The poet lookalike is named Sutherland Beverly, a name as pretentious as he looks, and he was in middle management at a construction company before the Event. He doesn’t show us what his magic is.

  He starts exactly as he claimed, with who should be involved with the town’s leadership. Surprisingly, he doesn’t recommend himself. He just wants to facilitate an attempt at democracy. He asks the room for nominations or volunteers.

  Only one person is nominated, and four others in the room back the nomination up, so Sutherland simply declares that this guy is the new town Mayor. I don’t think that’s entirely how it works, but I don’t really care—I’m not planning on living under this guy’s control. A similar process is done for a Deputy Mayor and a five-person Council. Only one of the people who are sitting at the table on the risers is selected: the old lady wearing the cross.

  I stifle a yawn. This is boring and tedious and not at all what I came here to do. I consider pulling out a notebook and taking some notes, marking who the new people of power in town are, but I just don’t see the point. These aren’t my people of power. Will it turn around and bite me in the ass, my irreverent disregard for these new policies? Maybe. But at the moment, I can’t be bothered to care.

  They briefly talk about numbers, projected rates of survivors based on their understanding of the Event, how many people lived in Newmarket, how many people might have died in the five days since without access to power or hot water or food or medical attention. Or, you know, monster attacks. Though they gloss over that part a little.

  Which is why the timing of it makes me laugh out loud, when a burst of purple haze, thick and opaque, appears in a blink on my map.

  Sutherland Beverly’s dark gaze snaps right to me at my outburst, as I clap my hand over my mouth. But the damage is done.

  “I’m sorry, young lady, but is this funny to you?” he asks me.

  I can’t look away. “No, not funny. But I do think dangerous.”

  There’s a murmur of confusion from the crowd, from the people at the table.

  “The danger has passed, my dear,” Sutherland goes on. The pet name coming from him makes my skin crawl. “The loss of all those people is tragic, but we’re safe now.”

  “Safe?” I echo. Already I can see the red dots converging. There was no notification headache, no transparent purple haze slowly moving until it finds the spot to settle. It just appeared, fully settled and heavy, with no notification and no reason why. “We’re about to be inundated with mutated animals. This is the least safe place to be right now.” I’m surprisingly calm.

  A red dot makes it to the edge of the community centre building on my map, but it seems to stall at the door. Thank goodness they haven’t learned how to open doors yet.

  “And how, exactly, do you know this?” Sutherland asks.

  “The magic I received,” I say. Admitting this out loud seems like the sort of thing that also might come back and bite me in the ass later, but right now the immediate survival of the delicate and weak people in this room is the primary concern.

  Sutherland’s eyes narrow, but before he can say anything else, there’s a smash of glass. One of the monsters, when they couldn’t figure out how to open a door normally, just broke the glass panes.

  The sound shatters the calm in the room. Multiple people scream, people scrambling from their chairs and moving about the room, causing a chaos that overwhelms me. People who stood back in the hallways scream for other reasons, as the first of the monsters start attacking. I’m assuming they’re attacking. That’s what they do, when they make it to a surge site.

  I look up at Sutherland instead and stride toward the risers. He’s watching the room devolve into madness, but turns when I get close. “Control the people.” I point behind me, where I had been standing a moment earlier. “Get those who can’t fight behind those doors, where it’s safer. Where it’s defendable.” I had a backpack with me in case I needed anything—a snack, something to drink, one of my bats, without needing to risk my inventory with other people around. I momentarily forget that, and pull one of the extra bats from my weapons stash.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Sutherland’s eyes flick down to where the weapon appears in my hand. His eyes widen for a moment, looking over me with a new sense of curiosity. I ignore the way the look rakes over me and the concern I have about breaking my anonymity. Too late now.

  “Go,” I snap.

  He springs into action. “Quick,” he yells out to the crowd, though his presence does nothing to calm the masses now. “Into the kitchen, the bar. The elderly, the women, the children!”

  A few people listen. I yank my backpack off, pulling the bats I have in the side pockets, and hold them out to the people closest to me. A few men come forward and take them, resolve and appreciation on their faces.

  I’m going to have to hunt more bats down after this. I have a bunch still in my weapons storage, bats and golf clubs and hockey sticks and other sports equipment, but not enough to equip the whole room. Not enough to protect every weak human here. I hand them out as quickly as I can.

  The first monsters get into the hall. There’s some little vermin, mice or voles or something, and a raccoon. None of them seem too physically mutated, which worries me, but I stop thinking. I start swinging.

  There’s screams around me for a different sort of reason, where people who clearly haven’t faced the monsters think I’m just bashing in the skulls of normal animals.

  Until one of the mice leaps into the air, levitates in the space above our heads, and begins to spin like a freaking ballerina. Its body is vertical, its long tail—a longer than average tail, I notice—starts by pointing down and slowly lifting to ninety degrees. It takes me a moment to realize that the tail isn’t just lifting. It’s splitting. Soon there’s about six or seven tails, splayed out around it like a banana peel while the mouse keeps spinning.

  And then the thing lets out a cry and the tails shoot out of the body like spears and pierce the crowd.

  The monsters have projectiles.

  And the monsters are properly infiltrated in the room now. Everywhere I look, there’s a critter locked into a fight with a human. Plenty are using their bare hands, or the chairs, but we’re not totally helpless. I notice a few of the other humans in the room have some sort of offensive magic, knocking down the monsters as they enter the room with nothing but a flick of their wrist. Someone has some sort of light power, flashes going off on the other side of the room feeling like a photo shoot is happening over there. Good, is all I can think. Blind the fuckers.

  I fall into the rhythm of the fight. Weird, how quickly these battles became my norm, how easy it is for them to be familiar.

  Weirder yet, the comfort of knowing I’m not the only one in the fight. Of having a veritable army of humans around me.

  And, of course, the weirdest part, is the opaque purple blanket in my map that never moves, never changes shape or colour. It’s like the surge site appeared here, fully formed.

  I whack a golden retriever across its face. I’m calm enough that I can consider the fact that I haven’t fought any dogs yet. This was someone’s loyal pet, and now it’s drooling out piles of acid that burn into the wood floors. I leap out of the way as I almost step on a pile, finally managing to get one real good swing in. The dog goes down and I move on to the next.

  Without the way the surge site’s properties on my map changes the closer we get to the crest, it’s hard to tell how long we’ll have to fight. How long it’s been, already, before I start to feel the familiar rumble of the ground. I wonder if I’ll get a Token from this, with how many other humans and monsters are still in the space.

  I stop wondering as another one of those projectile mice lifts into the air and spits out its tails.

  And then it’s over. Just like that. The fight in the monsters just goes out and the purple in my map blinks out of existence. There was no final rumble, no moment of stillness before the cresting of the surge, no cresting surge at all.

  The humans don’t realize it. They’re still kicking, smacking, whacking with sports equipment or chairs.

  “It’s done,” I yell out, watching some of the monsters try, and fail, to find their way out. There’s still that drunken walk they do post-surge, but it’s definitely… less potent. It’s troublesome. “Stop, stop!” I hop up onto the risers. “HEY!”

  My voice is magnified a few times over. The room pauses, everyone looking over at me in surprise. I’m surprised, too, until I spot someone in the bar staring at me. A younger woman, a hand held out in my direction, who gives me a small smile, and nods, answering the question I didn’t have to ask out loud. I point to my throat anyways, and she nods again.

  Okay, human megaphone. Cool.

  “It’s done,” I say again, not shouting but hearing my voice loudly across the room. “Is anyone injured? Does anyone have a healing magic?”

  A new sort of activity takes over the room, with a few people starting to collect the monster corpses—fewer than I’d have thought—and others setting up chairs for the people injured. Many of the chairs are covered in blood. A bunch of people come out of the alcoves, through the doors in there, and a few go over to the injured. A few others walk around in a daze. I spot the grandmother in her overalls going around, touching people on their shoulders.

  There’s a peace in the moment, a true coming-together of a community, and I watch the room from the risers with more certainty that Nancy, Ryder, and I can’t do this alone. We need a team. We need our magical commune.

  But I don’t want to be in charge. I don’t want the responsibility. I don’t know how to lead.

  Plenty of the people in the room are staring at me, wonder and curiosity and surprise on their faces. My clothes and bats are covered in gore. I don’t want their attention.

  “Healing magic?” someone yells out in the room, scorn in their voice. “Where was this desire to help people with healing magic when you lit me on fire yesterday, you bitch?”