Page 36 of Outfoxed

A gust knocked it upwards, where one of the approaching funnels sucked it up, stripped it of leaves and bark, and flung it back to the ground, where it joined the debris scattering the outskirts. It skittered across the ground, took flight again, and crashed down again, over and over at Mother Nature’s whim.

As one, the twisters landed, and they moved in a pattern, swirling towards each other in a spiral, synchronized to a steady beat, swaying as though they listened to some lethal magic only they could hear.

The tree did not blame Mother Nature for its demise as one of the tornadoes drew close, ripped it from the ground, and tossed it away, discarded like so many other lives in Tulsa. Long after the tree’s death, my magic held me firm so I might witness the truth to be found in the circling tornadoes ruining my home, each one following a set path to maximize its destruction.

Mother Nature could rage, but she didn’t plan, she didn’t strategize, and she didn’t draw patterns on the ground with her tornadoes.

No, such planning was the conceit of humans, humans who wanted to see my home die a slow and agonizing death.

Satisfied, my wild magic faded and left me alone in the ruins of my home.

Monday, May 4, 2043.

Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Alley.

I dropped the stick, opened my eyes, and stared over the destruction, unable to forget the precise, spiraling pattern the tornadoes had taken while destroying the outskirts, my home. A cold realization sank in, digging its claws into my chest.

Someone used magic against my home, capturing Mother Nature’s power and perverting her into a weapon, one meant to destroy Tulsa one neighborhood at a time. That my magic revealed so much meant one thing to me: it understood I would share the fate of the many others in the city if something did not change, and it expected me to make use of the past to create a new future—one with me still in it.

Who the hell would want to destroy Tulsa? Why? The city had nothing to offer, much like the rest of the Alley. While the storms had grown in intensity, they’d been hitting the area for as long as the quadrants had existed. The boundaries had sprung up in the days following the arrival of magic, and life had changed. I shivered at the memory of Peace’s mission to rid the Earth of thieves and murderers, and I wondered if the sword had let go of her need for revenge over the years. Considering my magic had gone out of its way to warn me of the sword’s treachery, I doubted it.

Part of me wanted to take a trip to the nearest river and toss the blade in, but I hesitated against destroying something so beautiful. A museum hadn’t worked before, although a storage cellar had—for a while.

I could just put her back in her crate and go about my business, finding suitable scrap wood to forge my practice blade. It wouldn’t take me long to find some sort of intact piece of wood I could fashion into a katana’s blade with time and a sharp enough knife.

Before I could do that, I had bigger problems to worry about, which involved finding potential survivors and clearing their cellar entries so they didn’t die a slow death rather than a fast one. I picked my next piece of debris with better care, a broken stud from someone’s home. Once again, my magic came at my call, although it seemed determined to showcase the unnatural pattern of the storm rather than help me find where survivors might be. After ten such incidents, I shook from exhaustion, had found nothing of use, and stared over the destruction wondering where I might even begin to look for survivors.

My stubborn home stood in defiance of the storms, the last of its kind. It needed new shingles, but it had otherwise emerged unscathed. How it had survived would likely remain a mystery, one my magic didn’t see fit to help me solve. That annoyed me, a reminder my magic had its own agenda and couldn’t be relied upon to do what I wanted. In the East, it displayed similar tendencies, although we shared a similar mindset when it came to the control and creation of toxins.

In short, neither of us liked that power, and I tended to use it only when necessary—or for the sake of another.

Sometimes, I questioned why I clung to my questionable ethics. If I were a little more willing to get my hands dirty, life would’ve been a great deal easier for me.

I returned to my cellar long enough to retrieve Peace, wrapping her in a linen bundle before tying her to my back. Talking to a sword made me a little crazy, but after seeing what she’d done to others who’d picked her up, I wasn’t going to underestimate her. “The guy who owned you before me gave me the cellar and everything in it, so you’re technically mine. I get that you don’t want to be stolen and can’t tolerate thieves, but around these parts, scavenging is a way of life. The dead don’t need what they used to own, and if we don’t scavenge, well, we die, too. And well, there’s no real point in killing anybody around here, either. Chances are, Mother Nature will take care of the killing for us. I’d really rather you not have a temper tantrum, especially since I want to take you to somebody who can teach me how to use you properly.”

I couldn’t tell if Peace understood me or cared, but I felt better for saying it, even if it did make me a little crazy for talking to a sword like she could hear me.

As I had no idea when I’d be back again, I filled my pack with supplies, grabbed a few bottles of water, a few cans of food and one of the openers, and prepared to face a day full of death and misery.

But I lived, and knowing what I knew, I meant to keep it that way.

My magic wanted me to know the truth, and I meant to find it—and I’d use Peace to carve out some justice for the thousands dead.

That much I could do, so I would.

Monday, May 4, 2043.

Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The Alley.

I scoured my neighborhood, locating three different cellars using a mix of magic and my ears. The eight survivors helped me search, but we spent hours without finding anything more than debris and fresh corpses.

Of the eight, six headed for Inner Tulsa. The other two, an older couple who’d been around since before the storms had taken a particularly lethal turn, refused to leave. I hesitated, then I offered to have them join me in my cellar, but they refused that, too.

They’d moved into their home the day they’d gotten married, and they meant to stay there until the day they died. I could respect that, and before I left, I helped them clear debris away from their cellar entry, reminded them to get a shack up to stay on the right side of the law in the Alley, and promised to come help them if I could.