New to the series or certain you’ve missed a chapter? You can find the introduction Here and the table of contents Here.

I awoke at dawn from just a few hours of sleep. It had taken some work to convince everyone that, based on rumors alone, we should leave immediately rather than wait for scouting to be done, but it seemed like most of the adult Naturalists were secretly relieved. The bandits who had lived here after chasing them out had done a lot of work to make the space their own and the added lingering stains probably made it an uncomfortable place for them to be. The Wayfinders didn’t take much effort since they still trusted me, even if a few asked more pointed questions about why I thought we should move than they usually did, so we were packed up again by bedtime.

The Naturalist children took the most effort, though. Since there were only a couple small children, they all knew they’d come home and apparently had mixed feelings about the entire matter. It seemed to me like they only argued now because it was the first time they’d been asked how they felt about everything going on in a while, but it was still difficult to convince them that they’d be more comfortable in an Enclave than trying to put their old home back together. All the Naturalist adults had a frame of reference for the comforts an Enclave could provide, even if they were ideologically opposed to the technology that they suggested caused The Collapse. The kids didn’t even have that, so I mostly just backed up the Naturalist adults who were arguing with them.

What really kept me up late was taking a double shift on guard duty. We needed all of our scouts and our best shots in peak condition for the next few days and I’d spent the last two days taking it fairly easy. I even let Tiffany take a shift as well, since she was paired with Natalie and only one person needed a gun per shift. She’d decreased her pain meds, so I trusted her to be able to stay focused. It made me a bit nervous, to be skimping on guard shifts in a place that we’d only just taken from its occupants, but there were enough stairs and long passageways that we’d be awake and armed long before any would-be foe could reach the upper floors where we were sleeping.

As I joined the bustle of waking up people, I did my best to project cheer, confidence, and understanding as people went through the process of dressing, eating, and packing up the last of their stuff so we could move out as soon as possible. Partway through eating my own breakfast and slurping down the coffee I needed to make it through the day, I noticed that Lucas and his scouts had already left. I looked for Natalie and saw she wasn’t fretting, so I assumed he’d taken the maps she’d prepared for him, but as I gazed around the room, I realized I hadn’t seen Cam at all.

After I finished eating and was washing my dishes, I saw Cam duck through the door from the hallway and sidle over to a table where they could grab some breakfast. When they grabbed two bowls, I realized where they’d been. I handed off my dishes to the Wayfinder standing next to me and jogged to catch up with Cam as I shook the water from my hands.

They were moving too fast for me to catch up without sprinting, but I was only a single flight of stairs behind them when they stopped on the bottom floor and turned into one of the empty storage rooms. When I got to the ground floor, I found Tiffany sitting in a folding chair outside the door as it slowly swung shut. She looked up at me and nodded hello.

“You get enough rest, Tiffany?” I paused, hand on the door, to look down at her, trying to surreptitiously get a look at the bandages around her arm.

“Of course, Captain.” Tiffany saluted with her left hand. “I’m just trying to stay handy.”

I chuckled and smiled, gently pulling the door open. “I’m glad to see you’re taking it all in stride.”

“Of course.” She smiled and shrugged as she waved her stump at me in a ‘hello’ gesture. “Though, I think I might have damaged my sense of humor since that was the best I could come up with all shift.” She paused for a moment, making brief eye contact before raising her eyebrows and saying “I don’t know if I’m ready to feel so stumped when it comes to making jokes.”

I snorted with laughter and rolled my eyes in faux protest. “I think your sense of humor is doing just fine. Keep it up with groaners like that, though, and I might have to assign you to a mandatory psych eval when we get to the Enclave. I’d prefer to intervene before you turn into Lucas, after all.”

Tiffany smirked in reply but didn’t say anything, so I stepped through the open door into the empty second-floor apartment that Cam had tucked their captive into for the night. I passed through a couple empty rooms, following the trail of light to a bathroom where Cam leaned against the counter, eating breakfast, while a disheveled, bloody person did the same in the bathtub.

“They look a little worse for wear.” I nodded my head toward Cam’s captive when they looked at me. “Weren’t they cooperative?”

“They were like that when I found them.” Cam rolled their eyes at me as the figure in the bathtub glanced uneasily at them and continued to eat their breakfast. “Shouldn’t have fought back when we confronted them. Shoulda just surrendered, like we said. Anything would have been better than acting like an imperious asshole who thought they could take down even just one Wayfinder.”

“Of course.” I sat down on a chair not that far from both Cam and their prisoner, watching the prisoner for a reaction. They seemed content to stare at the two of us out of the corners of their eyes as they clumsily shoveled food into their mouth despite the manacles they wore. “What do they have for us?”

“Nothing much.” Cam smirked as the prisoner turned to exclaim and then stopped when they saw the look on Cam’s face. “Just plans to take the Enclave down, complete with terms to ally with other bandit troops and a blood pact with the Cultists out of Indiana.”

“The ones that keep trying to build catapults to launch stuff into the Enclave over the lake?”

“Yeah, those ones.” Cam nodded. “Plus maps with routes to avoid the monsters we figured were up here. Apparently a few groups have been working on scouting out their current patrol zones and sharing intel. Lucky for us, this little shithead ambassador had all the hard intel we could need for the Enclave or even just us to thwart their plans. We’ve got pretty much everything we might want, whether they speak or not.”

“Wow, sounds like they’re in quite a jam, aren’t they?” I looked over at the person in the bathtub as I made sure the only expression on my face was pity. “I guess we’ll just have to clean up since they can’t give us anything else.”

“Wait!” As the prisoner lifted a hand in my direction, I paused halfway out of the chair to watch them as they flailed to hold onto their bowl of oatmeal. Once they’d gotten it under control and shifted their position so they couldn’t jerk their hand out from under their bowl again, they cleared their throat and continued. “Yeah. I’m, uh, the delegate. Not just an ambassador.”

“And what does that mean?” Cam scraped the last of their breakfast out of their bowl and then smacked their lips in satisfaction. “Good food.”

“It, uh…” The prisoner looked between us and visibly swallowed. “I’ve got all the info. I know everyone’s name and the plans and all the terms-”

“No.” Cam set their bowl on the counter next to the toilet and then leaned over to stare at the prisoner. “We’ve got all that now.”

“I’ve got more!” The prisoner carefully set their bowl aside and shifted around so they were on their knees. “I’ve got base locations! I’ve got supply drops. I know where all the fallback shelters are. I can give you anything you want to know!”

“Then why are you waiting until now to give it to us?” I folded my arms but kept my face neutral.

“I thought you were gonna kill me.” The prisoner glanced uneasily at Cam and then right back at me. “But you wouldn’t feed someone you were gonna kill. That’d be a waste. Take me with you! I’ll tell whoever you want whatever they want to know! I’ll spill my guts to anyone! Just don’t kill me or send me off…”

Cam smirked. “That’s more like it. You shoulda started with this. Mighta got to sleep in something better than a bathtub if you’d been this cooperative last night.”

“I was sure you were going to kill me the instant I spilled my guts. Folks captured by Wayfinders never…” The bandit swallowed nervously. “They never come back.”

“Today’s your lucky day, then. You get to live.”

Cam looked at me out of the corner of their eyes but I didn’t take my attention away from the prisoner. “Tell my friend here everything you know and I’ll look into getting you some insulated gear to make the trek with us.”

They nodded excitedly and flopped down into a more comfortable position in the tub to finish their breakfast. Once they were done, I grabbed their and Cam’s bowls and turned to leave. Cam followed behind me and, once we were past Tiffany, allowed her expression to turn into a glare. “What was that, Marshall?”

“They agreed to help us so I told them they got to live.”

“You’re going to drag them behind us, eating our food, while we head through some of the most dangerous territory we’ve seen around Chicago in decades? We should just kill him and be gone with it.”

“You don’t need my permission to make that call, Cam. You’re a Captain as well.” I kept my voice low and my expression neutral as I added “you can kill whomever you like.”

“Marshall, you-” Cam paused, looking over at Tiffany sitting beside the door.

“‘Me’ what?” I took a step closer to Cam, lowering my voice even further. “I’m in charge? I’m the one who usually decides this stuff? Well, I decided they get to live and, if you don’t like that, you can exercise your authority as our combat leader and kill them. I want them alive so they can verify everything we’re going to report to the Enclave. Depending on the current bounties for their gang, they might still get put to death for whatever their gang has done, but I think that coming in with this much information is only going to cause problems for us unless we can absolutely prove we’ve done the leg work.”

“I think we’ve already got enough liabilities, Marshall.” Cam lowered their voice to match mine but took a half step back from me. “The last thing we need is some asshole shouting for his friends while we’re trying to move quietly.”

“Then gag them. There’s options other than murder.” Cam opened their mouth to speak but I carried on. “Blindfold them, even. Truss them up and we’ll carry them on a sled or something. They don’t need to be able to act independently. They just need to provide us with information now and when we get where we’re going. Anything that meets those two conditions is fine.”

“Fine.” Cam sighed and looked over their shoulder at the door. “I’ll take care of it. Just know that whoever I’m leaving behind with the supplies and you all will have orders to shoot this idiot if they try anything.”

“They’ll have to beat me to it.” I frowned at the relief on Cam’s face but shrugged instead of pushing for information. “Now go find out what they know.”

I watched Cam jog back into the room and briefly locked eyes at Tiffany who quirked an eyebrow at me. “You sure about this, Captain? Isn’t it against the rules to bring a bandit into an Enclave?”

“Usually, but there are exceptions. The guards will hold them at the gate and then let them in once someone further up the chain says the intel we have is worth enough to bring them in. If they already have this information or don’t think they need to hear from the bandit, they’ll put them in a holding cell until their trial and then either exile them or put them to death.”

“I see…” Tiffany frowned but didn’t ask any follow up questions. After giving her a minute to think of more, I waved goodbye and went upstairs with the dishes I’d collected.

As I got upstairs and managed to catch the dishwasher before they were finished, I saw that everyone had moved on from breakfast and was hurriedly finishing their preparations to leave. I pitched in, taking care of the tent and our personal supplies since Lucas had already left, Cam was busy with the prisoner, and Natalie was managing our supplies situation. We wanted to move quickly but we didn’t want to leave anything behind for the local bandits to pick up when we left, so she was overseeing the distribution of most of our supplies to everyone’s packs so we could get down to a smaller sled. Thankfully, being in a relatively high-traffic area meant that we wouldn’t need to do as much digging to get to our destination, so we could weigh people down a bit more than we liked to.

After we left, travel to the Chicago Enclave went as smoothly as I could have hoped. We had one close call toward the end of the first day, but Lucas’ scouts had left a path to guide us around the area where a small collection of monsters had been wandering around. It was tense, knowing we could turn a corner and run into them if we weren’t careful, but Cam’s vanguard made sure there was nothing waiting for us as we advanced.

On the second day, not long after setting out, we found traces of a small group of bandits, but Lucas’ group had already killed them before we’d made camp the night before, judging by the state of the bodies, so we carried on. The rest of that day passed without any noteworthy events, though we lost a lot of time going out of our way to avoid conflicts, one time even finding one of Lucas’ scouts waiting for us rather than a route marker. Everyone was feeling pretty tense when we finally camped in a boarded up building, but we could see the walls of the Enclave from the roof of this building, so everyone seemed cheered by the fact that we had only half a day’s walk left before we arrived.

The following day, just before noon with a heavier flurry of snow coming down around us, we finally stepped into the shadow of the Enclave. I had to resist the urge to stop and stare at the massive metal walls as we approached, but most of the Naturalists, especially the children, couldn’t help but stare as we continued moving them forward.

Standing fifty feet tall and thick enough that you needed to bring a light of some kind with you when you went through the gate, the walls of the Enclave were one of the few remaining marvels in what used to be Chicago. It was always a little jarring, to see street corners and bottoms of buildings I recognized from my childhood that were entirely overshadowed by this towering fortification, so I imagined the Naturalists who might be seeing it for the first time since its completion were probably struggling to reconcile it with their memories of Chicago or what they imagined an Enclave would look like.

Everyone knew Enclaves had walls. Enclaves were famous for them, even, since one of the reasons they tended to rely on exile as a punishment was to keep the population inside the walls from growing too large. Few Enclaves had walls like Chicago, though. Since Chicago had weathered the initial attack so well, there were a lot more resources and people left to use in building the enclave and all of the readily available building materials, mostly scavenged from existing structures, meant that the only city in what used to be the US that could have competed was New York and there was nothing left of that city by the time the snow had settled, so the Chicago Enclave reigned supreme.

That, plus the foresight of the engineers who built it, meant that Chicago was the only Enclave that never had to worry about space or resources. Every building outside the Enclave’s grounds had been stripped in order to make this truly massive wall, but that meant that the people inside it got to live comfortably without needing to have every scrap of housing cut down to the smallest size possible. There was the chance that would change in the future, depending on how many other Enclaves fell and how many refugees Chicago took in, but it remained the primary retirement Enclave for most Wayfinders for a reason. It gets hard to share space when you’re used to living on your own all the time.

I was shaken out of my reverie when I heard Lucas calling my name from beside the gate. I waved in his direction and jogged over, moving past Cam’s group as they spread out to watch our rear now that we were walking under the cover of the Enclave guards posted at hidden points along the wall. When I reached Lucas, he gestured for me to follow him into the small operating base just inside the open gate.

Inside, past the entry room where we left our weapons, packs, and thermal gear, we found a pair of sergeants sitting at a large table, a stack of papers in front of them, as another officer stood behind them, pouring steaming coffee into mugs. The officer, a lieutenant, turned around and gestured for us to sit across from the sergeants, putting down the coffee cups in front of us as we shuffled into our seats.

“Captain Marshall. Your scout here gave us the rundown. Mind expanding on that?”

I nodded in acknowledgement at the lieutenant as I scanned her office for information about who was currently stationed at the base. The Wayfinders and Enclave guards got along most of the time, but there was a small segment of the guards who didn’t care for the Wayfinders since we tended to show up with problems on our tails or just after we might have been useful. I kept track of most of the officers who felt that way, but I was not familiar with any of the people in front of me and the contents of this spacious office gave me no indication of how she or her subordinates might feel. All I got was that her name was Rivera.

“I have information for the council, Lieutenant Rivera. There’s a concerted effort by the local bandit population to prepare a strike at the Chicago Enclave, even teaming up with the nearby sect of Cultists in Indiana.  I suspect that they’re also planning to involve the newly released monsters in some way. I have no evidence of that last bit beyond general suspicion, but it stands to reason they might try something drastic given the rumors swirling around the area about whatever tech it is that the Enclave is cooking up.”

The two sergeants who had been busily filling out parts of forms had stopped and looked up from their papers, both of them staring at me slack-jawed. After an incredibly heavy silence while the Lieutenant met my eyes with an unreadable expression on her face, she gently nudged her subordinates and said “get back to work. We’ve got a lot of new residents to process.”

The two of them quickly turned back to their work as the formality and stiffness left the Lieutenant’s posture. She slid into a chair across the corner of the table from me and folded her hands around a half-empty coffee mug that was, somehow, still steaming. “That matches with what little intelligence we’ve got. Unless you’ve got details, then that might not buy you much with the council. We can’t track these rodents down. They’re too well hidden and quick to flee.”

“Well, lucky for all of us I’ve got all the details anyone could want other than day-of movements and a prisoner to corroborate them.”

The lieutenant looked up sharply from her coffee mug and glanced over at Lucas who had clearly left out these details. When he just smiled and shrugged, she sighed. “Well, sounds like I’m running this one up the chain of command. We’re getting people ready to process the naturalists and while I need someone to walk me through the details of what’s going on with your group since, last I heard, you’re supposed to be in the Des Moines Enclave or thereabouts, I’m not about to stop the rest of you from heading into the Enclave. You’re all known residents, save for these new folks, so we’ll just need to do a check of your gear and then you’re free to go.”

“My logistics officer, fellow Captain, prisoner, and I will leave our gear here. We need to get to the council immediately and the other Wayfinders can take care of it. Lucas here,” I poked my friend in the shoulder, “will stay here to tell you what happened and answer any questions. He’ll also take care of our gear once you’re finished checking it over.”

Lieutenant Rivera paid as little attention to Lucas’ spluttered protests as I did and nodded. “That seems wise. Very well, Captain. I won’t hold you any longer.”

I stood up, poured the remnants of my coffee into Lucas’ mug, and then headed out of the office into a bustling room that was filling up with Naturalists. I squeezed past them, told Elder Brianna what was happening, and then stuffed myself back into my thermal gear. Outside, through a different doorway, I saw the Wayfinders unloading their gear into a storage room, shifting it all into orderly piles so the guards could make sure we weren’t bringing anything broadcasting signals into the Enclave. They also checked for hazardous materials and on the guns we’d brought, but that was more of a formality because we had licenses that allowed us to carry things in and out of an Enclave that most other folks could not.

I collected Cam, Natalie, and the prisoner after Natalie had her bag searched and Cam had their gun checked. Natalie’s bag contained everything we’d learned from the prisoner and Cam needed their gun in case the prisoner tried anything. Up to this point, they’d been content to stay silent and be hauled along with their wrists and legs manacled, but they had started to seem nervous as we walked into the shadow of the Enclave and Cam was taking no chances that this bandit might do something under our watch.

As we stepped out of the long, winding tunnel beneath the wall, I was struck again by how much Chicago had changed. Most of the buildings stopped sixty or seventy feet over the ground, a few of them still bearing the unmistakable signs of destruction at their peaks even though they’d all been repaired enough that every remaining floor could be occupied again. There were a few that were mostly still twisting spires of girders and beams that seemed immune to the damage of The Blizzard, but these skeletal frameworks were all that remained of the tall buildings that festooned the birthplace of the skyscraper.

It was always difficult to take in, these metallic claws pointed at the heavens, but all you had to do was tilt your head downward to see how Chicago was still thriving in its own way. The orderly streets of the city still reigned here, made even more orderly by the lack of cars and the change of the streets from common asphalt to a mixture of brick and flagstone walkways. People walked up and down the streets, bundled up against the cold rather than against thermal detection, their breath freely steaming in front of them as the system of heavy fans and heat sinks trapped any traces of the Enclave’s warmth so that it was slowly dispersed in a wide radius around the wall rather than funneling out the top like a chimney.

I saw a few people stop and stare as we entered into the Enclave proper, a trio of Wayfinders leading a manacled person at gunpoint directly toward the center of the structure where the council buildings were located. I could hear small snatches of conversation as we walked, people reacting to this sudden bit of excitement interrupting their day as they pursued errands, met friends for lunch, or otherwise went about the sedate life of the oldest and strongest Enclave in the Midwest.

Our walk was a quick one, motivated as we were to get this business finished, and it didn’t take us long to be shuffled into the council chamber once we’d arrived. Lieutenant Rivera had not waited on my word to notify the council, so they were ready for us when we arrived. A small contingent of guards took over the prisoner from Cam who, captive discharged, opted to wait outside the council room rather than surrender their gun. They waved at Natalie and I as we were led inside, a mournful look on their face like they were watching us be led to our deaths and  I shook my head at the melodrama of it all.

Inside the council room, I found a group of eleven people sitting at a long meeting table. I followed the guards and the prisoners to the one end without a chair at it. Standing a couple paces in front of the prisoner and their guards, I politely nodded my head and said “Good afternoon. As some of you probably know already, I’m Captain Marshall of the Wayfinders and I’m here to bring you all the information about the local bandits that my group discovered on our way in.”

There were a few nods in return and a couple heads leaned toward each other to quietly speak but, since no one had asked any questions, I carried on. “This is my logistics officer, Lieutenant Natalie,” Natalie inclined her head, “and she has all the details of what we’ve learned. All of this can be corroborated by the prisoner behind us.” The prisoner waved nervously. “What I ask in return for this information is for the Naturalists we brought with us to be accepted as refugees and for all of my Wayfinders who must or choose to retire to be given room and board until they can get settled on their pensions.”

The lead counselor, a woman named Helen with iron grey hair and a pleasant half-smile on her face, looked at her colleagues for a moment before saying “that seems reasonable, given that we’ve done the same for less. Still, given the nature of the information you claim to have, let’s agree to determine the specifics later when we’re not under threat.”

“That seems reasonable to me.” I glanced over my shoulder at Natalie who nodded as she stepped forward.

“Here is a copy of everything we’ve gotten from the prisoner, with a few sections of special interest highlighted for your armed forces. You’ll want to act on this sooner rather than later since it seems like they’ll be starting their preparations in earnest within the week. It took us three days to get here with the information, so chances are good that they know a group of Wayfinders took down one of their allied bases. It would not be a stretch for them to assume we also captured their missing representative,” Natalie gestured at the prisoner, “so I expect you’ll see some changes to these plans.”

“Not too many, though.” I shrugged. “There’s too many of them involved in this to change all their plans. I’d just worry about how desperate they might get and how quickly they might decide to rely on the local monster population to wreck things for them.”

As Natalie passed her papers around the room, handing them first to the head of the Enclave Guard, Captain Brinswald, the few whispering voices were joined by others until the whole group was engaged in a quiet chatter. I waited until all of the papers had passed the head of the table, Lead Councilor Helen, before starting to speak again.

“I think it would be wise, given the number of monsters out there and the impending activation of whatever this technological marvel is, to bring on the local Wayfinders, my group included, as an auxiliary force. We can handle your scouting, set up sniper nests, pull off ambushes, and start bringing the fight to this group before they walk up to your walls. Having us around to thin their ranks and keep them from interacting with the monsters will probably be incredibly helpful with whatever strategy you already have in place.”

“I appreciate your suggestions, Captain Marshall, but there’s more at stake than you realize.” Captain Brinswald was leaning forward, their chin resting on their folded hands. “You see, when we activate this new technology, there is a small chance that a weak signal will escape. It is unlikely that the bandits will need to do anything to attract the monsters to us if that happens as the signal will likely be enough.”

One of the councilors two seats down from Captain Brinswald, a new face I didn’t recognize, cleared their throat. “This calls into question the whole risk assessment and vote we held. I doubt the citizens of the Enclave would be so ready to risk everything if they knew that the bandits had been planning something this coordinated.”

“Be that as it may, Councilor Allonso, we do not have enough time before the activation is scheduled to happen to hold another vote and, if what Captain Marshall is saying is true, then we might wind up facing both groups whether we activate the sink or not. We should notify everyone and have them prepare to evacuate just in case, but we need to continue with the deployment or else we risk losing this window between passes of The Blizzard until who knows how many years from now.”

As the councilors debated back and forth, I caught Natalie’s eye and quirked an eyebrow while mouthing the word “sink.” She shrugged, apparently just as unaware as I was despite her background in technology, so I settled back to listen.

Over the next ten minutes, as the council debated what to do and I waited for an answer, Natalie and I learned that the “sink” was a massive charged wire net that, paired with a series of special emitters, would cancel out any outgoing signals from the enclave. People would be able to use electricity, use short-distance radios, make phone calls, and use all manner of computers again because this contraption would prevent the signals from getting out. It seemed almost too good to be true, but they’d performed several successful field tests with a smaller version of this setup and gone unnoticed, even after the local population of Monsters started moving around.

This was probably how the bandits had learned about the project, since the Enclave had been sending these testers far outside the city in case the worst happened, but the whole Enclave had been so excited about it that the council had decided it was worth the risk. Even the elevated risk of getting unwanted attention since there would be a brief window while the emitters were being lined up that some signal might escape since setting up a “sink” at this scale would be much more difficult to get right before turning it on.

Eventually, though, the debate wore down and Captain Brinswald formally accepted my offer. “We will need your help now more than ever, Captain Marshall. As the vote passed, we will set you and any of your Wayfinders who choose to help in a commune that a group of Naturalists abandoned when they left our Enclave. You’re welcome to keep it as long as any of you live here, rent free, until you find someplace more suitable or retire elsewhere. It will be set aside for you and, if you so choose, any of the local Wayfinders under your jurisdiction while at least one member of the original group remains there”

“Thank you very much, Captain Brinswald.” I nodded to them in gratitude and then gave a small bow to everyone else “and you all as well.”

“I’ll have one of my guards take you to where you’ll be staying and fetch your group of Wayfinders for you. This evening, once you’ve settled in, please come to my office with all available officers so we can discuss the revisions to our strategy.”

I smiled politely and warmly as the last formalities were observed and left alongside the four guards, Natalie, and the prisoner, picking up Cam as we left. Natalie filled Cam in while I talked to the guards who were going to help us and then the tree of us left on our own since I knew where the commune was.

As we walked off to what was probably going to be our home for the foreseeable future, or until the bandits and monsters wrecked the Enclave, I felt a strange mix of jangling nerves and sharp relief. Sure, it was great to have a home for now and the idea that we might be able to use technology outside of a heavily shielded bunker was almost unbelievable, but it was difficult to let that thought lie unmolested when my mind kept thinking back to the first wave of monster attacks my friends and I had survived all those years ago and what even a taste of that might be like now. It was difficult to appreciate my new home and the possibilities of the future when one of those possibilities involved my future home and the place I’d grown up being overrun by a horde of monsters.