With the sound of the alarm ringing in his ears, Terrence rubbed the sleep from his eyes and rolled out of bed. He partially remembered a dream that had involved dancing on a building while mops rained down from the sky. Awkward.

Selecting a pair of socks from his drawer, Terrence pulled them on and grabbed two Food Bars, a successful attempt at packing a full meal’s nutrition (and none of its flavor) into a portable chunk. He yawned, still too tired to face the night, and popped two caffeine pills. With his CommPad stuffed comfortably into his pocket, he locked the front door, took a bite out of one of bars, and started his trek to work.

The bus stop was as crowded as ever. It was evening on a weekend, and aside from the few folks who weren’t bar denizens, the streets were coming alive. Terrence boarded the bus and nodded at the driver, who gave only a glare and a cough in reply. Then Terrence sat down, quietly watching the sights pass through the window.

The neighborhood changed. Apartments gave way to condominiums, and the streets began to look cleaner. Then the driver turned onto the skyway, and the sights whizzed by too quickly to take in. Turning his attention back to the inside of the bus, he noticed that one of the news posters, a week-old one about a monster attack on the other side of the city, had been replaced with a new one about a plague in a neighboring city. Quarantines had been set up and tests were being performed, but the death rate was still at a record high. Trade with them had been cut, so shortages were to be expected until further notice.

They exited the skyway. Once again, the scenery looked different. They’d passed the residential part of town, and now shops dominated the landscape. Signs glowed brightly from the windows, their pictures advertising Food Bars, reflective jackets for sun protection, and other goods. In the distance, Terrence could see the towering border wall, intimidating viewers on both sides. A little closer, smoke billowed from factories, tinting the sky with a light dusting of gray that the lingering rays of sunlight somehow managed to shove their heat under.

The bus, plodding steadily, made its way towards the city’s center. The road slanted up, and for the first time during the ride, Terrence looked away from the window. He knew what he would see, and he didn’t feel the need to look at it again. Even so, it wasn’t difficult to imagine the landscape stretching out past the top of the wall. Out there, a road meandered through a land that was barren and devoid of its natural vegetation, most of which had been driven to extinction years before by the competition and predation of monstrous species. The native fauna was absent as well, having disappeared when food sources died out or when they themselves had been preyed upon by the intruding monsters. The few indigenous species that remained, humanity included, were struggling to stay around. Terrence, having grown up after the apocalypse, had only heard stories of the world as it used to be, but he still felt the effects of its loss. It seemed that every week there was either a new monster attack or ration cut. Even cities as advanced as New Jericho were overcrowded and struggling to remain stable. Hope pushed him to keep working towards getting his family to a safer place, but he couldn’t help but wonder just how much longer they could hold out until they, too, vanished.

A split second later, the road dipped again and the view was gone. The bus plodded on down the road. Even so, Terrence didn’t feel like smiling. Before he got off for his stop, he gave one final wave to the bus driver, who glared before breaking into another fit of coughing. Terrence stepped off and the bus rolled onward, but he watched its trail of smoke disperse into the surrounding gray. Finally, he went inside.

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Chi-Chi was sitting in the corner. She looked up when she heard Terrence and smiled. A white butterfly opened and closed its wings lazily on her head, and another rested on her shoulder. It would have been very pretty if he wasn’t aware of what those butterflies could do.

Terrence smiled back and put the box inside the cell. “Here you go,” he said. “Enjoy your dinner.”

Chi-Chi was kind enough to wait for him to turn around before feeding, but he could still hear the panicked squeaks coming from her prey. Quickly, he tended to the ball of arms, which was excitedly pressing its knot of decrepit string against the glass. The tangle had been augmented with what looked suspiciously like rat intestines. Terrence hurriedly finished up with it. When he turned around again, he found Chi-Chi observing him quietly. “Hey again,” he sighed.

The creature squeaked and crouched closer to the glass. Two white butterflies were resting on her head, and for a brief moment, Terrence wondered how many she had in her. “So, uh, how’s it going?”

She whistled contently. “Same here,” shrugged Terrence. “I guess it’s just been a regular day.” His CommPad beeped with an incoming call, and the next moment, Chi-Chi began chattering rapidly. Terrence couldn’t help but wonder if his device’s sound had meaning in the language of squeaks and whistles, although he doubted it. “It’s just a message, see?” he tried to explain, pulling out the CommPad to show her. “Probably some idiot’s just trying to sell me something. I don’t think they’re aware of the concept of sleep,” he rolled his eyes. Then he frowned. The message wasn’t from a salesperson, it was from his home. “I’m sorry, give me a moment,” he told Chi-Chi, accepting the call. A small image of his sister, dressed in faded floral pajamas, appeared on the screen. “Aure, what are you doing up this late?”

“Terrence!” she sobbed.

“Whoa, whoa, Aure, what’s wrong?” On the sides of the screen, he could see a number of people he didn’t recognize. Suddenly, he realized that he didn’t know where his sister was. “What’s going on?” he asked, panic creeping into his voice. “Where are you? Where’s Mom?”

“Hush, honey.” The screen’s display tilted wildly as Aurelien’s CommPad changed hands. Terrence caught a brief glance of an adult woman in a nightshirt that had been hastily covered by a coat. Then his mother switched off the screen to put it up to her ear, where the speaker mode would be off. “Everything’s okay. We’re just on a bus, en route to New Jericho. There was another monster attack.”

“I saw it!” cried Aurelien, her voice cutting out as the connection stumbled. “I couldn’t get to sleep and then suddenly it was right outside the window!”

There were more gentle words from his mother, and then she was talking to him again. “I’m sorry, Terrence, I know this wasn’t what we’d planned. Please don’t worry about us. We’ll figure something out.”

“No, Mom, I can help. I’ll…” He swallowed hard, aware that there wasn’t a thing he could do to get them into the city faster.

Aurelien cut in once again, sobbing. “It was just killing them. It didn’t even eat them. It just killed them, like it didn’t even care.” She gasped, breathing rapidly. “Terrence, do you think it didn’t know it was hurting them? Couldn’t it st—”

The rest of her question was lost to static. He heard his mother’s voice break in once again. “—there by morning, don’t worry about—we’ll figure it out when we get—” The connection was dead.

He watched the blank screen for a little while, and then looked over at Chi-Chi. It was hard to read the expression in her black eyes, but she seemed concerned. She popped a butterfly into her mouth and squeaked. Maybe she was a little concerned. Could monsters even feel that?

Then, to deepen the wound, his CommPad beeped again.