Ugh. What day is it?

—

It’s raining.

Schroeder has rigged up a water collection system to refill our water bottles at the far end of the sofa. He used his belt knife to cut up a raincoat in his backpack, and now each water bottle has its own funnel to catch the rain. Pretty clever. He talked the entire time, showing me what he was doing. I wonder if he does that for all of the kids under his guard.

He’s happy because he says this rain is also washing the salt from our skin and our clothing after all of that swimming yesterday. I’ll say. I’m soaked through.

—

Oh, it’s pouring out there now. That’s fantastic. All three of us are trying to lie inside the sofa fort without looking as if we’re all lying together inside the sofa fort.

Schroeder is cursing himself out. He said he should have packed a proper tarp in his backpack. I don’t think you could have anticipated that one day you would end up lost at sea, Schroeder.

Man. It is really hammering down out there. The throw rugs are all saggy and dripping wet overhead. Drip, drip, drip. At least it isn’t windy any more. Last night was just a little bit terrifying. It got real stormy after dark – all thunder and lightning, crashing noise and dazzling blasts of light. Wave after wave towered up, as big as a bus. The sofa pitched through them, its front legs paddling in the air whenever it leapt through the spray at the crest of a wave. Then whoosh, it would plunge down the other side, while jagged forks of lightning tore across the night sky. We clung to each other and screamed a lot.

I don’t think any of us got much sleep last night. The storm petered out a little before dawn. We all collapsed in exhaustion after that. Too tired for breakfast. The sofa paddled on through the whole thing. You are one tough sofa, dude.

Everything is dead calm now. The sky is dark grey and the water is so flat you can see the raindrops broiling against it. What a miserable day. But at least we can drink this water.

Gonna try to snatch an hour of sleep and then I’ll do some more writing. Brb.

—

Ugh. Awake. Still grey and rainy out. No idea what time it is.

Simon and Schroeder are still asleep. Schroeder’s got his head on my knees again. I’m too tired to push him off.

Good opportunity to get some writing done. Notebook is kind of damp though. Ick.

Okay. When I last left off Schroeder had ordered Doris and I to go clear out the new hideout. I don’t think either of us were very happy about being kicked out to go do housecleaning duties, but it was better than hanging around the hideout. I was glad to be outside. Man, did that house smell. Like charcoal barbecues and unwashed teenage boys.

“So what exactly are we supposed to be doing?” I said as we headed off down the street. Doris had given me a golf club for some reason and I was swinging it in circles and whacking pebbles down the curb.

“Clearing out this new place of Schroeder’s,” said Doris. He carried that pry bar with him. “Basically that means gutting it of anything that might be alive.”

“Alive? Do you mean, like, alive alive, or cars that drive themselves alive?”

“The second one. Did you bring gloves with you?”

“No.”

Doris snorted. “Okay. I hope you like electrical burns.”

The house on Carmichael Street turned out to be an adorable little two-story cottage with a teeny front yard full of flower gardens and a big backyard surrounded by a tall white fence. It had a steep roof with those funny round gingerbread house shingles, and fancy dark green shutters, and stained-glass ornaments hanging in the curtained windows. There was a wee porch out front too, big enough for a wicker chair. The whole thing was really cute. And really, really small.

“He wants to cram a dozen people into this?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Doris. “This should be good. At least it has electricity.”

“What is his beef against electricity, anyway?”

“Oh, who knows. I think he believes that it’ll either give us away to Miller, or that houses use it to lure us inside so they can eat us.”

“Wow, that’s – insane. Do houses actually do that?”

“Who knows. I’ve never seen a living house before. Schroeder is a nut. If I were in charge we’d live in houses with electricity all the time. If we’re going to be stuck here, we might as well be comfortable.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said.

He smiled. “Okay, let’s see here.”

Doris went through the gate and up the front steps onto the porch. He crouched at the door and tugged off his backpack. My eyes popped when he rummaged inside it and pulled out an enormous ring of keys.

“Holy crap, Doris!” It looked like something a prison convict would use to kill people. “There must be a hundred keys on that thing!”

“I collect ’em,” he said. “From the houses I bust into. Pretty sure I’ve hit up this place in the past. If not, well, I guess we go in through a window.”

He tried a handful of keys in the lock until one finally clicked. I went to open the door but Doris stood up and held out his arm.

“Not a good idea,” he said. “Let me show you how we open doors in Hinterland.”

He opened the door himself, waited two seconds, and shut it quickly. I jumped when I heard a lot of objects muffledly crash into the other side.

“What was that?” I said.

“Observe,” said Doris.

He opened the door again. I whistled. At least a dozen knives, forks, scissors, letter openers, knitting needles, and other assorted pointy things were lodged into it. Yikes.

“Wow,” I said as I followed him inside. “Thanks for the safety tip.”

We padded warily down the front hall. Nothing leapt out to attack us. The little house was dark, the curtains drawn. It was not very quiet inside, though. Unseen things went tic-a-tic-a-tic-a-tic across the floor in the gloom.

The living room was dark as well, and floral and lacy. Lots of fat cushions sat on flower-printed sofas and armchairs. There were tassels on lampshades and doilies on everything else. A bunch of woolly hand-knit quilts lay scattered about the room. A basket full of yarn sat next to the television set.

“Damn it,” said Doris in a pained voice. “I hate breaking into little old lady houses. I always feel so guilty about it.”

“Aww, aren’t you a sweet young man,” I said. Everything smelt of lavender.

“Ahh, knock it off. Okay, here’s what we’ll do.”

Doris reached for his pry bar. “We’ll start on the ground floor and work our way upwards. Room to room search. If anything springs out at you, club it and throw it out a window. If it looks at you funny… club it and throw it out a window. This isn’t a precise science here.”

I eyed the VCR in the cabinet beneath the television set. It was a top loader.

“How do I know if an inanimate object is giving me a shifty look?” I said.

“You’ll get a feel for it soon enough. Just one of the keen and ridiculous senses you learn to hone while you’re here.”

“Good to know,” I said, and rammed the iron head of the golf club through the front of the VCR. It whirred and made a screechy noise as its glass face crumpled in. The ‘stop’ button popped off and the power light blinked out.

Doris watched as I put my foot against the VCR and wrestled the golf club out of its electronic guts.

“That’s the spirit,” he said.

We split up. Doris prowled off towards the kitchen while I resumed my hunt through the living room. I poked at things with my golf club like I was rooting for snakes. Prod, prod, prod. Come on, shifty stuff. Try to pick a fight with me.

But nothing else gave me the eye. A bunch of ceramic kittens in a glass cabinet stopped romping when I got near and went still, paws cutely frozen in mid-air. I held up my fist at them as I stalked past. That’s right, kitties. Don’t mess with Morgan Mumford.

So I threw the VCR out a window and went to help Doris in the kitchen. I found him standing in the middle of the room amid a pile of broken crockery, swinging a toaster around by its power cord. Wow. An electric egg-beater flew at him with its whisks buzzing and he smashed the toaster into it and let go of the cord. Both the egg-beater and the toaster flew into the oven, which opened its front door in time to gobble them up.

I listened to them clang around inside it. “Wow. Just wow.”

“Any problems in the living room?” said Doris, as if he hadn’t just calmly one-shotted two kitchen appliances.

“Nah. Need any help here?”

“You can shake down the cutlery drawer if you want.”

I yanked it open. Sure enough, a bunch of forks and knives immediately attacked my hands. I swatted them into a garbage bin under the sink, where I was ambushed by a tin of powdered cleaner.

As I snorted white powder out of my nose and mouth I heard Doris gleeing over by the fridge.

“It’s friendly!” he said. “And it’s full of food! Want a pickle?”

“No!” Eyes watering, I peered at him. “Where did all of that food come from?”

“Offhand, I’d say the grocery store.”

“Duh! I mean, how did it get into the fridge if nobody lives here?”

Doris swung the fridge door shut, though not before helping himself to a jar of dill pickles.

“This Hinterland version of Coching tries to mimic the real town as closely as possible, right?” he said. He waved a pickle. “So every now and the houses will sort of update themselves to stay current with the real world. Don’t ask me how it works. During Halloween and Christmas you’ll walk around town and see decorations and lights on the houses.”

I looked at my hands. They were scratched and oozing blood.

“That’s handy,” I said.

He shrugged. “Let’s go upstairs.”

The stairway was full of pictures of frolicking grandchildren and cats. I sort of felt bad about breaking into the place, until I remembered that, technically speaking, no one actually lived here.

Wan yellow light shone throughout the upstairs hall. Motes of dust hung in the sunbeams. The floor creaked under our feet.

“Looks like we’ve got a couple of bedrooms up here, plus the master,” said Doris. “Shouldn’t be too much in them. Leave any clothing you find. Even if nobody wants to rock an old lady’s wardrobe it’ll at least make good bandages.”

“How do you want-” I said, when something flew out of a closet and blindsided me.

I tumbled sideways into the bathroom, where I was immediately pelted by toothbrushes, bars of soap, and a bunch of shampoo bottles. Cursing, I tried to fend them off, only to have a towel soar into my face. It wrapped around my head. As I lurched around trying to claw it off I heard Doris laughing hysterically.

I banged off the sink and finally tore off the towel, gasping. Doris stood in the doorway. He had a vacuum cleaner gripped in a bear hug. It lunged in his arms, trying to get at me.

“Stop laughing!” I said.

“Sorry,” he cackled. “But that was great. You have toothpaste in your hair.”

Disgusted, I scrubbed it out with the towel. “Did that vacuum attack me?”

“Yeah. I should have warned you about closets. Would you like the honours?”

“Oh, would I ever.”

The vacuum cleaner fell straight from my arms into some bushes in the backyard when I heaved it out the bathroom window. I watched it crawl out of the bushes, only to get attacked by a push lawnmower that had been lurking near the rear shed.

“God, this place is fucked up,” I said.

“We’ll have to clear that shed out too,” said Doris. “Ugh, fantastic. Come on, let’s finish up here.”

We split up again. Doris headed into the master bedroom while I veered towards a smaller one. To my surprise it was full of posters of athletes and girls. There was a flatscreen television on the dresser with a DVD player and a game console hooked up to it. A pretty nice stereo system was up there too, one of those kinds you can dock your phone into. Stacks of CDs and DVDs lay scattered about. Dirty clothes sat in heaps on the floor. Looked like grandma had a grandson living with her.

I eyed the console as I sidled inside. Aw man. It was an old Xbox, too.

“Come on, Xbox,” I said in a wheedling tone. “Let’s be cool. Don’t make me bash you, bro. I’ve spent a lot of good time with a relative of yours. All those Bioshock and Halo nights. And that two month Skyrim marathon. Remember that? I guess you wouldn’t. This one time I played two all-nighters in a row, and my eyes got so bloodshot that when I woke up the next morning I freaked out because I thought I’d gone blind, but it turned out I was just lying facing the wall.”

One of the controllers shot off the dresser and lunged at my face. I reeled when it struck me in the forehead, then hastily dropped the golf club and got my hands up as it wound itself around my throat and immediately tried to strangle me. Damn it, grandson. Why couldn’t you have bought wireless controllers?

I threw it to the floor and stomped on it. The rest of the console yanked itself out of the wall and sprang at me, but I snatched up the golf club and swatted it so hard it flew across the room and smashed into the wall over the bed. I laughed when it fell onto the pillow and its power button lit up with a red ring.

Both it and the controllers got tossed out the window. That lawnmower was waiting below. It pounced, and shredded plastic bits went flying everywhere. Man. I was starting to like that lawnmower.

Something whacked into the back of my head. I staggered, then whipped away from the window and held up the golf club in a samurai grip. The entire DVD collection of Band of Brothers flew at me next, but it was so big I smacked it out of the air with a two-handed strike. Felt pretty badass. Then Iron Man 2 clocked me in the ear. Ow!

Oh, to hell with this. I snatched the pillow off the bed and ripped off the pillowcase. I threw it over the whole damn lot of DVDs on the dresser. They fought like a sack of cats as I marched to the window and hurled them outside. To my surprise they didn’t fall to the ground but fluttered off into a tree. I slammed the window shut just as Thor swooped down and smacked into the glass. Ha!

“Any of you guys want to give me grief?” I said to the stacks of CDs. Not a peep out of any of them. Damn straight.

Curiosity got the better of me. I flipped through them. Saw nothing special. I popped a random mixed CD into the stereo and something peppy by The New Pornographers began to play.

I cranked up the volume. From the master bedroom I heard Doris yell, “What is that racket?”

“Cleaning montage music!” I yelled, and wound up and smashed a lamp.

Aw man. The music was getting me jazzed. I looked for something else I could hit. “Come on, wusses. Who’s next?”

A skateboard sprang out of the closet with a bang and roared straight at my head, its wheels tangled in the long cord of a pair of stereo headphones. I snatched it out of the air and spun and threw it into the hall, then took a running leap and landed on it for good measure.

Doris glanced over when I rolled into the master bedroom.

“Having fun?” he said acidly.

“Want to ride this thing down the stairs?” I said.

So we skateboarded up and down the stairs for a while, to the music of The New Pornographers. It was pretty fun. Doris scored major style points when an ironing board attacked him at the bottom of the staircase. Without skipping a beat he launched his pry bar at it and impaled it with such force it that flew backwards and got stuck to a wall. Holy crap!

Happy and red-faced, we eventually barrelled down into the kitchen. A blender was clumping over by the microwave but it seemed to think twice about taking a shot at us.

“Oh man, that was fun,” I said. “Wanna hit up the shed next?”

“Let’s check out the cellar!” said Doris. “There might be some jam or preserves down there.”

A door in the kitchen led down to a damp fieldstone cellar. It was chilly down there, and the air smelt of mildewy stone. Bare light bulbs dangled on thin clicky chains.

“Uh oh,” I said. A great big freezer had clumped over and now sat defiantly at the foot of the stairs. It opened and shut its white maw menacingly. I saw a lot of frost and wrapped meat inside it.

“Hmm,” said Doris. “This could be trouble.”

An idea hit me, and I lifted my hand. “Nah, I got this. Sikes!” I screamed, like I was being murdered.

“Ow! Volume, Morgan!”

Sikes blinked into existence two stairs below us. He was dripping wet and wore only a towel. He looked around frantically. “What?! What is it, what’s wrong?”

I pointed down at the freezer. “Want to toss on some pants and help us evict DJ Chills here, homeskillet?”

“You called me here for that?! Oh hell!”

Sikes blinked out again, and for a moment I thought he had ditched us. He reappeared a moment later, dressed in his shorts and an unbuttoned police shirt. He grumbled as he combed his wet hair with his fingers. “You know, when I made that deal I figured that you would only call me in the event of, you know, actual life-threatening emergencies.”

“Neat trick, eh?” I said to Doris, who stood gawping.

Sikes crammed on his police hat. “All right. What is the great big threat that demands my immediate attention?”

“Help us clean out this cellar! Doris spoke of the possibility of jam and jam-related goods down here, so we can totally pay you back in delicious jarred things.”

“Lordy! Well. I do like a good chutney.”

With Sikes’ help it was a piece of cake to seize hold of each end of the freezer and toss it upside-down into a corner. It rocked in outrage, pinned by its own bulk. During the scuffle we woke up a pair of bicycles, which ramped straight at us, only to be snatched out of the air by Sikes. He held them up by the handlebars and gave them a stern look and said, “Are you boys going to be good now?”

Doris meanwhile rubbed his hands together in glee.

“Two bikes!” he said. “Now that’s a stroke of luck.”

“You want to keep these monsters?” I said.

“Yes! You’ll see why later.”

“I’ll just stand here holding them indefinitely then, shall I?” said Sikes testily.

Doris and I poked through the rest of the cellar. A whole flock of dusty old books and records flew out of some boxes and swarmed us, and at one point Doris got run over by I can’t believe I’m writing this, a bunch of plastic decorative reindeer. But I think it was just high spirits, because they all pranced up the stairs and disappeared. I guess when you’re a Christmas lawn ornament who only gets to go outside for a week or two every year you leap for freedom when it beckons.

We didn’t find any jam, but there were more jars of pickles and preserved fruits like peaches and apricots, so that was good.

“How has your first day in Hinterland been so far?” said Sikes when we all sat out on the back deck afterwards. The lawnmower rumbled around the yard. Sometimes we threw it a pickle.

“Insane,” I said. “Is it like this all the time?”

Sikes lay on his back in the sun, his hat pulled down over his face. He said, “Usually, yes.”

“Schroeder says I’ll be dead by tomorrow.”

“He says that to everyone, from what I’ve heard.”

“He says it’s because I’m going to get Red Rovered into oblivion.”

“I read the article in the newspaper. Sorry, pet, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

I sat bolt upright. “So the Red Rover really is a thing?”

“Yes. Nobody knows what kind of a thing it is, but there’s definitely something out there killing people at Miller’s bidding.”

Aghast, I said nothing.

“Try not to worry about it,” said Doris. He sat in a deck chair with a jar of peaches on his lap. “It might not call you. It could be a hit and miss thing. It’s been a lot more hit than miss so far, admittedly.”

“Oh, amazing,” I said.

Sikes sat up and thumbed back his hat.

“I’ll look into it, pet,” he said. “Now, in the meantime…”

“Oh!” I grabbed his sleeve. “Help us clean out the shed!”

“Hey, now! I’m not your personal genie, you know.”

“Come on, Sikes,” said Doris. He flashed a sunny smile. “We’ll pay you back somehow. You know we’re good for that.”

“Huh! I’m going to hold you to that, kid.”

But Sikes got up with minimal grumbling and we all jumped off the deck, ready for battle. Surprisingly, the lawnmower did not attack us. It rubbed up against Doris’ ankles and made a rusty purring sound.

“What gives with this thing,” said Doris.

I sniggered. “We’ve been feeding it all day. It’s no wonder it likes us.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

With the lawnmower puttering along behind us we marched over to the shed. It was a tiny little thing, painted blue with little white heart-shaped windows coated with caked-on dust. Cute flower baskets hung out front. I opened the door without thinking and Doris screamed, “Shut the door, shut the door!”

An engine roared into life. I froze. Doris charged past me and slammed the door shut with his shoulder.

VREEEOOOW went the thing in the shed. A giant blade punched through the door next to Doris’ head and carved downwards like a buzzsaw, throwing dust and shavings into the air. Sikes dragged him backwards before it carved into his shoulder.

“Holy shit!” gasped Doris. “What kind of old lady keeps a chainsaw in her shed?”

“A widower, maybe,” said Sikes. “Or one who is determined to keep her trees trimmed.”

With a loud CRACK the door split open. The chainsaw burst through it. It was a big orange and oil-stained brute. It dove at Doris and Sikes, who yelped and scrambled away as it tore through the earth where they had been standing.

“Nice going, Morgan!” yelled Doris.

I held up my golf club and studied it. Then I looked at the chainsaw, which sat in a huge furrow of dirt with its motor growling.

“Be right back,” I said.

The shed went mad when I scurried into it. I hit the dirt floor as things flew off shelves and smashed into the walls. With my hands over my head I lay face-down and listened to the crashing. When something whistled towards me I scrambled backwards, just as a pair of trimming shears shot into the dirt where I had been lying. That would do!

I grabbed the shears by their wooden handles and yanked them loose. They tried to flap away and I held on grimly.

“Knock it off!” I said.

Something whammed into my back. I stumbled face-first into a bag of fertilizer. I rolled off it, spitting dust, and a pitchfork rammed into the bag. Dirt and funky white crystals burst everywhere.

So I grabbed the pitchfork too. It struggled against me, so I beat it against a wall until it went still.

Feeling like a barbarian warrior I ran back outside with a weapon in each fist. Doris was nowhere to be seen. Then I heard him yelling up in a tree. The chainsaw roared as it sawed into the trunk, shooting out a flurry of wood chips.

Sikes stood behind a barbecue. Outraged, I threw the shears at him. “Stop standing around and help us, you bastard!”

The chainsaw stopped grinding away at the tree and rounded on me, growling. I gripped the pitchfork in both hands and fenced at it. The chainsaw swung and metal snarled against metal. I stabbed again, this time aiming for the little two-stroke engine. The mangled prongs tore into its air intake and the rotten beast let out a shriek and leapt at me. Leapt right at my face!

Something whirred past my ear. I froze.

The chainsaw flew backwards and smacked into the trunk of the tree, pinned through its handle by the garden shears. It roared and threw an awful tantrum, spinning around and around.

I looked back at Sikes. “Did you throw that?”

“Sort of,” he said modestly.

“Dude! That was so cool!”

“That wasn’t badly done yourself, pet.”

Doris’ sarcastic voice drifted from the tree branches. “Oh, yay for everyone! Now how the hell am I supposed to get down?”

Sikes peered up at him. “Just climb down the other side! Don’t worry, it can’t get you now.”

“Oh, sure it can’t! Watch how fast I go!”

But Doris slithered down and crept over to join us. We all stood and watched the chainsaw spin for awhile, like a really angry Catherine wheel.

“So, what are we gonna do about this thing?” I said.

“Leave it to me,” said Sikes. He tugged his hat brim and smiled. “I’ve got a good rapport with your basic power tools.”

“Wow,” said Doris. “Schroeder will not believe what he missed.”

“What the fuck happened here?” screamed Schroeder in a bewildered rage when he came to inspect our progress later that afternoon and discovered the mess we had made of the backyard. By then we were all lounging on the back deck and drinking from a carton of orange juice we had found in the fridge. Sikes had the chainsaw on his lap and was petting it like it was a cat. The lawnmower rubbed up against Schroeder’s ankles.

“A little bit of TCB, mang!” I said. “That’s taking care of business, whaaat!”

And then Doris and Sikes and I leapt into the air and slapped a three-way high-five, blam!

Okay, no we didn’t. I just like the mental image.