We race through the countryside at breakneck speeds.

I’m riding on Luna’s back, holding on for dear life as the giant puppy darts around. That an animal so relatively small compared to me can hold my weight is weird, yet she doesn’t seem to struggle in the slightest. But just because I’m riding her, it doesn't mean I have any actual control over her. She's a pet, but she's not my pet. Luna runs however she pleases, going up to the others for more pets and scratches.

When I realize that's what she wants, I wrap my arms around her neck. It's mostly to keep myself steady, but I also rub her fur so she’ll calm down. Monster or not, she's still just a pup at heart.

Emily is somewhere in the pet convoy, holding onto her own ride for dear life. She’s back atop that sabertooth tiger looking monster, and I prompt the system for more details.

Donut - level 11 Saberfanged Persian Female.

This creature is a pet.

Emily keeps her face buried in the cat's luxurious fur, which I realize she does in order to deter the others from making conversation with her.

“Do you control these guys?” I ask Jessica as Luna takes me towards her.

“Most of them,” she says.

“Can you bring Emily closer?”

She snorts, suppressing a laugh. A moment later, Donut changes course and comes up to my side. Emily extracts her face from the creature's fur, looking dazed. When she sees she's next to me again, she calms down.

We reach the downtown area a few minutes later, finding yet another battlefield. The sixty or so buildings are arranged around a few intersections, but every road going in is blocked. The grounds around it are decimated, filled with monster corpses, spikes of crumbling earth or melting ice, and strips of burned grass. Craters litter the landscape, ranging in size from fist sized to car sized.

Even from a distance, I see people up on every rooftop and snipers in most upper floor windows. They’re fighting against a small group of monsters, tearing them to shreds with skills and bullets.

“Better leave your pets behind,” I tell Jessica. “Let’s approach on foot first.”

“Good idea.”

The pets all come to a stop about a quarter mile away. We hop off, and Luna gives me a few displeased yelps. I scratch her under the chin.

“Be a good girl,” I say as she nuzzles into my chest. “We’ll be right back, okay?”

She yowls half-heartedly, then she retreats among the other pets. Emily sidles up to me in her ever silent manner, and Jessica does the same.

“She likes you,” Jessica whispers, pointing back at Luna.

“Yeah, I figured. Let’s go.”

We trudge through the carnage, going over and around monster corpses. I’m in the lead, with Emily and Jessica right behind me and the rest of the group fanning out further back. Complaints about the gore and the stench fly off left and right, and admittedly, it is pretty bad.

Not like it hasn’t been bad all night long, but here, it’s on a whole new level. The air is thick with the smell of flash cooked guts and singed fur, with a nauseating undercurrent of urine, feces, and festering bodily fluids.

I stop myself from gagging, but others aren’t so lucky. A few of them stop to hurl the contents of their stomach onto the ground, adding to the problem.

Emily and Jessica try to hide their disgust, and they’re doing an admirable job. Their poker faces are on point, but they can’t fool me. Emily, who was already pale to begin with, is now white as a sheet. Jessica, meanwhile, looks almost green.

“Don’t you guys deal with animals on the regular?” I ask after a particularly nasty breeze that makes Jessica clamp a hand over her mouth.

“We weren’t a kill shelter,” she spits.

Our approach causes a bit of a ruckus among the defenders. Some retreat, others come forth, and although I can’t make out any words, I hear stuff being shouted. Sniper rifles have been tracking us for the last few minutes, but no one’s taken a crack at us yet.

As we get to within fifty feet of the outer buildings, someone shouts halt! I look up at the roof and groan. A man spins two revolvers in his hands, sticking them into holsters at his hip with fluid motions.

He leaps off the building, which is two stories tall, doing a superhero landing accompanied by a heavy thud. The inertia of the fall forces him to one knee, but he expertly rolls with it. God damned drama queen.

He goes to say something, but I speak first.

“That can't be healthy for your knees, old man!”

“God damn it, Jack! I'll tell your mother that you ruined my bombastic entrance!”

“Not if I get to her first! What will she say if she hears you're jumping off of buildings like a jackass?!”

We stare each other down for a long moment before we both break out into laughter. Pops runs up to us, and he tackles me into a bearhug. We hold like that for a minute before he pulls away, still holding my shoulders. His eyes take me in, going up and down my body.

“God,” he says with a smirk, “you look like absolute shit.”

“Yeah, well I've been busting my balls out there all night long.”

“So I've heard.”

He lets go of me and takes a step to the side, regarding the rest of the group.

“Where's Mike?” He whispers the question I've been dreading.

“He went to Dianne's place. Haven't reached him yet, but I'll head out to look for him.”

“We'll talk inside,” he says. Then, in a more bombastic voice, he yells, “Emily! I'm glad to see you. How are you holding up?”

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Emily, I realize, is hiding behind me again. She's closer this time, almost right up against my back. I peek over my shoulder, bending my neck awkwardly. She lifts her face and shoots me a pleading look.

“I'm…good,” she forces out a couple of words.

Pops laughs, but I can see the worry in his eyes. He looks at me, then at her, then back at me. We make eye contact, and an unspoken message is passed across. It's something I know all too well, something he only does with me and Mike. The we fucked up and we'll talk about it later when your mother isn't around signal.

In this case, I figure he wants to tell me something about my new companion. Something he can't say with her here, so I don't ask the myriad of questions floating in my head.

“Jessica!” He continues, moving on from us.

He spends a minute greeting everyone, then he shows us towards one of the buildings. The ground floor is a store I know all too well, selling hunting and camping supplies for both locals and tourists. Lots of them would flock to Stelver, especially during hunting season, and this is…was one of the stores that catered to them. It even sold souvenirs for the less adventurous visitors.

Now it’s in ruins. The large display windows are all shattered, filling the ground with glass shards. Someone boarded them up from the inside, but the barricades are in bad shape. I look around for the wooden bear sculpture I’d made for the place once upon a time, but I can’t see it anywhere.

It wasn’t a fine work of art by any means, so it’s not a huge loss. Pops introduced me to wood sculpting when I was little, and the hobby stuck with me. It’s how I ended up a carpenter, and I kept making my shitty sculptures of wildlife on the side, selling them to both locals and tourists. Garry, the shop’s owner, noticed me doing it one summer and asked if I’d make one for his own store.

It’s been here ever since as the unofficial mascot, accumulating wear and tear from all the people touching and petting it on their way in. Seeing it gone hurts a little, it’s just another reminder that life won’t be the same ever again.

I shake the dark thoughts away and refocus. The two upper floors are living spaces, and the roof is flat. Some of the people on said flat roof drop ladders for us to climb. I wait at the bottom until the others go up, with Emily right behind me. Pops and Jessica talk about her group's pets a little distance away.

“They look like monsters, but they're not,” she's in the process of reassuring him. “Please tell your guys to not shoot them.”

Pops passes the message up. Someone else takes it and leaves to spread the word between the other defenders. Satisfied, Jessica approaches the ladder and starts climbing it next.

I grab her leg and give it a gentle tug.

“Wait for me up there, I have something for you to do,” I say.

She looks down at me, and a grin forms on her lips.

“Ordering me around already?” She quips. “I didn't get the memo where you were appointed boss.”

“Nothing like that. Think of it more as a…favor.”

“That would make two of them,” Jessica says, her grin a notch wider. Then, she adds more loudly, “you all heard that, right? You're my witnesses for when I'll call in the favors!”

I pat her on the leg and she gets going, though I can't tell if that last part was serious or not. She reaches the roof, leaving only me, Pops, and Emily down here.

I gesture at the ladder. Emily gives me a look that I can't quite figure out.

“I'll be right behind you,” I assure her.

She gives me a half-hearted nod and starts climbing. As soon as she’s out of sight, I turn to Pops. He leans in, but I put up a hand to stop him.

“Later,” I say. “Right now, we have something more important to deal with. I didn’t go looking for Mike because I ran across one of the wave bosses. It was headed this way with a horde of monsters. We killed the boss and a bunch of the monsters, but the horde is still pretty big. They might hit here in the near future.”

The light hearted demeanor evaporates, and Pops turns serious. He raises an eyebrow and asks, “killed the boss and a bunch of the monsters?”

“I told you I’ve been busting my balls out there. Emily and I have been setting a few explosive traps to weaken the horde.”

“Okay. How many are left, and how long do we have?”

“No idea when they’ll hit,” I answer. “And I don’t know exactly how many, but probably a couple hundreds at the very least.”

I grab onto the ladder. It looks like he wants to say something else, but he stops. Instead, he just says a meager, “sorry, Jack.”

I shake my head, looking up at the gathering on the rooftop above me. “We could’ve done things a lot better. But we could’ve done a lot worse, too.”

“Right.”

----------------------------------------

I make it up to the roof, and I spend a minute just taking in the view. The inside of the downtown safe zone is teeming with people, hundreds and hundreds of them. It reminds me of the yearly Christmas festival, just minus the peace and happiness.

The people are going every which way, wandering around aimlessly. A few groups hand out food to the masses, which are gathered in lines that snake up and down the streets. The signs of battles are everywhere in the form of puddles of drying blood and destruction.

It’s a bittersweet sight, and I have to remind myself of what I’d just told Pops. Things could be a lot worse.

“What did you want to ask me?” Jessica says.

She’s by my side, her eyes glued on the crowds. Emily is behind me, fidgeting with her bow.

“How did that thing with your parrot work? I thought she was smart, but then Emily talked through her. Is it like a drone or something?”

“Or something,” Jessica says. “It’s a skill called Hivemind. Lets me link my mind and senses with one of my pets. I can also do that to someone else if they accept the connection.”

“And it lets you talk through your pets?”

“Only through the ones that can talk to begin with,” Jessica clarifies.

“That sounds mighty useful now that electronics don’t work,” Pops interrupts, having appeared behind us as well.

Emily flounders for a moment, caught between all three of us. She ends up side stepping me to put me between herself and the other two. Then she catches sight of the crowds below, and a shiver passes through her. I wonder for a moment how she’ll fare once we go in, and if I can do anything to…I don’t know. Help her? This is clearly not good or healthy, but I don’t have the time right now.

“Anyway,” Jessica continues, “why are you asking?”

“Can you send Polly to look for my brother? I want to talk to him.”

“Give me the location and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you,” I say.

Jessica grins. “Don’t thank me yet, I wasn’t joking about those favors.”

“Oh, come on.”

We bicker for a bit, then I give her Mike’s location. Dianne’s house is a few miles south-east of here, so not too far away.

“Done,” Jessica says, and I look back at the pets in the distance. One of them takes off flying, little more than a gray dot against the morning sky. “It’ll take a while, and I need to be with you to get the link going.”

“Okay.”

“When you’re done with that, can you come looking for me?” Pops asks. “We could use a skill like that to help organize things around here.”

Jessica gives him a thumbs up. Pops takes his leave, directing us to the police station as he strolls away.

“You can rest there for a few hours. Get some sleep if you haven’t.”

“I’ll sleep after we push back the horde and I find Mike.”

Pops stops and gives me a stern look. I don’t budge, so we end up in a staring contest.

“Did you get any sleep?” I shoot back.

“Yeah,” he says, surprising me. “Four hours.”

“Fine,” I sigh. “I’ll get four hours as well, but not a minute more. And you have to promise you’ll wake me up if you need help.”

“Pinky swear,” Pops says. “But don’t worry, we can handle it.”

He jumps from this roof to the next, using some sort of skill to aid him. I realize I didn’t get any information about his class or level, but we’ll have time for that later. Now that he mentioned it, I really do feel tired. Hell, I feel exhausted. It was only adrenaline and urgency that kept me on my feet for this long.

“Let’s go,” I say.

Both Emily and Jessica follow, and we go down into the safe zone.