It was sudden. A colorless light swept over the world of Oitania and with only this phenomenon as warning, technology began to break down in stages. Digital electronics were the first to go. Computers failed, many vehicles stopped working, and power systems worldwide suffered irreparable damage as fixtures exploded and wiring shorted out. As emergency and medical services ground to a halt, widespread fires consumed entire cities. For a few hours, some radios continued to work, informing those who still owned them of the scale of this unprecedented disaster. After a short while, even those radios stopped receiving signals, and for the first time in over a century, the sky no longer carried the voices of humanity to all corners of the world. In the outer reaches of that quiet sky, defunct satellites maintained their orbits, destined to a lonely eternity apart from the sphere below.

Men and women were disgraced to pillage through the remains of their civilization, salvaging what means of survival they could from the wreckage. Their fabricated, modern world had collapsed so suddenly that most didn’t realize the scale of the disaster until days later.

On the thirtieth of April, 780 Federation Era (FE), the Apocalypse began.

Three days later, the first monsters began to appear.

Albek Shokarov peered into the rear window of his neighbor’s house. There was a slight gap in the blinds that let him see inside, where the light of the midday sun illuminated enough of the interior for him to make out the scene. The Robinsons’ kitchen lay in a state of neglect. Pots and pans filled the sink while dirty plates were strewn about the countertop. The red-and-white checkerboard tablecloth on the kitchen table had a number of colorful stains decorating its surface. At the far end of the kitchen, the refrigerator stood, a beautiful testament to the worldly convenience of times past. A useless piece of junk, now.

He spent several minutes checking every corner of the room. He rapped on the wall a few times, narrowing his eyes for any sign of movement.

‘No signs of a break-in. I checked all the windows, doors, and walls. C’mon, Albek. It’ll be fine. The Robinsons are gone, and their house is probably loaded. They couldn’t have taken too much with them. It’ll be fine.’

Sucking in a tight breath, Albek positioned the crowbar against the seam of the window frame and started pushing. After a second’s effort, a crack rang out and a portion of the outer frame fell off. He paused and listened, but there was no movement from inside the house. Exhaling, he removed the rest of the frame and then moved on to the window itself, working at it with the crowbar until it finally popped free of its frame.

An atrocious odor greeted him. The vapors of rotting food and mold combined to form a foul miasma that reminded Albek of the garbage incineration plant he toured once during a field trip. After bringing his shirt up to cover his nose, he pulled aside the blinds and waited. No noise came from inside. He stowed the crowbar through a strap on his backpack and pulled out a baseball bat from a holster on his hip. The bat was heavier than regulation weight thanks to his father, who had boosted its reliability factor with three pounds of lead and a perforated leather handle for grip. It was one of his favorite things in the world, but unlike those other favorite things, this one was entirely illegal.

Placing a foot up on the ledge, he gripped the sides of the aperture and carefully maneuvered into the Robinsons’ kitchen. Once inside, he opened the blinds fully, flooding the room with light. He then went to every window in the room and repeated the process.

It had been over two weeks since he last saw Mr. Robinson. Though not on necessarily great terms with their family, Albek figured he would have at least noticed if they were going to try and move to a safer area. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t have. Trust was a rare commodity nowadays.

He hoped that the Robinsons had decided to pack up and flee without telling anyone. The alternative wasn’t good.

Albek opened one door of their pantry to take a look. At least two dozen cans of various foods were inside, prompting delight, followed immediately by a trickle of unease.

‘If they ran, would they have left all this food behind?’

A part of Albek, the part he called his animal brain, wanted to take the food and leave, but the overthinking part of him whispered that if something had happened to his neighbors, he had better find out what it was to prepare himself. Gritting his teeth, he began a slow sweep of the house, opening window blinds wherever he went. The layout of the first floor made a circle connecting the kitchen, dining room, foyer, hall, and living room. Once done checking over the kitchen, he took a counterclockwise route, planning to do a full circuit and end up back where he started. He could start looting when he was sure it was safe.

The carpeted floor that began right outside of the hard-floored kitchen gave him quiet steps. Though he’d been shedding the pounds during the last month or so, he was still overweight, and he’d never been very stealthy.

After entering the dining room, Albek noticed the first signs of violence. Several chairs were knocked over and dining utensils lay scattered everywhere.

‘Not a good sign. But from the state of the kitchen, they’ve been gone for at least a week. And remember: no signs of a break-in. Not a single cracked window. Doors are all locked. And besides, I opened the blinds. No monsters. It’ll be fine.’

His heart, pounding in his chest, didn’t appear convinced, but he took a few steadying breaths and carried on. Making sure not to disturb any of the upturned furniture, he tiptoed around the mess and made his way to the entry hall.

It was there that he saw the carnage: a pool of blood that had spread over half the room, dried and nearly black with age. The patterned rug in the center of the foyer had soaked most of it up, turning the material the color of death. Another wide streak of blood led up the flight of stairs. Something or someone had died here, by the front door, and was dragged upstairs. The scent of rotten food wafted by his nostrils again—but he doubted it came from the kitchen this time.

He may as well have swallowed a pound of ice. His stomach pulsated with freezing terror as he gazed up the stairs, imagining movement just beyond his line of sight. He immediately began to backpedal the way he came.

‘Shit, shit, shit, shit! Why do I keep poking my fucking nose into places it doesn’t belong?!’

He planned to return to the kitchen, throw a couple cans in his backpack, and leg it out of this place as fast as he could. That train of thought derailed as soon as he made it back to the other side of the dining room, however. By the kitchen table, in front of the window he had entered by, stood a monster.

It was a creature reminiscent of a mangy cat crossbred with a human. With matted gray fur and a small, wiry frame (that despite its slender appearance left Albek with no doubt that it possessed a great deal of strength), a thing that might as well have crawled out of a vat of nuclear waste blocked his exit.

Albek froze out of instinct. It hadn’t seen him­—couldn’t see him, probably. The thing seemed to be blinded by the sunlight that flooded in through the window. It was keeping itself low in the shadows provided by the table, sniffing around the floor where he had entered.

It probably heard Albek breaking in and came to investigate, taking a different route than he had. Thankfully, he hadn’t gone the other direction, or he’d have run straight into it.

Albek took a cautious step back, but there was no reaction from the preoccupied cat. Despite that, it was slowly moving in his direction. He took another step but felt something crumple under his foot. A metallic crunch made him nearly jump out of his skin. He’d trodden on some discarded silverware.

‘Oh fuck.’

With a snort, the creature jerked its head up to face Albek. Eyes closed tightly, its nose twitched, causing long whiskers to dart from side to side. Its mouth opened, giving Albek a view of a double row of razor-sharp incisors.

‘All the better for eating my face.’

Albek didn’t breathe. If he moved any more, the silverware would make more noise. But that wouldn’t matter shortly because the thing was again advancing in his direction. Without moving his lower body, Albek fumbled around his belt, looking for anything in reach he could use to distract it. His hand fell on something small, square, and made of hard plastic: a pink walkie-talkie he had clipped on. He stopped, hesitating.

‘Liyne will kill me if this thing doesn’t.’

But it was a choice between throwing that or his baseball bat, and the monster was getting closer by the second. He threw the radio, hitting the rear wall by the window. Before the toy even hit the floor, the monster whirled about with impossible agility and threw itself at the source of the noise. The sudden speed it exhibited nearly made Albek scream, but he bit his tongue and turned, booking it at full speed for the front door, leaping over two fallen chairs at once in an uncharacteristic show of agility. There came a screech from behind him that sounded unlike anything else he’d ever heard before: animalistic, yet unsettlingly human. The creature realized it had been duped, but Albek was already in the entrance hall.

Albek ignored the pool of blood and slammed into the front door, undoing the double-locks as fast as he could. He heard a crash as the monster barreled into the dining room table behind him. He flung open the door and bolted out—only to collide headfirst into the screen door just beyond, flinging him on his rear.

Momentarily disoriented, he staggered up, glancing behind him to see the monster atop the table on all fours, readying to pounce. An incomprehensible sound rose up from Albek’s throat as he got up and rammed into the thin wooden frame with his shoulder, bashing the screen door open even as the monster leapt. Albek felt a burning sensation on his back as he sprinted for freedom.

He cleared the steps down to the front yard in a single leap and continued across the lawn, arms pumping. He nearly dropped the baseball bat for a burst of speed, but fought off that impulse in favor of keeping his weapon. He chanced a look back, hoping that the thing would decide against chancing daylight.

He should have known better.

With a grunt, Albek jumped to the side in time to avoid the creature colliding into him at full tilt. Still, it clipped him, sending him sprawling. The creature itself tumbled and rolled along the overgrown lawn, leaving earthy furrows in its wake as it clawed the ground to arrest its momentum.

It was too fast. Faster than anything had a right to be.

Hissing, the creature swept a paw at its face, trying to cover its eyes. Wisps of smoke curled up from its fur, but the creature wasn’t quite combusting into a fireball, as Albek had hoped it might.

Sunlight was humanity’s greatest defense against monsters, but it was apparently more of an annoyance for this creature. Through the pain, the creature was stubbornly sniffing him out.

This time, Albek didn’t try to run. He’d learned his lesson. It would catch him in seconds if he tried. It tracked by sound more effectively than by smell. He put forth all his effort to slow and deepen his breathing, worried his panting would give him away.

He watched as the monster struggled. It seemed so weak now, hunched over in the light of the sun, fur smoldering.

Maybe if he had stayed silent and still, the thing would have retreated inside, but he had no guarantee of that. Besides, upon seeing the monster in this state, Albek felt a coldness creep up his neck: wriggling its way into his mind with icy fingers. He began to realize how close his story had just come to ending.

‘This fucker tried to kill me.’

It was blind and in pain, but even now it was approaching him. He observed its thin, starved frame. A solid breeze might push it over.

Something nearing disdain arose in Albek.

‘I’ve beaten zombies twice your size before, you asshole. Let’s see what you’ve got.’

Albek’s hand tightened around the bat. Blood pulsed in his ears. Taking a step forward, he swung the bat up and over with all the force he could bring to bear, smashing the thing’s head, only to learn just why it was that everyone avoided all the other monsters.

Albek wasn’t a shrimp. Though he never had the patience for working out before the Apocalypse, his frame afforded him a good deal of leverage and weight that he could put behind his swings, a solid advantage against this creature that was under five feet tall and seventy pounds sopping wet.

Maybe it had a thick skull, or maybe it heard the air moving and shifted so that the blow glanced off its head, but this was still a strike from a lead-filled bat. Either way, when the swing connected and the creature remained standing, Albek was understandably concerned.

The monster hissed in pain, whipping around, sunlight forgotten, and lunged at Albek for the third time; but this time he wasn’t able to avoid it. He barely had time to lift the bat between them before it was upon him. His last sight was of the world turning upside down.

As he passed out, he remembered the pink walkie-talkie he’d thrown, and had a strange thought.

‘I hope it didn’t break.’

- - -

He came to with an unfamiliar weight on his chest. His head was dizzy, his body numb, but otherwise, he felt unhurt. Then, he glanced down and let out a whimper.

The horrifying creature was crouched on top of him, gnawing on something meaty.

‘What’s that?’

Reflexively, he tried to move, to shove the creature off, but his all that happened was that his left arm lifted an inch into the air and fell back with a thud. With effort, he turned his head to the right.

His arm was missing from the shoulder down. He glanced back up.

“That’s mine…” he croaked out, still not quite believing it.

The ears of the monster flickered when it heard him, but it went back to chewing.

Albek’s mouth pooled with liquid, and he choked, spitting it out.

“…give it back…”

It was hard to stay awake. The image of the cat blurred, doubling, tripling, and coming into sharp focus for a second, only to repeat the dizzying process again.

Ignoring his words, the creature stood and fumbled around with its clawed hand until it found his other arm. Albek’s severed appendage still in its mouth, it began dragging him back to the house. The smoke was starting to come off its fur in greater amounts now, and the creature looked much like a pile of hot embers when it’s just started to rain.

The sunlight was working, but too slowly.

His head was elevated as he was being dragged along, and Albek was finally given a view of his body. His shirt clung to him, soaking wet. It would have been uncomfortable if it wasn’t so warm. And—was it red before? Trailing alongside his legs were several masses of rope.

Albek’s head swam. Did it use the rope to tie him up? He couldn’t see why.

‘Rope. Rope… that’s not how you tie... It’s not doing any good. Haha. Dumb cat doesn’t even know how to tie… rope...’

The thought was oddly hilarious. Why bother using rope to take a prisoner if you’re just going to drape it around them? He let out a little giggle, then another, but the third turned into a terrified sob. It wasn’t rope, but his intestines which had spilled out on the ground and were getting dragged along behind him.

The pain began to come. Slowly, at first, little ripples of agony that built on one-another.

‘I’m dying. I’m going to die and be eaten.’

They became waves. Pounding, torturous crests followed by short troughs.

“Help…”

He was being dragged under, into the waiting mouths of sharks. He began to see lights. Hear sounds that weren’t there. A cool hand, a distant memory, stroked sweat-slicked hair away from his forehead.

“Save me.”

His voice was garbled, distant. Coming from another universe. Were those stars he saw?

“I don’t want to die.”

The distance lengthened. He was eternity.

‘Liyne.’

“She… needs...”

Time stopped. With it, so did the pain.

The first thing Albek noticed were the branches and clouds far over his head, fixed in place despite the breeze he’d felt earlier. He thought he even saw a leaf suspended in mid-air above him. Then, he noticed the catlike tail of the monster which had been whipping back and forth above him. It was now nearly motionless, crawling through the air at a snail’s pace. Time hadn’t slowed, but stopped. His own mind sped up in tandem, and he became aware of his body and surroundings to a degree he couldn’t have before, like somebody had turned up the contrast. Seeing his body portrayed in a colorful canvas of reds, blues, and purples only made him despair further.

Then the corners of his vision darkened, and a Voice that was not his own resonated around him, filling all the corners of the frozen world with its words.

It was genderless, somehow sounding slimy and solid at once. It was the Voice of a degenerate and a bureaucrat, a merchant and a queen, it was thousands of tongues and none at all, and it was completely and undeniably inhuman.

You desire salvation, then? I can grant this. What will you give in return?

The Voice spoke slowly, measuring each syllable. It evoked a sense of extreme discomfort, but he might as well have been dying of thirst and just been presented with an elixir.

The cat had him at the doorstep to the house, where the pool of rotten blood lay in the foyer. He thought of how the monster would drag him up the stairs, where he would become just another bloodstain for someone to puzzle out. He thought of his father, waiting at home for his son. He thought of his sister, clutching a pink radio whose pair would never return.

Then, a sense of urgency. This wouldn’t last. He was slipping, his life ebbing away every moment he spent suspended in this place. The Voice waited for his response. The gates of nothingness opened their maw wide, and he knew that if he passed through them, he’d never leave those dark halls.

Albek didn’t consider his next thought deeply.

And he made a promise that he would regret forever.

‘Anything, I’ll give anything you want, just save me!’

The Voice did not respond for a time, but as his plea echoed out, projected from Albek’s own thoughts, they did so with an air of finality. A dread swept over him even greater than that given him by the monstrous specter of death. Desperate for water one second, by the next it was like he’d taken a dip into a frozen lake, so sudden was his return to clarity.

Instead of giving a response in words, the foreign presence in his mind emanated a sense of satisfaction that Albek could somehow feel through their connection. The positive emotion was at odds with his own fear, eliciting within him a strange dissonance.

His vision darkened further as the last echoes of the Voice resounded.

When you are complete, I shall collect on this bargain. Live until that time comes, son of Void. Towards that end, I grant you my aegis.

- - -

Albek came to his senses staring at the sky.

He didn’t hurt anywhere. For a moment, he wondered why he should.

‘It’s beautiful.’

And it was. Sunlight filtered down through the leafy boughs of the tall trees which swayed in the wind. The sky beyond was a clear blue, and several puffy white clouds strolled lazily by. In the distance he heard birds and insects, and for a time he felt a numb sort of happiness.

Then he remembered what happened and, sitting up with a start, his hand flew to his right shoulder, only to find his arm attached and whole.

With wide eyes, he gazed down at it, wiggling his fingers, amazed when they responded to his every command.

‘Was it a dream?’

He clutched at his stomach, feeling under his shirt for damage. He was fine.

Albek was sitting on the front lawn of the Robinsons’ property. It was still midday, so he couldn’t have been passed out for long. With a single glance at his clothes, he knew he hadn’t imagined earlier. They were covered in blood. His shirt was ripped and dyed in red, as were his jeans. His backpack lay nearby, relatively untouched.

Glancing around, he bore witness to a shocking sight.

The monster was sprawled out at the foot of the porch steps. With a surge of panic, Albek jumped to his feet and hopped back several steps, but he stopped when he noticed something odd. The creature’s arms and legs were splayed out spread-eagle, and its face was twisted in a silent roar of agony. Furthermore, it wasn’t moving.

Albek gulped. Cautiously, he approached it. Closer, then, but not too close, he saw that it looked different. Before, its fur was gray, and its muscles were lean but powerful. Now it looked almost white, and it was shriveled: dry and withered. Those muscles were gone, its skin shrunken to the bone like it had been vacuum-sealed.

Furthermore, there was a strange pattern on its body which Albek didn’t remember seeing earlier. Hundreds of tiny lines that fanned out along its flesh. They were dark in color, spreading and branching out across the skin and fur of the monster. They might have been veins—if veins had sharp ridges and looked like a path burned by an electric current. They stood out in stark relief against the desiccated flesh, and all seemed to converge in one place: the creatures’ paw.

Whatever the mysterious pattern meant, and whether it was the cause of the thing’s death, Albek didn’t stick around to find out.

‘If it’s dead, fine. If not, I’m not about to wake it up. Let sleeping dragons lie.’

He took a wide circle around the creature to get back to the front door. He went back inside, closing and locking the door behind him. He paused at the trail of blood, but after a moment, he shuddered, continuing to the kitchen. He didn’t want to think about what he’d find upstairs.

He began stuffing his backpack full of canned goods. When those ran out, which they quickly did, he looked for other things: jars of preserves, peanut butter, breakfast bars, honey, sugar, flour, oil, and condiments. There were always condiments.

‘At least we’ll never starve… but is a life eating only salad dressing truly worth living?’

Then, he appropriated things like candles and matches. He began going through other rooms downstairs. The entire time, Albek was on edge, listening and glancing around him for movement. His bat never strayed far from his hand.

‘Toilet paper. Always need toilet paper.’

When space ran out in his backpack, he unfolded a cotton bag he carried in his pocket and used it instead. There wasn’t much left to take by then, and by the time this second bag was half full—mostly of paper products—he decided it was time to leave. Filling up the rest of the space with towels, he made his way out.

On the way, he took one last circuit of the house, avoiding the bloody stairwell, and soon found himself cycling through the events of the past half hour.

‘That Voice did something. Somehow it either rewound time, or it killed the monster and healed me. Maybe...maybe I really did dream it—’

As he had this thought, he knew it to be untrue. The memories were too vivid for a dream, and his ruined clothes spoke for themselves.

‘But what does the Voice want with me? And what did it mean about me being ‘complete?’ Worst of all, why did I say I’d give it anything it wanted? I could have tried offering it… I don’t know, some soup? Maybe it would have gone for soup.’

The uneasy feeling he experienced during that conversation was like an itch at the back of his mind. For a moment after he exchanged his promise with the Voice—for just a moment—it was as if all of the hatred and evil in the world had been centered into a razor-thin beam and focused on him. He had been an ant under a microscope; a lazy wave of the hand could have turned him to ash. The Voice wasn’t doing this out of kindness, that much he knew with absolute certainty. There was no goodness there.

Though he berated himself, Albek knew why he had done it. He thought he was going to die and just wasn’t resigned to that fact. The feeling of encroaching nothingness, of nearing death, was so terrifyingly immense and final that he would have made a hundred such promises.

‘I should just be happy to be alive.’

Swinging the bag over his shoulder, he headed back to the window, looking down at the sight of a walkie-talkie on the floor. After throwing it at the wall and having a cat-monster sent after it, it wasn’t even scratched.

‘They sure built them durable, huh?’

He felt along the edges of the plastic radio, a smile playing at the corners of his lips.

‘Who would have thought this thing would actually save my life?’

He lowered the bags out of the window, then climbed out himself, dropping to the ground with a grunt. He stopped himself before heading home to strip off his bloody garments and, from a compartment in his backpack, pulled out a change of clothes that he had stuffed behind his first-aid kit and emergency rations.

He could have changed inside, but his nerves wouldn’t settle as long as he was in that house. He changed in peace outside, not worried about voyeurs. After the Apocalypse, there were few anybodies.

After changing, he left the ruined clothes in a heap on the ground. They were too torn up to salvage, and he wasn’t suffering from a shortage of spare apparel.

Albek worked his way to the front of the house, glancing as he passed (at a safe distance) the comatose figure of his vicious assailant, but it hadn’t moved. He’d have to check again tomorrow, and if it was still there, he’d finally believe it was dead.

Once he’d reached the road, the load on his chest lightened up considerably. He allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief, though he kept his eyes peeled for any movement along the tree line or the neighbor’s houses.

Before heading home, he stopped at the Robinsons’ mailbox. Lifting the little red flag on its side, he pulled, snapping it off. Then, with another glance in the direction of the most-likely-dead monster, now concealed in the grass, he opened the mailbox, deposited the flag inside, and closed it up again. For anyone who bothered to target this house for possible loot, the lack of the flag would indicate that it had already been checked by someone, and the flag’s presence inside the mailbox would indicate that he thought there could be danger inside. This was the code that the community of North Hill had decided on during their second post-Apocalypse meeting.

That meeting was two weeks ago, but it felt like a year.

One month. It had been a single month since the Apocalypse, yet most of the people in this isolated mountain community had either died or run away. With the Robinsons gone, the numbers dropped lower. Not one out of ten houses were occupied. That was good for those who survived by looting houses, like Albek and his family, but once they ran out of food to scavenge, well…

‘I can only hope the government or someone else has figured it out by that point.’

Sinaq was the closest city. It was sizeable enough for the region, with well over 100,000 people inhabiting the various suburbs that sprawled out for miles around. Technically, North Hill, Albek’s neighborhood, was classified as a satellite of Sinaq, though it was over twenty miles away and nearly a half-mile straight up Tolstead Mountain. Not exactly easy to reach on foot, even with a paved road.

After the Apocalypse, some of the people who departed North Hill to make the trek down the mountain promised to return with help or with news of the outside world. Despite some of them taking bicycles, no one ever made it back. No one knew why.

Albek wasn’t sure why they bothered. Everyone saw the huge plumes of smoke from Sinaq the day of the Apocalypse. Little help would be coming from that direction.

Within a few minutes, Albek had rounded the corner to his home. Nestled away behind a row of leafy bushes and trees, the one-story brick house with ivy growing up its walls had never looked so inviting as it did now. He crunched up the gravel road and approached the front door. He knocked, three slow taps and two quick ones right after.

A dog started barking from inside. After a couple seconds, he heard a muffled voice from inside.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Dad. Open up!”

‘Why make me learn that stupid knock if he’s gonna ask anyway?’

He heard the sound of locks being undone, and the door swung open. A man in a wheelchair greeted him. In his late 50s, his dark hair had flecks of white and, though it had been styled in a military fashion until recently, it was now slicked back, revealing a receding hairline. He sported a clean shave—the one luxury the man afforded himself—and though his green eyes surveyed Albek sharply, hints of weariness could be increasingly seen in the wrinkles on his forehead. One of his hands held the collar of a puppy while the other held a pistol—not pointed at his son, but near enough so that the implication was clear.

Albek was surprised how glad he was to see his face, despite only being gone an hour or two.

“Password?”

Hemash Shokarov spoke with a heavy Kalkian accent. To those of the Federation, it was an accent that belonged to criminals, religious fanatics, and warlords. An identifying mark, separating the known from the other. To Albek, it was family.

‘And why ask for the password after the door is already open?’

The password of choice for today was his mother’s name.

“Umeith.”

His father holstered the weapon and quirked his lips into an almost-smile.

“You are wearing different clothes now, I thought you might be a face-snatcher.”

Albek gave a nervous laugh, unsure if he was joking or not.

Hemash said, “Well, never mind, hurry inside. And lock the door behind you, yes?”

The man let go of the puppy and started wheeling himself away.

Albek did as he was asked, closing and locking the door behind him before the animal that was attacking his shoelaces got it in her mind to make a break for it. He trudged to the kitchen, where he lay down his bags of goods and collapsed into a chair. He picked up the dog who’d chased his shoes there and held her at face level.

“Hello Dune,” he said.

The mutt tried to lick him. She had a sandy brown coat covered in black specks, and at over three months old, she was already twice the size of a cat.

‘Small enough to sit in my lap. For a little longer, at least.’

The puppy’s snout followed his hand as he scratched her behind the ears.

He whispered, “You could have gone up against that monster, right? Bet you’d have scared it right off!”

Dune snorted into his hand then glanced up at him, clearly doubting the veracity of that statement.

His father called out, “Liyne, come out! Your brother is home!”

A nine-year-old girl emerged from another room down the hall. She had black hair and olive skin, the same as Albek. She didn’t share his blue eyes, however, but instead had Hemash’s piercing green gaze.

She approached solemnly, stopping next to Albek to squint up at him.

Hemash spoke, “She was worried about you. She had a feeling that something happened.”

Albek looked down at her. Her lips had tightened into a frown, now. How did she always seem to know when he was getting into trouble? He reached down to his belt and unhooked the walkie-talkie. Since it stopped working a month ago, he had to mimic the noises a radio would make.

“Tchh. Why the long face, Sarge? Over.”

Liyne reached out and poked him in the stomach, hopping back out of his reach when he took a swipe at her.

He growled, “You’re lucky this dog’s in my lap!”

Liyne pulled her own radio out from a glittery purse, speaking into it.

“You can’t use Private Dune as an excuse! I’m faster, admit it.”

“I’ll admit it when you outrank me, Sarge.”

Liyne stuck out a tongue at him. He only raised his nose, demonstrating that he was beyond such petty insults.

“Go, minion. Do as I say, and bring out the lunch supplies!” he ordered.

Liyne ran off, and the two men began to sort through the items he brought back, setting aside the food based on type. Expiration dates mattered little to them: everything that was going to go bad had been eaten already, and anything else would be gone long before it passed the date on the label.

Dune, now ignored, hopped off his lap and curled up at his feet.

Hemash glanced down and grunted, “The dog is not begging today. Have you been teaching her manners?”

“No. Maybe she just picks these things up fast. I think she’s a smart one,” he replied.

Dune’s nose twitched.

Liyne returned with paper plates and plastic utensils. Once everything had been sorted and Hemash decided on lunch, the family of three dug in silently. The meal consisted of peanut butter spread on crackers, with some raisins sprinkled on top and canned peaches on the side. They ate without complaint.

Albek’s mind slowly worked as he chewed. He wanted to share what happened to him with his father, but he didn’t want him or his sister to know how much danger he had truly faced. Still, they needed warning if there were other things as dangerous as that cat-monster around. It took a direct hit from his bat and barely flinched, and it more than likely could have torn down the barricades they had erected at the windows and doors with ease. As he was wrestling with this problem internally, Hemash spoke up.

“We are nearly out of crackers. In another day or so.”

Albek nodded, letting another moment of silence pass while he ate.

“Well, let’s run down the checklist,” Albek finally said. “We have enough canned and boxed stuff for at least three more weeks. Adding the flour and rice, we’ll be good for longer. With the chickens laying, there’s protein. We could even eat them in an emergency, and I can always go foraging further out if I need to, which I plan to do again soon. There’s only so much longer we’ll be able to eat stuff we don’t make ourselves. Honestly, I gave up on good food a week ago.”

His father grunted, “You don’t like my pita?”

Albek gave him a sideways glance.

“Dad, no offense, but you’re only good at making one food. And pita ain’t it.”

“See if I make you my bekish again.”

“If you manage to get your hands on a whole pig I’ll eat those charred rocks you call bread for a week in return.”

“Hah. Just wait. This gun is not for show, you know.”

There was a lull in the conversation as Albek thought back on all his favorite foods, his mouth watering. He stuffed a dry cracker into it. He couldn’t imagine what he’d eat a month from now when what they had on hand ran out.

“If you plan on going out further, you should take my gun,” Hemash said, returning to their earlier topic.

Albek hesitated, but ended up shaking his head, “No. You need it to protect the both of you. Besides, you taught me the basics, but I’ve never even fired it. This bat’s gotten me out of plenty of trouble already.”

He patted the weapon that was propped against his chair, painfully aware as he did so of how useless it had been against the monster not two hours ago.

“I do not like it. Remember what happened on Manson street? You barely got out alive.”

“Yeah, but I’m much more careful now because of it...” he grimaced, knowing he couldn’t run away from this conversation forever, “…though, something similar happened again, actually.”

“What? A monster attacked you? Was it a zombie?”

‘I wish.’

“Not a zombie. Over at the Robinsons… I’m pretty sure they were killed by something. And that something was still there when I broke in.”

Liyne paused, fingers halfway into a box of raisins.

His father’s brows furrowed. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine. I think.”

“What happened?”

Albek shuddered. “Well, I’m pretty sure it’s dead now. It—it was like a cat. But also a person. It stood on two legs. But nothing about it other than that was human.”

“You killed it?”

Albek smacked his lips, searching for the words to explain.

And then the universe, with no apparent vested interest in this conversation, decided to reboot.

EMBRYO INSTALLATION IN PROGRESS

LOADING

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LIBERATING BRIDGE CONNECTION

. . . 34% . . .

CALCULATING WORLD COORDINATES

. . . 65% . . .

ESTABLISHING SERVER DIMENSION

. . . 100% . . .

STANDBY FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF PLANAR INTERFACE

SUPERIMPOSITION BEGINS IN 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .