Tourists of the Apocalypse Read Online Free PDF

bangs against the wall as he stumbles in, dropping his work bag. I manage to get to the bathroom and close the door halfway before his boots hit the stairs.
    “Missy,” his voice echoes from the entryway. “I ain’t seeing any breakfast.”
    The window in the bathroom pushes up with ease. I have spent the last six months scraping the dried paint out of the gullies and smoothing the wood. I creep slowly out onto the grey shingles of the roof, pushing the glass down behind me. My escape nearly complete, I slide to one side of the window and press my back against the uneven wood siding. I can feel the vibration of Jarrod’s work boots thumping on the stairs. It’s always better if he doesn’t see you.
    “Dammit woman,” echoes from inside the house as the bedroom door is pulled open violently and the knob slams into the wall.
    The ensuing argument goes on for at least ten minutes, ending in my mother going downstairs to fix breakfast. No plates or punches were thrown today, making this a good Saturday. You don’t want to be here on a bad one. In an effort to keep the positive trend going, I slip around the side of the house on the steeply angled roof. Once there, I use the fireplace to climb to the ground. Every third brick protrudes on the corners and I am unsure if this was part of the design, but in my cases it’s a blessing.
    Our house sits at the end of a cul-de-sac. It used to be a normal street, but at some point they put in a drainage ditch and rounded it off. The pavement now dead ends into a circle turnaround. The houses on the straight section leading in are all vintage two story jobs like ours. The three single story ranch homes recently built on the end are brand new. There were never any For Sale signs out, but a guy moved into the middle house a few weeks ago. Walking along the side of the house, I see a car in the driveway. There is one new un-occupied house between ours and the car, leaving me squinting my eyes to see the vehicle clearly.
    “Wholly smokes,” I utter upon identifying it as a Porsche.
    The home’s new owner drives a green truck, but always parks it in the garage. There is a bright yellow 911 sitting in the driveway now. The only reason I can identify the make and model is from reading tattered copies of Road and Track in my dentist’s waiting room. A black plastic fin grows off the trunk, a feature I recall the magazine referring to as a Whale Tail . The fin makes the car at least thirty years old, although it looks brand new. The only other remotely sporty car on the street is a dented silver mustang owned by Dickie Bennet up on the corner.
    Dickie suffered a minor head trauma while working at the cement plant and has a tendency to hit things when he parks. Jarrod also works at the cement plant, but Dickie doesn’t come around our place much. Last time he did, Jarrod called him retard from the front porch, then threw a beer bottle at his car. I cannot imagine how that relationship works down at the cement plant. Adults are complicated.
    Taking a seat on the front steps, I watch the paperboy toss papers at the front doors of the houses down the street. When Jerry gets to my house he rears back and lets a rocket fly. I’m ready for it and manage to knock it down. Seeing that I nearly caught his toss, he gives me a thumbs-up and pedals away. He’s fifteen, older than me by a few years, but has always been decent to me at school. His parents aren’t divorced, but his dad isn’t shy about roughing up his mother. We share this unfortunate common ground. His father also works at the cement plant. Is there something about that job that induces wife beating?
    The dented aluminum thermometer nailed into the porch post reads 82 degrees, which suggests another scorcher. It was in the 90’s the past few days, not unusual for July, but hot just the same. I take the time to neaten up my shoe laces tied in haste during my escape. Nearly done, I hear a screen door creak open from the direction