Red Rover | gxg | Wattys 2023 Winner | ✔

(2) Talking Sinks and Other Atrocities

Dripping.

It's coming from the kitchen. Leaky taps are common, but six weeks on the run from a water-based apocalypse have left me sharply attuned to anything that sounds watery. I follow the noise. Sure enough, the kitchen tap is dripping. I stand and stare at it for a while before I realize what feels off: where most such taps drip at regular intervals, this one wastes water in a fancier manner, varying its drips in random patterns with an occasional dribble thrown in. There's something in the pipes.

Calico J is poking through cupboards and Patrick is keeping watch out a window, as he often does. I wait for flour to be found before informing them both of what I'm about to do.

"Testing something. Stay back."

Both step away obediently, and I turn on the tap.

For a moment, there's just water. It gutters and coughs, and I'm about to worry that I misjudged bad plumbing when blood-red liquid spurts from the tap. I leap back. So do Patrick and Calico J, the latter of whom drops a cuss in Spanish that sounds more colorful than any English counterpart. A jug's worth of Redding pours into the sink and swirls there before the tap switches back to water. The water drains. I shut off the tap. The Redding keeps swirling.

"Leave, you fucker," I growl. I tested this because I want to keep on top of any new Redding behavior, but I don't actually like finding new things. This town has been apocalypse-stable for the last six weeks, and as far as I'm concerned, if it's not getting better, the least it can do is stay that way.

The Redding drains. The pipes make a deeply sketchy popping sound as they fill, until the last of the red stuff vanishes with a sucking sound and a loud, triple bang that makes us all jump.

"Good riddance to you, too," I say.

"Glad we didn't pick this one to live in," says Calico J.

"No kidding." Forget the Redding. That plumbing is three leaks and a rupture waiting to happen. We're only midway through October, but if we make it to colder weather and the water's still running by then, the last thing I want to deal with is frozen pipes. "Should we—"

I'm interrupted by a knock on the front door. Patrick grabs Calico J's arm. I recognize the knock pattern enough to hide the lurch of my own heartbeat. That's Ditzy.

"Let's go," I say. I'm not at all worried about Ditzy being left outside without us, but I would like to leave this house and its resident Redding alone. We've got what we came for.

Ditzy has feigned death in a porch chair when we open the door. The ruse fails on account of her knock a moment ago, plus the strand of hair that the breeze blows across her eyelashes, making her eyelid twitch. She pops up when I call out the detail, knowing full well that she would respond to nothing less, and that Patrick's nerves are already shot from the Redding encounter. The last thing he needs is a Ditzy possum impersonation.

"Still got the book?" I say.

A sly smile creeps across Ditzy's face, and I realize she's set me up for something a moment too late. She draws the book from inside her denim jacket, right against her chest, with sultry slowness and a suggestive look.

I spin away, my cheeks flaring. "We're going home."

It's automatic: a different part of my brain intervening on the part that has been rendered useless by the demonstration, and equipping me to flee. Ditzy's giggle hits my back like cupid's arrows as she and the others follow me out the gate. Calico J is probably killing himself laughing internally, but he spares me my dignity and says nothing all the way back to the house.

We all start learning Morse code that afternoon.

That feels like studying for finals all over again. The headache. The sounds around me beginning to zone in and out of logical interpretation when I have to focus for too long. All of us sprawled out across the couches and the living-room rug. Ditzy taps dot-dash patterns to Calico J while he wizards dinner out of whatever dribs and drabs Patrick and I scavenged that morning. He says he has an easier time learning things out loud, and with people. Ditzy's the same. In half an hour, they're talking in knocks and scratches like some kind of ghoul pair. I swear there are days I'm convinced they're both geniuses who hide among us plebs for fun.