The girl woke up to the sound of a grating scream. At first she wasn't sure if it was coming from her dream, but this scream was different from that one. It was an agonizing scream with a whimper, one of wrenching pain rather than horror. Everything was dark, but then she remembered she had closed the blackout curtains the night before.

She heard the scream again followed by a hushed murmur. She untangled herself from whatever blankets were left on the bed and walked over to the door.

“ARRGHH!”

The girl jerked back with surprise at the intensity.

“Please, John, just cut it OUT!” came Emily’s voice.

“Just hold still Em. I’m administering the lidocaine," John’s voice was mostly businesslike, casual even. But the girl could sense as if there was almost… a tinge of fear mixed in. “Ok, you ready?”

“Fucking no!” said Emily with a pained grunt. “But do it anyway!

“Alright here goes.”

Emily let out another sustained half cry half grunt through clenched teeth before… release. Then the girl could hear her gasping for air through the crack of the door. John sighed with relief. There was a thunk and a tinkling clatter as if something was dropped into a glass container.

“We finally got it out completely,” he said. “Well this scalpel is done for as well. Looks like we’re going to need to go on another run for medical supplies soon.”

There was a moment of silence before Emily responded. Not too long, but a doubtful pregnant pause long enough to mean something.

“Yeah," She said simply.

There was a hollow feel to her voice. A feeling of weariness and acceptance that the girl did not like. She pushed open the door.

“A-are you guys ok? I heard some yelling," she said with a small voice. She saw their silhouettes shuffling, shadows inside the yellow-orange tent.

“Yeah, we’re doing good,” said John a bit too quickly. “Good morning kid! Sleep ok?”

“...um yeah, it was pretty good," she replied. “Are you sure you guys are fine? I mean…”

“Hold on one moment and let us get ready,” he said. “I’ll make us some breakfast in a bit.” There was more shuffling with some clattering. “Think you could heat up some water, kid?”

“Yeah sure!”

***

John was wearing the hazmat suit again. At this point, however, he seemed to be pretty used to it and deftly manipulated the ration packaging through the thick gloves. Emily remained in the tent “clearing things up” she said. The girl sat next to the tent mixing some oatmeal and adding in various dehydrated fruit and flavorings. She tore open a package of dried banana slices and tapped some in. She thought for a moment, then emptied the whole thing into the pot.

“How was your night, Emily?” the girl asked tentatively.

“It wasn’t the best," came the reply. There was a pause. “I heard you’ve been having some strange dreams?”

“Yeeahh," the girl responded, sneaking a banana piece from the oatmeal. It was crunchy and sweet, not bad. She sprinkled some artificial cinnamon flavoring in. “I dreamed of the cold place again and… I think there was an explosion or something.”

“Oh really? Wow, that must’ve been very exciting.”

“Well, I’m not really sure everything just kind of went black, and then I was at the ocean place again," the girl stirred the pot for a moment, trying to remember the details. “It was all dark and shiny with rain, it was crazy.”

“Like a storm?” Emily sounded intrigued.

“Yeah there was lightning and I think I went underwater at some point.”

“That sounds scary. I can’t imagine being out in the middle of the ocean during a storm like that," the woman in the tent replied.

“That wasn’t even the scariest part," the girl said. “Somehow we survived but then we found an eyeball. I’m not sure why but that REALLY scared me.”

Emily grew quiet. “An eyeball?”

“It was kinda creepy too, it was like hanging from this pile of metal.”

“Sounds pretty gross," Emily responded. “Do you… remember anything else about it?”

“Humm… not really. The dreams kinda fade when I wake up," the girl scooped a spoonful of oatmeal and bananas into her mouth. It was not bad, the dried bananas were better than she expected.

John’s voice came from the balcony, “You’d better not be starting without us or you’re not getting any of this.” There were sounds of sizzling and the fragrance of scrambled eggs wafted in.

“Ahah… I’m just taste testing!” the girl called out as she hastily put down the second spoonful. She smiled sheepishly at the yellow tent. “It’s weird, the dreams all come rushing back when I go back to sleep though. Like I just stepped out for a moment, and then when I’m back, it all plops back into my brain.”

“Have you considered keeping a dream diary?” Emily asked. “Write down what you can remember as soon as you can remember so you can keep track of things even when you’re awake.”

“Y’know that’s a pretty good idea," The girl grabbed her backpack and dug through it for a moment. “There should be a notebook in here somewhere.” She pulled out a green spiral bound notebook. It was a little bent around the corners but overall it was pretty intact.

Emily’s face appeared in the small window opening of the tent. “Wow, is that paper? Where’d you get that?”

“My grandma had a lot of old notebooks from when she was a teacher, she let me have some," the girl replied. “A lot of digital things can be tracked, I heard paper was safer, and there’s a lot of private stuff in here…”

“Who’d wanna spy on you, little lady? Got any dark secrets you aren’t telling us?” John squeezed back into the room balancing a pan of scrambled eggs and an unknown fragrant meat in one hand. At the sight of the girl’s hungry look he grinned. “Alright let’s get things divvied up. How’s the oatmeal?”

“Is real good!” the girl replied, getting ready a plate and a fork. “At least I think so.” She added on. John and Emily had their own personal eating utensils they kept in the tent. John scooped a pile of eggs onto a plate for her along with 2 pieces of fragrant pink meat.

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“How’d you get eggs?” asked the girl, “Aren’t they all rotten by now?”

“These are powdered eggs,” said John. “You can keep it for a long time.” He noticed her poking at the meat with her fork tentatively and predicted her next question. “That’s spam. It’s a rather older meat type that’s put in cans to last really long. Tastes pretty good too.”

The girl put a small piece in her mouth, then began stuffing more in rapidly. “Mmrph is pre’iy goo’.”

Emily declined the spam, “I think I’ll just have oatmeal. I’m not feeling it right now.”

“More for us then, eh?” said John, giving the girl a wink. But she could faintly sense the worry hidden behind the gesture.

“The oatmeal’s pretty good too!” the girls said after swallowing her mouthful of food. “I added some bananas.”

“Some bananas?” John scooped a ladleful of oatmeal into a disposable bag to bring into the tent. “Almost looks like it's all bananas from what I’m seeing.”

“Ok maybe I added all of them," the girl grinned sheepishly, then hid her face behind another spoonful of eggs. Despite being heavily processed, the eggs tasted heavenly. Especially with the savory spam.

John packed half the food into disposable containers to take into the tent leaving the rest for the girl. Then he retreated in between the yellow flaps to eat with Emily.

“Any plans for today?” asked the girl.

“Well, we should probably throw the trash for starters," said Emily.

The girl pulled a face. The toilets in the hotel flushed exactly once… because there was no power to refill the toilets. They had been going out onto the balcony to go to the bathroom into waste bags. Then, when the waste bags were full, they would throw them… off the balcony.

The rest of the city was largely abandoned so there wasn’t too much of a problem with this. And there wasn’t really anywhere else to throw it unless they wanted to keep all their human waste in a closet somewhere.

“I’ll handle it this time," said John, “but like… after breakfast.”

“We should also probably check on the water reservoir on the roof," Emily continued, “Oh and see if we can’t get the radio working while we’re up there.”

“I’ll leave that to you," came John’s voice. “You’re better at that kinda stuff.”

“Ugghh… I don’t really want this much responsibility," replied Emily with a sigh. “But I guess I’ll take a look at it. Hey kid, still got that swiss army knife?” She sounded oddly excited. “I’ll mess around a bit after breakfast. Though I’ve never worked like that in a hazmat suit before, could get tricky.”

After they ate, the girl helped to clean up the food and pack everything away into one of the giant large walk-in closets. She also checked on the three Gerald Jrs. to see how they were doing. They seemed more spindly. Or so she thought. They might need bigger pots, but now that she thought about it she didn’t know where she was going to get those.

The girl gave each of them some droplets of water and carefully placed them in the corners of the balcony so they could get some sunlight. John trundled past her carrying the “waste” bags and hurled them over the edge unceremoniously.

“Hope that doesn’t hit someone," he muttered, peering over the edge.

They got together their things to carry to the roof. John dragged along a tarp and a few stacked buckets he had snagged from one of the maid carts on the way up. Emily carried the parts of the radio in her backpack along with the multi-function knife as well as a crowbar to help open things that needed prying open. The girl brought some food packs, her kinetic battery charger, and a pair of binoculars to peer around the city.

The hallway was brightly lit. Large windows let in the sunlight giving them astonishing views of the city on one side while allowing them to peer down onto the rooftop pool and bar down below on the other. Most of the pool appeared to have dried up giving it a reddish muddy look from up above.

As they approached the staircase, John held up a bright yellow gloved hand. “Let me check things out first.”

After putting his load carefully on the ground, he slowly turned the handle to the staircase. The girl winced a bit as the handle made a sharp click and beeped indicating that it was unlocked. John kept going, pulling the door open slowly. The staircase was dark and foreboding in sharp contrast to the brightly lit hallway. Where the penthouse suite hallway was warmly decorated with light streaming in, the stairwell was clinical and gray with only small windows and battery powered green “Exit” signs to light the way.

John reached into the front of his suit and fished out a hand torch, taking a moment to fumble with it before it clicked on. He eased himself through the doorway while Emily held the door open. So far so good.

He peered down the gap between the winding stairs.

Silence.

John held up his hand in a thumbs up.

Good to go.

They moved their way up the short staircase, clanking and thumping as they went. A sharp beep of card swipe and they were outside under a featureless azure sky. They turned and walked around the staircase structure they had just come out of. On the other side were a set of elevators that led directly from the presidential suite to the roof.

“Wooow”, the girl exclaimed. There was a shallow pool (though mostly dried up) with white recliners lining the edge. The pool went all the way up to the edge of the building and as she looked, she could see across the gap to where there was another pool on the neighboring twin building. It looked almost as if you could sit in one pool and have a friendly chat with someone in the other one; albeit with a 1000 foot drop in between.

There was also vegetation artfully placed at key locations to give a very colorful relaxing atmosphere. Or it would have but most of the plants were now dried and dead or dying. There was also a small stocked bar where a private bartender could be called upon to service those living on the top floor whenever they so desired.

After they had their fill of wandering about, eyeing the bar, and marveling at the lavish sights, they headed back toward the staircase. There was a nondescript fenced off area which they gained access to with their magic all-purpose keycard. There were a few tools laying about and a workbench with a small overhang situated next to a concrete maintenance unit. There was a solid gray door with the sign: “Staff Only”. The girl felt an involuntary shiver run down her spine. After a brief inspection they noted the door had a conventional lock on it rather than a keycard lock. This was easily solved by the crowbar they had brought along.

After waving away the dust particles and acclimating their eyes to the much murkier light inside the room, they found themselves looking up at a large metal box-like mechanical object.

“What do you think?” asked John. “Is this the water unit?”

“Do I look like I know?” asked Emily. She knocked the side of the unit gently with the crowbar then gestured at the metal staircase leading up. “Let’s take a quick tour and see.”

They poked around a bit and discovered from some manuals laying around the side that it was, in fact, a water reservoir. However, how much water was inside and whether or not the water was clean was still a total mystery. As long as the unit was sealed, they felt relatively confident in the safeness of the water.

They headed back outside. Emily began unpacking the radio to work on it in daylight while the girl helped. John began laying out the tarp and securing it to various objects. After a moment trying to figure out what he was doing, the girl asked.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, I don’t know if it’ll work, but I’m hoping we can use this to collect water if it rains," John pointed to the edge of the tarp that was lower than the others. “This will hopefully funnel water into the buckets there.”

“Oh hey that’s pretty cool!” the girl replied, then after a moment she looked a bit more doubtful. “But we’re in a desert, there probably isn’t going to be a lot of rain.”

“Yup so we have to make sure if it does rain, we don’t waste it.”

For the next few hours the girl helped out where she could, jogging around the rooftop intermittently to charge the radio’s batteries. Then John did a few more telekinetic tests with her coin and a billiard table they found. She got tired and finished off a few more snacks (making sure to save the last two creme cookies for John and Emily). She sat by the pool while she ate, scanning the windows of the building opposite them with binoculars to see if she could see anything.

Suddenly, she heard a shout from Emily.

“I think I got it!” said Emily when they approached. They could hear static coming from the cobbled together setup in front of her.

“Nice!” exclaimed John. “Let’s dial it and give Vandenberg a ping. See if they respond.”

“Roger”, came the reply. Then, Emily’s voice became businesslike as she spoke into the mic. “Doc and Em to Spider Thread, Doc and Em to Spider Thread, do you read? Over.”

Silence.

“Doc and Em to Spider Thread, do you read? Over.”

Silence.

“We’ll keep trying," said John with a reassuring smile. “It can take a bit–”

He was suddenly interrupted as the radio crackled on. “Spider Thr…d here, is … Emily? Ove...”

Emily quickly twisted a knob to tune it better and spoke back into the microphone. “Spider Thread do you copy? Yeah it’s Emily. Do you read me? Over.”

The radio sounded again this time loud and clear. It was a man’s voice, “Heyyy, how you folks doin’? How’s John? We haven’t heard from you guys in weeks. I thought you was goners! Over.”

Emily and John gave a brief cheer. The doctor lifted the girl up in celebration causing her to laugh out loud.

Emily responded, “Hey yourself, Duncan. We’re still hanging in here," She watched as the other two spun around. “Listen we got a pretty interesting case here, I was wondering if you could hear us out? Over.”