This World We Live In (The Last Survivors, Book 3) Read Online Free
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
and Jon can go into town to get our food. That'l give both of you a sense of what it's like to travel together. What's today, anyway?"
We al counted back to Tuesday, the last day in our lives that had meaning.
"Friday," I said, counting the fastest.
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"Al right," Mom said. "That wil give you the weekend to look for everything you need. Rods and flies and wading boots. How are we on trash bags?
"
"We stil have a few," Matt said. "We haven't been throwing out much garbage lately."
"Horton wil be happy," I said. "The house wil stink offish."
"We'l solve that problem when we have to," Mom said. "Along with any others that come along."
May 6
I love breaking into houses. I mean, I real y love it.
We each took a neighborhood. Matt started at Mrs. Nesbitt's and worked his way down Howel Bridge Road. Jon biked over to the Pine Tree section, and I went to Shirley Court.
It's easy enough to tel if a house is vacant. No smoke from the chimney, nobody home. But I knocked on doors first, pretty comfortable that no one was watching. Shirley Court has a much more suburban feeling than Howel Bridge Road, but you could tel the whole neighborhood was deserted.
When we left the house after breakfast, Matt, Jon, and I discussed the best ways of breaking in. A lot of the houses, we figured, would be unlocked, because after the house was first left empty, the scavengers would have broken in, taken al they wanted, and not bothered locking up. But if we couldn't find enough in the houses like that, we should break a window and let ourselves in.
This is the kind of discussion you have outside, where Mom can't hear you.
32
We each took a trash bag, which seemed
optimistic to me. Then again, I expected to find some half-ful detergent containers, and they're pretty bulky.
We told Mom we'd be back by 4:00, but we didn't explain to her that we'd be going separately. You can never tel what's going to set Mom off. She might have thought we'd be safer together, but then again, together we might run into a guy with a semiautomatic who'd take us al out--although my guess is the guys with the semiautomatics left a long time ago.
It's hard to say what my favorite part of breaking and entering is. I love the adrenaline rush. Wil there be someone in the house? Wil I get caught? I never used to shoplift, but now I understand why some kids did it. When everything else is boring, there's something to be said for risk.
But exciting as that is, it's nothing compared to finding treasures. Bottles of shampoo, one of them almost completely ful . Partly used bars of soap.
Lots of detergent--so much I ended up pouring it al into an almost empty 150-ounce container. Fabric softener sheets, a luxury I'd forgotten existed.
And the toothpaste! A half-used tube here, a quarter-used tube there. Two completely untouched containers of fluoride rinse. One linen closet I ransacked had a half dozen brand-new
toothbrushes. We might starve to death, but at least we'l have good teeth.
Of course I checked the kitchen cabinets first, but I only found one thing there: a box of rice pilaf that had been lodged in a corner and gone
undiscovered until me.
Most of my time I spent upstairs, going through bedrooms and bathrooms. It took me four houses before I remembered cosmetic bags, but once I began searching for
33
them, I found lots of things. Travel-sized containers of shampoo and toothpaste. Hotel bars of soap, mostly untouched. Tissue packets.
I would have loved to find six-packs of toilet paper, but no such luck. Stil , every house I broke into had a partly used rol in each bathroom, and I took al of them. I pul ed out al the tissues from their boxes and shoved them into one of the empty cosmetic bags.
One house had a shelf fil ed with paperback mysteries. Another had an unused book of crossword puzzles.
Hidden in the back of one linen closet was a twelve-pack of batteries. A bottle of aspirin sat waiting for me in a medicine cabinet. There were two cans of
We al counted back to Tuesday, the last day in our lives that had meaning.
"Friday," I said, counting the fastest.
31
"Al right," Mom said. "That wil give you the weekend to look for everything you need. Rods and flies and wading boots. How are we on trash bags?
"
"We stil have a few," Matt said. "We haven't been throwing out much garbage lately."
"Horton wil be happy," I said. "The house wil stink offish."
"We'l solve that problem when we have to," Mom said. "Along with any others that come along."
May 6
I love breaking into houses. I mean, I real y love it.
We each took a neighborhood. Matt started at Mrs. Nesbitt's and worked his way down Howel Bridge Road. Jon biked over to the Pine Tree section, and I went to Shirley Court.
It's easy enough to tel if a house is vacant. No smoke from the chimney, nobody home. But I knocked on doors first, pretty comfortable that no one was watching. Shirley Court has a much more suburban feeling than Howel Bridge Road, but you could tel the whole neighborhood was deserted.
When we left the house after breakfast, Matt, Jon, and I discussed the best ways of breaking in. A lot of the houses, we figured, would be unlocked, because after the house was first left empty, the scavengers would have broken in, taken al they wanted, and not bothered locking up. But if we couldn't find enough in the houses like that, we should break a window and let ourselves in.
This is the kind of discussion you have outside, where Mom can't hear you.
32
We each took a trash bag, which seemed
optimistic to me. Then again, I expected to find some half-ful detergent containers, and they're pretty bulky.
We told Mom we'd be back by 4:00, but we didn't explain to her that we'd be going separately. You can never tel what's going to set Mom off. She might have thought we'd be safer together, but then again, together we might run into a guy with a semiautomatic who'd take us al out--although my guess is the guys with the semiautomatics left a long time ago.
It's hard to say what my favorite part of breaking and entering is. I love the adrenaline rush. Wil there be someone in the house? Wil I get caught? I never used to shoplift, but now I understand why some kids did it. When everything else is boring, there's something to be said for risk.
But exciting as that is, it's nothing compared to finding treasures. Bottles of shampoo, one of them almost completely ful . Partly used bars of soap.
Lots of detergent--so much I ended up pouring it al into an almost empty 150-ounce container. Fabric softener sheets, a luxury I'd forgotten existed.
And the toothpaste! A half-used tube here, a quarter-used tube there. Two completely untouched containers of fluoride rinse. One linen closet I ransacked had a half dozen brand-new
toothbrushes. We might starve to death, but at least we'l have good teeth.
Of course I checked the kitchen cabinets first, but I only found one thing there: a box of rice pilaf that had been lodged in a corner and gone
undiscovered until me.
Most of my time I spent upstairs, going through bedrooms and bathrooms. It took me four houses before I remembered cosmetic bags, but once I began searching for
33
them, I found lots of things. Travel-sized containers of shampoo and toothpaste. Hotel bars of soap, mostly untouched. Tissue packets.
I would have loved to find six-packs of toilet paper, but no such luck. Stil , every house I broke into had a partly used rol in each bathroom, and I took al of them. I pul ed out al the tissues from their boxes and shoved them into one of the empty cosmetic bags.
One house had a shelf fil ed with paperback mysteries. Another had an unused book of crossword puzzles.
Hidden in the back of one linen closet was a twelve-pack of batteries. A bottle of aspirin sat waiting for me in a medicine cabinet. There were two cans of