Tag woke to a noise. Either the platform had moved in the wind or the girl had banged her head against the window again. The flat grey of the morning was meaningless. One hand went to his safety harness. The other went to his gear, stowed back in his sack, which was tethered to him. All was well. And anything else: unimportant. Anything else could fall.

He sat up, pulled out his collapsible mug, began to make cold instant coffee in it. Tag stirred it by swirling the cup around as best he could. Need to find another spoon since he dropped the last one. He leaned back against the railing and drank, planned the day.

Bump. The girl. He looked in the window and there she was, his companion for the last three weeks. One-armed, and it looked like birds or insects had made a go of her eyes. He couldn't figure if it was just dumb luck she stayed at the window, not-staring at him, or if she had some other way of knowing he was there. Didn't matter.

Up the side of the building and then across the roof, check the roof exit to make sure it's still secure, across the top of the footbridge to the next building over, then up the access ladder to that roof, check that roof exit to make sure it's still secure. Gear is stored in a maintenance panel. Down the face of the building ten floors to where he left off yesterday. A few more weeks and this section of the city would be done. And sooner or later he'd have to figure out what was next.

When the world went away, a few friends stopped to see him before they fled. He hadn't realized at the time what a gesture that was, but he certainly appreciated it now. Come with us, they said. And he had said, Why? Or he had said something like that. And they had said their goodbyes and moved on.

It was ten months later, well into his projects, that he had finally understood the miscommunication. They thought he was giving up. "Why?" For them, he had seemed hopeless in the face of the oncoming chaos. And they had respected his decision to forfeit. For his part, though, he had no intention of giving up. This was his city. He had fought like hell to leave his hometown and move here, had worked on his art to the point where he could show it, and had started to make a name for himself before the end.

But it wasn't the end of the world. What's the apocalypse to an artist? Just a change in medium. He remembered the last group of survivors he had met. When he told them what he had done and showed them the building across the street. "Why the fuck are you doing that?" their leader had asked him. They had met on the second floor of a hardware store. He had been gathering more cans of spray paint. They had been gathering whatever they could find. He smiled and nodded to them, the epitome of urban survival, with their baseball bats and axes and one pistol between them. "Why the fuck are you doing that?" he had asked them in return. He didn't think they had understood.

On occasion, Tag slept indoors. Usually in the duct work of an office building, but the lack of maneuverability made him nervous. And a couple of times he had slept on the couch of an executive office, with every other piece of furniture piled against the door. But now unless the weather was simply unbearable, he stayed outside, usually on the side of the building. Window washer platforms were the best as they were as stable as anything in the world. But he had to secure the roof and check it each day. No one wanted those things raining down on them from above. He knew by experience.

He looked across the way to the work in progress and decided what needed to be done today. He finished his coffee, put away the cup and checked his gear. As he double-checked where his crowbar was attached for easy access, he looked to the girl inside the office behind the glass.

"I'll take care of you before I move on," he said. "I don't normally bother but for you I'll make an exception. It's the least I can do."

He thought he had spoken it aloud, anyway. He seldom used his speaking voice. There was hardly ever any need for it.