Page 137 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

I step away from the door, grab the back of Whiskey's coat collar, and haul him off the chair.

"Hey—HEY! I wasn't done!" Whiskey protests as I drag him toward the window. "I had a whole bit⁠—"

"Out."

I shove him headfirst through the window.

To his credit, he doesn't scream.

He does, however, make a sound like a Saint Bernard being squeezed through a mail slot.

The loud thud from outside is deeply satisfying.

Behind me, the door stutters open, slowed down by the doorstop. I don't turn around as I grip the window frame, swing my legs through the gap, and drop two stories into the landscaped hedge below.

The landing is clean. Knees bent, weight distributed, barely a sound.

Whiskey is not so fortunate.

He's sprawled facedown in the mulch bed beside the hedge, groaning into a decorative shrub. One arm is tangled in the branches. The newly repaired coat I had filleted in Canada is now ripped from collar to mid-back where the window latch claimed its pound of flesh.

"Ow," he says into the dirt.

I straighten my shirt, brush mulch off my sleeve, and start walking.

The hospital property backs up against a thin strip of woods that separates it from a residential street. I slip between the first row of trees without looking back, my stride long but unhurried despite the distant sound of voices from the window above us.

Whiskey scrambles to his feet behind me. I hear the crash of him extracting himself from the hedge, the heavy thump-thump-thump of his boots as he jogs to catch up.

He falls into step beside me like we're out for a casual evening stroll and he didn't just squeeze through a hospital window twice to threaten to extract a man's spine through his ass.

"Dude," he pants, grinning so wide I can see every one of his teeth in the moonlight. "That was fucking sick."

He holds up his fist.

I look at it.

Look at him.

Keep walking.

His fist hangs in the air between us. He keeps it up, jogging beside me with his arm extended, the fist hovering in my peripheral vision like an overeager satellite.

"Come on, man! Don't leave me hanging."

I leave him hanging.

"That's cold, bro," he says, finally dropping his hand, but the grin doesn't fade. He shakes out his arms and rolls his neck, cracking it. "How the fuck did you get here, anyway? I didn't see your car in the lot."

"I walked."

"You walked?" He stops mid-stride, then catches back up. "That's like… three miles from the pack house."

"I grew up in a walkable city."

"It's freezing out."

"A significantly colder walkable city."