Somehow, I did manage to get back to sleep after that.

The next morning I groggily awoke on the futon, a slight cramp in my neck from repeated nights on an unfamiliar mattress. My irritation led to a pleasant realization: my boosted strength would make carrying the mattress from our king-size bed upstairs no problem at all. The prospect of actually sleeping in my own bed again - or near enough - helped make the day seem a little less terrible.

Getting it upstairs was easy enough, in fact, that it didn’t even delay our departure… although that was at least partly because of all the other delays.

Apparently there are some things that aren’t changed even by the collapse of civilization: if you have someplace to go, kids won’t eat quickly, you’ll have to tell them to use the bathroom at least three times, and someone isn’t going to be able to find their shoes.

We finally found Gavin’s boots - one in the bathroom, the other under his pillow. I was used to finding my kids’ belongings in random places, but that one actually merited questions from me. Why had his boot ended up under a pillow? Why only one of his boots? Did he want his sheets covered in mud? Did he like the feeling of grains of dirt rubbing against his skin.

Gavin claimed not to know how his boot ended up in his bed, suggesting that “someone else” must have put it there.

Someone else. Put his boot. In his bed.

Mmmhmm. Yep. I wasn’t buying that, not even on sale with double coupons.

Regardless, with that sorted, we were able to head out. I was grateful Pointy’s presence meant I didn’t have to repeat the process for Cassie - the AI was apparently keeping notes on where my daughter left all her things.

We had a lot to do, and less than four hours before “Deadline,” the name people had started giving to the time of day when the badblankets and the rams had first spawned. A bit of gallows humor, but the name seemed to be sticking.

I was able to test Parry on some leafenrats - it did work about as I hoped, aiding me in moving to intercept blows and adding force to knock them away. My sword wasn’t an ideal tool to Parry leafenrats, but it let me get some practice.

Tori’s house was the first stop on our list. Not only was I hoping she could make me a shield, she’d been injured yesterday taking out the ram attacking her own property - likely why I hadn’t seen her on the street.

It took her a bit to get to the door. When she let us in, she moved slowly, using an upside-down broom as a walking stick, and quickly sank down into a nearby armchair after letting us in.

“Thanks for coming by. What’re you charging?”

Right to business, I guess. I ushered my kids inside. “We were thinking we’d give one cast of Healing Touch for free, 200 calories for each use after the first.”

The system seemed fair to me - using his ability a little didn’t tire Gavin, but if he had to use it five or six times in a row, he’d certainly feel it. Tori was wrinkling her nose, however, and I hurried to finish what I wanted to say.

“Uh, I was hoping we could offer you a different deal. You said you can shape steel now?”

“Iron and its alloys, yeah.” Tori admitted grudgingly.

I lifted the roof out of the tagon and started unloading the cookware that was crowding Cassie. “I really need a shield. I’ve got a carbon steel wok here that I think would form a good basis, and a couple of cast iron skillets and some cookie sheets too. If you could combine them, maybe make a scutum for me?”

Tori’s eyebrows were trying to crawl into her hairline. “A scutum?” She said it like the word might be inappropriate.

I pulled a fantasy novel from under Cassie’s butt, pointing at the cover. “Like this one. A big, curved rectangle. About 2 by 4 feet? Maybe a little less?”

I’d thought long and hard about what kind of shield I wanted. Historically, scutums had been used by armies. Soldiers could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with each other and interlock the massive shields to stop an enemy army’s charge or protect against incoming arrows. As a solo warrior, it was a really odd choice.

I was going for it anyway for a few reasons.

First off, I was damn strong. A big part of the drawback of a larger shield was how heavy it would be to carry, and I wasn’t worried about that.

Large shields were also harder to maneuver. The smaller your shield was, the easier it was to move it quickly to intercept an opponent’s blow or to get out of the way of your own strikes.

That had made me discount larger shields at first, but as I’d thought about it more I’d realized the maneuverability of a small shield wouldn’t really help me. It made more sense when you were fighting other humans, whose weapons would generally target you from the waist up. That wasn’t a claim I could make about any of the enemies we’d fought so far. A small shield on my arm would be hard to move to protect my kneecaps from a charging ram or to guard my ankles from an leafenrat. As I’d run through scenarios in my mind, I hadn’t been able to come up with many where a smaller shield would be helpful at all right now.

That might change in the future, as we faced different types of enemies… but it might not. Things like bucklers were generally used to block a single blow at a time. A larger shield like the scutum gave me more options. For example, if something shot several missiles at Micah, I could potentially catch all of them on the scutum’s larger surface.

Tori looked from the novel I’d handed her to at the cookware I’d unloaded in her hallway.

“Nope,” she said. “Not happening.”

Her blunt refusal surprised me. I’d thought agreeing on a price would be a challenge, but I didn’t think she’d just turn me down. “What? Why not?”

“Why not? Why not? Hah! Let me tell you. First, you ain’t brought nearly enough good metal. The wok is good, but the cast iron is gonna take extra work from me, and those baking sheets are fuck-” she cut herself off and glanced at the kids. “Uh… they’re aluminum. Even if I use the cast iron pans, that’s just not enough metal. The shield’s gonna be too thin, and it’ll crumple like tinfoil when one of those rams hits.”

That wasn’t great, but I could probably scavenge more steel cookware. It wasn’t a dealbreaker. “And second? If that’s the first problem.”

“That’s a hell of a lot of metal to move! It would take me most of a day. Not a fair trade for some finger wiggles from your kid. Even if you were willing and able to pay, you’d have to wait until I got through all these other projects.”

Tori flicked out her fingers, indicating two laundry baskets by the door. One was labeled “Done” and the other “To-Do,” and both were filled with a variety of electronics. I saw a lot of walkie-talkies, but also a few camping lanterns and some tasers or stun guns.

As I took in the piles, Tori continued. “I’m in pretty damn high demand. Every second house has someone who can heal.”

I frowned. “So you’re just going to waltz through the neighborhood and get a better price on healing? With your leg like that? You don’t have much time before the Deadline.”

“No, no. I’ll pay his regular fee. I’m just not gonna make you a massive metal shield. That much work, I’d have to charge you… oh… I dunno. ‘Bout 20 thousand calories?”

I blanched. Even if I found the metal, I couldn’t afford that! That was more than an adult ate in a week. I opened my mouth, trying to gather the words for an argument, but Tori cut me off, her face unsympathetic.

“Supply and demand,” she said, nodding toward the baskets brimming with electronics.

I shut my mouth. What could I say? I couldn’t really argue that my shield was more important than their stun guns and walkie-talkies. 20,000 calories seemed extreme, but if she could fix a few dozen small electronics in the same time it took her to make one shield, it was probably about right… much as I hated to admit it.

It was a massive disappointment.

Micah grabbed my wrist and stage whispered to me, “Your sword, Mom. You were going to ask her to fix your sword.”

His reminder snapped me out of my funk a little. I pulled my weapon out of the janky holder I’d rigged for it by mutilating a purse.

“Would you accept a smaller trade? My sword’s taken some damage. Fixing that and maybe reinforcing the edge a little… would that be much work?”

Tori looked interested. “Yeah, that won’t take much. Give it here, and pick up that wok for me.”

I complied. Tori took the sword and laid it across her lap, then pulled a small chunk off the edge of the wok. She swept her hand down the blade and the hunk of metal appeared to melt and flow out between her fingers, filling in the damaged areas. She frowned for a moment, focusing, and I thought I could see the surface of the sword shift slightly.

“There ya go. Took care of your chips and pulled some of the milder steel into the center. Gave you some real sharp cutting edges and hardened them up a little. I wouldn’t let it flop around at your side like you’ve been doing. Unless you got a real sheath, you carry it by hand.”

“So I don’t cut myself?”

Tori blinked. “Yeah… sure. I guess. Mostly so you don’t damage my work by letting it slam into the nails on your belt over and over. Too many traces of aluminum on the edge of your blade, and I know that didn’t come from the monsters.”

I flushed, embarrassed and irritated by her accusation. I could imagine an ancient Eastern master - or maybe the old rat guy from Ninja Turtles - shaking his head at me and telling me to “Honor thy weapon.” But honestly - where the hell was I going to get a proper sheath?

Rather than directly respond, I called Gavin over to heal her.

It took him four casts, but whether that was because her injury wasn’t as bad as it seemed or because his healing had gotten that much stronger was hard to say. Possibly some of both.

We said our goodbyes and headed out the door. I’d discarded the idea of asking Darryl for help with a shield after looking at the wok. His ability seemed to make small changes - joining seams, patching holes, and reinforcing weak spots. To get the wok to work as a shield would take a lot more than that - it was just far too curved. The entire shape of it needed to be different. He might be able to make a sheath for me, if I could get him materials, but that wasn’t a desperate need. For now, I could carry my sword.

We traveled to a few houses, healing a woman’s broken leg, a man’s smashed hand, and some deep slashes on a little girl’s arm. We got a bit of food for our trouble.

Pointy said we still had almost two hours before the Deadline, but Gavin was looking a little tired, and there wasn’t really space for him in the wagon with all the cookware. I was debating whether or not we should risk visiting one more house when the Intrusion Alarm went off.

Someone - or something - had entered our home.