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Gus sat in the shadows, watching the thing in the Santa Claus suit for about 20 minutes as it tried to free itself from the manhole. It had gotten caught somehow – probably on the ladder -- and was trying to get loose by simply pulling away, as if brute strength was the answer. They operated on hunger and numbers, not individual physical strength. Gus knew there were more of them out in the street, just a stone’s throw from the alley and the manhole. They were all over the city now.

Gus had no problem outrunning them or losing them in places they couldn’t go, even if it was just their slow reflexes and poor coordination keeping them out – like the way lobster traps keep their prey in. She could move faster than them and was more agile, but the day was coming when that wouldn’t be enough. Hopefully, today wasn’t that day.

She looked up. The afternoon was cold, cloudy, raw, and it would probably rain or snow soon – the kind of day when once upon a time you could see people’s breath when they were outside. Gus could see her own today, but there was nothing visible coming out of the things.

She had been cautiously making her way through the alley and was only about 20 feet from the entrance when the thing in the Santa suit spotted her from the street and started for her. It didn’t have as much luck spotting the open manhole, however, and stumbled right in, like in a cartoon. The fall was arrested somehow – its leg probably got caught on the ladder -- and it was trying to climb back out when it got snagged again, this time just close enough to success to cover Gus’s way out with its flapping, grasping appendages. One of its arms was waving around at a crazy angle seen often in fiddler crabs, not people, and was probably a result of the tumble. In any case, the manhole had become the alley’s tollbooth and the thing in the Santa suit the collector, and the toll was frightful.

Gus could have just run quickly past but she didn’t have a clear view of the street from where she was, so she didn’t really know what was out there. In the time that she had already spent sitting in the alley, about 20 of them shuffled past, ignoring the manhole Santa. They couldn’t see Gus at all since she took care to keep still, like a cat, and out of their line of sight. Her instinctive caution was working for her and keeping her alive – had she seen more of the street she would have seen enough of the things to change her mind about trying to run through them. Best to wait, maybe until dark.

Foley never returned to their apartment, although Gus waited for him for the better part of a week. He always came back before and he never showed or said anything to indicate the situation outside was getting any worse over the past few weeks, except maybe teaching her how to escape the building with her life, just in case she had to do it without him. Her route was so well-planned that she was more than halfway there now, and so far this was the only real obstruction. From the alley it was just a matter of making it down a couple of streets, and then all she’d have to do to get out of the city entirely was to cross one of the rivers somehow. The tunnels and bridges were mile-long vehicular smash-ups, but no matter -- as long as the fires were out, scrambling over and through the wrecks would be a sure way of discouraging a chase, or at least winning one. Finding a boat wasn’t an option– anything that could float and maneuver floated and maneuvered away a long time ago.

Was that a snowflake? Gus knew Tony’s Woods were nearby … or should have been nearby. Tony was a neighborhood tradition. A gargantuan Italian with a big appetite and a bigger voice, he ran a seasonal business out of the empty lot next to his building around the holidays, selling life-size fiberboard cut-outs of choirboys, angels, the nativity, Santa Claus with his sled and reindeer (but only five, including Rudolph), and, of course, Christmas trees. There were so many trees leaning up against racks that it turned the lot into a small, labyrinthine forest. It was especially nice when it snowed, and the kids loved it. Gus could remember playing there a couple of times with Dinah, Wayne, and Gogi. Tony would have The Little Drummer Boy playing continuously over loudspeakers into the night, and would sometimes fall asleep with it on, so it would be the last thing Foley and Gus would hear before falling asleep and the first thing they would hear when waking up. None of the neighbors ever complained because they loved it as well.

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