V2-Coda

Alan found himself standing in thin air.

He dropped and instinctively braced himself for a rough landing, but he fell an extremely short distance.

Just a few inches. He was one of the luckier people. All around him, he saw a half dozen people fall out of the air. He recognized every face he saw; they were his coworkers from Barry, Pesca & MacDougal. Three of them had been on the second story of the law office, so they dropped considerably further than Alan did.

He rushed over to where two of those who fell from the second floor had landed, but fortunately, neither appeared to be hurt.

They made it through Orientation, too, after all, he reminded himself. And without James protecting them. They’re probably rather formidable. What happened to the building, though?

He helped the slower-moving of the two to rise to his feet. Wait, are these all the survivors from the office? Less than one-third of them had returned alive.

It seemed the System had been serious about cutting down on the human population.

Alan responded numbly, automatically, to the equally formalistic “thank you” from the fellow he’d helped back to his feet.

Then he looked around for a moment, checking faces again.

Jesus, none of the partners survived except—

“Alan, how did you sur—I mean, so good to see you!” Dean Crocetti’s voice cut through his thought process.

“Good to see you, too, Dean.”

A shame that only you and I survived, though. And “shame” was an understatement. He’d known Cliff and Brendan for decades. That long acquaintanceship had been snuffed out by this System in only a few weeks.

I’m just glad Mitzi and I are alright. The casualty rate for this thing was worse than any war I’ve ever heard of.

He turned and finally saw the firm office. The building had moved, he realized. Perhaps the Earth itself had changed size and shape. The System’s voiceover had said something about that when all this started, hadn’t it? It was difficult to recall, and Alan’s memory wasn’t what it once had been anyway.

Between the surviving firm employees and the building, gaped a wide sinkhole. Alan peered into it, and he wondered how deep the hole went. Florida sinkholes opened up all the time, but he’d always thought the firm’s building was set on a sturdier foundation. The possibility of a sinkhole could be predicted in advance by construction professionals, he’d believed. Something about a layer of limestone and erosion?

But maybe it was a waste of time wondering how it had happened. The law firm was no more, and most of his friends at the firm were dead. I need to make my way to Mitzi. At least she’s alright. That’s the most important thing. She would have teleported back home.

“Alan, are you feeling okay?” Dean asked.

“Are you, Dean?” Alan replied, cocking an eyebrow. “Knowing that only this handful survived?” He gestured at the precious few people left from the firm. He turned and began to walk away.

“Wait, wait,” Dean said, catching up to him. “At times like these, we ought to stick together.”

Alan turned to analyze his face, trying to read what Dean’s intentions were exactly.

It doesn’t really matter, though, does it? he thought. Whatever Dean wants to accomplish doesn’t matter. Because the ones I need to “stick together” with aren’t here.

The images that came to mind were those of Mitzi, Sierra and James.

—

Timothy Rook found himself in the Planter High School cafeteria, surrounded by other high school students.

When the System transported me to Orientation, I was in the boys’ restroom, he thought. Dropping me here seems pretty sloppy.

Then again, it was also rather convenient. There were dozens of other students with him here. Some of them were people he’d been thinking about killing, before the System’s announcements caused him to hold off on the school shooting.

His trigger finger felt itchy, and he knew the Keres were hungry for sacrifices.

Now might just be the right time to make good on those plans he’d put off…

—

Damien Rousseau dropped headfirst into a trashcan in Orlando Central Park.

I was not in a fucking trash can! he thought exasperatedly as he pulled himself out. The System Homunculus had told him they were all being transported back to roughly the same places they’d left from. Clearly, that was slightly misleading.

But as he emerged from the can, he saw some people he recalled walking around the city block when he vanished. Maybe the Earth’s location changed, but the relative position of the humans on it, at least compared with each other, stayed the same. Which means…

He glanced around for his cousin Philippe, but he wasn’t shocked when he didn’t find him. We never got along, but I never expected him to die in circumstances like those. Philippe had gone off with Nikolai Rostov at the outset of Orientation, despite Damien’s expressed reservations. It was no surprise to Damien that the cultists had come to a bad end, once he heard about what they’d gotten up to since he and Philippe went their separate ways.

I’m just grateful Aunt Patrice never had to see her boy turn out that way.

Damien looked to the city center, which was only a couple of blocks away. Or had been. The center of Orlando was no more. The sidewalks and roads were shattered into lopsided chunks of asphalt, separated from each other by fissures of varying size. What was left of the pavement was littered with broken glass. The skyscrapers had almost all been utterly destroyed, probably as a result of whatever calamity had destroyed the roads.

An earthquake? Or did the planet grow larger or something? He supposed it didn’t matter. All that mattered was knowing what to do next.

And that much was obvious to Damien. Find James Robard.

Wherever he was, that was clearly the place to be.

He was about to walk off in search of James’s wolf pack, or anyone else who would know where to look for the leader, when he saw a familiar face. A young woman walking around in the wreckage of the former city center.

Damien decided the search could wait. He’d see if she needed help. And maybe she would know where to find James. That girl was part of his group for longer than me, at the very least. And maybe longer than the Rodriguez family?

He rushed over to the woman whose name slightly eluded him.

“Hey there!” he shouted as he drew close.

She turned at the sound of his voice and smiled at the sight of him. But Damien couldn’t help but notice that the smile, pretty as it was, didn’t seem to reach her eyes. The eyes were exhausted, impatient, frustrated—anything but happy.

“I didn’t imagine I’d run into the team Werewolf so quickly,” she said.

You didn’t expect to run into me at all, Damien thought, and the way I’m reading your smell, I make you a bit nervous. He’d had his Werewolf senses for less than a month, but he thought he was adapting to them very well. A certain odor for fear, a certain odor for food, an odor for a prospective rival—following that instinct a little too closely had already gotten him into trouble—an odor for almost any situation. Living bodies were almost an open book now.

“I’m going to find James,” Damien said. “I thought maybe you’d know where he is. You were traveling with him before, right? We could go together. Looks like this world isn’t much less dangerous than the one we just left.”

She let out a little sigh. “You’re probably not wrong.”

“But you don’t want to go with me.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’m planning on going my own way for now. There are things I want to do… that wouldn’t be of any interest to him.” She swallowed and took a long moment to think, but Damien could sense she wasn’t finished talking. “You tell James that I said ‘Thanks,’ alright? For the way he behaved in Orientation. He was more decent than he had to be. If we meet again, it will be as friends, as far as I’m concerned.”

Damien simply nodded.

She went on her way, and Damien began his search for the wolf pack in the park.

The woman was already long gone by the time Damien realized he didn’t remember her name.

“S” something, right?

—

Luna and the wolf pack appeared in a patch of forest they didn’t recognize.

Most of them had lived their whole lives in the Orientation space. Only the first generation, the Wolf King and his oldest pack mates, had ever been adults on Earth. They had lived in a wildlife sanctuary before the System changed them. Luna had been born there, too, but her memories of Earth were fuzzy. And this forest was essentially fresh growth anyway, though it looked deceptively well developed.

It was a new and wild world they inhabited. Deliciously unsettled.

Luna scented the wind.

Where do we go? asked one of the pack, a younger wolf, slightly runty.

She stated the obvious. We go to find the pack leader. James’s smell wasn’t apparent in the cool breeze that wafted over them, but she felt certain the bond that connected the wolf pack to their leader would pull them together again. She would see if they could find him with their collective tracking abilities, and if not, she would reach out telepathically.

Luna didn’t want James to think she was the type of wolf who always wanted someone else to solve her problems.

But for now, she added, looping in the rest of the pack, let’s find some food.

The wind hadn’t carried James’s scent, but the smell of other animals was strong and tempting in the air. These woods must be full of prey.

—

Camila Rodriguez smiled through tears.

“So many of us lost our lives in that horrible place, but I’m so happy that I got to see most of my family reunited.”

When she had awakened in her tent in Orientation, the first piece of news her remaining family gave her was that all the able-bodied family and friends who had been left to guard them had been captured, or perhaps killed, by undead monsters. The second piece of news, given immediately after the first, was that James Robard was on his way to rescue them.

And now, here they all were, safe and sound.

The apartment complex where her family lived was in a strange condition. Some of the buildings had fallen down, while others had simply moved positions to be more spread out. Camila and her family had gathered in one of their apartments that was still standing.

The first few hours back home were a rotating series of reunions. First, the ones who had been captured came by to let her know they were okay. She squeezed them and doted on them until the next family members came.

Their cousins, the Sánchezes, and their neighbors, the Garcías, had fared much worse. In their Orientations, more than half of the population had died. Camila also gathered that despite their arriving on the same day, they had somehow spent more time in the other dimension.

When they came, Camila and the other Rodriguezes shifted from rejoicing in reunion to commiserating over their shared losses.

While Camila was embracing her family and community, a few of the young men dug a pit in what had once been the front yard, to cook barbecue in. No one criticized them for ruining the landscaping. The Earth had shifted while they were gone, and none of the gas lines were functioning, even in the most intact of the apartment buildings.

That night, they all dined on a massive wild boar monster. Ángel García and Vicente Sanchez had caught it in the woods that sprung up near the apartments while they were gone. There hadn’t been more than a handful of trees there before. Who knew what else now lived in those woods?

Despite being a monster, it tasted just like the pigs Camila remembered raising in her yard as a little girl.

“We’ll decide what the family should do tomorrow,” she said to her cousin, Rafa Sánchez.

He simply nodded in agreement. His eyes looked distant and melancholic.

—

Cara appeared where she’d been before Orientation. She had been camping with a few friends. The tents were still standing, albeit strangely positioned, as if the campsite had been much more spread out than it actually was. Or as if the space had expanded? She didn’t spend much time thinking about that. Leave that to the brainiacs, she thought.

Most of the friends she came with had died in their respective Orientations.

Cara decided to spare the two who’d survived and simply walked off alone. She was fairly certain they didn’t even see her, before she used her superior physical Stats to dash away.

Once she was a good distance away from her former friends, who she expected and hoped never to see again, she transformed back into her Wendigo shape. She felt more comfortable in a form that embodied pure power and ruthlessness.

And she covered ground faster, too. She raced North, following the Pole Star. She had given the other Wendigos a common direction to travel in, and a destination to meet at.

If they remained in the region formerly known as Florida, the hot, humid climate would sap their powers considerably. Instead, they would go to Canada, where winters were harsh. From there, they could gradually spread their influence and carve out their own slice of the world.

With their weather powers, and the naturally cold climate, they would create a country where man had to consume man, and dog had to eat dog, in order to survive. A land of always-winter. A place where the environment would grind everyone down until they became monsters.

Like Cara and her new friends.

—

Detective Leo DaSilva reappeared on Earth just outside the police station he’d been sitting in when the world changed.

Surprisingly, although every building around the police station was ruined, the station itself was still standing.

Unfortunately, half of the police station was standing in one spot, with part of a skyscraper embedded in its roof, and the other half was six feet to the left of its counterpart. Neither half of the building looked stable, though DaSilva took a moment to admire the remarkable skill of its construction.

In Florida, no one built structures to withstand earthquakes. The Sunshine State simply didn’t have them. Florida architects worried about hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, instead. Clearly, the Earth had moved. But the police station, the most important building in the city in DaSilva’s opinion, remained almost intact.

He decided not to go back in for his personal effects.

And even though he still had his car keys, he could see dozens of abandoned cars in the streets without leaving the police parking lot.

I guess I’ll walk wherever I’m going, he thought. He still wasn’t quite sure where that was.

But as Nana DaSilva used to say, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

The Detective started walking.