Apocalypse Parenting

Fordborn will be unavailable for the next three time increments. His client was killed in her sleep by one of the new monsters, and he has requested time off-duty to enact traditional mourning rites.

--Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

When Pointy was able to confer with the system the following morning, it refused to say anything about the new monsters, their odd capabilities, or the timing of their appearance.

We’d still learned quite a bit from other sources, but I almost wished we hadn’t.

Locally, our losses had been fairly light. There were enough people with Announcement to blanket all of the Huntsville metropolitan area, and the biggest danger the paraslugs posed was to the unwary. As long as you could find someone else to stand guard while you slept, the odds that one of the slugs could kill you were incredibly low. Our steadfast loners - like Bunker Benjamin - were stressed about being forced to cohabit with others, but the necessity was hard to deny.

We lost a few stubborn individuals, but no more than we had to any other new monster.

That wasn’t true everywhere.

The Arsenal had been hard at work, sending out communicators across the country. We’d been in touch with Nashville for some time, but in the past few days, we’d made solid contact with Birmingham, Atlanta, Memphis, and many smaller cities. From what I’d heard, we expected to make contact with Louisville within the next day and Charlotte the day after, with hopes to get a team to Washington D.C. by the start of the next Challenge.

I’d hoped that sharing our information with those cities would have given them a similarly robust defense against the paraslugs, but I’d been naive. Sure, we gave our contacts the information, and they shared it as much as they could, but the organization in Huntsville was exceptional. Most cities hadn’t carefully arranged people with Announcement, so they had gaps in their coverage. Most cities hadn’t built up trust in a central leadership, leading to delays as people took time to verify anything they were told before passing on the warnings.

Those gaps and delays got people killed.

A lot of people.

Really, really gruesomely killed, too.

We hadn’t had many casualties locally, but we’d had some, and there’d been several other cases where we’d rescued people who were midway through being paraslug munchies. The slugs took a long time to eat people. They could, with their paralytic agent shutting down all voluntary movement. I’d initially assumed that people would have bled out in short order, but the slugs kept pressure on the wounds they made as they ever-so-slowly dined, often keeping their victims alive for hours.

It technically made the paraslugs less deadly, giving us lots of chances to rescue people, but it also made for absolutely horrifying nightmare fuel.

The rescued victims were all heavily traumatized and missing limbs. Even those who’d taken Regeneration would be far less effective fighters for months, if not years. It reminded me unpleasantly of a historic warlord I’d read about. I couldn’t remember his name, but he’d blinded enemy troops before sending them home, forcing an additional cost on his former enemies as they had to care for thousands upon thousands of newly disabled men.

I didn’t mention that thought, not even to Pointy. The facts were what they were, and we would of course be caring for our wounded. Confirming that the carryover cruelty had been intentional would serve no purpose other than fueling my anger and hatred for the people responsible.

I hardly needed help keeping that fire going.

Instead I threw myself into practice with my newly expanded abilities. I could now keep five medium-sized objects aloft with Telekinesis. I’d contracted someone with Improvised Equipment to turn one of our old baby carriers into a wearable harness for Cassie. I still couldn’t grab her directly, but I could grab the harness and move her around, as long as she didn’t resist me. Even with people too heavy to lift, I could easily tug on a sleeve here or a pauldron there to guide them out of harm’s way.

I was also having a lot of fun with Basic Hologram. It had only middling numeric synergy with my Eidetic Memory biological augment, but the numbers didn’t tell the full story. I’d spoken with others who’d taken the ability and they’d found it useful in many ways. It was an excellent ability for communication, allowing me to point out targets or share static diagrams.

Using it in combat was a little harder, because the ability didn’t do much of the lifting for you. If you had a bad mental image of what you were trying to create, you’d make an unconvincing hologram. These bad images still allowed for surprise attacks, since they hid whatever was behind them, but actual deception? It was generally possible only for a split-second.

That was still enough to be useful in the heat of battle, but the gap between what people had hoped to do with the ability and what they’d managed had been disappointing for almost everyone I’d spoken to, with the exception of an artistic guy who’d won the local perspective-art chalk competition two out of the past five years.

I didn’t have his artistic talent, but what I did now have was a perfect photographic memory. I couldn’t convincingly create things I hadn’t seen before, but if I put up a hologram of something I’d actually seen, no one questioned it.

Micah grabbed at a plate of spacecakes several times before focusing enough to realize that his hand was passing right through it. He shot me an irritated look. “Really, Mom?”

I grinned at him. “The real plate is under the towel next to you.”

Micah reached for it as I dropped my voice. “...Or is it?”

He froze for a second, then cautiously touched the towel twice, his fingers making the fibers bounce. “Yes, it is.”

“Are you sure?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes I’m sure, Mom. You can’t do moving stuff.”

“Or can I?”

“You can’t. And I can feel it.” He frowned at me. “You’re not funny, Mom.”

“Gavin thought I was funny.”

“Gavin thinks everything is funny.”

Cassie and Pointy had been putting in time to experiment with their new abilities as well. Pointy hadn’t quite gotten Cassie’s transport into the mecha form I’d dreamed of, but she had coaxed her partner into something more protective. Rather than an actual animal, Cassie’s transport was now similar in size and structure to one of those battery-operated ride-ons that I’d been hugely jealous of as a kid and never gotten for my own children because I’m a massive hypocrite and because we had no space for one in the garage.

…Which was probably why my parents had never gotten one for me either?

You’d think I would have gotten over that at this point, after multiple decades and the literal end of the world, but I’d caught myself eying Cassie’s little car and trying to convince myself I’d fit in the tiny seats more than once.

Anyway, Cassie’s transport was about the size and shape of one of those things, but Pointy had drawn inspiration for the styling from an old Care Bears book I’d kept from my childhood. The car had a wide pastel smiling face in the front and a fluffy cloud-like body. Two rainbows criss-crossed over the seats, supporting a clear protective bubble. There was enough space for four toddlers, so Arnav and other children often rode alongside her, taking advantage of the extra protection the transport offered. It wasn’t hugely durable, but it could take one or two heavy hits before being destroyed.

Cassie was happy to let others ride in her car, but insisted that she got to be the driver, see-sawing the wheel back and forth with wild abandon. The transport, fortunately, was actually piloted by Pointy, with the wheel being purely decorative, so it proceeded in smooth curves rather than stomach-churning zig-zags.

Another advantage to the transport was that Pointy had been able to shape its airvents with gaps too small to allow the paraslugs, keeping Cassie’s passengers safe even if they dropped off for a midday nap. The slugs would only attack mobile humans if they were cornered or stepped on, but they didn’t hesitate to go after anyone resting or asleep, no matter the situation.

I kept a watch for the paraslugs with Life Sense, allowing my combat groups to root them out of their hiding places and kill them, but this was more useful for getting points than for reducing their numbers. The system replaced them quickly enough. There was no end to the monsters it threw at us.

And Titans, for that matter.

There had been a lot of D-Rex in Huntsville. There hadn’t been a third monster or new threat, even though the next Challenge was now only two days away, but D-Rex were becoming a stunningly regular sight, probably due largely to our success in the previous Challenge.

The Arsenal had been studying the Pylons that had appeared after the end of the last Challenge and determined that they did increase the rate at which both monsters and Titans appeared nearby. The “shifting” of the Pylons’ shape was simply determined by the number of people nearby with bracelets. The closer I got to a Pylon, the larger it would become. The farther away I got, the smaller it was. If no one with a bracelet was in range of a given Pylon, it would shrink in size until it was almost unnoticeable, no larger than a Frisbee.

With me, Priya, George, Micah, Samar, Gavin, Matilda, and Benjamin all victors of the previous Challenge and all living practically on top of each other, our neighborhood was getting a D-Rex every other day, and we were still kiting in just as many from the surrounding area, since we were by far the fort best able to handle them, aside from the Arsenal itself.

I felt guilty about the extra danger, but our ability to deal with the fire-breathing dinosaurs was advanced enough that most considered the extra spawns a net positive, because of the extra points and prizes we’d been earning from taking them down.

Our firefighting crews had gotten hugely practiced at eliminating fires, and the area was now criss-crossed with firebreaks to make their jobs easier. Benjamin’s massive firearms were more than capable of taking down a D-Rex, and he’d become a crack shot.

Most of the Titan’s Hearts had been exchanged for Minor Matter Replicators. Between the extra Titans appearing this week and the ones we’d pulled in from the surrounding area over the past week or two, we had the makings of a small factory. Replicating enough bullets and gunpowder for our own use was trivial, so we’d started exporting to our neighbors. In addition, Mayor Alexandra had even decided that we could spare a 2” cube each day for personal items. Anyone could pay to enter a raffle each morning, and the lucky winner could duplicate pre-Apocalypse candy, makeup, batteries, or whatever suited their fancy. It was a waste in a lot of ways, but Alexandra claimed that the impact on morale was worth it and no one had tried too hard to argue.

All of us had some small luxury we were praying for a chance to replicate.

So when a D-Rex appeared in front of our combat group, we were all quick to retreat back to Fort Autumn, but no one panicked. Gavin wrapped his tail around Micah, lifting him up and carrying him as he jogged, letting his brother face backward and focus on deflecting any fire breaths away from our rearguard.

After verifying that Pointy had accelerated Cassie’s cloudcar to the front of the group, I dropped back to jog next to Gavin so I could talk with Micah. My oldest son wasn’t the only one guarding our backs, and he had the right abilities for the job, but it still made me nervous.

“Be careful, Micah,” I said.

“I’ve done this lots of times, Mom. With my new synergy, it’s not even hard.”

“I know. I know. Just… don’t let yourself get distracted!”

Micah sighed gustily, loud enough to be heard over the sound of our retreat. “Mom. I’m not going to miss the giant dinosaur staring at the sun while it inflates like a frog. It’s really obvious. Really easy.”

“Well, just don’t let your guard down because you think it’s too easy-”

Eligibility verified. Complaint registered. Intensifying.

I almost tripped as the alien announcement disrupted my thoughts. The extra eyes I’d given myself let me have a clear view of the monster, even as I ran. The D-Rex had stopped chasing us and was doing something strange.

No. It was just standing there, but something strange was happening to it. Its skin rippled, contorting unnaturally, like the aftershocks of someone throwing a rock through the surface of reality.

“What the crap?!” Micah said. His voice was shaky, panicked. “Something is wrong! Everybody, RUN!”

Belatedly, I flicked on Analyze. The D-Rex was getting bigger, and its shape was subtly shifting as a hundred tiny apertures appeared across its body.

The rippling stopped abruptly and a blazing wall crackled across the road in front of us, cutting off our escape.