Page 26 of Up in Smoke

Does my little vixen have something she’d like to tell me?

Friday, June 5, 2043.

Hooks, Texas.

The Boundary.

Mother Nature didher best to kill us, but after almost two days of bitching and moaning her discontent over our general survivability, she packed her bags and went to sulk elsewhere. We’d surfaced several times to make use of one of the outhouses scattered around the place, a present from some angel of a traveler.

Sandro did his part, and with a blend of magic from the South and the Alley, he cleaned them all out, dug the holes deeper, and even purified the entire structure to help prevent potential spread of illness for a while.

He even had a poem and a song capable of transforming deadfall into toilet paper, which he stored inside each outhouse, making sheltered nooks for the supply inside.

The rest of the time, we kept each other company, and when my fox wasn’t having her myriad of itches scratched, we read books. Sandro had put hundreds upon hundreds of new books on my e-reader in a vast assortment of subjects, including books on how to learn new languages. I picked Spanish first, as I hoped he might be able to help me learn. When I asked, he grinned, showed me how the device could teach me how to speak any one of the languages on it with audible lessons, and promised once I was ready to try a conversation, we’d attempt to badly speak Spanish at each other.

He thought we might be able to conquer the entirety of the Spanish-speaking world with our horrible mispronunciations, our incorrect grammar, and poor vocabulary.

In the late afternoon, with everything right in my fox’s world and a spring in my step, we left Hooks and continued along Old 82 towards Paris, where we’d cut north on route to Tulsa.

The weather held, and I worried.

Sunday, June 7, 2043.

De Kalb, Texas.

The Boundary.

Once upon a time,De Kalb represented the other end of the boundary zone. Much like Texarkana, the place had seen better days. The evidence of twisters in the area littered the ground, and I dodged the freshly broken wood to prevent my magic from rearing its ugly head and causing more problems.

Thanks to Mother Nature’s bad idea of a joke, we’d been forced to shelter in a cellar and wait out her fury each and every night.

In the first few days, I hadn’t noticed the wear and tear on Sandro, but he could no longer walk without dragging his feet, he slept rather than read when we were forced underground, and it became harder to wake him up in the morning. My fox fretted, and for once in my life, she had no interest in continuing her plans to tame the hot ass bounty hunter through frequent seductions.

She wanted to dig a den, drag him inside, and protect him until he stood on his own again, not understanding the boundary drained away his energy.

While the brewing storm growled overhead, I opted to push on to Blossom for one reason alone: I’d scavenged a sturdy wagon from the ruins of a hardware store, one that rolled easily enough I stood a good chance of being able to pull it even when a fox. After some searching, I’d located the rubble of a pet shop, selecting a harness that would fit. Near the pet store, on the Alley side of the old boundary line, I’d found a general store, one that had been stocked within the past six months. Canned goods with over a year of life left in them went into the wagon, including my favorite brand of beef stew, chicken noodle soup, and enough beans to fuel an army.

Then, because good luck could happen even to me, plastic bags of spices, still intact and fresh enough to serve use, had survived the destruction. From chili peppers to parsley, I grabbed it all, along with several canvas bags, which devoured a ridiculous amount of space in my wagon—and would eventually take up space in our packs, too. As olive oil was worth as much as gold in a city with few imports, I grabbed several large bulk cans of it along with an assortment of smaller artisan bottles, hoping we wouldn’t have to unload them due to their weight.

As my final, crowning achievement, I found several camping sets of pots and pans new in box, complete with dishes, and one went into my wagon as a splurge.

Once in Tulsa, we’d appreciate the spices, and until we reached Tulsa, we’d appreciate having the extra cookware.

I hauled my treasures to where I’d left Sandro to rest.

Sandro eyed my acquisitions with interest, which relieved me. His lethargy had made it a struggle for him to care about anything at all, including eating. I pricked my ears forward and brought the wagon to where he waited, lounging on an abandoned lawn chair that’d somehow survived Mother Nature’s wrath.

“I see my resourceful vixen has found a wealth of goods. I don’t suppose there was a second wagon?”

“This is the only wagon,” I lied, aware he might be riding in our wagon and I couldn’t pull two no matter how hard I tried. Pulling one would test my luck if it came to that. “It’ll be a little extra work to pull, but I found spices, olive oil, and a lot of canned goods.” I twitched my tail at the thought of having my favorite beef stew over a campfire. “No chocolate, though.”

The little I’d found hadn’t been packaged to survive months on the shelves.

Sandro locked onto the cans of beef stew, and when he picked one up, my tail developed a life of its own, swishing back and forth. I licked my lips.

“I guess I can’t tease you all that much about this, can I? You look like I do when a good steak comes my way, except I can’t express my delight through the energetic wagging of my tail. We can have beef stew tonight, assuming we find a good place to ride out the storm.”

“I think we can make it to Avery before we have to call it quits. With luck, we’ll be out of the boundary by then. This was supposed to be where the boundary eased up and we’d be in patches of the Alley.” I pointed at one of the former sections of the Alley. “There used to be a general store for travelers there, but it looks like the boundary swallowed it up.”