They left their bikes near the tower and walked over. The lower part of the ladder was in a metal tube-like cage, which was locked. But the legs of the water tower had smaller crisscrossing beams to support them.
“So, how do we get up?” James asked.
“Watch.”
Leo leaped up and grabbed the lowest crossbar. He let himself swing for a moment, hoping it looked like he was just gathering momentum. In reality, Leo had never done this before. He’d heard of kids at school doing it before, and some of his friends claimed they’d done it. So in theory he knew what to do.
As his legs began swinging higher, he hoped to himself that it was as easy everyone else made it seem. He swung his feet to the crossbar and locked his ankles around it, then shifted his hands and feet until he reached one of the water tower’s large legs. The bar ran up at an angle. He reached up for the next cross bar, which angled the other way. He went hand over hand again until he reached the platform. He clambered over the railing and took a deep breath.
He looked down and saw James was already halfway up. He was also breathing hard when he reached the platform. Leo flexed his hands. The narrow crossbars were hard on the palms.
“How many kids have died doing this?” James asked.
“None that I know of,” Leo said. “But I heard about one guy who broke an ankle.”
“If that happened to us, we’d have no way to call for help,” said James.
“I guess not,” Leo admitted. “But look, we can see most of the town from here.”
There was the blue roof of the pizza restaurant his parents owned, and just down the street was the playground he’d played at as a kid. Both were usually busy this time of day, but now there were no signs of life at either one.
“It’s a ghost town,” said James.
“Yeah,” Leo said quietly. Then he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye.
His gaze darted to a house just a few blocks away from his own. The yard had a high wooden privacy fence around it, but from up here they could see right in. The blinds were drawn closed in most of the windows, but in one of them on the lower level he could see there was a dark gap in the blinds. He watched it for a moment, and then suddenly the blinds snapped closed.
“Look!” He pointed.
“What?”
“I just saw someone looking through those blinds. Someone’s there!”
“I still don’t see—” James stopped when the side door to the house quickly opened.
A yellow pit bull came bounding over from the backyard and scurried into the house. A girl poked her head out, glancing around the yard. Then she yanked the door closed behind her.
“Sigrid,” Leo said in surprise.
James looked at him. “You know her?”
He nodded. “Sort of. She goes to our school. We used to ride the same bus when we were kids.”
“Let’s go talk to her,” James said. “She might know something.” Then he hesitated. “I don’t suppose there’s an easier way down?”
“Not unless you have a parachute,” said Leo. He started back down the same way they came.
“Ugh.” James followed.
They made it safely to the ground and biked over to the house. Leo’s heart was beating quickly. He never thought he’d be this excited to see a girl he barely knew.
Leo punched the doorbell, then realized it probably didn’t work. He rapped on the door. There was no answer.
“Sigrid! It’s Leo,” he called. Then he realized she may not recognize his name. “From school,” he added lamely. Inside the dog started barking.
“It’s okay, Sandy,” they heard a girl’s voice say through the door. The door cracked open, and Sigrid looked out at him in surprise.
“Uh, hey,” he said. “I’m Leo. We go to school together. And this is James.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “He goes there too.”
She continued to stare at them, clearly wondering why they were standing at her front door.
Leo cleared his throat. “So listen, do you . . . know where everyone went? I went for a ride in the woods this morning, and when I got back everyone was gone or something. Everybody except you.”
Her eyebrows narrowed. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Just come inside,” she said, rolling her eyes. She opened the door and let them in, shutting and locking it behind them. The pit bull—Sandy, Leo figured—followed them into the dining room.
“The army evacuated the entire town after the power went out,” Sigrid explained as she sat down at the table. “They gathered everyone at the schools and loaded them up in transport trucks. They didn’t even give people a chance to go home first—said there was no time.”
“How is it their vehicles work when all the others are stalled?” Leo wondered.
“I don’t know,” Sigrid said.
“They’re the military,” James said. “Of course they have the best technology to withstand anything.”
“That would make sense,” Sigrid said. “After the Visitors attacked—”
Leo’s eyes widened. “The . . . Visitors?” he repeated. “That’s actually, like, a thing?”
“What are you talking about?” asked James, who was clearly even more confused than Leo.
“That guy who tried to steal my bike earlier mentioned something about ‘Visitors’ too. I thought he was just trying to mess with me.”
“Wait,” James said, looking back and forth between Sigrid and Leo. “Who are the Visitors?”
Sigrid sighed and gestured to the chairs across from her. “You guys had better sit down.”