Authors: Juliette Harper
Tags: #apocalyptic, #Urban, #story, #short, #read, #Survival, #Paranormal, #zombie, #novella
At first, Vick was sure the rustling must be a rat. In the wake of the apocalypse, she had discovered that rats were excellent survivors, sometimes too excellent, like those instances when they seemed to clearly think the food she worked so hard to find was theirs as well. She and Lucy were constantly on guard against their incursions, and it only stood to reason that they would be in the deserted library as well.
She had regained her composure as the sun started to fall deeper into the horizon and sternly reminded herself that she was here for a purpose. There’d be time to figure out what happened in the park later. Now, she needed to find what she was looking for and get back to the safety of the townhouse. And face Lucy, who would no doubt be irate.
Methodically, Vick began going through the stacks, steadily amassing a pile of books that quickly outgrew the duffel bag she brought along. In the morning, she’d have to make her way back to the SUV and risk driving on the ruined streets to load up the volumes.
In truth, she didn’t expect this to be her only research trip into the city. All she really hoped to get out of this expedition was a set of better questions. There were so many things they didn’t understand, and consequently they really didn’t know what they were looking for in the way of “answers.” Multiple resurrections of the dead were about the wildest wild card she could imagine. What she had just witnessed in the park was straight out of a Hollywood movie.
The instant that thought crossed her mind, Vick laughed out loud. Like an apocalypse of the reanimated dead wasn’t something out of a Hollywood movie? That’s when the rustling noise turned into a distinct, “Shhhhhh. There will be no talking in the library.”
Vick’s hand went instantly to the butt of her gun and she flattened herself against the nearest bookcase. How could there be anyone on the floor with her? She’d secured every door, and she would’ve heard any effort to open them.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
She was answered with a firm, “If you cannot abide by the rules, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
The voice had come from somewhere to her left. Cautiously, Vick moved in that direction. When she stepped around the bookcase at the end of the island where she had been working, she was met by an astonishing sight.
There, at the information desk in the corner, sitting primly by a dusty plastic ficus tree, was a gray-haired woman who was unquestionably a librarian. Just for an instant, Vick decided that she must be seeing an actual apparition, that she could add “ghosts” to every other bizarre normality in her world.
But then the “ghost” looked up and said, “I saw that stack of books, young lady, and I hope you’re not thinking you’re going to check them all out.”
When Vick didn’t answer, the woman continued, “I’ll have you know, Missy, that we have a three-book limit. You can look at those books here, but you cannot take them out of the library.”
Since she couldn’t think of anything else to say, Vick said simply, “Yes, ma’am.”
The woman peered at her over a set of half glasses, and asked suddenly, “Are you dead?”
Vick holstered her weapon, and said, “No, ma’am. I’m very much alive.”
“Well, then, you still have to abide by the three-book limit. Only the dead get a dispensation because they mind so poorly.”
And with that, the woman took a long, sharp pencil out of the holder on the desk, twisted her hair atop her head in a practiced, perfect bun, and jammed the pencil in place to hold the hair secure. Then she went back to whatever business she thought she was attending to.
“How long have you been here?” Vick asked, moving forward slowly so as not to startle the woman.
The question seemed to catch the librarian off-guard. Her composure wavered for just an instant, and a querulous note came into her voice. “Since the night the young people became unruly in the park.”
“You mean the Fourth of July? Three years ago?” Vick asked, surprise coloring her words.
“Three years? Oh my. Has it really been three years? I’ve been so busy cataloguing the special collections on the top floor, I suppose I simply didn’t notice,” the woman said, fussing with dusty papers on the surface of the desk.
Vick was standing in front of the counter now. “Ma’am?”
When the librarian looked up, Vick said gently, “What’s your name, please?”
“Mrs. Meredith,” the woman answered brusquely, and then, still peering at Vick, she said uncertainly, “but my friends used to call me Hettie. Are you my friend, young lady?”
“I am now, Hettie.”
When Vick asked to see the “special collections,” Hettie led her through a wire cage at the back of the floor that opened into a utility stairwell, which explained how the woman had gotten onto the floor without Vick’s knowledge. The top floor was one open space and it was obvious that Hettie had been living here for quite some time.
A sofa in the corner was made into a neat bed, hospital corners just so. There were cases of canned goods stacked along one wall, and a small propane stove vented up through an ornate fireplace.
Hettie, who was observing Vick closely, saw her attention fall on the stove and said disapprovingly, “Apparently the library committee no longer sees fit to pay for our electricity. I had to resort to that expediency just to have a civilized cup of tea in the afternoon.”
Vick smothered a smile. “Where do you get these things, Hettie?”
“Oh, from the shops in the neighborhood. I have all the appropriate requisition forms in triplicate,” she said, opening a drawer and showing Vick an array of labeled manila folders. One clearly said “Propane Stove.”
“There never seems to be anyone at the counters these days,” Hettie said, closing the filing cabinet firmly, “so I leave a copy of the form and trust they’ll contact the director for payment. He’s been awful about not coming in and tending to his duties. The rest of the staff, too. Slackards. All of them. Sometimes I feel very much alone here.”
“I’m sure you do,” Vick murmured, her eyes running over the basket with yarn and knitting needles. And then she saw the desk littered with an array of calligraphy tools -- bottles of ink, racks of pens -- and in the center, a large leather-bound book lying open.
Hettie, who was still following Vick’s gaze, said, “My hobby. I watch and I write down what I see, but I make it tidy and elegant here. Have you noticed how untidy and tawdry it all seems now?”
Vick’s eyes met those of the older woman and she saw the fear and incomprehension in their gray depths. “Don’t you hate for things to be out of place, Hettie?” she asked soothingly.
Relief flooded the older woman’s face. “You understand.”
“I do,” she said, “and I have a very particular problem. I think you can help me.”
“Well, of course. What is the matter?”
“I have a library of my own, Hettie, and all of the books are out of order. I need a librarian.”
Two hours later, Vick was almost ready to leave Hettie where she’d found her. The loopy old dear refused to leave without her “things.”
“Okay, Hettie, look. Let’s make a deal.”
“I never liked that show,” Hettie said, reprovingly. “It was tacky.”
Vick had to stop for a minute and think about that one. “Right, okay. Let’s compromise. You come with me in the morning, and then my friend Lucy and I will come back and pack up all your things.”
“I will not be effective without them,” Hettie insisted archly.
“Right. Understood. So, you’ll come?”
“Well, yes, of course. I cannot leave a library unattended, but we will have to wait until after the morning promenade.”
“Hettie, we don’t have time for a walk first.”
“Not us, young lady, the creatures. When they are finished with their morning walk, we can leave. I think they must go to their offices afterwards because I don’t see them for hours.”
Vick decided not to argue about the “promenade.” She didn’t need the old woman agitated, so she agreed to her suggested departure schedule.
Because they were up so high, and because Hettie had obviously survived unmolested for three years, Vick stretched out on the extra sofa that night and let herself relax. For her, that had become more than just getting horizontal. She went into her considerable stores of willpower and loosened the iron bands of control she so rigidly maintained.
Slowly, the tightness flowed out of her body, replaced by an awareness of the fatigue that plagued her, but which she ignored with single-minded purpose. A well-meaning psychologist had once informed Vick that she was "hyper-vigilant." Well, the old bumper sticker just happened to have it right. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the world isn't out to get you."
Vick seldom let her guard down, but in the oddest way, she felt safer in the world as it was now than she had when Maurice was an ever-present threat. She'd sooner deal with undead monsters than her husband's obsessive-compulsive, controlling manipulations. But the real reason she seldom let herself relax were the things that crouched waiting behind the fatigue. There sat loneliness and fear, growling against their chains, straining to be set free. She could not afford to go chasing after either one or to let them loose to eat her alive.
But here, in this moonlit perch above a crumbling city with a half-mad, but wholly sweet woman watching from her rocking chair, humming as she stared at the rooftops through a high, vaulted window, Vick fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. In the morning, the smell of percolating coffee awakened her. Opening her eyes, she discovered that in the night Hettie had covered her with a plaid blanket.
Pale morning light was filtering in the high windows and Hettie was fussing around her make-shift kitchen talking to herself. Vick noticed a leather satchel on the work table and realized the woman had quietly packed up all her work tools. She had apparently made up her mind to come along without any further argument because a second, smaller bag sat on the floor under the table.
"It's rude to watch someone without saying good morning," Hettie chirped, turning toward Vick with a cup in her hand.
"
Great
," Vick thought to herself, "
one of those librarians with eyes in the back of her head
.” But what she said aloud was, "Good morning, Hettie. I was just waking up a little."
"Perhaps this will help," she said, bustling over. "I'm afraid I don't have cream, but there's sugar if you want it."
Vick sat up and realized the room was chilly. Fall was coming on fast. She let the blanket stay over her legs as she accepted the cup. "I take it black, thank you."
"You'll need to bring that over here by the window," Hettie said. "The promenade will be coming by shortly. I've set up a telescope for you as well."
Pushing the blanket aside, Vick stood up and walked over to the window where Hettie had carefully arranged two telescopes and two chairs, and apparently rather precisely aimed them to look down the street. Vick sat down and put the cup on the floor beside her. She bent to look through the eyepiece and was startled at the scope's power. It was trained all the way toward the end of the long boulevard that approached the library from the west and dead-ended at the front steps.
"The promenade has to flow around the library to pick up the street on the other side and continue toward the ocean," Hettie said, sitting down on her own chair and peered at an old wind-up ladies’ watch pinned to her sweater. "They will be visible at the end of the street in less than a minute."
"They're that punctual?" Vick asked, adjusting the focus on the device slightly. But no sooner had she spoken than she saw them, walking as a group, not in step, but coordinated enough to maintain loose lines and files. They were coming up the boulevard slowly, and as they walked, other figures emerged from the buildings and fell in with them, so their numbers grew with each block they passed. It took about 20 minutes for them to come roughly eight blocks, and by that time Vick guessed there were more than 100 of them stumbling along.
As they neared the library, she took her eye away from the scope and just watched. They seemed to have come from every walk of life. There was a fireman, wearing his bunker gear, streaked with dried blood in a long trail from the neck to the hem. A nurse in a uniform that had once been white and was now tattered and gray. There were men in fraying business suits and one woman incongruously weaving along wearing only one high-heel on her left foot. Up she bobbed and down again in a well-developed rhythm, oblivious to the obvious solution to her problem.
Without missing a ragged step, the front line made the left turn in front of the library, and the whole group began to move around the side of the building. Vick stood up and moved with them, going from window to window, fascinated by what she was seeing.
On the far side of the library, she had a clear view of their course down to the seawall that protected the city on the east. The whole matter had been the cause of great policy debate in the months before the mystery plague broke out.
The city was, essentially, sinking -- and had been since early in the 20th century. As the water levels began to encroach on real estate along the shore, the federal government built the seawall to hold the ocean back. Vick had some vague recollection that it went up during the Depression years, built by one of those government alphabet agencies her grandfather derisively called "make work."