The high winds buffeted the dormitory; it felt like the entire structure was tilting, and complaining about having to do so. The wind also exposed every last spot where the walls let through a draft, and in two places—dorm rooms, on the third and fourth floors—windows they didn’t realize weren’t intact allowed entire snowdrifts to form indoors.
Several times, they heard wolves howling somewhere distant, their voices carried by the wind. Other than that, it felt as if the world around them was dead.
They took to the higher floors to watch the snowstorm blow through. Robbie and Bethany tried to describe what they were seeing—a magnificent sight, from their perspective—to Carol, who mostly focused on the noises the building made.
Carol didn’t like the storm at all, and said so, loudly, many times.
Such a chill settled in on the dorm that they finally tried the fireplace that evening. Robbie had to spend an hour sawing through wood first, and then came a comedy of errors, as it appeared the smoke wasn’t going to go up the chimney. This was alarming; more evidence to support the thesis that they were simply terrible at preparing for long-term survival.
Surely an effort could have been made in advance of the storm, to determine if the fireplace worked. During the storm, escape to another building was perilous on a level only Touré might have considered trying. Yet they were evidently about to suffocate, so escape was the only option.
Then Bethany rechecked the flue, and then they were okay. Robbie, who grew up in a house with a fireplace but without any interest in using it, thought he’d opened the flue when he’d actually closed it. Bethany—still not sharing much about her past—was raised in a house with a working one, and also claimed without elaboration that she had extensive experience with fires.
They then came to terms with two other alarming facts. First, the fireplace was a barely adequate source of heat, and second, it consumed wood at a much greater rate than their available supply. There was enough to last the storm, probably, but unless there was a thaw before the next one (they assumed there would be a next one) they didn’t have nearly enough wood to last the whole season.
Robbie, perhaps recalling the table leg he’d been using as a torch, pointed out that a lot of the furniture in the dorm was flammable, and that with the axe and saw on hand, they would probably make it through the year. After that, they could just move to the next dorm. In this way, they might never run out of things to set on fire.
It was a good point. A grim one, but still good.
The snows lasted two days. When it was over, the pile was so deep, they couldn’t open any of the doors.
Carol
1
“Hey, we’re out of food.”
This was how Bethany greeted Carol and Robbie on the morning of the third day following the storm. The snow was still entirely blocking all means of egress, and snow shovels had not been one of the mandatory items on their list of needs. Not that it mattered. As Robbie said, it’s really hard to shovel from the inside out; there would be no place to toss the snow.
“What do you mean?” Carol asked Bethany.
“Just what I said. There’s enough Noot for this morning, and then we’re done.”
“Did you check the staff area?” Robbie asked. There were about ten places extra Noot bars could be lying around, because they weren’t incredibly organized people.
“I checked everywhere.”
“I thought we put those on the shopping list,” Carol said.
“Yeah,” Robbie said. “We did. It was on Touré’s list. I didn’t even think to check.”
“We can make it a day or two,” Carol said.
“No, I said, we’re out,” Bethany said. “Dude.”
Carol assumed the last part was directed at Robbie.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll gear up.”
“What?” Carol said. “You can’t. How will you get out?”
“I’ll jump from the second floor. It’s only a couple of feet. I should be back in a few hours.”
“That’s much too dangerous.”
“It’s sunny today, Carol,” Bethany said. “We don’t know what it’ll be like tomorrow, right? What if there’s another storm?”
They were right, but Carol was panicking anyway. If he didn’t return . . .
“How will you get back?” she asked.
“I can practically walk up to the second-floor window as it is,” Robbie said.
“I saw some rope in the basement,” Bethany said. “I’ll make a rope ladder for him, if he needs it. It’ll be fine.”
“And I have plenty of winter gear now,” Robbie said. “It’s really not that far.”
“Yes, yes, all right, fine,” Carol said. “But if Touré were here, he’d be telling you what a bad idea this is, especially now that you’ve said it will be easy.”
“If Touré was here, he’d have picked up the food and we wouldn’t be facing this problem,” Robbie said.
It took Robbie an hour to collect the gear he needed, and then he was ready. Carol stood at the second-floor window and listened as he stepped through to hard snow just on the other side. They’d been truthful enough in that regard: The top of the drift really was high enough to make this feasible.
“Hurry back,” Carol said.
“It won’t be a hurry,” he said, as he crunched away. “But I’ll be back before sunset.”
“That isn’t the slightest bit comforting.”
“I know. Sorry.”
Bethany closed the window then and narrated Robbie’s progress for Carol until he was out of sight.
2
Carol was mindful of the need to keep in shape. The safest way to do that was to go on walks, something that used to make a good deal more sense when she still had Burton. It was a little tougher now, especially outside. But indoors, in an abandoned dormitory, it was an effective way to remain occupied.
Walking also made her feel less useless somehow. It made no sense, as she wasn’t doing any work that forwarded their cause, but it felt that way just the same. The only real benefit was that while she was doing it, nobody needed to look out for her, and maybe that was enough: an hour or two without her as a burden on someone else’s time.
She’d already visited all of the floors at least once.
After the ground floor, there were another four, separated by stairwells on either end and a nonfunctional elevator in the middle. Each level had been checked for obstacles, so once she got the length of the corridors down, she was able to get up to a light jog.
But today was just for exploring and keeping busy so she didn’t worry about Robbie.
On the windless days like this one—in stark contrast to the terrifying loudness of the storm—there was almost no sound. The snow muffled what might have come from the outside, save for the occasions in which a pile fell from the roof, or off a tree. Those periodic whump noises were to her ears the same as a truck dropping its rear gate, and so at first she misapprehended what she was hearing as proof of life, in a world that had no such proof to offer.
There was still plenty to notice. The fourth floor had a sour smell that kicked up whenever moisture got in through the broken window in room 421. It was also draftier than the other floors, although the fifth floor was pretty bad too. The third floor, for some reason, reminded her of the library she used to visit when she was ten. They’d had an audiobooks section that had almost nothing for ten-year-olds, so she’d just listened to what the adults were listening to. This led to a lot of awkward questions about what certain words meant, but, though scandalized, her mother never told her to stop listening.
The memory made her want to cry, so she stopped going to the third floor.
Sometimes she tried the dorm room doors. If one was unlocked—around one-third of them were—she’d wander in to discover what the last tenant had to offer. It was never much. Clothes sometimes, but no valuables. (Although, the definition of value had changed drastically of late.) If something se
emed interesting but she couldn’t identify it herself, she’d bring it to one of the others.
One such thing was a plastic disk that felt like a tiny satellite dish. It turned out to be a wireless cell phone charger. She’d never heard of such a device, and neither had Bethany or their resident tech expert, Touré. Robbie recognized it, and spent a few minutes going over the value of the product in a world with electricity. Then they set it aside.
She was on the fourth floor, checking out a new unlocked room, when she arrived at the conclusion that there was someone else in there with her.
Sneaking up on a blind person wasn’t at all nice, and most people she knew didn’t do it, or didn’t do it on purpose. New arrivals typically committed to an incidental noise—throat-clearing was a favorite—to announce their existence. It was generally unnecessary, because for the most part, the person they were coming up behind already knew they were there. It was polite, though; a way to say, I know you’re blind without having to say that out loud. But Bethany was just a kid, and Carol might be the first blind person she’d met.
“Bethany?” she said. “Is that you?”
The girl didn’t answer, so maybe she wasn’t there and Carol was just having a moment. It didn’t feel that way, though. It was the same sense she got when the wolf entered the common room that first night: a vague quality in the air. Someone is sharing this room with you, the feeling said.
“Bethany, come on. This isn’t funny.”
Silence. Not even breathing. This had to be all in her head.
Except it wasn’t.
The dorm rooms all had the same basic layout, with the choice of furniture placement an occasional variable. Carol had already felt along the desks and the bedposts of this room and was standing near the closet, which had a chest of drawers in the lower half and wasn’t deep enough to hide a person. If someone was in the room with her, they had to be taking up hardly any space, and the space they were taking up was the other side, near the window. That meant it wasn’t one of the wolves.
Not that it could have been anyway. A wolf couldn’t have appeared inside a dorm room on the fourth floor without making a lot of noise. Not unless it climbed through the window. But the snowfall, while deep, wasn’tthat deep.
The room might also not be large enough for another human being, at least not without her having bumped into that person at least once.
It was probably her imagination.
She swung the cane around the middle of the room. There was nothing there.
Except smells.
The other dorm rooms smelled like mahogany, mildew, and dust. The wolves smelled like wet dog. The smell in this room was neither of those; it was closer to urine and sweat.
Someone was there.
“Hello?”
A shift in the air from a slight motion. A rustle of cloth on cloth.
That urine smell again.
“Look, I know you’re there,” she said. “This isn’t amusing.”
She felt along the wall for the corner of the closet. The room exit was on the other side of that corner. That was where she should be.
“Hello?” she said, again.
“Carol,” a man said.
She nearly jumped through the ceiling.
“Robbie? Oh, Robbie, you terrified me. How did you get back so quickly?”
“Carol,” he said again.
“No,” she said, quietly.
This wasn’t Robbie’s voice, and it also wasn’t Touré; that was the full extent of living men who knew Carol by name.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” the intruder said.
“What?”
She swiped her stick around the room, still not connecting with anyone. Directionally, it sounded as if he was right in front of her, but there was nobody there. Her four working senses were in total revolt.
“You don’t need to be afraid. I’m here to warn you. It’s coming back.”
“Right. Yes, of course,” she said.
The exit to the room was directly behind her now. She began backing up toward it, her stick pointed toward the middle of the room like a sword.
“It’s coming back,” she said. “I understand, thank you. I’d like to go now.”
“Carol,” he said . . . and then he touched the tip of her cane and pushed it to the right.
She screamed, pulled the cane away, spun around, and got her feet caught up with one another as they tried to engage in the act of running. She fell through the doorway, and landed on her knees in the hall.
“No, no,” she cried, getting to her feet while expecting to be grabbed from behind any second. She turned and felt for the doorway, steadied herself, and grabbed for the doorknob. Then she slammed the door shut and held it.
Got you.
“Bethany?” she shouted. “Come quickly, I need you!”
Win
1
Winter hit Boston like a tsunami.
Win was a couple of miles from the gym when it happened, on a piece of land called Copp’s Hill. Elton was munching on the grass while she took in the view and considered her options.
Touré was back at the gym, feverish, and babbling like a nutbar. She was pretty sure he wasn’t going to make it, because she’d run out of ideas for how to help him and nothing she’d tried so far was working.
The morning after they started camping out at the gym, Win went out looking for whatever could take care of Touré’s wound. It was a high-risk endeavor because the pigs were everywhere, and they were aggressive at all hours, but there were also five pharmacies within a mile of the gym. The best way to avoid a confrontation was to stay on Elton as much as possible and not linger out in the open, and so that was what she did.
From the shelves, Win grabbed antibiotic pills, creams, liquids to be injected, rubbing alcohol, and fresh bandages for the wound. Once she’d filled her bag, she returned to the gym.
None of the antibiotics had any effect. The area around the wound remained red, and Touré was in agony whenever Win moved the leg, touched the leg, breathed on the leg, or thought about the leg.
The fever started the second day. She had pills for that, too, but they weren’t keeping it down. The mercury thermometer she’d scrounged—the digital ones wouldn’t work—indicated his temperature was going in the wrong direction.
By this, the third day, Touré couldn’t tell the difference between what was actually happening to him and one of several fictional adventures he’d narrated himself into. Sometimes, Win couldn’t tell the difference either, frankly. Reality was pretty messed up without any embellishment.
“I have to bring the fever down,” she said into the wind.
Copp’s Hill was a high point in Boston’s North End. Win remembered wanting to visit this city specifically for the Italian food of the neighborhood beneath her. It had proven a massive disappointment, but that was probably not the fault of the North End.
From the hill, she could also see part of Boston Harbor. At least some of what she was looking at was supposed to be dry land, but she couldn’t tell which part.
She’d surveyed that area already before running into Touré. All the buildings erected at the edge of the harbor were at least partly underwater now, if they were standing at all.
One of those buildings was the New England Aquarium, which she had been to, on a class trip as a child. There was an enormous tank in the middle, viewed by walking around a ramp that curled, clockwise, all the way to the top. She wondered if the fish in that tank stopped to look at the fish swimming outside it and asked themselves what was going on.
She could see the dry parts of the city from the hill too. On land, pigs running around the streets was the new normal. There were other animals as well, but they were scattered; the pigs only respected the wolves and the substantially larger animals. Everyone else was potential food. The potential food appeared to be cognizant of this fact.
On this day, the streets see
med a lot emptier. She didn’t understand why that was until the cold wind introduced itself. The animals knew something was coming.
Win left the edge of the hill and went back to find Elton. He looked up at her and snorted.
“I felt it too,” she said. “I think it’s snow.”
She patted his neck.
“Hope you ate enough.”
Win led him back down to the street. Copp’s Hill was a burial ground, and she didn’t feel like being around any more death today.
2
The snow didn’t care to wait for them to get back to the gym.
It started before they’d made it all the way down the hill, and was—thanks to an incredibly strong wind—blinding in seconds. It cut right through Win’s clothing, reminding her that she was dressed for a different season.
Elton allowed her onto his back for part of the return trip, but only the part he was comfortable with personally. He still wouldn’t take the bit and considered her efforts to direct him in one way or another as suggestions rather than commands, so they were relying purely on his sense of direction.
Win closed her eyes, held on to Elton’s neck for warmth, and let him find their way.
He didn’t go far, stopping at the bottom of the City Hall steps. To the left should have been Faneuil Hall, according to the signs. That was another place she’d always wanted to visit. It was half underwater now too.
Elton had stopped not because of any barrier, but because he didn’t seem to know where he was supposed to go next. Also, he was probably having about as much trouble seeing as she was.
“Okay, okay,” she said, climbing down. “I’ll lead. But I’m a tourist too, you know. You should pay better attention.”
With her in front, they walked into the teeth of the wind, around and past the old State House—now missing the clock tower—up to Washington Street.
They were getting pummeled. Thankfully, there was no hail like there had been during the last storm, but the snow was whipping around so fast, it felt like being attacked by tiny needles. They were nearly snow blind and in extreme danger of becoming actually blind if they stayed out in this weather for much longer.
The Apocalypse Seven Page 18