We ended up calling it Fort Autumn, much to the disgust of every child but Micah, who thought it was “Very logical.” Colonel Zwerinski sent out an Announcement two hours later, after we had completed some rough preparations.

Attention! This is retired United States Army Colonel Dane Zwerinski. Burials for those who died during last night’s violence will be held tomorrow. We still have four bodies unidentified, so please come by 107 Lavender if your loved ones are unaccounted for.

It has become clear that additional security is needed for the Shop. As such, we plan to raise a fort. We will be asking everyone who resides within a half-mile of the Shop to sign the Fort Autumn charter committing to defending the Shop when necessary and providing a limited amount of support to the community.

If you do not wish to sign, we will be happy to provide assistance in relocating and promise that we will continue to re-sell Shop-provided food and water at cost. We recognize that this will present an inconvenience, but the Shop cannot be moved and we cannot risk the resource supporting so many lives.

Several copies of the charter have been posted within the Shop. Please make your decision within the next week. Elections for civil leadership will be held in two weeks’ time.

Before he’d made the Announcement, we’d written out multiple copies of the charter. Some, we hung in the Shop, but we needed an official copy for people to sign.

Deciding on the text of the charter had been easy, compared to the hassle of actually making four decent copies that looked somewhat professional. Before her transformation, Priya’s handwriting had been excellent (you can’t get away with sloppy handwriting when teaching the ABCs), but now her scaled fingers made holding a pen difficult. The results weren’t even close to textbook-perfect print I’d seen from her over the years. The rest of us were… better, but not by much. Errors abounded. White-out was a fine solution for the display copies, but we wanted at least one unimpeachably flawless draft of the text for everyone to sign.

After repeated failures, we roped the nine-year-olds into helping. Their handwriting wasn’t as good as Priya’s, but it was better than any of the other adults’.

“As soon as we get one perfect copy of this written, we can go out hunting!” I said. It was a good bribe. Samar had gotten his third ability on the way home last night. This meant that other than Arvan, who had two, all the kids were now “tied” with three abilities. The equality of strength was pleasant for Gavin, Cassie, and Samar, but chafed at the older kids. They were the oldest! The best! The strongest! They knew it in their tiny petty hearts, and the fact that reality bore scant evidence of this inherent truth was unforgivable.

It was Anju who finally pulled off an error-free version, checking each letter carefully and meticulously before she committed it to paper. Micah was slightly irritated to be outdone, but his poor mood was quickly washed away by excitement about getting to go out to earn more points.

George still wasn’t back. The rescuers and former hostages had stopped to rest for a few hours as the day grew hotter, so we planned to head out to the southwest to look for monsters and meet up with them.

I was personally excited that we’d be leaving the house around the time the Announcement was made. I'd get to dodge dealing with the initial wave of complaints and arguments.

Here’s the thing about leadership: it sucks. Everything you do, no matter how necessary or justified, will always make someone unhappy, and that person will be sure to let you know about it. No one ever goes up to the mayor and says “Great work with keeping our fire-departments well-funded and utility prices reasonable” unless they have a personal connection to someone who works there, but people will always complain if one intersection that has mistimed traffic lights or if the entry fee for the city pool is too high.

In middle school, the mayor’s daughter had been in my Girl Scout Troop. Grown-ass adults would complain to this poor twelve-year-old about stuff like that when she was just trying to earn her badge for first aid or sell some cookies. It got so she started using only her first name with strangers, and stopped selling cookies door-to-door entirely.

I’d led things before, myself. I’d student-directed a school play and been vice-president of the board gaming club in college. Petty stuff, right? But even that minor experience had let me know how thankless a task leading things really is. When someone starts screaming in your face about your “controlling dictatorship” because sequins got added to props instead of glitter, it definitely makes you question your life choices.

There was one thing worse than leading things, though: following incompetent leadership.

I trusted Colonel Zwerinski, more or less, but I was nervous about the idea of electing civil leaders. It’s rare that the people who ought to be in charge want to be, and common for charismatic know-nothings to win the glorified popularity contests elections often are. If I could avoid taking the helm myself, I would. My kids were my first responsibility, and enough of one.

I’d have to keep an eye out on who was trying for the helm. If I could throw my weight behind a sane and competent candidate, maybe I could dodge it myself.

Those were all troubles for the future, though. The elections wouldn’t take place for a couple weeks. For the time being, the important things were being acted on, and I could simply head out into the world to kill monsters with my kids, unburdened and carefree!

…Dear lord, the past few weeks had really messed up my worldview.

As I was heading out the door with Priya, the colonel pulled me aside for a minute. “Your route to the rescue group is going to take you pretty close to the gardens.”

“Yeah…” I said, not seeing his point.

“Circle around them. I’ve talked with Matilda via Mental Speech, and she claims the Dragon is gone and didn't cause trouble. I haven’t seen the Dragon around, but I still don’t trust her on either account. Until we have the time and people to deal with her BS, she’s a risk factor. Steer clear.”

I wanted to argue. I trusted Matilda, the sweet and generous old lady who hadn’t hesitated to share her dwindling food supplies to comfort crying children… but she’d let someone go who was part of a force that was literally killing our neighbors. That wasn’t easy to overlook. I couldn’t put my faith in her above my children’s safety, so I nodded stiffly. “We’ll head straight south then, and cut west after we’re already in Royal Woods.”

I tried to shake off the damper the brief discussion had thrown on my mood. The bloodstains on what remained of the sidewalk didn’t help, calling up memories of injured bodies and anguished screams.

At least the kids hadn’t been there for that. I saw Priya eyeing the evidence of last night’s battle, but the kids ignored it completely.

“We’re going to go meet Dad and the people he saved! My dad is a hero, Gavin.”

“I know your dad, Sammy! He lives at my house!”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

Both Samar and Gavin cracked up, first-grade humor at its finest.

We’d headed out early, while it was still hot. Most people took a break from hunting during the middle of the day, but Lavender Lane was still bare of monsters, courtesy of a few people sitting on porches or under the shade of trees. I couldn’t blame them; the sun was up, but there was enough cloud cover that it wasn’t as fierce as it was some days, and the breeze was actually really pleasant. If people hadn’t splurged on Room Coolers, they were probably cooler in the shade outside than inside the overcrowded homes.

I’d gotten much more confident with my Life Sense, allowing us to move quickly. Arvan and Cassie rode together in one of the tagons, and the rest of us ran. The kids easily kept up a pace that would have been respectably athletic for an adult a few weeks ago, even with their shorter legs. It didn’t even seem to tire them out, and our group quickly left the most-densely-populated area and started encountering monsters.

I got my first glimpse of the new things.

We turned a corner and saw one pacing slowly across the road, picking up each leg in a slow and dignified way. It really did look similar to an ostrich, but much smaller, perhaps a little more than half the height. There were plenty of differences, of course: its legs were covered in soft feathers or fur, not scales like an Earth bird, and while the creature shared the ostrich’s long flexible neck, it had no beak. Its face came to a narrow point, sort of like a greyhound, if greyhounds had magnificent pointed ears framing a curling multicolor mane. To finish off the birdlike animal’s flashy appearance, a fanlike tail swayed behind it.

When it spotted us and began to run, its gait was also ostrichlike, legs flipping furiously as its torso appeared oddly motionless. The illusion of similarity was disrupted after I hit the monster with Draw Attention. Forcing it to look at me caused it to start to lose balance, and its body contorted oddly, flexing and stretching like an opening umbrella for a moment as the creature tried not to fall. Clearly, its fur or feathers concealed an anatomy more alien than its appearance implied.

Regaining balance, it turned toward us, giving up on escape. I got out my sword and went to meet it, before Micah’s irritated “Mom!” reminded me that I was supposed to be trying to give the points and fighting experience to the kids. Even though further help wouldn’t reduce my share of the points, they could still use practice in facing monsters without adult help.

That didn’t need to happen against monsters that were still a mystery to us, though.

Priya seemed to agree, moving up to meet the bird-thing with a still-intact shield and her own blade. The kids peppered it with attacks as it drew closer, and Priya let it come in range of the toddlers’ Automated Defensive Assistants before she finished it off.

Anju groaned. “You too, Mom? That one was easy.”

Priya shook her head. “They seem easy, yes, but I don’t trust that. They are new, and we don’t have anyone with Analyze at a high level of synergy, so all they can tell us is a little more than we can see ourselves: how their bodies work, what their weapons are. I suppose that could be all there is to them…” she trailed off doubtfully.

“Nah,” I said decisively. “It doesn’t fit the pattern. Every monster that’s appeared so far has given us something new to worry about. You kids can try to fight the other monsters, but Ms. Priya and I are helping on these space emu or whatever they are.”

The kids weren’t thrilled about my verdict, but with the midday heat still pressing down there were plenty of other things to fight. They set to it with a will.