The snake sword stayed on the kitchen table for several minutes after Leo brought it down. Neither of them seemed quite ready to move past the fact that it existed.
Melody turned it over in her hands until she was sure it really was made from the monster. The blade kept the same forward curve as the pincer that had spent most of an hour trying to cut her in half, only now it was human-sized. Dark green scales overlapped along the hilt around a black grip. A twisting guard curled protectively over her fingers. When she tilted the blade toward the smoky light from the window, thin silver lines showed inside the metal like veins trapped under glass. It was one of the coolest things Edward had ever held, which probably said unfortunate things about his old life.
She set it down beside the fang dagger and realized something far less exciting. She was starving. Not regular missed-breakfast hungry either. The moment she noticed it, her stomach clenched hard enough to hurt and produced a growl loud enough that Leo looked over.
Melody pressed a hand against it. “Apparently eating monster energy does not count as lunch.”
Leo glanced at the weapons. “Guess you didn’t absorb the food part.”
Melody considered that for half a second. “I hate that this world is weird enough that I can’t immediately call that stupid.”
Leo almost smiled.
The kitchen still looked like someone had stepped out in the middle of an ordinary day and never come back. A coffee mug sat by the sink with a dried brown ring at the bottom. A loaf of bread waited beside the toaster. A grocery receipt lay under a fruit bowl that held two apples and a banana already turning brown. The family photos on the wall made all of it feel too personal, so Melody tried not to think about who had bought the groceries.
She opened the refrigerator and immediately noticed two problems. There was no light and no cold air. She touched the gallon of milk, and the plastic was almost room temperature.
“Damn.”
Leo leaned in. “There’s a lot of food.”
“Yeah. Warm food.”
The shelves were still full, milk, eggs, sliced turkey and ham, cheese, yogurt, leftovers in plastic, and a bag of lettuce that had already given up. Under normal circumstances she would have closed the door and accepted that most of it belonged in the trash. These were not normal circumstances.
She checked the date on the turkey, opened the package, and smelled it carefully. Nothing sour. Still, bacteria did not politely announce themselves.
Leo’s stomach growled behind her, and when Melody looked back he seemed mildly embarrassed.
“You hungry?”
He nodded.
Her own stomach answered with another growl. “Yeah. Me too.”
She pulled out the turkey and a block of cheddar. “I’m not pretending this is safe. If anything smells off, tastes off, or either of us starts feeling sick, we stop immediately. And none of this comes with us. One questionable sandwich is one thing. Putting warm turkey in a backpack for later is how we lose a fight to bacteria after surviving giant monsters.”
Leo nodded. “Okay.”
She eyed the open jar of mayonnaise, then put it straight back. “That one I’m not risking.”
“Mustard?”
She checked the bottle. “Mustard has a ton of vinegar, right? Vinegar has my trust.”
The bread on the counter was slightly stale but fine. Melody made three sandwiches, one for Leo and two for herself, using turkey, cheddar, and mustard. She added extra turkey to both of hers when her stomach complained again.
Leo noticed. “That’s a lot of turkey. Kind of overpowers the rest of the sandwich, doesn’t it?”
“I got fired through a snake today. I feel like that earns me additional turkey. The apocalypse isn’t a time to become a food critic.”
Leo nodded slowly. “Yeah, never mind.”
They carried two of the sandwiches and some warm orange juice to the table, leaving Melody’s extra sandwich wrapped on the counter for later. For the first few minutes neither of them talked. The bread was dry enough that Melody needed juice after almost every bite. The cheese had gone a little oily, and the turkey sat at that unfortunate temperature where every survival instinct quietly suggested this was a bad idea.
She ate it anyway.
After everything that had happened, sitting at a table and eating an ordinary sandwich felt almost luxurious. No monster was trying to eat her. Nothing was exploding close enough to shake the walls. There was only smoky orange light behind the curtains and distant sirens that belonged to someone else.
Leo ate slower. Every so often he stopped with the sandwich halfway to his mouth and stared at the table. Melody noticed, but she didn’t fill the silence. She could guess where his thoughts went, and talking would not bring his family back.
Eventually Leo looked down at the sandwich. “My mom made mine like this. She always put too much mayonnaise on it, though. I told her I didn’t like that much, but she always forgot.”
There was the smallest smile on his face. It lasted maybe a second.
Melody rested her forearms on the table. “My mom did that with tomatoes. I hated them on burgers when I was younger, and somehow every single time she ordered food she forgot.”
Leo looked up. “You have a mom? I mean, of course you do. Do you think she is safe?”
The question landed harder than he could know. Edward did have a mother. Somewhere across the country she had lived for more than a year believing her son died in a plane crash. Maybe she still lived in the same place. Maybe there was a photograph she still could not look at without crying.
Melody stared at the sandwich. “I don’t know.”
Leo seemed to catch something in her voice and didn’t ask more.
They finished eating quietly. When Melody swallowed the last bite she leaned back and waited a few seconds to see if the turkey would settle correctly.
“Still alive.”
Leo finished his juice. “It’s been like ten seconds.”
“I survived the first critical window.”
“I don’t think food poisoning works that fast.”
“It would be very inconvenient if it did.”
Leo gave her another faint smile. That was enough.
Melody stood. “All right. We need to get ready.”
“To leave?”
“Yeah.”
The house was safe for the moment, but safe and useful were not the same thing. There was no running water and no electricity. They had no idea whether the people who lived here would return, or worse, if monsters would find them, and staying inside indefinitely because nothing had found them yet felt like the kind of decision people in horror movies made five minutes before something came through the wall.
She opened the pantry. “Shelf-stable only. Juice first, then food. We don’t know when we’ll find either again.”
The pantry was better stocked than she expected, with peanut butter, crackers, pretzels, protein bars, fruit cups, cereal, canned soup and fruit with pull tabs, cookies, and snacks clearly bought for kids. Leo held up a box of dinosaur fruit snacks and Melody nodded. Goldfish followed, then Oreos.
Melody considered them. “Dense calories.”
“That’s why?”
“That’s what I’m going with.”
They avoided anything that needed cooking. Water was the bigger problem. Between the pantry and refrigerator they initially found only apple juice and orange juice.
“That isn’t much in the way of non-sugary liquids,” Melody said.
Leo looked at the bottles. “It’s better than nothing.”
“For sitting in a house? Sure. For two people walking around a burning city with no running water? Not really.”
She touched the dead faucet again as if it might reconsider. Nothing.
“We will need more.”
That gave them their first real objective.
They searched the rest of the house. The upstairs bathroom produced a first-aid kit better stocked than expected, with gauze, bandages, tape, alcohol wipes, antibiotic ointment, tweezers, scissors, ibuprofen, and antihistamines. Melody took the whole thing. Downstairs they found two flashlights, one of which worked after Leo changed the batteries, a lighter, matches, garbage bags, duct tape, and a small multitool. All of it went into the useful pile.
They found water almost by accident. Leo opened a cabinet in the laundry room while looking for more batteries and discovered a half-used case shoved beneath a shelf of detergent and cleaning supplies. Eight sealed bottles remained inside the plastic wrapping.
Melody stared at them like Leo had uncovered buried treasure. “Okay. That is significantly better.”
Leo pulled the case out. “It’s just water.”
“Exactly. Right now water is better than most of the stuff in this house.”
Leo held up the duct tape next. “What do we need this for?”
“I don’t know yet, but you can never go wrong with having some duct tape around.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“Yes.”
Leo handed it over.
The next problem was carrying everything.
Leo remembered backpacks upstairs. Melody followed him to a hallway closet near what had probably been the children’s rooms, where winter coats hung beside an old vacuum and two small backpacks dangled from hooks.
One was bright blue and covered in Bluey characters. The other was pink and purple with smiling My Little Pony characters on every available inch.
Leo took Bluey immediately.
Melody stared at him. “You didn’t even think about it.”
“Bluey is better.”
“You left me the pony one.”
Leo shrugged. “You’re a girl.”
Melody looked down at herself. That argument had become disturbingly hard to counter.
She took the My Little Pony backpack and held it in front of her. Three brightly colored cartoon horses smiled up with the aggressive positivity of creatures completely unaware that civilization had ended outside. Melody looked from the backpack to the snake sword downstairs, then down at the borrowed sweatpants hanging from her hips.
“I would make a terrible role model for little girls everywhere.”
Leo smiled before he could stop it.
Back downstairs they divided the supplies. Melody carried most of the water and juice since the weight barely bothered her. The first-aid kit, flashlight, batteries, peanut butter, protein bars, crackers, fruit cups, matches, lighter, and duct tape went into her pack. Leo took lighter food, four bottles of water, fruit snacks, and pretzels.
Melody looked at the extra sandwich she had made earlier and stuffed it down quickly. Questionable meat was not surviving beyond the house, and she wasn’t going to let the chance for more nutrients pass.
When she finally zipped the My Little Pony backpack and swung it on, the straps immediately reminded her it had been designed for someone significantly smaller. She extended them almost as far as they would go before the bag sat comfortably against her upper back.
Leo looked at her with a smile.
Melody narrowed her eyes. “Something to say, child I just recently saved from a giant snake?”
“I didn’t say anything.” He adjusted the Bluey backpack and looked away, pouting.
The weapons needed solutions. The snake sword had no sheath, so Melody wrapped the blade in two thick dish towels, secured them with duct tape, and tested the edge. Nothing cut through. An old leather belt from upstairs became an improvised strap, and it took several attempts before the sword sat diagonally across her back without blocking the backpack or putting the handle somewhere impossible to reach.
She stood in front of the hallway mirror and examined the final result. An oversized gray T-shirt hung over loose sweatpants, the My Little Pony backpack sat high between her shoulders, and a monster sword wrapped in dish towels crossed diagonally behind it. Long red hair framed bright green eyes that looked far too elegant for somebody whose weapon sheath was currently made from kitchen supplies and duct tape.
There was something fundamentally wrong with the entire combination.
She kind of liked it.
Leo was trying to put the fang dagger through a belt loop.
“No.”
He stopped. “What?”
“That blade cut through giant monster scales. You are not keeping it loose beside your leg.”
She wrapped the fang in a folded washcloth, taped it securely, and created a crude loop that attached to his belt. They adjusted it until Leo could draw the dagger without exposing the edge until it had cleared his body. It was crude, but after everything they had improvised today, professionally manufactured objects suddenly felt like a luxury.
Leo finished adjusting his straps. “Ready?”
Melody nodded and took one step toward the front door before her bladder immediately reminded her that biological functions did not care about dramatic timing. She stopped, and Leo waited while she sighed.
“Hold on. Bathroom.”
She hurried down the short hallway and closed the door out of habit. The bathroom was dark without electricity, lit only by dull orange daylight through the frosted window near the ceiling. She pushed down the oversized sweatpants and underwear, sat on the cool seat, and then hesitated at yet another basic part of being a woman Edward had somehow never considered.
“Right.”
She relaxed, and the sensation was different enough that her brain locked onto it immediately. There was no aiming. The muscles involved felt subtly unfamiliar, and even the way she had to sit and the awareness of where everything was happening reminded her that this wasn’t just Edward in a body that looked different on the outside. This body worked differently. Melody’s body.
She stared at the opposite wall the entire time, mildly fascinated by something roughly half the population probably hadn’t consciously thought about since they were toddlers. When she finished she stayed seated another few seconds.
“I am going to be discovering sensations for months, aren’t I?”
Nobody answered. Probably for the best.
She cleaned up, reached automatically for the faucet, then remembered there was no water. The first-aid kit had hand sanitizer, so she used that, returned it to the bag, and met Leo in the entryway.
He was already waiting with the Bluey backpack on and the wrapped dagger at his side. His eyes flicked toward the My Little Pony backpack.
Melody pointed at him. “Not one word.”
Leo’s mouth twitched. “Stooop, I’m just looking at you!”
“Your face laughs very loudly, kid.”
He smiled despite himself.
Melody adjusted her straps and checked the sword one final time before resting her hand on the doorknob. For several seconds she didn’t turn it. The house was quiet and safe, or at least it felt safe. They had spent hours here without anything trying to kill them. There were walls between them and the monsters, food still in the cabinets, and beds upstairs. Leaving meant deliberately walking back into whatever New York had become while they were hiding.
Melody looked at Leo, who had already noticed her hesitation.
“You okay?”
She almost gave him an automatic reassuring answer. Instead she nodded slowly. “Scared.”
Leo shifted his backpack. “Me too.”
Something about hearing him admit it helped.
Melody smiled faintly. “Good. Means we’re not stupid enough to think this is safe.”
She opened the door, and smoke-stained afternoon light poured into the entryway. Abandoned cars sat at strange angles along the street, broken glass glittered across the sidewalk, and thin columns of smoke rose between buildings farther away. Somewhere beyond them a fire still burned, its orange glow barely visible beneath the daylight. Above everything, the sky remained broken, the enormous mana breach stretching across the heavens while blue-white light spilled through the wound and countless glowing particles drifted down over New York like slow-moving snow.
Melody stepped outside, and Leo followed immediately. She waited until he was beside her before pulling the door closed.
The My Little Pony and Bluey backpacks bounced lightly against their shoulders as they started walking together into what remained of the Bronx.