Hours away, Violet sat on the sandy shore outside the beach house she and her parents had picked out. They had plenty of choices: The end of the world had driven humans from the prime real estate. The fog had settled over Long Beach and brought with it the plague of zombies and strange beasts that had befallen the rest of California. Worse, the sea also vomited up strange creatures, making it unsafe for mortals.

For ghosts like the Harmons, it was perfectly safe. Most of the creatures that preyed on the living avoided them. Even monsters, it seemed, feared what was beyond the grave. The only things bold enough to bother Violet as she sat sketching were insects and seagulls. Those pesky birds apparently hadn't gotten the memo that they were living in a wasteland. They expected handouts even though it had been years since crowds of humans had roamed the beaches with food.

Being at the beach wasn't quite as nice as Violet had hoped. The fog choked everything, which rendered the nearby ocean into nothing more than background sound. Granted it was something different to hear, but without the sight of the waves rolling in, it was just white noise.

Joshua sat nearby in his bouncer seat, calmly watching the seagull flock. He had been abnormally mellow in the days since they had arrived at the beach. The sound of the surf lulled him. Violet wondered if it was because it reminded him of his mother's heartbeat, but she knew it would hurt her parents if she were to say it aloud, so she kept the observation to herself.

She finished her seashell sketch and closed the notebook she was working in. She thought about taking her baby brother for a walk further inland. She liked pointing out the various plants and natural wonders. As a child, her parents had worried about her getting lost and the big cities never had much by way of nature to explore near where she had lived. She had no concerns about getting lost now, since she needed no sleep or food and could will herself back to the beach house whenever she felt like it.

She would never say it where her parents could hear, but she didn't mind being dead now that the world had opened up. Sure, it was foggy and foreign, but the new species of florae and faunae were really no different than any other life form, she reckoned. The next evolution of the planet.

Violet pushed herself to her knees and smiled at Joshua. "Hey," she said.

Then something moving in the fog distracted her. A hazy outline was coming closer from the direction of the ocean. She gently scooped her brother up and put him on a shoulder, eyes on the figure. It resolved itself into the form of a person: A young man.

He was hunched slightly under the weight of a big, dirty canvas bag he hauled over one shoulder with both hands. He headed up the beach, cutting close to the property the Harmons had usurped. His destination was the house next door.

Violet's curiosity was piqued. The guy was dressed in a heavy overcoat though Violet didn't think the temperature was cold enough to warrant it. He wore dark pants and had shoulder-length black hair in need of washing. His strides were purposeful despite the shifting sand and the weight he carried with him.

"Let's get you inside," Violet murmured to the baby in her arms.

She wanted to investigate the stranger up close.

—

After Violet dropped Joshua off with her mother, the teen went to the beach house next door. The air had cooled with the approach of evening, causing insects to start their nightly songs. The steady sound of the fog-smothered surf was like a disembodied voice, potent but invisible through the thick haze. Scrubby beach plants clung to life at the fringes where the sand stabilized near the foundation of the Prussian blue house.

Like the ocean, Violet was invisible, but she still found herself sneaking out of habit. She let herself into the house through the front, finding it unlocked. It took a little searching, but she finally found the stranger in the kitchen. He had dumped the rucksack on the central table. Candles stuffed into bottles and candle nubs clustered on plates provided him light and cast the room in an eerie glow.

The young man had shed his coat and dropped it over the back of a nearby chair. He had both hands on the table and was hunkered over the sack with a sour look on his face. Then, with a deep sigh, he tugged open the zipper. His look of distaste growing, he reached in and with some effort hauled out a corpse.

This was a corpse like none Violet had seen. In her time being dead, she had seen a great many bodies, though admittedly most of them were in online photos. Her sense of morbid curiosity had grown exponentially after she learned of her own death. It had snuck up on her so seamlessly, for weeks she hadn't even known she was dead. Discovering she lived in a house haunted by roughly 30 ghosts gave her a lot to think about over the years.

This body was like nothing she had seen. At first, she thought it was a large fish or perhaps a diseased seal. The flesh was slimy and black with a greenish tinge. Only it was too big to be a seal, and it had arms and legs. When the stranger rolled the body over, the face was a distorted mess of pulped skin and bone, slicked up with a black ichor that Violet assumed was blood. Its face was beaten in.

The young man pushed up the sleeves of his faded navy sweatshirt, then pulled a knife from the sheath at his belt. He used the nicked blade to slice the creature open from neck to pelvis, drawing Violet's attention to the fact that the thing was male. Blackish-green guts erupted from the slit belly, pulling the girl's eyes back up off the thing's withered genitalia.

"Oh, sick!" Violet exclaimed in morbid fascination as the innards slithered over the table. Some of the small intestines fell to the floor with a wet splat.

The young man stifled a retch and then steeled himself. A moment later he shoved his hand into the incision he'd made. Looking up to the ceiling, he dug around inside, then pulled hard. Seconds later, he had the thing's stomach in his hand. He dropped it on the table and carved it open. A nasty, smelly mess spilled out.

Violet took a step back, holding her nose. It had always bothered her that she felt the need to breathe, as a dead person, but she did. She had experimented quite a bit with her own limits back in the early days of being dead. If she held her breath, some weird part of her would eventually decide she had to pass out. She had even succeeded in hanging herself to death once but woke in an awkward situation with the twins, Troy and Bryan, drawing on her face.

So she was stuck enduring the stomach-turning stench the dead thing's last meal put off. The young man poked around in the mess with the end of the knife, finally spearing out a ring of keys.

"Ha!" he crowed. He grabbed a towel from a nearby drawer and scooped the key ring up with it. "Fuck you, bitch! You only thought you were gonna get away with that."

He polished the keys off and, when he was sure it was as clean as he could get it without running water, he shoved it into his pocket. Then he wiped the blade off on the towel, then tossed the towel over the dead creature's face.

"What the hell is that thing?"

Violet couldn't repress the urge to ask any longer, even though she knew suddenly being heard would undoubtedly freak the guy out. She made sure she was across the table from him when she spoke, just in case he decided to get stabby.

Startled, the young man scuttled back, knife at the ready as he looked around for the source of her voice. Seeing her suddenly on the far side of the table made him do a visible double-take. He pointed the large knife at her.

"Who are you? What're you doing in here?"

"Relax," Violet said, holding her hands up to show him she was unarmed. "My name's Violet. I came in through the front door. You left it unlocked, genius. If you don't want company, you might want to think about changing that."

He blinked at her rapidly, digesting the fact that this strange long-haired girl just insulted him. He kept the knife pointed at her. "Nobody lives here but me. Nobody has for, like, years."

"My family and I are staying next door," she said dismissively, as if this was a regular winter visit. "What's your name?"

Her response only confused him more. "It's not safe to stay here."

"You're staying here," Violet pointed out.

"That's because I'm from here," the young man said, waving the knife at her.

She shrugged off his explanation and looked at the corpse, uninterested in his knife. "What is this thing? Did you kill it?"

He stared at her then slowly lowered the knife. "I call them mermaids," he said hesitantly. It had been a while since he spoken to another person. "I know they don't have fish tails, but their faces are pretty fishy." He glanced down and amended: "Well, not this one. I bashed his face in because he ate my keys."

"Why did it eat your keys?" This was the most interesting thing Violet had heard in a while, so she wanted the guy to keep going, even if he still hadn't told her his name.

"Because they eat everything," he said, sounding impatient. "Why are you here? And don't give me any shit about being here with your family. Nobody comes here anymore. Not since the fog brought the sea monsters and zombies."

"My family does," Violet said casually. She was trying to sound friendly, but it occurred to her that she might be trying too hard and possibly coming across as creepy. "Why don't you put down the knife and talk to me? I mean, it's obvious I'm not armed. Can't we be friends?"

He still looked suspicious, but he finally put his knife back in its sheath. "You're lucky I'm not some crazy raider," he said, still feeling the need to see some sign of intimidation from her. "You know what they'd do to a girl like you?"

Violet knew what reaction he expected and probably should've acted it out, but she couldn't help herself. "Nothing compared to what I'd do to them if they tried," she smirked. "I didn't get this far down damnation alley by being fragile." Then, more seriously: "I'm betting neither did you. How about this. You tell me your secret of survival, and I'll tell you mine."

His brow dipped briefly and then he tipped his head. "Okay. Sure."

...

Author's Note:

This was a slight deviation from the chapter I had planned. Violet thought you guys needed to know some stuff.

Her new friend is partially inspired by Carl from the Walking Dead series. His catch-o-the-day was largely inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Just recently I started re-watching the Mystery Inc series, which is heavily steeped in Lovecraft lore. I had to tap the master.

Next chapter we'll see what Tate's been up to.