Chapter 18
Leveling the ground in the back of the house for a place to build his ‘clubhouse’ took the better part of the whole weekend… mostly because Seb was eleven and wielding a shovel was harder work than he remembered.
Not that I did it a lot even as an adult.
His mom took him down to the beach in the truck so he could fill buckets up with sand. After digging up the sod, he leveled the space, then dumped all the sand in and raked it clean. Next came some old cement cinder blocks they had from another project, upon which he built the floor frame.
Twenty by twenty, with beams two feet apart, and in no time he had a level base to put a floor on.
Before he did that, however, Seb put a layer of insulation foam down, fit in so it was snug up inside the beams. Plywood followed for the floor, and then he built and, with his mom’s help, lifted the walls into place.
Those were a lot heavier than I expected, Seb thought sourly.
He was, in fact, struggling a lot with even the lighter aspects of the work… which, he had to admit, was giving him some issues with body dysmorphia, something he had never expected to have to deal with.
No matter how much he tried to reorient his own brain, there were times when he expected his body to be capable of things that he could easily have done as a young man… but not as the child he was now, or even the old man he remembered being.
Funny, that. My mental self is still twenty something, and always has been, Seb thought wryly.
For the longest time he’d dealt with his brain saying ‘you can still do that’, while his body snickered quietly and said ‘try it and die, old man.’
Now my body is eager to go for it, but nothing works the way I remember, damn it!
Sure he was stronger now than when he was this age the first time, but a strong eleven year old was still just an eleven year old.
It was incredibly frustrating.
*****
It was so damned adorable.
Eve couldn’t help it, she was absolutely loving the entire process.
Sebastian was putting everything into building his little clubhouse…
though, she had to admit, twenty by twenty was a bit bigger than she’d originally envisioned when he’d asked permission.
But, that aside, he was going the extra distance to make sure that he was at least trying to do everything right.
She wasn’t certain he was, honestly, she didn’t know that much about carpentry and the like herself, but it looked good?
But what she was enjoying the most was watching him try so very hard to do things he really wasn’t up to just then, before slowly and visibly breaking down and calling for her help.
He so clearly wanted to do it himself that she didn’t feel right about just stepping in and helping, and… if she were honest… She found the whole process incredibly entertaining.
The sheets of chipboard Sebastian had chosen for the outer walls were too heavy for him, but he used leverage to get them upright and then rocked each sheet until he got it up on the stringer.
Only then did he call for help, and she would go out and hold it in place while he put in the first few nails.
I suppose this is what raising a boy is all about. Here I was thinking that he’d never get his head out of his books. I guess I was wrong.
*****
Chipboard for the walls, plywood for the floor and roof. For now, he’d only bought enough foam to insulate under the floor, just because that would be the hardest to do later all things considered.
The door and windows would be trickier, he knew, but a trip to the dump would fix that if he remembered correctly. Worst case, asking around would probably turn up someone with some stuff buried in a shed that he could get on the cheap.
He’d needed his mom’s help to get the roof done, that was for sure.
There was no chance that his scrawny butt was hauling full sheets of plywood up even the ten feet or so from the ground the rafter beams were at.
But that was just the work of an afternoon with her help, and then it was pretty much done.
Still have to wrap it in Tyvek, but the weather is nice this week, so I’ll get it done soon enough. Seb would also check for old siding when they got to the dump or, again, ask around.
It was a small enough community, someone would either have some or know someone who did.
Everyone had more junk kicking around than they wanted to think about, he knew that from personal experience after all.
Finishing details aside, Seb was smiling ear to ear as he stepped in through the hole where a door would have to go shortly and looked around the nice little space he would soon get around to completely filling up with all manner of mad scientist junk.
If it weren’t for the alien invasion, I’d honestly think this was a heaven sent replay. A chance to do all the stuff I always wanted to do?
It was amazing… but his smile faded, because he knew that there was an invasion… and Seb remembered just how many people died the first time around.
There was so much to do, but he wasn’t going to let it break him either.
I’m going to break them instead… and have fun doing it.
*****
As he’d expected, an old door was easily acquired at the dump, not brand new of course but still solid and they’d pulled it out of the pile before the fire was set that week so it didn’t even smell all that bad or have scorch marks.
The hinges are even still attached, score. Seb thought as he roughly shoved the door into the box of the old GMC Sierra.
He didn’t have as much luck with windows, however, and had to admit defeat on that side of things after a couple hours of searching through the piles.
Don’t need windows right away anyway.
“Done?” Eve asked from where she was watching.
“Almost,” Seb said, “I think I saw something over there…”
He walked away from the truck again, heading for a pile of junk that had been dumped recently.
“Be careful, and you’d better hurry. I think they’ll be lighting the pile on fire this afternoon.”
“Got it, Mom!”
Seb shook his head, just pile your trash up and toss on a match… then do it again next week.
It was startling how different things would be in just a decade, forget the crazy stuff that happened even further on.
Ten years, and Seb knew that this dump would be abandoned, rendered illegal by environmental laws.
Plastic bags would replace paper, to save the trees…
despite the fact that the trees used for paper were almost entirely farmed for that purpose.
People would even think that it was their idea, that it was environmentally progressive… when it was really to save the companies involved a couple cents a bag.
A couple cents a bag, and all we have to accept in exchange is drowning in plastic waste. A real deal.
He crawled over one pile, heading for the one he’d seen from a distance, mind still caught in the moment. It wasn’t that he disliked the environmental movement, of course, he had been a member of it himself at varying times through his life. Still was, if he were honest.
Properly caring for the world he lived in wasn't exactly controversial to his mind.
The problem was that it was easy for groups that… cared a little less, let’s say, to manipulate those that care too much.
People, in groups, were the most dangerous thing he’d ever known… until the invaders at least. There was something about a group that caused the average intelligence to degrade down to the lowest level the group represented.
It was all incredibly frustrating, and more so when you knew the group had good intentions.
At least when they’re evil pricks I can just laugh at their idiocy while I hate them, Seb thought wryly. Good meaning sorts just make me… sad.
There was never any shortage of either kind, which made him even sadder, so Seb pushed that away and focused on the pile of junk he’d spotted.
“Yes! Just what I thought it was,” He said, pulling the stove pipe out and turning it over, being careful not to cut himself on it in the process.
Someone had just renovated, he assumed, and they’d tossed their entire old stove pipe and chimney.
Seb checked it inside and out, not finding any holes or rot in most of it.
A couple pieces weren’t worth saving, but he didn’t need that much anyway, so he tossed those aside and started hauling the rest back.
“Stove pipe? Sebastian, you are not thinking of lighting a fire in that shed are you?” His mother blurted when she saw him.
“Of course I am, mom, it’s cold here in winter.”
She stared blankly for a moment before crossing her arms, “Sebastian Parker, if you think I’m letting you light fires in the back yard…”
“Relax, mom, you can look over the whole thing before I even think of using it, ok?” Seb said placatingly. “It’ll be safe, I promise.”
She glared, but said nothing more as he tossed piece by piece into the box of the old truck.
He just grinned at her as he got under the tail gate and pushed it up and closed.
Man, I need to grow a little, this is just embarrassing.
*****
A short while later he was bouncing on the bench seat as they were heading home, the local station playing on the radio, ‘Dancing on the Ceiling' playing through their top ten countdown for the week.
When the song ended, Seb was looking out at the water of the bay as the news came on. His thoughts kept him distracted until he heard his mother murmur something.
“Huh? What?” He half turned.
“I said those poor kids,” She nodded to the radio.
Seb focused on it, frowning.
“... the missing children were on a hiking trip with chaperones from the school and community, part of an end of summer weekend. Searchers located their campsite yesterday, but no trace has been found of any of the group.”
Seb blinked, “Where’s this?”
“Not far,” his Mother told him, “Just a few towns up, barely an hour’s drive South of here.”
South of here.
Coincidence? Seb was thinking of the EMF signature he’d spotted, the one that got stronger about eighty miles to the south.
The one that’s almost certainly a trapdoor location.
Maybe it was a coincidence, but it certainly felt a little too on the nose for that.
I don’t remember any missing kids, Seb thought, closing his eyes as he tried to dig up memories of years long gone rather than the same years about to arrive. But that doesn’t mean much. I might not have been paying attention, just might not have bothered to remember it. Damn.
He was going to have to look into it, wasn’t he?
*****