And suddenly, silhouetted against that sky, something dark appeared. A face, grinning down at me.
“Hi,” the looter said.
CHAPTER 11
Hearing about them on the radio I’d always expected the looters to be big, bearded men in leather jackets and chains.
This one was a woman, about thirty years old, dressed in a fur coat.
She did have a wicked-looking hunting knife in her hand. She showed it to me, and I saw an eagle engraved in the blade. Once I saw that eagle I couldn’t look anywhere else.
“You’re smarter than you look, aren’t you?” she asked. “You waited a long time. That’s good. But you can’t wait forever. You’re too young, and too soft from living in the city. I bet you’re pretty hungry.”
She turned the knife a little, and the orange light of the sky made it glow. It was like I was hypnotized. She had a big watch on her wrist, and that sparkled too. The face of it was cracked and it was missing one hand, but it gleamed silver.
“Listen, I know we got off on a bad foot here. And you’re worried I’m going to hurt you. I could. There’s no use pretending, either of us, that I’m not a dangerous person. But I can also be pretty friendly. People who are nice to me get to see my friendly side. Now, I’m going to take you someplace where you can get a little food. Maybe not the good stuff you’re used to, but it’ll fill you up. And I’m afraid it’ll be a little dirty and unsanitary by your standards, this place. But you’ll get to meet lots of people there. Lots of people just like me, who are undeniably dangerous, but who like it when people try to be their friends. People who do what they’re told, and don’t talk back—they can make a lot of friends in this world. Are we going to be friends, little boy?”
The gleam of her knife and her wristwatch was almost blinding. Maybe that’s why I did what I did next.
It was clear she wanted me to climb out from under the cars on my own—she didn’t want to have to come in after me. The whole business with turning the knife from side to side was meant to scare me.
It also meant she wasn’t holding it very securely.
I jabbed my arms upward and grabbed her watch as if I would pull it off her wrist. She yanked her arm back, moving very fast, so instead I grabbed the collar of her coat, getting two good handfuls of soft, greasy fur, and then pulled downward as hard as I could, dragging her face toward mine, pulling her upper body into the space between the two cars. She shrieked in rage and surprise, but I was already moving, sliding myself under the second car, my heels digging into the broken asphalt to pull me along. The knife spun in the air as she dropped it. It landed on my chest, the eye of the engraved eagle staring me in the face.
She reached down one hand like a claw to grab the knife. At the time I just wanted to keep the knife away from her, to make sure she couldn’t grab it and stab me with it. I had no intention of hurting her. But as I grabbed the knife before she could reach it, the blade slid along her wrist, cutting a deep gouge in her skin and making her shout with pain. She yanked her arm back and stared at the blood dripping from her wrist. Then she turned to look at me again. Her face was still only inches from mine, and I half expected her to start biting at me. So I shoved the knife down into my belt and then slid entirely under the second car.
I got out from under that car in half a second and then I twisted around and got to my feet. Behind me she was still struggling to climb out of the gap between the cars. I took one glance around and saw a line of buildings before me, low stores and offices facing the turnpike. It was the best cover I could hope for, so I dashed for it, expecting at any moment to hear a shot ring out, expecting to be gunned down. The attack could come from any direction. I knew she had at least one partner out there somewhere.
I was certain she would try to kill me.
Instead I heard her laugh, behind me. She thought this was funny.
“You fucking cut me! Pretty good, kid. Run away, little boy!” she called after me. “Run and go play with the zombies! They get real playful at night!”
CHAPTER 12
I didn’t believe she wouldn’t follow me. I knew almost nothing of the world outside New York City, and so I ran, my breath sawing in and out of my chest, desperate to just get away, to escape whatever she had planned for me. The buildings flashed by on either side, stores and restaurants giving way to parking lots and lawns choked with overgrown trees. It was already starting to get dark, and I thought I should try to get inside one of the buildings. But every doorway I passed was either boarded up or padlocked. I didn’t have time to break into a building—I was convinced that the looters were still after me. I wanted to put as much distance and as many walls between them and me as possible.
I ran across another street, jumping over potholes and broken pavement, and on the far side was a wide patch of grass that hadn’t completely been overtaken by trees. At its edge stood a two-story building with intact windows and a door that wasn’t boarded up. It would have to do. As I got closer I saw it was the Fort Lee Public Library. That at least seemed like the kind of place looters wouldn’t bother with.
The door creaked a little as I yanked it open, but it shut behind me automatically as I dashed inside into the dark. The last of the daylight was streaming in through the windows and I could just make out a big desk and then row after row of shelves full of books.
Dust covered the top of the desk and made me think nobody had been inside this building since the crisis. That was good, but I was more interested in the sign that pointed me to the restrooms. Inside the men’s room, and then the women’s room, I tried every one of the sink taps, because I was desperate for water and didn’t care if it was toxic or not. One of the taps made a low groaning sound when I yanked on its handle, but that was all. Desperate, I turned toward the toilets. One look at them and I knew it was pointless. The bowls were dry and cracked, and the tanks were full of nothing but a furry brown growth of fungus.
I dropped down to the tile floor of the bathroom and put my head in my hands. I had no idea what I was going to do. I still thought the looters were after me, though that seemed less and less important as my lips grew drier and burned even more. If I died of thirst, it didn’t matter if they found me. The thought even occurred to me that they would have water, and that it might be better to give myself up than die of dehydration.
I was starving, too, though the hunger was just a distraction from how dry I felt.
The one consolation of this physical distress was that I had no time to think about anything else. Not what had happened to the government driver who was supposed to pick me up, or how I would get to Ohio now. Not that my whole world had turned on me and spat me out like a seed from between its teeth. Not what had happened to my family. Not even how scared or lonely or desperate I felt.
I had to have water.
By the time I came out of the restroom, it was almost full dark outside. A little blue light came through the plate-glass windows at the front of the library. Not enough to do anything by. I went behind the desk and pulled open drawers, because there had to be water here. I was certain of it—I wanted it so badly it had to be true. The drawers were full of old papers and office supplies, which I rifled through with desperate fingers. The bottom drawer held a woman’s leather purse and I grabbed it up, tore open its clasps, and dumped its contents on the desk. A thousand tiny bugs scampered everywhere across the wood veneer and I jumped back. I had imagined a sealed bottle of water inside the purse, imagined it so clearly I felt betrayed when it wasn’t there. I did find one thing that should have excited me more than it did. There was a crumpled pack of cigarettes that I ignored, but tucked inside was a bright orange plastic lighter. The fuel inside hadn’t all evaporated. I flicked its wheel and it lit up the room, scaring the bugs further.
It was dark enough that I had to use the lighter just to find the makings of a torch. An old sweater full of moth holes
hung on the back of a chair behind the desk. The chair was made of wood—I broke off one leg and wrapped the sweater around it. Without oil or anything to get it going it took a long time to light the sweater, but eventually I had light, flickering, guttering, orange light that made me feel a little better.
If I could have stood outside the library and watched myself do all this, I would have seen what I’d just done, though. Those broad plate-glass windows had contained only darkness for twenty years. When I lit my torch, the light beamed out into the streets of Fort Lee like a beacon. Like a signal to any eye that might see: Something is alive in here. Come and get it.
CHAPTER 13
There was plenty of the library yet to explore in my search for water. Torch in hand, I climbed the stairs to the second floor, which was filled with more bookshelves and lined with small reading rooms. Behind a locked door—easily forced—I found an office full of papers and old, dead computer equipment.
Not a drop of water, though.
I was getting desperate, and it was affecting my judgment. I was moving fast, waving my torch around and leaving black smoke stains on the ceiling tiles. I’m surprised, looking back, that I didn’t set the place on fire.
I went back down to the main floor and sat in a chair and just cried for a while, even though I knew that would only dehydrate me further. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that the building might have a basement.
I’d spent my whole life in a city that was flooded at its foundations, and this simple fact had failed to occur to me the whole time I spent running around that library, desperate for a drink. When I did finally think of it, my eyes went wide and I considered slapping myself.
The basement door was locked, but I kicked it open easily. The door bounced in its hinges, revealing nothing but darkness—and the sound of dripping water.
I hurried down the stairs by torchlight and found what I’d been looking for. The basement of the library was flooded, the waters lapping at the bottom step. I hurried forward, my feet splashing in the water. I could see the whole basement from there, an expanse of black water, more than I could ever drink. I stooped and made a cup of my hand.
And then I stopped.
My whole life I’d been terrified of poisoned water. The first generation had told me many times why the rivers of New York City were toxic. Upstate from the city were countless little industrial towns, places that had once housed factories and thriving communities. They were abandoned now, evacuated or overrun and belonging to no one but the zombies. Their crumbling buildings were full of old machines and stockpiles of chemicals, though, and without anyone to stop it, a century’s worth of pollutants had leached into the water that flowed ceaselessly down past New York. I was still close enough to the Hudson that I needed to worry, no matter how desperately thirsty I was.
I stood there for quite a while, staring at the water in my hand. In the end, I was saved by a rat.
I heard it squeaking and looked up. A book floated on the water out there, open so that its covers formed a miniature raft, its dangling pages floating in the water like the tentacles of a jellyfish. Crawling along its spine was a brown rat, its nose flashing back and forth as it looked for a way off the book. It eventually gave up looking for a dry escape route and just dove into the water, swimming for a shadowy hole in one wall.
Rats are smart creatures. I’d learned that living in New York City, exploring abandoned apartments in the skyscrapers. I figured the rat probably had some way of telling if the water was poisonous, and that if it was clean enough for him it would be okay for me. I didn’t even use my hand after that, I just dropped down on the step and sucked up water with my mouth, I was so thirsty.
One need taken care of, I started to think about how hungry I was. But the only thing I could do about that was suck on some old mints I’d found in the librarian’s purse. They were sugar free, so I was getting no nutrition out of them, but they took my mind off how little I’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours.
Sugar free. It wasn’t the first time I had to wonder about what people were thinking before the crisis. Sugar free—why make food that contained no food? Why make something that was a perfect simulacrum of food, but gave no nourishment, that couldn’t help you when you were hungry?
Sometimes I think the precrisis people were all insane, and sometimes I think that, without zombies to worry about, or how to find food, or how to make a place safe, they must have done perverse things just to stave off boredom.
Thoughts like that occupied my mind as I lay across the basement steps of the library, filling my belly with water to help keep from feeling like I was dying of hunger. There was no room in my head for anything else, for any thoughts that didn’t involve food or safety. In the morning I knew I would have a lot of work to do. I would have to find my way to Ohio on my own—a safe route that kept me away from the looters. I would have to find something to eat or I would never live long enough to make that journey.
To accomplish that, I had only a few scant tools. I had a disposable lighter. I had the knife I’d taken from the looter woman. I studied it, then, testing how sharp the blade was, feeling how the grip felt in my hand. Studying by torchlight the eagle engraved on the blade. Tiny flakes of what looked like rust were lodged in the little lines, flakes that came free when I scraped at them with my thumbnail and left only shiny metal underneath.
No, not rust. That had to be dried blood.
I nearly threw the knife away from me, into the water. I didn’t want to touch it after that. But I was born into this world, not the one before the crisis. I knew better than to throw away a tool. I tucked it in the back of my belt, where I didn’t have to look at it.
I fell asleep then, one of my feet dangling in the water. I didn’t dream at all.
Nor did I wake up when my torch went out, and the darkness closed in around me. So when I did wake, it was to blindness and panic. Because I could clearly hear someone moving around in the library above me.
I was sure it was the looters, come back for me. I was certain they would try to capture me again. I lay perfectly still in the dark, conscious of how loud my breathing was.
Above me, inside the library, something heavy crashed to the floor. Maybe a bookshelf. I bit my lip.
The door at the top of the stairs opened. I could hear it creaking, though no light came through. Could the looters see in the dark? Brian had told me once that government soldiers carried special goggles that let them see at night, so they could watch out for attacks even in the dark. Was it possible the looters had taken a pair of those goggles from a soldier they’d killed?
I could hear someone take a step down the stairs. Another step. They were no more than six feet away from me. They stopped there.
Just stopped. I could feel them, feel their presence so close, though my heart was beating so loud I couldn’t hear a sound.
What were they doing? Why were they just stopped there, waiting? Maybe they were watching me with a nasty grin, taking pleasure in my terror as they prepared to kill me in some gruesome way.
I reached behind me and drew the knife from my belt. Not that it would do much good just slashing around in the dark.
I had to take a chance. If they could see me, I had to see them. With my left hand I took the lighter out of my pocket and flicked its wheel. The flame jumped up much higher and brighter than I’d expected, and for a moment I could see everything.
I could see the man standing on the stairs above me, his clothes in tatters, his hair long and wild and matted to one side of his head. His eyes were bright red with blood. It wasn’t a looter. It was a zombie.
CHAPTER 14
I panicked and screamed and lashed out with the knife, and my thumb slipped on the lighter and it went out, and it was dark again, and suddenly I could smell him, smell nothing but the zombie, filth and excrement and the rotting bits of meat tr
apped between his broken teeth. He lunged forward, grabbing my arm. He was stronger than I expected—we’d always been told they were weak and easily overpowered—and he started pulling me toward him, reeling me in toward his mouth, toward his clacking teeth.
For a moment we struggled like that, each of us pulling, canceling out each other’s strength. I grunted and heaved, but he just pulled harder, matching me. I was weak with hunger and fear and exhaustion and he was bigger than me, gaunt and emaciated but taller, with longer arms. Inch by inch I was getting closer to his mouth.
All in total darkness.
My arm started to hurt from the strain of pulling against him, and eventually it started to twitch and spasm. “No,” I squeaked, my voice echoing off the basement’s concrete walls. “No,” I said, and then I had to stop pulling, had to give in.
The zombie didn’t. They don’t feel pain, we’re told. That means they can push their muscles far beyond what a healthy human can, even to the point where they injure themselves. The zombie kept pulling. But as I crumpled underneath him, giving in, giving up, he was suddenly overbalanced on the stairs. He came toppling toward me—I could feel his weight coming down over me—and then he tripped on a riser and went stumbling, crashing down into the water below with a great splash.
I didn’t waste time thinking about what had happened. I wasn’t thinking at all. I bolted up the stairs into the main floor of the library, knowing in a moment he would get back up and come after me. Knowing I had to run.
A thin trickle of moonlight came in through the plate-glass windows upstairs. Just enough that I could see the bookshelf that had toppled onto the floor, spilling books everywhere. Just enough I could see gray shapes moving around the desk, around the shelves, around the stairs leading to the upper floor.
There were zombies everywhere.
I tried not to scream as I turned for the door, wanting to get out, not caring what I had to do to get out. A zombie loomed up in front of me before the door—I could smell it even more than I could see it—and I lashed out with the knife, cutting deep into its face. The pain of the wound did nothing to it, of course, but the force of the blow was enough to knock it sideways, to make it stumble. I leapt past it and out the door.
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