***

After Madeline convinced me to literally come out of the closet, I sat myself down on my old bed, still crying, of course.

Honestly I’d always been a bit of a crybaby to begin with, but the last couple of days had made it way worse. Which was only fair, if you asked me. I think most people expect that when extraordinary events happen to them, they’ll find some sort of inner strength that then allows them to push through adversity and come out the other end a stronger person.

Speaking from a fair amount of experience, I mostly find that adversity just sucks. Tends to make you less a ‘stronger person’ and more just plain old traumatized.

Granted, there’s the whole survival mode thing. You get pushed hard enough and emotions kinda just shut off along with higher brain function, allowing you to just focus on whatever needs doing at the time. That’s temporary though, and it doesn’t make you stronger or anything, you just turn into an animal for a while.

And I wasn’t in mortal peril at that point, so my emotions were very much active and working.

Madeline was in the doorway, as she couldn’t really fit her wheelchair into my room. It was a small space in general; often it felt more like a furnished coffin than a proper living space. That would have been less of a problem if I felt safe in the living room, but Jacob could get access to me there.

I was explaining this to Madeline between sobs. It was less that it felt like a good time for an emotional confession, and more that the words were pouring out of me without any way for me to stop them. Madeline, to her credit, was being quite nice about it.

Though after telling her about the time Jacob slammed a chair kitchen floor until it broke while screaming at me, she snapped. I won’t repeat exactly what she said, as the profanities she spewed on my behalf were not really safe for human consumption, but she started with a statement about shoving that chair into an unfortunate location, before launching into an impassioned and specific soliloquy about highly tortuous varieties sodomization and some creative uses for an apple corer.

It got a laugh out of me, and I’ll be honest, seeing her get so upset on my behalf did make me feel better.

“I mean Jesus Christ Leo, you told me he was an asshole, but not that he was this abusive.” She complained, having finished her rant.

“I didn’t want to gripe about it too much.” I squeaked. While I knew Madeline pretty well, we were just friends and had only been acquainted for about six months. I hadn’t wanted to burden her unnecessarily.

“Have you talked to anyone else about this?” She asked.

“No. I haven’t even wanted to admit to myself what was happening. Much less anyone else. If finding me curled up in my fucking closet didn’t make it clear, my feelings on the subject are pretty raw.”

“I’d gathered that much, yes.” she replied. “Honestly, if I get my hands on that asshole I will very likely rip him to shreds.”

Normally I wouldn’t take that statement literally, but given her recently acquired superhuman abilities, she was probably capable of doing all that and more if she put her mind to it.

Not that I was honestly sure I’d mind if she did.

The problem was whether Jacob had a display too. To his credit, He’d never resorted to outright violence before, even when he’d had a fit.

Now though, violence seemed to be a much more accessible form of interaction than it used to be. Both Madeline and I had killed a fair share of monsters at that point. The same abilities we used to kill those monsters would probably do just as good a job at killing people.

“Leo?” Madeline was looking at me with concern. I’d gotten lost in my own head again, apparently.

It would probably be a good Idea to share my newfound worries with her rather than sit on them.

“Sorry, just thinking.” I said.

“About what?”

“Well, what if Jacob has a display?”

“Oof. That’d be pretty nasty.” She grimaced.

“Right? And if he does, well, I’m not sure what he would even do with it. Even being on the other end of his shit for months I still can’t get a read on that guy.”

“I can’t imagine he’d do anything good with it.” Madeline said.

“Yeah, probably not. I guess the question then is how bad he’d be.”

“I’d think pretty fucking bad, from what I’ve heard. Do you think otherwise?” She asked. I thought on that for a second. I also got up to grab a drink out of my fridge. Crying my heart out had made me parched,and my voice was all cracked too.

“I don’t know,” I croaked, “Jacob just doesn’t make any sense to me. Never has.”

“I’m not sure there’s much to make sense of. He’s an evil asshole.” She spat. I handed her a bottle of tea, and grabbed another for myself.

It was cold brewed honeybush. It was mildly sweet, and had a soothing finish, almost like mint. It was a personal favorite. Madeline popped the lid off the glass bottle and took a swig.

“That’s good.” she said, seemingly surprised by the flavor. “What is it?” She held the bottle up to her eye and read the label. I took a gulp of tea myself as she did so.

“Oh, does this stuff have actual honey in it?” she asked.

“Nope. The plant it comes from is just called honeybush. I don’t know why. It’s good tea though. Mild, but I like that better than the bitter kind.”

“Fair enough. But back to Jacob, are you worried we’re gonna have to fight him?”

“A bit. He was never outright violent with me, but he definitely liked his intimidation tactics. I think it was some sort of weird dominance thing. He had to make sure that he knew he was superior, and that meant putting me down. But like I was just telling you with the chair-”

My voice cracked again. I took another sip of tea, and a deep breath before continuing.

“That was unusual for him. He didn’t usually do anything that he couldn’t weasel his way out of. Like he would shoulder check me, but he’d pretend it was an accident. Or whenever he broke something, he’d usually make sure no one was around to see him do it. But that night, he smashed the damn thing right in front of me.”

“I have some things of his I’d like to smash as well.” She quipped.

“And I’d probably help you, but he actually got in trouble for that one. He couldn’t even lie his way out of it because my other roommates walked in on him as it was happening. And that’s the thing, while he would normally be more careful than that, occasionally he’d just have a fucking fit, and do something dumb.”

“It kinda sounds like he’d be capable of doing a lot of harm, Leo.”

“You're probably right.” I took a deep breath, let it out, and downed the rest of my tea. “I’m just not sure what to do about it.”

“Well, I’m not sure we have to do anything in particular. Unless you really want to confront him.” Madeline said.

“I kind of feel like, just leaving it would be the easiest option, but I’m not sure that would be the right thing to do.” I replied.

“Leo, put aside what’s right or wrong for a moment. What do you want to do?”

That was a good question.

What did I want?

“I think I want out of here first. I don’t like it here, and I don’t like the Idea of running into Jacob right away. And then I’m gonna think about it.”

“Fair enough. Let’s grab your stuff and scoot.”

So we did.

***

We had just made it to the roof. I held the door for Madeline as she went through. She probably could have made it through just fine on her own, but she was tolerant enough to allow me my little acts of courtesy.

The roof was clear, thankfully. We’d decided in advance that if it looked safe we’d take the opportunity to see the sights, hoping to get a better grasp on the state of the city. With the internet to our building seemingly cut, and no access to cell service we had no Idea how far the monster based disaster that we were experiencing went.

Presumably far enough to disrupt search and rescue operations, as we hadn’t seen any hide nor hair of law enforcement or any similar authority. Checking with our own peepers couldn’t hurt regardless, so we peered through the Reinforced wire fence that covered the perimeter of the rooftop.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The neighboring building looked much the same, a couple windows were busted, one wall on the first floor of an office building still had that truck size hole in it, and we could occasionally see things crawling around on the streets and the sides of buildings.

No people though. All the cars we could see were bereft of their drivers. The major thoroughfare just to the west had seemingly been in the midst of a particularly bad traffic jam, too. I saw some pookas on the top of a small delivery truck, seemingly examining the area in much the same way we were. A few more crawled between the lanes of vehicles, occasionally scratching at one car or another when it caught their interest.

We also saw smoke. Something we couldn’t see was burning in the distance, and when the wind shifted I could smell it too. Smelled like wood smoke, mostly. Too much of it for a simple campfire though, so probably a building of some sort. Hopefully whoever inhabited it was fine, but I couldn’t see myself rushing out to go check.

But is hiding here really the best option?

Before I could pursue that particular thought any further, Madeline got my attention. “Leo, I think I see a person!” She shouted.

“Really!? Where!?” Neither of us had seen another person aside from each other since the day before yesterday. Just finding evidence that we weren’t the only two people left alive on earth would be huge.

“Four o’clock, right next to the old game exchange!” I knew the place she was talking about, the locally run shop traded in all sorts of old media from vinyls to cassettes to video game carts that had been released nearly half a century ago.

Madeline was looking through the lens of her rangefinder, and she handed it to me so I could get a better look. Peering through the lens of the scope, I found the person in question after a couple seconds search. They appeared to be in the middle of breaking and entering.

“Well, that’s not Ideal.” I said.

We could hear the sound of breaking glass from here.

“No, but at least there are people.” she responded brightly.

“I suppose so. Can’t imagine why they’d be breaking into that old place though.”

“I’m not sure either. If I was the pillaging sort I’d be going after food, myself.”

“You think they got abilities?” I asked.

“They’d have to, right? How would they get past all the monsters otherwise?”

“Well guns work, to a certain extent. And fire or electricity works on the bloptopi, though that’s a bit harder to manage.” I said.

“Wouldn’t we have heard the gunshots, Leo?”

“Not if they happened when we were in the barrier.”

“I suppose we wouldn’t, no.” She paused for a moment, observing the distant figure pick their way around the broken safety glass. “Though I bet we’ll find out what they’re packing if we keep watching ‘em.”

“Sure. I got nowhere else to be.” I agreed, settling in to continue watching the show.

The individual who had busted the window to the game exchange was soon joined by another individual who appeared from a nearby alleyway. They seemed to argue for a bit, before entering the building together. We lost sight of them once they did so.

Madeline and I both continued to watch for a while. We couldn’t see inside the building at all due to our viewing angle, so I was getting bored.

I was just about to open my mouth when I heard a gunshot.

“Oh, looks like they use guns.” Madeline said.

“Hopefully they use them well, then, ‘cause that’s gotten the attention of the beasties nearby.”

“And a lot of them too. But they’re all stopping some ways away. That’s weird.” I saw what she was talking about. A mixed collection of pookas and undead had formed a perimeter around the game exchange. None of them got any closer than about two or three car lengths away, though.

“That is downright strange. Are they being stopped by a barrier?” I wondered aloud.

“We wouldn’t have heard the gunshot if that was the case.” Madeline pointed out.

“Right, but what if they put up a barrier right after that first shot?” I replied.

“Oh, that might-” Madeline was interrupted by another gunshot. “Never mind. Apparently not a barrier.”

“Sure sounds that way.” I agreed. “I wonder what’s up then?”

“Don’t know. Maybe an ability of some sort?” Madeline speculated as more gunshots rang out. I counted six in total, though no more sounded after that.

“Do you think we should try and help?” I asked.

“As heartless of me as it is to say, I don’t think we’d make it in time if they’re in trouble. And there’s a few too many guys for us to fight through, regardless.”

I didn’t think less of her for the assessment. It was accurate after all, and we’d nearly died enough times as it was.

I was about to say as much when one of the two who had entered the building stumbled out of it. They were walking with a noticeable limp, but they stopped short after noticing the crowd they’d drawn.

“Are you sure there's nothing we can do?” I asked. Seeing them injured like that made me quickly realize that I didn’t want to have to watch a person die.

“Fuck, I don’t know!” Madeline hissed, clearly not excited about how the situation was developing either.

“Well, I’m thinking we take a couple potshots at the zombies and see if we can get enough of their attention to clear a path.” I said, unwilling to really just watch this all happen.

“I’m not sure it’ll help, but it’s better than nothing,” she agreed, "You gonna use your new guy for that?” she asked.

“No. Frankly I don’t trust his aim enough to not hit whoever is down there.”

“That bad?”

“He couldn’t make a shot to save his life in the show. I don’t know if that’ll apply here, but I don’t feel like taking the risk.” I pulled the revolver from my inventory as I spoke, pulling the hammer back and taking aim.

I fired off a shot. I couldn’t really tell if I hit anything. Either way, none of the dastardly critters down there seemed to care. The tiny silhouette of the person down there jolted upright, so at least they noticed. I took another shot. I’d found this out yesterday, but the percussion of the 1860 army was pretty loud.

Yet the gathering horde didn’t seem to care at all. They were singularly focussed on the poor soul stranded on the sidewalk in front of the game and vinyl joint.

“They just do not give a shit, do they?” I cursed.

“Not the ones in the circle no, but look at the lizard over there.” Madeline pointed. Sure enough, it had turned its head to look directly at us, though it wasn’t doing anything but staring.

“Try shooting at him, Leo.” I wasn’t sure why that’d help, but for lack of a better Idea, did so anyway. I missed entirely, but I did manage to shatter a nearby window. The lizard found this to be sufficient cause for alarm, and promptly inflated its neck to scream at us. And scream it did.

Jesus that thing was ear piercing. Neither of us ruptured an eardrum, probably thanks to the distance.

That got the attention of the gathered mob of awful things below us. They quickly disbanded their encirclement of the injured would-be robber in order to swarm our building. Which accomplished our original objective, I guess.

“How’d you know that’d work, Madeline?”

“I was going over the timeline of events yesterday in the shower, and the earliest event on said timeline was when I got screamed at. So I thought maybe that scream had attracted everything to the building.”

“Oh. Guess you were right then.” I said.

“Part of me hoped I wasn’t, but at least now we know that the lizards draw aggro.” We looked at the unruly, inhuman congregation below us. They were trying to break through the glass windows that comprised much of the lobby. The glass was the Reinforced kind, but I wasn’t sure how much battering it could take.

“Miss Madeline?”

“Yes Leonardo?”

“Are we gonna be ok?”

“Good question. I have no Idea.”

“Well that doesn’t inspire much confidence.” I said.

“Well excuse me, I didn’t realize that it was my job to be inspiring confidence.” She replied.

“Smartass. Do you think we should be doing something, though?”

We were just sitting there and staring. Madeline had pulled her chair up perpendicular to the fence, allowing her to lean over the side of it and look down at all of our adoring fans.

I looked at the revolver in my hand. I didn’t think a single bullet was going to be much help here, so I put it back in my inventory.

On the plus side, the possible criminal across the street had escaped execution, though we still hadn’t seen their partner leave the game exchange.

We were pointedly ignoring the fact that that probably meant they were dead. What had killed them and injured the other was a mystery that would have to be solved when we weren’t being surrounded on all sides by things that wanted to eat us.

Madeline opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by an odd sound, like a high pitched squeal that stopped and started with a staccato rhythm.

Madeline swore, and reached for her sword. We’d strapped it to the back of her chair with bungee cables, and she had to draw it left handed because her right arm couldn’t comfortably reach behind her head.

She’d practiced enough this morning that she was able to draw it smoothly and I soon saw why she thought it was necessary to do so. A lizard was climbing the fence. And with my gun put away I was in no position to react. I fumbled with my inventory to retrieve it, but Madeline was faster than me, as always. She dashed over and skewered the lizard just as it crested the fence and started bulging its neck.

It deflated with a comically flatulent hiss.

“You know, we really should have seen that one coming.” I said.

“Yeah, but what can you do?” Madeline said, peering down the side of the building. “Oh hey, there’s a pooka climbing up the gutter pipes.”

“And there’s another one over here too. We got some time before they make it up though, wanna scram?” I asked.

“Sounds good to me. Hey, fire off that last shot in the revolver if you would, we can reload it then.”

“Sure, give me a sec.” The fencing prevented me from aiming directly down, so I couldn’t hit either of the baddies climbing up the sides of the building. I could aim for the massive crowd below, though. I stuck the barrel in between a gap in the wiring, pivoted the muzzle down, and fired.

I didn’t spend much time checking if I hit anything, more concerned by getting the fuck out. Madeline took the lead and I followed up in the rear my little animatronic fellows holding on for dear life as she bumped her way down the stairs.

We made it back to her room, put up a fresh barrier, and started discussing our next course of action as Madeline reloaded her gun for me.

I would eventually need to learn how to do it properly myself, but it wasn’t precisely the best time for it.

“So are we gonna hide here while they break into the building, or are we planning any sort of defensive effort, you think?” I asked.

“I mean hiding here is almost certainly the safest option, but ethically speaking I’m not sure I’m totally comfortable with it.”

“Really?” I was mildly surprised. While Madeline had proven that she was more than willing to help someone in need if they were in front of her, other than that she didn’t really tend to stretch her neck out.

“Well, I just kind of feel like we made this mess, so leaving for someone else to cleanup doesn’t sit right with me. I mean, they will break in, inevitably.”

“Yeah I agree.”

“The question is how we repel them without dying in the process.” She finished checking the bronze caps on the back of the revolver’s cylinder, and handed it to me.

“I got half an Idea there, actually.” I said, making sure the lethal side of the firearm was pointed away from anything.

“Do enlighten me then, because I got nothing.” She said.

“Tommy there should be capable of dishing out some impressive damage, so we can use him for an opening volley. Then we use the door to the stairs as a choke point, so we only have to deal with a couple of them at a time. We can then retreat up the stairs as needed.”

“That works I guess. The only problem I have with it is that I can’t really go up the stairs and defend myself at the same time.”

“Can’t you just use Accelerate to fling yourself up ‘em again?”

“Yeah, I suppose. Wouldn’t that leave you in a lurch, though?”

“How so?” I asked, tilting my head slightly.

“Well, when launching myself around, I can’t exactly keep pace with you. That’ll leave you a flight below me with nasties on your tail.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna have to take turns. But Four-arms and Tommy here can help cover whoever needs it.”

“Alright. Let’s get down there, then. If they bust through before we can prepare, we’re screwed.”