Page 28 of Up in Smoke

While I struggled to get the damned thing rolling, once I succeeded, the road helped, as it had a slight downward slope. I eased from a walk to a jog, looking back to check on Sandro.

As I feared, the instant he’d stopped moving, he’d passed out. I chittered my agitation over his state, focusing on my goal.

Overhead, the clouds growled. In front of me, the Alley waited, and I bet the clouds growled there, too.

Unlike in the boundary, when the clouds voiced their rage in the Alley, death came calling.

As always, I would do my best to survive, even if it meant I had to shift and drag Sandro halfway across the quadrant to preserve our lives and deny Mother Nature of more tallies in her black book of bodies.

Wednesday, June 10, 2043.

Blossom, Texas.

The Alley.

My eyes had deceived me.Less than five minutes after I began my frenzied jog hauling Sandro to the relative safety of the Alley, I rammed through the invisible curtain of magic. Without the proper preparation, it reminded me of getting punched in the gut, and I clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t stumble to a halt and puke on the side of Old 82. I shuddered, slowed to a halt, and concentrated on my breathing until my stomach settled.

As far as I could tell, Sandro still slept, but I checked his pulse anyway to be certain. His steady heartbeat reassured me.

Then the dark clouds tinged with green began to swirl and rotate overhead, the first and last warning I needed that things were about to get sketchy.

Without Sandro coherent—or even conscious—I’d have to battle Mother Nature on my own and hope good fortune blessed me. I spat curses at the sky, hoped she’d hold her temper for at least another twenty minutes, and checked the trashed outskirts of Blossom in search of a hiding hole.

A few sticks with tattered cloths offered hope. The first one marked a cellar, but a recent storm had thrown debris over the entry. With five good minutes, I’d have time to open it up, and biting curses, I went to work. After the first few boards went down, a sound from below caught my attention, a thumping from the other side of the cellar door.

While I’d needed good fortune, I’d just become salvation for some poor bastard who’d run out of luck. Understanding how most cellars work and with no idea how long the luckless bastard had been stuck down there, I hurried it up, flinging broken boards, limbs, and several cinder blocks off the door before yanking it open.

The face of a child stared up at me, and the little girl began to scream and cry, incoherent babbling I assumed meant she’d crossed the line into the realm of pure hysteria. I scooped her up, checked the steps, and hauled her out before diving down into the cellar to the next door.

The decomposing bodies of her parents occupied a corner, along with the mewling form of a young cat, an older kitten.

Right. I couldn’t help her parents, but I could help the cat, so I scooped the animal up and carried it outside. The child stood where I’d left her, still sobbing.

I put the kitten in the wagon with Sandro, lifted up the girl with one arm, and dragged the wagon to the next cellar.

It would take days to free the entry from the building that had collapsed on top of it, and I could only hope nobody had been inside. Unlike the girl I held, I wouldn’t be able to save them, no matter how hard I tried.

It took four more tries to find an intact cellar without any occupants, living or dead. Rain pattered down from the sky, and I hurried down the steps, setting the girl down before dragging Sandro down. The sky continued to darken, but I couldn’t spot any twisters in the works, so I took the time to ease the wagon down the steps into the confines of the cellar. Once it was inside, I went up the steps one more time, slammed the exterior door closed and locked it before opening the airway slot. I breathed a relieved sigh and headed down, aware a twister might be able to take down the first cellar door, but Mother Nature would have to work to reach us in the safety of the concrete cellar.

In the time it’d taken me to bring Sandro and our belongings down, the child had shuffled to a corner, sat down, and quieted, staring at me with reddened eyes.

The poor, sweet little girl. In her shoes, I’d be kicking, screaming, biting, and sobbing still—and would have been for a long time to come. My fox whined in my head, and I heeded her, going to the child and crouching in front of her. “I’m sorry, baby.” What else could I say to the child, who’d been locked in a cellar and had been forced to watch her parents die, victims to the Alley like so many others?

She sniffled, wiped her face with the dirty sleeve of her worn dress, and nodded. “Mama was sick, and Papa ran out of medicine, then the storm came, and he couldn’t open the door. He made me promise I understood it wasn’t my fault.”

In my eyes, she was but a little thing, although I rarely judged a child’s age all that well, despite having worked at the martial arts center. My heart hurt, but I hid my pain and went to the wagon and retrieved my combs so I could tame her tangled, matted hair. I wouldn’t be able to erase the trauma, but I could show her a little love and care. “It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t his, either. What’s your name?”

I wished I could do something for her parents, although I’d be forever grateful her father had tried his best to limit how much guilt his daughter would face over the years.

“Alondra.”

“All right, Alondra.” I pointed at Sandro, who would have one hell of a kink in his neck when he woke. “That’s Sandro. We just made it through the boundary, and it hits him pretty hard, so he needs to sleep it off.”

“We were supposed to be safe from the boundary, but the line jumped,” Alondra informed me, and her brows furrowed. She stood still while I worked on her hair, and I took care with how hard I pulled. “Then the storms came.”

Storms often hit hard near the boundary, driven from the fluctuating torrents of colliding magic. “The new boundary line attracted them. Still, I’m sorry. Once this storm passes over, I’ll see if I can give them a pyre.”

“A pyre?” she asked.