Sydney rolled over onto her back and stretched languorously. Vaughn had gone to the grocery store to pick up dinner essentials, leaving her home with the kids. Both Isabelle and Jack were old enough now to play unsupervised, as long as either she or Vaughn was in the house, so Sydney felt she could indulge herself just this once. After all, how often did she get to take a nap?
"Oh god!"
Sydney sat up, suddenly wide awake. There was something in Vaughn's voice that triggered all her alarm bells.
"SYDNEY!!" Vaughn shouted from the kitchen.
She ran into the kitchen just as he was coming to the living room, and they almost collided.
"Vaughn! What's wrong? Where are the kids?" she asked immediately.
Vaughn stepped aside, and Sydney gasped in horror. The kitchen had been torn apart. Half a dozen appliances, as well as one of Vaughn's old cell phones, had all been dismantled. Their pieces were scattered haphazardly around the kitchen, indicating that the perpetrators had been in a hurry. Who would do such a thing, and what on earth were they after?
"Where are the kids?" Vaughn asked.
"Oh my god, the kids!" Sydney said as she raced to the back door. "They were in the yard!"
"They're there! They're there," Vaughn repeated with obvious relief.
"Oh, thank god," Sydney breathed.
"Look," Vaughn said as he suddenly took in the scene outside the open window.
Both children were surrounded by plastic pieces and bits of metal. Isabelle labored over a schematic consisting of several sheets of printer paper taped together. It had been drawn in an impressive array of colors. Jack wielded a large screwdriver in his tiny hand and was actively screwing two things together.
"Ok, now what?" Jack asked when he'd finished whatever he was doing.
Isabelle chewed on the end of her coloring pencil as she consulted her diagram.
"This one," she said, picking up a plank of wood and handing it to her brother.
"It's too big!" Jack complained.
Isabelle examined the metal contraption in Jack's hands, and nodded.
"Here," she said as she picked up a large kitchen knife.
Sydney yanked open the door and burst into the yard, Vaughn hot on her heels.
"Isabelle!"
Isabelle glanced up.
"Mommy, no!"
Sydney looked down and stopped just short of tripping over something shiny buried in the grass.
"What is this?" she asked, bending to examine it. It was a length of metal wire – probably stripped from the coffee maker, she thought with chagrin.
"It's the defenses, for our fort!" Isabelle said.
"It's so the bad guys won't get us," Jack explained.
Vaughn eyed his son with no small amount of incredulity.
"What bad guys?"
"You know, the vampires!" Jack said.
"Like in the story, Daddy," Isabelle clarified.
Sydney cast Vaughn an exasperated look.
"I told you they were too young for those books!"
Vaughn grimaced.
"Are you guys afraid of the vampires?"
"Because you know it's just make believe, right?" Sydney added.
Jack gave his parents such a withering look that they were both momentarily taken aback by his resemblance to his namesake.
"I'M not scared," he declared indignantly as he finished tying his contraption to the tripwire.
"Me neither," Isabelle concurred. She then brushed the wire with her hand. The wooden plank snapped back and something metal whizzed past Sydney's head.
Isabelle and Jack exchanged a grin of delight.
Vaughn clapped his hand over his mouth to hide his astonishment.
Sydney's eyes widened for just a moment before she put her hands on her hips, which was the universal signal that a scolding was imminent.
"No knives!" she said, extricating the kitchen knife from Isabelle's grasp. "Do NOT dismantle mommy's coffee maker! And NO BOOBYTRAPS!" She confiscated several more items which looked like they may have come from the coffee maker, then turned and marched back into the house.
Vaughn winced at his children's identically glum expressions. He knelt down and said very quietly, "Three inches off that plank ought to correct your trajectory."
Then he quickly hurried into the house after his wife.