Later that day, I braced myself as we approached our fourth house.

Not for an attack - we’d thrown a number of rocks and I was pretty confident we’d fought all the leafenrats that lurked in this yard. We were getting really good at fighting them, and I’d even found a spot I could hit that led to instant death. It was located deep in their torso, and protected from the top by several bones, but Assisted Strike let me take advantage of their open mouths to reach it. Sometimes. If they got in too close, even Assisted Strike and my new sword weren’t enough to get a stab in at such an impossible angle, and I had to resort to a slower kill by targeting their soft stomachs. The boys rarely missed with their squirt guns these days, and Micah’s little flames couldn’t miss. Even when I didn’t use my ability, the average time it took us to get a kill had dropped sharply.

No. The fighting was going fine. Maybe even going well! I just wasn’t at all excited at talking to another of our neighbors.

I know! I know. This was my idea to begin with, and I still believed it was necessary. I just… didn’t want to.

At least Gavin had taken a pass on his line about the “Dirty Wank” at the last house. Darryl and Priya’s instant laughter the first time he’d said it more or less guaranteed that he’d try it again, but my completely unamused reaction seemed to have gotten through to him. Finally.

It hadn’t actually made the third house that much more enjoyable to visit. Every adult I’d met since the Maffiyir opened our conversations with disbelief or anger that I’d taken my kids out to fight. My good friend, Priya, had been charitable enough to assume that there was some kind of reason, but she’d still been shocked. Everyone else was somewhere on a sliding scale between her and “You’re-a-Reckless-Fool” Robert McKlasky, and most were much more closely aligned with McKlasky. No one wanted to hear that homes wouldn’t be safe much longer. No one wanted to believe that the aliens would make the kids and elderly fight.

One of the homes, I thought I’d gotten through to. Two parents, both working from home, with a daughter heading to college in the fall and a son in high school.They’d been reluctant to trust me, but after I’d brought Pointy out, their arguments had lost a lot of conviction. I thought I’d see them at the playground tomorrow.

The other houses were a tossup. I couldn’t afford to spend hours arguing, so I just presented the information, found out what abilities they’d taken, and left. Most of the adults we spoke to were in tears when we departed. I hoped that meant they believed me on some level, but it still meant that my basic pattern was “Go to house, get yelled at, tell people things they don’t want to hear, walk out leaving them in tears.”

I’d never been super relaxed meeting new people. It was why I’d gotten into theater. My mom had pushed me into it in hopes of making me less reclusive. I honestly really enjoyed being on stage in the role of someone else, and theater experience had been very helpful for putting on the mask of someone who was confident and unphased by socializing with strangers. But it was a mask. A useful mask, a mask that often helped me get to know people well enough that I really was relaxed around them… but a mask.

Shouldn’t social anxiety not be a thing when you’re facing actual, real, physical threats? There seemed to be something to that, since I hadn’t minded interacting with Darryl or Dog Guy - I’d, uh, forgotten to exchange names - but I guess there was a limit to how much awkwardness I could casually bear, even in a life-or-death situation.

Micah was curled up in the wagon now, resting. Cassie was very irritated, insisting that there wasn’t enough space. She wasn’t exactly wrong, but he’d offered to use Freeze on any good food each house had left. Considering how close everything was to being ruined, I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. People were hugely grateful for his help, and if we tried to come back later to do it, that stuff would already be spoiled. I wasn’t looking forward to everyone running out of things to eat. If someone showed up on my doorstep hungry, did I feed them and take food away from my own kids? What if they decided to fight us for food? What if a family with their own kids was hungry? Could I really not share our food with a hungry grade-schooler? Could I really give away food my kids needed to someone else?

I didn’t have answers to any of that, so I was trying to get Micah as much rest as possible to let him maximize the help he could offer.

I was a little hopeful about this house. It had been hard to tell from a distance, but I thought the shiny warrior we’d seen outside earlier lived here. It looked pretty similar to the ones on either side, but both of those had smashed windows that I assumed meant no one had been home to answer the door for Dog Guy.

When I reached the door I put my back to it, rapping it twice with the pommel of my sword. That way, I could face outward and keep an eye on any threats as I waited to see if anyone answered.

We were waiting quite a while, but the door did eventually swing open behind me.

“Pardon me,” I said, gently pushing Gavin inside and dragging the wagon over the doorstep. I didn’t bother asking permission. That just kept their door open for extra seconds and increased the risk to both of us.

Once safe, I lifted the roof off the Tagon.

“I’m freeeeeee!” yelled Cassie, flopping out of the wagon onto the ground. Her landing didn’t look comfortable, but she wasn’t crying so I didn’t worry about it. I turned to greet our host, a tall short-haired woman a bit older than myself. Maybe early forties?

“I’m Meghan,” I said. “These are Gavin and Cassie, and that’s my oldest, Micah.”

“Name’s Tori. He hurt?” she nodded toward Micah, who had climbed out of the wagonbed to stretch out on the floor.

“No, just tired. He’s got a freezing ability and he’s been using it on any food we thought we could save as we visit houses.”

She looked mildly impressed, but shook her head ruefully. “Well, he can keep resting for now. My brother’s family visited last week, and they just about cleaned out my freezer. I already ate the cold food I had left.” Tori saw my concerned look and continued. “I’m not totally out! Got some canned food, some cereal. Just out of cold food. Say, weren’t you the group that left this in my mailbox earlier?”

Tori waved a familiar little paper at me and I perked up, delighted. “Yes! We’ve been trying to share information, but I didn’t think anyone had gotten those. I was trying to do what I could on my way to a friend’s house, but it takes a lot of work to actually make it up to a front door from the street!”

“You’re telling me.” Tori grimaced. “Spent the first two days making armor and a weapon, then couldn’t stay out for a full ten minutes before I got injured. By my own armor, no less!”

Gavin had wandered away and was toying with a knickknack he’d found on a nearby table, a little decorative box covered in gears that spun as he touched them. He didn’t seem to have noticed her words.

“Gavin! Remember, we ask before we touch other people’s stuff? Also, didn’t you hear? Ms. Tori is hurt. Ah, where are you injured, anyway?”

She pushed back her left sleeve to reveal a bicep wrapped with what looked like strips of cut-up T-shirt fabric. “Didn’t get the articulation on the armor right at the elbow. It worked at first, but as soon as it moved the wrong way it sliced muscle. Had to give up and come inside after that.”

“You can give her four casts, Gavin.” I gave Tori an apologetic glance. “Sorry, but I’ve already got two kids in the wagon. It won’t fit three, so I really can’t let him wear himself out.”

“Four… casts?” she started to ask, but Gavin had already grabbed her hand. Her eyes widened with surprise, and flexed her arm, then pulled the wrappings off to look at it closer. Her arm still bore a scab, but she swung it around easily, wincing only slightly. “Wow. Healing Touch, I guess? That thing’s no joke.”

I smiled. “Yes, but it’s stronger now than it was when he first got it. Two days ago, it would have worn him out helping that much. I’m guessing you took some kind of metal-molding ability?”

“Yeah. I’m an electrical engineer, so… ‘Shape Paramagnetic Metals.’ What a mouthful, am I right? But I was trying to get something that’d let me fix the wiring they slagged. That one got me copper and aluminum.”

My eyes widened. “You can fix the wiring? Is that any good without electricity?”

She pulled a device out of her back pocket. “Sure is! Seems like batteries are fine, and so are a lot of the fancier components. Capacitors were mostly fine, but I had to re-do a lot of the transformers and the oscillator, and without the wires a lot of the stuff was rattling around loose in there, so you’d need the know-how to put it back together correctly. I couldn’t make one from scratch without the other materials it uses, but I got this baby working again.”

I looked at the device in her hand. Encased in plastic, it was about the same size as a remote control. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, then I noticed the angled metal nubs at the top. “You’ve got a working TASER?!”

Tori grinned. “Technically, it’s a stun gun, since the electrodes don’t shoot out, but yeah. Aluminum armor to keep me safe, taser to shock them, then stab, stab, stab, baby!”

She seemed to suddenly become conscious of my kids looking up at her, and coughed, embarrassed. “Uh, sorry.”

I waved this off. It felt odd, but my kids getting more comfortable with the idea of stabbing was probably a good thing.

“Do you think you could fix the phone lines? Landlines don’t use electricity, right?”

“Common misperception. They just don’t take much, so they can run off the phone companies generators in a general outage.”

“Um. Radios? Maybe we could get radios working? Or walkie-talkies?”

Tori frowned, thoughtfully. “Radio receivers, no problem, as long as we got the batteries. Heck, I think I remember reading about a receiver that doesn’t use electricity at all! Oh, wait, though, I think those powered themselves off strong radio waves, and those’ll be gone too. I guess walkie-talkies work off short range radio…” she stopped her stream-of-consciousness ramble. “Why do you ask? I owe your son big time for the heals. I don’t mind doing a little project or two for you, but I feel like you’re thinking bigger than that.”

I nodded and began to explain my ideas to her, starting with the information I’d learned since I’d left the note in her mailbox on the way to the Turners, and ending with my plan for a meetup the next morning in the park.

“So you see, an easy way to communicate would benefit all of us.”

She frowned.

“You might be right, but if I’m holed up in here fixing walkie-talkies, I’m not getting any stronger. Might help you all, but that’s a risk I don’t feel like taking.”

I glared at her, frustrated. I forced myself to take a deep breath. We needed Tori’s help. “You don’t have to fight all day. The monsters around your house don’t come back too quick. We saw earlier you’re pretty fast at killing them, and with the taser you’re not going to be tiring yourself out with fighting. What’s to stop you from fighting for ten minutes, then coming in here and working to help your neighbors?”

Tori seemed unconvinced. “And that’s what you’ve been doing? Just sticking close to home, killing the monsters that come to you? The battery on my taser isn’t going to last forever. After I saw your first note, I’d been thinking of taking an ability to help me recharge it once I got to 144 points. But from what you’re saying now, if I take some kind of energy ability like that, my first ability won’t get stronger.”

What an irritating person. She had a full fricking suit of armor, she could fix electronics, she only had herself to care for, and still she was sitting here talking about all the reasons she couldn’t help anyone else?

But we still needed her help. Even if someone else had her ability, it sounded like it wouldn’t be very useful without her background.

“Look,” I said. “Just come to the playground tomorrow morning. I’ll bring our walkie-talkies so you can do those for us, and I’ll try to ask other people to bring some too. Maybe someone else will have an ability to recharge batteries, or won’t mind taking one at their next threshold.”

“I don’t want to meet up with a bunch of people looking for handouts from me,” she growled.

“Okay,” I said tightly. This was harder than getting one of the kids to share a new birthday present. “When I tell other people to bring their walkie-talkies, I’ll ask them to bring 500 calories of food with them per handset. They’ll be buying your help.”

That seemed to interest Tori. “Okay. Alright. Yeah, I can do that.”

We were done here. I couldn’t stay polite to her for much longer. “Micah! Cassie! Back in the Tagon! Gavin, I told you to leave that alone. It doesn’t belong to you.” Gavin looked up guiltily from the table, where he was once again messing with Tori’s steampunk decor.

“Aw, he can take that with him if he likes it so much. I don’t need it, and he did me a solid today.”

“Really?” said Gavin, delighted. “It’s so cooooool.”

I sighed. How were we going to get that home with us? Micah and Cassie were already uncomfortably crowded in the Tagon.

“Just, um, put it in the basket on top with the guns.” I told him. Hopefully it would make it home. Gavin would be pretty bummed if it didn’t.

We left the house, carefully checking the surroundings for enemies as we made our way down the road to the next home with unsmashed front windows.

Gavin bounced beside me perkily. “Ms. Tori was really nice, Mom!”

“Yep,” I grated. “A real sweetie. Bless her heart. ”

…

In the end, we only made it to two more houses that night. I made a mistake. I chased a leafenrat under a tree and another dropped down behind me, raking a long gash down the unprotected back of my thigh.

The older couple whose yard we were clearing was watching, and they took a big risk to help us out. The man rushed out the door with an umbrella and hit the leafenrat. It didn’t roll far, but Gavin took advantage of the temporary distance to blast it with the pepper gun. Its disorientation let us make it inside before anything else jumped us.

I’d brought water to rinse any wounds we took. As soon as the door slammed behind us, I was popping open the water bottle, squeezing it to squirt a stream of water into my leg injury. I couldn’t avoid letting out a whine as I did so. The moment I stopped, Gavin lunged in, and blessed, blessed itchiness began to replace the searing pain.

Gavin took his hands away. “I didn’t get it all the way, Mommy, but I’m feeling really tired.”

Shit! I should have stopped him as soon as it closed. I’d been so relieved by the receding pain that I hadn’t been thinking. At least he hadn’t knocked himself out. He was learning his limits.

“No, no. Good job,” I told him. “You can work on it more later. I’m glad you stopped.”

I regretted my relaxation earlier this afternoon. If I’d taken that time to make myself the gladiator skirt I’d thought about, this wouldn’t have happened!

The man was panting hard after helping us out, and his voice wheezed. “Couldn’t leave you out there. I remember when my granddaughters were his age.” He raised a shaking finger to point at Gavin.

“Thanks,” I said warmly. “It would have been rough fighting them off while injured.” I thought we would have been okay, but I’ll admit I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to take away from his heroism.

His wife came back into the foyer, balancing a package on her walker. “Well, can’t have kids in my house going hungry. Who wants a cookie? Just storebought, with the power outage, but I still like them.”

I was still sitting on the floor in a puddle of blood and water, but I waved my hands at her. “You don’t have to feed us! We’ve got food at home!”

She looked at me, offended. “Don’t be silly. This little duckling needs a treat after seeing his Mama get hurt like that! Why on earth were you outside in this, anyway?”

That kicked off the same song and dance I’d gotten all-too-used to. We tried to fill our hosts in on what was going on, and we learned a little about them in return. It turned out their names were Gary and Matilda Olsen. They hadn’t taken abilities yet, and in spite of our urging, they didn’t seem inclined to. I tried to suggest they come to the meetup tomorrow, but I got only gentle laughs.

“There’s no way I could make it all that way, dear,” Matilda told me.

I wanted to argue with her, but how did you fight monsters when you needed a walker to make it down the hall?

Micah had dragged himself from the wagon to freeze their food, so neither he nor Gavin could really walk home. We were stuck here for a while until one or both of them recovered. That gave me plenty of time to try to talk to Gary. He seemed in fairly decent shape, despite his advanced age. I tried to make suggestions, ways he could get stronger to help protect himself and his wife. He listened politely enough, but I never seemed to suggest anything that sounded good to him. “Can’t leave Mattie in here alone while I go out after the monsters, now can I?” he whispered to me when his wife was distracted by one of Cassie’s questions.

Were they just… resigned to death?

I wasn’t brave enough to ask. I didn’t want my kids to hear their answer. We just sat together and chatted until the boys felt better. Matilda was wonderful with Cassie, reading her some children’s books they’d kept since their own kids were small. She was excellent at it, expressive and dramatic, with a different voice for each character.

The boys eventually recovered, and we headed home. The Olsens waved at us from the window as we left.

I couldn’t think of any way to help them.