---Em---

     First good sleep I've had in weeks, and it ends with somebody shouting my ear off. I think what I really miss most about my pre-apocalypse life is sleeping in. Much better than spending the first few waking minutes of every day trying to figure out whether or not you're under attack.

     I can already feel the dream starting to slip away. Quickly, I plug my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, doing my best to tune out the shouting. Rock my head back and forth, gently. A technique I picked up off the internet. Start at the end and work backwards.

     Something about intellectual meatloaf. Before that, Colby and I were working in a crime delicatessen, researching felonious pigmentation. I was there because I had to get a tune-up, because the tyrannosaurus rex wouldn't let me play with his hula hoop. And Olivia said something about...

     "Are you going to help me or not?"

     Damn it! It's no use; the memory has already faded. I glare at the guy responsible for making me forget my dream. Slightly older than I am. Jun, I think his name was. Great, I can remember that, but the important stuff...

     "Well?" Jun's chest rises and falls heavily as the rest of us wipe the sleep out of our eyes.

     "What's all that noise about?" Comma half-mutters half-yawns. Her eyes have an almost greyish hue to them, and her skin's got a sickly look to it. Her symptoms aren't supposed to start showing for another two days. But then, who's to say rat-plague'll affect an alpen the same way it'll affect a human? Bottom line, we need to get her some of that antidote as soon as possible.

     "Jewel's missing," says Jun.

     Crawford scratches the back of his head. "So you want us to... go on a treasure hunt?"

     Jun doesn't seem to appreciate the joke—assuming it even was a joke. You never know with Crawford. "She told you what they did to... to our people. If anything's happened to her—"

     "Talk to Wates," Comma suggests with a little venom in her voice. "Don't you know? He calls the shots around here."

     "Wates isn't taking any visitors." Jun's eyes dart back and forth between mine, Comma's, and Topher's. Trying to figure out which of us is the leader, I bet. Good luck. "I think she might've run away."

     "So go find her." Comma crosses her arms. Unapologetic as always, I see.

     "That's why I'm here." Jun takes a deep breath. Swallows. Good move—losing his cool will do him no favours with this group. As evidenced by our not-so-friendly countenances after having been so rudely awakened. "I tried. But the tunnel entrances are guarded. Apparently, we're not allowed to leave without permission."

     Topher grins. "And you want us to open up a can of permission, huh?"

     "That is what I had in mind, yeah."

     "Fine," says Comma, massaging her temples. "But only because I need some fresh air."

     We file out of the subway car and make our way across the underground lot. A couple of charred logs lie in the fire pit, the embers from last night's blaze still glowing beneath them. The community's already begun to wake up; off in the opposite end of the lot, a couple of survivors are rationing out tin-can breakfasts. My stomach growls, but the prospect of possibly out-of-date canned fruit isn't exactly appetizing.

     A trio of tough-looking kids, the oldest of which can't be more than thirteen, blocks our access to the tunnels. Let's call them Lanky, Portly, and Muscled. Lanky twirls a yoyo when he sees us approaching. Portly chews on a toothpick. Muscled cracks his knuckles.

     "I thought I told you to beat it," says Portly, invading Jun's personal space as some kind of intimidation tactic. This kid can't be any older than nine. Eloise was more intimidating. Muscled inches forward, subtly flexing his pecks, as if to let us know he means business.

     Lanky does a typical walk-the-dog trick with his yoyo. Bad form all around—Colby could walk circles around this guy with his eyes shut. "Unless you got permission from Wates—"

     Comma shoves past us, snatching Lanky's yoyo right out of his hands. "You have a problem? No? Then get out of our way."

     Muscled starts to go for something at his belt. A pistol? No. Some sort of pager. Before I can so much as blink, Ace comes stomping over to us, arm cannon at the ready. "Not you again," he mutters. "What kind of trouble are you looking to get yourselves into now?"

     "That mousy brunette with the rosary beads ran away," says Gail, before Comma can get a word in. Smart move—letting Comma speak on behalf of the group is equivalent to begging for a confrontation. "We're goin' after her."

     Ace sighs. "I'd try and stop you, but fortunately I know how to pick my battles. So here's the deal: you can go, but I'm coming with you."

     No complaints. Jun does stick his tongue out at Lanky, Portly, and Muscled though. It is convenient to be able to make use of the flashlight function on Ace's arm cannon. The trek back through the tunnels is a lot like the first one, only with significantly less rat.

     We emerge in the city core. Everything's just how we left it, except for the occasional splash of pterodactyl crap. Gives the urban centre a real touch of class. The abandoned cars and buses continue to yield nothing of interest; this area's long been combed of anything of value.

     "Keep an eye out for the hunters," says Ace, making sure the safety's off his arm cannon. So I guess that means they never did make it back last night. There's not exactly a deficit of empty apartment buildings to camp out in, but with the pterodactyls making their rounds, you'd need to have guts to stay above-ground past curfew.

     Mya crouches and starts sniffing around, tracing her fingers along the ground. She closes her eyes and lets the wind ruffle her hair. She lets it speak to her—or at least, so she claims. She used to do a lot of tracking for us back in our zombie-hunting days. Though I still can't tell whether she actually has an aptitude for tracking or she's just full of it.

     "Picking up on anything?" I ask.

     She nods. "This way."

     We follow her further south. Or at least in the direction that I think is south, assuming the sun actually rises in the east on this planet. I keep forgetting that those rules of thumb don't necessarily apply anymore.

     It's strange walking through a post-apocalyptic city without having to watch out for zombie attacks. Kind of peaceful, actually. We tread on in silence, absorbed in our individual thoughts, until we finally find something.

     But it's not Jewel that we find.

     Ace drops to his knees. Jun looks like he's going to wretch. The ground in front of us is scorched black. Six corpses stand frozen mid-action, all of them statues made of ashes. Crawford takes a single step forward and they all crumble away.

     "Those your hunters?" Topher asks.

     "This is..." Ace trembles. "I've never seen anything like this."

     Mya sidesteps the ashes, keeping her eyes to the ground."Somebody passed through here, not long ago. Could be Jewel. Unless..."

     Jun shakes his head. "She wasn't among them."

     Ace collects himself pretty quickly. "We need to head back. I'm reporting this to Wates."

     "But Jewel—"

     "Forget about her. If she headed south, chances are she's already dead."

     "Why?" asks Topher. "What's south?"

     "Uncharted territory," says Ace. "The woods. Two days' trek from here. You can see the tree line if you climb up that phone tower over there."

     "We've got to go after her," says Jun.

     "Assuming she's still undigested," Crawford points out. "I'm not volunteering to wipe her off a windshield."

     That gets a bit of a rise out of Jun, but he backs off when he notices Crawford's trusty glass shank. He hasn't been around the guy long enough to know to give him a pass when he says something inappropriate. Besides, it's what we're all thinking.

     Comma swoons a little. She leans on Gail for support.

     "You all right?" Gail asks.

     "I'm fine," says Comma. "Just a little woozy."

     "Maybe you should go back and lie down," I say.

     Something tells me if she weren't so out of it, Comma would've given me a black eye for even suggesting that. I get off with a light scowling-at. I decide not to press the matter any further.

     "She has at least an eight-hour head start," says Topher. "If we're going to go after her, we should stock up on—" He's interrupted by the roar of a motorcycle engine. A biker gang speeds into view, first crossing the bridge and then whipping down the crumbling city streets, using the rusted cars as ramps whenever necessary. Glass and metal crunches beneath their tires. The air reeks of burnt rubber and exhaust fumes.

     They circle around us, like a school of sharks. Great. Add demon biker gang to the list of things I'd prefer not to encounter unless I'm safe behind a TV screen.

     One of them—their leader, I assume—skids to a halt and hops off his bike. The rest of them stop circling, forming a barricade around us. I can't help but stare at the boss demon's left ear—well, technically, the bony shell occupying the spot where his ear used to be. A purple-scaled demon—the one that was manning the tool booth when we showed up—hands the boss demon a lighter.

     The boss demon struts over to us and lights his cigarette. He takes a long drag and then blows smoke in my face. "What's all this then?"

     "None of your business," Ace snaps. He spits—thankfully, not in the demon's face. These two go way back, from the looks of it.

     "Pleasure," says the green-scaled demon, extending a hand for me to shake. "The name's Rex." That name... I've heard it before somewhere. The dream! Rex—he's the demon who knows the way to Ganeden. To where Olivia is. I try to hide my surprise, but my eyes betray me, I'm sure. I go to shake Rex's hand, but he yanks it away.

     "We've got a bit of a problem," says Rex, in what sounds like a half-assed imitation of a cockney accent. "Kag here says some bint went and did in one of my men. I thought for sure he was off his trolley. I says, no one can be that daft. Then I found this."

     He snaps his fingers again. Another demon tosses a severed head on the ground in front of us. I can barely recognize the hook-nosed demon; the acid from its blood has melted its face into an abstract mess.

     "But I'm getting ahead of myself. There are taxes to pay. It's why I'm here, innit? I'm the bloody taxman." Rex pulls back the flap of his jacket and draws a pistol from his belt. "I always did fancy human weaponry," he says, admiring the gun. "There's something poetic about being able to take a life with the click of a button."

     He cocks the pistol. Pauses for another drag on his cigarette. He takes a moment to survey the scene. By now, he's probably noticed the ash heaps. He shoves past us and dips his pinkie finger in the ashes. Then he licks the finger clean, like a cop testing for cocaine.

     "And here I was thinking I'd need to decimate you lot. Looks like somebody beat me to it." He turns around and glances at Ace. "How many?"

     "Six," Ace utters through clenched teeth.

     "Six? Pity that." He pauses. "Then again, it wasn't them what slit Tuk's throat."

     "No, it wasn't." Comma walks right up to Rex. "It was me." She squeezes her hands, but her chakram fails to materialize again. Her eyes widen. She starts coughing. Violently.

     Rex, however, couldn't look more pleased.

     "Pop her in the brains!" wheezes a patchy-skinned demon with flaky scales.

     "Rip her head off!" barks another with snake eyes.

     Rex spins around. "You git! Don't you recognize those ears?" He pinches Comma's left ear. "She's an alpen."

     "What's an alpen?" asks the purple-scaled demon.

     Rex's jaw falls open in disbelief, and his cigarette plummets to the ground. "What's an...?" He aims his gun and fires. The bullet pings the demon right between the eyes, leaving a nasty bruise but failing to penetrate the rock-hard scales. "Mutt! Take her."

     He shoves Comma into the arms of a pudgy demon with more hair than scales. Mutt hoists Comma onto the back of his bike; she's too weakened by the rat-plague to resist. I go after her instinctively, but freeze when Rex points his gun at Gail.

     "We're taking the alpen," he tells me, matter-of-factly. "Little gift for the boss man." So Rex isn't the one in charge. That's right; come to think of it, I remember Liluye mentioning someone called Dante.

     "If you lay a finger on her—"

     "She belongs to us now." Rex gets right up in my face. Good. So long as he's not pointing that thing at Gail. Let him focus on me. "We can do whatever we bloody well like." He pulls another cigarette out of his pocket. Holds it out for one of his lackeys to light. "Like I was saying. Someone's gotta pay for your little act of rebellion."

     Ace frowns. "But you said—"

     "I don't give an ass's ass what I said," says Rex. He turns his attention back to me. Smirks. "Don't think I didn't notice. You fancy this one, don't you?" He presses the barrel of his gun against Gail's head. Twists it a little. She winces, but stands firm.

     "Don't." That's not me pleading; it's an order. If he so much as thinks about it...

     "I don't like being told what to do." Rex sucks on his cigarette. Takes a long drag and then flicks it away. "Let this be a lesson."

     He pulls the trigger.

     Click.

     He pulls the trigger again.

     Another click.

     He stares down the barrel. "Sod it then." He pats Gail on the head. "Your lucky day." Then he goes and hops back on his bike. He revs the engine, and his lackeys do the same. "See you around," he says, before speeding off.

     The rest of his demon biker gang follows suit. Comma throws us a pleading glance, but there's nothing we can do. Within seconds, they're gone, and she along with them.

Author's Note:

My heart nearly stopped when Rex pulled that trigger. Luckily, Gail lives to die another day. Let's lighten things up a bit: which character currently without a POV do you think deserves one?

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