Twice.
The first time, it was for something really cool. When it was constructed, the library was one of the tallest brick buildings in the world. I think it was something like twenty-five stories tall, if not more. Western Massachusetts was really proud of having that building at the University, and more than a few books were written about it, as well as the guy who designed it.
Then the first brick fell, which is why the library became famous again.
It seems that when the building was designed, the weight of twenty-five stories worth of books and shelves wasn’t factored into the equation, and the building couldn’t take the stress.
More than a few people almost got killed as the library occasionally dropped brick bombs without warning. Eventually the University had to build a huge fence around the whole building to corner off the drop zone. A few years later, after it was proven that nothing could stop the library from chucking bricks, floor after floor of books had to be removed.
Finally, only a handful of floors remained useful.
By the time that Prianka, Trina and I went to visit the University library, only two hundred people were allowed inside at a time, just to make sure the building didn’t hurl a brick.
In the end, the University library turned into a colossal Western Massachusetts joke.
What a perfect place to put an out-of-the-way computer lab.
Unfortunately, the University in the fall meant people and people meant poxers, probably way worse than anything we had seen so far. And these weren’t going to be just any poxers. They were going to be weeks-old poxers, smelly and grimy, with dead eyes, and starving because anyone who was immune on campus had become fast food that first night.
“Okay,” my aunt Ellen said. “The University has a computer lab.” She turned to Trudy. “If we can get you there, do you think you can hack into Diana’s network?”
Trudy looked pale as she clutched little Krystal. “For everyone’s sake, I think I have to try.”
There was another general murmur that wafted through the air. Meanwhile, Trina sidled up next to me and put her mouth so close to my ear that her whisper was barely a whisper, but I heard it loud and clear anyway. “Do you know how many poxers someone Trudy’s size could feed?”
“Shup up,” I hissed back, but she was right. How could someone like Trudy navigate through a minefield of poxers at the University? How could she even get close to the library, let alone fend off whatever was inside?
While I was busy stressing myself out so much that little beads of sweat started welling up on my forehead, I didn’t even notice Sanjay standing up or raising his hand.
“Sanjay?” said my aunt. I was sure that she thought he was going to come out with some sort of fact or figure that was mildly amusing.
Instead, this is what he said.
“I am autistic. Autistic doesn’t mean stupid. I know computers. I can break them, too.”
Everyone was silent. I didn’t know why, but I suspect it’s because what he said was the truth. Just because he was autistic didn’t mean he was stupid—not at all.
“Good,” Trudy said as she smiled at him, but she couldn’t hide her fear behind her grin no matter how hard she tried. “Two minds are better than one.”
Just like that, it wasn’t me and my friends who were going to save the day once again, leaving the adults locked inside a Walmart with bicycle chains. It was all of us—kids and adults—and we were going to finally have to work together if we had any hope of bringing down Diana and her people.
That, or die trying.
46
I FOUND A POLAROID camera in the toy department. I didn’t think they even made Polaroid cameras anymore. It’s not like it was stacked on the shelves with the other photography equipment. The camera was sitting with all the science toys, next to a kit to dissect a plastic, see-through version of the human body, and something called a monocular that had a picture of a kid wearing this cyborg looking thing on his eye.
I took the camera, ripped open the box and was grateful that there were two packs of instant film that came along with it.
Then I took pictures.
The first one was of Charlie Buckman and his parents drinking tea at one of the tables where we had our meeting. Charlie stood between his two parents and they smiled. It was such a normal moment, right in the middle of our abnormal lives.
“You’re a good guy, Tripp,” Charlie said to me after I had taken the picture, then for some reason he stuck his hand out and shook mine. I was a little embarrassed. Maybe it was because he was a minister and I had snapped at him when we first met. Who knows?
The second picture was of Sanjay and Trudy. They were also sitting at one of the tables. Trudy was talking to him in computer speak and he was listening and absorbing while eating a bag of something cheesy and crunchy. Sanjay had orange dust all over his mouth. So did Trudy. The dogs were with them, and Andrew, too. He sat patiently at the edge of the table waiting for either of them to share.
After the picture slid out of the bottom of the camera, I waited for the image to materialize before my eyes. When it did, I smiled and shoved it into my pocket along with the picture of the Buckmans.
Then I went in search of the others.
I found Jimmy, Trina, Manny, Niki and Prianka fillings bags with supplies. Niki and Manny had a basket and they were gathering food. Trina, Jimmy and Prianka were getting other things—more essential things. If we were ever going to make it through hordes of undergraduate poxers at the University we were going to need fire power. Not guns, but honest to goodness things that made fire.
“Say ‘Cheese,’ I said as they gathered together for a group shot.
After the first picture, my father emerged out of the shadows, took the camera from me and told me to go and stand with my friends. I wasn’t sure if he was still mad at me or not. If he was, I could tell his anger was fading fast and getting replaced by worry. After all, we were all about to do something crazy dangerous. Nothing in his medical practice, or in his life, had ever prepared him for the zombie apocalypse. He was trying, though. He really was.
“Thanks,” I said after he took the second picture and handed the camera back to me.
“You’re not an easy kid,” he said.
“Why? Is that what it said on the package? I know we were a double- pack and all, but no one ever told us we had to be ‘easy.’” I said that last part using air quotes.
He shook his head. I thought he was going to get mad at me or something. Instead, he said, “I wish I was more like you.”
That one threw me for a bit of a loop. “Why? I’m a toothpick with a smart mouth.”
“I was a toothpick at your age, too,” he said. “Then I wasn’t.”
“What about the smart mouth?”
“Who knows?” he shrugged. “I was a teenager once. Maybe I let a few zingers fly here and there.”
I shuffled the camera around in my hands. “So what you’re saying is you were probably just like me when you were sixteen. Probably not an easy kid.”
He stared at me for a moment. Then lightning fast, he reached out and pulled me to him and hugged me so fiercely that I could barely breathe. Yikes. I was so not used to all this mushy stuff, especially from my dad. “You suck,” he told me then kissed the top of my head. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Then he left. Everyone stared at me and Trina smiled this big, goofy smile.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” she replied. “It’s only that you just lived through a command performance of what I had to go through while you were still sleeping. My lecture was longer, though, and Mom cried.”
“Did they say you weren’t an easy kid, too?”
“Nah,” she said. “They know you’re the badirchand. Not me.”
Prianka finished piling a shelf’s worth of lighter fluid into a basket then came up to the two of us. She easily slipped under my arm like she was always meant to be there. “You are a badirchand,” she said. “But you’re my badirchand.”
Trina snorted. “I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I think the two of you are worse than me and Jimmy.”
This time it was Prianka’s turn to snort. “Somehow I doubt that.” Then she left me and continued gathering supplies.
Meanwhile, I went off in search of more subjects for my camera.
I found Freaky Big Bird, Nedra Stein, Randy Stephens, and Professor Billings layering themselves with clothing in the fashion department. Everyone seemed to be in a cheerful mood. I don’t know why.
They readily stopped and posed for a picture, even Felice. When I looked at it, she had a weird expression on her face that made me a little nervous.
She looked crazy.
I think it took Andrew crapping in her mouth to finally make her snap.
Creepy creepy, right?
A few aisles over, Aunt Ella and my mother had little Krystal. They were playing dress-up with her, but what they were really doing was making sure that she had warm clothing for the next few months. My mom and Aunt Ella even let her put on some makeup.
When I pulled out the camera, she posed like she was in one of those kiddy beauty pageants where they dress kids up like adults.
It was a great picture. I smiled when I added it to my collection in my pocket.
Finally, I doubled back to the toy section, filled a bag with a few things then went in search of Bullseye and Dorcas. It’s no surprise that I found them in sporting goods. Bullseye was looking at the bow and arrow sets, while Dorcas sat in one of those portable chairs that people bring to soccer games so they can perch themselves in front of the bleachers.
“Hey kid,” she said and lifted her hand in greeting as she licked her lips and stuck a lit cigarette back in her mouth.
“Hey,” I said.
“You okay?”
I nodded and held up the camera. “Just taking some mugshots,” I said. It wasn’t until that moment that I even fully realized what I was doing. I was taking pictures of all the good guys in case anybody didn’t make it through our journey to the University. I wanted to remember everyone just like they were and not being eaten by poxers.
Or turning.
Dorcas leveled a wizened gaze in my direction.
“I don’t take a good picture,” she said.
“Too late,” I told her then took her picture before she had a chance to blink. It came out great. Then I turned and took another one of Bullseye, right as he was about to shoot an arrow at a mannequin wearing hunting gear.
That one came out great, too.
I stared at all of my pictures for a long moment then showed them to Dorcas. She fanned them out as though they were a pack of cards and smiled as her eyes danced over each person’s face.
Bullseye came up and stuck his hand out. Dorcas handed him the pack of pictures and he flipped through them, too.
“I look wicked awesome,” he said when he found the candid shot of himself, standing erect, with one arm pulled back on the bow before he let the arrow fly.
“Wicked, for sure,” I echoed and took the pictures back from him and put them in my pocket.
Then I handed Dorcas the bag I had been carrying. She opened it up and pulled out two of the monoculars that had been on the shelf where I had found the camera. On the side of the packaging, in green neon-letters, it read ‘one-eyed night vision,’ with a cartoon of a kid staring at a raccoon with stars overhead.
“What’s this?” Dorcas asked.
I swallowed. I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to move forward. I wanted to close my eyes and feel safe for one more minute, but I didn’t have that kind of luxury. Maybe someday I would, but not today.
Finally I took a deep breath and let it slowly out. “I think the three of us need to talk,” I said. “It’s important.”
47
WE LEFT WALMART at around 10:30 that night—all of us.
While we were busy loading the bus, Randy Stephens torched two poxers. He was nervous but less nervous than when we cleared the parking lot the first time.
One of the poxers was an old lady who probably used a walker when she was still a person. The other was a middle-aged guy with torn pants and no shoes.
The two of them squealed as they went up in flames then popped, sending burning chunks everywhere.
Sanjay didn’t even cover his eyes when they exploded. Something had changed in him. I guess if you see horrible things over and over again, they start becoming common place. It’s probably just like television. I noticed over the last year or two that TV shows started showing people puking on camera. Of course it was totally fake, but it didn’t matter. After the tenth or eleventh time, I stopped turning away when someone ralphed. The whole act of barfing stopped being gross.
Instead, it became commonplace—just like torching a poxer.
Once we were all loaded on the bus, Trina got into the driver’s seat again. No one batted an eye. Before she started up the engine, I handed her another night vision monocular like the others I had found in the toy department.
“This is awesome,” she said after she fit it over her head and turned it on. “I mean, it would be great if it was for two eyes instead of one, but I can drive with this and no headlights. It’s perfect.”
“I thought it might be,” I said. Then I put one hand on her shoulder and bent down on my knees next to her.
“What?” she said, because she knew I was about to get all serious.
“Nothing. Okay, well, not nothing.” I stared at the floor for a moment.
“Are you okay?” she asked me.
“Funny,” I said. “I was going to ask you the same thing.” I leaned in a little. “The question is, are you okay, you know, with all this? I mean, we could just skip the University altogether, drive the other way, and never look back.”
“If we did that we’d always be looking back,” she said. “This is as good a plan as any. I’m tired of running. It’s not good for my complexion.”
I smiled. “Zits aside, you know we’re going to be driving into a whole mess of poxers—probably more than we’ve ever seen.”
“I’m not worried,” she said. “We’ve been dealing with whole messes of poxers since that first night. I’m getting good at hitting them with the bus, and we’re all getting good at torching them. We’ll be fine.”
“I hope so,” I said as I turned and looked over my shoulder. Dorcas’s school bus was full of familiar faces, some young and some old. Not one of them looked like they didn’t want to be there. Even Freaky Big Bird had lost her sour expression, although it was replaced by that crazy creepy one.
“Then here we go,” my sister said and turned the key in the ignition. As the engine rumbled, Professor Billings made her way to the front where Jimmy was sitting right behind Trina. She slipped into the seat next to him.
“I know this area well,” she said. “I’ll guide Trina through some back roads that won’t have as many cars on them. Then we’ll try to approach the University from behind. It’s our best way of getting on campus with the least amount of the dead around.”
“That’s why they pay you the big bucks,” said Jimmy. “You heard her, babe. The professor’s going to GPS it for you.”
“You got it,” my sister said and slowly backed the bus up from its hiding spot on the far side of Walmart. When she was clear of the building, she did an awesome three point turn and faced us in the direction of the road.
I heard my dad say, “When did she learn how to do that?”
Then I heard my mother. “When did the two of them grow up? Weren’t we just
at Forest Park Zoo riding ponies and telling Tripp he didn’t have to be afraid of the horsies?”
That made me smile and sad at the same time. I would never be at Forest Park Zoo again, with ponies and ice cream, surrounded by happy people who knew nothing of poxers, or Necropoxy, or people as evil as Diana Radcliffe.
Memories like that would be fables that this generation would tell the one after us, and the next and the next.
Trina stepped on the gas, and the bus lurched forward into the night.
“Oh my God,” she said. “This monocular thing is awesome. I can see everything.”
“Hey, that’s what I’m here for,” I told her. “Awesome ideas and comic relief.”
Then I looked back at the sea of faces, two dogs, and a crow, sitting quietly in a school bus, heading toward a possible suicide mission that was wicked dangerous at best.
I was thankful for one thing, though.
Everyone was so focused on leaving that no one seemed to notice that we were missing two of our number.
Dorcas and Bullseye had someplace else to be.
48
I LOST TRACK OF the calendar.
I suppose it had something to do with all the night driving and the day sleeping, along with a fair amount of anxiety. As the bus traveled through the darkness with Trina effortlessly weaving right then left to avoid whatever was in the road, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what day it was.
I knew we were still in September, or at least I thought we were. I wasn’t sure what holidays were supposed to be coming up next. I think Columbus Day was sometime in October, but Columbus Day was such a minor holiday, it never meant much to me except for an extra day off of school. Of course I knew Halloween was at the end of October, but who wanted to think about creepy things anymore? We all had just about enough scares to last a lifetime. Maybe the whole idea of Halloween would slip away—well—except for candy—and maybe those orange and white triangular things. I knew they were called candy corns, but Trina and I always called them corn snots, because they were perfectly sized to fit up your nose.
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