Free Pouncing on Murder by Laurie Cass

with Mr. King’s books to know what his imagination could do with fog.
    Creeping in on little cat feet, it was. Not Eddie feet, though, because Eddie’s feet were big enough for a cat twice his size and he was only occasionally capable of moving silently. Any other cat would be as soundless as this fog, insidious and sticky, clever and . . . and what was that?
    Had I heard a noise? What was . . . ?
    “Adam?” I called. “Is that you?”
    “Hey, Minnie,” he said. “A real pea-souper, isn’t it?”
    His voice was coming from a different direction than whatever it was I thought I’d heard, but fog did funny things to sound. At least that was what I’d gathered from all those scary books I’d read as a kid.
    “And I don’t even like pea soup,” I said. My toes hit the main road and I turned right, toward Adam and Irene’s mailbox, where I assumed Adam would be. “That was the only bad thing about my mom baking ham. You knew pea soup was coming along in a few days.”
    “Love the stuff,” Adam said. “Irene makes the best ever.”
    The disembodied noise of a car came toward us. I stepped off the asphalt onto the outside of the road’s shoulder, just to be safe, and kept walking. An Adam-sized shape materialized. He was facing me, standing in front of a mailbox-shaped object, his back to the approaching car.
    “Best pea soup ever?” I asked. “No such thing.”
    “Au contraire,” Adam said, and went on to extoll the virtues of what I considered the most unappetizing food in the world, next to all mushrooms. And it was because I wasn’t really paying attention to him that I saw the car coming out of the fog.
    Coming in our direction.
    Straight toward Adam, who didn’t see it, didn’t hear it, didn’t even know it was there.
    There was no time to warn him, no time to do anything except act.
    I dropped the books and sprang forward, head tucked, arms outstretched in my best imitation of the football player I’d never been or ever wanted to be. As I thumped into Adam with all my weight, I could have sworn I heard a faint feline howl.
    We fell to the ground hard. I twisted my shoulders, trying hard to rotate my momentum, wanting desperately to roll us over and away from the car.
    Over and over we went, off the road, off the shoulder, and half into the ditch. Was it far enough? Would the car swerve? Would it still get us? I pushed into the ground with my feet and sent us one roll farther.
    The car whooshed past and disappeared into the gloom.
    “Are you okay?” Adam’s voice was weak.
    “I’m fine. How about you?”
    At the end of the last roll, I’d ended on my back. I pushed myself to my knees and looked hard at the fog, making sure the vehicle was really gone. I saw no sign of the not-quite-a-killer car and breathed a sigh of relief.
    “I’m fine,” Adam said.
    His voice, normally full of laughter and bonhomie, sounded thready and old. Guylike, he hadn’t worn a coat on his trip to the mailbox, even though the temperature was only in the mid-forties. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a plain maroon sweatshirt that showed evidence of more than one painting chore. There were spatters of white, brown, and even a color that was exactly three shades darker than the sweatshirt itself.
    It wasn’t until he touched that particular shade that I realized it was in a vertical line on his chest and that it wasn’t paint at all.
    “Adam,” I said as calmly as possible, “you’re bleeding.”
    He looked down and made a move to pull up his shirt and sweatshirt, but I yelped at him, “Stop!”
    “But I’m bleeding.” He reached for the bottom of his sweatshirt again and I grabbed at his hand.
    “Anything we do now won’t help and could make it worse,” I said firmly. “Your clothes might be sealing the wound, and if we pull it away, it’ll bleed even more.” I wasn’t sure how much of that might be true, but it sounded reasonable. Maybe I’d learned some medical stuff through sheer proximity