As it turns out, our dry goods are still safe. My vague hypothesis about the water seems to hold, and I'm more surprised than anyone. Not because it doesn't make sense, but because it seems I might actually be onto something.

The carrots are half contaminated, just like the garlic. The four of us form something of an assembly line along the kitchen counter, the other three slicing open carrots while I inspect each half for traces of red or the smell of Redding. It hurts me each time a once perfect-looking carrot joins the oozing pile of cans in the sink. We can't afford this kind of waste. It takes us hours a day to find food already.

In the end, we aren't even left with enough carrots for a standalone meal. As the kitchen's order devolves further into piles of kept, suspect, and discarded food, we set aside anything we think might go with the vivid orange vegetables, and end up with something closer to a deep-fry than a stir-fry. I can't smell Redding in our sauces, but most are so pungent on their own, they might be masking it. We decide not to risk it. Calico J cringes almost all the way to the floor as we empty bottles of soy sauce and premade marinades down the drain. Our meals from now on are going to be a lot less flavourful.

Supper that night is a dismal affair. People brood over their bowls in silence, and though she still flounces and hair-tucks as usual, Ditzy looks shaken from her close call. Which makes no sense, because she's one of the toughest people here. Probably the toughest, if I'm being honest. But she doesn't even take up her usual game of knocking ankles with me under the table and then pretending it was an accident. Patrick examines every bite before he nibbles it in half, inspects it again, and finally puts it in his mouth. Calico J just looks gloomy.

I don't think anyone's going to address the elephant in the room, so I clean my bowl and wait for the others to do the same before I do it myself. "So what are we going to do about this?"

Nobody answers. Patrick continues to scrutinize his food, Calico J stares into his empty bowl, and Ditzy turns the same look out the nearest window, for spice.

I press on before the silence becomes uncomfortable. "We know this only started recently, or else someone would have noticed the Redding in the cans we've been using. We were eating more of that creamed corn just last week. So either it was dormant and only just manifested, or it only found its way into the food. J, we didn't have any trouble with vegetables last week, did we? You were the one who used the most of them."

"Not that I noticed." He looks unsure. "But I don't know if I'd have caught it? You have, like, radar eyes."

"The smell is the worst, actually."

"Even more so, then."

I rest my head in my hands and lace my fingers through my wind-tangled hair. The first seed of a headache radiates down my spine and makes a point just south of my nape ache. I slept badly last night. The ache doesn't cease when I lift my head again. "What we really need to know is whether this is just a normal process, or some kind of progression."

"'Normal'?" says Patrick, side-eyeing me.

"You know what I mean."

Silence falls once more. Nobody wants the second option I just proposed to be true. We've been living in fear of it ever since Red Thursday: fear that the tenuously stable equilibrium we've found is temporary, and will give way to something worse. To what, we have no idea.

Then again, I don't know if it can be considered an equilibrium in the first place. We've never gone back to old safe houses to check if the Redding retreated once we left, or whether it lingered along the baseboards or pooled beneath the stairs. If it's the latter, we'll run out of houses eventually. And then there's still the question of what happened last night. It's possible the Red Rain—just Redding from the sky, as far as we can tell—only "spoke" to me because I could finally understand it. It might have been talking to us all along. Or it really was my imagination.

To my relief, it's Patrick who speaks up first. "What if the Red Rain last night didn't mean 'run' just from the house?"

Calico J frowns. "You mean it might be telling us to get out of town?"

Patrick hesitates, so I lift my head instead. "You remember what that other survivor told you about Chesnet, right?"

By the look on Calico J's face, I think he forgot that part.

"They were amazed we had four people here," I remind him. "And called us, what, 'crazy tough' for it? And then refused to come down if we wanted to meet up with them. I don't know about you, but I consider that a strike against this town in particular."

"So what's so special about Chesnet?" says Ditzy.

"That's what we don't know. They didn't tell us, and we didn't ask."

"Dammit, Meg," says Calico J. "Why didn't you point that out while I was texting them? I could have asked."

"Text them now, then."

He pulls out his phone and does so. I look around the table and see Patrick staring at his bowl again, turning his spoon over and watching it intently like it protects him from something.

"Patrick?" I say, because I like how Calico J always goes around a room, and if I'm being honest, it gives me an excuse not to fill more of this silence myself.

"I don't like how those other survivors talk about Chesnet," he says. "I think we should leave the town."

There it is. Someone else has voiced it. With that, I feel a lot more confident as I turn to Ditzy next. She gives her usual shrug.

I don't know why I expected anything different. Ditzy is like this. She's always been like this, ever since Calico J and I left the university campus and found our first safe house. Ditzy marched right up to it that same day. Just knocked on the door, done up in her usual spotless clothes, with a baseball bat slung over her shoulder like some kind of post-apocalyptic valley girl. She told us we were the first survivors she thought looked decent enough to hang out with.

Calico J is last around the table. He's still watching his phone screen, chewing on his lip like he does sometimes when he's unsure about things.

"Any news?" I say.

He just shakes his head. His phone takes that moment to buzz. We jump up and cluster around behind him, and I take the moment to read what he texted. He asked what was so bad about Chesnet, or by extension, what was safer about the areas outside. A single reply graces the bottom of the screen.

Sorry, that's going to have to be part of our screening. No offense. We've had people up from Chesnet before, and it didn't go well.

We all look at each other.

"Is this the moment where one of us reveals that they've been hiding something from the rest of the group?" says Calico J. "Because if so, we're gonna have to have a word."

I glance around. Ditzy just looks miffed with the person on the other end of the line. Patrick has a haunted expression, but anxiety is his natural state, and an ominous text like that is just as likely to have triggered it as anything he's hiding. Something nudges my foot. I look up to find Calico J watching me with something like pleading in his eyes.

"I'm not," I say. "Hiding anything, I mean."

It's the truth. We've been so reliant on one another since Red Thursday that I can't imagine not disclosing something that could compromise our collective survival. At least to him. I certainly hope the others feel the same way.

"They sound like a bunch of lily-livers to me," says Ditzy in disgust. "Scared that we'll bring some new pestilence to them when we've survived this long?"

"I mean, that might be a valid concern," I say in spite of myself. "If Chesnet is more dangerous than the areas all around it, somehow, and we're still alive here, it's possible we're resistant to something other people aren't. They're using basic quarantine protocol."

"They could still tell us what they're looking for."

"And what, expect us to disclose if we matched it?" A mirthless smile twists my face. "You've already heard how I feel about most of humanity's response to the apocalypse. It's only fair that they would apply the same caution to us if we've never met before. I don't like it either, but I at least understand where they're coming from. J, what are you telling them?"

He glances up again. "What do you want me to say?"

"You're the one who's been talking with them. Just say what you'd say in response to that."

"I don't know, Meg."

"What about?"

"Anything. I want to meet with them, but I don't know how to feel about this." He looks at me helplessly. "I studied graphic design, not biology. I don't know enough about quarantines or whatever you're hypothesizing. Is what they're saying reasonable, or is it shady?"

"Shady," mutters Ditzy.

"Both," I say.

"So what do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. We want to meet with them, right? They might have answers for us. So we can play along with their rules for now, and if anything starts to smell foul, we get out. We need to go somewhere that has more food anyway."

Though I remember even as I say it that the group told us to bring our own food, so that's another strike against going. It twists something inside me to trot out Calico J's own goals and Patrick's declaration, but they're the ones who know what they're talking about. Patrick is probably on to something, at least, and nobody's suggested talking to the Redding yet, so I'm not about to. To be completely honest, I'm more on Ditzy's side when it comes to these other survivors. Something smells foul already... or if not foul, then at least a little bit off in a sinister kind of way. Like Redding in our food.

I'm not the one who's been talking to them, though, and Calico J has a way better sense of people than I do. He's been insisting since the start that we meet up with these guys, and I'm not about to stand in the way of that if that's his evaluation.

"Alright," says Calico J. He still sounds unsure, but he texts the other person back anyway. A quick buzz replies. "They say cool, and see us soon."

"Nothing else?"

He shakes his head.

"Sounds like we're going on a road trip, then."

Saying that out loud releases a bit of the tension inside me. As much as I don't like the cryptic way these survivors talk, I think I agree with Patrick's evaluation of the Red Rain talking to me. Or maybe I'm just spooked by that experience, and being paranoid. Getting out of Chesnet feels like a good idea. It makes sense, at least, if our food is turning to Redding, we keep getting chased out of safe houses, and other survivors have branded our town as the place you don't want to be. Or maybe the group in the university cafeteria has something to do with it. I can't tell.

"First question, then," says Calico J. "Whose car are we taking?"

"Stealing, you mean?" I say.

Ditzy grins the way she does when she's got an idea I'll either love or be utterly appalled by. "Taking. Tomorrow, you guys are coming with me."

Like this chapter if you're a fan of Ditzy's ideas  😂

Comment how reasonable you think the other survivor group's demands are