Red Rover | gxg | Wattys 2023 Winner | ✔

(4) Safe as Houses

The contact project's complete lack of success hasn't stopped Calico J yet. He got the brainwave two weeks ago. Combing through his apps in search of ways to save battery, he rediscovered a group chat that some cryptocurrency scammer started months ago and added about a bajillion numbers to. They all started leaving immediately, of course. He did, too, but not before some three hundred people did the same, leaving a string of little "[number] has left the chat" messages whose very existence was evidence of sentient humans on the other side of the screen. He's been texting these numbers one by one ever since. Hello, we're survivors. Are you still awake and able to read this message?

"Pffft."

I raise an eyebrow at him.

He shows me the phone. The number he just texted has replied with some variant of, "Hi, I'm lonely and live in your city, do you want to meet?" that even autocorrect couldn't salvage. It's followed by a picture of a very scantily clad woman.

"Troll it," says Ditzy. "I love trolling bots. Their algorithms go scrambly when you tell them you're gay."

"I don't want to waste battery." Calico J looks mournful. "But that sounds like fun."

I nudge him. "Stay on track. You don't know how long the cell service will last."

For a variety of reasons, I don't put much faith in connecting with other survivors, but he does, so that's all I really care about. Calico J sighs and goes back to texting. When Ditzy's turned her attention elsewhere, I pull out my own phone. I have no new messages.

I'm probably kidding myself if I think a bit of high ground will even slow the Redding in its search for us. It's in the water. Humans can't live without water. Maybe there are places arid enough that the Red Rain itself hasn't reached them, but my family lives twenty hours inland, and the last I heard from them was Red Thursday.

I check my water bottle. The latest refill is still clear. It was hard to tell in the dark.

The lawns and houses around us expand as we enter the uptown east side. I begin to scan each one more intentionally. We want something with a raised foundation and good landscaping; a house unlikely to flood when it rains in a normal way, just in case that helps keep out the aforementioned water-based threat. One car or a single garage is preferable. In my experience, only one car means a house's residents were less than filthy-rich, and therefore more likely to cook for themselves or at least have non-perishable food in the house. A third floor also isn't a bad thing. As far as I'm concerned, the farther we can sleep from the ground, the better.

I look for other threats, too: any risks or signs of fire, flooding, or damage to telephone or electrical wires; any signs of looting; and any Sleeper damage. Just in case there are other survivors who managed to wake one. Sleepers never move far from where they're woken, and they don't stay up long if their target escapes, but you never know.

We circle through a couple of blocks before I find a house that meets all my criteria. Calico J and Patrick scout the outside while Ditzy follows me in. The main floor is empty. We climb an ungodly number of stairs and start checking rooms. I grimace as I open the door to the master bedroom to find a woman and child on the floor. They're Sleeping. It would look like normal sleep if not for the too-red veins that web their closed eyelids and lurk beneath the skin of their pale faces, necks, and arms. They're even laid out side by side.

The woman doesn't have a phone on her. That means someone else called her name directly, and it can't have been her kid; he's down, too. Unless they said each other's names in perfect synchrony and then just so happened to fall side by side like this, there was someone else in the house.