“How you doing in there, pal?” Nicole asked, using the voice she usually reserved for the few times she had gotten babysitting jobs. “Need anything?”
Ryan didn’t need anything. He never did. Or, if he did, he wouldn’t let her know.
“We’re both back.”
He had been nervous the first few times they had left the building, but since he built his fort, he had gotten better with it. “And there’s a new boy. His name is Alex. I gotta tell you, Ryan, he seems even stupider than David!”
Ryan gave a slight smile. That made Nicole feel good.
“But, he has a dog!” She realized that while she had thought of having a dog as good news, she didn’t know how Ryan would take it. Maybe he was afraid of dogs. That would be disastrous. She knew that if she had to make a choice—and of course it would have to be her to make it—the dog would have to go. That hurt her. Maybe they could build a house for it outside, within the fence. Maybe Ryan would just be okay with it. “Do you like dogs, Ryan?”
Ryan did nothing. Of course he didn’t answer, she thought. That would be easy. “Oh well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
DAVID
David stood in the doorway for a few seconds, watching Alex patting his sleeping dog, staring out the window they had recently climbed through. He knew what Alex saw. The same thing that was always out there: a few of those things—mudmen; he liked that—clambering at the fence. Not aggressive, not even really aware. Just ... there.
It was something that David had witnessed several times since they arrived.
“Hey,” he finally said, making Alex jump. “Want a tour of the place?”
Alex nodded.
“Well, let’s go then!”
The room they had entered—what David and his sister had taken to calling “the hard way”—was at the far end from the stairs. The long, dark hallway had only one small window at this end. The floor and walls were all bland yellowish white. Each side of the hall held five doors, though they became less distinct the farther down the hall they were—farther from the light. David wished there was a way to get more light up there, but with no power, they had very few options. Halfway down was a water fountain which no longer worked. This was flanked by two doors—one with a stick figure boy, the other a stick figure girl. Both bathrooms were open, but without working plumbing, they only offered privacy rather than functionality.
At the opposite end was the staircase to the first floor lobby which lead to the main entrance—“the easy way.” He would show that to Alex later.
Only two of the eight remaining rooms on the second floor were open when they had arrived two days before. After re-locking the easy way door and boarding up the window they had smashed to get in—the first act of vandalism either of the siblings had ever committed—the three of them, David, Ryan and Nicole, all passed out in the second floor room that would become their bedroom. It gave them a view of the front of the building and street, though no one had any interest in looking.
They had checked all the doors when they woke up and found that only the farthest room on the opposite side of the hall—the hard way room—was unlocked. It gave them more space, but it was completely empty. No food. No supplies. Nothing useful at all beyond the window that would become their second entrance. Now it was littered with things that David had hauled up until he found uses for them.
David knew that Nicole was in the bedroom—he could hear her talking to Ryan—so he merely pointed it out to Alex when they got to the end of the hall. There was no need to get more aggression from his sister when he didn’t have to.
David had jimmied the door next to their bedroom open and found that it had an unlocked door to the room on the other side. There, he found the motherlode: tools of all shapes and sizes—the room was being renovated before the recent catastrophe began. He also found office supplies, including the paper-cutter that he almost immediately took apart. He had always been at his best when he was working on a project, so he knew that’s why Nicole didn’t question him.
The room between the bedroom and tool-room became a supply room where the new residents could store everything they would need: food from the kitchen downstairs (though frozen goods were kept in the freezer), a first aid kit (though it was mostly just slings and medical tape), and a few extra cushions from the karate school.
The room with the tools became David’s workshop, which only differed from the storage room in that it held far more junk. Scattered there were pieces of wood, metal, wires, rope, and whatever else David could find in the building that didn’t prove of immediate use elsewhere. He had plenty to work with. Granted, most of the tools wouldn’t work without electricity, but they still had multiple uses in the mind of the inventive ninth grader.
Alex headed for a sheet of springs and coiled metal. He pulled back one of the springs and let go with a satisfying SPROING!
“That’s from an old couch we found downstairs,” David told him. “The cushions are damp and smell pretty bad, so we just left them down there. I cut up some of the frame for wood.” He too pulled back one of the springs. “And all these.”
“What are you gonna do with them?” Alex asked, glancing over the dozen or so springs “Make a launching pad or something?”
David smiled at him—a mischievous sort of smile. “Better than that, Alex,” he said almost laughing. He crossed to a pile of papers and bristol board. “I’ll show you.”
ALEX
Alex, with a combination of awe and
