My thoughts are still swirling as we leave the bloodied house, everyone’s mood a little soured from the experience. Gigi takes one last look at the front door, shakes her head, and heads on down the driveway with purposeful steps. I don’t approach her, not wanting to push her too hard on it. She’ll come to her own decisions. She’s always been stubborn that way.

  We go a few more houses down the street before crossing the road and heading back in the direction of home, and then past. It’s more of the same. Some of them are untouched, some of them appear to have been left abandoned in the middle of normal daytime activities, and some of them have small traces of a monster having come through it. We see no more dead bodies, but there’s a sense of foreboding, all the same.

  Nancy sidles up to me. She’s chewing on her sweater cuff, and I know her well enough by now to note that something’s really bothering her. “What’s up?” I ask.

  “Have you… noticed anything?” is her reply.

  “I notice lots of things,” I say. “But that’s a very vague question. In what context?”

  “The world?”

  “Nance.”

  She sighs. “The landscape looks different,” she finally says. “Like, trees seem to have gotten bigger and some of the gardens have changed.”

  I take a quick look around me, and though I can’t see a specific example of it, I guess things do seem a little more… wild. “I did not notice that, no.”

  “There was one house with a whole side of it covered in some sort of climbing vines. I’m pretty sure I’d have remembered that from before.”

  “Huh.”

  “You really haven’t noticed?”

  I shake my head. “Sorry.” But now that she mentioned it, I was starting to. Once pristinely-manicured lawns that were getting long and lush, way more than one skipped mow would cause, and in a way that was uncharacteristic for autumn in Canada. Gardens that were overflowing from their careful beds. Trees with boughs that were splayed over the roofs of the houses.

  As Gigi and the group approach the next house, I approach Nancy. We hold back as they knock, try the door, and find it unlocked. They disappear into the house. She turns back to me.

  “I’m noticing,” I tell her. “What do you think happened? Why is it doing that? Has it been growing faster for days?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. This all feels new to me. I do have a theory, though.”

  “Go on.”

  “That surge yesterday. It was big and weird and your compass ability did something strange and the whole thing felt a little… off.”

  I nod, tucking my hands into my butt pockets of my jeans. “And?”

  “You said that the magic that exists inside the animals makes them mutate. What if it’s doing the same thing to the very planet? Mutating it? Changing it? Taking over?”

  “It could be,” I say with a shrug. “It wouldn’t totally surprise me. We’ve changed, the animals changed, and now the plantlife is changing, too.”

  “Flora and fauna,” Nancy says.

  “Exactly.”

  She lifts her cuff back up to her mouth. After a moment, she lets out a hum, and without another word turns away from me and heads up the driveway.

  I almost smile. But before she can make it to the house, and before I can even take a step, Gigi bursts out the front door. “There you are!” she calls. “This is the one! I want this house!”

  ***

  As one, we go back home, to my house, to Safehouse 1, to Home Base—I don’t know what to refer to it as—and get Gigi’s stuff. We bring it all back to her new house, just two doors down but across the street. As we’re setting things up to her specifications, there’s a knock on the door.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Ryder stands to his full height and, using his finger, points to each of us as he counts, and finally turns his point to himself. He looks so puzzled, since everyone he knows is in the house already.

  I chuckle, because it’s so comical as an action. Though I have to admit that I, too, am curious as to who would be knocking.

  Savannah takes action before the rest of us, heading back through the house to open the front door. We all follow along—except for Gigi, who happily hums to herself as she sets her clothes into her new dresser drawers.

  “—and we saw you all crossing the street,” a man’s voice is saying as I step into the hallway.

  “Okay?” Savannah says, waiting for more explanation. She still has one hand on the doorknob, her knuckles almost white, and has the door open only wide enough for her to look through. I can’t see the people on the other side.

  “It’s just rare to see other people,” a woman’s voice adds. “This neighbourhood’s gotten so quiet.”

  “Yeah, it has,” Savannah says. It’s curt, but it’s not mean. I’m sure she’s just being cautious. We all are. Ryder stands at my sides with his hands in fists, his brows narrowed. Poor kid. I really need to find that therapist for our community.

  Clearly, the strangers at the door note it, too. “We’re sorry to ambush you like this, and we mean no harm,” the man says. “We just… I guess we wanted to say welcome to the neighbourhood.”

  I squeeze in beside Savannah and she’s forced to allow the door to open a little farther. The couple at the door both react with the same little jumps when I come into view.

  And then all of us relax, because I know them.

  “Jane?” the woman asks, looking a lot older than when I last saw her. She’s average height, though a little stooped, her hair a dark grey with heavy wrinkles over her face. Her husband, a couple inches shorter than her, has many of the same features, in that way that long-married couples start to look alike.

  I used to pass their house on my bike on my way to school, and they always drank their morning drinks on their front porch. Even in the winter, they could enclose their porch with glass and had space heaters and they would sit out there. I don’t know their names, but I know their faces. I’m a little surprised that they know my name, to be honest.

  “It’s good to see a familiar face,” I say honestly.

  “I told you I kept seeing that grey car go by,” the woman says, lightly whacking the backs of her fingers on her husband’s chest. “I told you it was Joel’s.”

  Hearing my father’s name spoken aloud hits me like a punch to the gut and I have to physically take a step back.

  The couple don’t seem to realize. They turn back to me. “Has that been you?,” the man asks, “Or is your dad…” They seem to notice the expression on my face, and he stops his question.

  “Oh, Jane, I’m so sorry,” the woman says.

  “Thanks,” I say. “That’s the world we live in, I guess.”

  “Us, too,” the man says. I try to wrack my brain, remember whether they had kids, but I can’t seem to find it. They’ve been old people my whole life.

  “Then I’m sorry, too,” I say, because… what else is there to say?

  The woman turns her focus back onto Savannah. “Is it you that’s moving in here?”

  “Uh, no,” Savannah stutters, a small jolt to her movements showing her surprise at being acknowledged.

  “Who’s there?” Gigi calls out from further in the house. She must have finished filling her dresser.

  “Who is that?” the man at the door asks.

  I sigh and take the door from Savannah, opening it all the way. The couple’s eyes go wide at the sheer volume of people standing in the foyer. And then Gigi comes out of the door to the ground-floor mater bedroom.

  “Gail?” the woman at the door calls, tilting her head to see through the bodies.

  Of course she somehow knows my grandmother.

  “Portia? And Pete! Well, I’ll be,” Gigi says, pushing through Beaker, Ryder, and Nancy to come stand beside me at the door. “Look at what the cat dragged in.”

  Portia and Pete. The names do feel a little familiar. At seeing Gigi, their whole demeanour changed. They are suddenly all smiles and animated expressions. “You made the drive in? You’re moving into the neighbourhood? Well, this is delightful!” Portia exclaims.

  I guess it’ll be nice that Gigi will have a social circle.

  “I figured if the world is ending, I should be a little closer to the family I have left,” Gigi says, chucking her thumb over her shoulder at me. “And you can’t beat these new housing costs. You think the old owners would mind?”

  Portia waggles her hand, shooing the notion away. “These suckers are probably rolling over in their graves, knowing that you’re here,” she says.

  The sudden change in tone leaves me reeling. How do I delicately remind Portia that they don’t get the decency of graves?

  But Gigi is cackling, and Portia is grinning like a girl, and even Pete looks a little more relaxed.

  “I think my granddaughter has it in her head to turn this whole area into a little safe space,” Gigi says with a laugh and a small shake of her head. Nice to know she has faith in me. “So who knows, maybe we’ll get a bunch of new residents on the street.”

  “It might be nice,” Pete says, “to have the shouts of kids playing in the street again.”

  “Come in, come in,” Gigi says, delicately pushing Savannah out of the way to let the elderly couple shuffle in. “Let me give you the grand tour.”

  Portia and Pete head in and Savannah goes to close the door. I stop her, but turn back to the geriatric survivors. “Gigi?” I call out. “We’ll… leave you to get reacquainted?”

  “Sounds delightful,” Gigi calls back over her shoulder.

  I snort. “Then I guess let’s get out of here,” I say the the rest of the team, and we leave the three of them to their loud catching up.