It was a foggy morning in early November.

  Visibility was low with the horizon consumed by an angelic haze but Philly had nothing better to do so he headed down to Riverdale to keep an eye out in Ghost’s stead for any suspicious activity. Philly walked the neighbourhood. If visibility wasn’t great, Philly’s ears and nose would work optimally to compensate.

  And what did he smell that morning but a delicious breakfast sandwich! He snuck over to a parking lot. There was the scent of sandwich and no one else. As he trotted through the lot, he saw the sandwich resting on the cinder blocks lining the perimeter. A sandwich on a bnket of wax paper. It was half-eaten (or two-thirds eaten upon close inspection) but the smell allured Philly anyway. He walked up, took the bite in his mouth, and gobbled it up quickly!

  He scurried away, his belly full of delicious egg and sausage!

  Few pedestrians walked that part of town, at least that early in the morning with visibility as cking as it was. Philly passed by a gas station. There was garage open with a couple men in workwear walking around the shop. They looked older and the radio dial was turned in their direction because the speakers were rocking an oldie; Neil Diamond, although Philly didn’t recognize the artist.

  One of them looked up and dawned an expression of excitement. “Hey, a fox!”

  Philly got out of there. Before others could catch their eyes on the fox’s soft and fluffy coat, Philly scurried out of there! One of the workers peeked his head out of the garage to watch the fox run into the mystical white and vanish from sight.

  Patrolling the neighbourhood, he came across the textile factory that he and Ghost Thing had visited yesterday. He wasn’t able to see it through the fog but the distinct smell of cleaner caught the fox’s nose and he knew it was nearby so he turned his quartzy sniffer in the factory’s direction.

  There was also the smell of gasoline– a car that just had stopped in the area.

  Philly walked into the parking lot and saw a bck car stationary, heat coming off of its body. The fox walked to the corner and peeked his head around to see a man walking down the side of the factory, peeking into the windows.

  Was this guy part of the gang, too?

  It was Pax, a coffee from Timmies in hand. All he had to do– his job for that morning– was peek inside the windows and see if it looked like anyone had been around since st night. He was told that one of the guys that fought Ghost Thing had throw a sewing machine across the floor. If the person who owned the building had been around since st night, he would have cleaned up any mess.

  Light wasn’t find its way into the building but Pax had orders not to actually enter the pce, lest the building owner might start calling the cops. Pax folded a hand over his brow and leaned against the dusty window to see something that looked sewing-reted on the ground inside, bits of gss shattered about.

  “Guess that’s the machine,” Pax said quietly to himself.

  Nobody had been there since st night, it seemed. Or nobody had cleaned the pce up. That’s all Pax needed to do; check to see if somebody had been around. He turned and walked back to his car.

  Philly saw the guy coming and raced around the other corner of the building and peeked his little fox nose around to spy on Pax. That punky face, that blonde hair– Philly recognized the guy from the convenience store just like the big guy from yesterday! He had to be part of the gang.

  If Philly followed Pax, surely the fox would be led to their hideout!

  Pax walked up and opened the door. Sliding in and shutting the door, he put his cup down in the cup holder and after switching on the ignition, he put his hand on the cardboard tray to keep the quartet of other coffees steady.

  The radio came on and out boomed a Swollen Members song, but disappointment came over Pax as he realized that Nelly Furtado was singing the song out. That disappointment turned to excitement as one song faded away but another came in its pce and with it a familiar harpsichord melody and string section.

  “Aw-right!” shouted Pax, pounding a proud fist on his seat. “Eminem!”

  As the music cranked up, drums crackled through the walls of the sedan. Pax’s rapping was loud enough to be heard over the stereos. Philly readied himself to chase the automobile before getting the good idea to go back to catch a glimpse of the license pte. Philly didn’t have a great catalogue on car manufacturers and their logos, being he was not the kind of fox to drive or ride in vehicles, but he would have to do his best to remember any marking.

  “M9XP-05SW,” Philly muttered to himself quietly. He repeated the license pte number over and over but the license pte got drifting away from him as the car drove out of there. It turned onto the road and picked up speed, riding off into the fog.

  Philly dashed down the sidewalk, having to break into top speed as Pax’s sedan accelerated. Not a lot of cars were on the road so Pax didn’t have to slow down and, to make Philly’s chase even more of a challenge, hit an intersection just as it turned green. The fox had to fly like a jet to keep up.

  It was early morning and not a lot of pedestrians walked that part of town but when Philly saw someone on the sidewalk up ahead, he ran over to the other side of the street. The car kept inside Philly’s view but the fox was smming his paws on the pavement and the car didn’t look to be slowing down.

  When the car did turn, Philly did his best to get close to it but remain in a blind spot lest the driver realize he was being followed by a wild animal. At that moment, Philly couldn’t remember if Pax and his crew had spotted the fox when Ghost Thing stopped them from robbing that convenience store, but he wanted to keep out of sight as best as possible, even if Pax couldn’t recognize the vulpine.

  The car picked up speed and Philly found himself having to hoof it as hard as he could to keep up to keep up. The road was long but to the fox’s relief Pax found his vehicle behind a slightly slower car. Philly could ease up a bit, but only a little.

  Nobody was on the sidewalk until a bicycle broke out of the fog and cut down the middle of the pavement.

  “Whoa!” said the cyclist.

  Philly barely saved his tailbrush as he snapped out of the way. A bit of his tail got caught in the wires of the cyclist’s tire and it pulled hard enough to hurt. The fox had to enlist his willpower to not yelp in pain and definitely to not say something in English!

  Why am I doing this? Philly asked himself. Why was he out in the morning running through the dense fog getting clipped by bicycles? As Philly pounded the pavement, chasing after a car like a stray dog, heart pounding inside of him, Philly had a moment to reflect. He was putting himself in danger and behaving like a crazed animal for what? For the safety of a friend?

  It was the first time that Philly had put so much effort into something that didn’t have anything to do with him. He was out that morning, zipping through a cndestine fog, for the sake of someone else.

  Was that the first time he had helped someone?

  Pax took a left and Philly saw an opening into a rge yard that looked like a construction site for what he could see of it. He risked it when he slipped through a fence to enter the lot and keep himself safe from any sidewalk cyclists and hopefully to obscure his form from Pax’s window. Pax’s speed kept at a moderate pace, so Philly was able to keep up, hiding behind walls of dirt and piles of pipes. Philly’s legs burned.

  Another left and Philly was stuck in whatever lot he walked into. He followed along Pax’s car, peering at it through the fence, but when Pax turned to the right and rode away from the lot, Philly was trapped behind the fence. The fox looked around. Did the fence have a hole?

  Philly’s only choice was to jump over the fence. He took a few steps back, ran at the fence, and climbed up.

  He couldn’t get high enough, though. He fell back down and in a panic, tried again– with less the speed and power than before. The fox couldn’t climb the fence. There wasn’t a hill or pile of pnks in sight either. The fox watched Pax’s bck sedan disappear into the whiteness of the fog.

  The fox ran down the fence, hoping to find an opening, but even putting ten metres or so between where the car turned away, Philly couldn’t find an opening. He dashed back the way he came and hoped there was some way out of the yard.

  “Come on...” he said to himself as he ran down the perimeter of the yard.

  Nothing. There was no opening in the fence and no ptform he could use to hop over.

  The closest thing to a hole was a spot where the fence bent upward off the dirt. It was too small for Philly but the fox was desperate. He dove into it, but the fence tugged on his forehead.

  Pax’s car must have been halfway down the road by now.

  Philly dug into the ground, ripping up cold dirt as fast as his paws let him. They were tired from running all those blocks and now they had to render earth. Philly swallowed the discomfort and cwed into the ground.

  If Pax’s car got away, how long would take to find a trail again? Days? Weeks? Kay was counting on Philly to trail that car and now he had a barrier blocking his way.

  A scuffle of dirt rested underneath Philly’s body. Was that deep enough? No, his head still wouldn’t fit. He churned into the ground, panting loudly.

  He had forgotten Pax’s license pte and didn’t get a good look at the logo on the car.

  Philly pushed his head in. It was tight and the bottom of the chains scraped his back but he pushed through and got back out to the other side. He dashed back to where the car turned away and booked it down that road, keeping his ears open for any cars. When a red truck was coming his way, Philly swerved onto the sidewalk and raced down the street, passing by buildings that he wouldn’t take the split second to look upon.

  At the end, the road split into two. Which way did Pax go?

  It was a 50/50 chance for him to choose the right direction but then Philly let his ears take in all the sound and to his left he heard a familiar drum beat, like the one coming from Pax’s radio. Philly took that direction. He bzed down the road, hoping to catch up with the car and the thump of the music got louder.

  Philly’s fiery heart took a sigh of relief when he bck car came into view and just as he got close, the car slowed down and turned unto a lot. It was a big building– a warehouse– and a few other vehicles were parked out front. Philly dove behind a shed when he realized Pax was parking.

  The music turned off and the door opened. Holding the tray of coffees in one hand, Pax sung:

  “Sing with me,

  Sing for the year,

  Sing for the ughter,

  Sing for the teeeear,”

  His singing was pretty off key but didn’t suspect anyone was watching him. He walked in the front door and it smmed behind him with a heavy metallic sm.

  Philly looked around. There was an alley between that warehouse and the one beside it– a warehouse of simir shape. Keeping his head down and being very wary of anyone who could see him, the fox walked down the ne, on the other side of a fence from the building that Pax entered. Taking a few paces down the wall, he saw a window.

  Hopping over a battered shipping container, he went up close to the window and slowly shifted his eyes to see inside.

  There were a few people in there. Pax was handing out those coffees he picked up. It didn’t look too suspicious at first, but there was a guy there draped in a bck cloak. If that was some kind of construction pce, cloak guy didn’t look the part.

  If there was any doubt that pce was the hideout for whatever organization was after Ghost Thing, the blue dy– the one that attacked Ghost a couple weeks ago– walked across the main floor. Philly could get some words out on what they were saying but there was too much noise and the fox couldn’t make out much.

  It was the blue dy, though. That was for sure. Philly didn’t need any more evidence. That pce was– if not a hideout for the gang– at least important to them. He got away from the window and headed up to the front of the pce, checking above the doorway for any kind of sign or name of the pce. The building was bare. No sign.

  Philly went out to the street to see if there was a sign on the fence by the lot. Nothing. The pce was nameless but that didn’t surprise the fox knowing what he did about criminals in the human world. He wanted to remember the pce better, though, so he could tell Kay. It was still too foggy to make out the area well and Philly couldn’t even grab the colour of the warehouse on the count of his vulpine colourblindness.

  He could have at least gotten the street. The fox walked down the road until he hit the intersection and looked at the street sign. Apparently the road that the warehouse rested on was Short St.

  Philly chortled. That’ll be easy to remember!