Archive of Our Own ^beta

II.

The afternoon sun beats hard down on the car as the canyon shrinks in the rearview mirror. One long road stretches into the empty desert before them. They could have—should have—stayed in the little motel next to the diner they’d stopped in on the other side of the canyon, but it was too late for that now. Hermia keeps driving.

Another hour through the dusty, red dunes of Simnation’s largest desert—another hour of the heatwaves dancing across the asphalt, another hour of the air conditioner in Hermia’s car struggling to keep up—and finally, there are signs of life.

Barely—Strangetown wasn’t very big, and certainly not very inviting. But it was something. Somewhere to rest. It was their only option for hours and hours unless they turned back, and well, that wasn’t an option at all. It was far enough afield that Hermia felt somewhat safe to stop and find her bearings.

And to sleep. Really sleep.

It felt like Hermia hadn’t slept in months.

So the dingy little motel on the outskirts of the dingy little town might as well have been a five star resort on Twikii Island to her. An almost empty parking lot had never looked more inviting.

Inside, the motel is clearly clean, just old and beaten down by the harsh circumstances of its environment. The man at the front desk is unexpectedly polite and well-spoken. It’s Hermia who stumbles over her words.

“And how long will you be staying with us?”

She doesn’t know how to answer that question.

The man at the desk doesn’t let her struggle for very long. “Not to worry, it’s not like we’re full up here. Just make sure to check out before eleven on the day you leave, or I’ll have to charge you for another night.”

Hermia swallows and nods gratefully, handing him her credit card. He enters her information into a computer more modern than anything else in the building by at least fifteen years and returns it to her, along with an old key. A large “3” is written neatly on the key’s tag in permanent marker. “If you need anything after hours, just ring the number in your room. Our night guy is right next door.”

“Thank you,” Hermia manages, before heading back out for her sister.

Juliette is waiting patiently in the car.

Before heading to the passenger side door, Hermia opens the trunk to grab their bag. When she closes it, she turns to find Juliette standing just behind her.

With a shriek, Hermia drops the bag onto the pavement. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Juliette stands still as a statue, expression unchanged.

“Sorry,” Hermia says, one hand on her chest and the other grabbing the duffel. “You just scared me.” Twenty-one years of Juliette never shutting the fuck up and now she was as silent as a church mouse. But a glimmer of hope strikes Hermia. Getting out of the car on her own was the most Juliette had done without help or instruction since before… everything.

Maybe she’s getting better.

The motel room is small, with only one queen bed, and very dated. But like the lobby, it’s cleaner than expected.

Hermia closes the curtains, then helps Juliette get more comfortable, removing her shoes and the flannel shirt, before attending to herself.

The next order of business had to be a shower. Juliette was in as good a condition as she could have been considering the state of her, since Hermia had cleaned her up to the best of her ability at the rest stop the night before. But Hermia was starting to smell, her feet were starting to melt into her boots, and her hair was getting greasier by the minute.

While the water heats up, Hermia unwraps the bandages around her hand and wrist, knowing she should have checked the wounds earlier and dreading what she might find.

But when the last layer pulls away, there are no cuts, no infection, no evidence of her crime except for a pair of faint scars. Where had she gone wrong with Juliette?

Juliette is still in the armchair where Hermia left her when she comes out of the bathroom. “We should get some sleep,” Hermia says, more to herself—par for the course, now. “We can figure out what to do in the morning.”

Hermia pulls on a fresh t-shirt and some underwear from the duffel bag, and it’s all over when she lies down in bed, lumpy mattress and all, with the whir of the ceiling fan and the hum of the AC unit chugging along lulling her to sleep. When her sister silently climbs into bed beside her, Hermia is dead to the world.

——

Tank and Buck are eating dinner in the living room—something Buck had assured Tank was no longer a mortal sin in the Grunt house now that Ripp had moved out, since their father could actually trust him to clean up after himself—when Buzz returns home from the military base.

Almost automatically, Tank stands up to greet him, as if he were in boot camp. Old habits die hard, and his shoulders sag slightly as he realizes the awkwardness of the action. Someone falls comically into a pool in the movie they have playing on the TV.

Buzz gives him a mildly quizzical look as he locks up, and thankfully ignores Tank’s anxious energy. “Welcome home, son,” he says, and that’s that.

“Hey, Dad,” Tank says, before sitting back down with Buck.

“Buck,” Buzz says, nodding at his other son. “I see you’ve already taken care of dinner.”

Tank had run down to the little convenience store for a quick pizza. Somehow, the cheap, freezer section pizzas tasted better when cooked in a greasy, industrial “oven” under fluorescent lighting. Of course, he hadn’t been prepared to see his high school crush working there, fiddling with a staticky radio behind the counter.

Erin Beaker had been two grades ahead of him in high school, and she was one of the only people who hadn’t either avoided him or gossiped behind his back throughout the years, and she’d moved in with roommates next door after she graduated, where she always had kind small talk or a friendly wave for him.

Looking back, Tank recognized that despite the fact that he was overly respectful, he had also been too serious to be any fun. He’d barely had any friends, and those few friendships he did have hadn’t extended past JROTC hours. He had let Ripp and his crew get the better of him—purposefully riling him for no good reason—too many times. So naturally, he had nursed a little unrequited love for the girl whose head was so far up in the clouds she seemed to have been above all of it.

Of course, Tank had crashed back down to earth when she’d stepped out from behind the counter and looked like she was about to pop. So much for working up the courage to really talk to her. They’d exchanged generic pleasantries, and he’d paid for his pizza and left.





“See you soon,” she’d said airily, and Tank had briefly wondered how many people, if any, in Strangetown knew what he’d really been doing while he was supposed to be at university. His father surely wouldn’t volunteer that information, but who knew what Ripp was off running his mouth about.

“Tank just got home with it like half an hour ago,” Buck says, gesturing to the pizza. “It’s still hot.”

Buzz wrinkles his nose. “No, thank you,” he says, leaning down to pet the cat, who was snoozing on the recliner. “Jeanie and I will have some real food for dinner. We have some good leftovers from the other night, and no sense wasting it.”

At the mention of food and her name, Jeanie perks up and leaps down to follow Buzz into the kitchen.

“He’s sharing with the cat now?” Tank asks Buck, quietly.

“It’s her favorite… tuna casserole,” he whispers back.

——-

Hermia wakes up sometime after the sun has gone down, jolting back to life in the darkness of the motel room. She can feel her sister in the bed next to her, and for a moment that flash of overwhelming terror paralyzes her. Without looking, she can feel Juliette’s eyes boring into the back of her skull, and wonders if her sister knows she’s awake, if she can sense her fear.

It takes longer for the feeling to subside this time, but again, Hermia scolds herself. There was no reason to be scared. In the state she was in, Juliette could barely even function at all, let alone function on her own without Hermia’s support. A feeling of helplessness replaces the fear; they had to find someone who could tell them what was happening, and how to fix it.

A loud growl erupts from Hermia’s stomach, accompanied by a nasty hunger pang. There was no way she was going back to sleep now, not with her heart still racing slightly and now her stomach protesting loudly the neglect it had been suffering. “I’m getting us something from the vending machine,” Hermia whispers, just in case Juliette was actually sleeping, and pulls on some leggings, fresh socks, and the sneakers she’d had in her gym bag. She leaves the room as quietly as she can, all the while fervently avoiding having to look at her sister.

——-

“This is why I don’t let you drive,” a young man’s voice says, startling Hermia out of her fog at the vending machine, where she had been trying to decide between stale chips and stale cheese crackers for dinner for the past ten minutes.

A young woman is with him. “I got turned around once, Dirk!” she exclaims, helping him unload their bags from their car. “And you wanted to stop and eat in the canyon!”

“Lilith, that took forty-five minutes,” he argues back, shutting the trunk. “You took us three hours off course through the woods around SSU.”

Lilith huffs, but it’s clear the argument isn’t that serious. “Whatever, we’re here now. Let’s just get to the room so we can start researching.”

“You know, everyone says Strangetown has all kinds of weird shit going on,” Dirk says. Hermia freezes. “I bet we’ll find something good here, even if we don’t find her.”

Their voices fade as they enter one of the vacant rooms, leaving Hermia to buy her dry cookies and stale sandwich crackers, and a couple of candy bars to try and entice Juliette to eat something, and to wonder what exactly they could have meant by weird shit, and whether there might be some help for them there, after all.

When she returns to the motel room with their “dinner,” Juliette is missing from the bed. Hermia’s heart skips a beat, but settles when she sees her sister sitting in the armchair, unnaturally still, as usual. “I got your favorite,” she says, turning on the light.

Juliette’s head snaps toward her.

Hermia freezes in shock at the sudden movement–the most energy she’s seen from Juliette since before the ruined wedding. Juliette’s mouth opens as if she wants to speak, and Hermia drops everything and rushes toward her.

“Juliette?” she asks frantically, kneeling in front of her sister. “What is it? What do you need?”

But Juliette says nothing, closes her mouth, cocks her head at Hermia, and Hermia’s shoulders sag in defeat.

It’s a start, she thinks dejectedly, gathering her snacks, setting the candy bars on the dresser next to her sister. She sits on the end of the bed and devours her crackers and cookies with fervor, suddenly ravenous, nearly choking before having to run to the bathroom and chug a glass of water.

Juliette observes silently from the armchair, but the ghost of a smile tugs at her lips.

Once Hermia gets herself back together, the exhaustion of the past few days returns. She strips off her shoes and leggings and turns off the light, checking on her sister in the chair one last time before she crawls back into the bed, letting sleep take her again.

The pale moonlight pools on the floor of the icy motel room through a crack in the curtains, and Juliette moves silently to the window, pulling the curtains further apart, her eyes wide on the waxing gibbous in the sky.

——-

After watching another so-called comedy with Buck, Tank decides to turn in for the night. He had struggled to get much sleep the night before, tossing fitfully in the little single bed, unable to regulate his temperature in the dry desert air—covers on, covers off, and what was he going to say to his father when he came home from the base? And that was before the damn cat had decided to unleash hell upon the toys strewn around the house at 0300, thundering up and down the stairs and through the halls like an elephant stampede before finally stopping to scratch at Buck’s door until Tank had gotten up and let her in. How Buck had managed to sleep through its utter decimation of the catnip legion, Tank could hardly hazard a guess, but when the door opened it had sauntered daintily into Buck’s room, pleased as punch, and thankfully that was the end of it.

Buzz had gone up to Tank’s old room-turned-office after he and the cat had finished their dinner to finish some paperwork before he turned in. He had to be up early to head back up to the base in the morning; hopefully he was as used to the cat’s antics as Buck was.

Tank hesitates before knocking. His father was supposed to be home again tomorrow night; they could talk then, when he’d had a little more time to psych himself up, to decide how he was going to frame the conversation. But that felt so dramatic, to be so anxious for no reason that he had to mentally prepare himself to tell his dad he’d gotten a promotion, even if it was in a different career than they’d hoped and planned for, that he knocked anyway.

“Come in,” Buzz says from the desk, where a few files sit open. He closes them—whether out of habit or because they really are classified, Tank can’t be sure—stacks them neatly in the tray, and turns to his son. “Need something?”

“Just wanted to check in,” Tank says gruffly. “It’s been a while.”

“It has,” Buzz agrees.

Oh Watcher. This was so painfully awkward. Buzz could be so direct.

“I did get promoted,” Tank spills out, wanting to share the news and get out of there before the conversation could get any more anxiety-inducing. “It’s only to desk sergeant, but I hope to make detective by—”

“I’ll stop you there, son,” Buzz interrupts.

Tank stops, aghast, waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Buzz to tell him how disappointed he is in him that he never went back to school and got his life back on its original, right track.

Buzz continues. “There’s no such thing as ‘only’ when it comes to an achievement. You’ve put in the hard work, to better yourself and your community, and you have clear, attainable goals to continue to do so in increasingly more effective ways in the future. Not everyone can say that. In fact, most people can’t. Don’t discount yourself, or your effort.”

“I… yeah, I guess,” Tank replies, flustered, his hand on the back of his neck. “I mean, yes sir,” he corrects himself, making eye contact like he’d always been taught.

“I’m proud of you, son,” Buzz says, quite sincerely, before turning back to his paperwork.

Tank stands in shock for a moment, a weight he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying suddenly lifted. So many times he’d heard those words and never believed them, and now here they were discussing something that had never been part of the plan, but it was something he had done entirely on his own, and something he was working toward, and maybe, just maybe, that was enough.

——-

The next morning—or afternoon, that is—Hermia wakes with a start. Her mouth is dry, her stomach nauseous from lack of proper food. Juliette is lying on the bed next to her, facing the opposite wall.

Hermia quietly dresses herself in the leggings from the night before and runs her fingers through her hair before tossing it back into a bun. In the bathroom, she splashes water on her face and brushes her teeth. Titania’s strange coins clatter to the floor when Hermia gathers up the clothes she’d left in a pile upon their arrival at the motel, and she absentmindedly puts them in her pocket before shoving the dirty clothes into a dresser drawer and tending to Juliette, who has sat up on the bed.

She could probably use a shower, but Hermia wasn’t quite sure what good it would do, if any. Juliette’s skin seemed so delicate—it was already damaged, and it’s not like the ritual had done any healing for her. The idea strikes Hermia that Titania’s salve might help at least in that regard, and she makes a mental note to grab what’s left of it from the car and apply it to some of Juliette’s worst-looking patches later. In any case, Juliette could probably skip the shower—Hermia hadn’t seen her do anything that might make her dirty, and if she washed anymore of the morturary’s makeup off of her, Hermia probably wouldn’t be able to bring her out in public at all. They had to put her in dark sunglasses to hide her eyes already. And nothing was going to remove the faint chemical smell emanating from her, nor the sickly smell of rot poorly masked by sweet floral perfume hiding beneath it, so why even bother.

Instead, Hermia helps Juliette cover herself with the same flannel shirt, don her shoes and sunglasses, and they head down the road to the diner that the motel owner recommends to them on their way out for some real food.

——-

“You sure that’s what you wanted, darlin’?” the waitress asks Juliette, whose plate sits in front of her, untouched.

Hermia swallows the last bite of her burger, hard. “Sorry, she’s on a medication that makes her really nauseous,” she lies, a little shocked at how easily it comes to her. “For her, uh, skin condition. Could we take it to go?”

“Of course,” the waitress responds. She gives Juliette a sympathetic once-over. “Poor thing,” she says, before leaving to grab them a to-go box and the check.

With a full stomach and more hours of sleep than she’d gotten in the past several days combined, Hermia can finally think straight. She’d used the time waiting for their meals to pull up Strangetown on her phone. According to the internet, it wasn’t much of anything but a military base and a science center. The former was a definite no on the list of places Hermia might try to seek aid. The second was a maybe, but as a last resort. The little blurb she’d pulled up on the web also said that there were lots of odd goings-on associated with the area. They mostly had to do with aliens, and apparently some had even settled there, but Hermia was sure somebody could tell her something. Maybe even one of the aliens could help them, with all their advanced technology.

“Here you are,” the waitress says cheerily, placing a paper takeout box on the table before them. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

“No, thank you,” Hermia says, scrolling through the comments on a random Simbook post about Deadtree. They were all either complaints about the nightclub’s theme being too dark and modern, or the saloon being too old and sad, or the people living in the dairy farm down the road being too weird… nothing helpful. In Veronaville, the fact that faeries lived among them was a well-known “secret.” Surely a place called Strangetown had something similar. She just had to figure out where to look.

“Well, come back and see me anytime. You can pay at the counter when you’re ready.” The door chimes, signaling that new customers have arrived. “Welcome in! If you wanna have a seat right here, I’ll be back to get your drink order as soon as I can.”

“Ugh, I’m starving,” the girl from the night before says, tossing her bag in the booth behind Hermia before sitting down.

“Same,” her friend says, sitting down across from her. “I’m getting two cheeseburgers.”

“Dirk, please,” she teases. “Chili fries and milkshake superiority.”

“You’re gonna be puking,” Dirk says. “I’m gonna have to go to the nightclub all by myself, return a hero all by myself… ‘poor Lilith,’ they’ll say, ‘she had too much dairy and Dirk found Bella Goth all on his own…’”

Hermia pauses to eavesdrop, her interest piqued slightly. The Bella Goth who had been on all the milk cartons several years back? Who had multiple billboards in Sim City with her face plastered on them, encouraging people to call with any information about her whereabouts? If she hadn’t currently been dealing with her own crisis, she would have been all over that.

“Please shut up,” Lilith laughs, tossing a crumpled up napkin at her best friend. “Maybe she’ll stop in for lunch. But do you really think its her?”

“It’s gotta be,” Dirk says. “She looks just like her. Maybe a little younger, but if it’s not her, it’s her clone.”

Lilith snorts. “Could you imagine? I guess we’ll find out when the club opens after dark… that deputy sure was suspicious of her.”

“I mean, he did say she just showed up out of nowhere with total amnesia. That’s pretty weird. I just wish he’d told us where to find her so we didn’t have to drive around for two hours asking random people.”

“Wishful thinking,” Lilith muses. “But the old lady at the service station gave us tons of leads”—Hermia stiffens, following along intently as she swipes Juliette’s untouched burger and fries into the takeout box—“If Bella’s really working at that club like she said, we’d better follow up on the rest. Even driving out to the cemetery today was productive for the business. The gravekeeper sure was creepy, though.”

“Oh, total serial killer vibes,” Dirk agrees. “That house reeked of Weird Shit. I was so happy to get out of there.”

“Getting scared on me, Dirk?”

“No,” Dirk says defensively. “I just don’t like being around someone who gives off those vibes and happily lives in a graveyard.”

“Well, she runs the cemetery,” Lilith muses. “It’d be a shit job if she wasn’t happy to be there. But you’re right. She’s probably way too into witchcraft or something.”

And that sounded like exactly who Juliette needed to see.

The waitress returns and takes their order, and Hermia leads Juliette to the table behind them. “Excuse me,” she says, trying to look as pitiful as possible, which wasn’t very difficult given the state of things.

Lilith and Dirk look up at her. They look at Juliette, then they look at each other before looking back to Hermia.

“Sorry,” Hermia says. “We’re just passing through, but we have ancestry here. Could you tell us where the cemetery is so we can see if we can find any family plots?” It seemed lying came just as easily to her as it had to Romeo.

“Uhh,” Dirk says, clearly unsure what to make of them. “Sure, yeah, there’s a really long road called Dead End Lane. It’s at the, uh, dead end.”

“You’ll know it by the fact that there’s nothing else fucking on it,” Lilith chimes in.

“Thanks,” Hermia says breathlessly, and rushes off with Juliette.

“Well that was fucking weird,” Lilith says.

“It is called Strangetown,” Dirk replies, and takes a crumpled straw wrapper to the face.

———

Back in the motel room, with her sister staring blankly at the wall, Hermia snacks on the cold fries that Juliette clearly wasn’t going to eat, going over in her head how she would explain their situation to the graveyard keeper. What details she would share, which she would omit, how she would know if she was trustworthy in the first place. The last thing they needed was the wrong person finding out about Juliette’s… condition. Best case, she’d be forcibly hospitalized and Hermia would have no chance of helping her. Worst case… no, she wasn’t going to think about that.

Hopefully, the gravekeeper really was involved in witchcraft, or at the very least, could direct them to someone who was. And if she couldn't help, Hermia would track down an alien. If not that, the science center. She’d taken a paranormal elective class at Académie Le Tour just for the hell of it. There were plenty of strange and unexplained things out there, and plenty of people who studied them.

And if no one in Strangetown could help them, they’d move on—maybe stop at La Fiesta Tech and meet with their paranormal professor. There were rumors of a dark underground scene run by vampires in Sim City; maybe they’d turn back and go west instead of north. Maybe Juliette was some kind of vampire; it would explain a lot about the… process, and her lack of appetite.

Hermia shudders at the thought. How was she going to feed her if that were the case? She could try stealing some blood bags from the hospital, but she’d never stolen anything in her life, never even had to think about needing something she couldn’t get. The Capps were rolling in money. Their parents hadn’t let them get too spoiled, thanks to their grandfather’s stories of how he worked his way up before meeting Contessa, but they’d still never gone without.

And Juliette wasn’t going to go without now. Now Hermia had a clear head and a place to start, and she would find a damn cure for whatever her sister’s condition was if it killed her.

———

After stocking up on more soda and candy bars at the vending machines for Juliette to ignore, Hermia leaves her sister to rest in the motel room and sets off for the little cemetery at the end of Dead End Lane. The drive down the lonely road isn’t too long; she can still see the main highway behind her, the sun dying in the sky.

There’s a chill in the air when Hermia pulls up in front of the large stone house next to the cemetery. The gate is unlocked, and she pulls her flannel tightly around her as she walks up the pathway. The house looms over her, dark and strangely alluring, as she raises a hand to knock on the heavy wooden door.

“And who might you be, come calling here, to interrupt an old woman’s tea?” a voice calls out from behind her.

Hermia jumps and spins around. Sitting in an armchair in the dead center of a smaller, but still quite “populated” graveyard is an elderly woman dressed in black. She’d been so focused on the house and her own thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed the graves, let alone someone having tea among them.

“Sorry,” she manages, as her heart rate normalizes. “I didn’t realize I was interrupting—”

“Nonsense,” the old lady interjects, and Hermia steps back. The gravekeeper smiles, her thin lips pulling back and disappearing over her teeth. “I’m pulling your leg. I don’t get many visitors out here anymore, and now three in one day? Come child, have some tea.”

Hermia hesitates. The words are kind, but the spirit behind them is… off.

“I said come here,” the old lady barks sharply, patting the little table next to her armchair that holds the tea set and a plate of cookies. “I don’t bite.” Her smile says otherwise.

Still, Hermia had come here to meet her, no matter the alarm bells in her head and the goosebumps on her skin. “My name is Hermia Capp,” she says, as she walks down the path to the little graveyard. “I thought maybe you might have some… advice for me, given what I’ve heard of you.” She chooses her words carefully, not wanting to insinuate too much if the two travelers had been wrong about her, not wanting to offend if they had been right.

“Ah,” the old woman says, pouring Hermia a cup of now-tepid tea. “So you’ve heard me?”

Hermia takes the cup, holds it close to her, but doesn’t raise it to her lips. She stares into the tea, its tiny brown flakes gathering at the bottom of the cup. “I heard that you ran the cemetery, and might have certain skills—”

The old woman lets out a frustrated sound. “Once, Olive Specter was on every guest list, at every event in Sim City. She was the party. Now I’m just the gravekeeper, decrepit and forgotten, tending to the poor, wayward souls of Strangetown, of all places,” She tsks and sets her cup down on the table, and surveys Hermia with the eyes of a predator. “You smell like death, girl.”

Hermia flinches.

“Oh, yes, you’re in deep trouble,” Olive says, savoring every word, and Hermia knows in her bones that the old woman is involved in something just as dark. “Tell me, child, what steaming, acrid pile of metaphysical shit have you stepped in?”

With a shaky breath, Hermia sets her cup down on the table. And then she tells her everything.

———

“Ahh,” Olive sighs when Hermia wraps up her tale, her eyes closed and face peaceful. “Now that was certainly a story.”

Hermia frowns. “I was hoping you might be able to help me, given your special… interest in death,” she says, still dancing around her words. “I don’t know what went wrong, or most importantly, how to fix it.”

Olive’s eyes snap open. “Special interest indeed.”

“So can you help me?” Hermia asks hopefully.

Olive meets her eyes. “Oh, no, my dear, I don’t believe I can.” Her face contorts into a sinister grin. “I usually work in the other direction.”

———

Whatever Olive Specter had meant, Hermia didn’t want to think about, and she certainly wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She’d thanked her for the untouched tea and her time—“Come and see us again,” Olive had told her, sipping her cold tea—and Hermia had gotten the hell out of there.

So much for that, Hermia thinks miserably. Guess it’s aliens now.

The moon is rising behind the dunes when Hermia pulls back into the motel parking lot. Out of habit, she tries Puck before heading back to the room. The number is still disconnected.

And Juliette is gone.

———

III.

Strangetown is burning. 

——

–Several hours earlier–

It was Juliette’s would-have-been wedding all over again. 

In her desperation, Hermia had torn through the modestly–appointed motel room so fast she’d pulled the shower curtain down. Whatever, she would pay for it. There was nothing left of her sister. She had even looked under the bed. The absurdity of a situation where Hermia might even consider that Juliette would have crawled underneath it like some kind of childhood monster wasn’t lost on her.

You’re losing it, she’d told herself, breathing methodically, forcing herself to relax and think. Hermia had never been so rash in her actions in her life. Tybalt was the one who always flew off the handle and Juliette followed her emotions–albeit in a healthier way than their brother–but Hermia had always been the one to go with the flow, keep her calm, and behave at least relatively rationally.

So the fact that she had damn near had a panic attack because her sister–who was probably just down at the vending machine, or staring into the pool for a change of scenery–hadn’t been twiddling her thumbs in their motel room was quite concerning.

But of course, Juliette wasn’t at the vending machines. 

She wasn’t at the pool. (Or face down in it, thank the Watcher.)

And when Hermia had found the night guy lounging in the office with his feet on the desk, focused on his handheld video game, he’d shrugged and said he hadn’t seen her either.

So Hermia had set off in her car in a fragile, manufactured calm, telling herself that there was no way Juliette could have gotten very far on foot.

——

 “Are you sure this is it?” Lilith asks impatiently, fidgeting with the newspaper clippings and various scans of missing posters in her lap. She and Dirk had spent their afternoon in the nearby library, printing what they could find archived on the web, suffering the ancient computers and agonizingly slow internet connection in order to bring some proof of her identity back to Bella. If she really was Bella.

Dirk’s brow furrows. “I thought it was supposed to be open by now.” They’d been sitting on the street in front of the nightclub for over an hour past sundown already. The architecture–simple, sharp, and more elegant than the surrounding buildings by a mile–sits darkened under a sign illuminated only by the full, red moon above. It reads Purgatory, the name they’d been given at the service station. There are no windows. “Maybe it’s just too early for anyone to be out yet, and this is their dead time.”

“I’m gonna try the door,” Lilith says, shoving the papers off her lap and stepping out of the car. “Maybe the sign is just broken.”

“Wouldn’t be out of place here,” Dirk muses, leaving the driver’s seat to follow her. There’s a chill in the air as they make their way up the steps, and goosebumps prick up on his skin. Something seems off here, but exactly what, he isn’t sure. Lilith continues ahead of him, completely oblivious to anything that might be wrong, as usual.

Suddenly, the front door flies open, and a familiar woman storms out with her bag over her shoulder.

“Holy shit!” Lilith exclaims as the woman nearly crashes into her, so entranced in her own thoughts that she hadn’t noticed them at the top of the steps. “Bella?”

The woman who would be Bella Goth starts, and stumbles back. “Sorry,” she grumbles, clearly annoyed, and tries to step around them. “We’re closed tonight.”

Lilith side-steps and blocks her path, and the woman huffs. “Don’t you recognize us?”

“I’m sorry,” she says, breathing slowly through her nostrils, trying to be nice, but it’s clear to Dirk that they’re testing her already-thin patience. “But no, and I need to get home before it gets any later.”

“Bella, come on, they’ve been looking–” Lilith starts, before the woman cuts her off.

“You have the wrong person. My name is Laura. Now please,” she says, looking around nervously. In the moonlight, she looks even more like Bella than the photo that had led them to her. “I hate it out here at night, and I have to walk home in this. I just want to get it over with.”

“We could drive you,” Dirk offers, feeling very sympathetic to her desire to get out of there. This was a conversation to be had indoors, maybe under the fluorescent lights of the diner. “We could buy you dinner.”

She eyes him suspiciously. Lilith fidgets nervously. “Why?”

Dirk pulls up a screenshot of a missing poster on his phone. It was the only thing that searching her name ever brought up anymore; she’d gone from an influential socialite to an urban legend, a cautionary tale. He holds it out to her, and she takes it reluctantly. “You don’t remember your name?”

Her eyes widen when she sees the photo, then narrow when she looks back up at Dirk. “What is this?”

“It’s you,” Lilith says. “You’ve been missing for years.”

Laura’s eyes move back to the phone, the cool light illuminating her face. The faintest trace of recognition ghosts across her features. She hands the phone back to Dirk. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”

——

She hadn’t spoken on the drive back to the aptly-named Road to Nowhere, clutching her purse close to her body as she glanced nervously around the backseat of Dirk’s car. 

He could understand why she might feel that way, after all–getting into a stranger’s car at night, out in what might as well have been the middle of nowhere, was probably near the top of the list of Highly Avoidable Ways to Get Murdered. He wouldn’t want Lilith doing it, though she probably would. Hell, he wouldn’t do it himself. Even Lilith, who was arguably the loudest, most impulsive person he’d ever met, had sat quietly, fidgeting with her phone, until they’d all three breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled into the relatively well-lit parking lot of the plaza that housed the diner.

And now, under the cool bright lights of said diner, the woman-who-wasn’t Bella Goth was doing a damn good job at impersonating her. 

Her arms crossed tightly across her chest, Laura-not-Bella eyes Dirk and Lilith warily across the booth. Her skin is smoother than he remembers, her face a little fuller, but there is no doubt in his mind that they’ve found her. 

On her first trip to the table, the waitress sets down a glass of cola with a wedge of lemon and a small cup of coffee before turning to Dirk and Lilith. “And for you?” They ask for coffee and water, respectively, order their food, and thankfully, Lilith doesn’t give them the chance to return to their awkward silence.

“So what happened, Bel–” she blurts out, and Dirk elbows her in the ribs. “I mean, Laura?”

Laura squeezes the lemon into her cola and stirs it gently with her straw, staring intently as the ice swirls around the glass. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t remember anything?” Lilith presses, and the waitress returns to their table with their drinks, and the jumbo slice of pie Lilith had ordered in lieu of a hot meal. 

Laura’s nose wrinkles at Lilith’s tone, and Dirk grimaces. Lilith was always one to rush in, guns blazing, without regard for delicate situations. They already knew that she had amnesia; they’d gathered that much by asking about her around town. “What she means to ask,” he says gently, “is what’s the earliest you remember? Were you here? Or somewhere else?”

“I don’t remember anything before here,” she says quietly. “All I know is I woke up in the hospital a few months ago. One of the nurses told me that a deputy found me wandering in the desert, severely sunburnt, incoherent–I couldn’t even tell him my name.” She looks Dirk straight in the eye. “I still couldn’t.”

“So Laura–” Lilith starts.

“That’s the name my nurse gave me,” she cuts Lilith off. “Because I needed one, and she said I looked like a Laura. I spent several weeks in there with her, until I was deemed able to care for myself as an outpatient, then she helped set me up with their program to find a cheap apartment and a bartending job, which is where I should be right now, but one of the regulars rushed in to talk to the owners and suddenly it doesn’t matter that I have to walk home alone at night or might not be able to pay my rent.”

“What if we could prove we know who you are?” Dirk asks as their food arrives. “That you have somewhere to go?”

“Why?”

Lilith fumbles in her bag for a business card. “You can look us up,” she says, sliding it across the table. “We’re a legitimate business.”

Laura frowns at the card– a plain, thick cardstock with PLEASANT DREAMS PARANORMAL INVESTIGATIONS in a basic, professional type across the front with a tiny icon of a ghost next to their information beneath it. “Do I look like a ghost to you?”

Sort of, Dirk thinks, as he and Lilith glance at each other. “We were neighbors,” Dirk explains. “When you went missing all those years ago, it was all anyone could talk about. Your daughter never stopped looking for you. I don’t know what happened in-between when you disappeared and when that deputy found you, or why they never put two-and-two together, but I know your family will want to see you.” 

And Cassandra could probably solve that mystery, he thinks.

“You really think I’m this ‘Bella Goth’?” she asks, pushing the spoon around in her chili. 

Lilith slides her the folder of “evidence” they’d gathered for her for her to browse. “If you aren’t,” she says, grinning, “then you’d have to be her clone.”

——

Tank had given up on trying to sleep.

Buzz was staying over at the base again, and Buck had never been a night owl, so with nothing else to do, Tank had turned in early too. But his body was so used to the overnight shift that he’d spent multiple hours just staring at the ceiling, mind racing back and forth throughout the events of the past few days and the life that had led up to them, reliving embarrassing moments and thinking about how he should have done this or that differently–as one does–and then the cat had scratched and scratched and scratched at his door, until he’d finally given up falling asleep, pulled his clothes back on, and let the damn thing in before heading out to find something else to occupy his mind. 

At this time of night, it was either seedy nightclubs or the Night Howl saloon, so he’d driven out to Deadtree to nurse a single, shitty beer and continue reexamining his entire life. But hey, at least now he was doing it in a bar instead of a too-firm twin-sized bed.

“Think we might close up early tonight,” Hoot Howell grunts, wiping down the bar near Tank. Not that it needed it–Tank hadn’t seen anyone else in there since he’d arrived. 

Tank nods. He’d never been much of a drinker, and probably wasn’t even going to finish the single beer he’d ordered. “Well, you can’t keep the lights on just for my sake.” A late night breakfast plate at the diner would probably be better anyway. Or a doughnut from the convenience store…

Hoot nods back in thanks, continuing his cleaning, then looks toward the window. “Be careful out there. Something in the air tonight.”

——

Tank had realized, upon leaving Deadtree, that Hoot had been right. Things just felt… off. The newest nightclub, Purgatory, was closed. On his way back to the main road, he’d seen the usual assortment of night owls, and people jogging, or walking their dogs, but they seemed to be in a sort of haze, like the cool, night breezes were too much for them, making them sluggish.

The little hairs on his arms prick up as he nears the junction of main and side roads. The nightclub on the corner is lit up and open, but the parking lot sits empty. Strange, he thinks, but only because there was barely anything else to do there after dark. If he had been on patrol back in SimCity, he would have been itching to radio for a few more cars in the area, just to make sure things truly were as quiet as they seemed.

It’s only by chance that he sees his brother’s best friend, whom he had never gotten along with, being chased by someone—or something— from the dumpsters of the next door apartment complex.

On instinct, Tank swerves into the parking lot and toward the confrontation. Whoever or whatever was chasing Johnny had swiftly caught up with him and knocked him to the ground near the empty club. 

Johnny flails frantically, scrabbling for anything he can find to defend himself, as the creature looms over him. It’s humanoid but covered in thick, pale fur, with ragged, unforgiving claws, and… tiny denim shorts and pigtails?

It lets out a loud, angry yelp as Tank smashes into it with his car before it runs off into the night.

“Holy shit, was that… Annie?” Tank asks, stepping out of the car. 

“Tank?” Johnny says, and attempts to stand, but has to settle for a seated position. From here, Tank can see the ugly tear on his arm where those claws must have got him, and knows his ankle had probably already started swelling from going down the way he had. “What the hell is going on?”

“No idea,” Tank replies, as a loud, mournful howl sounds from somewhere much too close. “But we better get the hell out of here.”

——

Johnny really couldn’t stand on his own, so Tank had had to almost carry him into the car. Both of them had bristled at this, the bad blood between them still fresh, but the howling was moving closer—and sounding angrier—by the second, and Johnny needed medical attention. 

“I can’t get ahold of Buck,” Tank says, speeding down the Road to Nowhere, while Johnny clutches his arm in the passenger seat, gray-faced and breathing raggedly. They’d wrapped his arm quickly and tightly with an old sports bandage from the glove box, but the bleeding wasn’t really the issue. The tears in his flesh had looked as nasty as the claws that made them, and Tank was sure they felt like it, too. “I don’t know what that thing was, but dad’s not home and I don’t have signal.”

Johnny’s head whips toward him. “My mom’s on night shift at the hospital, but my dad and sister—”

“The hospital has security and isn’t far from the base, and your house is all the way out in Paradise Place. Your dad has probably been asleep for hours and unless your sister is sneaking out now, she probably has too,” Tank says. “We’re almost to my house and I can raise the general there and see if he knows anything. Then you’re going to the hospital.” 

Johnny opens his mouth to argue, but Tank interrupts him. “And if I have to, I’ll go out to Paradise Place myself.”

He was in tactical mode now. If word had reached the base already about some kind of violent creature roaming the streets, then Buzz would have orders for him. And if they weren’t aware of the situation, they needed to be so they could get it under control before anyone else got attacked. And Buck was scared of the wind rattling the windows, so someone needed to check in on him, and make sure he kept the house locked up tight. 

When they arrive at 51 Road to Nowhere, the front door is unlocked. Worrisome. Tank was sure he’d locked it on his way out, but a creature like the one that attacked Johnny certainly wouldn’t have knocked and politely closed the door behind itself. Still, he was feeling particularly stupid for leaving his weapon locked up in its case in the bottom of his duffel bag instead of carrying it on his person like he should have been. He’d never had to use it–except for training at the range–and obviously hadn’t planned to tonight, but now he sorely wished he was carrying in case he ran into that howling creature again and needed to defend himself or someone else. 

With Johnny left to fume in the car over his arm and the fact that in his current condition, he couldn’t do anything to help, Tank quietly surveys the downstairs open area. Everything is as he’d left it. No one in the other rooms, no one in the closets. Buck was likely sleeping soundly upstairs, blissfully unaware. Tank would let him know the situation, then call their father, grab his weapon, and drive Johnny to the hospital. Then he’d go from there doing whatever the general ordered to help secure the town.

Upstairs, Buck’s bedroom door stands open. 

Tank glances quickly around the hall before he rushes to the bedroom, but his brother is gone.

No one in the bathrooms, the office, the closets, the other bedrooms. Even the damn cat is missing.

He inhales deeply and closes his eyes for a brief moment, settling his racing thoughts, before heading into the office and grabbing the phone from the desk. This was something he could do: remain level-headed in a crisis even if he struggled with anxiety in other areas of his life. The dial-tone drones as he punches in the number for his father’s division of the base and makes his way to the guest bedroom.

Mercifully, someone picks up on the second ring.

“This is Tank Grunt calling for General Buzz Grunt,” Tanks says as the soldier on the other end of the line asks for identification. 

“One moment,” she says curtly, and places the call on hold. 

With the phone cradled between his neck and shoulder, Tank sorts through his neatly packed bag and pulls out a small locked case. He retrieves and inspects his gun, then clips the holster to his belt and secures the weapon, pulling his shirt back down over it. Just in case.

The phone clicks softly. “Go for General Grunt,” his father says.

“Dad,” Tank replies, and cuts right to the chase. “There’s something out there attacking people, and Buck’s gone.”

“Buck’s here,” the general replies, and Tank’s breath comes out in a low whoosh. “And we know. We’ve had reports of something brewing out there all night from every sector. I had Duncan stop to get him, but you weren’t there, and cellular is down.”

“What can I do?”

“We’ve got more units out picking up those in the most affected areas now,” Buzz responds. “Paradise Place has been fully evacuated of everyone present, and we’re trying to breach Deadtree now, but there’ve been… problems.”

“You have the Smiths?” 

“Oh, this place is greener than that damn lawn,” Buzz says drily. “We have the whole clan, except the hospital staff, but that’s locked down tight–no one in or out.”

“Dad…” Tank pauses, and then lowers his voice. “What the hell is going on?”

Buzz pauses for a moment at the informality, then levels with his son. “I don’t know, son, but we’re doing what we can to figure it out. Duncan’s back out there looking for Ripp now. Listen, you need to get–”

With a nasty crackle, the lights cut out and the call dies. 

A loud hiss sounds from beneath the bed. 

Tank curses, kneels down and pulls out his cell phone, the little flashlight illuminating just enough that he can see the cat, with it eyes glittering in the darkness, its fur raised, backed into the corner as far from him–and anything else–as it can get.

Get to the base, Buzz was likely going to say before getting cut off. 

Damn it, Tank thinks. The cat was a menace, sure, but he couldn’t just leave it there to fend for itself against whatever weird shit was happening in Strangetown. Slowly, he reaches his arm toward it, bracing himself for a bite. “Come on,” he says quietly, in the most calming voice he can muster. “We can’t stay here.”

Shockingly, the cat relaxes, and hesitantly approaches his hand. Tank flinches slightly as it sniffs him gently, expecting a lunge and at least a nasty scratch, but instead, the cat leaves his arm be and slowly pulls itself out from under the bed, watching him expectantly as he sits up on his knees and zips up his bag. 

“Want to go see Buck?”

The cat cocks its head to the side as if it really understands him, then rubs along his legs and follows Tank docilely into the office to grab the general’s old communications radio from the closet–just in case–and the first aid kit from the bathroom, and then out to the car.

“Change of plans,” Tank says, letting the cat jump into the backseat and then stowing his bag on the floorboards before her. Johnny’s eyes are squeezed shut tight from pain, but he looks over at Tank as he slides into the driver’s seat. “We’re heading to the base. Let me see your arm.”

“What about my family?” Johnny asks through gritted teeth as Tank unwraps the stretchy bandage.

“They’ve been evacuated to the base. The hospital’s locked down, but the military infirmary can take care of you.”

Johnny frowns at that, and then lets out an angry groan as Tank dabs antiseptic on the jagged gash. As if that was going to do anything for it.

Tank studies him. He could understand Johnny’s hesitation. The military in Strangetown wasn’t exactly secretive about its suspicions regarding extraterrestrial activity, so to walk right into their base, and injured on top of that, was going to be uncomfortable at the least. But his family had lived in Strangetown for years and been fine. His aunt Lola even worked at the base, acting as a sort of liaison between the military and the “frequent flyers” who seemed to be spotted most often in the desert airspace. Their concentrated activity there had actually been why Strangetown had become what it was; the military had noticed, set up their operation, and the town had grown up around it. Otherwise it would have just stayed a dusty little pit stop in the long stretch of desert in between the canyon and Oasis Springs. 

Tensions did rise a little every time someone got abducted and came back pregnant, but that hadn’t actually happened much, and every time it did, the person in question had insisted it was something they wanted. Of course, there were the conspiracy theorists who cried brainwashing, and the really crazy ones who claimed that the military was in league with the aliens and was forcing them to say that as a coverup, but there was a lot of weird shit in Strangetown, so most civilians just kind of went with it as one more odd thing on the ever-growing list. 

It might have even stopped being an issue entirely if Johnny’s father would just do the bare minimum and consult with the leaders there and give any insight as to why Strangetown’s airspace was such a hotbed of activity, but he had always insisted that he was Retired and was going to stay that way. This had been a point of contention with Buzz for years–he and Lyla been the first to extend a hand to the Pollination Technician, invited him and Johnny’s mother, Jenny, to dinner to bridge that connection, and been so genuinely shocked at the PT’s refusal to be of any kind of service for the place he was now trying to call home that it had soured any chance of friendship between their families for good. In Buzz’s eyes, and the eyes of his colleagues, it confirmed that constant vigilance was required, as if the aliens had something to hide. Tank had never been sure whether Lola had joined the military as the gesture of good faith that her father was unwilling to provide, or if she simply had ambitions that required military service. 

Tank and Johnny had their own conflict, of course, and it was completely unrelated to any UFO activity. In another world, they might have been friends, bonding over their shared love of sports and fitness, but instead their teen years had been Ripp vs. the General, which in reality had translated to Ripp and friends against the world–including Tank. And Tank would almost certainly die before admitting it, but he had secretly been jealous that Ripp had found such close friends and he hadn’t. Things with Ripp were settled now; he’d reached out after Tank had dropped out of LFT, finally seeing his brother as human, Tank supposed, but as they weren’t family, neither Tank nor Johnny had ever felt any obligation toward each other.

All that aside, they were in a state of emergency, and the rest of his family was already there except for his mother, and his injuries needed tending, so Johnny was just going to have to deal with it. Still, despite the resentment between them, Tank had never actually been as unreasonable as his brother made him out to be, and he could understand. “It’ll be fine,” he says awkwardly, turning the key in the ignition after finishing up with wrapping Johnny’s arm tightly in fresh gauze and a new stretchy bandage. “I just want to make one more stop.”

——

Hours of searching, and Hermia had nothing to show for it. 

She’d searched all of the areas within walking distance of the motel as thoroughly as she could without breaking and entering, and had found no sign of her sister. So she’d widened her search area a little bit more, each passing minute distancing Juliette further from her, sending her spiraling further down the rabbit hole of all the terrible things that could happen to her sister.

Aside from the terrible things that already had.

The diner had been her first real stop after she’d searched the public areas in and around the motel, and now it was going to be her last before she went back to search it yet again, thinking that maybe Juliette had wandered somewhere familiar. At this point, it was desperation more than hope. 

She would wait for a while, but she’d eventually have to call someone. Tybalt would certainly drop everything and race to her in record time, but he’d just as likely get into a wreck in his haste and leave her well and truly alone. She hated the thought of calling the sheriff’s department. The authorities there would certainly find Juliette, and there would go Hermia’s chance at ever seeing her sister again, at her sister ever having a normal life. But her time, and her choices, were running out.

Juliette, of course, is not at the diner. 

In fact, almost no one is. Only the table in the back corner is occupied, and Hermia barely registers the pair she’d asked for directions earlier. The same waitress from the lunch shift calls out a greeting, and Hermia slumps over the counter, angling herself to face the door.

“Couldn’t find her?” the waitress asks sympathetically, setting a coffee down in front of Hermia, who shakes her head without making eye contact. “It’s on the house.”

Hermia thanks her, feeling pathetic. “Has she been here since I checked earlier?”

“Sorry, honey,” the waitress replies. “But I can get the sheriff himself down here. He eats here enough for free that he owes me a favor.”

“No!” Hermia says loudly, and the other woman starts, so she scrambles an excuse. “Sorry… she’s an adult, she can go where she wants, I just worry…” 

The waitress doesn’t look quite convinced, but she nods. “If you need anything…”

Hermia thanks her and takes a sip of the burnt coffee. The wind howls loudly, almost angrily, outside. She pulls out her phone, frowning.

By now, Hermia knows better than to try calling Puck. If she had to hear that automated voice telling her that the number she dialed could not be reached one more time, she was going to snap. 

Instead, she opens up their text thread and begins typing furiously.

By the time she finishes, multiple long text bubbles full of expletives and accusations fill the chat. She’d sent him every negative thought she’d felt over the past few days. Let him know exactly how it felt every time she’d tried to call and beg for help, or hell, even comfort at this point, and have it thrown in her face by some computer that she had been abandoned, left completely and utterly on her own. What had even been the point of helping her look for Juliette if he was just going to abandon her when she needed him? Had he ever cared about her, or had she just been the first one to see past his shyness, to not care that his family was stranger than most? 

And FUCK YOU, Puck, for abandoning me when I needed you most of all.

Breathing heavily, Hermia sets her phone down hard on the counter. Maybe Puck didn’t deserve all that. After all, he hadn’t killed Juliette. Hadn’t even known she was going to look for his mother and do anything like… what she’d done. Probably would have told her not to, that nothing good would come of it, and been right. 

But the messages come back one by one, with a little red exclamation point beside them.

Sorry, your message cannot be delivered at this time.

Not that it mattered whether he deserved it or not. It wasn’t like he was going to see them anyway.

——

“Seriously?” Johnny asks irritably as Tank pulls right up to the door of the convenience store. “You had to stop and get a snack?”

“Oh, shut up,” Tank says. “I have to check on someone, and it’s on the way.”

“Barely,” Johnny mutters, wincing at his injuries. “At least be fast.”

“Obviously.” Tank steps out of the car, leaving it running. And pauses, feeling more sorry for Johnny than he’d ever admit. “You want anything?”

Johnny rolls his eyes, then thinks twice about it and accepts the olive branch, at least for now. “A PowerSip and a protein bar.”

Tank rolls his eyes to himself, but heads into the little shop anyway. It’s just as he suspected–Erin there, working the night shift alone, focused on fixing her radio. It wasn’t in the evacuation areas he knew of, but he still hated the thought of her being there by herself, with that thing on the loose. 

“Tank?” a gratingly familiar voice asks, and his brother comes out of the bathroom, drying his hands on his shorts. 

“Ripp?” he asks, just as surprised to see him. Wasn’t Deputy Duncan supposed to be out collecting him from his job? “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

Ripp grins, heading over to the hot cases. “I’m on lunch.”

“Right.” Leave it to Ripp to drive out of the way for whatever odd junk craving he was having instead of just eating closer to his job, or packing from home. A horrible thought passes through his mind that maybe Ripp was the reason for Erin’s current state–he would be the one to accidentally get someone pregnant–but Tank sets his jaw and returns his focus to the situation at hand. At least their dad would have less to worry about if he showed up with Ripp too, and that freed up evacuation efforts for others. Might as well keep him and Johnny fed on the way, so they’d both be less cranky when they got to the base. 

Tank grabs a couple of protein bars for Johnny and a PowerSip from the cold case before heading up to the register, trying to decide the best way to convince her to come to the base with them. “Hey, Erin,” he says, then calls to his brother, who is juggling multiple burritos, a hot dog, and a small box of doughnuts as he tries to fill his soda. “Come on, Ripp. I’ll get it.” Bribery would work on him. Probably. He gives Erin an embarrassed smile. 

“Awesome, thanks man,” Ripp says, setting his food on the counter, then he narrows his eyes at Tank. “What’s the catch?”

Tank sighs. “Have you heard from dad?”

“You know the less we talk, the better we get along,” Ripp jokes, but to his credit, takes the frown on Tank’s face seriously. “Why?”

“I think maybe it’s better if you hear it from him,” Tank says. “But the short version is that there’s some kind of night beast running around attacking people, so we need to evacuate to the base.”

“No way,” Ripp says, at the same time as Erin says “Okay,” her hand on her belly.

Tank sighs heavily. He should be happy– Erin agreeing so fast had been unexpected– but of course Ripp was going to be a problem, and of course he couldn’t leave him there. “Look, I have Johnny in the car–”

“Johnny agreed to this?” Ripp asks incredulously, peering toward the door, where Johnny was indeed in the car of his own free will. 

Well, mostly. “He had no choice. It got him and the hospital is locked down. His leg might be broken and he definitely needs stitches.”

“Fuck,” Ripp says, taking in the situation. “Alright then. We can take my truck.”

“I’ll shut down,” Erin says. “It’ll only take a few minutes. I’ll leave a note for the morning clerk that they’ll have to do some extra cleaning.”

“Oh, they’ll hate that,” Ripp grins, gathering his food. 

“Grab anything else you want from the fresh stuff,” Erin gestures. “I have to throw it out anyway.”

That was the wrong thing to say to the bottomless pit that was Ripp. Tank gathers the rest of the garbage while his brother plunders the hot cases–did he think they didn’t have food at the base?–selects a burrito and a doughnut from the leftovers for himself, and then tosses the rest. By the time he’s finished taking out the trash and gathering his bag from his car, Erin is locking the doors, Ripp has pulled his truck around, helped a frowning Johnny into the bed, and begun passing him snacks. 

“You better drive,” Ripp says from the bed, tossing Tank the keys as he helps Erin into the front seat. The cat, who had been pointedly ignoring everyone in the shuffle, moves for her, and climbs gingerly into what’s left of her lap. Erin pets it absentmindedly as Tank slides open the back window so she can hear what’s going on. Something like gunfire sounds in the distance as he pulls the communications radio out of his bag. 

He doesn’t even have to connect the radio to power; Buzz had been prepared for anything, and kept the emergency battery well-charged. It doesn’t take long for someone at the base to respond and connect him to his father. 

They barely have time to acknowledge each other before Buck’s voice takes over. “Tank??” he asks breathlessly, like he’d been crying. “You h-have to go back, Jeanie–” In the background, Tank can hear Buzz telling his youngest son to calm down and let him have the radio back. Buck must have truly been hysterical. “D-duncan wouldn’t let me f-find her–”

“Don’t worry, I got her,” Tank assures his brother. “And Ripp, too.”

Buzz manages to get the handheld back from Buck, whose blubbering keeps the voice-activation transmitting. “I told you, she’s a brave soldier,” Buzz tells Buck.

“She’s a cat, dad,” Ripp mutters.

“Dad, we’re on the w–” Tank starts, but Buzz interrupts him.

“Switch to our training channel,” the general orders in a hushed voice, and Tank quickly obeys, adjusting the radio to a channel with less ears–the one on which Buzz had trained him how to use the radio as a child. 

“You have Ripp?” Buzz asks, once the new connection is established. 

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m here,” Ripp chimes in.

Their father sighs in relief. “You two need to leave now.”

“We’re heading to the base now,” Tank says.

“No,” Buzz corrects him. “I don’t want you going through Deadtree, and they’ve closed off the backroads into the base. You need to leave Strangetown. We’re about to announce a curfew, but what we really mean is quarantine. It’s better for you to leave entirely.”

Tank stares at the handheld in shock, then meets Ripp’s eyes. His face echoes Tank’s surprise. A quarantine meant that things were just about as bad as they could get, and then even worse than that for their father to risk the operation and his career by warning them to leave ahead of it.

“Dad,” Tank says, holding the radio tightly. “What is going on?”

“If I knew, I would tell you,” his father says, and Tank can almost see him pinching the bridge of his nose. “But it’s bad out there. The dead started climbing out of the ground in Deadtree–”

“What?” 

“–I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t read the reports myself. Luckily that cemetery is old, and the inhabitants weren’t very… put together.” Tank grimaces as his father continues. “When we got that mostly under control, people really started losing it, and couple that with your standard full moon crazies–” Tank knew all about those from his night patrols, where it was clear that a full moon brought out not necessarily the worst, but definitely the weirdest, in people– “On top of that, there are reports of some kind of creature attacking civilians near the main road, and now apparently the dead are rising at the old Specter cemetery too. Specter’s refusing to leave–barricaded herself inside her house and laughed when they tried to rescue her...” Buzz pauses, considering that Ripp is in the car too. “Might want to tell the girl.”

Johnny lets out a bitter snort. “Like she’d even care,” he grumbles. 

Ripp throws him a warning look, and Tank ignores them both. Whatever had gone on between them while he was gone was none of his concern, and quite frankly, he didn’t really care.

“Look,” Buzz continues, with a finality that meant the conversation was over. “The base is safe as it gets here. Start driving now and don’t stop until you reach the canyon. I mean it. Call me on this channel when you get settled. And Ripp…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid,” Ripp finishes lightheartedly. “Tell Buck we’ll take good care of Jeanie.”

The radio sounds one last time, and they can hear Buzz sighing heavily. “Over and out.”

——

Bella had had questions, and lots of them. They’d had to order more coffee, and–more, in Lilith’s case–dessert. But ultimately, neither Dirk and Lilith nor Bella had had any satisfactory answers for each other.

But Cassandra would. At least for Bella.

“They can’t really complain when I don’t show up for my next shift if they never told me why or for how long they were shutting down in the first place,” Bella muses, picking at her cobbler. It had been settled after she’d studied the dossier Lilith and Dirk had prepped for her. Whether seeing her own face staring back out at her, page after page, had triggered some sort of recognition in her or if she was simply desperate enough to try anything to get her life from before back, Dirk couldn’t gauge, but they were headed for Pleasantview in the morning after they’d dropped her off at her apartment to pack. And sleep, if she could.

If any of them could.

“I’ll go start the getaway car,” he jokes, leaving Lilith and Bella to wrap up in the diner. 

A fire engine barrels down the road. Dirk fiddles with the radio, searching in vain for a local news station. He’d noticed more and more sirens in the past hour or so, passing and fading off into the distance. The wind seemed to have picked up too, howling loudly, signaling a nasty windstorm approaching–the other side of the road had already lost power, by the looks of it–but the night felt impossibly still.

Giving up on the radio, he pulls out his phone to check the news feed there, and nothing. No service. They were in the middle of nowhere, so it was probably something the locals were used to… but still. A police cruiser blares past, and the sound drops off at the same time as all the others before it. 

It’s then that Dirk realizes the occasional howls of wind and sirens are the only sound in the eerie quiet that has settled over the plaza. He rolls down the window to silent, stifling air. He wasn’t stupid–of course it wasn’t going to sound like Sim City in a small desert town. But dead silence? It’s the same wrong feeling he’d had at the nightclub.

Lilith breaks said silence as she climbs into the car, chatting with–or rather at–Bella, who slides into the back seat. 

“Do you have service?” she turns to Dirk as she fastens her seatbelt. “I had to call Cassandra on the payphone.”

It wouldn’t have been Dirk’s choice to call Bella’s daughter before they were safely on their way, just in case Bella changed her mind, but Lilith was going to do what she was going to do. “What’d she say?”

“I don’t think she believed me,” Lilith admits. “And we didn’t think putting Bella on the phone so early was the best idea.”

At least she had the sense for that.

“But she’s expecting us?”

“I told her we’d be there tomorrow.”

Dirk turns back to face Bella. “And you’re sure you’re okay with this?”

Bella meets his eyes. “It’s not like I have much else to lose.”

“Cassandra sounded worried, though,” Lilith says, frowning. “She didn’t know why, but she said we should get out of here as soon as we could.”

Dirk shakes his head. If Cassandra, with her weird sixth sense about things and her dabbles in the occult, was worried, he definitely didn’t want to be there any longer than he had to. 

“I have a bad feeling too,” Bella says quietly, and they both turn back to stare at her. 

The howling picks up again, loudly, causing Dirk to jump slightly. But this time, he isn’t quite sure it’s just the wind. Through the rear window, he can see smoke billowing up over the dunes.

“That’s it,” he says, popping the hatchback and stepping out of the car. He returns to the front seat a few minutes later with a police scanner. “Time to find out what’s really going on here.”

——

As if the night wasn’t bad enough, Hermia’s car refuses to start. 

Not long after the other group had walked out of the little diner, the waitress had—apologetically, at least—kicked Hermia out. “Best be getting back before the wind gets any worse,” she’d advised, looking anxiously out the glass doors.

Hermia couldn’t blame her. It sounded uglier and uglier by the minute, and apparently a bunch of houses had already lost power. She didn’t want to get caught in it either. 

But her damn car had just died. Whether it couldn’t handle the desert heat, she’d let it go too long without a tune up, or the universe simply hated her, Hermia didn’t know. And of course, she had no service. 

It had to be option three, then. The universe just hated her, and was punishing her for her brief foray into necromancy.

Regardless, she was done sleeping in her car, and she needed to be at the motel if Juliette somehow found her way back. So she does the only thing she can do, and starts her lonely walk down the highway.

The wind howls louder, and Hermia instinctively wraps her arms around herself. The air is mildly chilly, but oddly still. No one is out, except a single truck that zooms past her.

Another howl, and Hermia’s stomach ties itself in knots. That didn’t sound like the wind at all.

She holds herself tighter. Far off in the distance, she can see a fire blazing—probably some unfortunate symptom of the dry air and incoming windstorm—which explained the sirens that had kept passing the diner. A worrisome thought strikes her—did Juliette have enough capacity to wander away from the fire, instead of into it?

Even worse, had she already been caught in it?

Great. Now she had a whole new set of anxieties to fret over.

At least the wind had quieted, and she could be alone with her thoughts. But without the wind, there was no sound at all.

Aside from a low, whining growl at her back.

Hermia whips around as the hot, damp breath touches her neck, only to be face to face with something out of a nightmare. Almost twice her size, covered in thick, matted fur, and monstrous, evil-looking fangs, the beast looms over her. For a moment, she’s too stunned to think, let alone react, staring right back into its eyes as if in a trance.

Putrid drool drips down the creature’s chin, its lips pulled back over its teeth, and suddenly it breaks their shared gaze, throwing its head back in a ghastly howl. 

Hermia snaps out of it, and starts running.

She’d done ballet almost all her life, and kept up her regular workouts at the gym even after she’d given up dancing in a studio, so she was in shape and had a healthy endurance. But she was no sprinter, and the creature had clearly evolved to chase. And tear. And kill.

It’s barely a car’s length behind her when one screeches to a stop in between them, and someone in the backseat throws open the door, screaming, “Get in!”

They don’t have to tell her twice. Hermia scrambles in and slams the door behind her. A horrible scraping sounds as the beast scratches along the side of the car, trying to tear the driver’s side door off its hinges, and Hermia slams into the woman in the backseat with her as they peel back onto the highway.

“All right! Let’s get the fuck outta here!” the girl in the front seat exclaims. It’s the pair from the diner, Hermia realizes, and in the backseat with her, she assumes, the woman they’d been looking for. 

Hermia adjusts herself in her own seat and fastens her seatbelt. The woman beside her straightens her clothing, and Hermia looks at her apologetically. She nods back.

“I’m Lilith, and this is Dirk,” the girl in the front seat says, peering back at her. 

“Hermia,” Hermia responds. 

“Lau—,” the woman in the backseat with her starts, and then corrects herself. “I mean, Bella.”

Hermia does a double take. So it really was that Bella Goth they’d found? 

Bella notices her, and shrugs.

“Thanks for saving me,” Hermia says awkwardly, unsure of how things were going to proceed.

“Well, we couldn’t just leave you,” Dirk says, looking back at her in the rearview mirror. “We can drop you somewhere on the way, but this place is about to be quarantined, and we have to go.”

“Quarantined?”

“Yeah,” Lilith says. “Apparently the dead walk the earth, and also large monsters attack innocent young women in the night!”

Dirk snorts, clearly used to Lilith’s antics, but Hermia struggles to keep herself from panicking. “My sister is missing.”

She doesn’t say what she’s thinking. My sister might be involved in this somehow. Lilith’s comment had been a little too on the nose.

Bella frowns. “Here?”

“I’ve been looking all night. Everywhere I could. She had to be on foot.”

“If you haven’t found her yet,” Bella says slowly. “You probably won’t.”

Hermia fights back tears. “I have to keep looking,” she insists, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Let me out.”

“The military has been evacuating civilians to the base all night,” Lilith says, in what’s clearly an attempt to reassure her. “They probably found her hours ago.”

That’s even worse, Hermia wants to wail, but instead just says “Please.”

“Look,” Dirk says calmly, and she meets his eyes in the mirror. “If you go back out there, you’re probably going to get killed. You literally almost got torn apart less than five minutes ago. If she’s safe, you’ll go back out for nothing. If she isn’t, you’ll still go back out for nothing.”

Hermia swallows. She knows he’s right. She couldn’t find Juliette on her own, and she definitely wouldn’t be any use to her torn to shreds and eaten by some sort of wolfman.

“But,” he continues, his eyes back on the road. “We know someone who might be able to help you. And she’s expecting us.”