We were going to be there for each other. That’s what human beings were always meant to do.
Now, it was our job to follow through on that legacy.
54
I THOUGHT TRUDY Aiken was going to pass out right around the seventh floor. We were less than a third of the way to the computer lab and she had to sit down. Prianka, with her good arm, handed Trudy a bottle of water which she gulped at greedily. Prianka also pulled out a juice box from a bag she was carrying and handed it to Sanjay. He took it from her, popped the tiny straw through the tin foil top, and sucked out the contents.
Professor Billings was holding a flashlight in one hand and a tiki torch in the other. I felt like we had stopped on the ledge of a cliff part way up a mountain. The stairwell went up and up into the darkness and it was eerily quiet. The only sound I could hear was Trudy huffing and puffing between gulps of water. After a minute or two, she caught her breath.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she kept saying over and over again. “I’m sorry I’m so fat.”
“Trudy,” Professor Billings said. “Stop it. You are a wonderful, beautiful, amazing human being.”
Sanjay took another sip of his juice box, licked his lips and said, “It’s not nice to call people fat.”
“Yeah,” I smiled at Trudy. “So be nice to yourself.”
“Besides,” said Sanjay in a completely deadpan voice. “You ain’t fat. You fluffy.”
All of us burst out laughing, which was the best kind of tension-buster ever. Even Prianka cracked a smile.
“Where did you get that from?” giggled Trudy. Obviously our little seventh-floor break was doing her some good.
“On a poster in Walmart.”
“Well, I like it,” she said. “Fluffy power to the rescue.” She balled her hands into fists and raised both arms in the air.
“Fluffy power to the rescue,” we all agreed then stood and kept climbing.
Every few flights we stopped for a quick rest. I was okay with that. We slowly made our way to the tenth flour, then the twelfth.
Right after the fifteenth floor landing, I heard a noise from somewhere up above. Any other time in my life, walking up the endless stairwell of a ginormous brick library, in the dark, I would have shrugged it off as just a mouse, or whatever else lurks in places like this.
This time was different. I couldn’t afford to shrug anything off.
“What was that?” I whispered. I thought I was being quiet, but it felt as though my words echoed through the stairwell.
“What was what?” said Prianka and instinctively stood in front of Sanjay.
“What? What? What?” said Andrew in a crow’s version of a whisper. We all stopped and listened.
After a moment, I heard the sound again. It was faint and probably several floors above us, but it was definitely there—like the belly scrape of a snake against the cement stairs, and we all know how much I love snakes.
“Something’s there,” I said as quietly as I could.
“Poxer?” whispered Prianka.
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I have fire,” said Professor Billings who was still holding onto her tiki torch.
“Good,” I said. “But I’m immune and you’re not.”
“Point taken,” she said and offered me the torch. I shook my head and held up my can of hairspray and a lighter.
“No worries,” I said. “I’m starting to like this whole makeshift blowtorch thing.” Then I took a deep breath and put one foot on the stairs going up.
“I will never forgive you if you get killed,” hissed Prianka after me.
I stopped and turned around. “Really?” I said. “Is that it?”
Prianka stared at me with her dagger eyes—a look that was all too familiar. “Okay. How about, ‘I’ll kill you if you get killed.’”
“Seriously?” I said. I actually felt like we were either on the verge of making up again for like the millionth time, or breaking up.
“You know what?” she said. “Trudy, could you please watch Sanjay? I’m going with Tripp.”
Oh my God. She was the most stubborn, exasperating, difficult, self-important person I had ever met.
“Suit yourself,” I grumbled.
“I am suiting myself.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Prianka turned on a flashlight and walked right by me, because, you know, she always has to be first at everything. I shook my head and followed. Maybe ten steps up, I heard Professor Billings behind us say something which made me smile, if only a little.
“When they’re a little older, I hear wedding bells.”
Trudy giggled and I could only imagine that Sanjay threw both hands over his mouth.
Prianka stomped up to the next landing, rounded the corner and went up another flight. Halfway up the next set of stairs she abruptly stopped and turned around. At that point, she was only one step higher than I was so we were pretty much face-to-face. She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. We stared at each other for maybe ten seconds before our lips locked and we were at it again, because kissing really did melt everything else away, at least while we were doing it.
Twenty seconds later we pulled apart. Prianka shook her head and stared at me.
“Why are you so difficult?” she whispered.
“Why are you?”
“You make me that way,” she said.
“No. You do,” I shot back.
“You do.”
“You do.”
We would probably have gone on like that for another ten minutes and maybe kissed a half dozen more times in the process if what happened next didn’t stop us dead in our tracks.
“You both need to make up or shut up,” said a deep voice at the top of the stairs.
Prianka twirled around and leveled her flashlight in the direction of the voice.
My stomach dropped to the bottom of my feet. Standing in front of us, pointing a very large gun, was another soldier dressed like all the others who had come after us before him.
Busted.
Crap.
55
I DIDN’T KNOW whether to put my hands up in the air or bolt. Neither of them seemed like particularly viable options. He stood there in the wedge of light coming from the flashlight that Prianka was holding, but something was different about him. He didn’t seem all stern and military like the other soldiers. If anything, I think he was a little amused.
“You’re Tripp Light,” he said, looking past Prianka to me.
“Um . . . I . . . um . . . my name is . . . Elmo,” I said. “What’s a Tripp?”
The soldier smiled and lowered his gun a little, not all the way, but far enough for me to know that another bullet wasn’t going to fly in our direction, at least for the moment. Then he reached his hand into his shirt pocket, pulled out a little folded piece of paper, and flicked it down the stairs at us.
It landed two steps up from Prianka, but neither of us picked it up.
“Well, Elmo,” said the soldier. “Has anyone else ever told you that you look exactly like the kid in that picture? I mean, like the spitting image. I swear, I think if I held the two of you up side by side and aged that kid, oh I don’t know, five years or so, he’d look exactly . . .”
“Oh my God, shut up already,” I said to him like I was almost bored. If this was going to be the end, then so be it. I was tired.
I couldn’t stand to listen to him talk. I think Prianka probably felt the same way.
“What do you want?” she snapped at the soldier. “Are you going to shoot us or are you going to keep blathering on?”
The soldier’s eyes seemed to grow wide. He looked down at the gun in his hand and got a horrified look on his face like he suddenly re
alized that he was pointing it at a couple of teenagers. “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry,” he said. “Habit, you know.” He quickly took the gun and laid it down at his feet.
“No. We don’t know,” said Prianka.
This guy was definitely a soldier, but he was also definitely not acting like one of Diana’s goons.
“Listen,” said the solider. “We’re cool, okay. I’m not after you.”
“You have my picture and you know my name,” I said. “Ten seconds ago you were pointing a gun at the two of us. That doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies.”
“I’m sorry,” said the soldier then licked his lips. “Listen. The campus is lit up like a Christmas tree and there’s a school bus parked in front of the library.”
“What of it?” said Prianka.
“What of it?” the soldier repeated. “I don’t know what you’re up to here and I really don’t care. All I know is that I’m done. That lady is crazy. I’ve been following orders like a mindless robot since this whole thing started, but even I know when the one giving the orders has a screw loose, or maybe even two or three.”
“That lady,” I repeated his words. “What lady?” Of course I knew the answer.
“Radcliffe,” said the soldier. “I’m done ‘ma-am’-ing her. She’s loony tunes, for real. This whole zombie thing is nuts.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” said a voice behind me. It was Professor Billings, followed by Trudy and Sanjay.
The soldier put both his hands up as though one of us was pointing a gun at him like he had just been doing to us. “Honest,” he said. “I’m done. I’m with the good guys now, and in my way of thinking, that means all of you. Am I wrong?”
Sanjay, with Andrew on his shoulder, took two steps forward and stared directly at the soldier, right in his face. Sanjay never did that. He didn’t like to make eye contact.
“Sanjay,” hissed Prianka but he didn’t stop and he didn’t turn around.
“What is your name?” he said to the soldier, like this little ten-year-old boy with a crow on his shoulder was our leader.
“Private Matthew Fillerman,” said the soldier. He seemed partially amused and maybe even a little scared of Sanjay.
Sanjay held out one hand, the one that wasn’t holding onto Poopy Puppy, and said, “Give me your shoelace.”
“Say what?” said the soldier.
“Your shoelace, Private Fillerman,” said Trudy Aiken, all fluffy and heroic. “Give it to him. Now.”
He looked totally perplexed. After a moment, he shrugged and sat down on the step he was standing on, untied one of his army boots and pulled the black lace free. When he was done, he threw it down the stairs. It landed a few steps shy of where Sanjay was standing. Immediately, and for amazing effect, Andrew leapt off of Sanjay’s shoulder, grabbed the shoelace in his beak, then flapped twice and landed back on his shoulder again.
Sanjay took the shoelace from Andrew, held out both his hand in front of him and tied the two ends into a single knot. “With this knot I bind thee, Private Matthew Fillerman.”
Snot almost flew out of my nose. Instead I snorted, but it wasn’t quiet.
“Shut up,” hissed Prianka.
Sanjay let out a sigh, slowly picked apart the knot and started over. “With this knot I bind thee, Private Matthew Fillerman, of your actions and your deeds so that you will hurt no one.”
“If you say so,” said the soldier.
“Shhh,” said Sanjay then continued. He tied a second knot in the shoelace and said, “I bind you of an evil tongue so that you may only speak the truth.” Andrew cawed and Professor Billings stared at the floor to hide the fact that she was probably smiling. Finally, Sanjay tied a third knot in the soldier’s shoelace and said, “With this third knot I bind your thoughts so you may conspire no more.” When he was through, Sanjay took the shoelace, crumpled it into a ball and put it in his pocket. “So mote it be,” he said, then turned to the rest of us. “He’s cool now.”
Whatever works.
I think the soldier was so stunned that he was at a loss for words. Finally he cleared his throat and said. “Okay. Can I, like, have my shoelace back?”
“No,” said Sanjay then began busying himself with Poopy Puppy.
Stranger things had happened in the past several weeks. I was used to it by now. I looked up at the soldier, who was now missing one of his shoelaces and said, “How are you even here?”
“The whole campus is burning. You might as well have sent up a flair.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “That doesn’t explain how you’re here, now, in the library.”
“Oh,” he said. “They sent me down from the roof to scout out what was going on, but I had already promised myself that it didn’t matter who or what I found, I was going to keep on going. All of them are way too crazy for me. I’ve had enough.”
“Them who?” Prianka and I both said at the same time, but right when he answered, the stairwell lit up in red.
The emergency power was back on, if only to give the building just enough light to not leave us completely in the dark.
Thank you, Randy Stephens, for being such an awesome electrician.
We were all so relieved that the soldier’s words almost flew past us and disappeared.
Almost.
“Dr. Marks and Diana Radcliffe,” he said. “And the pilot. They’re in a helicopter on the roof.”
56
THE FACT THAT Diana was so close made my insides burn with anger. Still, we were here and so was she. Maybe that was a good thing—if we hurried.
So that’s what we did.
The twenty-second floor was vacant like most of the other floors in the library, save for the computer lab. It sat not too far from the door to the stairs we had just climbed. The lab was surrounded by big glass windows and looked a little too close to the glassed-in closet I found Jimmy James in at the radio station in the center of Amherst.
Back then, there were poxers everywhere and they freaked me out. Now all they were to me was a big, fat nuisance.
Sanjay, Prianka, Trudy and Professor Billings hung back, as the private and I took care of the only three dead things on the floor. Of course, they were all inside the glass walls of the computer lab. It was easy enough to open the door and lead them out.
One was a stick-thin guy who looked totally stressed out even as a zombie. He had probably been cramming for a test. Another one was a black dude with glasses that were like a foot thick. My guess is that when he was still alive, all he did was study. The last was another hippie girl like I had seen out on the streets in Amherst, with a funky shirt, plaid shorts and weird sandals. She was even wearing penguin socks. I didn’t even know where people bought socks like that.
In no time, the penguin socks along with their wearer were torched and extinguished, but it didn’t matter. Diana, Dr. Marks and the chopper pilot were still waiting on the roof for Private Matthew Fillerman to report back to them what he’d found in the library.
“So what’s your play?” the soldier said once we were all inside the lab. The lighting was all weird and red because the building was running on back-up power, but the dozen or so computer screens remained blank.
“We have to get one of these computers up and running,” said Trudy as she pushed by him and walked past a few dark screens. Sanjay followed her with Andrew still on his shoulder.
Private Fillerman watched him go. “What’s with the freak?” he said.
I sighed. Not again. I felt a cold chill from the other side of me where Prianka was standing,
“That ‘freak’ is my brother,” she snapped. “And he’s smarter than you’ll ever be.”
Private Fillerman grimaced. “I don’t doubt it. I don’t doubt much of anything anymore. But you gotta admit, whatever he did w
ith my shoelace was bizarre. What was that, anyway?”
“Magic,” I told him.
He opened his mouth to say something, like maybe to tell me that magic didn’t exist, but he stopped.
Maybe in this new world it did.
He cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said. “Magic it is.”
Meanwhile, Trudy sat down at one of the computer setups. Sanjay mirrored her movements and sat down at the setup next to her. At the same time, they both reached over and found the power buttons on the big boxes next to the screens and waited tense seconds.
“Bingo,” Trudy said when her screen finally lit up. So did Sanjay’s.
“Bingo,” he repeated.
“Bingo. Bingo. Bingo,” chirped Andrew and I started to get the feeling that Private Fillerman was getting a crash course in ‘freak’ no matter what Prianka said.
Then Trudy took her two chubby hands, linked her fingers together, stretched them out, and cracked her knuckles. Sanjay did exactly the same thing. Finally, she turned to him and said, “The University should be an Internet hub. Most big universities are. If it is a hub, and we get on the Internet, all we need to do is find Diana’s network connection.”
Sanjay nodded his head and they both started typing on separate key pads like they were playing the piano. The click-clack of their fingers filled the room as we all watched.
Professor Billings was standing behind Prianka. After a minute or two she said, “Your brother is absolutely amazing.”
“He is,” agreed Prianka. “He’s been playing with computers since he could reach the keyboard.”
“Fascinating,” she said. “What an astounding brain.”
She was right. Still, that astounding brain belonged to someone that Diana, Dr. Marks, the pretty doctors, and anyone else behind Necropoxy, thought didn’t have the right to exist.
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