FSE

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"You're welcome," Delia says. The words leave her lips like the chewed cud of a falcon's remains as she stands there, spattered in blood, tar, sweat, glass, tears, and dried urine in the middle of a cracked concrete street sprinkled in shards of vehicle metal, glass, and plastic in the middle of a swath of gray-brown towers, factories, and chimneys under an apple-juice sky and its floating rust-flake clouds that look over a bat dressed in black, dust, and wounds. He studies, in silence, the twisted fur-and-dowel sleeve of his crumpled wing with eyes like cameras and lenses the color of a grease fire, and from time to time his muzzle rips like an old seam and falls into a painful grimace.

The Dalmatian's foot-paws are bare and shift as gravel and glass poke into their pads. She scrapes them one at a time against her filthy jeans to clear them. Her chest swells and falls in ginger sighs as the bruise from her seat belt settles in; she rolls her neck as whiplash pushes its thumb under the base of her skull. The black shotgun grows heavy, so it trades paws.

Grim, reader, grim, is her mind as it swims in a miasma of days behind her and the day before her. She sees the split-rail fence rolling up and down the verdant meadow, the smoke-stained walls of a hospital waiting room; she smells the baby powder of her child's blanket and sees the marks on her kitchen doorjamb of how tall he was getting (just below her knee); she hears her sitter giggling as Marcie tosses her baby in the air, she smells daffodils as she rips them from the earth, tastes the blood of her friend as it squirts around her garden trowel; she sees the police, the police cruiser, the bat, a bus, a greyhound whose groin explodes as if the gun, not his guts, was loaded with blood, flesh, and bone, and here she is.

Here she is with a nameless agent on his phone who, between grunts, squeaks, and curses relays his situation and his condition over his phone to an entity he would never, of course, introduce to Delia. Or, as he puts it, introduce to "T.B."

"I'm stuck on top of an overturned agency car and I have T.B.," he says. His eyes dart to Delia, then dart away when she looks back. He sees the hairs on the back of her neck spike and her lip curling. "She appears asymptomatic and so far has been compliant. We need to be pulled out of this oven; I'm burning...no, that was flung out of the car during the crash...no, I bounced that off the head of an Afflicted...no, not anymore. I have Typhoi?have Delia to thank for that...yes, she still is," the bat says as his large ember eyes stare at her encumbered paw. He nods, and as he continues to listen to the tinny voice on the other end of the phone, he leans forward, hisses as his broken wing shifts, and then nods a final time.

"Ah! Ah...no. No; I can ask. She might stick to the dish on this one...yes. It's been a sweet, flaky honor to serve if she does. Bake Winter Vegetable with a quarter-cup of chives in the crust and bring her covered with a dish towel."

Agent Peach closes his phone and slides it into his breast pocket, crushing the silky orange pocket square that at this point, was wilted anyway. He scoots on his tail over the car's underpinnings and leans against an upturned wheel. As he opens his mouth to speak, he sees Delia wrapping both paws around his black shotgun and her eyes squeezed into narrow slits. He hesitates to speak. Her lips twitch as she suppresses a growl.

"Typhoid what, Agent Cobbler?" she says in a low tone.

The bat clears his throat and fixes his tie the best he can with his one good wing. Labored, he uncrumples his posture against the wheel and addresses her in a curt, snappy tone.

"Ms. Dapplewood," he says, "I'm not in a position to bargain and so I'm not going to patronize you. And, according to the rules of decent furry beings, of which we both are, I technically 'owe you one'," he says, squeezing the orange silk knot against his crinkled, bloody oxford. "You may keep the shotgun; it's yours."

Delia growls at him.

The bat swallows audibly and says, "It's a very nice weapon; they don't issue that to just any salt and bacon gre?ah, any salt of the earth. There's no waiting peri?"

Delia lunges forward and bangs a free paw against the edge of the car.

"I don't want your toys, Agent Cobbler, I want answers; just like the ones you and Mr. Buckle were anxious to get out of me. My own child, my dear friend, my dear friend's daughter and my babysitter for the last eighteen months?and this bus driver?are all dead because of a three hundred year-old disease that's drawing the attention of strangers in fancy suits who won't give out their names and who can get me out of jail faster than I can get put in for murder. Please," she says as her voice and demeanor cracks, "tell me what's going on."

The bat cracks his jaw against his good wrist, and through a sigh he says in a low tone, "I'm not talking down to you and I don't take you for stupid, Delia, but you need look at it from the Kitchen's point of view. What happened to your son was no simple affliction or unfortunate malady. It's been less than thirty-six hours and you've run into four different cases, three of which are miles apart from each other, and all of which have resulted in casualties. Your son didn't just turn ill, 'Typhoid Bruna.'

"He turned into a bomb."

The word hits Delia's bruised chest like another seatbelt; a gush of hot tears squeeze single-file down the base of her muzzle and she tightens the grip on her gun, glaring through a blurry mist at viscous miasma that's bubbling through her mind, and all the feelings thrashed about like trash on the foaming ocean?the sorrow, the emptiness, a desperate feeling of loss?spews and swells into a pure, bridled rage that chomps at the bit like the Nightmares as they drag the Chariot of Hell over scorched earth. It slicks her teeth with saliva, it shocks her spiked fur; her growl slashes her throat and she spits razors as she snarls,

"Don't you talk about my son in that way. Don't you talk about my son in any way! I don't care if your little organization erases me, because it won't be an act of prevention. It'll be an act of vengeance!"

Delia cocks her gun and aims at the bat and wraps her finger around the trigger, which is wet from sweaty paws and smooth, so smooth?the kind of smooth that makes a young woman feel like a real woman; the long, ribbed grip of the pump fits her paw perfectly and its great girth exceeds it; the hefty weight of the sheer, black barrel makes her arms flex as she holds the mighty weapon close to her body and its great heat, both its present heat and past heat remembered brings sweat to her pawpads and thirst to her long, spotted tongue. As she aims at the bat, her wiry tail curls and she pants.

Maybe Pigmund Leud was right about the female race.

Or maybe this was just how much she hated this one-winged imp.

This imp looks at her with fallen ears, slumped over the tire and breathing like he was suffocating.

"I know you're scared, Delia. I know you're heartbroken. I have a family of my own, a whole brood of little girls whose ears are already big as their mother's and they're all very special to me. I don't have any pictures because, well, we don't carry any ID. I'll show you though; I promise."

The bat pauses to cough, and in his haste to cover his mouth he moves his bad wing. He shrieks in pain and collapses over the tire, slumping as sharp as a trench coat tossed over a park bench and heaving in a pile of fur, starch, and wrinkled cotton-blend. Delia watches it all with a great cringe on her face and she bites down on her tongue with great force; she bites until she feels faint. Still, she keeps the gun trained on him.

"You're going to stop lying to me. You want answers? I want answers. Actually, I don't want answers. I want out. I want a shower. I want to go to bed. I want to forget about your sneaky little tricks, I want to forget about my friend attacking me in my living room, I want to go to work and dip my stale donuts in old office coffee, I want to put on a sundress and run through a grassy field, and I especially want my son back but I know I'm yiffed sideways on that. You say you 'owe me one?' Then get me home. Pull your shadowy strings and get me out of this mess."

The bat pushes away from the wheel, shivering in pain, hissing through his teeth, desperately trying to keep his limp hanging wing from banging against the side of the car. He's bent so far over that Delia can't see his eyes past his eyebrows.

"You know I can't do that, Miss Dapplewood," he says in a hoarse whisper.

"You suits can't even buckle your own seat belts," she growls, "and you know what? Forget it. I'll just walk. If I ever see you suits chasing me on government bikes I'll jam a stick in your spokes."

Delia wraps the gun's sling about her shoulder and starts off past the overturned car. A black wing quivers as it reaches for her, and she walks through its claws like a branch on a tree. She steps over the greyhound's mutilated corpse and starts down the center of the hot concrete road, following the faded yellow line and stepping over the dandelions that grow through its cracks. The bus looms heavy to her right and she gingerly steps around its shattered glass, eyes darting to it should it decide to tip.

Or dispense. Her grip on the sling tightens. The road is quiet and wind whispers along the tips of the distant chimneys, carrying the cotton-candy exhaust into the apple-juice sky.

Agent Peach Cobbler sits atop a lukewarm muffler with a broken wing whose bones lean against his nervetips with lockpick teeth; every jolt, jostle, and shift snicker shots of pain through his body and make him shriek through gritted teeth. Agent Peach Cobbler's pawpads sweat like raw, thawing meat, and shakily he fumbles his phone open to dial his colleague, but his phone slips through his slick fingers and falls into the car's underbelly, clattering all the way down. His heart does the same and a whine escapes him.

No gun, no earpiece, no phone. The bat turns with labored claudication until he can see Lady Dalmatian over the increasing span, and sullenly he shakes his head. Typhoi--...Delia had the right idea. He, too, wanted to go home. He, too, wanted to sleep from the mahogany roost bar in the master roost next to his wife. He wanted to wrap his wings around all five of his daughters and nuzzle all their huge fuzzy ears, he wanted to fly in a wide formation with them over the crystal lake at the park near his house and laugh out loud as they would dive-bomb the ducks, shrieking in chittering laughter.

But suddenly and silently, like a musky mausoleum sigh, a bone-gaunt skunk in a faded hoodie stumbles out of the bus's crumpled doors and shambles across the street. Peach's veins turn to stone: his bloody rare eyes sightlessly roll like two greasy tennis balls; his mouth foams a frothy pink mix as he mumbles incoherently. Peach sees what looks to be bloody bite marks on his arm, on his neck, and on his face. Otter, if he'd venture a guess, but he daren't say a word?heholds his breath as his heart climbs up towards his throat, and in the distance he sees Delia, shotgun in hand, walking farther and farther away.

She is gone.

A stray gust ruffles the skunk's hoodie, and this same breeze catches the bat's ears and he can hear his ramblings on the wind. The wind also catches the bat's bad wing and shifts it across the car, which stabs the Agent's shoulder with the strongest jolt of pain and he screams!

He almost screams.

He doesn't scream.

He bites down on his cheek and holds it, sweat pouring from his paws and his body quaking as it approaches a state of shock. He is silent, however?until a slice of it breaks off and his molars click together.

And then the skunk turns around and squints. He squints at him, and that's it.

"...government...agent..." he grumbles as he squints at the little suited furry. "...conspiracies...captured prisoners...torture...and track us like animals. A wire in all of our brains! You!" he growls. "You kill our country! Capture! Test! Toss! Grind our teeth into glue, scent glands in our perfume! Compost us in the jaws of Mother Nature to feed our Ferus Furrytrap overlords!

"Puppet master! Destroyer!" he yells as he runs at the overturned car. He grabs the side of the vehicle and rocks it, throwing the bat onto his back and further cracking his wing. Peach shrieks in pain and through a mist of tears sees the skunk mount the vehicle and tower over him.

"You did all this!" he shouts, to which the bat smirks. A stream of drool runs down his chin.

"What do you mean, did all this?" he says with a hoarse chuckle, "I can't even buckle my seat belt."

He then falls unconscious.

The Agent wakes with his wing splinted to some plastic trim ripped from the vehicle and tied with his creamy orange tie and several strips of a pink t-shirt Father Time would have sworn was red at one point. Delia sits slumped with her back to him on the lip of the car, gripping the bumper on either side of her hips. Her overall straps are undone and tied around her waist, which shows how downy white her fur was under her shirt. It nearly glows compared to the dusty gray and tar smears running the length of her arms and tail. The Dalmatian's ears?naturally floppy?are flat against the back of her head.

"You saved me," he whispers.

"I killed you," she glowers, turning to face him. Her voice pours from her mouth like a melting ambulance siren. Her brown and red eyes smolder like clouds of Agent Orange and, with his free wing, Peach follows her glare to a soft, wet, and sensitive gash on his neck. Those fingers return dripping in dark red syrup.

The bat sits up with a sharp breath, thankful his wing doesn't jolt, and holds it as he looks to the sky and its rust-flake clouds and its cotton-candy vapor trails. He thinks; he thinks hard, and then he lets his breath out.

"Not yet," he says. With a pause, he swallows. "But you'll have to."

Delia turns away and clutches the car's bumper. "There has to be a chance," she protests.

"My wing's broken in at least seven different places" he hisses, "but I will succumb and I will attack you. Before you can raise that gun at me I will pounce you and in the span of seconds I will bite your muzzle, rake your eyes, box your temple, and yank on your ear to expose your throat where I'll go in for the kill. You will kill me now while you have a chance, or you can let this malady mix years of combat training with rabid, incoherent rage and try your luck.

"What's it going to be, Miss Dapplewood?"

Delia's reaches for the gun, but as she touches it her paw flees back to her side.

"It can't be this simple," she whispers. Despite his ears he strains to hear her.

In the distance roars a supercharged car going far, far too fast, and Peach recognizes his engine. He sniffs sharply as his heart skips, and then he slowly stands, teeth grit as his wing grinds. Tears come again to his bright orange eyes as silently, he steps along the car's underbelly and bit by bit, watches as the Dalmatian's ears twitch and turn toward him. When he reaches her, her paw is wrapped around the gun, forearm flexed. He rests his long fingers on her shoulder.

"Please," he says.

Silently, the Dalmatian slides off of the car and stands with her back to him, shotgun hanging at her side. Her muzzle rises toward the sky and she arches her back, sniffing the air. Her muzzle then lowers, and then she pivots toward him with the deliberate lethargy of a large tower crane. Her eyes are blank, echoing tiny noises in the absence of thought, and Agent Peach watches himself in their reflection. He watches them past the gun's muzzle and over Delia's own, and he watches as their deep, empty recesses form dark rusty clouds and from those dark rusty clouds he sees their surfaces congeal around two wide, endless pupils that from their oily depths erupt an orange flame that consumes him in a deafening, blinding, thunderous clap.

It echoes against the corrugated steel siding of factory buildings and dusty, graffiti-covered brick walls like a shower of sparks, dribbling onto the pavement until it fizzles and fades.

Then Peach is dead, which makes Delia feel numb. It makes her feel sad, too, but most of all very numb. She wants to bury her head in her paws, but there's blood on them, and she wants to cry, but she's all dried up, and she wants to run away, but where could she really go? Did this ever happen to Peach during his other missions?

What would you do if you had to kill someone you worked so hard to save? Do you think you would blame yourself for every little misstep; would you blame yourself for taking on such a responsibility? What would you do if you failed in your efforts to preserve life, and what would you tell a secretive government organization, who now has a trained sniper aiming at your bare chest?

"Typhoid Bruna, we demand that you stand down!" shouts a voice behind the sniper.

She turns to face them and glances down at her left breast which is now highlighted by a bright red spot.

"...he said I could keep the gun..." she whispers.