by Teresa Grabs
She threw one torch down into the group. The anghenbeast howled as the flame landed on its back. The pack scattered briefly while the injured one fled to the safety of another part of the city. Echo took aim and threw the second lit torch, but this one missed its target and lit the ground on fire. The plants had dried in the late summer heat, and the small fire didn’t take long to spread. Between the growing fire and increasing smoke, it didn’t take long for the pack to split. Only two continued, enraged by their unseen attacker, toward her home.
As they approached, she stood to get better aim with her spear and threw one towards the lead anghenbeast, but it missed its target. It only served to startle and enrage it further. The tapping of their large clawed paws hitting the floor of the main entrance echoed through the building and sent shivers up her spine. Charlie ran down the stairs toward the sound before Echo could stop him. She grabbed her last two spears and ran down after him as the sounds of battle rang in her ears. Snarling and growling bounced off the walls. She ran as fast as she could but stopped dead in her tracks as she heard Charlie’s yelp followed by the unmistakable sound of crunching bone. Her heart and stomach lurched into her throat, but there was no time to think. No time to reflect. An unknown rage exploded from within. Echo screamed as she reached the top of the stairs above her enemy and flung one spear deep into the back of the anghenbeast that still had Charlie in its mouth. The other snarled and lunged up the stairs.
Pain coursed through her body as she lay under its weight. Her breathing labored as the smell of smoke grew thicker. Echo screamed as she found an unknown strength and pushed the dead anghenbeast off her. The broken spear rolled down the stairs, clanging with each step. Sounds of crackling tinder reminded her she was not out of danger yet. Panting, she crawled to her feet, wincing as she pulled a claw from her left shoulder. Blood soaked her shirt, but the light from the growing flames ignited her survival skills once again.
Echo ran up to the shop, grabbed her bag, knife, caver’s skin, two unlit torches, and then ran back down the stairs. By the time she reached the staircase, flames had begun consuming the dried plants that once covered the floors and walls, making the front entrance impassable. She climbed over the anghenbeast on the stairs and saw Charlie’s lifeless body lying on the floor near the second dead anghenbeast. There was nothing she could do for him. She fled out the side of the building and into the dark city filled with more roaming anghenbeast.
Spreading flames drove the animals out of their homes and further into the city. The flames provided light as she joined the greeners in their search for somewhere safer and followed them to a part of the city she had never seen. In the last three months, she had explored only the buildings in a ten-block radius but never felt the need to explore much further. Now she had little choice. Surviving meant moving forward. Always moving forward. She continued moving forward through the city until there was no light from the fire and the air returned to its musty, yet sweet scent. There were no wide-open areas and fewer dying plants in this part of the city.
She stopped and lit a torch by striking her knife against the framework of a building and held it high. While highly weathered and worn by plants, the buildings were much more intact in this part of the city. It was getting darker, and Echo needed to find shelter for the night. She walked a little further, past where even the greeners were not going.
In front of a large, but short building, there was a sign covered in dead vines. She lit the vines and watched them burn and fall to the ground. She stomped on the embers once they landed to make sure she didn’t catch this part of the city on fire as well.
“Hope City Library.”
Echo blinked in disbelief. Her dream. Those boys. They said they would be forced to move to Hope like the others. Were her dreams real? The echo of a lone anghenbeast sent shivers up her spine.
“Hope City Library it is.”
Fourteen
She started up the walkway and found the building to be like most of the rest of the city except it appeared to be stone rather than metal. Unlike her last home, the library had a large stone fireplace in an open central room, and the interior was largely intact. Whoever made this building, made it to last and withstand the tides of time. Echo wandered around the central room for a few minutes, then remembered the anghenbeast were still outside, somewhere in the city. She found refuge for the rest of the night in a small office by the central room that still had a door on its hinges that she could barricade. The only other way in the room was through a small window that was much too small for any of the anghenbeast or cavers she had seen so far.
Echo rested the burning torch in the corner of the room, closed the door, and barricaded it with a small metal desk that was in the room. Resting under the open window, she looked up at the night sky and gripped her knife. Night provided time to finally think whether she wanted to or not. Thoughts of the dead anghenbeast flooded her mind. Its last snarl echoed in her ears. Images of Charlie laying there, dead, helpless, defenseless. Why didn’t I stop him? Why didn’t I grab him? Why didn’t I save him?
The last three months played in her mind in reverse. The caver’s skin coated its dead body, bringing it back to life. All the small, furry creatures that Charlie had eagerly consumed returned to life and scurried back to their homes where loved ones were waiting for them. The greener Echo killed rose from where it lay and began gnawing on the lush green plants in peace. Emotions she thought were gone, long hardened since the cave, returned with a vengeance.
Unable to constrain them, unwilling to control them, Echo screamed. She screamed for Charlie. She screamed apologies into the night sky for killing without a thought. She cursed the anghenbeast for turning her into a monster. Where there were no more screams to scream, she cried. Cried for Charlie. Her friend was gone. She was truly alone now. She had not been there for him. She cried for Michael. She wondered if he had even encountered the anghenbeast or had accidentally died too soon. She cried for Matthew, who never even made it to the oasis. What he went through must have been much worse.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” she whispered as her eyelids grew heavy. “I should have been a better friend.”
Before sleep overtook her, Echo cursed the state for exiling her. All she wanted now was to understand why. What was so wrong with her that she needed to be exiled. The knife slid from her hand as she slumped in the corner asleep bathed in starlight under the caver’s skin. When morning broke, and the sounds of life returned to the world outside her office, Echo woke and rubbed dry, crusted tears from her eyes.
“Good Morning, Charlie.”
Echo sat up and looked around the room briefly forgetting the events of the night before. A lump formed in her throat, but she swallowed it rather than allowing herself to be overcome with emotion again. He was gone, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“Always forward, Echo” she reminded herself. “Always forward.”
She snuffed her nose and stood up. As she stretched, she was painfully reminded of the anghenbeast’s massive body that slammed into hers. Light reflected off the surrounding buildings and lit up the great central room as she walked from her room into the library.
“Wow”
Echo looked in amazement as she walked further into the room and looked up into what was just darkness hours before. The upper floors were open and looked down into the central room where she stood among tables and chairs that were just becoming visible under the dying plants. A smile grew on her face that could not be held back by the emptiness in her soul created by her lost friend. Her smile grew into laughter and excitement as she returned to her room and picked up her knife.
She walked around the main floor running her hand over the walls, desks and kicked what must have been a trash receptacle in its former life that now lay on the floor. At the opposite end of the open room was a large staircase that led up to the first floor. Tall shelves had fallen over or collapsed on themselves and what books they once held were long disintegrate
d and now lay in dust piles beneath the dying vines. Tables and chairs filled the open spaces on the first floor. Two other floors above her were the same. Once back on the main floor, her stomach growled and reminded her that not everything was back to normal. She had shelter, and the knife provided her some protection, but she still did not have warm clothes or, more pressing, food. Without a spear, hunting would be very difficult, and there were no more plants bearing fruit. With one last look around, Echo stepped outside into the midday sun, covered her eyes, and looked around. She memorized the buildings around her new home and set off in search of food.
◆◆◆
Two weeks had passed since Echo followed the greeners to the Hope City Library and started life over again. Mornings were still hard as she longed to see Charlie’s face when she first woke, but nights were even harder as she settled in on the caver’s skin by the fireplace. She would often glance toward the entrance halfway expecting to see Charlie amble in panting after a long day of chasing things. While exploring the new neighborhood, she found a source of fresh water in what may have been a park at one time, chemical lanterns just like the ones her class used when they went night sleeping in the school’s basement in third-year, and she found the upper basement levels of the library a perfect holding area for meat. One frail greener should feed her for the winter. However, her torn clothing would not last much longer. Still faced with the prospect of freezing to death, Echo set out every day after the sun warmed the city to find clothes or tools that she could use to cut and sew the caver skin into clothes. So far, all she found were office buildings.
In the lower level of the library tucked away in a back office hanging on the wall was a map of the city that she used to mark where she had already searched. This part of the city was as crammed together as her city was, but she had yet to find the state building. This puzzled her as the state built and owned everything in the city, yet Hope did not appear to be built the same way. Each of the buildings she had explored so far retained some remnant of the individuals who used to occupy the building, and none seemed to indicate a state like hers. The closeness of the buildings and interior layouts created pockets of color where life in Hope could be felt and seen. She collected what she needed from each building to the left side of her street creating a two-block zone where she felt safe and protected from the anghenbeast should they attack again. Now, Echo turned her attention to creating a safe zone on the right side of the street behind the library.
She tucked knife in her waistband, flung her empty bag on her back, and headed out into the city. The library had, at some point in its life, a park behind it, which meant fewer buildings on this side of the street. It also meant more open space to plan an attack in if the anghenbeast came that way.
“Best set some traps,” she said, walking through the park to the street behind the library.
The first building was like all the others except the elements left no room untouched. There were so many buildings to explore. Her policy was that if she didn’t find anything of use on the first two floors, it was not worth her time to explore further. Few animals lived in this part of the city and the lateness of the season meant more vegetation had already died. This made exploring easier and less dangerous. The second, third, and fourth buildings were more of the same, but as she crossed onto the next street that was shielded by the elements, she felt like she was home.
It was nothing to look at from the outside, with its broken windows and ravaged façade, but from the inside, it was a goldmine. She walked in the open door and gasped. It had been a mercantile. She ran outside and looked up to count the number of floors. Ten at least. She jumped up and down with excitement. A real mercantile. She ran back inside and started rummaging through metal drawers and offices on the main floor looking for anything that she could use as clothing, food, weapons, or survival. Like the other buildings though, she knew the only hope was finding something in the interior part of the building; a little nook or cranny protected from the outside for as long as it was possible. Oh, there were no rooms completely untouched by the outside, but some were better than others.
The first floor held nothing, as did the second floor. She paused on the staircase and looked up. Rules were to move on, but this building held such possibility. Dismissing her own rule, she climbed the stairs to the next level. And the next. And the next. Each floor yielded nothing of use. She had come that far for nothing.
“If there’s nothing on the next one, I’m done.”
The stairs leading to the sixth floor had corroded worse than the others, and she found herself climbing up by the railing rather than risk falling through the stairs. Once on the floor, her spirits lifted seeing how cut up and partitioned it was. There was bound to be more interior rooms up here than the sales floors below. She ignored all the outer offices and doors and headed for the center rooms whose hallways were clean and looked like someone could walk out of one of the doors any moment.
She stopped and looked down the center hallway. It reminded her of the hallway where her father worked. She felt like an intruder. An outsider who didn’t belong in that shop’s hallways. Her mind raced with images of people bustling around the hall, moving in and out of the rooms as they collected goods for the sales people and customers below them. Their dress was unfamiliar to her as it was neither uniform nor as casual as the people in her dreams. They walked past as if she were not there. She was the future echo of their lives.
“What happened to you?”
As soon as she spoke, the images disappeared, and she was left standing in the middle of the hall once again. Her hear pounded, and she instinctively lowered slightly and brandished her knife. Silence. There were no sounds of life anywhere in the hall, yet she felt watched. This was not the first time she had felt watched while exploring this part of the city, but she pushed it out of her mind as paranoia because there were so few animals here and she felt more alone. Especially without Charlie. Charlie would have loved exploring these new buildings with her, but she had to put him to the back of her mind as well.
“Focus, Echo.”
The first few doors in this hall belonged to offices, but the last one opened into a large storeroom filled with clothing in varying states of decay. Even dry rotted clothing brought a smile to her face. Her heart felt light, and she became giddy as she touched a pile of shirts that turned to powder under her fingers. She laughed. Walking from shelf to shelf and row to row, Echo touched and imagined what all these clothes looked like when they were new. She had worn the same set of clothes since she was exiled. Her mouth watered for a change of clothes. Something. Anything. A small stack of pants tucked away in a cabinet behind glass doors appeared to be in better shape than the others and as she lifted the top pair little pops and cracks echoed around the room. They were plastic-like and reminded her of the workman’s boots that she saw in the machine shop on her field trip. She held up the pair to her waist, and they engulfed her whole body making her laugh more. Searching through other stacks produced a pair that, with a little help, could serve as her new pants.
On the other side of the storeroom were shirts, and she had a much easier time finding something there to replace her torn, thin, blood-stained shirt as size didn’t matter. She quickly changed clothes, ripped another shirt into strips, and threaded it through her new pants, making a belt of sorts. She never wished she had a mirror more than she did then. Echo spun in circles with outstretched arms, feeling like a new person. A new Echo for a new life in a new city. She was but an echo of her former self. These were workman’s pants that had pockets on their sides that held her knife snuggly. She threw her bag back on and headed out into the hallway to see what else lay in store for her.
Back out on the street, she returned to exploring the other buildings. Nothing much of note in the remaining buildings and, as the sun was getting low, she returned to her library. There used to be so much time to explore, but now the hours of daylight were short, which meant long, and lonely nights.
She had not yet explored all her library though, always wanting to leave something for the next night. A cool wind blew through the city as she returned home and made her very thankful she found more clothing. It was the little things in life that excited her now. Nothing held much value before either, but now everything was divided into whether it could help her survive or slow her down. In that light, few things were truly necessary.
It was dusk when she arrived at the library. She set her bag down in front of the fireplace and returned to the front door to install her night security that she built the week before. It was like the one at the cave, but this time was made of metal lashed together by thick wire. Two wedges provided interior support and shards of metal scattered throughout the lashing ensured it would do damage to anything that tried to break it down. Should the anghenbeast come back, or something worse appear, she was ready. She lit her night’s fire and retrieved a few pieces of meat from the basement for her dinner.
“You should have seen it, Charlie.” She sat by the fire talking to the flames. “There were so many piles of clothes on the shelves. I got this new shirt and these new pants. What do you think? Yeah? Thanks! I like them too. They didn’t have anything there your size. You would still be cold. You would have had so much fun today, but I think this part of the city would be boring for you.”
When the meat was cooked, she sat on her caver skin rug and ate in silence just as she had all those years in school. When she was finished, she stood up and picked up a chemical lantern.
“Well, come on, let’s go finish exploring the basement. We still don’t know what’s behind those metal doors.”
In the library’s basement, below her meat level, and below the building’s maintenance level, lay a very strange level made of metal. Its floor was metal. Its ceiling was metal. Even the room’s doors were metal. She explored the hall itself the previous night, and it appeared that this was the lowest level in the entire library as there were no other stairs, ladders, or access points that she could find. This level only had one way in and one way out. It was also the coldest and darkest part of the building. The lantern provided some light, but not as much as she would have liked.