Raising Pokemon in the Post-Apocalypse After the Day of Descent

When it arrived, a crack split the sky. Things that breathed fire and spat lightning fell from above, and they could drag away anyone standing in the street. Beyond the walls, survival depended on the grain depot and on rules. I guarded a supermarket, with a box of ham sausages in my hands. On the fourth day, someone making a delivery pushed up a stroller, put the little one down, and left. On the twenty-third day, I went out and brought both of them back. Later, it began imitating people: learning to walk, to tilt its head, to say names. Whoever answered was gone the next day. I had a ledger listing three hundred people. It could remember thirty thousand. So I kept writing, page by page, and drove in stakes one by one, carving all our names into them. It copied one; we wrote two. In the apocalypse, the most precious thing isn't food. It's what you can afford to raise.