They found canned food in the pantry. Not a lot, but they’d been eating nothing but Noot for weeks, so the discovery was hailed as if it was the greatest treasure imaginable. There was also wood for the fireplace on the enclosed back porch, plenty of blankets, three beds, and a full liquor cabinet.
“This was definitely a good idea,” Robbie said, plopping down in a dusty easy chair.
“Right?” Bethany said.
Carol was on the other side of the living room, at a desk facing away from the front windows. Robbie imagined the professor who’d owned this place sitting at that desk and grading papers, using the afternoon sun through the porch for illumination.
“There’s something on the floor over here,” Carol said.
“Let me take a look,” Robbie said.
Her cane was hitting the side of a pair of men’s shoes. They were resting under the desk at the end of a pair of pants that were draped over the side of the chair. In the chair was a shirt, a jacket, and a pair of eyeglasses.
Seeing all of it assembled in this way hit Robbie hard, because he realized in an instant precisely what he was looking at.
Someone died in this chair, he thought, and this is all that’s left of him.
“What is it?” Carol asked. She had her hand on the side of the chair and was about to sit.
“Just a pair of slippers,” Robbie said. “Hang on, there’s stuff in the chair. Let me clean it off.”
“Guys,” Bethany said. She was holding up two umbrellas. “I know it’s raining, but who wants to go check out the library?”
“We only just arrived,” Carol said, clutching Robbie’s hand. “I’m sure this was enough for one day. Tomorrow we can bring more over from the dorm, and then maybe we’ll make time for the library. How about that?”
“It’s literally right over there,” Bethany said. “We’re about as close to it as we were to the river before. C’mon, sunset’s not for a couple of hours, and we have umbrellas.”
“We went through a lot just to go this far,” Carol said.
“Please. I’m begging you. I am so bored,” Bethany said.
Carol was clearly expecting Robbie to say no, which was a good guess considering his reluctance to go anywhere. He appreciated her speaking up for him.
“What the hell,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Then I’ll go as well,” Carol said. “I’d rather not stay here alone until I’ve gotten used to the noises this house makes.”
4
Robbie sort of wanted to visit Harvard Yard first, if only to finally complete the trip he’d begun when he woke up on the first day of the apocalypse.
But Harvard’s libraries were scattered, and slightly less useful to a layman trying to understand how to make electricity or set a broken leg. For example, there was an entire law library they weren’t likely to ever have any use for. That was probably equally true for the theological library.
Also, the public library was closer. As Bethany said, it was only a couple hundred yards away, at the bottom of the street.
The library was an odd-looking place. On the left side, it was a slate-gray brick building that looked like an old castle. On the right, it was a far more modern edifice made of glass. The newer half could have been mistaken for a greenhouse, which was what Robbie at first thought he was looking at. Both buildings were dirty, and dealing with climbing moss, but that was more obvious on the glass structure. The castle side looked like it was supposed to have stuff growing on it.
There was a large, overgrown lawn in front of both parts of the library, with crisscrossing paths damaged by vegetation the same way the city’s sidewalks had been. Thanks to the rain, only a few animals were loitering around outside.
“We went past this place,” Robbie said. “Me and Touré. I thought it was part of the high school.”
The city’s high school was indeed in the background, behind the older side of the library. It consisted of one long building, a smaller building that looked like a theater, and a courtyard beyond that, fronting another street.
The whole area stood between two major thoroughfares: Broadway and Cambridge Street. They met at a spot closer to the Square, with a firehouse sitting at the point of the V. Opposite the firehouse was a tunnel that had Cambridge Common on the other side.
Robbie had been through this section on his bike at least three or four times.
“Yeah, I was going there next year,” Bethany said, in reference to the high school. “Looks like it’s homeschooling from here on out. C’mon.”
They headed across the lawn, past a curious family of geese, to the glass door of the new library.
Up close, the glass looked several years overdue for a cleaning. Robbie could just make out vague shapes on the other side. Those shapes looked like bookshelves, so he didn’t let himself get freaked out, though the whole thing did seem inexplicably creepy.
“Cover me,” Bethany said, handing off her umbrella to Robbie. She knelt down in front of the door and got to work on the lock.
“What are you using to do that?” Robbie asked.
“Paper clip works, most of the time,” she said. “I usually make do with what’s around if that doesn’t work. I used a barrette once, or one time the tooth on a belt buckle.”
“I figured you had some sort of professional kit.”
“Right. Saved up my allowance and everything. Dad wouldn’t even let me have a cell phone—don’t think he was springing for a locksmith’s kit.” She stood. “Yeah. I can’t open this,” she said.
“Why not?” Carol asked.
“Didn’t really think I’d be able to; it looked like the wrong kind of lock. Thought it was worth a try.”
“What’s the right kind of lock?” Carol asked.
“Not this kind. It’s too new.”
“Now what?” Robbie asked. “I could break the door down.”
He held up the axe to emphasize his point.
“No, man. Now we look for another door. Nobody ever swaps out all the locks. There’s always a basement door, or a laundry room, or an employee exit.”
She took back her umbrella and started toward the older wing.
Robbie reached out, grabbed the handle, and tried pulling the glass door. It didn’t budge.
“I tried that first,” Bethany said, without turning.
“I thought we’d feel pretty stupid if it was unlocked the whole time.”
“I agree. That’s why I tried that first.”
The miniature castle wing had several doors to choose from. The main entrance was both locked and chained, with a sign indicating the porch they were standing on was unsafe, and to please use the entrance to the new wing instead.
Next, they found a normal-looking door around the side, at the bottom of five stone steps covered in mold. Standing at the door meant wading into inch-deep standing water.
“Yuck,” Bethany said. She leaned over to get a good look at the lock. “Yeah, I can do this one.”
She stepped into the muck, while Robbie stood above her and to the side, extending the umbrella as well as he could. Carol waited nearby, under her own umbrella.
They were all getting wet, despite the umbrellas, because the wind had begun to pick up significantly over the past several minutes. Twice Carol nearly lost her umbrella to a particularly stiff wind.
“I’m beginning to think we should try this on a better day,” she said.
“No, I’ve almost got it,” Bethany said.
Then, quite abruptly, the wind stopped.
“Whoa,” Robbie said. “Somebody turned off the weather machine.”
“Shhh,” Carol said.
There was a roar in the distance.
Robbie gazed up at a cloud bank that was doing things he’d never before seen a cloud bank do. It was low and swirling, and if he were a religious person, he’d say it looked like the hand of a deity was trying to reach down from the sky.
Then the rain tripled in intensity.
“Do y
ou hear that?” Carol asked.
“Hear what?” Robbie asked. “The rain?”
“Not the rain,” Carol said. “Over the rain. Bethany, you need to hurry.”
“Almost there,” she said.
“Wait,” Robbie said. “Is that . . . is that a train?”
That was what it sounded like: the chucka-chucka sound of an old locomotive. But there were no tracks anywhere near them.
Also, everyone was dead.
“It’s not a train,” Carol said. Then a powerful gust of wind knocked her over and took her umbrella away.
Robbie ran over to help, leaving Bethany unprotected.
“Hey!” Bethany said.
“Sorry!”
“I’m okay!” Carol shouted, over the wind and rain.
He closed the second umbrella before it was swept away as well, and got Carol to her feet.
“We’re in!” Bethany said, yanking open the door. “Quick!”
Robbie got Carol to the steps and handed her down to Bethany, who guided her the rest of the way in.
“My cane!” Carol said. “Robbie.”
“I’ll get it.”
It was on the ground a few feet from where she’d been knocked over. He crawled over to it, to stay out of the wind as long as possible. Then he saw what was making all that noise.
There was a funnel cloud touching down on the street behind the high school.
“Robbie, come on!” Bethany shouted.
He scrambled to the steps and down through the doorway. Bethany closed the door behind him, plunging them into complete darkness.
“This is fine,” Robbie said. His voice echoed back to him, indicating they were in a large space. “I don’t know what’s down here, but it’s gotta be safer than what’s out there.”
The building groaned, unless it was the wind that was groaning, which was somehow more terrifying.
“Damn, what is that?” Bethany asked. “Are there dinosaurs now?”
“It’s a tornado,” Carol said, from the other side of the room. “We’d better stay here until it passes.”
Bethany
Carol’s admonition aside, there was no way Bethany was simply going to be staying in a basement when an honest-to-god tornado was passing by her future high school.
“No way,” she said. “Get me out of here. Where’s the staircase?”
“Tornadoes are really very dangerous,” Carol said. “Are there any windows? We should stay away from them.”
There were half windows at the top of the walls, but a ton of muck was built up on the other side, rendering them unusable.
“We’re okay,” Robbie said. “We should really stay here.”
“Sure, you say that,” Bethany said. “You got to see it.”
Bethany opened up her bag. It was a great find, that bag. Easily the best thing Touré scavenged. It was meant for cyclists, so it was weighted funny if you weren’t on a bike, but it was also waterproof, so the matches were still dry and so was the torch.
She dug out the lighter fluid to prep the torch, and lit a match.
“Ahh!” Robbie said. “Warn me before you do that.”
“Sorry.”
She touched the match flame to the end of the torch. They’d been using table legs. Bethany had the end of it wrapped in a sheet that caught easily, with spare sheets in the bag so she could reuse the torch.
She’d gotten good at it, having learned early to let the sheet burn a little before holding the torch upright, or bits of it would fall on her hand. This meant letting hot ash fall on the floor, but that had never been an issue, not even in the dorm hallways, which were carpeted.
Considering the library floor splashed when she walked, she was probably okay, she figured.
As long as it was water and not gasoline.
“Be very careful with that flame,” Carol said. She was on the other side of the room, next to a stack of old newspapers.
“Yeah, wow,” Robbie said. “Everything down here’s flammable.”
“Including us, yeah,” Bethany said.
There was a wooden staircase to Carol’s left.
“I’m getting out of here, guys,” Bethany said. “I wanna see the tornado. You can tell me it’s dumb and childish later.”
The door at the top of the stairs was locked, but not with the kind of lock that would give her trouble. She got through it in under a minute and didn’t even have to put down the torch.
“Hey, you guys coming?” she asked.
She continued without waiting for a reply.
Her childhood was on the other side. The door let out into the old wing’s children’s section, a basement-level area that used to be equal parts books and play area. Bethany remembered being taken down here when she was five, just as she was learning that the symbols under the pictures meant something.
All the books were gone now, but a lot of the displays—a giant green caterpillar, a gigantic horned monster, a few superheroes—remained. That only meant the building was closed down not long after her last memory of the place. The new kids’ area in the modern wing probably had more current artwork.
Robbie and Carol made it up the stairs.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“The tomb of my misspent youth,” Bethany said. “I used to love coming down here.”
She handed Robbie the torch and took up a position at the window facing Cambridge Street.
“Aw, man, where is it?” she asked. She couldn’t see the tornado anywhere.
As if in response to her question, a powerful wind shook the glass in its frame.
“Where are the books?” Robbie asked.
“I think this whole wing might be condemned,” Bethany said. “Long time ago. Last time I came, I wasn’t allowed down here. I think only the stacks are used now.”
“The stacks?” Carol asked.
“Archived stuff. Cool place. I’ll show you if you want.”
“I think we should find some books,” Robbie said. “Recent ones. I take it that would be in the new wing?”
“Yeah, come on. I think I missed the fun outside.”
She took back her torch and led them up a staircase that was embedded in one of the things that looked—from the outside—like a castle turret. The windows were thin and tall, and out of reach. Decorative and not too useful for archers.
At the top of the steps was the old lobby. She remembered this place twice over. Before the new wing existed, it was what you’d pass through to get to the basement. As she got older, and the books moved, she still went through it, only then it was to get to the stacks.
A breeze hit them as soon as they reached the lobby; one of the windows had been broken.
“I guess we could have gotten in through there,” Bethany said, as wind and a little rain tickled her arm. The condemned porch was on the other side.
“I think the storm must have done that just now,” Robbie said. “It wasn’t like that before.”
“Kind of it to leave the other windows alone,” Carol said.
The entrance to the former center of the main library—where all the boring adult books were located—was to the right of the down staircase. Those doors were closed now. On the wall opposite the lobby desk was a set of steel doors leading to the stacks. Next to that was the entrance to the new wing.
“That’s where all the up-front books are,” Bethany said, pointing to the new wing. “If you guys don’t mind, I was gonna head to the stacks first.”
Robbie opened the steel door and peeked inside. Cold air came out. All either of them could see was a metal grate floor and the beginning of a railing.
“Seriously?” he said. “What for?”
“I’m in the middle of a couple of series,” she said. “It’s hard to explain.”
“I guess,” he said. “Just, I don’t know, be careful. That window could have let something in.”
“Back atcha,” Bethany said. “I’m going on the other side of a steel door. You gu
ys don’t have one of those in the glass house over there.”
Robbie
The first thing to greet them on the ramp connecting the old to the new was a sign that read WE’VE GONE SOLAR above a bank of light switches. Excited, Robbie tried the switches.
It didn’t do anything.
“Of course not,” he said.
“What is it?” Carol asked. She was on his left, with two fingers on his outstretched elbow.
“Nothing. I’m going to keep trying light switches until I find one that works.”
“Yes, well. I think we’ve established that the power grid has been offline since the start of the whateverpocalypse.”
Robbie laughed. It was Touré’s word. It still cracked him up. “According to this sign,” he said, “the library isn’t on the grid; it’s solar.”
“Hmm. That is interesting. I wonder what would cause a solar panel to fail?”
“I don’t know. But we can go ahead and rule out lack of sunshine.”
The glass walls weren’t doing a great job of letting in the aforementioned light, although there wasn’t really any to let through, for a couple of reasons: (1) There was the torrential rainstorm outside; and (2) there was a real possibility that it was already late enough in the day for the sun to start setting. If it was getting dark, they might have to spend the night in the library, although the house wasn’t far.
Robbie noted that the extreme rain wasn’t doing a lot to wash the windows. That was because it wasn’t just dirt—the windows were tinted. And probably treated, to keep the sunlight from discoloring the books. Either way, he couldn’t see through them, and as a result the whole library was pitch dark.
“Hang on,” he said. “I can’t see.”
“You’ll get used to that.”
“I believe you,” he said, laughing. He was well past feeling awkward about his sightedness around Carol.
He stopped in the walkway and, using the fading light from the old section, started assembling his own torch.
“How’d you know about the tornado?” he asked.
“Didn’t you feel it?” Carol said. “The pressure, in your ears.”
“I did, I guess. Wasn’t something I thought about at the time.”
The Apocalypse Seven Page 24
