Chapter 4: First Contact

  The long way around took Dave down Elm Court, which was a cul-de-sac he'd driven through maybe twice in four years, and which had apparently decided to handle the apocalypse by becoming a swamp.

  An actual swamp. The asphalt was gone, or rather, it was still there, Dave could feel the hard surface under his boots, but it was covered in three inches of dark water that smelled like a pond. It had things growing in it. Green things. Reedy, thin-stalked plants that had not been there an hour ago and were already knee-high, rising out of the flooded street.

  Dave waded through it. The water was warm, which was wrong for October, and his boots squelched with each step. Emma, from her perch on his back, was fascinated. She kept reaching down toward the water, straining against the carrier straps, making grabbing motions with fingers that opened and closed.

  "No," Dave said. "We don't touch mystery swamp water."

  "Bah," Emma said, in a tone that suggested she disagreed on both ethical and scientific grounds.

  Something moved in the reeds to his left. A ripple, quick and sinuous, cutting a V-shaped wake through the water. Dave stopped. Watched it. It curved away from him, circling wide, and vanished behind a submerged mailbox.

  The mailbox belonged to the Websters. Tim and Diane. They had a daughter in first grade who drew pictures for Emma every time they visited. The mailbox was half underwater and the Webster house had a tree growing through its living room window. Not a normal tree, something angular and dark, with bark that caught the orange light wrong.

  Dave kept walking. Faster now.

  The cul-de-sac was a loop, and the far end connected to a side street that would bring him back to Route 9 past the intersection where the truck-creature had crossed. He was almost there, could see the street connection through the reeds, dry pavement beyond the waterline, when the system pinged.

  ~*~

  Behind you. Three of them.

  ~*~

  Dave turned.

  They were coming out of the reeds. Three of them, low and fast across the water's surface, not wading but skimming, their bodies slicing through the shallows with horrible efficiency. They looked like frogs. Dave's brain said frogs because it needed to call them something, and frogs was the closest category it had.

  They were not frogs.

  They were the size of large dogs. Their skin was slick and dark, mottled green and black, and their mouths were too wide, splitting their heads nearly in half, lined with teeth that were translucent, almost pretty, like shards of sea glass. Their eyes were flat and gold and fixed on him with a focus that was not animal. Animals didn't coordinate. Animals didn't fan out to cut off escape routes. Animals didn't communicate with flickering patterns along their flanks, pulses of bioluminescent light, green to gold to green, passing between the three of them like code.

  These three did. One straight at him. One left, toward the sidewalk. One right, toward a half-submerged car. A flanking pattern. Dave had seen enough nature documentaries to recognize hunting coordination, and enough video games to recognize a mob pull.

  He was the mob.

  Dave planted his feet in the submerged asphalt. Crowbar in his right hand. The grocery bag. He let it drop, and it splashed into the swamp beside him. He'd deal with that later, assuming there was a later.

  The first one leapt.

  It launched itself out of the shallow water with a sound like a wet slap, jaws open, those glass-shard teeth catching the orange light, aimed at Dave's chest. At the carrier. At Emma.

  Everything in Dave compressed into a single point of focus. Older and faster than thought. The crowbar came around. Hips first, then shoulders, then arms, the same rotation he'd used for a thousand defensive plays in college. Except the ball was a three-foot carnivorous frog-thing and the stakes were his daughter's life.

  The crowbar connected mid-air. The impact was enormous. It traveled up his arm and into his shoulder and it felt good, which was a thing he noticed and immediately did not want to think about. The creature went sideways, hit the door of a minivan hard enough to cave in the panel, and dropped into the water.

  It didn't get back up.

  No glitter this time. It just stopped moving. Its body began to dissolve, slowly, the edges going soft and translucent, sinking into the swamp like sugar into hot water. The bioluminescent lights along its flanks pulsed once, a fading green, and went dark.

  Dave didn't have time to watch, because the second one was coming from the left.

  He turned. Too slow. The weight on his back, Emma and the carrier and the go-bag, twenty pounds of baby plus twenty pounds of supplies, shifted his center of gravity a half-second behind his feet. He over-rotated and his left boot slid on something slick beneath the water and the frog-thing's jaws snapped closed on the grocery bag strap instead of his arm.

  It pulled. Hard. The strap cut into Dave's shoulder and jerked him forward. His right boot slipped. He went down on one knee, water surging up his thigh, his chest, cold against his stomach despite its unnatural warmth, and the frog-thing thrashed, shaking the bag like a terrier with a rat.

  The plastic tore. Cans and bottles scattered into the swamp. The formula canister, sealed, it would be fine if he could find it. The Cheerios box, soaked on impact, gone, a cloud of dissolving oat circles spreading across the water. The baby food jar rolled under the minivan. Mrs. Huang's plums disappeared into the reeds.

  And the dish soap.

  The bottle of Dawn hit the water, bounced once off the submerged curb, and rolled toward Dave's knee. He grabbed it without thinking, the same compulsion that had pulled his hand to it in the kitchen, the same deep, certain instinct. His fingers closed around the blue bottle and something clicked into place. In him. As if a circuit had been completed that he hadn't known was open.

  Emma shrieked. An excited shriek. The shriek she made when Dave bounced her on his knee or when the frog monsters in his video game popped onscreen.

  The third frog-thing was airborne. Coming at his face. Jaws wide, glass teeth glistening, close enough that Dave could see the inside of its mouth, Ridged, pink, glistening with something that was not saliva.

  He did the only thing he could think of. He raised the bottle and squeezed.

  A stream of blue dish soap hit the creature in the mouth.

  It popped.

  Different from Todd. No rainbow, no glitter shower. This was faster, simpler, almost elegant. The dish soap touched the creature and the creature burst into a single iridescent sphere. A perfect soap bubble, enormous, rainbow-sheened, floating for a half second in the orange light before it popped too. A soft, satisfying sound. Pop.

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  And then nothing. No residue. No smell. Just the faint, clean scent of dish soap hanging in the warm air where a monster had been.

  Dave knelt in the swamp, dish soap in hand, and stared at the empty space.

  "What," he said.

  The second frog-thing, the one still tangled in his ruined grocery bag, froze. Its gold eyes moved from Dave's face to the dish soap bottle. It released the bag. Slowly. Carefully. The way you set something down when you've realized the person across from you is holding a weapon you do not understand.

  Dave pointed the bottle at it.

  It ran. Skimmed across the water's surface and vanished into the reeds so fast it left a wake that rocked the submerged mailbox.

  Dave stood up. His knees were soaked. His heart was running at a tempo that should have required medical intervention. He was holding a bottle of Dawn dish soap aimed at an empty swamp, one-handed, like an action hero with the dumbest weapon in cinema history.

  Emma was laughing.

  Laughing. Full belly laughs, the kind that shook her whole body in the carrier, the kind that came from somewhere deep and true and made her face go red and her eyes squeeze shut. She kicked her feet and flapped her hands and laughed at the empty air where the frog-thing had been. She laughed the way she laughed at the game. The exact same laugh. The one Dave had heard a hundred times from the bouncer next to his computer while frog monsters popped on screen.

  Dave looked at the dish soap. Looked at the swamp. Looked back at the dish soap.

  He thought about the frogs in his game. He thought about how his daughter had watched him kill them for weeks, giggling every time they popped. He thought about the golden light in the nursery and the system that called him Dad and the fact that his weapon, his actual combat weapon in the actual apocalypse, was Dawn Ultra Platinum Advanced Power, Spring Meadow Scent.

  He thought about all of that and then he put it in a box and closed the lid, because if he looked at it directly right now he would start screaming and not stop.

  "Okay," he said. His voice was steady. His hands were not.

  ~*~

  WEAPON DISCOVERED: Bubbles

  Type: Ranged

  Ammo: Dish Soap

  Status: Effective

  ~*~

  Dave read the notification. He read it again.

  "Bubbles," he said flatly.

  ~*~

  Bubbles!

  ~*~

  That was different. That was the first time the system had responded to him directly, and the single word had an energy to it, an enthusiasm, that the flat status updates hadn't had. The exclamation point wasn't decorative. It was emotional. It was the written equivalent of a child clapping their hands.

  Dave looked at Emma. She was still laughing, though it was winding down to giggles. Her cheeks were red. Her eyes were bright. She was having, as far as Dave could tell, the absolute time of her life.

  Something cold moved through him. Recognition. The beginning of a thought he wasn't ready to complete. A thought about who was writing the system text, and why the frogs in the apocalypse looked like the frogs in the game, and why his baby's laughter sounded the same for both.

  He put that in the box too. Closed the lid harder.

  Right now he needed to collect his groceries from the swamp.

  Dave waded around gathering what he could. The formula was fine. Sealed container, floating near the curb. The Cheerios were gone. Unsalvageable. A soggy mass disintegrating into the water. Emma's Cheerios. She ate them every morning, one at a time, with the deliberation of a tiny food critic. Losing them felt disproportionately devastating, a small, stupid grief in the middle of everything enormous.

  The baby food jar had rolled under the minivan. He fished it out. Mrs. Huang's plums. He found them in the reeds, jar intact, because Mrs. Huang canned her plums in heavy glass and did everything with the structural integrity of a woman who built things to last. The water bottles were scattered but recoverable.

  He found the grocery bag floating near the mailbox, torn beyond repair. He stuffed what he could into the go-bag's side pockets and exterior straps, redistributing the weight, turning himself into a walking supply depot. The dish soap went in the right side pocket, cap up, within easy reach.

  He stood in the swamp and took stock. He was wet from the chest down. His left shoulder ached where the bag strap had cut in. He'd killed two frog-monsters and scared off a third. He'd lost his Cheerios.

  The adrenaline was draining, and what it left behind was something he didn't have a word for. Something between exhilaration and horror. He'd hit that first frog-thing and it had felt good. The connection, the power, the clean efficiency of it. And then it had dissolved into the water and he'd watched it go and felt nothing, and the nothing was worse than the good. Because the good meant he was built for this. And the nothing meant he was getting used to it.

  Forty-five minutes. He'd been in the apocalypse for forty-five minutes and he was already getting used to killing things.

  He looked at his hands. The same hands that changed Emma's diapers and typed helpdesk tickets and made scrambled eggs on Sunday mornings. They were steady now. The shaking had stopped.

  Something pinged in his vision.

  ~*~

  LEVEL UP

  Level 2 → Level 3

  New ability available.

  ~*~

  Dave braced himself.

  ~*~

  Boo-Boo Fixer — UPGRADED

  Now works on other people too!

  Kiss THEIR boo-boos!

  ~*~

  He stared at it. Then, despite the swamp and the dead frog-things and the orange sky and his daughter laughing at soap bubble violence. Dave laughed.

  It came out of him as a cough. Short, surprised, half a sob. The idea that his power-up, his level-up reward in the actual literal apocalypse, was the ability to kiss other people's injuries better. It was so absurd and so pure and so completely, unmistakably Dad that it broke something loose in his chest and the laugh turned into two laughs and then it stopped and his eyes were wet and he wiped them with a sleeve that smelled like swamp water.

  Emma heard him laugh. She laughed too. Hers was better. Hers was always better.

  "All right," Dave said. He tightened the carrier straps, adjusted the go-bag, settled the crowbar in his hand, and touched the dish soap bottle in the side pocket to confirm it was there. "All right."

  He waded out of the cul-de-sac and onto dry ground. Route 9 was ahead, the intersection clear, the overpass visible in the distance, a dark shape against the burnt horizon. The delivery-truck creature was long gone. The road was empty. Warped, cracked in patterns that might have been random, but passable. He could walk it.

  Emma settled against his back. Her laughing had faded to the soft humming sound, content, comfortable, the sound of a baby who had been thoroughly entertained and was now considering sleep.

  Dave felt something shift when her mood shifted. A warmth in his chest, dimming slightly. His limbs felt a fraction heavier. The electric clarity that had been running through him since the nursery faded, just a touch.

  Emma yawned. He felt that too. Her whole body softened in the carrier, the slow loosening of a baby who was giving in to gravity and warmth and the rhythm of her father's walking.

  No. Not yet.

  The thought was sudden and sharp. He didn't know why it mattered. He didn't know why Emma's nap schedule was suddenly a tactical consideration. But something in him, the same instinct that grabbed the soap, the same instinct that said run before the beam fell, understood that whatever she'd given him was tethered to her. If she slept, the tether slackened. If she slept, he was just a man. A man with a crowbar and a half-empty bottle of dish soap, walking through a world that had already proven it could produce things bigger than him, faster than him, and hungry.

  "Hey," Dave said. He reached back and wiggled Raf in front of her face. "Hey, Emma. Where's Raf? Where'd he go?"

  Emma's eyes refocused. She grabbed Raf and stuffed his head in her mouth with the efficiency of a baby who had been stuffing Raf's head in her mouth for approximately four months.

  The warmth in Dave's chest steadied. Held.

  "There we go," he said. "Stay with me, kid. Just a little longer."

  He walked. Route 9 stretched ahead of him, cracked and warped and empty under the orange sky. The overpass was a quarter mile out, close enough to see the details now. Cars on the road surface, some of them stopped at odd angles. Something moving up there, small, human-shaped.

  His phone said it was 12:41 PM. Sarah was due back in a little over two hours. She was either mid-massage and unaware, or the spa had been hit too and she was doing exactly what Dave was doing. Moving, adapting, surviving. He knew which one he'd bet on. Sarah didn't freeze. Sarah organized. If the spa ceiling fell, Sarah would have a triage plan before the dust settled.

  She was fine. She had to be fine. The alternative was a door he would not open.

  Dave walked faster. Emma chewed on Raf and hummed and kicked her feet against his back, and Dave held her awake with Raf and singing and the sheer force of a father's will, because the second nap was coming and they both knew it and he needed every minute of her wakefulness that he could get.

  Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty if he kept her entertained.

  He needed to cover as much ground as possible before then.

  Dave Thompson, Level 3 Dad, armed with a crowbar and a bottle of Dawn Ultra Platinum Advanced Power in Spring Meadow Scent, started jogging toward the overpass.

  Behind him, the last frog-thing's bioluminescent lights flickered and went dark. Ahead of him, the overpass waited. And somewhere past it, through miles of whatever the world had become, his wife was either safe or she wasn't, and the not knowing sat in his chest beside the warmth and the fear and grew.

  He jogged faster. Emma held on.