It took them about a year.
After they had finally turned on the radio, after they had finally understood the jumble of voices, after they had learned how to turn the dial and press or unpress a button or two, after they had learned from the news and fiction and music broadcasts which station had what program, they managed to construct a walkway from the closet to the bed. Their close proximity saved time when they needed to talk to each other, but also made it much easier to wake the others. It was easier to get dressed, easier to have meals, easier to get wood, easier to have a conversation, but it was also easier to know, to fully understand, to be sure of one's neighbors because when two crossed the line between their individual bedrooms, they often found that a window to their inner selves had been opened, allowing all three to see that they shared a vision of the world, an understanding of the past, and a hope for the future.
They had decided that day, after they had made the path, that they could use more electronics. Before they had turned the radio on, they used to have three flashlights, four bottles of water, and three cans of food. After they turned on the radio, the flashlights no longer worked, but they still had three cans of food left and four bottles of water. They didn't last very long, though. Four days after opening the cans of food, the last bottle of water went rancid. Three days after that, all of the sheets, the blankets, the pillows, and all of the clothes were wet with the humidity and the sweat that came with the buckets of food that they ingested after the supplies had been completely gone.
Then the lights went out, and darkness fell.
They slept.
And then the dreams filled the empty space.
Floating. Flying. Waking. Sleeping. Seeing. Hearing. Touching. Feeling. Dreaming. Here. There. Realizing. Believing. Wanting. Searching. Planning. Over. Under. Around. Through. At the beginning. At the end. And, there.
Then, eventually, a plan was formed.
To go back.
To find outside.
To find the world there.
They knew that there was a world beyond the walls of the house. It just wasn't the same world that they had left behind before the storm came. It was a world with a god, they said. They knew he must exist because they had never heard of him, but they had heard of the devil. They said that the storm had brought forth the devil and had left the house standing, in tact, as a testament to God and his power.
And the storm had also brought forth death. Death was, and had been, a common thing to them, but that wasn't what this storm had done. They saw the dead walk, they saw them suffer. They saw the dead scream and they yelled and screamed. They were strong, the dead, and the dead caused a lot of pain.
If the dead could live and scream then perhaps there was hope. If the dead could live, and if they weren't evil, maybe they could be alive again.