Dark Road

by David C. Waldron

  “I won’t know unless I go check but it’s at least worth a look. My biggest fear, well my two biggest fears…ok, amongst my biggest fears are such terror inducing thoughts as; the books are all gone as they’ve been taken and used for fuel, the books are ruined as the windows have been broken and they’ve been exposed to the weather for months, the books have already been picked over and all that’s left are books on the mating practices of the Portuguese Man-o-war or—and this one really frightens me—there’s no old-fashioned card catalog and I have to do it with absolutely no index.”

  Dan shuddered. “I could be in there for years looking for a book on wilderness survival. How ironic, I could starve to death looking for a book on how to survive in just this situation.”

  Marissa shook her head, “You are so melodramatic sometimes, now I know where Bekah gets it.”

  “And you are so level-headed, I know where Jessie gets it,” Dan retorted.

  “And if you aren’t careful you won’t be ‘getting it’ so keep a civil tongue in that mouth there, Mr.,” Marissa smiled.

  “So,” Dan said, ignoring the mild rebuke, “I know the Inglewood branch isn’t huge but I’m hoping I can find something useful.”

  “At this point I’d settle for an old Boy Scout manual,” Marissa said.

  “Ditto, or even back issues of Boy’s Life. I remember getting those when I was a Cub Scout but didn’t do much with them except read the jokes. Speaking of which, what do you get when…”

  “Really?” Marissa interrupted, staring at her husband.

  “No.” Dan said. “But I really wish I’d stayed in Scouts after whatever animal it was I made it to. Bear or Beaver or Wildebeest, I think it was, or maybe Musk Ox? I was eight and I got to use a knife is all I remember.”

  “Well, try not to be too conspicuous about it if you find anything, when you come back,” Marissa said. “Have you mentioned it to anyone else yet?”

  It was Dan’s turn to stare at his spouse. “No, and I don’t plan on it either. If nobody else has thought of it until now and I have the bright idea to go to the library all of the sudden, I’m afraid Carey, or more likely Rick, will start putting things together.” Dan chewed the inside of his cheek, “What with the increased interest in attics that I’ve already caused, I’d really like to keep attention off of us until we leave if it’s at all possible.”

  “Good hunting.” Marissa kissed Dan and he was out the door and on his bike.

  …

  He hoped he didn’t have to use the story he’d concocted about needing some exercise, since it sounded lame even to him. Nobody expended more energy than they needed to nowadays, much less went on a bike ride outside of the neighborhood.

  The ride to the library was only a little over a mile but took Dan about fifteen minutes, and he was constantly looking over his shoulder once he left the neighborhood. He hadn’t realized how quickly he’d grown used to being sheltered in their little community and he felt both vulnerable and like he was being watched the entire time he was outside of its confines.

  He remembered smelling the smoke and seeing the glow to the south and west for weeks after the power went out but Dan was thoroughly unprepared for the level of devastation outside of the neighborhood. The subdivision across Gallatin road had burned completely to the ground and a number of brick buildings had been gutted by the same fire. Dan was sure that the only reason it hadn’t gotten to their subdivision was the width of the street and the fact that the wind had been blowing the wrong direction.

  The memories of watching that fire were still raw. Dan could still hear the sound of gunfire from the guards that had first yelled to warn off the refugees, and then, ultimately, picked them off one at a time as they tried to get in. Eventually, Dan couldn’t watch anymore; it had been too cold, too harsh. He understood the need, intellectually, but that didn’t mean he’d needed to stand there and be witness to it.

  Dan still had hopes of finding an intact library but hadn’t even considered the building itself burning down, since it was all brick. Seeing the burned out brick husks on the west side of the street brought home the fact that only the shell was impervious to fire. Dan consoled himself with the knowledge that the library was on the east side of the road and was hopefully spared from this fire at least.

  Dan’s heart sank when he reached the parking lot and rode in front of the library. All of the front windows had been broken out to one side of the front door. At first glance it looked like the trip might be a waste of time but Dan was here and he wasn’t just going to turn around and go home without at least going inside for a look around. As Dan got closer he realized he was going to have to do something that he hadn’t considered when he left the house. He was going to have to leave the bike outside and unattended while he went inside.

  The library had a bike rack but he hadn’t thought to bring a lock for the bike and the last thing he wanted was to have it stolen. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t have worried too much about it since it had his name engraved on the underside where the pedals went through the frame. Now, that didn’t mean a thing. If he lost the bike, he’d never get it back, and this was his only means of transportation when the family hopefully took off, as well as every morning to get water; he couldn’t lose the bike now.

  Dan rode around in the parking lot trying to decide what to do before determining that he wasn’t going to leave without checking out the inside of the library, but he wasn’t going to leave the bike completely unattended either. He pulled the bike as close to the front doors as he could without coming near any broken glass and then used the quick-release lever on the seat and the front wheel, to remove both. The seat went into his backpack and the front wheel he would just have to carry.

  Next he put the bike behind the bushes on the opposite side of the door from the broken windows, as far as he could reach. They were some kind of holly and, having not been trimmed for three months he was fairly scratched up just getting the bike in. Hopefully, the combination of hiding the bike where he did and disabling it would keep him from having to both walk home and to wherever they decided they were going whenever they left. Now he just had to get inside the library.

  While all of the windows had been broken, most of them hadn’t been broken cleanly or very thoroughly, and Dan was more than a little worried about a deep gash or glass slivers. Coming late to the party was the realization that someone else, or worse, many someone elses, might have taken up residence in the library.

  “Why don’t I think of these things ahead of time?” Dan muttered under his breath as he looked for the window with the least likelihood of severing a major, or even minor, artery.

  Partially obscured by a bush was a window that looked to have been almost completely cleared of glass along the bottom and side edges. Dan would have to watch out for the glass at the top, but he should be ok to get in. He was almost as concerned about the bike tire as he was his hands, but was willing to use the backpack, if necessary, to protect both himself and the tire.

  After a good half a minute of wriggling and muttered curses he was inside, and the only scrapes were from the brick outside. From the looks of things, the windows that had been broken were in the office area up front and not in the general library area. If that was the case, and the doors had been shut, Dan thought to himself, the books and magazines may be ok.

  Dan stopped to listen for a minute, realizing again that he might not be the only one here. Of course, while he was halfway through the window would have been the perfect time for someone to ambush him; he wouldn’t have had a chance in the world of defending himself. He’d decided to leave the gun at home since he had next to no idea how to use it and better than even odds of getting it taken away and used against him at this point.

  Convinced that there was either nobody else here, or they were being quieter than he was and were willing to let him come and leave in peace, Dan decided to get on with the task at hand and see if there was anything to find.

 
; The door into the library proper was open but it looked to have been opened recently, which meant that he would be well served to stay on his toes. It also boded well for the hope that the weather hadn’t done a number on the books and magazines inside. If anything, the library felt a bit musty inside—even with the recent rain they’d had—and Dan breathed a sigh of relief. Now the only question was where to start? He’d been mulling this over on the way here and still hadn’t come up with a good answer.

  He was pretty sure that the library had a fair assortment of hunting and outdoor magazines but didn’t know how much useful information he could get from any one, or even a couple dozen. Then there was the lack of power and the likelihood of there not being a backup card catalog and having to go through the entire library looking for what he needed. Should he start at 000.00 or 999.99? Dan realized he didn’t even have a coin to flip and decided to start with the books first and save the magazines as a ‘last resort’. If nothing else he could grab all of the Field & Stream and Boy’s Life magazines that he’d seen in the past on the way out.

  The decision of where to start in the Dewey Decimal System was made easier by the sheer desire to not walk further than necessary, as the closed-up library was sweltering. As most libraries are, this branch was organized so that you came to 000 first. “Ok, let’s begin. Something tells me this row is going to be a complete bust, though,” Dan said as he looked at the first few books. Apparently 000 had to do with Computer Science. Dan was sorely tempted to just skip down the row when he saw that there were not one but two sets of encyclopedias further down, but gave it up as a bad idea.

  If I do this I do it right. Sure as shootin,’ if I jump ahead now, I’ll do it later and miss something important. It was a maxim that had served Dan well in school when studying to be an EMT and had frankly done him no disservice in the Taylor’s attic, and he’d do well to hold to it now. With a sigh, he started looking at the titles of every book on the shelves.

  …

  Dan hung his head and almost started to cry. “Why didn’t I start at the other end?” he whimpered aloud. It had been almost four hours and he had the beginnings of what he knew was going to be a killer headache from staring at book titles. He’d had to go back and re-read entire shelves after realizing that he hadn’t been paying attention for minutes on end. He was almost completely out of the water bottles he’d brought, and that was with drinking sparingly.

  He’d come across a section that had looked promising about twenty minutes prior, in the 613’s…613.69 to be precise, but the section was either picked clean or this branch didn’t have the books. The shelf had been ‘collapsed’ with the bookend so he didn’t think anyone had gotten to the books before he had. It was more likely that this branch just didn’t have the books. More’s the pity.

  Now he was standing in front of the 790’s. This section had been picked over, the books on the shelf hadn’t been collapsed by the bookend and this section was obviously dedicated to, or at least about, the outdoors or outdoor-type stuff. Dan looked around and wondered exactly what to do next. Should he continue on or look around for the missing books? Might they be in the library with whoever had taken up residence, however temporarily?

  As much as it frustrated him, Dan decided to finish the task, although he was virtually sure he had found what he’d come looking for. His heart wasn’t in it, he was frustrated, he wasn’t paying attention, and his mind was on ‘790’ when he was in the 890’s. That’s the only reason he even noticed something out of place, and it still took him half a shelf to realize it. Dan stopped and slid his finger back to the book that had been shelved incorrectly. It was in 896 instead of 796. It was titled “Wildwood Wisdom”. Dan didn’t hesitate like he did with the key in the Taylor’s attic once he’d read the title a second time, but he was careful when he pulled it off the shelf.

  It was a good-sized book—almost an inch and a half thick. A quick flip through it showed a number of illustrations including shelters, fires, fishing, and trapping. The book would have been considered out-of-date three months ago given the drawings he’d seen, and he wasn’t sure if he was up to making buckskin clothes, but at this point anything was better than what he had. Dan was sure this wasn’t the end-all be-all of survival for his family but he held it to his chest, closed his eyes, and said a little prayer of thanks nonetheless, and quickly put it in his backpack.

  He wasn’t done looking, though. If this book had been incorrectly shelved, either accidentally or on purpose, others could have been, too. Revitalized, Dan finished his search of the nonfiction section of the library.

  Although the remainder of the shelves were a bust, Dan was walking away happy. He wasn’t leaving empty handed. He would be up early and late reading all he could before they left and gathering anything extra that would help them out. He decided on the way out to check for magazines, but they had apparently been picked over already. Too bad, he really would have liked to have some idea how to shoot a rifle before he left other than what Rissa could teach him. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a good teacher, but she hadn’t been hunting in a long time. Still, he was sure she could outshoot him any day.

  On the way back towards the offices, Dan noticed footprints in the dust by the front sliding doors and thought it odd since the doors were obviously out of order—then he paused. Were the doors out of order or did he just assume they were? Had Dan simply made the same assumption that the first people to come across the library after the power had gone out had made, that the doors wouldn’t work because the power was out?

  Tentatively, Dan walked up to the doors and wedged his fingers between the two panels where there was a gap from the weather stripping and pried on the doors. Surprisingly, and with not that much effort, the doors slid apart. “Well, I’ll be!” Dan said as he walked into the vestibule between the inner and outer doors. Careful not to let the doors close behind him he made sure the outer doors would open just as easily, and sure enough, they did without much hesitation.

  Dan made the decision to quit while he was ahead and not try to loot the rest of the library or rummage through what someone else may have been able to find. He wasn’t here to pilfer someone else’s things. His goal had been to see if there was anything left to find in the library proper, and there had been. He hadn’t gotten to the point where he had to stoop to out-and-out theft yet, and as long as he could avoid it he would. In some ways, Dan knew he was justifying what he was doing to himself, but he also knew he had to keep himself sane. He wasn’t ready to cross the Rubicon yet.

  Once outside, Dan closed both the inner and outer doors behind him since the library could still be a tremendous resource and didn’t deserve to be ruined, and after a quick look to be sure he was still alone, reassembled his bike for the ride home.

  Chapter Five

  Once again trying to be more aware of his surroundings on the way back, while also trying to ignore the itching feeling between his shoulder blades, Dan counted three auto repair type places, in addition to the one auto dealer between the library and their neighborhood, that hadn’t burned down. The auto dealer still had a number of cars on the lot and all three of the repair places had at least a couple of cars parked outside.

  The one gas station near the neighborhood had a line of abandoned cars which brought Dan up short. Maybe there wouldn’t be gas available, or at least not readily. All of those cars were most likely empty, now that he thought about it, and there was no way to pump out what was in the tanks underground. Would someone else have already siphoned what was left in the tanks from all of the cars around here?

  Dan didn’t have any ideas right away but at least he was thinking. He’d been in a mental rut for the last several weeks and he’d needed something to shake him out of it. Having a goal, something to plan for, had finally knocked things loose and gotten him thinking again. All this time he’d been afraid that all of their resources would have to come from the neighborhood—where everything was watched like a hawk—but that wasn’t ne
cessarily the case anymore.

  He would have to be careful since he couldn’t do everything all at once or he would draw suspicion. He needed to talk things over with Rissa; she needed to be in on it. After all, Marissa was the one who made everything in the home function on a shoestring budget before everything came undone, even with everything else on her plate.

  On the way back into the neighborhood he looked at everything with new eyes: which homes were unoccupied, what yards had fences, who still had dogs in the neighborhood, and what was the longest stretch he thought they could go undetected if they went via back yards? Should they try to take off at night or leave during the day, as though nothing were out of the ordinary? He was finally treating it as a problem, and one with a solution, rather than just his new lot in life until he and the rest of the family starved.

  It wasn’t until he caught himself almost waving at one of Carey’s buddies, Rick Gayle, that he realized he was on the verge of giving himself away. Dan didn’t think he’d been smiling, but he was pretty sure his demeanor was different, and that needed to stop. One of the last things Marissa had said was to not be too conspicuous, and here he was acting like he’d gotten a new lease on life.

  As far as anyone else knew, nothing had changed. They were all still going to die in the next few months due to malnutrition, disease, or some roving band of thugs. Frankly, Dan was a little surprised he hadn’t run into anyone today—come to think of it. It had been a couple of weeks since they’d heard any gunshots during the day or night close by, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still groups out and about.

  Only a couple of weeks since they’d heard gunshots, which meant the guards were doing their job and keeping people out of the neighborhood. How are they keeping them out? Dan wondered. Do I really want to know? Would Carey or Rick tell me if I asked? Who’s firing first, our guards or the people trying to get in?