Slipping Away Read online

  For answer, I pointed. The squirrel-mouse blinked once, slowly and deliberately like a golden owl. Arlin and Tiberius finally disentangled themselves and scrambled to their feet, looking at the squirrel-mouse together.

  "Ha!" Tiberius shouted at it, flipping his wings out in an aggressive pose. When it continued watching us, Arlin yipped at it, clapping his hands. It blinked again, and both my friends turned to me, shrugging their cluelessness at me.

  "Well, it's not hurting anything, and we don't have time to figure it out, at least, I don't, and old man Finn is s'posed to be handing out some of his cookies tonight, so let's just go."

  Tiberius, who had begun to look mutinous, brightened at the mention of cookies, and Arlin was already trailing after me down the path. A moment later, we heard the loud hum of Tiberius's wings as he buzzed down the path after us. Behind us, as I glanced back, I could still see the squirrel-mouse sitting on the edge of the clearing, watching us leave.

  -----------

  Campfire always took place at a bonfire pit on the edge of town. The grown-ups set it up that way so that if the fire ever got out of control, they would have a chance to put it out before any houses or important buildings burned, and because of the fire, it also had firebreaks all around it. It was set up inside an old stadium, in a pit in the center. Our town was close enough to an old city that we had access to a few different stadiums, so the grown-ups had picked one of the smaller ones that was conveniently close. Old houses that were breaking down were torn apart most days, both to get rid of breeding grounds for pests and to make room for other things later. While the better pieces went into a storehouse for people to use, the junk from the houses was run through a planer to strip the chemicals off of it and went into a pile for the bonfire that happened two or three times a week. Because most of the grown-ups only remembered outdoor fires when they went camping, they called it the Campfire.

  On one side of the huge bonfire, there was a raised platform for a stage. It was close enough that the fire illuminated it, and far enough away that the people on it wouldn't get caught by a stray flame. The platform was needed because the community had two thousand adults, and even more kids. It was small enough that we all knew each other on sight, and big enough to be self-sustaining. About eighty percent of the town showed up at Campfire on a typical night; with that many people in the crowd, it could get hard to see. The grown-ups took turns making sure the only people on the platform were the people with a show to put on. Other than that, folk were allowed to go where they wanted. Several people had built stands on the field, and smaller fires were built up here and there for cooking. The town mostly traded throughout the day, but a lot of trading also happened at Campfire, especially between kids who didn't want parents to know what they were up to. Campfire was where people planned surprises for each other, where they got up to things they normally wouldn't try. The firelight created an atmosphere that was very different from during the day, and the shadows made it harder to recognize other people. Closer to the stage, people traded for treats or brought snacks from home while they watched the performances. At the far edge, young men and women hid in the shadows or snuck under the old bleachers to fool around away from their parents. In between, aside from the sale stalls, a lot of older professionals who worked a specialized profession before the plague made themselves available to any kids who wanted to learn what they had to teach. For the older workers, this was vital if electricity was going to be available later, when they got too old to maintain the generators. As it was, we only had enough electricity to run a pre-plague household for an hour each day. Indoor plumbing was still available, but hot water and gas stoves were a thing of the past, although people who had the time could heat their own, and a lot of people kept reservoirs on the roofs of their houses for a warm shower in the evening. The professionals who kept the electrical and plumbing systems working had been common enough, and enough had survived, to keep the system running in the meantime, and now they were passing on their knowledge to anyone who wanted to learn. Scientists and medical professionals also taught kids weird things at Campfire, but since they also taught daily at school, they didn't often get as many attendees as the plumbers, electricians, engineers, and crafting professionals.

  On this particular night, Pandora had talked the head of the dance troupe she had mostly learned from and often danced with into giving me a try as well. It wasn't as fun as being up there for, say, winning a shooting competition, but stage time was stage time, and I wasn't going to jeopardize it. I had worked every bit as hard to get up there as Pandora had to make the chance for me, rehearsing with the troupe for the last three months. Someone had found them a copy of the Nutcracker from before the plague, and they had enough professional grade dancers to do a few scenes from it. If it went over well, they planned to try for a whole performance in another year. For now, I was one of the flowers in the scene with the Sugar Plum Fairy, and that was enough for me. It meant that I got a new outfit, free of charge, and even though the tutu was useless for anything but the play, the leotard was black, and might turn out very useful for sneaking around in.

  Arlin, Muffy, and Tiberius were all claiming disgust that I would do something so girly, but they were all jealous that I got to spend time on stage when they hadn't, so I wasn't worried. To keep from giving them too much chance to tease me, though, I had put a change of clothes, black denim pants Mama had made me and my favorite black leather vest, into the backpack I kept a few other treasures in and brought that with me. I also had a new pair of bracers I had traded for that I meant to show off, and my favorite black belt, my pocket knife and my daggers, which my parents got for me as a reward for always bringing in game. My daggers and my bow were always somewhere close by me, just in case, and although Pandora eyed them when we sat down with the troupe to wait for our turn on stage, she didn't say anything. I did make sure to put them out of sight when she motioned for me to, and sat eagerly watching the other acts. I never got such good seating, and I meant to take advantage of it, whatever Pandora might think.

  Pandora was shaped a lot like me, but her face had a natural sophistication that was mirrored in the rest of her. Her fur was mostly gold on the back, arms, and legs, but she had a white chest and belly. She also had elegant white marks just beneath her dark brown eyes, and black just above. A streak of darker gold fur ran from between her almond-shaped eyes to between her ears, which were larger, longer, and more delicate than mine, and which were outlined in black and tipped with tufts of black fur. Mama and Dad said her cat half must have come from the caracals that were in the African cat exhibit at the zoo, just like they always thought that my panther half was probably a black leopard.

  The first act showed off a particularly large chitin-snake skin, twenty foot from end to end and four foot tall at the middle, off a snake a group had hunted in the forest. It was used as a part of a costume for a Chinese festival dance, although people around us whispered it was the wrong time of year for the dance.

  It was the middle of the second act, a group of jugglers who were juggling knives, swords, and even flaming torches, that Pandora and I noticed a whispering in the crowd behind us. Pandora just flicked an ear back, annoyed that people were being so rude, but I couldn't resist glancing back to see what was up. Of course, there was always some noise at Campfire, although the area close to the stage usually stayed fairly quiet, but this didn't sound like the normal bartering, playing, and fooling around. I wasn't lucky enough to avoid Pandora thumping me for my impoliteness, and I settled down at the glare she sent my way, but the quick glance had showed me some of what was wrong.

  "The warning flag is up," I whispered to Pandora.

  The warning flag was a red flag that was kept at lookout posts around the community. We weren't in a particularly dangerous area, but there were occasional issues with marauders and more common dangers from nastier animals coming out of the forest. We kept lookouts at buildings around the edges of the community, which the stadium was
one, to let us know what was happening. A dark green flag meant everything was normal, a black flag meant a group had been spotted in the distance, an orange flag meant that group was hostile, and the red flag, called the warning flag, meant a nasty creature had come in from the forest.

  "It goes up about once a week," Pandora whispered back, flicking her ears back in annoyance. "The hunters will take care of it. Stay still."

  I was itching to know what was going on, but Dad had warned me that Pandora was in charge since I was on her turf, and I had better listen to her for the night, so I sat still with my eyes on the stage. Then, as the jugglers wound down, we heard screaming start from behind us, mixed with roars and growls. This time, Pandora turned to look with me.

  Behind us, out to the edges of the stadium, dark shapes were crawling over the walls and making for the crowd. The screams were mostly from one area, but quickly spread to others as the shapes hit the first of our townspeople and began to tear them apart, often literally. Looking, I saw pangers, bear-wolves, ligers, chitin-snakes, and other aggressive hybrids, and between them I saw less aggressive creatures that were acting every bit as nasty tonight; squirrel-mice, stag-bulls, and deer-goats. Golden owls, screech hawks, and other night birds were swooping here and there into the crowd, attacking people. Behind the confusion I saw, as my eyes adjusted to the night, the terrifying sight of wyverns, giant lizards with wings, working to ring the stadium. I saw all this as if in slow motion, so horrified that my brain ground to a halt. I stared for what felt like hours but was probably only ten seconds or so before Pandora grabbed and shook me.

  "Come on!" she shouted in my ear. "We can't stay here, Nyx, let's go!"

  Her words started my brain working again, at the same time as she started to drag me away. I lunged for my pack and my bow, slinging them over my shoulder as I turned to follow her. She had already grabbed my arm when I turned away, and we clung together while people around us started to panic and run, Pandora's and my strength and agility allowing us an edge in that area. Somehow, we made it through the crowd and partway up the bleachers. When we reached the edge of the stadium, I paused for a moment.

  "What about the family?" I shouted hysterically at Pandora. "And what about Arlin and Muffy and Tiberius? We can't leave them!"

  "We'll meet up with them later! Mama and Dad are with the boys, they'll take care of them, and you know you're friends can take care of themselves! Nyx, listen," Pandora urged, pulling me out of sight under the bleachers and turning my head to look at her, "I don't want to leave them here either, but wild courage won't do us any good right now. We don't know what's going on, we don't know where they are to make for them, and we can't do anything for them if those animals catch us. We have to get out of here, okay? We'll see if Mama and the family have made it to the house first, and hopefully your friends make it through the night."

  Looking at her, I was shocked to see her shaking all over, her ears plastered back to her skull and her fur fluffed out. Pandora was just as scared and uncertain as I was, but she was also right. I hated leaving my friends behind, but I couldn't do anything for them.

  "Fine," I growled at her. "Let's go."

  Pandora nodded and turned to go for the main entrance, but I growled at her.

  "Not that way, Pandora."

  "But that's the way out," Pandora told me. "I thought we agreed we were going to head to the house."

  I hated her at that moment. Her and her proper diction. Her and her goody-two-shoes attitude that didn't know enough to get us out of there, but had to point out that I couldn't do any good for my friends by staying. But she was my sister, and I loved her, too.

  "You spend so much time doing grown-up stuff, and working at being good and responsible, you didn't learn half the stuff I know," I snarled at her, that miserable seed of bitterness making me nasty. I knew I was being stupid, but that only made me angrier. "Me and my friends played all kind of pranks around here, and it's a slaughter at the main entrance." It was true; we could both hear shrieks coming that way, and animal roars, could smell blood and sweat and rank fear from both sides. Sometimes having such sharp senses was a very mixed blessing. I waited for Pandora's uncertain nod before I grabbed her arm and hauled her further into the bleachers. "This way."

  The closest way I knew to get out was one that would be nearly impossible for a human to use. It involved a crack in the back of the bleachers, a tube that had been part of the vents before the plague, and a drop of nearly twenty feet, which I shortened to ten by jumping to a handy tree. Muffy and Arlin couldn't make that jump, but Tiberius and I found it handy enough for a quick getaway. Thinking about my friends, I hoped they were alright. We were as close as family, and while I worried about my brothers and parents, I knew they were together, and could take care of themselves. My best hope for my friends was that Muffy had probably been with Tiberius, and Arlin was almost as good in a scrape as I was.

  I really hoped they all had someone to keep them from playing the hero, like Pandora had for me.

  Pandora squeaked a protest at the size of the gap I was asking her to fit through. "I'll rip my leotard," she protested.

  "They'll rip your hide," I growled back, wriggling through. "Hand me my stuff."

  Pandora was silly sometimes, but she knew better than to protest now. Handing my things through to me, she wriggled through herself, getting herself caught halfway through.

  "Grab that and let your back end go loose," I advised, pointing at a bit of piping. "You won't be able to fit if your back end's bunched up to push you through."

  Pandora did like I told her, and we ran down the hall to a small room with some big fans. My ears told me we were cutting it close; a slithering noise said something was keeping an eye on the halls. When had the animals gotten this smart? I wondered. The vent's opening to the outside would never have fit us originally, but fortunately, it had crumbled over the years, leaving plenty of space for a clever girl to jump to a nearby tree. I led the way, jumping to land lightly in the tree. Pandora's thump was a little heavier, but her years of dancing had given her an excellent ability to judge distances and land where she wanted to.

  We had climbed down to the lowest branches before we noticed the snag in our plan. The bigger, meaner animals were mostly inside the stadium, but there were several wyverns wandering here and there. Wyverns couldn't actually fly - their wings were too small to compensate for their body mass - but they could move very quickly, and their size was fairly intimidating. Somehow, they seemed to be a favored fusion, created from little lizards (that the bio teachers called tuataras, not lizards, from the zoo,) and birds, and (based on their size) either elephants or whales or dinosaurs. Wyverns were big enough to match the infamous t-rex from the old days in a fight, I often thought. They weren't designed quite as efficiently for killing, but they were plenty able to deal out a world of hurt, and only an idiot would want to tangle with one.

  "What do we do now?" Pandora whispered at me from a lower branch, her fur fluffing out at the sight of the wyverns.

  I shook my head, unsure of how to get past the guards. Looking around, I remembered a prank Tiberius and Arlin and I had played on Bangle, a centaur girl from in town who was extremely vain. Waiting for a nice, bright afternoon after a rainy day, we had set up a bucket full of water, hanging from between two trees by a clothesline, with a rope attached to the bottom to allow us to spill the water on cue. Arlin had lured her to us, and we had dumped the whole bucket of water on her head, then run away while she was mad enough to chase us. We had run her into several mud holes before she stopped, and because we had dressed in sacks, the adults still didn't know who the pranksters were. The rope was still up, and plenty strong enough to hold Pandora and me, I hoped. It was strung from the top of a tree twenty feet away to the top of one a hundred fifty feet or so beyond that, which would leave us beyond most of the wyverns, if they didn't shift.

  "Follow me," I hissed at Pandora. Moving as quietly as I could, I slipped down the tree, keepin
g it between me and the nearest wyvern. Pandora stayed just a moment behind me as I maneuvered. From times in the forest that I had run into the wyverns by accident, I knew that, while their sight was very good, their hearing was only a little better than a typical human's. Waiting until I was sure the three wyverns in the area were looking away, I went to all fours for extra speed and stealth as I slipped across the parking lot to the other tree. As I climbed the tree, I considered our next step. The rope between the trees would leave us across the street, in easy reach of a few rooftops. As cat hybrids, Pandora and I were both able to run the rooftops, something I had done with Tiberius, Arlin, and Muffy several times, Tiberius hauling Muffy across the gaps that would otherwise have stopped him, and we would be safe enough up there; the wyverns were too heavy for the rooftops, and so they couldn't sneak up on us.

  It went fairly smoothly. We were able to run across the rope from tree to tree, and from there we were able to jump to the rooftops. Pandora and I kept running for several rooftops, leaping the spaces between the rooftops and skidding the landings when we misjudged a jump. After a little while, I felt something from behind us. Pandora felt it too, because we both skidded to a stop at the same time, exchanging a look and turning to see what was happening.

  Behind us, the stadium was in flames. Its massive structure dominated a nightmare scene, very different from the fire-lit nights at Campfire. Here and there, burning bits of junk spiraled through the night air. At first I couldn't figure out how they were floating, but then one came close enough for me to distinguish a screech-hawk carrying it by a bit of rope. Here and there, other fires had started. The town was burning, the older suburban buildings smoldering steadily, the newer mud-walled buildings that were easier to heat losing their roofs. It wouldn't be long before the fires had burned through the whole town. It wasn't ahead of us, but there was no question of meeting up at the house now. The bird I had seen had been heading that way. The fire would be at the house before we got there, and it would be too dangerous to go in. Angrily, I hissed at the animals that had done this, now that they were too far away to hear. Beside me, Pandora snarled angrily at them, too, tears running down her face. After a moment, though, she turned away from the sight.