They spent the night in Derek’s apartment. Jeremy found a broken-down cardboard box and newspapers in the recycling. The box went back together easily enough, and with a trash bag lining the inside and a layer of shredded newspaper, it made a pretty good makeshift litter box. Atticus gave him an unimpressed look when he took her into the bathroom and showed it to her. But she was smart enough to use it rather than soil Derek’s unblemished carpet.
He spent the night on the couch. Moira claimed the bedroom to herself, as she should. And Caleb made a bed on the floor for himself out of the throw pillows and couch blanket. Jeremy made a token effort to offer the couch to him, but Caleb shut him down immediately. He wasn’t the one with a shredded back. Jeremy lay on his stomach and relaxed into the couch cushions with relief.
Caleb insisted on checking at his back. The bandages needed replacing anyway. He propped open the first aid kit. All the old non-stick pads and peeling medical tape piled up on the coffee table. The wrappings of new sterile bandages joined them as Caleb applied antibiotic ointment and covered the cuts.
“Hey, do you remember that time I got super-duper drunk and put my arm through the glass coffee table at Benny’s old place?” Caleb asked, “And for like a week after, you had to help me with my bandages just like this cause it was my right arm.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Jeremy said into the couch cushion.
“I’m glad we don’t go to shit like that anymore.” He poked his tongue out as he squeezed a bit of antibiotic ointment on his finger, then leaned over Jeremy, “I prefer our chill movie nights.”
Jeremy had known Caleb for a long time, since before he’d implemented his stricter rules about not going to parties and going to bed by a particular time each night. He’d always had those tendencies, early and overprepared for anything and everything. He was rigid in his values and expectations of other people. But he wasn’t always so opposed to meeting new people and doing new things. He was grateful to Caleb for sticking around even after he’d become a reclusive cat owner who’d rather order take-out from the Chinese place and grab a bottle of wine to drink on the couch than go out to bars.
“Not going to have many more of those for a while,” Jeremy said.
“No, probably not.” Caleb chuckled, “Figures that you would finally get your life together, and then the whole world goes to shit.”
“It’s all cause of you, you know.” Jeremy accused, “I broke one of my rules. Actually several. No plans unless made a week ahead of time, and no parties hosted by strangers. All to help you go after your soulmate, and it turns out it wasn’t that serious anyway.”
“Aw, come on, don’t be like that! Now, you get me all to yourself.” Caleb nudged his shoulder and loomed over him with a shit-eating grin.
Jeremy closed his eyes. “No thanks. I was looking forward to you having another person in your life to start pestering instead of me.”
Caleb grumbled and finished bandaging him up. Atticus curled up next to Jeremy’s head, her fur tickling his neck and shoulder. He kept his eyes closed as Caleb cleaned up the pile of trash, drifting off to the sound of crinkling plastic and Caleb talking to himself under his breath.
In the morning, Moira crept out of the bedroom with a careful, neutral expression. It failed to hide her disappointment when she saw only Caleb and Jeremy sitting on the couch eating toast. Jeremy wasn’t too offended. He’d been a little disappointed when he woke up and realized that he would have to figure out how to juggle finding Derek and getting to Uncle Howard’s penthouse at the same time. Moira might just leave them to return to the mansion to see if he’d gone there. Jeremy would feel pretty strange letting her go off on her own, but he supposed they didn’t owe each other anything, not really. And she was a dragon, after all.
Instead of the butter and jam Jeremy had left on the counter, she grabbed a jar of peanut butter from the cabinet and slathered that on her toast. Then she drizzled honey over it and took a big, angry bite out of it. Jeremy got up to put his plate in the sink and grab a pan to start making some eggs now that everyone was awake.
“So, what’s the plan?” Caleb asked.
Jeremy glanced at Moira, then said, “I think it is really important to try to get to Uncle Howard’s penthouse so we can get out of the city because I don’t see things getting any more peaceful anytime soon."
Moira took another bite out of her toast.
“Once we are out of the city, we can go to your place, Moira.” He offered, “Maybe he went there.”
“Maybe,” She said, “I called his mother. Left a message. Maybe she’ll get back to me.”
“Okay, yeah.” Jeremy cut a slab of butter and knocked it into the pan. It sizzled down and filled the room with a warm, nutty smell. Caleb turned the TV on as he grabbed the eggs from the fridge. Moira joined him on the couch.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Jesus.” Caleb said, “They have a literal countdown on the bottom of the screen.”
They ate silently while watching the news, just as they had eaten dinner the night before. Caleb did the dishes while Jeremy perused the cabinets for any good food to add to their granola bars and trail mix stash. He found some fruit snacks. They got a raised eyebrow from Jeremy but went in beside the pouches of Gatorade powder and B-12 supplements.
Moira sat on the couch and watched him pack. She pushed to her feet and stretched when he zipped up the food backpack. “I think he has some first aid stuff we can take.”
She wandered into one of the bathrooms and started going through it. Then she thought of some extra underwear she kept in Derek’s dresser that she should grab while they were here. Then she wanted to take a shower. Jeremy knew she was stalling, but that was a pretty good idea. So, one after another, they each took a shower, cleaning away the grime that had settled on their skin from walking through the smoking city.
Jeremy emerged from the shower to see Moira sweeping the kitchen's linoleum floor. Caleb sat on the couch, rubbing his head with a towel, eyes glued to the TV. Jeremy made it two steps out of the bathroom before Moira swept over and confiscated the ball of dirty laundry from his arms.
“I’m doing a load of laundry before we go!” She said over her shoulder. The clothes went into the little washing machine hidden in a closet that Jeremy had not noticed. She pushed the start button and returned to sweeping.
“Listen, Moira.” Jeremy said, “If you want to hang out here while we go to your uncle’s, that’s fine.”
“Oh!” She leaned on the broom and gave him a look of genuine surprise, “I don’t know…”
“It’s not a bad idea.” Jeremy explained, “If he comes back, you’ll be here. You can always call Caleb if you need us for anything. On our way back out of the city, we can swing back here for you if you want.”
Aside from the fact that it was her uncle’s penthouse that they were breaking into, there wasn’t any reason Moira had to come along with them. Jeremy was not even sure if she actually cared about the information as much as he did, although he figured she had to be at least curious since it was her family.
Moira looked around the apartment. Caleb didn’t look over, but he watched out of the corner of his eye. She leaned the broom against the wall with a sigh.
“No, I’d rather…not be alone in the middle of the apocalypse.” She looked anywhere but Jeremy, “As soon as the laundry is done, we can go.”
“Okay.” Jeremy said, “But leave a note at least, in case he does come back.”
Moira trudged into the office to grab sticky notes and a pen.
They left about two hours later when the sun was nearing its highest point in the sky. There was much less activity outside now. People had returned home last night. Jeremy wondered if that was the end of the protests. He doubted it. As they passed a street where the riots had hit, they saw people checking on the bodies lying across the street and sidewalk. Two cops with guns slung over their backs lifted bodies into the back of a truck. People in dark blue fire department uniforms, t-shirts tucked in, and medical gear at their side went from body to body. Most of the people helping out were just regular folk in dusty, bloody clothes, wearing latex gloves and bandanas over their faces. Jeremy doubted the outrage was over. It was just shocked into a lull. It would return even worse.
Aside from the carnage in the streets and buildings still burning periodically, their walk to the penthouse was relatively uneventful. In terms of encounters with mythical creatures. They hadn’t been able to go more than a few hours without running into something on the first day, but yesterday, they had not seen anything. He wondered if they made their way out of the city for some reason.
And then they encountered a ghost.
“Is that a ghost?” Caleb asked. The smog of smoke smeared over the sky, darkening the streets as though night or rain were about to fall. The contrast lowered. Shadows grew. And in front of them, a wispy, translucent figure floated across the street. The delicate appearance directly opposed its violent actions. It picked up a chunk of asphalt from beside the curb and hurled it through a window. However, its hand passed right through the rock, and the window remained unshattered. The ghost tried again. Failed again. And grew even more agitated.
“Yeah.” Jeremy said, “That’s a ghost.”
Atticus peered out of the carrier on Caleb’s back and yowled. Moira glared at the cat, but the ghost did not notice the noise. It was too focused on trying to break the side mirror off a car parked along the side of the road. When that did not work, it tried to smash the store windows directly with its fists.
“It seems pretty angry,” Caleb observed.
Moira rolled her eyes, “No shit. It’s probably stuck in yesterday and doesn’t realize it's dead.”
“It might realize it’s dead.” Jeremy pointed out. Otherwise, they must be confused about why they could not do anything. Although, if they were confused, this could be the source of their evident agitation. Moira shrugged and started walking again. Caleb made a noise, and she rolled her eyes again. She had been especially petulant since leaving Derek’s apartment. Jeremy did not blame her. Even Caleb tried to keep his entire personality a bit more under wraps for her sake.
“It can’t do anything.” She gestured to the ghost. It passed back and forth through the window instead of breaking it. That was a good point. Jeremy started to follow her. The ghost did not clock their presence at all.
That was a pretty unexpected consequence of the events from yesterday. And a pretty terrible one. This ghost did not seem to be able to continue the destruction, but that might not be a general rule. Some ghosts might be able to move things, like poltergeists, out of movies. Or maybe if they practiced enough, all ghosts could learn to move things. Either way, it would not be good for dead people stuck in the anguish of the riots to wander around the city.
Jeremy pulled out his notebook and flipped to a new page as they walked. He wrote down his thoughts about ghosts, then tapped his pen against his chin and looked at Moira. “Have they given any information about the undead coming out of the gate down in Texas?”
“No,” Moira pulled out her phone and tapped as though double-checking. Her eyes flicked back and forth. “Everything is about the nuclear strike that will hit in a few hours. They are pulling the National Guard out. Most of it was already out, trying to hold a perimeter against a huge group of protestors trying to run into the blast zone. Good god.”
“I hope they got everybody out,” Caleb said.
Jesus. If there were angry, resentful ghosts from a riot, Jeremy did not want to imagine what kind of backlash they might face from people left behind in a nuclear strike.