by Richard Pahl

Created on: February 10, 2009

The Fledgling - A Tracy Cunningham Novel.

I slipped out the back door as quietly as I could, and walked around the lot, ostensibly stretching my legs. All the cars in the lot were empty. Apparently, the palace guards were gone.
Piece a cake!
I was feeling pretty good. I'd gone under, found out what I had to, and gotten away, and no one was wiser except me.
A booming male voice scared the pee right out of me. "Gwine somewhere?"

I didn't turn to the voice, didn't freeze in my tracks, just sprinted across the lot and over the fence to the neighbor's back yard. I heard a car start up and spin rubber as he peeled out of the parking lot.
I made it across the block and was running down the alley in the next block when a car came screeching around the corner. Headlights lit my path. The car was in the alley!
I panicked and ran faster. I was conscious of wind in my ears, conscious of trying to make my legs churn just a little faster with each step. Conscious about how far out of shape I was. I was so in deep ca-ca if they caught me! I ran, arms pumping, breathing hard, trying to keep to the right side of the narrow corridor. Most of the garbage cans were on the other side.
A wino was stumbling towards me, oblivious of the action in front of him. My first inclination was to dodge around him, and let him stop the car. My second realization told me if I didn't move the drunk to one side he'd wake up in the morgue.
I blocked him from the side, using all my hundred pounds to shove him away from the car's path. We crashed into a metal doorway about the same time the car tried to remove my fanny. It was that close.
The car had passed, and now I was behind it. I doubled back over the same path I had taken, knowing the car couldn't turn around in the alley. I had scant seconds in the deserted street to make up my mind. I could hear the car coming around the block.
I ran through the neighbor's yard again and hopped the fence back into the parking lot of Willa's cat-house. I hid in a shadow-covered corner, behind a trash dumpster, catching my breath. I prayed that the turkeys chasing me wouldn't figure I was back where it all started. After a few minutes of heavy breathing, I climbed into the metal dumpster. It was a good thing I did, because the car came back into the lot, driving in a way that the headlights played over the entire property.
I could see two men in the car from the small crack in the hatch door to the container. They parked right next to where I was hiding. I was

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