The radio was still playing music as Ben carried a tray with four mugs of tea through to the den.

The others were sitting by candlelight, with Monroe in an armchair, and Hayden and Dawn sharing the couch.

Dawn had found a blanket and had it wrapped around her shoulders. Hayden had kicked off her shoes and socks.

Someone had lit the room's fireplace, and heat and the smell of woodsmoke was starting to suffuse the air.

It was weird to see them spread out and relaxed like that, after the panic and near-constant running of the day. If it weren't for the bloodied bandages and glowing weaponry, he might be looking at an extended family relaxing after Christmas dinner.

"There was no hot chocolate, but I got tea," Ben said, setting the tray down on the coffee table.

Monroe got up and grabbed a mug, dropping sugar lumps into it from the bowl Ben had set out.

Hayden got one too, pausing on her way back to drag a side table in front of the door back to the hall. It wasn't secure, but it'd at least make a noise if someone tried to open the door from the other side, and it made them feel better.

The whole house had been secured in that way. Hayden and Dawn hadn't boarded windows up, but they'd checked that they were all shut and locked, that there was no one hiding in cupboards or under beds elsewhere in the house. The doors were all locked tight. They'd slid the little bolt that some paranoid previous owner had installed on the loft hatch shut, and made sure the bar that secured the basement's external door was in place.

The house was as safe as they could make it, which wasn't very safe, but the exercise had given them all an illusion of safety they were all clinging to.

Ben grabbed himself some tea and sat in a free armchair by the fire. The cups were little china cup-and-saucer things, the first ones he'd found when he was going through the cupboards.

On the radio, the song ended with a voice cutting in over the tail end.

"That was Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers," the same relaxed voice from before said. "We're coming up on eight thirty here in Saint John. If you've just joined us, you're listening to Radio Chiptune Armageddon, 1423 AM, coming out live to all you ghosts and huddlers out there. I'm here with Paisley West, former head of animal control in the Saint John city government. Paisley, you want to say hi to all our huddlers?"

"Hi huddlers."

Paisley sounded like a woman in her twenties, speaking clearly with a faint Canadian accent.

"Paisley, it's a pleasure to have you on tonight. Thanks for taking the time. I can guess there's other things you'd rather be doing."

"Well, I did have movie tickets for tonight, but I'm pretty sure that's cancelled."

"Safe bet. What was the movie?"

"Uhh. It's B-movie night at the Rockwood drive-in. I think it was meant to be The Thing."

"That's the one where the alien invades the Arctic?"

"That's right."

"Well, at lease we don't have any The Things around."

"That's something."

"Now, Paisley, you ran the Saint John animal control department, is that right?"

"Yeah. I've wrangled more bears than you can shake a stick at.

"Is that background helping you any, now? Have you wrangled any aliens?"

Paisley was silent for a long few seconds, and when she spoke her voice cracked with emotion. "Yeahhh?"

"Do you mind talking to us about that?"

She audibly swallowed. "Sure. Well, you know those starfish?"

"The ones that are about as big as a truck?"

"Yeah. Well, one of them cornered me in a parking lot." There was no interruption from the host, even when Paisley broke off and gave the mic about twenty seconds of dead air before continuing. "They're blind, they can't see, they can only follow vibration, but if you're stuck outdoors they can keep up with you no problem. You take a step, and they take one, and theirs are bigger, and eventually you're frozen, with the thing inches away. They smell super bad, so you want to throw up, but you don't want the puke to hit the ground, because then it'll know you're there."

"That sounds impossible," the host finally commented. "How do you get out of a situation like that?"

"Well, I didn't have any weapons, but I had a pocket full of loose change. After I'd been cornered for about twenty minutes, I took out a handful of change and started tossing it. Every time I tossed one, the thing followed where it landed. I managed to get it to a gas station. They were having a sale on jerrycans, and they had a bunch set out, all lined up on the yard. So, I got myself set up next to it, and started filling cans. Fill a can, toss it to the sidewalk, and the starfish would eat it. I don't know if it's food for them, or if they're just dumb, but it ate all ten cans. When those were gone, I sprayed it with the pump, lit a fire on the ground, and beat my getaway sticks."

"And it burned to death?"

"It exploded," Paisley said, then hiccuped. She took a minute, maybe taking a drink from a glass. "I guess the fumes in its belly caught and the whole thing blew up. Its legs popped off and everything."

"That's amazing. I bet you felt like rambo."

"I didn't feel like rambo. I cried for two hours straight, afterwards." Paisley gave another long silence. "I think I had to let part of myself die out there, the part that was afraid, to become the person who could survive it. Do you understand? Does that make sense?"

"Paisley—" the host said, his calm affected voice dropping into real emotion for the first time.

Paisley interrupted him. "Actually, could you not call me that any more?"

"Sorry, sure thing, what should I call you?"

"I don't know. Actually, can you call me Paige? Middle name."

"Sure thing, Paige. Paisley, Paige. Your parents were really big on the P-names?"

"Parents?" Paige said, quietly, almost to herself. "Where are my parents. Where the fuck are my parents."

"Huddlers, let's have some more music. This is Coalescence, by Chris Christodolou."

Electric tones started playing from the speaker. Ben had trouble hearing the music in it.

Monroe jumped up, hand pressed to his side, and made for the downstairs bathroom, through a door on the other side of the den that led to a little utility room. He had to move a dining chair wedged against the handle, and left the door ajar after he passed through.

Dawn had picked up a People magazine from a pile on a shelf of the TV cabinet and was flipping through it.

After a minute she dropped the magazine in her lap and said, "I don't get why someone's doing this."

"What's that?" Ben asked.

"Running a radio show. Like nothing's happening. Like they think it's important."

"It's kind of nice to hear a human voice," Hayden said.

"It could be like a public service thing?" Ben suggested. "I didn't know that thing about the starfishes following vibration."

"But that came out by accident," Dawn said, still perplexed.

After a while of not getting an answer, she lifted the magazine back up and started leafing through it again.

"Hey Dawn, can I ask you a question?" Ben asked.

"Mmhm?"

"Why were you bringing a gun to the office?"

Her eyes appeared above the top of the magazine, staring at Ben with a dull expression.

"Ben!" Monroe's voice called out from the bathroom, two doors away. "Hey Ben."

Ben's gaze lingered on Dawn for a second, before he got up and went to the door.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Can you come in here a minute?"

Ben glanced back into the room, the others were studiously not looking his way.

He stepped out of the den and went to the bathroom door.

"In there?"

The bathroom door rattled as the lock was undone from the other side, and the door popped open a crack.

Ben hesitated at the threshhold. For a second he had the thought that it was a trap, that Monroe had been Eve'd and was waiting to rip his throat out or something. He banished the notion and pushed the door open.

Monroe was standing by the bathroom mirror, his shirt off, his body turned so that his side was reflected.

Even from the door, Ben could see the injuries Monroe had got from the teardrops back at the shelter, deep depressions in his skin.

"Am I going to die?" he asked.

Ben approached, looking down at the injuries. He didn't want to get a closer look.

They weren't bleeding. They weren't discoloured. The one facing Ben was a deep cave pushed into the skin below the ribs, big enough to fit a banana in. The skin had been deformed like a bedsheet sucked into a vaccum cleaner tube, but it wasn't broken.

"Does it hurt?" Ben asked.

Monroe shook his head.

"You don't feel pressure or anything?" The opening looked like it had to be displacing the space his kidney was meant to be.

"It feels normal."

Ben had an involuntary flashback to the little office at the start of all this. He saw Alan's head being squashed and deformed without breaking, without killing him, without even knocking him out.

He ran his fingers over his eyes, before focusing back on Monroe.

"I don't think you're going to die. I don't even think it's hurting you. These things, I think they reshape you without breaking anything."

Monroe let out a long breath. He looked back down at the injury, then grabbed a stranger's toothbrush from the stand and poked the handle into the depression.

"Okay," Ben said, holding his hands up and turning around.

"Do you think it'll heal on its own?" Monroe asked. "Like, will it pop back out?"

"Sure," Ben said, not wanting to extend the conversation.

He felt Monroe hug him from behind, then slap his shoulder as he passed to the door. "Thanks, man."

"Yeah, no. No problem," Ben said.

Monroe slid past and left the bathroom, letting the door close behind him.

Ben's gaze fell on the mirror. He looked at the spot on his chest, a slight bulge where a toilet roll tube was taped under his shirt.

He had his own alien wounds.

He stepped to the sink and unbuttoned his shirt, hesitating for a second, before starting to peel the patch away.

The corner came away, the tape taking hairs with it. It was halfway off and he still couldn't see anything on the skin below it. Was the parasite gone? Had he killed it?

He tore the rest of the patch off in one go and didn't even wince.

The skin under the patch was clean and clear. Unblemished. Unscarred. No alien parasite.

He worked his way out of his shirt and turned to check the rest of his body.

No.

There it was. Still there, still attached, just relocated to a spot below his ribs.

Its eye was open, glaring up at him. Its mouth was a tight line below the eye, firmly shut.

"How'd you get down there?" Ben asked, flatly.

The thing's mouth opened and it began open-mouth hissing, a low noise that sounded like it came from the back of a throat.

"How am I meant to get rid of you?"

Ben stared at it for a few seconds, making eye contact with the eye, then brought the patch down to stick over its new location.

The hissing got louder as he brought the patch down, then when it was an inch away, the thing moved.

The fleshy tumour slid across Ben's skin, flowing away from the patch like a rat swimming through pink paint. It was like Ben's flesh was a liquid to it, an oily liquid, parting and flowing around it as it migrated to his stomach.

His naval moved aside to accommodate it as it settled down.

Ben was reminded of the dents on Monroe's body. Changes to the flesh that were more topological than biological.

Fuck, Ben thought.

"You can just go anywhere, huh?"

It was pointless trying to cover it. He didn't have a way to hide it if the thing didn't want to stay hidden.

What if it spread to somewhere it was visible? What if it slid up onto his face?

Of the others, only Dawn knew about it. If they got sight of it before they knew about it, things could go badly. It was too easy for Ben to imagine Hayden whipping out a hairspray flamethrower first and asking questions later.

Maybe he should tell the others, before it had a chance to come up on its own.

He thought about it for a minute, before rejecting the idea. Dawn knew. If it came to it, she'd speak for him, help him convince the others not to do something impulsive like stabbing him.

"Are you going to stay put?" he asked the thing.

It just stared at him. Ben started buttoning up his shirt. It never broke eye contact until it was obscured by white fabric.

By the time Ben got back into the den, the song had ended and the voice was back.

"Hey there huddlers. Next up we've got another interview for you, and this one might get a little spooky." The DJ hit something on a sound board and a clip of howling wolves played.

Ben wedged the dining chair back against the door and went to his seat. The voice on the radio continued.

"I'm here with the alien entity possessing the restrained body of former police chief Paul Daniels. Alien. Is that accurate?"

The voice that trickled out of the radio next set goospimples running up Ben's arms and the back of his neck.

"You have no hope for survival. Your future is a stew of pain and fear, ending in cold pointlessness." The voice was wet and croaking. Emotionless, except for a kind of robotic malice. "Take your own lives now. Slice your flesh. Slice the flesh of those you love. The greater the love, the deeper the cut. Death is the most merciful gift you have left to give."

"Jeeze Paul, are you sure youre not a Canadian social worker?"

There were a few seconds of dead air. Ben remembered his bracer suddenly and pressed the button, craning his neck to look around and scan in every direction. He didn't see anything but the others sitting around the lounge.

On the radio, the presenter was changing tack.

"So, Paul, How are you finding Earth so far?"

"It is weak. It is ripe for the flensing. The scattered few who remain will end their lives screaming beneath my unkind hands."

"So, I guess that means you're just here to torture people to death?"

"To death, for those who are lucky. Many of you will not be lucky."

"And what's the point of doing that?"

"It delights me."

"Thanks, Paul. You know, I had a dentist like that a few years back. Doc Anders, if you're out there, your people have arrived."

There was less than a beat of silence before the dead, croaking voice of Paul went off, gradually building in monotone intensity.

"We have only just begun to arrive. As the dead grow in number, our vessels will proliferate. Soon there will be more of us than there are of you. We walk among you, unknown, undetected. No stranger's face will be safe to trust, and those who die quietly in the night will become our jagged blades come morning. Infants will disembowel mothers. Parents will devour their young."

"Uhuh uhuh. You heard it here first, folks. We're on Evil Dead rules from here on out. And you all thought it'd never happen."

"What."

Ben looked around at the others. Dawn looked ashen. Hayden was covering her mouth.

"Do we think that's the same kind of thing that Eve was?" he asked.

Dawn leaned forward, her head in her hands. "Sounds like, maybe?"

"Well huddlers, I don't think we're going to get much more out of Paul, but our producer Rachel's been working on something for the last few minutes, and it looks like we've got a new segment up for you later. A little gameshow kind of thing for our guests here tonight, so stay tuned for that. First, here's Pink Floyd with Wish You Were Here, for all the people we really wish were here with us right now."

Ben settled back into his chair as the music started. He was stuck thinking about Alien Paul. The dead were their vessels? So they were a kind of alien parasite. He couldn't help but wonder how closely related to his parasite. At least the thing on his skin hadn't started spewing evil monologues.

Remembering to scan, Ben pushed the bean on his bracer and looked around. He saw something.

A little way off, a dime-sized figure was moving quickly towards the house. It was outlined in human-white, pictured sitting down. The way it was positioned made it look like they were floating along on a flying chair, but Ben guessed they were driving a car.

Hayden must have noticed something in Ben's posture.

"Trouble?"

"Someone's coming," Ben said. "I think they're driving up."

Monroe took a second to catch on, then grabbed his sword, shifting position in his chair so that he was sitting on his rear with his feet up on the seat, the sword clutched in his lap.

Hayden picked up her spear and moved to the back of the room, so she could keep both doors in view at once.

"He's pulling up," Ben said, watching the floating outline come to a stop, then move as if they were climbing out of a seat.

From outside there was the sound of a car door slamming.

"Didn't hear an engine," Dawn observed.

"Maybe it's a Tesla," Monroe said.

The white outline walked tiredly towards the front of the house, reached into a pocket, and then there was the sound of a door unlocking.

"Oh shit, I think it's the owner," Ben said.

The battery on the bracer died, and the outline winked out, but by then they could all hear him. There was the sound of the front door shutting, the rattling of a lock turning, and then footsteps coming from the kitchen.

There was a creak of floorboards outside the room, and then the door opened. It hit the shoved-up coffee table with a clack, then continued to slowly open, pushing the table out of the way.

The barrel of a shotgun appeared through the crack in the door, and everyone in the room tensed.

The gun was followed by a guy's head, peeking around with a mixture of clashing emotions on his face, then catching sight of everyone sitting around. His eyes went to Dawn first, then were drawn to Hayden and Monroe's glowing weapons, at which his expression cemented into confusion.

"Hey," Ben said.

"Heyyy." The man was silent for a few seconds, now looking suspicious. He glanced at Dawn. "You all looters?"

"Squatters," Dawn said,

"Sorry," Ben said. "We needed a place to rest. Thought this one was abandoned."

"You all from the city?"

"Yeah. Port Cardigan, anyway."

The man swallowed. "They drop the bomb?"

It took Ben a second to work out what he meant. Out here in the sticks, there might have been limited signs of what was happening, beyond a general loss of people and communications.

Ben shook his head. "Alien invasion."

The man scanned Ben's face. "You're shitting me."

"No, man," Ben said, then gestured at Monroe. "Look at the alien sword."

The man looked, then gave Ben another close inspection. Apparently he saw enough not to laugh him out of the room.

"Jesus." He lowered the gun.

Ben stood up, stepping over to the door and holding his hand out to shake.

"I'm Ben. That's Dawn, Hayden, Monroe."

The man pushed the rest of the way through the door, looked down at Ben's hand then grasped it.

"I'm Guy. This is my house."

They shook, Ben finding his touch reassuringly solid and physical.

"Great to meet you. Sorry we just barged in," Ben said. "It's a mess out there."

The song on the radio ended and gave way to crosstalk between the host and a woman who hadn't been on air before.

"What? What are you calling it?"

"Humanity fortunes."

Instead of going back to the armchair, Ben pushed his way in between Dawn and Hayden on the sofa, sinking back. Dawn spread her blanket to go around Ben's shoulders as well and he helped it get settled.

"What kind of aliens are you claiming have invaded?" Guy asked, moving to sit down on the free armchair. He rested his shotgun across his lap, hand away from the trigger. His tone was guarded, but not unfriendly.

"It's not little grey aliens or anything," Ben said quickly, still listening to the radio. "It's a variety, and a lot of them seem more like animals than organized invaders."

"What?" the radio host asked again.

"Humanity fortunes."

The host cleared his throat. "All right, huddlers. We've got a new segment for you tonight, a little quiz show we're calling Humanity Fortunes." The host hit a button and a repeated air horn sound effect played over the air. "I have twelve questions here, and our two contestants Paul and Paige will take turns answering. If you're playing along at home, you can go around in a circle. Contestants, if you know the answer, wait until the sign lights up to say it. We dont want to spoil the game for all the ghosts and huddlers out there."

"Sure," Paige said, in a this might as well be happening tone.

Guy looked at the radio uncertainly, then around at the other four of them, who were all listening intently.

"We listening to this?" he asked.

"Okay. Paige," the host broke in. "What minty substance do we squeeze out every morning? What minty substance, do we squeeze out, every morning."

There was a stretch of silence, before Paige hesitantly answered, "Toothpaste?"

"Thats right! And we all hope stocks of that last a good long time. Now to our other contestant. Paul. One word answer, where are they taking the hobbits?"

"What. What is this." The possessing alien's voice was as thick and wet as ever.

"It's one word. The place they're taking the hobbits."

"The hobbits will die screaming, pierced by needles of salt and blades of frozen excrement."

Guy shifted in his armchair uncomfortably. He didn't seem to know what was happening. "Is this some kind of joke?" he asked, glancing at the radio. "Kind of edgy, isn't it?"

Ben caught his eye and shook his head.

"Incorrect. Paige, do you want to buzz in?"

"Isengard?"

"That's right. Still on you, Paige, Fear leads to... what. Fear leads to what."

Monroe called out, "Anger!"

"I dont know that one, sorry."

The sickly voice of the alien cut in. "Fear will lead to agony, and your incontinent deaths."

"The answer I was looking for was Anger. It's a Star Wars thing. Prequels though, so."

"Ugh," Paige grunted.

"Question three, to Alien Paul. What do we stub all the damn time? What do we stub, all the damn time? Come on. Hurts a lot."

"Whatever this thing is, we will find it, and we will stub it, over and over and over."

"Paige?"

In the gap between answers, Hayden glanced at Monroe, then turned to look at Guy. She stared at him for a few seconds, then said, "Toe."

"It's gotta be toe," Paige said.

"Correct!"

"We will stub your toes until they are bloody ruins. You have betrayed your world to this fresh pain."

"Alien Paul. You find a box and a bottle. The box says 'eat me'. The bottle says 'drink me'. What's your name?"

Hayden turned back to Guy. "You want to take a shot at answering this one, Guy?"

Ben followed her gaze. He got it straight away. Hayden was in the same mood she'd been in when she was questioning the person or thing who'd called himself Tom in the car.

Guy answered reluctantly, like he wasn't sure if he was being made fun of. He was obviously just going along with the group of weirdos he'd found squatting in his house.

"I guess the answer's Alice," he said. "It sounds like it's from Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland."

"Paige?"

"Alice?"

"Yes. Good."

Dawn spoke up. "I wouldn't have got that."

There were more questions. Hayden continued to answer when it was her turn, and continued to pressure Guy when it was his. Monroe didn't get what she was doing and threw out his answers for the couple he knew.

Guy ended up answering another three questions, two correctly. For the last one he mistook a question about the band Earth Wind and Fire for being about the classical elements, but by the end of it Ben was convinced he was human, or at least so close that nothing they could do could tell otherwise.

"Guy, do you mind if we crash here tonight?" Ben asked.

By this point, Guy's expression was blank. "I can't find my partner, or my kids. I don't mind much of anything."

"They're probably in space," Monroe contributed.

Guy's gaze went to him.

Ben stepped in. "Whenever what happened happened, apparently a bunch of people got knocked into some kind of stasis, somewhere else."

There was energy in Guy's expression for the first time since they'd met him. "What are you talking about? Where are they?"

"We dont know the details, unfortunately," Ben said.

"How do we get there?"

"It's, the Lirral... There's this whole thing." Ben turned to look around at the others.

Should they help the guy get to a Lirral shelter? There had to be more of them out there. It wasn't where Ben wanted to be, but this guy had lost his whole family. It was a desolate alternative to even the suspect hope the Lirral were offering.

"But they're not dead?" Guy asked.

"Probably not dead dead," Hayden said.

Guy looked down at the shotgun in his lap, thoughtful.

The radio host signed off a little after that, switching to what sounded like an automated playlist running through a variety of, to Ben's ears, tuneless electric music.

They didn't stay awake much longer than that.

The four of them all slept in the same room, a decision they arrived at simultaneously, without discussion. It was a guest bedroom, two queen-sized beds and a recliner chair, with a plush office chair pushed under a desk. Enough to sleep three people at a time even with nobody doubling up.

Hayden and Ben both suggested having a rotating watch. They thought Guy was human, but they didn't want to all be helpless at the same time in any case. What if something snuck into the house?

Ben leant his bracer to the operation, where whoever was on duty would wear it and tap it to keep an eye out. Monroe slept with his sword in harmless purple mode, and Hayden left her spear out for whoever was sitting on watch duty.

Ben took early morning watch, falling asleep at six in the bed Dawn had warmed up, while she staggered to the office chair.

He was meant to sleep three hours until nine, but he was woken up just over an hour later, with Dawn shaking him and the electric-cello hum of something alien passing overhead.