He slept in for the second day in a row.

  Last night, after shuffling home and spraying the salt off with the hose, he'd collapsed back into the chair and gone back to sleep. He woke to Sabbath licking his fingertips, cleaning out the Siren blood that was caked under his nails. With a chuckle, he reached out, scratching between those dark ears. "Hello, old man, I'm guessing TJ hasn't gotten around to your breakfast yet?"

  "Uncle Brom, check the News tab. Last night was wild." TJ's voice popped out of the kitchen alongside the sound of toast exiting the toaster. Looked like he was willing to eat the heel after all. Seemed like the power had come back on, too, the kid must have spent a good amount of time plugging stuff back in while Brom was asleep.

  Hooray for small mercies.

  With a grunt, Brom lifted the big Maine coon into his lap, letting Sabbath spread over him like a familiar blanket that just happened to be able to purr. Reclining lazily in the chair, he checked out the headlines even though he was pretty sure what he'd see.

  [Cold Bay Press

  Siren Feeding Frenzy at Aria Beach! At least 15 confirmed DEAD!

  Sheriff Bruce Colby authorizes siren hunt, says numbers need 'thinned down'. Applicants should stop by the Sheriff's Office and sign up.]

  "Hunting sirens? Sounds dangerous." He remembered the predatory creatures from last night and the sea stained with blood. At least fifteen? No, that number was incredibly conservative. Probably closer to twenty or thirty, maybe more, considering how far from the vicinity of the beach that song had reached.

  "Sounds like loot. We're pretty close to the beach, too! Man, that could have been us! Good thing we were asleep." The couch squeaked, and TJ had to hold his toast plate aloft as Marble instantly decided to investigate. If left unattended, that toast would end up in the fat cat's stomach.

  "Yeah, good thing we were asleep." Brom had broken into a dead sprint last night when he'd realized that if he was on the beach, then TJ might have been as well. Relief had flooded him faster than the adrenaline had when he'd returned to the house to find that not only was TJ still asleep, but also that when Brom had shuffled out of the house, he'd shut the door out of habit. No cats had escaped while he'd been enchanted and lured out to sea by the man-eating fish witches.

  "Man, my first real quest. I hope I get a bunch of XP from it!" TJ brushed the crumbs from his chin. "Or maybe an item. It sounds like the kind of task that should drop an item. Or maybe the sirens drop items? I mean, that would make sense too now that we're out of the tutorial."

  "I think you're getting ahead of yourself. TJ, last night, you weren't handling me throwing hands very well. Today you're talking about hunting a fish-human hybrid." His gaze was level on his nephew, grey eyes warm but wary.

  That nervous habit surfaced again, TJ tapping his thumb on the underside of his plate. "...world's different. I'm going to have to get used to it, right? You did."

  Brom snorted. "That's different. I had some pretty strong motivation to get my shit together and get through it." He held TJ's gaze steadily until the teen flushed and looked away.

  "I'm not a kid anymore, Uncle Brom. I don't need a helicopter uncle."

  "Excuse me, I'm an attack helicopter uncle. I have way better offense than the kind that hover uselessly." It was a terrible joke, but it broke the tension. "Kiddo, you brought this on yourself. You gave a damn about me, I'm going to give a damn about you. You don't need me wiping your nose and putting bandages on your knees if you scrape them, however, you might want me tanking the hits while you get used to sniping. You might have gotten away with shooting skeletons in the Tutorial because you were riding the fantasy high, but trust me, actually killing something hits different. If you freeze, I want to have your back until you work through that."

  The thumb tapping slowed and then finally stopped as TJ worked through his thoughts and found some peace. "Yeah. Okay. But, we're going to go siren hunting?"

  "Not at first. We can sign up, but the first thing we're doing is going grocery shopping. Unless that siren quest rewards us with a free Meals on Wheels service, then we're going to starve sooner rather than later if we don't.

  "What's meals on wheels?"

  "Vintage Door Dash." God, he felt old sometimes. The name was even self-explanatory. At least TJ was asking out of genuine curiosity, assuming it was a reference to the actual name of something and not just taking it at face value. "Okay, Sabbath, off you get, old man. Dad has to go buy more cat food." The old black cat gave him a disapproving look, stretching each hind leg in a stride before sauntering off properly.

  "...how old is Sabbath now? I don't think I've ever asked."

  Brom appreciated the fact that when he stood, his knees no longer popped, enjoying his stretch before answering TJ's question. "Older than you are."

  "I'm sixteen!"

  "And Sabbath is seventeen. He's a fossil in cat years. I adopted him from a foster while we were chasing bar gigs in Oregon. That was the summer before you were born." He rubbed weathered fingertips against his forehead. "...man, my twenty-year reunion was coming up soon. Fuck when did I get so old?"

  "Dad's was this year. You should have seen him trying to recapture the glory days." TJ finished the last bite of toast, brushing the crumbs off his chest. "I'm going to go get a change of clothes out of the truck, and then I'll be ready to head to town."

  The look on Brom's face as TJ walked away was unreadable. He'd known that things between his brother and his nephew were getting more and more sour, but he hadn't realized just how dire the situation was becoming. It seemed almost every conversation, a dig at JJ worked its way in there, and Brom wasn't sure how to fix that kind of anger. It wasn't like he had a stellar relationship with his own dad to fall back on for an example, and hell, his relationship with JJ was pretty abysmal on its own. When he was younger, he'd resented JJ not just for getting all their parents' attention but for being a fucking toolbag of a human being. Now that Brom was older well, not much had changed. JJ was still a tool.

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  The stories he could tell TJ about his old man would be counterproductive. Brom wasn't here to add onto his list of sins in the family's eyes, and he was pretty sure if he completely torpedoed his brother's father-son relationship, he'd get nailed to the pillar of shame. Low contact would turn into no contact. He wasn't quite prepared to salt that earth just yet. Instead, he just tried to remind the other that his dad did still love him, tried to make peace. For TJ's sake, not JJ. The kid didn't need to grow up in a garden of spite.

  Gloomy thoughts hung in their minds like broken ornaments on a burnt tree, reflected naked in their faces each for the other to see. The start of the walk toward town was wrapped in silence heavier than the wet, post storm air that surrounded them. The sun was out, the trees steaming, cloaking the day in mist that dissolved into prisms and shimmering rainbows. After the third one they passed, TJ bumped his arm.

  "You think there are pots of gold at the end of those now?" He gestured, an eyebrow quirking up.

  "If there are, how fucked up do you think leprechauns are? Like, you can't believe they're cheerful cereal box mascots, clapping just because someone found their gold?" Brom shook his head. "Nah, I've seen that movie. Old slasher horror flick. Pure cheese. They even sent him to the hood in the," he paused trying to recall the details. "I think it was the third movie."

  Teenaged eyes rolled so hard they almost fell out of TJ's skull. "Uncle Brom, your shit was fucking weird."

  "Kiddo, Hollywood back then was fueled by very expensive coke habits, and execs were way less worried about traumatizing us. The shit we consumed as childhood media content was some grade A nightmare fuel. There was this one puppet movie where souls were being straight-up stolen. PG rating too." He made an expansive gesture to the road and mountains ahead of them. "You! You guys are the inheritors of our weird, may you never fly as close to the sun."

  "Yeah... too bad the Internet is lost and all that media with it."

  "We have VHS back at the house. I wonder if the VCR still wor-"

  An exploding tree rather impolitely interrupted their conversation. Splinters of spruce fell like fresh rain, scattering around them as larger spears of the tree shot outward like a vampire's worst nightmare. Without thinking, Brom covered TJ, feeling a few of the larger pieces carve near misses in the air around them while only a few branches whipped at him.

  HP: 599/600

  Two cow-sized bird-lizard-beast things screeched overhead, one hauling half a man's body while the other was trying to snatch bites of it mid-air. Their screeching and squabbling carried them into the trees on the other side of the road, shaking more of the forest as they slowly faded into the distance. Brom stepped back from TJ, brushing the needles and twigs from his shoulders.

  TJ shook his head, catching his breath. "No offense, Uncle Brom, I don't think we need to inherit any extra weird."

  "Noted."

  Many more such scenes played out on the two-hour walk into town. What had once been a fairly sedate drive was now turned into quite the trek, climbing fallen obstacles, dodging burning vehicles, and hiding from things that appeared too big and too ugly for the two of them to fight. They passed the familiar driveways of neighbors who, like Brom's grandparents, had built their homes back in the tree line. The only signs there were homes there were the cuts of the gravel that lined the drives and the mailboxes that stood at the ends. Dark smoke rose from several of these places, signs that not just the occupants but the homes themselves were gone. For all his earlier words about not needing to be looked after, TJ was sticking plenty close to Brom, and his gaze had turned much more cautious and quiet.

  "This is less young adult light novel and more prime time zombie thriller than I like." It was TJ's cautious admission an hour into their walk.

  "I will pretend that those words make sense in context and nod sagely." And normally, Brom was the one making obscure pop culture references that went over the teen's head. It was about time TJ got in one of his own.

  "It means maybe you were right. Maybe this is a lot more dangerous out here than I thought. We haven't seen a single other person. The sirens couldn't have gotten them all. Did they get picked off by all the shit in the woods? Did they already head into town hours ago? Did we, like, miss some mass transport to the safe zone? Or were there a lot more like those guys last night, going through and clearing people out?"

  He ruffled TJ's hair, interrupting the spiral. "The sirens probably did get a bunch, remember there's a quest to hunt them. But hey, a lot of people were probably asleep. I think it's a combination of everything. The sirens, the beasts, bandits, and people heading to town on their own. There are probably families holed up in some of these, better prepared than we were and trying to wait things out, see if people are coming? Hell there are preppers that live out here, those folks are probably fine. This might not be the doomsday they were planning for, but hey, it's someone's doomsday. They can make it work."

  He hopped up on the roof of a smashed car, ignoring the streaks of blood on it and stretching a hand to TJ. He couldn't stop the kid from looking, he could only give a sympathetic smile when he turned green afterward. "You're gonna have to get used to that."

  "You keep saying that."

  "Keeps being true, but hey, I can see the Welcome to Cold Bay sign. Town's not much further."

  He hauled TJ up onto the top of the ruined car, pointing to the green and gold sign near the upcoming bend in the road. It was just past those trees, just obscured from view. Whatever was coming, whatever remained, whatever had changed, they'd know in the next fifteen minutes.