My legs were shaking as I went up, using my mop handle like a walking stick to help me climb. Davi looked at me curiously. “You okay, Vince?”

“Yeah, just tired. Surprised... you’re doing so well. Byron was out in the first few minutes.”

She shrugged. “He could shoot at everything. I guess I could have blocked every monster, but that seemed wasteful. I kept it back for the times I was worried the, uh, spacedogs would actually touch someone.”

“Well, you did a great job.” It was true that she’d used her Force Shield only intermittently, but I remembered that blue pane getting in the way of a leaping monsters, or appearing to block and slow down a second monster when two arrived simultaneously.

“I guess. Maybe I should have used it more. I only got 30 more points.”

I paused, consulting my interface. “I think I got… almost 70? I’m just over 100 now.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Nice. If that woman from earlier was right, you’ll probably earn a second ability next time you go down to fight.”

“Yeah.”

The system that had been set up here was good, maybe even great. Since we’d gotten here, I hadn’t seen a single person get injured, in exchange for dozens of monster deaths.

At the top of the escalator, someone had defaced the wall with a permanent marker. An arrow pointing to the right was marked with “A - L” while an arrow with “M-Z” pointed off to the left. Giant letters had been scrawled on the wall at intervals, so that people could rest and still be woken when it was their group’s turn to fight. Davi elbowed me as we passed TAF Sprinkles, sprawled in a heap amid several other people in similar orange-and-white shirts. I recognized some, including a famous female duo that had joined TAF at the same time, but I couldn’t remember their names. I bet Davi knew, but out of respect for the slumbering team, she kept her fangirling to that one nudge to get my attention and a very quiet squeal.

We found Byron and John under an R scrawled across the wall in permanent marker. Both were still awake, though they looked exhausted.

“Where’s Kurt?” I asked.

“He went back to Concourse A. There’re more restaurants there, and he was hoping he could find us something to eat. That cheese sandwich earlier didn’t really fill any of us up.”

At Byron’s mention, I noticed my own discomfort. I’d eaten a big breakfast at the hotel, but since then I’d had a few packaged snacks from a vending machine and a cheese sandwich. The sunlight was starting to fade now, marking the end of an incredibly busy day.

I slumped down to wait with them.

It took a little while for Kurtis to return, and when he did, all he was carrying was a gallon jug. He set it down, shrugging at us apologetically.

“What’s that?” John asked.

“Syrup! Caramel syrup.” Kurt laughed as he said it, a slightly hysterical sound.

“What else do you have?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all.” Kurt put his face in his hands. “I was lucky to get this. The donut shop had been picked clean of everything that had been baked already. They were even out of sprinkles, jelly - all the stuff they use for fillings. This jug was back behind some bags of coffee beans.”

“We can’t just eat syrup…” John said.

“Then we can eat our snack food or we can starve,” Kurtis told him, bluntly. “As I was walking away, I heard a fight starting. A big group of people, twenty or so. Fighting over a fricking bag of tortillas. It ended when the bag broke, and then people were scrabbling around on the ground, scooping up dirty tortillas off the floor like they were some kind of treasure.”

John went white. “People can’t be that hungry yet.”

“No,” I said. “But they’ve realized they’re going to be. There's a good setup here at the barricade. Taking a little time to earn points is probably alright, since we know we don't need that many to give us a second ability and more options. But... we need to get moving. Soon.”

“I think Vince is right,” Byron said.

Kurt shook his head. “That’s insane. I don’t want to starve to death either, but… Byron, you got tired after like five minutes of fighting. Where are we going to make it in five minutes? A parking garage? You think that’s going to be safe?”

“Staying is just choosing a slow death!” Byron said.

“Maybe something will change if we give it time! Slow certain death is better than fast certain death.”

The argument continued for quite a while, drawing John and Davi in.

I felt the same pressure as Byron to keep moving, but I was struggling to come up with a plan that would keep us alive against a continual stream of monsters. My efforts to focus the discussion there kept getting derailed into a discussion of whether or not we should leave at all. John mostly agreed with Kurt, that leaving was suicide, but the prospect of food shortages was sobering to him.

“My mother and father used to tell me stories about the Depression. Hunger is easy to underestimate. People get angry. Slow - both the brain and the body. I don’t want to fight monsters at all, but doing it when we’re already in bad shape…” He shook his head.

Davi largely kept quiet, other than making minor corrections or asking for clarifications to other people’s arguments. I don’t know if she was intimidated by both options or just thinking it all through.

None of us were quite hungry enough to eat plain caramel syrup, but breaking into our limited snack foods seemed frivolous when we had another option available, however unpalatable. We instead stared at the jug as the argument wound down fruitlessly.

It wasn’t easy to sleep, on the hard floor of the airport hallway, bellies contracting painfully, with the shrill cries of monsters echoing in the distance. At least Group R's sleeping area was somewhat guarded. Groups M, N, O, P, and Q formed a living barrier between us and the top of the escalator, and a few other groups had formed after us, some of whom were sitting and talking as they waited for their turns to fight. Monsters shouldn’t be able to approach from that direction, but if they could - if they’d broken in elsewhere - we wouldn’t be the first to find out.

I did fall asleep eventually, though we were woken for another turn at defense. I had no idea what time it was, and Sarah’s replacement wasn’t sure either. A large bonfire had been made off to the left of the stairs, offering enough light to see the intruding spacedogs. Someone had smashed into the drywall present in some of the employee areas to get enough wood to keep it going.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Our second round at the barricade went much the same as the first, except that I didn’t stay the full-half hour. After I’d missed a few strikes in a row, someone was sent to pull me away and tell me to go back to sleep.

“I’m fine!” I protested. “I want to keep fighting my full half-hour. I need to get a second ability. I’ll be fine.”

The man who’d taken over the hourglass and clipboard jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Upstairs! You ain’t special. Everyone at the barricade needs to be awake and alert! You wanna play dumbass hero, you can do it on your lonesome. Just you jump the railing and head right on outside.”

The stark ultimatum stopped me short. I didn’t like it, but I guess I could understand: the system others had set up was benefiting me: if I wanted to take advantage, I had to follow the rules they’d made.

For now.

“Fine,” I told him, and trudged up the stairs to head to sleep one more time.

…

When I woke in the morning, Davi and Kurt weren’t there. I went to get a drink from the water fountain and frowned when the button press brought nothing at all. I tried the one next to it, which also didn’t work.

I looked around, and spotted someone holding one of those awful party-hat cone-cups that come with water coolers. “Where’s the water?”

The man’s face had been morose to start with, but it dropped further at my question. “Faucets aren’t working anymore. Stopped a couple hours ago. Someone found a few jugs in the employee areas and rolled them out. Over by Group Z.”

I jogged over, intending to grab some water for my group, but when I got there, I could see the jugs were already empty. Three ten-gallon containers rolled uselessly on the ground, and I felt my heart lurch.

I’d known water would be an issue, eventually, but I’d hoped it would last until we’d moved on. We had our roller bag of drinks, but moving a lot of liquid was difficult. I hadn’t seen a lot of good solutions, but now I regretted not pursuing some of the bad ones that had occurred to me, like trying to fill plastic bags with water or raiding the restaurants for a thousand paper cups.

I went back to where Group R was sleeping and shook John and Byron awake. “The water’s gone.”

Byron and John came awake quickly. Byron stared at me for a few seconds, blinking away the remnants of a dream. “The water’s gone?”

“Faucets stopped working a couple hours ago, apparently.”

John sucked in a deep breath. “Lord have mercy. There’s… there’s no other way to get water here, is there?”

“Someone found some water cooler jugs in the employee-only areas, but it looks like those got used up nearly instantly.”

“Shit! We should have thought to check for those.”

I looked up at the sound of Davi’s voice, seeing her and Kurtis approaching. Davi waved at us. “Glad you guys are awake now. Grab our stuff and follow me.”

She scooped up her backpack and grabbed the roller back to pull behind her and Byron followed suit. Confused, I followed both to the top of the escalator, where a huge crowd was gathering. I could see the orange shirts of the TAF eSports team among them, the distinctive over-pocketed uniforms of airport security agents, and many, many more.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

“Our army,” Kurt said. “So we can get out of here.”

“I thought you wanted to stay…”

“I did!” Kurtis laughed helplessly. “I do. But… the water’s gone. We can’t, can we? Davi and I woke up and we got to talking… it’s obvious to most of us at this point, especially with more and more people showing up from Concourse A, hoping we have water. Even if someone were to have something to drink, the moment they showed it off they’d probably get mobbed for anything extra they had. So… if that’s going to happen anyway…”

Davi opened the roller bag filled with drinks and started handing them out, to us first, then the crowd.

“We’ve got a plan,” she said. “These will be too heavy to take with if we're moving fast, anyway, and I'd rather the people marching with us weren't falling over from hunger or dehydration. There should be more to drink in the parking lots, cases of water bottles in cars and stuff.”

“The spacedogs, though. They could hide under the cars and bite people in the legs," I said.

Davi nodded. “Everyone who’s earned a second ability in the past few hours has taken something to try to address that. Stuff that lets people see far away, an ability that lets people make little animal-things, enhanced hearing and vision, um… this weird thing that makes like… a cloud? Some of those have been a bust, but we’ve got five different abilities that might help, and at least two people with each. We’ll grab wheelchairs and luggage carts to help us move anything or anyone we find and we’ll head southeast. The airport employees say that’s where the closest buildings are. The closest ones are just infrastructure, but it’ll give us a place to rest if we need.”

“You can’t see it, over the hills, but I talked with four people who are sure they know the way to the closest building.” Kurt’s fists were clenched. I could tell he didn’t want to do this, but he wasn’t wavering anymore.

Davi seemed determined as well, and Byron had been on-board from the beginning. That only left John. If... if we had to leave him behind…

I glanced over my shoulder, uncertain what I’d find.

John was looking down at first, bushy white eyebrows shading his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He lifted a hand and turned it over, examining it. It was the hand of an older man. The veins were starting to protrude a bit. The skin looked just slightly loose and dry. He wasn’t decrepit or infirm, but he was at least twenty years older than Kurtis and me. I couldn’t blame him, if he decided he couldn’t make the journey. That he couldn’t fight the monsters.

Even if I thought the alternative was certain death.

“Damn aliens,” he said after a bit. “I, uh, read a lot about them. Or, I guess, what people thought about them. I thought I’d be ready if aliens went public. I thought I’d be the expert. But… I’m not. Never read anything that predicted something like this.”

We were all quiet, looking at him, not rushing him.

“All this… points nonsense? Monsters appearing out of the air? It’s like one of the video games my son tried to get me to play. My granddaughter, too.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Never did get the hang of any of it. Never did make sense to me. Didn’t see what it was for, really. Rather watch a good game of football. I guess…”

He stopped, and looked up at us. His face was more vulnerable than I’d ever seen it before.

“I guess it’s time for me to learn. Can I count on you younguns to help an old man out?”

We’d all been waiting, anxiously. At his words, Davi rushed forward to grab his hand. Byron clapped him on the back and Kurt clenched a fist with a victorious grin. I gave John a thumbs-up. “We’ve got you,” I said. “We’ll make it to safety. We’ll make it home.”

“Home? You mean… Huntsville?” Davi looked skeptical. “That’s more than a thousand miles from here.”

“Yeah. So?”

Davi looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I… Just don’t see how it’s possible. Not with that mess outside.”

“We’ll figure it out!”

It wasn’t until Davi’s eyes widened and I saw her take a half-step back that I realized I’d snapped. Practically shouted.

Getting back wasn’t optional. Not for me. But Davi had only moved to the area in January. She’d lived in Huntsville for a little over half a year.

She might not… care… about getting back there.

She might even want to go somewhere else.

Did anyone want to go back to Huntsville with me? If I had to go alone… No. I knew Kurtis was worried about his family. But everyone else…

A hand fell on my shoulder. John stepped beside me. “Now, son, y’all need to settle yourself. We got enough on our plates today without getting worked up about tomorrow. And we’re all facing today together. Gonna need to stay calm to do your best out there.”

It took me a moment to realize he was right. My muscles were corded with tension, and I took a deep breath, trying to force myself to relax. Being tense would only slow my reaction time and tire me out faster, and I didn’t know how long we’d have to fight for.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “We all agree we need to get out of here. I guess we can work anything else out later.”

Davi offered me a sympathetic smile. “Right.”