“Um, Mom? Maybe I can just eat the animals you hunted after all. I really don’t want to eat this.”

Micah’s voice was hesitant. He was holding most of a ration bar in his hands, awkwardly distant from his body. We’d tried to teach our kids to be polite when things tasted bad, and my oldest was a rule-follower. George had said the rations “weren’t great,” but they must be pretty bad for Micah to intercept me the moment I returned home volunteering to eat what he’d been calling “cute animals.”

When I’d left, we’d had a bit over a dozen neighbors in our yard, celebrating. I’d been gone less than an hour, but there were at least twice as many people out front now.

As for why I’d left… Aliens had turned our planet into some kind of sick gameshow. Humans, or the “contestants” as they called us, could earn points and gain seemingly supernatural abilities, but that came at a cost: they’d rendered nearly all our technology nonfunctional and filled the outdoors with an increasing variety of nasty monsters.

This had caused a ton of problems, one of the biggest of which was the looming threat of starvation, which had hung over us all like a dark specter until earlier today, when I’d earned the Blueprint for a Basic Shop that sold both food and water.

The chance to compete for the Blueprint had been a limited opportunity I’d earned by raising my Novelty. It wasn't clear exactly how to earn Novelty, but it seemed that it boiled down to “being interesting.” The competition itself, however, had been deceptive. Almost a trap.

It had been billed as an opportunity. Everyone who opted in had been pulled to one of a series of similar locations where supposed “race courses” had been set up. My friend Priya and I had both been invited to compete, but we'd been taken to separate locations. After comparing experiences I was pretty sure the whole thing had been rigged. Not rigged to make one competitor win, but to ensure “racers” arrived at the finish line near-simultaneously, after fighting a series of monsters.

Priya had been lucky. She’d simply been outsped by her opponent, a man who’d darted past her at superhuman speeds to beat her to the finish. She hadn’t won the “race,” but both she and her opponent had come home safe and well.

I won, I guess. But another woman was dead now. My opponent, a mom from New Jersey named Crystal.

I’d killed her.

At the time, I’d thought she was trying to kill me. Maybe she had been. Maybe not.

I’d never killed anyone before, and I’d found it too hard to keep it together in front of my kids and amidst all the celebrations, so I’d taken a little walk to an empty home to try to process my feelings.

I knew I couldn’t stay away forever, so I’d come back as soon as I felt I could. I hadn’t expected to have to deal with complaints the moment I returned.... though perhaps I should have.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to get my mind in order. I needed to deal with my emotions, but not now. I didn’t live in a world that offered me the luxury of extended emotional breakdowns. Carefully, I packaged my feelings and thoughts away, before giving my son my full attention.

I’d taken too long to respond. Micah looked up at me nervously, worried my silence signified irritation with him. “I’m not trying to be mean. It’s just that the taste reminds me of throwing up.”

I snorted.

“What?” he asked, honestly confused.

“You’re not trying to be mean, it just tastes like vomit?”

He looked up at me, puzzled. “Yeah?”

“Riiiiight. Well, let’s try this. Hand it here.”

Micah handed it to me, instantly, happy to have it out of his hands. After he did, he looked worried. “I hope it isn’t poisonous. Then you’ll be poisoned AND I’ll be poisoned.”

“It’s not poisonous,” I chided. “You saw Mr. George test it.”

I bit off a chunk.

It was one of the worst things I have ever had the misfortune of eating.

It was made up of two main textures, both of them unpalatable. The first? Thin flakes just too pliable to be crunchy, like crackers starting to go stale. These flakes were broken up by rubbery things that reminded me unfortunately of steamed mushroom. The flavors were wildly unpredictable, each chunk or flake having its own. Raw broccoli, followed by strawberries, followed by something almost like pepperoni. Not the worst flavors in their own right, but fairly horrific in combination.

I swallowed, trying to be done with the awful experience. It didn’t work: left behind in my mouth were traces of the sticky substance used to bind the other parts of the ration together, and it did indeed have an acidic aftertaste that was eerily close to bile.

Oh, and I had at least two of the stale flakes stuck in between my teeth after that single bite.

I’d steeled myself before sampling it. I had intended to put a good face on an awful taste, as an example to my kid, but I guess I failed. Micah offered me the water bottle he was holding before I could even ask.

“See? It’s super awful.” He sounded a little smug.

“It’s… not the best,” I admitted, voice strained. Crap. If it had been drier, we could have pounded it or ground it into powder, then washed it down with water. The stickiness and moisture present would make that fairly impossible.

I took another swallow of the water. That nasty aftertaste really lingered. Micah was grinning at me as I wrinkled my face in distaste. Hm. Some misunderstanding there.

I met my oldest child’s eyes. “I’ve got bad news for you though: even if it tastes like garbage, we don’t get to be picky about it. I can’t hunt enough animals to keep us all fed.”

He looked horrified. “You can't? Why not? We can’t eat that!”

Maybe we’d sheltered the kids a little too well from the realities of our situation. So far, they’d had three full meals every day, mostly of stuff they’d enjoyed or tolerated before. I offered him a sympathetic grimace. “We can, and we will. We do have some other food left - I’ll talk with Ms. Priya and Mr. George, but I think we can work it out so we can have some normal food for ‘dessert,’ at least. You know, after you eat a ration bar, you can have some sweet potato or a few crackers or something to help get rid of the taste.”

That clearly wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for. He stared at me, every line of his body communicating his readiness to argue, but his furrowed brow conveying his difficulty in finding words.

It was flattering in some ways, an artifact of his faith in me, like when he’d been a toddler and had a tantrum because I “refused” to turn off the sun. In others, it was simply frustrating. He was a good kid. I would give him what he wanted if I could.

“Micah, look!” Anju called out from her perch atop the Shop. Her Flight-boosted jump had carried her easily atop the building, and she was ostensibly keeping a lookout for new monsters, her Burden ability being particularly effective at shutting down fliers. George was standing on the ground, keeping a close eye on our lookout. Having her so high and exposed seemed to be stressing him out, but he was letting it happen.

“What?” yelled Micah.

“It’s Mrs. Wright! She’s here! She’s okay!” Anju was pointing down the street, but I couldn’t see what she was pointing at, our view blocked by the Shop.

“Mrs. Wright?!” Micah had loved his second grade teacher, and had been delighted to find out she lived just around the corner from us. While I hadn’t wanted to invade her privacy too much, she’d been kind to her former student when we saw each other out on walks, always remembering his name and taking a few minutes to chat.

I’d checked her house early on in this disaster and had been disappointed to find it empty. There were a lot of possible explanations for her absence - summer job, vacation, shopping trip - but I’d given up on seeing her anytime soon. Anju hadn’t been pointing toward her house, though. She was pointing the opposite direction, to the south.

I grabbed Micah’s arm to keep him from bolting out of our yard. He strained against my grip and I gave his arm a little squeeze.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go look together.”

Micah flashed me a big smile and dragged me around the shop.

As we rounded the corner I saw a massive crowd approaching.