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 Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:11 pm
 They were halfway back to Shera and Verity’s apartment when Bath’s phone buzzed loudly. It was getting late. Frankie was barely stumbling along, leaning on Bath and yawning loudly. Fena was doing better, but Bath was certain that the kid was drawing on store of energy that were about to run out. He was certain that the text message he’d just received was a message from the kids’ parents, demanding to know where they were. Bath felt bad about that. They’d finished up a while ago, but in deference to Frankie and Fena’s shorter legs and obvious exhaustion, they had been moving at a slow pace while a rumbling in the backpack on Bath’s back showed that the kittens had already fallen asleep. Frankie’s new cat was following him close. Yep, it seemed that Ben, as the kid insisted on calling him, had decided who his forever-people would be.
But the text message, when Bath pulled his phone out of his pocket, was much more than a parental reprimand.
EMERGENCY ALERT.
PROCEED TO THE NEAREST EMERGENCY SHELTER.
DO NOT GATHER YOUR BELONGINGS.
EMERGENCY ALERT.
Bath’s heart raced. In an instant, sleepiness and the complacency of a fun evening were gone. Bath shoved the phone in his pocket and crouched down. In a single movement, he scooped up Fena, Frankie, and Ben the cat and began to walk quickly down the sidewalk. Running was pointless. He couldn’t see his feet, and the pavement here was uneven enough to make running in such conditions a bad idea. “I’ll explain later,” he told the boys when they protested.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:14 pm
 Fenaret had had a very good evening. He’d gotten four new stuffed animals and a bucket full of a lot of candy. He had some cute pieces of jewelry, too. In all, tonight had been a success, and if he was staving off sleep by surreptitiously snacking on some of his candy, so what? In a way, Fena felt guilty about that. He prided himself on his self-control, and he’d been looking forward to spreading his candy all over the floor, sorting it out, and wondering over how much candy he had. Now he had eaten quite a few pieces.
I’m just giving myself the energy to walk home, he told himself. There’s nothing wrong with that. He popped another piece of chocolate into his mouth and munched on it thoughtfully. Yes, this was pretty good candy for Haunted Hallows. Some people gave out really cheap candy this time of year, but thankfully this bag was full of some good stuff. The crinkling of the wrapper as he stuffed it in his cauldron was almost drowned out by the beeping on Batholith’s phone. He let his babysitter drop his hand to pull the phone from his pocket. It was probably Ra asking them where they were and when they expected to get back—they were pretty late as it was. Fena was surprised when seconds later, Bath had put the phone back into his pocket and picked up Fena, his brother, and his brother’s new cat. “What’s going on?” Fena gasped.
“I’ll explain later,” Batholith growled. Fena gulped. That sounded bad. Were they in trouble? It was just a long way to walk from school back to their house, that’s why they were late! Fena had never gotten in trouble with his parents before…
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:15 pm
 Francesca was indeed getting tired. He’d had a very exciting night, from carving pumpkins and getting into costume to meeting a new babysitter and going trick-or-treating. They’d been really busy, so yeah, he was getting kind of tired. He wanted to go to bed pretty badly at this point. He couldn’t wait to get home, dump his candy out on the floor, and sort it all out. Then he could go to bed, and snuggle up with Obi-Ben. And Yogha, of course, though Yogha might be kind of jealous. Oh well. There were ways to introduce a new cat into a household with cats in them already. Ra knew what those methods were—she’d been practicing them all her life. That might mean that Frankie might not be able to invite Ben onto his bed tonight, though. He would have to get very slowly eased into the household so that he didn’t disturb the other cats.
Frankie stifled another yawn and once again checked behind him to make sure that Ben was still there. Ben was still there. He purred and pushed his head against Frankie’s leg. Frankie curled his tail around the cat, but did not touch him with his tail. Cats could get startled really easily when you did that. Frankie was too distracted gauging the distance between his tail and Ben to notice that Batholith’s phone was buzzing. The next thing he knew, he and Ben were in the babysitter’s arms with Fena and they were rushing down the street. “What—” Frankie said before being cut off by the babysitter. Ben wasn’t happy either, yowling and struggling and digging his claws into everyone. Batholith didn’t notice, though; he was too busy taking them home.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:17 pm
 Verity and Shera got the alert while they were watching a black and white shlock flick on television. The alert showed up as their phones buzzed with the emergency text. Verity exchanged glances with her partner. Wordlessly, both Nightmares got to their feet. The nearest emergency shelter? Where was that? Verity hurriedly searched for it on her phone—helpfully, the map app was showing it without even waiting for a prompt. The nearest one was the city shelter. “We’ll drive there,” she said. “It’ll be quicker.”
The broadcast and texts had told them not to bring any belongings, but honestly? Shera and Verity couldn’t leave until the boys were all back, so they might as well bring things with them. Verity picked up a milk crate and started filling it with supplies—water bottles, granola bars, jackets. She looked over the selection in their closet and grabbed one for everyone—but she grabbed two of her jackets. Batholith would need a jacket, after all. To cap it all off, she added her sons’ favorite stuffed animals. She had no idea how long they’d be at the shelter, but she’d heard enough horror stories about emergency shelters to bring her own supplies.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:18 pm
 Sherald picked up the remote and turned off the TV. Verity was grabbing supplies—it looked like she had coats, water, and a small amount of food packed. That left a few things for her to pick up. She pulled out her trusty shoulder bag and put all of her medications in them. She grabbed flashlights and emergency batteries, then added a couple of books. Just in case. If there was going to be an emergency, she wanted them to have some entertainment. A couple sleeping bags under her arms, and she probably had everything they needed. Their pets had water in their bowls and enough food to last them for a while. The litterboxes were relatively clean. Good. So…what now?
Doors? Windows? Shera wasn’t very fast in her current condition, but she checked all of the doors and windows as fast as she could. They were all locked. Good. Now all that was left to do was to prep things for when the boys arrived so that they could get moving as fast as they could. She made space in a cupboard that she knew the cats couldn’t open for the boys’ candy, and she fished out a cat carrier. It wasn’t an event without at least one cat following them home.
It didn’t even occur to her that the boys might be headed for a shelter already until after she’d opened up the cages. But before panic could set in, the door was being opened.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:21 pm
Batholith arrived to a room bustling with activity. From the looks of things, Shera and Verity had gotten the alert at the same time he had, and they’d been hard at work. Bath set the boys down on the ground and looked around. “What can I help with?” he asked.
Verity pointed to the piles of coats and the crate. “Take these to the car, please,” she said. “It’s the blue van with the camping bumper stickers.” She tossed him the key. “Just get everything stowed away and we’ll get going.”
Batholith nodded, picked up the supplies, and rushed outside. There was indeed a blue minivan outside with camping bumper stickers on it. Apparently the family loved camping—he hadn’t known that. Then again, he didn’t know this family very well at all, having only just met them tonight (not counting meeting Shera last year as a teacher). The inside was covered in books, so apparently they were pretty bookish. That’s nice, he found himself thinking. He wasn’t thinking very well right now if he was thinking about that…
He shoved the supplies into the backseat, thinking as he did that they were bringing an awful lot with them. He sighed. If they had to move fast, they would have to leave most of it behind.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:21 pm
Fena was still confused when they got home. Rather than get scolded when they opened the door, they were set down on the floor and then ignored. Mom was giving Batholith instructions and ordering him to pick up crates and piles of blankets. What was going on? Whatever it was, Fena didn’t like it at all. He hated it. He hated not knowing what was going on. He hated not knowing what they were doing or why. Were they in trouble or not? Why was everyone upset? Why was no one explaining things to them?
“What’s going on?” he asked Ra, but Ra didn’t reply. She only shoved a warm hat on Fena’s head, then reached out to snag Frankie and subject him to the same treatment. Then Mom was there. Well, Ra was tired and wasn’t up to talking sometimes, so he was better off asking Mom anyway. “What’s going on?” he asked her.
She didn’t answer him, either. She just snatched the candy bucket and stuffed animals out of his arms, locking them away in the cat-proof cabinet above the fridge. Fena yelped. “Mom!” he snapped. “What’s going on?!”
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:23 pm
If anything, Frankie was as shocked as Fena was. The instant he was down on the ground, his mother was shouting, and Ra was scooping up Ben and Frankie’s new rat, Warlock. Ra put them in cages, with Warlock put on a shelf the cats hadn’t figured out how to reach yet. Batholith had disappeared and Fena was shouting left and right. Frankie looked around. No one was making sense, and no one seemed to be paying attention to anything Fena had to say. That was unusual. They’d ignore Frankie sometimes, mostly when he was being really obnoxious and trying to get them to notice him, but they didn’t ignore Fena. Fena was always well-behaved—since when had Frankie’s older brother started shouting at their parents?
Nothing was right. Everything was wrong. There was a wool hat on Frankie’s head, the one he wore when they went camping. His new toys and candy were in the cat safe and he was being herded outside to the car. They didn’t do this.
Did this have something to do with Bath’s text message?
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:24 pm
Yup, the boys had brought home a cat. And a rat, which was unusual—at least, until she saw the markings on the rat. Verity nodded in approval as Bath volunteered to help out and Shera put the new pets in cages. They didn’t want bloodied warfare while they were out. With the supplies in the car, the chocolates hidden from both the cats and the hysterically yipping Quill, and with warm hats affixed to everyone’s head but Batholith’s (but that was okay, they had extras), Verity marched her family down to the car. She looked at her watch. Had it really only been eight minutes since they got the alert?
Then again, that might be eight minutes too long. Verity picked up the loudly protesting Fenaret and carried him to the car, while Shera herded the tired but compliant Frankie along. It seemed like the boys had switched roles. That was disturbing in itself.
At the car, Bath had already seatbelted himself in, and he’d left the car keys on the front seat. Verity’s fellow hybrid helped her buckle Fena and Frankie into their seats. Within moments, they were off. Fena had finally fallen silent, but his ears were laid back and his tail was fluffed out so much that he looked like Udneb.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:25 pm
The panic of trying to get to the car was over. By the estimate on Shera’s phone, it would only be a few minutes until they got to the shelter, especially considering that Verity was driving. Shera’s longtime roommate and newly consummated lover was very much of the opinion that emergencies nullified all rules of the road. They were breaking speed limits on their way to the shelter, and Shera had never seen so many boulevard stops. She counted at least two red lights run and quite a few horns being blown, but there didn’t seem to be any cops to pull them over, and even if there were cops—would they really risk it? Two children in a car headed for an emergency shelter?
It seemed like eternity, but in reality it was only two blocks before Sherald finally spoke. She addressed both of her children, but she tried to make eye contact with Fena in particular in the rear-view mirror. “There’s an emergency alert out,” she said softly. “We don’t know why. All we know is that something big is happening and we need to get to a shelter. It took us a while to get going. That’s why we weren’t answering you. We just wanted to get things done so that we could leave the apartment and get to safety. I’m sorry we worried you, Fena.”
Fena grunted, but didn’t say a word. Neither did he calm down.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:26 pm
Bath had spent long enough with the boys to know that Fena was the wise, level-headed one. For him to be acting this upset, he had to be really frightened. Bath knew better than to call it fear, though—in this mood, most kids would be mortally offended to be accused of something like fear. Fear implied that their parents were not at fault, when in a situation like this, all they really wanted was for their parents to be at fault.
Bath desperately wanted to change the subject. He also wanted to coordinate their efforts to get out of the car and into safety as quickly as possible. He dug into the crates at his feet and slipped water bottles into his backpack alongside the now-protesting kittens. He looked up in time to catch Shera turned around in her seat to give him the full benefit of a raised eyebrow. Verity, too, was looking at him from the rear-view mirror.
He probably should have left the kittens at the house. “I forgot I had them,” he said quietly. “Besides, I didn’t want to upset your cats, leaving a bunch of kittens at your place.” But mostly it was that first one. Bath went back to digging in the crates. “I’ll carry the sleeping bags and supplies,” he said. “Everyone carries their jacket?”
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:27 pm
Fena was incensed that he was being treated like a small child. He was! He was being treated like a finnicky infant being strapped into a child seat. The fact that it wasn’t actually a child seat made it no better! He struggled, but in the end, he was subdued by a combination of two half-Imps forcing him to settle into his seat. Fena slammed his head back into the headrest in protest, but he didn’t touch the release for the seatbelt. He was angry, but he was not petulant. Just because they were treating him like a child did not mean that he was going to act like a child!
At long last, Ra told them what was going on. Except she didn’t. Fena didn’t know any more than he had before—there was some emergency, okay. And then Ra apologized to him. Fena looked away. She’d apologized to him. Well…that was nice, actually. He liked being apologized to. And a lot of the bad feeling went away with that. But he couldn’t forgive her. Not yet. She’d ignored him, and he wanted her to know how he felt about that sort of thing.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:29 pm
An…emergency? And a shelter? “What’s an emergency shelter?” Frankie asked.
“It’s a place you go when there’s trouble,” Mom said. “A big safe place that everyone gathers at until the danger’s over and everyone can go home.”
Frankie nodded. That made sense. For some reason, when Ra had first mentioned an emergency shelter, he’d been imagining a big tent. Now he was imagining…something else. He didn’t know. Actually, to be honest he was still hoping for a big tent. Maybe a circus tent? With stripes and animals in it? That would be just grand! Frankie liked that idea, even if it wasn’t particularly likely.
He wanted to ask when the danger would be over, but before he could even put that question into words he realized it would be useless to ask. If they knew when they’d be coming back, Mom would have said that instead of being vague. But nope, vagueries all around.
We’ll be back when we’re back, Frankie thought. He reached out to the crate and pulled out his oldest stuffed animal, a stuffed sheep named Laceboots. He might not have the neat stuffed skeleton he’d gotten tonight, but hey—at least he had Laceboots. That was what was important.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:30 pm
Verity tried to think of an answer to Bath’s question. “Yes,” she said finally. “I grabbed an extra jacket for you, Batholith. I can’t guarantee you’ll like the color, but I think we’re about the same size, so it should fit you and keep you warm.” If anything, it would be short in the sleeves and, shall we say, baggy in the chest. Same height, same combination of hybrid traits, but that did not make Verity and Batholith the same size. He has bigger arms than me, too, she thought, looking at his arms. Even through a sweatshirt, she could see the muscles. “I hope it fits you,” she added lamely.
They got to the parking lot of the stadium in short order and all five of them piled out of the car. Verity grabbed Fena’s hand tightly, refusing to let go even when he tried to pull away. She wasn’t letting anyone in their group out of her sight. When she could see that Frankie, Shera, and Bath had gotten out of the car and had pulled their jackets on (Bath’s arms were, indeed, a tight fit), she locked the car and lead the way into the arena.
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Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 11:32 pm
The arena was, as might be expected, packed full of worried, panicking people. No one seemed to know what was going on, and once Shera, her family, and Batholith were ushered into the arena, the doors were closed and sealed behind them. It seemed that they had been among the last to get there. They weren’t the only people to bring some supplies, of course—there were plenty of other people who had grabbed their belongings before heading out. But Shera had a hard time not justifying her own entourage’s belongings, especially when the police gave them dirty looks. She wanted to shout at them that they weren’t late because they’d stopped for their belongings—they were late because they’d stopped for their children, who had been out trick-or-treating at the time.
By the Nine—it was still Haunted Hallows! It was still October 31st. It was still a time of ghosts and ghouls and things that went “bump” in the night. It was almost surreal what was going on here tonight, on this night of all nights…
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