Part II: The Fox “So, Cat gave you the long and short of how-how he died, right? Then I’ll tell you what happened next. I’ll bet that smart-aleck called Wolf ‘evil,’ didn’t he? But Wolf only did what all of us were too yellow to try! As Wolf turned back to us, we-well, we shrunk away from him. W-we couldn’t help it sir. Even if Wolf was a hero for doing it, he-he had killed a man. Cat was the first one to say it out loud, to call him evil. And…and Wolf just accepted it. He didn’t argue. He owned it right then and there…he had become the ‘evil man’ Father had spent all those years warning us about. But he was still our-our brother, sir. He was the best older brother a fellow could ever have. I’d follow him, evil or no, because he saw the-the truth of things. If Wolf had let the man live, when things got difficult later on, we’d have all turned on one another. We’d have blamed Cat, or blamed Wolf, and eventually…we’d have all crawled right back to Father’s home. Wolf broke the hold the man had on us. We weren’t ‘Father’s children’ anymore.” “So we made tracks out of that-that place. But what were we going to do next? Wolf had a plan, obviously. Cat is just-just the smart-aleck who has to try and boss everyone around. We already knew the score; Cat just had to say it aloud. He said that without Father to tend to-to the stitches, and with all that filth from the explosion, the stitching would go bad. It’d get infected, we-we’d all kick the bucket, slow-like. We knew we needed a-a doctor. Someone to snip the threads and get these masks off for good. So Wolf told us that’s why we were heading straight for the closest battlefield. Lamb told him it was far too dangerous, but Wolf laid it plain. War meant soldiers, and soldiers meant scrap, and a scrap meant injuries. Injuries meant a medic. And-and a medic was our only prayer.” “We heard the-the racket every night, sir. We knew exactly which way was closest to the scrap. But it didn’t take much walking before Songbird finally fell to her knees. What did we expect? While the rest of us were shaken up, she was just too small to keep the pace. Besides, it was getting dark, and it was going to get bone-chilling cold. We couldn’t very well freeze to death before we got started! So Wolf made the call: We’d camp for the night. I was going to make a break for it, find some firewood while there was still a bit of light, but Cat-that smart-aleck snapped at me. He said it was ‘stupid.’ Said a fire would be spotted in the dark and soldiers would start shooting at anything that moved. Naturally I knew that! But I-I figured with our animal mask on and-and the brush hiding us we’d just look like-like forest creatures. Wolf didn’t want to take the gamble, though. But I tell you, sir, I swore right then and there that if we froze in that cold, I’d spend my afterlife haunting Cat for it.” “We-we drew up a plan proper, sir. Wolf was to take first watch, then after an hour, he was to wake Cat and me so he could get an hour’s shut-eye. That egghead’s books have likely made him blind as a bat in the dark, but Cat insisted on being there to make sure I didn’t do anything ‘idiotic.’ We were supposed to rotate from there, but after Cat and I finished our shift Wolf didn’t wake us again. He didn’t rouse us until early morning-clamping his-his hands over our mouths and telling us to stay real low. There were bullets wizzing right past us, sir! Lead humming in the air like-like hornets! They weren’t aiming for us, mind you, but we were caught square in the middle of the crossfire. Songbird couldn’t keep the pace, she was too small. Wolf just-just scooped her up like she weighed nothing at all, and she held tight to his chest as we-we made a break for it!” “Just as we were making tracks, sir-Lamb just-just lost her footing! She went tumbling and rolling down the slope! She fetched up hard against the boulder and bruised her shoulder something fierce, but she-she dislocated the thing! But she saved our skins, sir! By falling, she found us a proper place to take cover! We all huddled in close, and I kept my hands clamped over Lamb’s mouth while she shook-she wanted to scream, see? But we couldn’t have that! Wolf never let go of Songbird, not once! Then, it got real quiet. Deathly quiet. I was going to sneak, see who won the scrap-to see if there were any medics about-but Wolf told me to stay low. He said, ‘Chances are, it’s just a patrol skirmish. One side’ll retreat and leave nothing behind, and the other’ll give chase. This isn’t the fire we’re looking for, Fox. No point checking. We wait…then we move.’ He was right of course. He’s always right.” “We kept walking, sir…then…then we saw w-what real fire looked like…….e-even back w-where we came from…the rubble hid the worst of it I…suppose…I’ve never seen so many dead bodies in one place…….” End of Part II: The Fox
