Chapter 1

The last kids on Earth and the Forbidden Fortress by Max Browman. Read for you by Robbie Damon.

chapter one Okay, I spy with my little eye. Is it the fortress? We agreed. Can't do the fortress again.

Is it a rock? Nope, is it a boulder? Yeah, a boulderis just a big rock.

I shrug. I can't help the scenery. I can't help that our games of I Spy are getting repetitive. We've been sitting in the same spot, looking at the same thing, for a long time. And not a long time like hours. Nope. June and I have been perched on this billboard—staring out at that fortress—for weeks. We're doing a surveillance stakeout thing. We're basically spies. Spies who do their spying from really far away. And spying from far away is good, because the whole vibe of the fortress messes with my head. Like staring at an optical illusion that you can't quite figure out. We've been at it so long that we've pretty much turned this billboard into our home away from home (away from home). It's darn near cozy now. We've got ball-game butt pillows, a solar-powered hot cocoa machine, and enough reading material to last us until the next end of the world. On the plus side—it's given June and me some quality one-on-one time. We've got about two hundred inside jokes, and we're pretty much super chums who never, ever argue...

for the last time. Jar jar is not for sensitive. He's-hey, you're just messing with me again. Aren't you Meaner, meaner? It's been a very long and very weird few weeks. How weird? Oh, let me count the ways... and the locations. Right here: June and me, perched on the billboard's walkway. June's hunkered down in a knit cap and an army jacket— it's a cool look, and I'm bummed she thought of it first. All I've got is a plain baseball cap and my camera. And down below: an elevated train track. That track leads to the thing in the distance: the fortress that looks like the sorta joint Skeletor would rent out for a Sweet 16 bash. It's spooky strange. Has

it been built here? Constructed by some mad monster architect? We don't know. We just know it's not normal. Also not normal: the Cosmic Hand. The sucker- covered other-dimensional monster-tentacle glove that is forever wrapped around my wrist and fingers. The Cosmic Hand used to do one thing and one thing only: allow me to wield the Louisville Slicer and use the Slicer's other-dimensional energy to control zombies. But then I did something huge. I controlled a zombie without the Slicer—with only the Cosmic Hand. Since then, the Cosmic Hand has been, like... evolving.