“Come on. Food and weapons. Flashlights, candles. Leave the rest.”
Dean stared wordlessly at the drifts of supplies resting in the truck. He sighed and scratched his head. “There’s a way...”
“There’s no way. Not if we want to leave the city today.”
“Maybe some of those houses up there would have packs, right? We’d lose twenty-minutes instead of our things.”
“I don’t care about the things!” Darla yelled, her voice echoed. Things, things, things.
Ainsley crossed her arms over her chest and bounced up and down on her heels, looking between Dean and Darla out from under her lowered head.
“Can we just make some progress today, please?”
No one answered.
Darla went back a second time into the ditch and pulled herself up to the truck. She rifled through the items and tossed out a few cans of green beans, a dented can of chickpeas, some crackers, candles, and several plastic bottles of water. Ainsley collected the cast-offs from the grass and carried them to the tarp wordlessly while Dean wandered off a few feet, peering at the overturned bus and the abandoned train with interest.
“You have your lighter? And your knife?” Darla asked him and he didn’t answer. She called his name and he turned, withdrawn. “Do you have the lighter and your knife?” This time Dean nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something, but thought better of it, and he turned back to the wreckage, his hands fumbling around his front shirt pocket.
“There’s no point in trying to work our way around the city. On foot, our best bet is to just go straight through. Let’s go.” She hopped down and the truck wobbled under her shifting weight. Gathering the edges of the tarp into her hands, Darla formed a plastic sack, and she pulled it up over her shoulder, like a downtrodden Santa Claus. Her gun holstered against her side, she walked with speed and determination past Ainsley and Dean, and left the duo in her dust.
For the most part, the city was intact. It was dusk as they marched their way into downtown Portland. This was Dean and Ainsley’s home, and it was the first time they had ventured into the heart of the city since the Release. They lamented and expressed shock over its desolate, abandoned, and wrecked landscape.
Arriving from the west, they hit the heart of downtown after two hours of steady hiking. Their path took them past the Oregon Zoo, which Ainsley petitioned to go see. The dogs had died, it was true, and other animals suffered from the contaminated water. But they had all seen the feral cats sprouting up along the outskirts of the neighborhoods, and had heard the distant howls of wolves moving closer to the city. It was possible that some animals, even after four weeks, might still be alive.
But Darla vetoed the detour; if all the zoo animals had perished, it would have been too grisly a sight. Worse yet, if they had been left abandoned by humans, and were clinging to life, their suffering would have been far more painful. They were not going to set the captives free, so it was better to leave them alone.
“I grew up not far from this teaching hospital, you know. My mom worked at the hospital and she could walk to work, but our backyard butted up against this grassy field and beyond that...the labs. Mostly monkeys. And sometimes on summer nights we could hear them. Howling. Just screaming like they were right there in our yard. Not far away...right there,” Ainsley told them in a quiet voice.
“In Portland?” Dean asked.
“Right here. Outskirts of the city. Right in my backyard, but you wouldn’t know it...unless you could hear them.”
“That’s awful,” Darla added, shifting the tarp from one shoulder to the other.
“Terrifying,” Ainsley whispered.
“You want me to take a turn with that?” Dean reached out his hands toward the tarp, but Darla shied away. She shook her head.
“I got it.”
“I can take a turn,” he said.
“You can take a turn tomorrow.”
“Come on—” Dean complained, readying up an argument.
Darla spun to him. “I’m not playing some martyr role and I’m not going to give you the tarp so you can feel like you’re being productive. I’m fifteen years younger than you are and I worked out my upper arms and shoulders every day for the past five years. I’m the most equipped person to haul the damn tarp. I’m not doing it to make you feel sorry for me...I’m doing it because I should.”
Dean put up his hands in surrender and then went to his pockets for a cigarette.
Still hauling the tarp, Darla marched over and freed one of her hands and grabbed the pack. She tossed it to the ground and put the heel of her boot over the cardboard and smashed it into the cement.
Ainsley watched the incident wide-eyed.
“It’s a stressful time...if he wants to smoke, let him smoke,” she whispered.
Darla turned her head toward Ainsley, and looked at her, blinking. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, then blew the air out her mouth, mumbling some version of a serenity prayer under her breath. Ignoring their disdain, she took several steps out into the street. The sun was lower in the sky, and a hazy orange hue filled the hills behind them. “We’re going to have to camp inside somewhere tonight. You two know the area the best, so where should we go?”
Everyone looked up and down the street. There were pockets of flooding, bodies, and abandoned vehicles. Something was on fire on the other side of the river and smoke trickled upward.
Ainsley shuffled her feet and then looked at Darla. “I have a place I want to go,” she announced. “The one place in Portland I always wished I could have all to myself.”
Without hesitation, Darla said, “Lead the way.”
“A bookstore?” Darla looked at the black, red and white marquee and then at the darkened lobby. Without light, it was impossible to see much beyond the front windows; the cascading bookshelves disappeared into darkness. Powell’s City of Books was a Portland landmark and a tourist attraction. It took up an entire city block and inside its industrial, no frills interior were more than a million books. Or so it boasted.
“Hotels might be too full of bodies. I wouldn’t be able to handle the smell,” Ainsley said, cupping her eyes and leaning against the glass, her breath forming a circle of fog on the window.
“The smell doesn’t go away,” Dean added. “There’s got to be people in there, too. Employees who couldn’t make it home from work...”
Ainsley shrugged. “It was just a thought.”
“It’s dark.” Darla rattled the front door handle and then walked around the corner, staring at the empty side street.
“We can go somewhere else,” Ainsley breathed, defeated. “I just thought...I don’t know...I’ve always wanted to be in there alone. “
“Wait,” Darla replied. She motioned for them to follow her. Along the edge of the street was an employee entrance, guarded by a keypad, rendered useless without power. Darla took off her sweatshirt and wrapped her hand up tight, then without explanation or warning, she punched the glass above the door. The sound of breaking glass echoed up the street. Shaking the shards free, Darla reached over and inside and pushed the metal bar on the door. It opened easily, welcoming them into the children’s section of the store.
Dean cleared his throat and mumbled a sincere thank you.
“From watching movies,” she explained with a half-smile.
Racks of Maurice Sendak and Curious George hardbacks beckoned them. Darla ran her hand over a copy of Goodnight Moon, which had been Teddy’s favorite when he was a toddler. She went to grab it, flip through the pages, but under the watchful eyes of Dean and Ainsley, she stopped herself. Nostalgia would have to wait.
Once inside, Ainsley had a plan.
Their flashlights lit the way around the darkened store. Occasionally, they would encounter a toppled shelf, scattered books, signs of panic, but for the most part Powell’s was quiet and void of life. Ainsley led them through a hallway lined with journals, pens, and bookmarks and up into a g
eneral fiction section. They traveled up another staircase and into science fiction. Collapsed next to a fantasy display, they confronted their first body; it was a liquefied mess, a puddle of yellow spread out from under its plaid shirt and seeped on to the concrete below. A leathery hand still clutched a hardcover book about dragons.
The trio stepped around it and shined the flashlight away.
In the next room, they found a café. The display case was empty.
“It was worth a shot,” Ainsley said as they slid the light over the shelves looking for anything of value.
“We aren’t the first ones to get inside here. Before day six the Raiders would have picked it clean.”
“Most of the food would have been perishable anyway,” Dean lamented. He took a step behind the counter and ran his finger along the Formica laminate. Dust had started to collect on the tables and chairs. Outside, it was raining. There was a gentle pit-pat of droplets on the sidewalk.
“Come on.” Ainsley motioned. “This way.”
The Rare Book Room was cozy: antique furniture and faux Persian rugs, wood paneling, and non-working lamps. Behind display cases were first or rare editions of classic literature. Darla shined her flashlight over the spines and read the titles. The area was cordoned off from the rest of the bookstore, like its own little private store-within-a-store, and whether by design or by accident, the air was cool, but not cold. To guarantee comfort, Dean had nabbed three oversized Powell’s sweatshirts on their way from behind a help desk on the second level. As they settled down on to the rug, they each shimmied into the fleece, and pulled the hoods down over their faces.
“Okay, this is going to sound stupid, but my dream was to buy a book from the Rare Book Room when I got my first job. A treat for myself, you know?” Ainsley told them, while perusing the titles from the comfort of the floor.
“That’s not stupid,” Darla told her.
Ainsley smiled and her face lit up. “Thanks.”
“You can have anything you want, you know. They’re doomed here...left to rot. You should take one,” Dean added, rummaging through the tarp and examining the green beans and the chickpeas with mild interest before leaving the cans unopened. He ripped open the bag of tea lights and set them out one by one around the room, lighting them with his lighter.
“It’s not the same,” Ainsley grieved. “I wouldn’t have earned it.”
The room glowed from the candles, and their shadows flickered across the walls. Scanning the shelves, Dean leaned over and peered into a glass case; it was tilted so that the onlooker could scan the pages of the book inside. The case was padlocked with a tiny lock and Dean took a step back and smiled. He took the flat bottom of one of the lamps and knocked the lock free. Then he lifted out the green cloth-bound book, stamped with gilded vines.
“Here,” Dean said, handing the book to Ainsley. “We’ve most definitely earned it.”
Ainsley put her hand on top of the cover and gasped. Then she tenderly turned the pages, and ran a finger along the words. It was the first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. A yellow bookmark fell out between the pages, and written in a flowery script was the price: $170,000. She let out a small shriek as she held the stated value in her hand.
“Oh my. No,” she whispered. “I couldn’t.”
“Money doesn’t exist. People don’t exist. That book is worth something only if it means something to you,” Darla said, and she leaned back against the floor and looked up at the dark ceiling and watched the way the candles created a dancing picture show against the wood. She closed her eyes and could still see and feel the fluttering images just beyond her reach. “Keep it safe, because we have a long way to go.”
None of them slept particularly well; each of them tossed and turned, and listened to the steady summer rain beat outside. Darla’s mind kept wandering to her son—she could only pray that he was safe. As much as it pained her, she also prayed that he didn’t miss her too badly. Teddy had attached himself to Ethan in the weeks they had spent together, and she hoped that the two of them found comfort in each other. More than anything she wanted Ethan to tell Teddy that she was coming for him. Ethan may not remember the details surrounding his capture, but he would know, in his heart, that Darla would never abandon Teddy.
Several times throughout the night, she found herself saying out loud, “Hang tight little man. I’m coming for you,” as if her voice could carry on the wind to her son’s ears. Once she had read a story of a son near death who spoke out loud a beautiful goodbye to his mother who was miles away. She woke and heard his words, as clear as if he had been standing right next to her. It was the type of supernatural bullshit that Darla would have laughed at in a different life. Now, she hoped that Teddy could hear her—wished that he would know in his heart that his momma would be there soon.
She tucked herself into a ball and tried to sleep. Deep, fatigue-ending sleep never came.
“Darla?” Ainsley whispered into the night as the candles burned down to their waxy finishes. “Are you awake?”
“Uh-uhmmm,” Darla moaned and shifted to look at Ainsley in the light. Dean snored from in the corner as if to announce that he had been able to doze off with ease.
“Someone else was here,” she said and she shoved over a pile of books. “Look.”
Darla grabbed a book and opened it. Written into the front cover of some book on berry picking, a person had written a pseudo diary along the copyright page.
“Can’t get home,” Darla read. “Hiding at Powell’s. Population dwindling. It would appear the employees closed shop early. Most people done. Few deaths, most cleared. This room felt safest. No way to tell what’s happening outside. Scared.” Then the date and initials: PZ. Darla flipped through the rest of the pages and they were blank. She put the book back down on the floor. “Huh,” she said and closed her eyes again.
“No,” Ainsley said and she pushed another book along the floor. “They wrote more.”
Darla’s shoulders slumped and a headache pounded in the middle of her forehead, but she humored Ainsley and kept reading. The diary entries were uninspired, most short choppy sentences with vague recollections. When the writer, PZ, realized there were active looters he/she stayed away from sight, sleeping in the dark. The person had written an entry for every day, sometimes multiple entries per day, dedicating a single book for each day’s writing. The defaced rare books were scattered around them, open to the title pages with PZ’s writing slanted along the white spaces.
“So, what do you notice?” Ainsley asked when Darla had finished reading the stack.
Darla stared at the pile. She flipped through them each again. Day 1. Day 2. Day 3. Day 4. Day 5. Day 6. And then—Day 7. Day 8.
Day 9 was a manifesto, a laborious rant against isolation and a fervent plea to remember the survivors of the vicious attack. There was a declaration of leaving the Rare Book Room and venturing out, despite not hearing or seeing another living being in several days.
“A day six survivor,” Darla said. She put her hands on top of the books and gave them a thoughtful pat. “Another person made it out alive.”
“Grant, Dean...this person,” Ainsley said. “And that’s just from one little area. There has to be more. Don’cha think?”
Darla nodded. “ I do.”
“Isn’t that amazing!” Ainsley’s face brightened and she pulled back all the books and began reading them again. “I mean...there are others. PZ. Paul. Patty. Peter. Penelope. It could be anybody.”
Rummaging back through the small pile of clothes, Darla found her gun and held it in her right hand; Ainsley saw her but didn’t say anything. She kept the gun against her side. After Ainsley had read the mysterious camper’s rambling and defacing notes again, she ran her hand under her nose, and that was when Darla noticed she was crying.
“Please don’t cry,” Darla said.
“You can’t tell me not to cry,” Ainsley replied and she leaned her head back a
gainst the bookshelf, holding the Walt Whitman to her chest like a shield.
“Fine. Cry. You’re right,” Darla replied and she turned away.
“Sometimes...” Ainsley started and she sniffed, “I don’t like you very much.” Then she covered her face with Whitman.
Darla watched as Ainsley sat there unmoving, her face covered, waiting for Darla to yell at her, or crawl over and make it all better—she wasn’t sure which response Ainsley was expecting. “Read me something out of your book,” Darla said finally.
Ainsley didn’t pull the book away from her body. “You want me to read you Walt Whitman?”
“Yup,” Darla tugged the sweatshirt up around her chin and straightened out against the floor to get more comfortable. “Make it good.”
She lowered the book and opened it carefully to a random page. “As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud, a dread beyond of I know not what darkens me. I shall go forth, I shall traverse the States awhile, but I cannot tell whither or how long...” she stopped. Flipped the page and then flipped back again.
“Keep going,” Darla said.
Ainsley read, “Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice will suddenly cease. O book, o chants, must all then amount to but this? Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? And yet it is enough, o soul; o soul, we have positively appeared—that is enough.”
The candles flickered and the rain pattered. Ainsley closed the book and held it tight.
“I always hated Walt Whitman,” Darla said.
“You asked me to read it.”
“I hate anyone that people tell me I am required to like. It’s a character flaw.”
Ainsley snorted. When Darla shot her a glare, she lowered her head, still smirking. “Darla admits her flaws. It’s almost charming.”
“No,” Darla said, sitting up halfway and propping herself up on her elbows. “You buy that shit? That it doesn’t matter what the journey is or how dark and awful the world seems, because we’re all going to die, and, then he says, it’s okay. Because it was worth it just to have been born?”
The Variables (Virulent Book 3) Page 9