Escape Pod

More Than Simple Steel
By Aimee Ogden

Micah misses the adults most when he wakes up each morning. Part of him is still waiting for the buzz of an alarm clock and the smell of toaster waffles to coax him up from sleep. But it's been four years, and there is no mother to nudge him awake.

He sits up on his mattress and scratches crust from his eyes. The bedsheets smell like sweat and grass; is it laundry day today? He's the closest thing to an adult under the roof of Grand Avenue Elementary, and if he says it's laundry day, then it will be.

Clothes on, shoes on. Everyone has to wear shoes all the time. That's the rule, ever since Marco got tetanus last year and they all thought he was going to die. It was the worst sickness they'd seen since the flops cleared out all the adults. Micah doesn't know what he'll do when something worse sweeps through.

The door of the teachers' lounge--he can't stop thinking of it as the teachers' lounge, even though there are no teachers here and not much time for lounging--clicks quietly shut behind him. Then he moves down the hallway, opening doors, calling names. "Fabián, garden. Jack, laundry. Vee, babysitting. Carrie, fishing."