Red Fox Action Log 42:

  Barry woke me up. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was a quarter past 8.

  “We got an emergency call from one of our neighbors,” he said.

  I followed him down the hall. I’d gotten an hour and a half more sleep, so I felt like I was ready to take on the world.

  “Supervilian Incident, or Escalated Emergency?” I asked, pulling on my mask.

  “No Purps today,” he said, referring to the slang for a Sierra Indigo, or Supervillain Incident. “At least not yet. Fire is out of control, and the FDKC can’t get in to rescue people for some reason.”

  I cursed, then ran back to grab my rebreather attachment I’d been working on. Almost as good as what fire departments used. The tanks only allowed for about ten minutes, but I’d never been on an op that required me to need more than that anyway.

  “How fast can we get there?” I asked.

  Sleuth appeared, and answered for him.

  “I can drive fast. Less than five, if we run the lights.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  We used Barry’s van, parked in the lot behind the comic shop. The grey paint, and black KCCT logo made it look both non-descript and official. Much better than his supersuit.

  I had no idea where Sleuth learned to drive, but he was good. Really good. We also almost got T-boned and all died an agonizing death — twice — while speeding through stop lights. After the second time, I resolved to not be afraid of it.

  Barry strapped his rebreather on. It was old, and I was worried about its seal. A bad seal means smoke in your mask. But he assured me it was good enough.

  Sleuth put on Sister Rosetta Thorpe. Said we ‘needed some serenity.’

  We parked on the sidewalk a block from the incident. I could see the orange against the black pillar of smoke in the sky. My blood ran cold. We sped our pace.

  Slueth interfaced with the Fire Department immediately on arrival. I looked up at the building. Fire started somewhere in the middle. Flames licked the brick from gouts that poured from where the fifth floor windows had been.

  I hated fire. Big fan of not being burned alive. Nothing to do but run in.

  Should probably ask Sleuth what was up first.

  “Give me a sit-rep,” I said.

  “They evacuated the first three floors. It’s an eight floor building. Think most of the residents are out from the first half. Can’t get to the top half yet, and they’re just keeping the fire contained.”

  “What’s stopping progress?” I asked.

  “Something threw three men out of the sixth floor.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “Supervillian would have made a statement or moved on by now,” I said.

  “Probably,” Barry jumped in.

  “Think it could be a demon?” I asked.

  If you didn’t know already, magic was real. Anytime you mess with it, you have a chance to tear open a hole into somewhere nasty, and a demon pops out. Government calls it Extraplanar Contaminants, or ECs, but we just call them Demons. On account they usually had horns and claws.

  Sleuth sighed.

  “I’ve never seen one in KC, but it’s likely.”

  “Then we need to get on the roof, and work our way down,” I said. “I’ve killed a demon before. They’re pretty squishy.”

  This was true, but I didn’t tell them I had had help last time.

  “How do we get civilians down?” asked Barry. “Crash pads aren’t built for higher than five floors. Maybe six.”

  “Ladder can reach the eighth, but not the roof,” Sleuth said.

  “Then you’ll ferry people to the window, while Barry and I search and secure.”

  “You said you fought demons?” Barry asked. “Are there usually more than one?”

  “Depends on if they were summoned or escaped. Talented sorcerer can summon multiple. Escapees are usually one at a time,” I said with more authority than I felt.

  I was technically a science hero. I knew almost nothing about magic. But I wanted him to feel better about following me in there.

  “Okay,” he said. “That makes me feel better. No known sorcerers here.”

  Sleuth sighed. He ran off to talk to the fire fighters, who immediately began extending the ladder to the eighth floor. I ran off into the alley with Barry.

  “You got a way up?” I asked him.

  “Yep,” he said.

  I hit the Fox Badge, then leapt to the fire escape. I pounded up the stairs. By the fourth floor my boots started to smoke from the heat on the metal steps. I hit the cadence and leapt from the wall of the adjoining building then back to the fire escape, pulling myself over the railing of the eighth floor. Still hot, but my gloves protected me.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I kicked my way through the window, and crawled in. Barry went pink all over, and blasted lasers into the ground from each open hand, launching him up to the top floor fire escape with ease. He then dimmed to his normal luminescence, and stepped through the broken window.

  “What was that?” I asked through the speaker in my rebreather.

  “My overheat mode. Tires me out a bit, so I don’t use it unless I really need it.”

  “Noted,” I said. “You’re the one with the ordinance. I’ll back you up.”

  “Once more into the breach, eh?” he said, pulling his mask on.

  I just nodded. I could feel the heat coming up from the lower floors. My stomach lurched, and bile hit the back of my throat. I kept it down.

  We swept the top floor, collecting five residents — fortunately, many had left for work at this hour — then met Sleuth at the window.

  “You can do this,” he said to a woman clutching her infant to her chest. “Just focus on your feet.” He then tied a sheet into a makeshift sling for the child, and hung it around her neck.

  I didn’t have that yet, that ability to calm people. I mostly just nodded and acted stoic around the people I saved. In situations like this, you have a hundred considerations running in your head at once. Adding a comforting bedside manner to all that seemed like it just wasn’t worth the extra space in your head.

  I was starting to believe I may be wrong.

  Barry and I took the stairs down. More heat. More smoke. I wiped condensation from my lenses with microfiber. Sounds silly, but it really helped.

  I found a terrified couple of teens huddling in the hall, and led them up. They were in shock and had frozen. As soon as we got to an area with less smoke, I asked them:

  “How many people are on your floor?”

  “Just us. My parents left for work. Oh! No, there is an old woman across the hall!”

  “What number?”

  “7010!”

  A groan issued from above. Again, the teens froze. I looked up. A beam strained under new weight. I pushed them down and reached my arms up to catch the falling beam. Barry escorted them away.

  I hadn’t had time to calculate the weight. Could have been much heavier than I could manage. Just focused on the chain of the body, felt the weight move from my arms, to shoulders, down my back, to my thighs, all the way to my feet.

  They shifted. I kept sturdy.

  Sometimes you just let the Fox Serum do its thing. I could shoulder five times the strength of the average man.

  Barry pointed them to the unit at the end of the hall, then headed back to me. He sent a ray of heat at the beam that split it in two. I fell to my knees. He picked me up.

  A wordless look passed between us. I was just about the only guy in the city that could have caught that beam, and he was the only one that could have cut it in half.

  We needed each other for this one. We headed down, feet slamming into floorboards.

  At 7010, I pounded on the door. No answer. Didn’t feel any heat from it.

  “I got it,” Barry said, blasting the door from its hinges with a laser the size of the width of my chest.

  I ran in. Didn’t need to go far. Eight feet tall, horned, purple skinned. Yep. That's a demon. I didn’t like that it was on this floor. Either he’d cut a swath up here or there were more than one.

  I felt a smile split my face. Didn’t have to hold back on a demon.

  I tapped my badge, waited a half second, then ran forward, leaping into the air. I executed a clean 540 kick that crushed its face in, snapped its horn, and killed it in an instant. When it hit the ground it spattered into a bucketfull of ichor and goo.

  “Holy shit, guy!” Barry yelled from behind me.

  “We need to finish this unit,” I said, kicking the door to the bedroom open. Found the old lady. Bloody corpse. Barry needed to see it though.

  I let him stare at her for a moment, then I tapped him on the shoulder. He just nodded.

  “I get it now,” he said.

  “Only need to see it once, and you’ll never stop kicking them.”

  “Not your first time?” he asked lamely.

  “No.”

  We hit the sixth floor. It was like opening a portal to hell. Helpfully, we didn’t see an actual portal. That would have been outside our paygrade. Wouldn’t know how to close it.

  Fire burned brightly on most walls, and a thick layer of smoke made seeing anything above the first three or so feet almost impossible. I got on my hands and knees just so we could see. Barry blew doors off their hinges from a safe distance. More than one of them caused a backdraft, but we were safe enough back down the hall. I had to roll over a couple of bright burning spots in the floor, but the suit was fire retardant enough that I was safe as long as I kept moving.

  Once we got to the middle unit, Barry LazerGunz stood.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Give me a sec. Rick?”

  “Copy,” Sleuth said over comms.

  “How empty is that Eighth floor?”

  “I don’t think you should try it,” he said.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “The whole building’s structural integrity could fail.”

  “Fire’s not helping that any. How many people are above me?”

  “None right now.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Cooling things off,” he said.

  He glowed pink all over. Then red. Streams of fire surged into him. Then brighter. Then more fire. Then solid beams of light hitting him from all directions. He glowed white hot.

  I looked around. No fire. Just smoke.

  He pointed a hand at the ceiling. A beam of light the size of a school bus exploded through the ceiling, and into the sky. The smoke rushed up like champagne out of a bottle.

  Still not safe without a rebreather, but we could see better. The walls glowed with embers.

  “I think I need to do another one,” Barry said.

  Another blast of laser up into the sky.

  “You good?” I asked.

  “I’m good,” he said.

  We raced to check the other rooms. Two more obvious corpses surrounded by blood. One person with a rattling cough. Thank God.

  I pulled his feet together, a man in his twenties, then hauled him over my shoulder. I had Fox Strength from the serum. Like hauling a toddler on your back.

  I pointed at the wall. Barry blasted a hole in it. Good solid brick on the building across the street. I repositioned him into a single fireman’s carry across one shoulder then shot the grapple at a 45 degree angle.

  I hit the badge three times. We were both permanently half mass as long as we were in contact, and the badge was on me.

  The slide down the grapple was quick. Too quick. I put my feet out and our combined weight slammed into the wall. A crack ran down it. Not my problem. We dropped the last six feet. I managed not to roll an ankle.

  A paramedic took him from my shoulders, and put the man on a stretcher, immediately administering oxygen.

  I put my ascender on and zipped right back across the street.

  “How’s this floor look?” I asked.

  “Two more demons,” Barry said. “But I took care of them.”

  “Good,” I said.

  The rest of the floors only contained corpses. Included in that was the poor kid who had summoned the demons. He’d found a dark grimoire. Barry made sure to blast it into pulp. By the time we were done, I’d long ago lost my oxygen and was just relying on the scrubbers in my mask to keep me safe.

  After we cleared the scene, Sleuth insisted that I go to the hospital with him.

  A couple hours later, they gave me a clean bill of health. When we got back to the comic shop, I collapsed into bed. The last thing I remembered Sleuth saying was:

  “Good job, Fox. There are people alive tonight that wouldn’t have been. I don’t know what to say. Well, other than you’ve earned another couple of days out of me. Get some rest for now.”

  Then I slept for 10 hours.