The search for indoor leafenrats - or badblankets - didn’t turn up anything else. It did reveal an unopened jug of apple juice, a mostly full case of cheap beer, and about a dozen water bottles. Dog Guy had walked confidently to the garage and grabbed a bag of pet feed, which he tipped out into a pan for his dogs to share. He opened one of the water bottles and started to pour it into a bowl, but Mindy stopped him.

“Hey! We don’t really have enough water for the humans. Let the animals drink from the toilets. We can scoop whatever’s in the toilet tanks into the bowls if they need more.”

“That’s not -” Dog Guy started to respond angrily, but Colonel Zwerinski’s quiet voice stopped him.

“If they get sick, I’ll cure them. No charge.”

The offer swiftly defused the argument, for now. I wished I’d brought the 5-gallon water jug with us, but it took up so much space that I would have had to ditch it if one of the boys needed to ride. Instead I’d brought a few smaller water bottles, only a bit more than I needed to refill the squirt guns.

Hm. But the boys couldn’t really use the squirt guns while we traveled with this big group, could they? There were only a few people outside of our family with eye protection. If we fired them with this crowd and the wind blew the wrong way…

I winced. Yeah, bad plan. Plus, I didn’t think I could refill the guns stealthily right now, and people would really react badly to me putting water in guns when they were thirsty.

“My family doesn’t need a water ration. I brought water to refill the squirt guns. We’ll drink that.”

“Those are some big squirt guns. Sounds like you have more than you need for just you.”

The speaker was Mason, the same guy trying to charge 1500 calories for Cleanse. I thought about trying to sell him the water, but I doubted most people had picked up on his earlier selfishness. I’d just look bad, and my bad attitude would encourage others not to share.

“That’s probably true,” I said, setting the largest bottle down on an end table. “I’ll share this one with the group.”

I was still carrying three others, but he didn’t challenge me as I walked away.

The food available in the house was much more plentiful than the drinks, if you didn’t care much about variety. A basket of fruit on the counter was still good, and I managed to snag a pear and an apple, but other than the fruit, there wasn’t much that anyone would have made a meal out of a week ago.

The cupboards held an absolutely ungodly amount of canned tomato sauce. Mind you, I’d done holidays with my husband’s family. I was no stranger to tomato sauce, but this was out of even my experience. An entire shelf was full of it, edge-to-edge, and part of a second. It really made you question the people who had lived here. Were they on some sort of weird fad diet? Accidentally ordered three cases instead of three cans from a grocery delivery site?

The other food in the cupboards needed preparation or was even less enticing than the tomato sauce - dry pasta, oil, flour, bottles of dressing, boxes of baking mix, that sort of thing.

I grabbed a knife and cut both fruits into six slices, two per kid, then fished out the seeds and put them in a plastic bag I’d found in a drawer. I hadn’t found anyone to grow my pepper seeds yet, but there was still a chance, and keeping a few seeds around cost me almost nothing.

The kids weren’t thrilled about the “tomato soup,” i.e. the canned tomato sauce poured into a bowl and eaten with a spoon. I mean, it wasn’t meant to be eaten that way, I get it. It would have been better with beef mixed in or some cheese on top, or at least some fresh pasta to pour it over. It had been a long morning, though, and they were hungry enough to eat at least some.

I didn’t feel like eating. Not at all. My brain was still adjusting to my new sense, and I kept getting weird messages: phantom itches on my body, odd tastes on my tongue, nonsensical smells, trouble balancing. None lasted long, but they were frequent enough to wear on me.

I ate anyway, grimly. It didn’t have to taste good or be a pleasant experience. As long as I could keep it down, I needed to eat it.

After we’d eaten, we explored the house a little. I couldn’t call it clean, not with the shattered glass, clawmarks, dirty footprints, and emptied closets, but you got the feeling that it had been very tidy, almost unlived in. There weren’t snacks or toys, and each of the bedrooms upstairs was perfectly coordinated and tastefully decorated, almost like hotel rooms. Maybe the house of someone older, whose kids had all moved away?

The door at the end of the hall was locked. When I tried it, someone giggled. “We’re taking the big bedroom! Go away!”

Wow. Bold.

I mean, we were all grabbing anything we thought was useful that wasn’t nailed down, and we’d just eaten their food and drunk their water. And if whoever owned this house wasn’t here now, they probably wouldn’t be soon, either. But I guess it still struck me as a little forward to just walk into a stranger’s house and lock yourself and a, uh, friend, in their master bedroom. I mean, not even a guest bedroom? Really?

Gavin and Cassie had run wild at the park and both were drooping, so I tucked them in for a nap in one of the smaller bedrooms down the hall. Micah had found a battered, ancient copy of Scrabble in one of the closets, and he’d convinced two of the teenagers to play with him. With the downstairs tables monopolized by adults chatting and drinking beer against Mindy’s medical advice, the trio accepted my suggestion of playing on the floor of one of the other guest rooms.

With the kids fed and resting nearby, I took a second to duck into the bathroom. I’d kept telling myself that if I had grown some sort of weird mutation, I would have felt it, or someone would have told me. But could I have missed noticing the feel of a new body part amidst all the weird sensations I kept getting? And how did you talk to someone about their sudden extra body part? “Hey, uh, did you know you have an antenna now?” Awkward at best. I couldn’t really relax until I checked for myself.

The bathroom didn’t have any windows, so it was pretty dim. I spent a few minutes peering carefully at my face, lifting my curly hair and turning my head and neck to check as carefully as I could. Eventually, I relaxed: if I had grown any new organs, they were obviously pretty small.

I retreated to the last empty bedroom and spent the next few hours with my eyes closed, trying to get a grasp of my new ability. I wouldn’t say I fully succeeded, but by the end of it, at least it wasn’t making me sick anymore. My brain seemed to have accepted that this new input was a separate thing from my other senses. Before, I might have likened my new sense to pop-up ads: intrusive and overwhelming messages that blocked me from what I actually wanted to know. Now, it was more like foreign-language subtitles: hard to get a meaning from, but easy to ignore if I wanted.

A polite knock on the wall made me open my eyes. Colonel Zwerinski was standing in the doorway. “Going well?” he asked.

“Eh, could be worse. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to use it the way I want, but it’s not going to mess me up anymore. If someone else pulls Cassie in the wagon, I can join the frontline.”

“I can do that,” said the colonel. “Least I’ll be helping that way.”

“Offering your cure ability up for free helped prevent a fight earlier,” I offered. “That’s something.”

He sighed. “Yeah, but in times like these, civilians want to follow someone who can lead from the front. That’s not going to be me. Long story short, I needed Cure Disease. Been a long time since I could exercise regularly, so I’m not starting from a great place, and now my ability ain’t so great for fighting either.”

That wasn’t the only thing keeping people from wanting his leadership. I didn’t say anything, but I guess my skepticism showed.

“I can see what you’re thinking, and you’re right. I… there’s a lot I don’t know. I’m not as prepared as I thought I was when I left the house this morning.” He sighed. “Not by far. Trouble is, there’s a lot I do know, too. Logistics, law enforcement, how to deal with banditry, setting up fortifications and field hospitals. I can’t let myself be sidelined.”

I nodded, slowly. “Alright. But why are you telling me?”

He looked away, embarrassed. “Well, judging by your points… not to mention your son’s points... you’re clearly one of the folks who does understand a lot of the things I don’t about what’s happening. And you’re one of the few who wasn’t fighting to get put in charge this morning.”

“I’m already responsible for enough people,” I muttered.

“Right. Fair enough! But that’s why I was hoping I could count on your support.”

I frowned. “My support for what, exactly? I thought you all agreed there wasn’t much action we could take right now.”

“Maybe not yet, but that’ll change.”

I shook my head. “Look, I like a lot of your ideas. And I think that, unlike some of the people who want to be in charge, you want it for mostly the right reasons. I think you’d try your best to help everyone. But I’m not going to paint a target on my back trying to help put you in charge without some kind of clear benefit. I’ve got my kids to think of.”

He looked disappointed, but nodded. “Guess that’s the best I can ask for. Uh, they’ve been talking downstairs about heading out. Thought I should tell you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I let Micah know and woke Gavin and Cassie. When I came downstairs, I saw that others had been doing more than just relaxing and drinking. A lot of the people had updated their apparel in a very apocalypse-chic way: nails had been pounded out through the walls of boots and the elbows and backs of coats.

I was amazed that the real apocalypse was making a generally-nonsensical post-apocalyptic look actually reasonable. Yeah, we could injure ourselves on them, possibly, but if badblanket hadn’t enjoyed wrapping itself around a knife it should hate grabbing a victim who had spikes all over.

Darryl handed me a belt. “Here. I figured you’d be out in front this time, and I knew you’d been busy.”

He’d clearly used Improvised Equipment on it. The nails weren’t just pounded through, but had their flat heads sealed in between two layers of leather. The belt was far too big for any of my kids to wear, so I put it on, spiked side guarding my back. I could use my sword to try to protect my front.

I’d have to hope being in the middle of the group would be enough to keep my kids safe.

“Thanks,” I told Darryl. He hadn’t had to do this for me. “If I can pay you back, let me know.”

I loaded the empty water bottles and Cassie back in the wagon. The dogs were on their own this time. I wasn’t going to let Cassie walk without me to hold her hand, and I wasn’t going to shut my three-year-old in a tiny, dark, box with a bunch of animals that had been spending a lot of time in combat.

I spotted two of the squirt guns on the floor nearby, and one of the spares was still in the dishrack, but the other spare was nowhere to be found.

“Hey!” I called. “We’re missing one of our squirt guns. Has anyone seen it?”

No one volunteered anything.

“Maybe one of your kids lost it,” Mindy suggested.

“No. I found the ones they were using. This was one of our spares. Someone took it out of the basket on purpose.” I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt. “If someone just wanted to look at it, that’s fine, but I need it back now.”

No one moved to give me anything.

I was getting angry. “Alright then. I shared our water. I took an ability to sense these new enemies, and I’ve been sitting upstairs trying to learn to use it while you guys relaxed, made new gear for yourselves, and looted the house. If you want to steal our squirt gun, fine. Go. Take it. But if this is the way you treat us, I’m not helping you get back to your homes.”

This got more of a reaction.

“I need to get home!”

“You can’t stay here. There’s no water left!”

“Whoever took her gun should give it back! We need her to sense those things!”

Mason, Calorie Economy Asshole, stepped forward. “So you’re gonna try to screw us all over because you think one of us took it? Look, I didn’t take it, and I’m willing to prove it.”

He upended the duffel he’d taken. Inside were three cans of tomato sauce, a roll of duct tape, some bandages, and a few books. No squirt gun.

I frowned at him. He’d been my prime suspect, but his leather coat and jeans were pretty tight against his body. With the duffel clearly empty, there was no way he could be carrying a squirt gun with him.

Prompted by his action, another person opened their backpack to show they hadn’t taken my squirt gun, and that set off a chain reaction. No one wanted to be the suspicious one who wouldn’t let me look through their bags.

But even though I checked everyone’s belongings, there was no sign of the missing squirt gun.