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chin in her small hand and turned his head skyward. It was then that he’d realized he’d never seen the night sky without modern life getting in the way. He’d been in many locations around the world that didn’t have electricity, but he’d never really looked up. He was always too busy looking out for an enemy.
    Like I should be right now. For all the good it’s doing.
    Peter found the short ladder, climbed to the top and looked out over the field. After a moment, he thought he detected motion. His heart beat hard, but then he realized it was just the wheat, undulating in the wind.
    The moon was rising. The sun had been defeated, but was redirecting its light to them via the moon. Twenty minutes passed, and the full moon had cleared the horizon, illuminating the field and the circular path that led all the way around it.
    Hours later, he still moved around the moonlit greenhouse, taking the stepladder with him, peering out over the field, searching for signs of approach or egress. When the view from the biodome revealed nothing new, he headed back to the house, which, with its shades pulled, was still pitch black. He opened what once was the back door and now separated home from greenhouse, and stepped inside, colliding with something that should not have been there.
    Peter sprawled back, lifting his shotgun, but holding his fire.
    “Shit!” It was Jakob. “Dad?”
    “The hell are you doing down here?”
    “You told me to come get you if I saw anything.”
    Peter had the boy watching the fields from the home’s second floor. ‘Your callsign is: Overwatch,’ he’d told the boy. ‘Keep an eye out from above. Get me if you see anything.’ But he could tell by the groggy sound of Jakob’s voice that Overwatch had fallen asleep. He couldn’t blame him. It had to be 1:00am, and they had to sleep eventually.
    “What did you see?” Peter asked.
    “Out front,” Jakob said, and he led the way through the dark. They both knew the space as well as blind people might their own home. With nothing new coming into the home, and everything already there having a place, the pair moved through the kitchen and living room without a sound, reaching the shade-covered front windows in seconds.
    Jakob poked a finger behind the shade and lifted it away slightly. “Right there.” He stood aside and let Peter have a look.
    The farmer’s porch, unused for years and coated with dirt and peeling white paint, was empty. As was the fifty feet of concrete between the porch and the field. But the field... Where there had been a wall of wheat when the sun went down, there was now a wall of wheat divided by a two-foot-wide patch of flattened stalks. Their visitor had closed the distance to the house in the cover of darkness.
    It hadn’t breached the house. There was no way to do that without making a lot of noise, but it could be anywhere. Right outside the window for all they knew.
    Jakob slipped his finger out from under the window shade, letting it slowly close.
    “I’m afraid we won’t be sleeping for the rest of the night,” Peter said.
    If Jakob nodded, Peter couldn’t see it. But he heard his son’s whispered voice. “Where do you want me? Overwatch?”
    “Stay with me,” he said and sat in a living room chair. “We know it’s coming now. We’ll have a better chance of...” Of what? Surviving? Could he say that to his son? Could he imply they might die tonight? He’s not stupid , Peter decided. He knows we might die. No need to sugar coat it. “...surviving.”
    Jakob sat on the couch. Peter couldn’t see him, but he heard the distinctive pop of the spring Jakob had broken years ago when jumping on the couch was still a fun thing to do. “And here I thought you were going to say, ‘kicking ass.’”
    Peter huffed out a laugh. “That probably would have been better, huh?”
    “Hells to the yes.”
    “Is that a pop-culture version of ‘hell yes?’”
    “I’m one of few teenagers left alive, right? I