Chapter Six: Classic Mistakes

  The cat was gone.

  I wasn’t disappointed, exactly. The last thing I needed in the apocalypse was another pet, right? And while I knew Riley and Zelda could be convinced to play nice with a cat, Bear might have been more of a challenge.

  I was mystified, though. I made myself a real cup of coffee and I ate my chocolate chip +10 animal communication cookie standing in my kitchen, wishing I’d had a chance to find out what the cat wanted and how it had gotten inside.

  And then I made a classic mistake.

  Instead of pulling on some clean clothes and heading straight back into the rift, I turned on the television. I wanted to know what was happening in the world. Between the squirrels, the goblins, and the rift in my backyard, I knew that everything had changed, that the world wasn’t the same place today as it had been yesterday.

  At the same time, my power still worked, my house was still my house, my dogs were still my dogs. Well, okay, Zelda had changed, but not in a bad way. Mostly, my dogs were still my dogs. But I wasn’t being swarmed by monsters, nightmares weren’t falling out of the sky on me, and the rift—while being weird as shit—hadn’t exactly been a horror show. The bugs were big, but they squashed just the same as smaller bugs.

  The news, though… that was a horror show.

  An ongoing, ever-changing, completely compelling horror show. You know how disasters flow on television news? The anchors talk, they show some footage, then they’re back in the studio. There’s video from overhead of the fire burning, water rising, storm clouds spiraling—take your pick—and then an interview with a person affected by the disaster, maybe another with a public official, and then back to the studio. After twenty minutes or so, they start repeating the footage and you get to see the same flames or floods or police presence in the parking lot of the mass shooting, and hear the same coverage that you’ve already heard.

  And then they move on. That story is over and it’s time for the heartwarming rescue or the traffic jam or the latest courtroom dramatics in some ongoing trial. Probably a murder or two, probably something about politics. Wash, rinse, repeat.

  Not today.

  Today it was one new story after another—one new disaster after another—and the cycle never made it back to repeat.

  Power outages across the globe, entire cities gone dark. Social media filled with footage of monster attacks, large and small. Texas had swarms of killer bees and the murder hornets in Spain were actually murdering every living thing they came across. Car crashes, plane crashes, trains derailing. Fires out of control. The National Guard deployed, the Army right behind them.

  And, of course, people being people.

  Worse, being the type of people the media loved to elevate, because—people being people, after all—they were what we couldn’t look away from. I was sure mothers were protecting their children and doctors were fighting to save lives and first responders everywhere were working their asses off. But there was also looting and riots, and worst of all, people with powers playing at being supervillains.

  And maybe that was unfair. Maybe the guy strolling around downtown Chicago setting buildings on fire didn’t have control over his new abilities. Maybe the teenager hurling cars at the police was having an understandable mental health crisis. Maybe the guy in Colorado with an enclave who’d declared he was only accepting applications from “beautiful girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty” was… yeah, no. He was a villain. Probably not a supervillain, just a petty little slimy villain, but definitely a villain.

  Still, I couldn’t look away. I sat in front of my television, on my comfortable couch, with my dogs curled up near me and watched the end of the world as we knew it.

  At least I learned a few things, so it wasn’t time entirely wasted.

  First, mana. It was a form of energy that had apparently always existed in our world, but at a very low level compared to most other worlds in the multiverse. Mana interfered with technology, but didn’t outright destroy it. The laws of physics were changing, but they still existed. Apples would still fall from their trees, and if they were caught by mana, that wasn’t so different from if they were caught by a farmer’s hand. Eventually, mana-tech could do everything for us that our traditional tech did now.

  Emphasis, though, on the eventually. Because before that could happen, stuff was gonna break, and the mana levels would be too low to power the systems we truly needed.

  Meanwhile, the mana would be working on the world, influencing our environment in ways both good and bad. For us, initially, it would probably mostly be bad. Animals could become mana-crazed, structures could transform, and people would change, too.

  For people, the System was a way to structure and control those changes, to give us choices, rather than letting the mana simply forcibly evolve us as it would.

  Or at least that’s what the talking head on television said.

  I narrowed my eyes at the screen, wondering where they’d found this guy and whether he knew what he was talking about or was just guessing. Based on my own experiences, I didn’t think he was wrong, necessarily, but I wanted to know what had made him such an expert. And where his biases were. He definitely seemed a little too pro-System, given what the multiverse was putting us through.

  But I might be a little pro-System myself. I glanced at Zelda. She was sitting next to me, head tucked against her folded paws, open eyes fixed on the television screen. Riley was asleep on my other side, Bear was curled up on the rug by the door, but Z was awake and watchful. I wondered if she understood what they were saying. Had her other-species comprehension skills grown along with my own?

  I couldn’t tell, but I didn’t ask her. Instead, I went back to watching. They were talking about the rifts now. They were opening up all over the world, releasing mana into our environment. Also causing damage, destroying buildings, spewing monsters, and generally wreaking havoc.

  At the moment, the monsters were relatively low level. Relatively meaning perfectly capable of killing unarmed human beings and earth native animals, of course. And they were doing so, in appalling numbers. Creatures that spawned inside rifts were innately mana-crazed. Like the squirrels, they were determined to kill. Fighting back was the only way to survive.

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  Fighting back, or finding your way to a safe zone, aka enclave. Apparently my fellow challenge survivor scenarios had used their time more productively yesterday. While I’d been huddling with my dogs, enclaves started popping into existence.

  The good news was that enclaves were protected spaces. No rifts would open up inside an enclave and no monsters could cross their borders.

  The bad news was so much worse. In some locations, the enclave structure replaced whatever had previously existed on the site. Any people present were not politely evicted first. They were just gone.

  And the enclaves had built-in population limits that apparently couldn’t be increased until the enclave itself tiered up. No one knew what that entailed, but desperate parents were pounding on glowing walls made of blue light around the world, trying to get their children inside.

  I had to stop watching then.

  A less marginally viable person would probably have immediately headed back into the rift to learn everything there was to know about rift management.

  I took a hot bath. With bubbles.

  And then I went onto the internet and started downloading things. All the things. Video courses on fighting for dummies, practical guides to surviving in the woods, instruction manuals on living off-grid. I wanted to get as much information as possible, as quickly as possible, before the internet disappeared. I was racking up the credit card charges like there was no tomorrow. Because, you know, there probably wasn’t.

  By the time I’d finished my TV binge, my bath, and my downloading shopping spree, it was full dark outside. I’d lost the whole day to… well, call it information gathering. That sounds better than wallowing. (It might have been wallowing.)

  I’d fed the dogs between the bath and the spree, but I ate my own dinner—leftover cold pasta alfredo, cooked on such a different day—standing at the kitchen counter, shoveling it down, considering my next steps. The rift tutorial?

  I wished I knew how long the power would last. I had solar panels on the roof, a generator in the shed, and solar chargers for my computer and cell phone. Hurricane Preparedness 101.

  Obviously, though, the mana could destroy any or all of those things. I really didn’t know how it ruined tech or what it was doing, just that it would. The rift tutorial wasn’t going anywhere. It would still be in my backyard when I was ready for it. But my ability to turn electronic data into printed data could end at any minute, so if I wanted to be sure that I retained at least some of the information I’d just purchased, I should start printing it.

  The printer was in my dad’s office.

  I hadn’t used it since the first couple months after his death, when settling his estate meant making copies and mailing paperwork. The dust was probably an inch deep in there. But the printer was the only printer I had, which meant if I wanted paper copies, I’d have to hope it still worked.

  I dropped the leftover dish into the sink, set my fork on top of it, and grabbed my laptop. With one last glance out the kitchen window at the splotch of rift marring my otherwise peaceful backyard, I headed toward the office.

  I hesitated at the door. My house wasn’t haunted. And if it was, I didn’t think my dad would be an angry ghost. Our relationship had its ups and downs, but the deepest downs were the results of my mental illness. Living with bipolar disorder isn’t easy, whether it’s yours or belongs to someone you love.

  It took me a while to figure that out, though. His side of it, I mean. And by the time I did, well, he didn’t want to talk about “emotional shit” and I didn’t want to push, and then it was too late.

  Maybe that’s why I felt like a trespasser in the house that used to be his, why it never felt like mine.

  Or maybe my house was haunted, and the office was where my ghostly dad was spending his afterlife.

  I turned the knob and pushed opened the door, a little disgusted with myself. I wasn’t really scared of my dad’s ghost, was I?

  The room was dark, stale with dust and old paper. I paused to let my eyes adjust, trying to remember where the lamps would be. One standing by his chair, another on his desk. I took a step into the room, then froze, heart leaping into my throat.

  Eyes.

  Eyes were gleaming at me out of the dark. Twin golden eyes, hovering chest-high across the room.

  I wanted to scream, but no sound came out.

  Behind me, Zelda barked once. A single, firm woof. Smells like cat.

  I exhaled on a rush of relief that felt like summer rain.

  Cat.

  Of course, it was the cat. Because the cat didn’t care about closed doors.

  “Jesus, cat, you scared me,” I said.

  The cat’s answering meow was precise, determined. And as clearly as if we were sitting together over a cup of tea, I heard: My name is not Jesus. Nor is it Cat. I am the General Ulysses S. Grant. You may refer to me as the General.

  My eyes had adjusted enough that the light from the living room showed me the shapes of furniture, the shadows still dark. The cat was sitting on the back of my dad’s armchair. I crossed to the desk, turned on the light, then looked back at the cat.

  The General Ulysses S. Grant, huh? Which one of my neighbors would name their cat after a Yankee?

  Zelda had padded into the room behind me. She sat on the floor by the desk, regarding the General with skeptical brown eyes. She lifted her muzzle into the air and sniffed, nostrils flaring. Why are you here, Cat? Cats are not pack.

  “Hey.” I twitched my index finger in her direction, saying, in dog, Don’t be rude. He’s a guest.

  Zelda flicked her ear at me. Guest? Or interloper?

  If Bear had said that, I might have been worried. Well, after I fainted with surprise at her complex vocabulary and sophisticated syntax. But I knew Zelda wasn’t serious, because none of the fur along the back of her neck had lifted. The animal communication cookie meant I was understanding her on a whole new level. Not just words, but tone.

  After a day of mostly fear and grief, it was a strange pleasure to be understanding my girl so clearly. Like getting an unexpected dessert at the chow hall in jail.

  The General uncoiled, rising from a crouch into a regal sit, tail curling neatly around his front paws. Had I known of your presence, Madame Dog, and that of your colleagues, I might not have sought refuge at this place.

  He lifted one paw and licked it, claws flaring. This chamber bears no trace of canine occupation, however. I hoped it might be suitable for a short-term stay.

  With Zelda, I had an absolute certainty that I was understanding her language, both tone and meaning. With the General, not so much. I thought I was getting the gist, but I might have been projecting.

  Or maybe… huh.

  I eyed him carefully, searching for every nuance in his body language. The flaring claws—was that a warning? The licked paw—a conciliatory note, perhaps?

  And then it clicked.

  He was a cat, not a dog. He didn’t have a dog’s innate, instinctive honesty. Dogs are terrible liars. They don’t usually try to lie and when they do, it’s usually so obvious that it’s more funny than convincing.

  But cats could lie.

  The formality, the assuredness, those were a front. A mask to disguise a small, frightened creature doing his best to be brave, to be dignified. The General had been hiding in here for hours, alone in the dark. No food, no water, trapped in a house with three dogs and a strange human, in a world that wasn’t making sense.

  That’s why I was having such a hard time reading his language. He was pretending. The assured language on the surface, the words he was trying to convey, didn’t align with the tells my twenty points in the animal communication skill and my twenty-two points in the perception attribute were revealing to me.

  A red dot blinked in the corner of my eye.

  Almost automatically, I opened my notifications.

  Skill gained: +2 to Animal Communication. +1 to Animal Handling.