks to my ears and tail, something I’d been born with, nobody had thought to test me as a witch, and by the time I’d clued in I was more than just a hybrid, I’d known better than tell anyone what I was.

I didn’t want to know what would happen to me if anyone learned the truth. Being a fox hybrid would cost me enough. My price tag would skyrocket if anyone realized I was more than I appeared.

My current price tag was enough to make my life difficult.

Once satisfied I might convince Carlos I headed for Inner Tulsa, I began the tedious process of backtracking towards the outskirts. I maintained my run until my lungs burned before I slowed, stopped, and listened for signs of pursuit.

Beyond the expected sounds of people doing their best to burn the bodies and clean up before the next storm, all remained quiet.

“Better luck next time, Carlos,” I muttered to myself.

I considered my various cellar options. Of my choices, two or three could only be accessed while a fox, and only if I controlled my size enough to fit into the entry hole, assuming it hadn’t been blocked by one of the latest storms. Some gambles were worth making, but I eliminated it as an option.

If something blocked the entrance while I was inside, the cellar would become my tomb.

I didn’t want to die. In a way, I appreciated how the bounty clarified things for me. When dead, I could do nothing. If captured, freedom remained a goal, something I could continue to fight for.

I kept one eye on my back while heading for the outskirts, forcing myself to take slow and even breaths in case I needed to make another mad dash out of a bounty hunter’s clutches. My head hurt from the close encounter with Carlos’s stick, and I wondered if he’d managed to draw blood. Until I reached somewhere safe, I didn’t dare to check.

Moving made me a harder target to catch.

By the time I reached my regular haunts, several pyres burned, and I wondered just how many lives the storms—and their creators—had taken. Ten, twenty? Thirty? Per pyre? I couldn’t tell; if built right, the largest one could reduce a hundred bodies to ash given a few hours and extra fuel.

It hurt watching them, so I moved on.

I stuck to the alleys to make it harder to track me, popping out to the rubble zones to check my progress and determine if any of my cellars could be accessible. The house on my deeded property, which I checked on at a distance, still stood. I viewed its persistence as a miracle.

After checking five cellars to discover the same general situation, I accepted the inevitable: I needed to head towards an Asylum entrance or the sewers and gain access to my good property that way. I could only hope I’d given myself enough time since last transforming, else I’d be flirting with more trouble. I tired of trouble.

It haunted me, just like the invisible weight of the murdered littering the Alley would haunt me.

The streets remained eerily empty, and the exposure bothered me enough I kept to the narrower corridors cutting through the dying city, checking my back for anyone following me.

Gunfire rang out, echoing in the alley’s tight confines. The first bullet struck the broken asphalt at my feet and dug deep. I jerked my head up in time to catch a glimpse of a dark figure wearing a trench coat. I couldn’t tell if I spotted the muzzle flash, heard the second shot, or comprehended the bullet slamming deep into my arm first.

I staggered, tripped over the debris strewn over the ground, and landed on my hands and knees.

If there was a third shot fired, it was lost in the darkness.

Friday, May 1, 2043.

Asylum, Oklahoma.

The Alley.