He tosses the shoes in front of me, and then bends down for the mat, and then gently swats at my feet until I get the memo to move. He folds the blanket over it and then wraps them both in a tight bundle, tying it down with some string and then strapping it onto his backpack, while I unfold myself from against the pipe where I’d been most of the night, my knees stiff from being in one position for so long.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “You understand me, right?”

  He looks up and kind of mage a show of strapping the bedroll down. He then moves on to the empty wineskin, tying it to one of the straps, along with a makeshift quiver and homemade bow. He ignores the firepit completely, but goes through his pocket, taking out the glass jar and inspects. After he puts it back, he looks from the shoes to me and back again, then takes a seat and pushes them toward me with his toes. Using the wool bandages still tied around my feet for socks, I slip them on and wiggle my toes in the empty space.

  “They're too big,” I tell him as he puts on his backpack. “They're going to rub.”

  He sits down in front of me and pulls a cord from inside his collar, a small, metal key hangs at the lowest point. He flips it into his hand and unlocks the cuff, first from my wrist and then from the pipe.

  “Yes, finally,” I sigh, tenderly rubbing the raw spots.

  He pulls the glass jar from his pocket, but I don't take it.

  “It's fine, I'll heal.”

  He stands and offers me his hand, helping me to my feet. It's the first time I put pressure on my soles in some time, so my feet feel sore and a little funny, kind of swollen.

  Once I'm standing, the gas mask creature picks up his backpack and puts it on. He then digs around in his pockets until he finds some things that belong to me: my box cutter, spare blades, and flashlight.

  I check the blades, making sure they're still sharp and the mechanism still works, and then move on to the flashlight, giving it a good, hard shake and then hitting the switch.

  He jumps back as if it had burned him, transfixed on the beam. I pass my hand in front of the light and touch the lens, and then switch it off and on again, showing him that it's cool to the touch.

  He raises a hand to pass through the beam and then softly murmurs, “Lantern.”

  “Flashlight,” I correct, making a mental note that he can make his own bow and arrows but has never seen a flashlight before.

  I switch it off to save the battery, just kind of holding it limply. The gas mask creature stares at me, as if wondering what other magic spells I might cast, and then moves to the front of the store, stopping at the entrance to look back at me. He motions for me to follow.

  I stand still, clinging to my flashlight. He handcuffed me to a pipe, but he cleaned my cuts. He handcuffed me to a pipe, but he brought me shoes. He held me here against my will, but...

  He waits patiently, head tilted, the hem of his coat blowing slightly in the breeze. He doesn't pull or push or handcuff me to drag along. He kind of looks like he's waiting for me to decide what to do. I take a mall step forward, thinking of the thing that come out at night. I’ve been lucky so far, but I don’t want to push it. Maybe sticking with the armed guy is a good idea, even if…

  I take careful steps out of the storefront, trying not to stumble in the oversized hiking boots. The gas masked creature seems happy when I join him, gesturing to a direction down the street, past the remains of something that looks like a brown zebra with stripes only on the neck, the body cavity largely empty and red stains spattered across the pavement, flies already making themselves comfortable.

  I look back at the storefront. I think it was closed a long time before humanity up and left. It looks like it might have been some kind of dress store, but I don’t recognize the chain. The letters are falling down, hanging loose. A bird’s nested in one of them, a small, feathery head sticking out, cooing softly.

  I jump at a hand on my shoulder. The gas mask creature wants me to follow, his charcoal-colored glove gently against my shoulder. He nods toward the road and pulls away, making a token show of walking backwards that way.

  “Fine, fine, I’m coming,” I mumble turning away from the storefront and following him, stepping neatly around the sticky blood. Whatever had eaten it had a thing for guts, I guess, which is a whole lot less scary in daylight.

  This is a drier side of town, that’s good. The pavement is cracked and split, plant life taking root underneath and in-between. The telephone poles still stand, leaning this way and that, but the wires aren’t connected anymore, hanging limply like dead vines. Some still have streetlight, but none have bulbs and one or two of the supports are hanging loose, held up by a thread and a prayer.

  Some of the buildings are boarded up. Some of them look like they might have been at one time, and a few have bits of nails or tacks still stuck to the plywood, as though posters were hung up once. A grocery store has shelving pulled down and rusted tin cans littering the floor. The cash register lies outside, as if someone threw it from the inside to break the glass. Across the street is an electronics store with gutted television sets littering the sidewalk.

  Daveney and I watched the footage from one disaster or another once, in some distant state or another. People were carrying off television sets, as I recall. We talked about how stupid that was for hours, how, under the circumstances, looting food and camping equipment is understandable, even forgivable. But what are you going to do with a flatscreen and no electricity, especially if the electronics were too damaged to use in the first place?

  I pass by a car, model unknown, and peek inside the windows. There’s a pink carseat in the back, and a handful of toys well past their prime. The front seat has a suit case, split open by time, with bits of ragged cloth hanging out the sides.

  It looks like this road is a smaller alley connecting to another, wider street, which looks like a city center, which…isn’t supposed to be here. It’s two streets separated by a parking strip, with shops and buildings on either side, plenty of wide space and parking, probably for tourism or maybe local events.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  There’s a news van sitting across some of the parking spaces, taking up at least three of them. The back is open, revealing ruined camera equipment, which also litters the ground. There’s a disturbing number of fire and rescue vehicles, including police cars, and faded, plastic barricades.

  “So…” I murmur, bracing against the wet wind, “did you see what happened here?”

  The gas mask creature doesn’t answer. He’s moving slowly around the abandoned cars, checking out the windows. I wonder if there might be others, the hostile ones with tails.

  He doesn't answer, edging nervously around a police car. I follow, stepping carefully and keeping low, weaving in and out of traffic that doesn’t look like it’s moved in years. I try not to touch the car and set off an alarm. It’s so quiet, I don’t think I could stand an alarm without my head exploding.

  I'm still sore, not to mention the raw spots and loose shoes. When he sees me wincing, the gas mask thing stops walking and pats the pavement.

  “I'm fine,” I insist, standing up suddenly, looking down at him kneeling in front of me.

  He gets back up and motions for me to follow. He sticks to the cars, staying out of direct line-of-sight of the buildings, but always checking the store fronts from behind something. We keep moving down the street, roughly left of where we were hiding, until he stops suddenly in his tracks.

  I look carefully at the windows, wondering what he’s seen. It could be anything, really, from the predators that were prowling last night, to more gas mask creatures, or, hopefully, human survivors. I check for movement, and find none.

  The gas mask creature, however, crouches behind a car, low, under the windows, checking nervously around corners and edges. He gently pulls me down, too, as if attempting to hide me from something I can’t see.

  “What?” I ask. “What is it?”

  He creeps toward the nose of the car, haphazardly parked in a way that can’t be legal across the parking strip, and peers around the corner at whatever must be spooking him. Attempting to mimic his evasiveness, I look through the windows and see…a statue.

  It’s a lifelike bronze statue of a woman in a suit, standing in an inspirational, authoritative pose, staring blankly toward us. Vines are beginning to grow around her skirt and a squirrel sits on her shoulder, quietly munching on something. She’s nearly green with tarnish, dented up in a few places, but otherwise not particularly memorable.

  The gas mask creature gently ushers me forward, pointing at the next stalled car over, motioning for me to move. I just stare at him.

  “It’s a statue.”

  He motions again, more urgently, pushing at my shoulder. Since he’s so persistent, I move on to the next car, confused, and not exactly stealthy. The gas mask creature, on the other hand, darts from car to car as though the statue has death rays in its eyes and might start shooting as soon as it sees him. He ushers me across the street as fast as he can get me to limp, sliding behind the buildings as though he’s afraid someone might see him.

  “It’s just a statue, you weirdo,” I say, dodging an attempt to snatch me around the corner.

  The gas mask creature tilts his head to one side. I’m not completely sure he understands what I’m saying.

  “It’s a statue,” I continue. “Statue. It’s dead, like a rock.”

  He tilts his head to the other direction, an awkward silence hanging in the air between us. After a little bit of this, he motions for me to follow a more industrial side of the neighborhood, continuing the same direction but out of view of the statue.

  This side of the street has fewer clothing- and décor-type stores and more auto repair shops and hardware stores. Some of it looks like this would have been part of the factory district at one time, which reminds me eerily of how it is in real life…except the part of town that’s supposed to look like this should be over that way, not here. I think.

  He beckons me on, waving me forward. That little den he had wasn’t a permanent spot, so…maybe we’re on to the next one? Of course, the wineskin is empty, he’ll want to fill that first, especially if there’s two of us now.

  I watch him peeking into car window and shop, apparently looking for something, and wonder why…me. I wonder what goes on in his head that made it okay to handcuff me down and start treating my injuries. Curiosity, maybe? The other gas mask monsters had tails, this one doesn’t. Maybe he sees some sort of…comradery there?

  I think back to the other ones. In my head, I still don’t realize the snouts are part of a mask. I can’t make out small details, like eyes under the lenses, but I’m sure they weren’t human. Far from it.

  I think I’d know if nocturnal, gas masked veloci-children were hanging around my hometown. That’s the kind of thing that people talk about.

  Some of the buildings have signs still visible, some falling down over doorways or on sign posts leaning over like they’ve given up on life. I recognize a few names, a few chains, or the name of a local place that shouldn’t be on this side of town. A few of them have the name of my hometown as part of the business name, so I’m relatively certain we’re in or near the town I went to sleep in next to Daveney just a few days ago.

  I’ve heard people say in the wake of disaster that they rarely recognize their town. With major landmarks flattened by water or earthquake, it can be pretty hard to tell where you’re at. This is different, this isn’t rubble and ruin left by earthquake or flood, this is…like being in a completely different town.

  “Was it an earthquake?” I ask, the gas mask creature looking skyward at the clouds, inclining his head just slightly to me to show he heard, finally giving a noncommittal shrug.

  “You don’t know?” I ask. “Or you don’t want to tell me? Do you even speak English?”

  I look down at my feet. It would figure I’d be held captive at the end of the world with someone who can only speak a few random words in English.

  He keeps moving, intersection by intersection. I recognize a few street names, giving me some idea of where we are. A few have words like "old" and "new" prefixes on streets that didn't have them before. It's not like storm damage changes street names. Or puts up new buildings.

  This area of town starts to look a little worse for wear, building by building. Whatever they were filming a street over looks like its fire damage bled over. I don't smell smoke, but I can see blackened rooftops and fogged windows. A few stray bricks litter the ground from crumbling walls. As we pass another intersection, I see more barricades, overturned cars, and emergency vehicles.

  “Looks like something pretty big went down,” I muse. “Care to talk about it?”

  He doesn't answer, but he does turn and watch me for a bit, looking down at my feet and tilting his head. He waits for me to catch up, I guess, apparently trying to match pace. I think he's been on his own awhile and it's hard for him to slow down enough for someone to keep up.

  On a rooftop, I can see patchy white lettering in faded white paint, “Not infected.” Cheery.

  I try to remember the outbreak-of-the-week. Mom always sends me highlights and checklists, keeping me up-to-date on the newest panics and how to hold them off. Maybe it's that, I wonder? Flu, malaria, dysentery...what starts making the rounds in a disaster?

  Once in awhile, I see something that makes me think I’m exactly where I think I’m supposed to be. It’ll be the name of a business, a familiar angle of the road, or the shape of the building, standing out sharply against the unfamiliarity of the city around me. When I’m sure that I’m home and just lost in the emptiness, I realize that’s an electrical cord sticking out from under the little door that normally covers the gas port.

  I almost start to wonder if…somehow I haven’t moved forward in time. That’s crazy, but…no less crazy than sleeping through the apocalypse and waking up to the apparent extinction of the human race and rise of the gas mask mutants…right?

  If my silent companion knows the answer, he doesn’t tell me about it.

  We keep moving until I see the mall up ahead, a sprawling, modern-looking thing with overgrown trees and scummy fountains that must have been beautiful at one time. It’s off a grassy turnoff, down a little hill leading to a splintering parking lot that hasn’t seen cars in a very long time.

  The gas mask creature stops on the hill and takes a seat. He digs through his pack, pausing to look up at me and pointedly tap the grass until I sit down, and produces a small amount of jerky, which he passes to me but doesn’t eat himself.

  “Not hungry?” I ask, placing a piece in my mouth.

  He shakes his head and places his hand against the snout of his mask.

  “Uh…huh…” I murmur softly, not sure what difference that makes but also not completely sure I want to see what the mutants have under their masks in the first place.

  He stretches back in the overgrown grass, hands behind his tangled, semi-brown hair. A little bit of his shirt pulls up and bunches, revealing a bit of pale pink skin. I watch the movement of his chest to see if he’s sleeping or not, and then stretch out myself.

  The bugs crawling under my skin makes me jump and itch. The sky above can’t seem to decide if it wants to be overcast or not, and, despite the unsettling silence from a parking lot that should be full to capacity, I find myself drifting off again. The gas mask creature wakes me a few minutes later, sharking my shoulder, letting me catch a glimpse of brown eyes under the lenses.

  He pulls me to my feet and points to the mall. We’re going looting, apparently.