It was all but impossible to navigate in the face of the awful visibility and the gut-wrenching horror that the rain and fog seemingly did their best to hide. Midday’s teeth chattered, not from cold—the air was still reasonably warm—but from the sensation of cold borne out of fear. Goosebumps felt like icy needles poking out of his skin as he listened to the gradual decrescendo of the tragedy unfolding in the plaza he had narrowly escaped less than a minute before.

The screams had mostly died off by then, and the only sounds he heard were the rain pelting him from above and his raft carving turbulently through the water. Despite the loud volume of the rain, Midday felt like an eerie silence had washed over the Neighborhood. He had no idea where the undead might be hiding, and the thought that there could be a zombie stalking his raft from below the waterline at that very moment kept him deathly afraid of making noise.

Midday noticed, upon feeling numbness make its way up his arms, that he had unconsciously started holding his breath. He forced himself to breathe but, as he did so, it dawned on him that Siempre Elvanera had hinted at the fog playing a role in the creating the undead and that, in breathing said fog, he might be putting himself at risk of becoming a zombie himself.

He almost wanted to laugh about it.

The game had been lost before it had begun. Weathermaker, the individual Siempre had claimed was responsible for the fog, was so impossibly far above him and everyone else in the Neighborhood that opposing them felt like a cruel joke. This was not a battle for survival. All this could be described as someone squashing bugs for fun.

If Weathermaker wanted to kill everyone in the Neighborhood, there was no reason to believe, based on what had been demonstrated thus far, that it would take more than ten seconds for them to do so. Survival depended not on the valiant efforts of those trapped within the walls of the Neighborhood but, instead, life and death were determined by the whims of a being whose power transcended Midday’s comprehension and, when he took all that into account, Midday couldn’t help but crack a sad chuckle at how arbitrary everything was.

“Oi.” A survivor on a raft of their own appeared out of the fog and came up beside him. “Do me a favor and try your best not to lose it.”

Midday looked up at the person and sighed.

They were wearing a Raincoat Ring. This was one of his fellow bodyguards. For some reason, Midday now found the thought that Mulberry had thought it would be possible for the bodyguards to protect anything at all humorous. It was a bad joke, sure, having been crafted unintentionally from naivety, but another subdued chuckle escaped his lips at the sight of this person.

“Do yourself a favor and get it together.” The person, a woman in her early twenties, put a palm to her temple and shook her head in disapproval. She was about as skinny as Midday, suggesting that she too was likely to be low level, but a composed demeanor—which manifested in everything from her steely blue eyes to her easygoing breaths—stood in direct contrast to the assumption that she was weak.

Midday, agreeing with the assessment that his current attitude would do more harm than good, let out a deep sigh and was subsequently more-or-less returned to his usual self.

“Who are you?”

“Honey Beeson. I’m level 7. You?”

“Midday Sunson. Level 5.”

“Got it.” Her lips curled into a bleak smile. “Looks like you and I will be the runts of the litter.”

“Hopefully.”

The water on which their boats floated which, having been significantly disturbed by the thousands of lightning strikes and the ongoing rainstorm, was very choppy and required both of them to lay on their stomachs to avoid capsizing. Even without the threat of the undead, it was hardly the ideal position to have a conversation, and the fact that Midday had to deal with the knowledge that Glauster had probably been electrocuted to death and might already be a zombie killed the conversation before it had any chance of getting off the ground.

Romulo was alive. He was sure of that much. There was nothing to worry about on that front. Gork was probably alive too, but Midday knew there was a high chance that the kindhearted doctor would get himself killed trying to help people. The fact that all Midday could do about that was let out a defeated sigh didn’t sit well with him. Now, more than ever, he longed for the kind of strength that would make it impossible for the world to toss him around as it so often did.

It was a morbid brand of curiosity that drove him to wonder about what level this Weathermaker individual was. Sixty? Seventy? Maybe eighty? He sighed. Attaching a number to something so far beyond his understanding seemed impossible. Even someone like Mulberry was beyond his ability to approximate—and she was probably several orders of magnitude weaker than the godlike entity known only as Weathermaker.

Another sigh. Thinking about those things was pointless. It would be better, he decided, to start seriously thinking about how he might go about leveling up if he truly wanted to be free from the indifferent shackles of fortune. Devil Peppercorn and the blackberries that usually accompanied it had already made his body more robust—and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future—but the fact of the matter was that a powerful level 5 was still only level 5 at the end of the day. He needed XP.

“Looks like there aren’t many zombies around here. Wonder where they all went.” Honey looked down into the water below them. “What are the chances that they’re lurking just a few feet beneath us, waiting for us to let our guards down?” Her face was like that of a kid telling a scary campfire story.

“Fairly high,” answered Midday. “So zip it. I don’t think either of us wants to run into one of them right now. Quieter is better, I think. The sun is getting low, so unless they gained some sort of night vision by becoming undead, they’ll probably be hunting mostly by sound. The rain is loud enough to hide most of our activities, but I’d prefer to save the conversation for when we meet with the rest of the group.”

“That was a lot of words for someone who just told me how important it is to be quiet.”

Midday felt his eyebrows tense up at this comment but said nothing in response. The two paddled their rafts beside each other for several minutes until finally making it to what they assumed was their rendezvous point. It was hard to know for sure, given that the only way one could navigate at this point was by looking at the chimneys and treetops that were still above the waterline, but the fact that other people were sitting there was evidence enough that they had arrived.

Six people, most of which floated alone on rafts that had been haphazardly tied together with rope, were sitting in a loose circle. Nobody seemed incredibly talkative but, upon seeing that two people wearing Raincoat Rings had arrived, one of the people spoke:

“Hello.” A familiar man greeted Midday and Honey with a somber voice. His raft was by far the largest and sturdiest of the boats in the circle, having been built from a robust mixture of wooden planks and logs. “Glad you two made it.” The man, who was sheltered under a slanted tarp held up by two walls of wood, held up an oil lantern whose warm orange light illuminated his face.

Midday at once realized that the person speaking to him was none other than Jenjo: the oh-so-cruel head guard of Neighborhood 8. He froze up in shock. Had the authorities caught wind of Mulberry’s plan? Was this the end? Unable to run because of the zombies that might be lurking underneath, he stared intensely at the forlorn-looking man.

Jenjo, perhaps having expected the fear in Midday’s eyes, shrugged. “Ah, no. I’m not the head guard anymore. Technically speaking, I was removed from the position a few days ago. For all intents and purposes, I’m just a slave now.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“For the same reason as you. Mulberry hired me to protect Solomon the Frog.” Jenjo made no attempt at hiding his frown. “But let’s continue this conversation after everyone else arrives. You’re not the first person to ask me these questions and you certainly won’t be the last. I’d rather not repeat myself too many times. For the time being, take a gun and shut up.”

Jenjo turned his attention to a gigantic duffel bag laying beside him and spent a few seconds rummaging through it before pulling out two weapons that Midday immediately recognized as the same kind of dueling pistol Jenjo always wore on his waist opposite to his cutlass—though the ones currently in his hands were obviously of far cheaper make.

He tossed one to Honey, which she easily caught, and then another to Midday, which he barely managed to catch by clapping his hands around the barrel.

“You’re giving us firearms?” Honey grinned at the weapon in her hands before pointing it at Jenjo. Nobody besides Midday flinched upon seeing what she was trying to do. “That’s risky, don’t you know? I’m sure you know how many people around here would love to see you dead.”

“Quite aware, yes.” Jenjo set his lantern down beside him and slouched a little more. “Go ahead and shoot. See what happens.”

Honey did precisely that and pulled the trigger only to find that nothing had happened.

Jenjo let out a disappointed sigh. “Good lord. Did you really think it would be loaded?”

Honey played it cool: “I was trying to say that I’m serious about hating you. I obviously knew that there wouldn’t be any bullets in there. Duh.”

“Oh, but there are bullets in there already. I was only kidding about it not being loaded.”

“But… But… Why didn’t anything come out?”

“Well, for one, the safety mechanism is still triggered. Disabling that would be a good place to start.”

“And… how would I do that?”

Jenjo sighed once again. “I’ll give you and all the other weaker members of the group a crash course in marksmanship later. Not yet though. How about you do us all a favor and shut up for a few minutes while you try to figure it out for yourself?”

Honey grumbled some sort of rude response but said nothing more. A short silence ensued.