When I wake up from my nap, the bandages on my feet have been changed, there’s a fresh fire going, and the gas mask thing is spreading that white paste on my wrist.

  “Hey, stop!” I gasp, pulling away as soon as all my systems come online. It backs away a safe distance, but still within reach, and puts the glass jar away.

  I look outside, rotating my wrist and admiring how nice it is not to feel like I’ve stuck my hand in a fire. It’s almost evening now, but not quite. The air smells clean and damp, reminding me that it rained before I fell asleep.

  The creature gets up and moves back to the firepit, tending something…something on a spit-roast. There’s a neat little pile of wood nearby, some of it sticks or branches and a little looking like maybe furniture or lumber, dry enough to burn.

  “You went out gathering wood?” I ask, sitting up.

  It gestures at the thing on the spit and holds up a swollen wineskin dismissively, setting it down just as quickly.

  “Oh, okay, you went foraging,” I reply, trying to see if I can pull my wrist out of the cuff if I can’t feel it. So far? No luck.

  The creature reclines back on its column, watching the thing on the fire cook. I start to wonder what it thinks about, just sitting there. It doesn’t pull out a book to read, or a radio for a little music, not even a deck of cards. So what’s it doing with all its time?

  “So, what’s your plan here?” I ask. “Am I…food? A broodmare? What exactly are you doing?”

  The creature looks up at me almost contemplatively, then stands up to come sit by me. I pull away from its touch, kicking at its hands and crying out when I hit one of the spiked backings on its gloves. It gives me kind of a “that’s what you get” look and then seizes me by the ankle, unwrapping my foot.

  “Stop!” I growl, kicking it. “Don’t touch me! Do you understand? Don’t touch me!”

  It lets me go but doesn’t move from the end of the mat, sitting cross-legged just out of kicking range. It seems to give me some thought and then gets up to rummage through it supplies, returning a few minutes later and putting the glass jar within my reach, the woolen bandages balanced on top.

  After that, it tends to the thing on the fire, occasionally fishing something in a leather drawstring bag from its pocket or backpack, spices, I suppose, and either sprinkling it onto the roasting thing or rub it in. Whatever it is on the spit starts to smell really good, like a barbecue restaurant, reminding me just how fantastic a steak would be right now.

  When it reaches a stopping point, it settles against its column and pulls out something round, leather, and tied with what looks like a shoelace. It unfurls it against the floor, spreading it out like wrapping paper before the box, and seems to be studying it. I try to get a good look at it, but the vantage point is bad. Of course, I already have some idea of what it is. It’s not like the creature is going to be critiquing any paintings right now.

  “Is that a map?” I ask. “A map of the city?”

  A small twitch of the muzzle tells me it’s looking up at me, saying nothing. It studies the leather map for several minutes before rolling it up and putting it away, apparently to go back to cooking.

  When the roast is done, it grips a piece of it tightly and rips it straight off, severing it with a wet pop, like pulling a chicken leg loose. It hands me the piece at a safe distance, but it’s so hot I juggle it from hand to hand to mouth to hand until it cools, which isn’t easy handcuffed. It’s cool by the time a get a good look at it.

  It’s about as long as my forearm, jointed, looking a lot like a giant finger. It’s kind of prickly, like it might have had fur that was burnt off or cut short, with crispy skin. The pointy end doesn’t have claws or fingernails or anything like that, but the other end has a bit of white bone, just like a chicken leg.

  It kind of looks like a giant tarantula leg.

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  I almost drop it when that occurs to me, looking up at the thing on the spit, trying to make out what it is. I can almost see the long, spindly bits and the round body. It looks like insects do, when they flip over on their backs and fold their legs up. Except spiders don’t have bones…so what is this thing?

  The gas mask creature looks at me expectantly, head tilted to one side.

  “Is this a giant spider?” I ask.

  It says nothing, just tilting its head to the other side.

  I look down at the leg in my hand, feeling slightly ill. Spiders don’t have bones, so what is this? What if it’s toxic to humans? If it is, I probably have bigger things to worry about, like starving to death or eating something bad by accident. It smells good enough, like the kitchen in a barbecue restaurant.

  I take a timid lick of the skin. It tastes like ribs, like licking the underside of ribs where the piece of skin or the connective tissue or whatever holds the bones together. It’s kind of salty, a little over-seasoned, but I definitely recognize the greasy fat of a mammal.

  A testing nibble, pulling skin and flesh from the bone. It’s like a chicken thigh, a little greasy and very meaty without having much of a flavor on its own the way beef does. It’s…not terrible.

  The gas mask creature slices me off three more legs and part of the body, which is a little more like a cut of steak, just not of beef. A chicken breast, maybe, and cut off what looks like bone, off ribs and spine arranged in a way to look sort of like the framework of the bulbous part of a spider. I start turning portions down when I feel queasy. I don’t think it’s what I ate quite so much as…how much it looks like a giant spider.

  When I won’t take any more, it slices off a few legs and part of the flank, and the goes to hide behind the column again. The fabric of its coat ruffles as it sits down, knees just in my field of view. It places the mask beside its knee, plainly visible. After a little bit, a small pile of bones starts to form next to the mask, and then a flash of elbow and a spray of unkempt sandy hair, the creature stretching, probably.

  I tug half-heartedly at the handcuff, wishing I knew how to get out of these. I’ve seen movies where people could whittle a bone down and use it as a lockpick, but I’m not that skilled, and I’m not sure it’s possible. Daveney could probably tell me, a long, drawn-out discussion on the physics of chicken bones and how they’re cooked.

  Daveney.

  I draw my legs up to my chest and try to remember precisely what I last said to him. I think he came crawling into bed with me, jostling the bed and waking me up from a nice dream. Whatever I said, I think it made him laugh. I think it was, “Be still.” I remember him kissing my temple lightly.

  I brush away a hot tear and look up to see the gas mask thing, standing tilt-headed in front of me. It seems to study me, cautiously, and then drops to my knees, gathering my bones into a small pile in its hands, which it carries outside. I watch it pass by the windows into the twilight.

  Crickets are chirping outside, maybe some frogs. There’s nothing else, no engines or televisions, nobody talking. It’s worse than a power outage, although that’s what I try to tell myself that’s all it is. It’s the sound of the complete absence of human life.

  When the creature’s soft footsteps enter the storefront, I actually feel a little relieved, until it does it again, gathering up the remnants of the spider-thing that nobody ate and taking it outside, leaving me along, handcuffed to a pipe. Something bays outside, a wolf or coyote or something doglike and predatory.

  I heard somewhere that dogs can turn mean if they’re on a chain. They feel confined, vulnerable, so they think they’re acting in self-defense. So that’s me right now, handcuffed, acutely aware of how little there is between me and the things that hunt in the dark.

  The gas mask creature steps out of the twilight again, silhouetted black against the failing blue light. It takes its place by the column and starts coaxing the fire back to life, which is kind of interesting to watch because it doesn’t breathe on the flames like humans do.

  Something howls and barks in the night, sending a chill up my spine. I keep a wary eye on the open storefront, dimly aware of soft, breathy laughter from the column. The empty store windows are completely still, except for some leaves scattering in the cool, damp wind.

  The gas mask creature is completely unfazed, propped up against the column, watching me, or sleeping. Completely relaxed, it pulls out its map again, studying it like people in parks study books, content with life and no looming specter of death howling in the dark.

  The walls are so thin. I never gave it much thought, how little and how much separates me from everything else. I spent my whole life inside a building, a house, a school, a supermarket, or a car. It’s easy to forget that things live and breed and die in the trees and on the sidewalks, whole lives spent outside.

  Something moves in the dark, something large, watchful, and four-legged. They bleat at one another softly, gentle sounds almost like what a cow makes, heads and eyes and ears turning in the dark. Sometimes they dart at nothing, scampering in one direction or another, spooked by something I can’t see.

  The gas mask creature stands and steps across the room, settling just behind me. I bark at it to go away, but it pulls the blanket over me, gently shushing me like someone consoling a little kid with a nightmare. The creature is warm and lean, the mixed body heat stifling shivers that I’d been trying to ignore, and the hard nozzle of the mask pressing into my shoulder, its left knee propping up my elbow, its right leg stuck out awkwardly under the chain to the cuff. It smells of sweat and leather, and an outdoorsy smell of rotten leaves and fresh air.

  “Shh,” the gas mask thing whispers, gently taking my resistant hand and running it up the outside of its thigh, to the seam of the sheath strapped there.

  Something lands on one of the grazing things, snarling, the weight of muscle hitting the ground. I hold back a small scream as the grazing things take off in a scatter, while one of them gasps and gurgles and struggles. I can hear the blood pounding in my ears and feel it throbbing against the raw spots on my inner wrist.

  “Shh,” it whispers, as the pack outside begins eating noisily to the sound of tearing flesh. “Safe here.” It takes my hand up and down, to the hilt and down the sheath, the soft leather of its hands stroking mine gently. “None come here.”

  My fingers tighten around the hilt. I wedge it out of the sheath just a little, testing to see how easily it glides. Its gloved hand wraps around mine a little more firmly, pushing me away. The pack outside howls, prowling around with the clack-clack-clack of claws against pavement. My hand tightens in reflex against the sheath.

  “Keep safe,” he whispers.