Roughly an hour after Constance put the twins down together in the antique bassinet Pat had refinished, Tate appeared at the door to the nursery. The fresh scent of baby powder sweetened the air in an unfamiliar way, though he wasn't sure if the difference bothered him or if it made the house better. He crept, silent but not unseen, to the wheeled basket and wondered at the copious amounts of grey and black lace adorning the hood.

Cautiously he peeked into the bassinet. The newborns were wrapped up and placed in a row. It reminded Tate of convenience store burritos. The babies were asleep. Their blond hair was virtually invisible, making them both look bald in the dim light. One was nursing in his sleep. The way his lip pooched out was kind of funny. Impulsively, Tate reached to poke the little lip.

He never made contact. A hand clamped around his wrist and stopped him even reaching into the bassinet. He was still in child form, so he had to look up to make eye contact with his mother.

"You don't need to be doin' that," she told him, her words firm if quiet.

"I wasn't going to hurt him." Tate was injured by her lack of faith in him.

"He needs his sleep." Constance tugged him away from the twins, not bothering to be gentle about it. "They both do. They don't need you pesterin' them."

He sulked up at her and tried to wriggle free from her iron grip. He didn't like how she was favoring the babies. "You're not their mother."

Her hand tightened on his wrist so fiercely, she made him cringe. "I'm the only mother they have. Just. Like. You."

"Ow, Mama!" Tate stopped trying to pull away when he realized that was just making her hold tighter.

She reeled him in by his arm and slapped a hand over his mouth. "Shhh!" she hissed.

In his youthened state it was easy to grab him up and haul him away. She took him out to the hall where she could keep an eye on the bassinet but still have a bit of space between them. Her son was crying by the time deposited him on his feet, so she kept her hand over his mouth.

"You need to stop actin' like the child you're pretendin' to be," she scolded, quietly but vehemently. "Or do you want me to treat you like you're seven? Is that it? Is that what you want? Because I'll put you in the naughty closet, if that's what you really want!"

Tate whimpered. Her nails were digging into his cheek and the look in her eyes was scary. He couldn't even apologize to calm her down because of the way her hand was covering his mouth. Locked in the realness of the moment, he had forgotten how old he really was and what he could do. He didn't see himself as an evolved spirit or the supernatural demi-god he liked to tell himself he was. No, he was just weak little Tate, angry and scared as ever, and he was in trouble. Again.

Constance gave him a long hard stare. When she was sure he would control himself, she let him go with a swat on his bottom. "Go find somethin' to do that won't wake the babies," she said with an air of disgusted dismissal.

He had no choice but to do as she said. All of the ghosts in the house had personal compulsions that still lingered despite their new freedoms. Dr. Harmon stood at the window every day, jerking off and crying. Violet killed herself regularly. Mrs. Nora was perpetually looking for her lost baby. Tate's compulsion was to do whatever the women in charge of the house told him to do.

Fortunately, most of them hadn't caught on to the fact that he was susceptible to their whims. Mrs. Nora knew, when she was lucid. Moira knew but she didn't like Tate, so she generally just avoided him. Chad, though not technically a woman, still somehow managed the same control and wielded it knowingly like a multi-tool. Tate's mother was the same way. She once told him that she wished she'd had the same control over him in life because things would have been a lot different.

Her instruction this time was to do something that wouldn't wake the babies, so he went to the dining room where he sat down at the long, dark wood table and set to pulling all of the plastic grapes off the centerpiece. It was a quiet activity that didn't wake anyone. It didn't even set off Chad's sensitive radar since the destruction was easily undone. One only had to pop the rubbery fruit back onto the wire stems. The mischief was incidental; his thoughts were on Nora. Constance wouldn't even let Tate touch the babies. It was starting to seem unlikely that she would let him take one for Mrs. Montgomery.

…

The foggy world felt strange to Troy as he rode his borrowed motorcycle down the long, cracked stretches of untended California highway. The recent earthquakes had damaged many areas of the pavement, making it impassable for anything other than what he was riding—or an ATV. The conditions of the aging roads would make them obsolete soon. Vehicles would need to be capable of off-road conditions if they were to be operable at all in the world that was unfolding.

The perpetual fog had killed a lot of the natural vegetation. Only the plants that could survive in shade managed to cling to life. A few leaf-bearing trees stuck out among the claw-like bare branches of the rest. Grass had died off, leaving large plots of bald dirt dotted with a few scraggly weeds and determined shrubs. The only animals Troy saw along the way were the blood crows he had come to associate with Michael. A flock of them moved along with him, sometimes flying ahead to land and wait for him to pass, only to fly ahead of him again. They were the eyes of the Antichrist.

It was weird to be virtually alone and yet feel so safe in the misty horror-scape. Back at the orphanage, he had thought about running away more than once but he had nowhere to run to and no real knowledge of what the world outside was like. What little he had witnessed of the world as a child had been enough to make him believe he was better off with the brethren, but there was always an underlying urge to to run and keep running.

Troy felt the mark on his hand heat up. Glancing at it, the northeastern edge was pulsing with faint red light just bright enough for him to see. He steered that way and the heat and light moved to a point near his middle knuckle,. After a very short time he could tell which way to steer without looking at his hand. He tell by the way it felt where the infernal light was positioned.

The closer he got, the more apprehensive he felt. He had witnessed many obscene and horrifying things since leaving his church group in New 'Salem but it was one thing to indulge in sins of the flesh and witness perversion. It was another thing to murder a stranger.

"Will you kill for me?"

Michael had asked that of the acolyte in the chapel before setting her on her coworker. Now Troy was riding through Long Beach at Michael's behest, to kill someone he'd never even met. He wanted to blame fear for going along with everything so far, but he couldn't pin it all on that. Certainly there was an element of fear there. Michael was terribly intimidating even when he was being friendly. Troy wouldn't want to see him angry, let along experience the brunt of his anger. But it wasn't intimidation alone that drove the ex-parishioner. It wasn't even the seduction of power, fame, or security. It was the desire to know who and what he, himself, was.

Maybe Michael was the wrong answer, but he was the only real answer Troy had seen to all the chaos and insanity that was going on in the world. He was Troy's best chance of understanding anything that was happening.

—

Author's Note:

The more things change, the more they stay the same. As much Constance's methods suck, I can't really blame her for banishing Tate from the nursery. He didn't mean any harm but he could easily hurt the babies accidentally. He doesn't have the same hangups Michael does. Ironically.

Troy's segment I admit was mostly to draw a fresh picture of what the world is like at the start of 2032. Also, I love motorcycles and every good post-apocalyptic story has an epic cross-country motorcycle ride in it. Next time we'll catch up with Billie Dean. I may be a bit slower in posting over the next couple of weeks as finals are on in college and it's the Christmas holiday. Lots of pokers in the fire and they have marshmallows on 'em!