My first rule for finding safe houses is that we go as far from the last ones as we can. The Redding found Calico J and I in our first one after only two days. When we picked up Ditzy, that put us into a completely new neighborhood, so we bunkered down... we lasted twice as long there, and four days still isn't that impressive in the grand scheme of things, but you can't really expect better in the middle of the apocalypse. Or so I thought. I decided to test the distance thing for the next safe house, and we were safe there for a whole week.
Dawn is just painting the sky coral-pink when we slip out of the house. The Redding in the basement had gathered to a sizable puddle by the time we left, but Ditzy was right: it had only found a small crack. Better than the last basement, which had an inch of the stuff on the floor by the time any of us found it. I don't know what the owners of that house would have done in the winter; I'm told the storms that beat up this coastline are flooders when they have a mind to be.
I'm tired. Calico J and Patrick aren't helping; J keeps yawning into his fist, and Patrick skulks along at the back of the group looking like death warmed over. He's a bit taller than I am, but he somehow always manages to make himself look small. It doesn't help that he's a skinny enough kid that Calico J keeps trying to feed him.
Ditzy alone isn't showing any trace of having woken up at three AM. She insists on walking beside the sidewalk—something-something our turn to occupy the road, something-something show of dominance; I don't think she even hates cars, she just likes being obstructive. Her head is up and her eyes sparkle as she surveys the empty scenery. There's really nothing around. We haven't seen another survivor in weeks, and even the birds are gone. There's no sign of Sleepers. Still, Ditzy twirls her baseball bat in one hand in a show of attack-readiness, or maybe just a very lethal fiddly toy. It's making Patrick nervous.
Calico J moves up beside me once we're out of the neighborhood. "Where are you thinking?"
"Uptown east side. It's far enough from the last two places, and the land there's a bit higher, too; if we're lucky, it should be at least a little harder for the Redding to reach us there. The one tricky thing is going to be food."
He huffs a laugh. "In uptown east side? Yeah, no kidding."
"I mean, there are restaurants. Very fancy restaurants. We could try cracking into a few of those to see what they have in their pantries."
"Sounds like an adventure," chips in Ditzy with a too-bright grin. I already know there won't be any lockpicking or subtle entry if she's involved, but right now I'm honestly too tired to care. If she wants to smash in a front window or two, we can deal with getting sued after humanity's found its way out of the apocalypse.
"Isn't there a good Indian restaurant up on Banokik street?" says Calico J. "Can we start there? I want to restock on spices."
"You're in charge of food, man. We can start wherever you want. I just find safe houses."
Okay, that's not entirely true. But if it was me in the kitchen, we'd be eating one-pot basics like chili or dal for days on end, and that idea got vetoed the moment Ditzy found out Calico J can cook. We still do a rotation, but I'm not the one finding a use for mace or amchur powder just because they sound fun.
Calico J pulls out his phone. I'm about to drop a reminder that the internet went out five weeks ago, but he's already two steps ahead of me, naturally; it's just his contact project again. He whoops as two bars of service flicker at the top of his screen. A local cell tower got in on the electricity redistribution last night, then, and managed to recharge its backup batteries.
I turn my eyes back to street names as we wend our way towards the poshest part of town. The only sounds for the next half-hour are our own feet, the rustle of an October breeze, tumbling leaves, and the near-inaudible tapping of Calico J's phone keyboard. I'm surprised he's still got battery. We've been sharing around my solar charger, but I'm pretty sure he last used it more than half a week ago.
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.
I backpedal and stick my head out the door. "Ditzy? Two in here, and there might be at least one more around. Can you help me move these ones?"
She emerges from another room down the hallway with her nose wrinkled. "Can't we leave them and use the other rooms?"
"It's got the biggest bed."
"This is a multimillion-dollar house, M. There are, like, twenty thousand guest rooms. We could each have our own if we wanted it. And I'd rather sleep in one that doesn't smell like people have been lying in it for the last six weeks."
It's lucky, at least, that whatever keeps the Sleepers alive also seems to deal with their bodily functions. Ditzy's exaggerating, but she's also not entirely wrong. The air in here is stale.
"The dad's in the bathroom," says Ditzy, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. "I think he hit his head when he fell."
"Please tell me he's still alive?"
"I mean, unless someone can be unalive and still breathing..."
"Good enough."
I don't care about a concussion or even some blood on the floor so long as we don't have to deal with an actual corpse. I've seen stuff over the last six weeks, but a putrefying body is one I have yet to add to my bingo card. I hope I never do.
I follow Ditzy back to the bathroom. There is a bit of blood on the floor, but more prominent is the pulsing, split vein of Redding running out from under the toilet lid and down to the floor where the man lies. I grimace. He's on his back already, which means we're going to stain the carpet on our way to the master bedroom. Calico J's not good with blood or its lookalikes.
At least the man had the decency to fall with his feet pointed towards the door, making our lives easier. Ditzy and I each grab a foot. A squelching sound heralds the first shift of the body, and the smell of Redding floods the room. It's somewhere between mold and swamp, unpleasant no matter how many times you're exposed to it. I try to breathe through my mouth.
The man's movement exposes the fat, red smear on the floor that all Sleepers leave behind. It's Redding. As far as we can tell, they're all connected to the ground and probably the water system via tendrils of Redding, and it's just as gross as it sounds. Grosser still is what happens if you move them. The Redding left behind begins to retract in on itself. It slithers back into the toilet veins, and by the time we've dumped the man with his presumed-wife and presumed-child, even the main vein has retracted into the toilet and vanished down the pipes without a trace.
A door closes downstairs. "All clear outside," Calico J calls up the stairs. "Should I test the water?"
"Give it a minute," I call back. "The pipes on the south side might need a bit of time to clear."
It all comes from the same place anyway, which means there's Redding in the water whether we like it or not. But it's the principle of the thing. I flush the toilet to hasten the Redding's retreat, for good measure.
"I'm unpacking the food," calls Calico J.
"Wait for the water. Why don't you go check the basement, if you're free?"
I hear a bag land back on the floor. Patrick says something, too quiet for me to hear, and the two of them peel off into their own conversation. At least that will keep Calico J distracted until we can confirm the house is safe enough to stay in.
I jump nearly out of my skin as glass shatters behind me. I wheel around to find Ditzy standing beside the mantelpiece over the electric fireplace in the master bedroom. A picture frame lies facedown on the floor beside her, glass scattered all around.
Ditzy is smiling, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Oops. Sorry, I bumped it by accident."
She's not even bothering to back up the lie. The tip of her baseball bat rests on the mantelpiece where I'm sure the picture stood a moment ago.
"Don't scare me like that," I say. "Why don't you go check the basement, too? I'll finish cleaning up here."
She leaves without a word. Only when she's gone do I pick up the picture frame. The picture inside shows an attractive, smiling, straight or straight-passing white family like you'd expect to see copy-pasted from a toothpaste ad that hasn't figured out the concept of diversity points. All three members are right now sprawled on the floor behind me.
I go to return the picture to the mantelpiece on reflex, but stop myself. Ditzy might be crazy, but I know she hates her family. This one must remind her of them. I set the picture face-down on the floor again, then leave the room and lock the door behind me. I'm halfway down the stairs when something else drops on the main floor, followed by a whoop and Calico J's shout.
"Meg? Meg! We've got a reply!"
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