Best New Fiction: ONE SAFE ROUTE THROUGH THE PSYCH-BELT GHOST-HOUSES by Allison Mulder

ONE SAFE ROUTE THROUGH THE PSYCH-BELT GHOST-HOUSES

by Allison Mulder

1. Wait for rain.

You can’t be sure of the walls otherwise. It’s all too same, the craters and rubble and even the buildings there before--white paint this, red brick that, lawns manicured into order. Solid shelter looks the same as open porches or garden archways. We tossed up flags, but one jutting elbow past a boundary is begging for the psyclones to whirl through and snatch you up, flattening you to nothing like everything else in the belt. Safety isn’t just any place with four walls. Psychic energy doesn’t care about wood, concrete, or metal.

If you can’t see the rain running off a ghost-house’s silhouette, if the ground isn’t dry beneath you, you’re not safe.

Follow the flags. These were good places once. Someone took care of them, or someone found refuge, enough to hold the feeling when the psyclones wiped this town off the map.

2. Easiest start is the Greenhouse, Green Flag.

Head East past the birdhouse where you picked up these instructions, walking the strip of mowed grass (and only the mowed grass). Everything past that is the belt, where psychic storms sweep through like cars on a track. Look for houses. Ghost-cornfields will not protect you, no matter how much the farmer cared. Too spread out. You need a focused area.

The greenhouse is that. A rectangle of lush green plants no matter the season, obvious even in sun. Use that as your starting line, wait for rain. Pull weeds if you like, but wear gloves. I know you’ll want to sink your toes into the dirt, feel the green, smell the healthy earth (in short supply, times like these) but watch for broken glass in the roots.

This place was safe and good, but it’s broken, too, now.

If any produce is ripe, take whatever you need, but not the poison flowers in the Northeast corner. Unless those are what you need.

Don’t go inside the house still half-standing there. Don’t even look at it. Especially not the upstairs bedroom.

3. Straight North--fast--to the Yellow Flag. Be ready for a long walk. Big yards and little conscience in that neighborhood, but past the red-brick pile, that huge ghost-house is safe so long as long as you take your shoes off, don’t take anything, don’t touch anything, or leave a mess. The space is more controlled than comfortable, but it was shelter for somebody, once. Shoes off, shoes off, shoes off.

4. The next one is small. Pink Flag. If you’re with other roamers, take turns or wait for heavy, all-day rain.

Northwest to the shell of a house with the blue door, but don’t stop just anywhere. There’s a closet at the back where the ceiling caved in, near the burnt-up bunkbeds. We marked it out with glitter tape.

If you’re caught there between rainstorms, tell some stories. Nice ones, if you have any. Move on ASAP to make way for the ones behind you.

5. Purple Flag, East, shoes back on if you haven’t already. The public library, the largest shelter we’ve found. You’ll know it by the weird statue outside--abstract even before annihilation.

All the books from before are gone, but people have been leaving and taking more.

Don’t be greedy. And know those books aren’t kindling.

6. North five blocks, veer left. White flag.

I’m not talking about this one. Help yourself to anything in the rubble, anything you need, anything that helps, just...if you find any pictures. Take care of ‘em for me. Leave them in the birdhouse on the other side. I’ll find them when I check the crossing twice a month.

I check everything, except this one.

7. Northeast, rainbow flags, every house in the cul-de-sac okay. These nerd friends bought every house when the market crashed--moved from all over the country, made things nice one house at a time. I used to sneak over to watch them take pictures and videos in their yards, dressed up like elves and orcs in shining armor with huge, happy grins.

Easier moving, but same rules apply. Tiny hops, wait for rain. Know your next place to land.

8. North, another long stretch. Run it.

Follow what passed for Main Street, all businesses. The safe ones are the vet’s office (Turquoise Flag), the diner (Orange Flag. Stop for lunch if you’ve got time and rations; everything tastes better there), and I don’t remember the little place at the end, (Red Flag). But someone must have loved it a lot.

DO NOT TRY THE MAIN STREET CHURCH. I’ve helped pull bodies out of that place.

There’s another church four streets West that seems okay. Be safe. Good luck.

Remember, sacred’s not the same as safe.

9. We ran a line from Red Flag to the next. It’s the longest dash in the route. Blame the ones who started robbing other roamers--taking their packs, pushing them out into psyclones, no witnesses left to complain.

No bandits left either, now, since they wrang the shelter out of that ghost-house.

We had to strike it from the route. So now, you’ll have to run.

These places were safe once. If we don’t keep them that way, we’ll never get anywhere.

10. The last bit’s straightforward. A nice neighborhood, where nobody knew safe wasn’t the default--or else they pretended well enough to hold the façade in place. Follow the flags, any order, until you hit the next strip of mowed grass, and past that, you’re golden. Just hike on, and out, and if you ever need to come back, follow these directions in reverse. If you plan on never looking back, leave ‘em for the next to pass by. There’s a birdhouse--stuff this paper in. Apologies to the birds.

Wherever you’re headed, make it beautiful. Keep it safe as you can, enough to stick when the walls are gone.

I hope you find everything you need out there.

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Allison Mulder writes fantasy, science fiction, and horror, usually somewhere in the Venn diagram of silly, scary, and sappy. Her stories have appeared in Fireside Fiction, Escape Pod, Flash Fiction Online, and more. You can find them at allisonmulder.wordpress.com, though Allison herself is more easily found on Bluesky as @amulderwrites.bsky.social.