How to Find Peace at the End of the World (8 page)

The last thing I want is to be trapped in this freakishly open, exposed, vulnerable space as the power goes out and complete blackness descends over the city. I make myself get up from the little picnic table I had found once again, the same one I remember taking lunch at back when I was an intern for the Houston Public Library system. I would come in and give Lenny, the front guard a high five and hop over the turnstiles instead of going through the gate for employees. Then I’d go down to the mail room and pick up the mail and head up the employee elevator to the top of the building. The central library in Houston is weird that way in that it gets darker and has less windows as it goes up: the main library levels are fronted with a giant wall of glass and go up into this little cap of granite, a sort of facade. Anyway, I don’t even know why I remember all that. I’m sort of tempted to go through all the places I once knew and see what they look like desolate, but I’m on a mission. Well, besides getting back to Amy, a secondary mission. I need to find a book, one in particular that could prove very useful to me, at least on the almost childish whim that makes me think this: I had once watched one of those History channel specials based upon the book. The whole premise is: what would happen if all people were suddenly to disappear. This TV special is really the reason I knew that power would stay on for 24 to 48 hours after such a thing happens. It’s the only reason I knew to take the four wheel drive because the TV show depicted all sorts of giant car pileups occurring after their drivers suddenly disappeared. The book was called something like “Vanishing Point,” or something else dramatic, with an equally dramatic subtitle. Honestly, I’m looking for this book because there’s this inaccessible piece of information in my mind, something I know is important and something I know is there, something that tells me I should be going South right now and not North, that I should leave North America altogether and I don’t remember quite why and more importantly how long I have. I would really like to find this out even though not going North for Amy is out of the question. But I would really like to be able to continue on with my journey without that foreboding that I’m driving ever closer to disaster. Or that feeling of time just, by the moment, running out.
I go through the revolving doors to the library and just like old times hop over the turnstyles, or at least I try to hop over them. I catch my feet on them--admittedly I’m not as graceful as I used to be--and end up half falling and half hobbling on the other side, but I guess the important thing is I catch myself before I cause really grievous damage to my face. I chastise myself: Dan, you have to stop all this childish bullshit. Really, the axe, the sports car, the guns, this turnstyle hopping, any of these situations could have resulted in something broken or something pierced, and then where would you be? Yeah, yeah, I respond to the stodgy, responsible Dan. I walk on towards the bank of computers to my right. Luckily they are booted up and logged in to the public account, but I’m not familiar with this new system. I type in Humanity and Vanish into the keyword box and click search. I’m gratified to find the title come up as the first search result: “Vanishing Point: Earth after Humanity.” It’s actually in the central non-fiction section, 2nd and 3rd floors, CHECK SHELF. I’m familiar with where it could be. It’s probably in the stacks closest to the re-circulation desk on the second floor. I make a beeline for it, straight to the escalators and up.
Midway up I’m suddenly jolted forward and smack my face on something hard. I black out, or think I black out or I’ve gone blind or hurt my eyes on the sharp corners of the escalator steps. All I feel is pain in my head and all I see is black. I reach up and feel my eyes and they don’t hurt all that much and feel dry. It takes many minutes before my senses come back to me. What I had feared most, besides going blind, has happened. In the middle of this Quixotic quest for a book the power to the city of Houston has gone out. And I forgot to bring my 4-D battery Maglight. How did I manage to do that? So, I am met with a great dilemma now. I can go forward and try to find a means of light, or try and wait until my eyes adjust, or I can slowly crawl back toward the ground floor now and feel my way to the front door. It is quite a dilemma to me now because as I had increasingly involved myself in this quest the importance of the book had grown in my mind. I need to find this book or I just might meet, not simply my own death, but a horrible and painful one at that. Just then I remember that Claude, our security guard, always kept a big flashlight behind his desk. I grab a good hold of the rubbery escalator hand rail and lever myself up. The escalators are in the big open lobby, and the way that I’m facing, I should be able to see something out of the large wall of windows: even though all human lights have gone out, there should still be starlight or moonlight or something to see by once my eyes adjust.

I pull myself up above the metal sides of the escalator and the rubber handrail and I’m surprised to see quite a bit, actually. Spotlights of strange hue, light bright enough to provide startling detail. All manner of auxiliary lighting. In the distance, past the courtyard and down the street more spotlights are coming on by the moment. Local systems. I imagine gasoline generators and the like tucked within basements, or battery systems charged by solar panels and what not, all of it coming on in response to the main trunk lines going dark. Just then I am again blinded, but this time with an overwhelming sheet of white that slowly dulls into a sickly yellowish tint. The library aux lights have come on. Realizing my time with this fortuitous turn of events is limited, I will myself up and run downstairs to the guard desk. I reach underneath for the flashlight, stomach falling when my fingers don’t come upon the cold metal I’m expecting, only wood. Then, leaning in further I catch on it, the reassuring, filed metal. I pull the light out of its Velcro straps and head back quickly to the escalators and run all dash the rest of the way to the 2nd floor circulation desk. There I begin filing though the stacks. The author’s name was Villanova, Frank Villanova. S, T, U, V. Here we are. Va, Vi, Vil. Ah, yes! Finally. Vanishing Point, Frank Villanova. I don’t pause to peruse the book here. Instead I turn right back around and head for the escalators, and that’s when I see a ghost.
8 PM. A ghost is not the rational explanation, I know, but I can’t help thinking this. It is actually the reflection of a form. It moves across the distorted surface of the wall of glass before me. It is startlingly white by the reflection, which after being reflected turns into this sort of translucent white, ghost white. But then, if it is a ghost, it is not a human ghost. It is the apparition of a smaller figure, but still quite substantial, walking on all four limbs. A dog? Could it be a dog? I’ve never seen a dog with such white fur before. Just then I hear several clicks, and a whine, and the lights begin to dim again. Several pops and clicks, like the system was overloaded or something. The quarters of the library seem to shut down, like the banks of lights going off in a warehouse or at a supermarket. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen, twenty minutes since they cut off. Boom. The Fiction section. Boom. The archives. Boom. 2nd Floor, Non-fiction circulation. By light reflected from some other place in the library, I run to the escalator and grab the handrail in those seconds before I’m again plunged into total darkness. I shudder violently against it, having just seen the white, moving apparition and now, as if on horror movie cue, having all the lights go out. I try to steady my breathing and shaking as my vision resolves, yet it’s taking much too long. Where’s the moonlight? The starlight? Each moment, instead, is tenser than the last, as I expect the hard jaws of some nightmare creature to close over my extended limbs. I crouch against the hand rail of the escalator and feel outward, forward for the edge of the next step. Solidly on that step, I feel forward again for the edge of the next one. Such caution should not be necessary, but it is an artifact of the conflicting signals my mind is sending my body: I need to move, I need to get out of here, away from danger, but I need to stay put, not throw myself into a danger lurking in the complete darkness.

Just then I notice a flickering against the edge of something. It’s curly and lumpy. It looks like the crown of trees, and I realize after a while that’s exactly what it is. It’s joined by the sharp corner of a building. Increasingly, there’s that yellowish, inconstant light behind it.
Fire. The drought combined with some spark, a generator shorting, or a transformer from the spike right before everything cut off. I don’t know.

And then, by the eerie yellow of that fairly distant fire I see two sets of eyes glowing, peering back at me.
 

I get up again, ghosts be damned, and duck waddle back up the escalators. The light in the distance goes out again, the crown of that distant tree fading into the surrounding blackness. I’m worse off for it because my eyes had already adjusted to even that meager light. Once again I can’t see a thing.
I think back to the white thing. I try and bring rational Dan into things. Dog? I’m afraid not. I don’t know of any dog that big and white and...fluffy. It looked almost like a fucking polar bear. I think back to a movie I saw once in which some zoo animal liberation front goes about their business until eventually, by the end of the movie, elephants and giraffes and lions and bears (oh my!) roam free among cars and frightened city dwellers. Fuck that movie. I am trapped in the Houston public library with a polar bear.
I hear padding and a snorting that doesn’t sound like any dog breed I know of. A wet exhale and I can imagine the ropes of salivary mucous hanging from sharp teeth, stained yellow by a diet of bloody things. Fuck imagination.
The sound of the padding changes subtly, instead of on tile it sounds now more metallic. I am stuck frozen in place, one hand clutched on the meager seeming 4-d battery flashlight, the other squeezing the hand rail, all the muscles in my body tensed in case I have to vault over the side of the elevator. Dammit, I think back to the handgun I had haphazardly stashed in the side pocket of the driver’s side door today, the one I’d not care enough to bring with me. I hear grunting and slapping and panting. Do polar bear pant? You think they would with that pelt of theirs. It’s close and getting closer. It must be most of the way up the escalators to me. It must be readying to pounce on its food. I squeeze the 4D tight, almost tight enough that it feels like I’m sandpapering the ridges of my finger and palm prints off. Then I begin to feel its steamy breath on me. My nose revolts, my insides tightening as that carrion breath washes over me. This creature is certainly taking its time, but then I’m not surprised. I’ve seen enough Internet bear mauling videos: they like to play with their food. Finally its movement seems to stop. It’s close. A snort and another putrid cloud of breath. I make my move. The hand tightened around the 4D jerks up. I mean to smack it right on its snout, make it see stars, or at least think twice. But I am clumsier than in my vision, and the flashlight bangs ineffectually on the side of the escalator and I hear my only form of defense tumble and clang down the escalator steps. I hear a little yelp. Maybe I’d caught it after all. But then the resurgence of that decrepit breath. The hairs of whatever animal is before me brushes over my skin. I should run but I’m paralyzed.
The cadence, the in and out of that breath. It brings me back. No, not bear. I’ve really never even been up close with one but I’ve heard them before, in the zoo or from amidst the trees at the dark forest campsites of my youth. This is not that sound. Yet everything is familiar, the sound of the opening of a great maw, something wet and warm and smelling of rotted garbage is slathering my cheek with a thick layer of slimy spittle.
This creature isn’t preparing to eat me.

I’ve been attacked like this before.
9:45 PM I feel my way down the rest of the escalator steps. My eyes are adjusting, but there’s no point in being reckless now. I put an arm out behind me to feel for the white creature and it nuzzles at my fingers as it follows. I look outside and the slice of sky that is exposed among the skyscrapers. There are a few stars out and a sliver of moon, so it’s not completely dark. I get into the open at the bottom of the escalator and turn to get a good look at my new companion. It’s a dog all right, but massive. I wouldn’t be far off if I guessed it weighed a good two hundred and fifty pounds. It looks a little like a giant fluffy golden retriever, but completely white. Albinoism? I don’t know. It minces off the last step, far behind me and immediately begins bounding towards me. In one great springing of its front paws, it’s up and gotten its paws around my shoulder, it’s slack panting jaw alternately licking my face and turning from side to side as more of that horrifying breath washes over me. “What? You been eating trash boy?” As if in confirmation I hear a small canine whine escape from somewhere deep in abyss one might call its throat.
I take its paws and shift its weight off of me and with all fours back on the ground it makes a circuit around me, and then reaching the tips of my shoes again, it sprawls to its side, its solid, warm weight pressing against the tops of my feet. I reach down and run a hand along the great dog’s collar but there’s no plaque there with a name or anything. Suddenly something invisible to humans floats before the white dog’s vision. Its entire body tenses.
I look outside again and scan the dark scraggly bushes under the trees lining the courtyard. Something ominous about all that shifting shadow. Even though I’m inside, surrounded by all this glass I feel exposed, as if glittering eyes are hidden in all that movement. They’re all boring holes into me. “C’mon boy,” I say, hooking a finger under the cloth collar. It takes very little effort to get the dog back up on its haunches, but when I move back towards the gate at the front door the dog stays right where it is. The harder I pull, the harder it tries to wrench free of its collar. At first I think he’s playing, or trying to be difficult. Then, I realize that he’s scared. “What have you got to be scared of boy?” I laugh. Then I think to myself, what does a two hundred plus pound dog have to be scared of? I flash my gaze back to the trees girding the library plaza, back to the embankments covered in fallen leaves. I don’t see anything and look back to the dog to try and divine where his trembling gaze is fixed. I shoot back to the trees outside, then began panning from one edge of the plaza to the other. Halfway, right around where I’d left my truck, I see it. In the negative space between two brighter tree trunks: Another fire has flared up on some distant street, a larger one this time and the light bounces and scatters off the white and reflective skyscrapers and throws the shadows long. In the muted scrim I see three sharp cuts, like some craftsmen has deftly carved from shadow a deeper darkness. They stand there, unmoving.
Two holes for eyes are bored in each of the dark totems, made with the tip of the same knife. Three Doberman Pinschers. They don’t circle. They don’t approach. They stand there, the sharp profiles of their heads hidden in their own shadows because they are pointed right at me.
I shiver in place, just like the white creature I’d thought, moments before, was a ghost. The dog looks at me and releases another of its canine whines. Then the dog begins to lick itself. Great, now is the time to engage in grooming your own balls. That’s when I notice a streak of red down his snow white fur. I crouch over the dog and begin parting the dog’s thick fur near the wound. He begins licking my hand. There is a look in his eyes, the brows furrowed over them, of both imploring (please that hurts) and understanding (do what you have to do). I look the wound over, spreading the thick, matted fur when I need to. Teeth marks. Great.
I look back up and the three shadows I’d seen near the shrubs are gone. Shit. I scan the perimeter of the plaza by the crackling fire from down the street. I get a strange feeling and begin looking closer to the windows of the library. Nothing. Damn those dogs. The color of their fur is probably like camouflage in this darkness. I don’t know why I’m convinced that it was those Pinschers that did this to the dog before me, but I am and I’m terrified they’ll do the same to me. I grab the security guard’s flashlight like a cudgel and approach the front desk area. I don’t see anything. I look back at the white dog, who hasn’t moved an inch from where it had first resisted my leading him. I look back to the plaza, to the Beast parked on the very periphery. Why the fuck did I park so far away? I could have run the truck over the curb if there weren’t so many re-enforced concrete columns all over the place. I should have anticipated the need. Still, I should have come farther down the street so I could make a straight beeline for the truck instead of a diagonal, out into the open.
I work out sort of a plan in my head, the hopeful outcome, of course: I’ll bolt out the front door and immediately the rabid dogs will be alerted of my presence. I hear the jangle of their collars, the padding of their feet on the concrete as they pursue me. (Why am I so sure that they will? Come on Dan, you know it.) They key is to keep things in between me and them, like the tables and chairs out in the plaza, I should tip them over. I try to measure the distance to the first object, a large planter. Shit, it seems far. Maybe I can use something as a weapon. My eyes fall upon each loose object between me and the car: the planters, the umbrella covered tables, the metal chairs. I remember when I was still working here that they chained up all the chairs and the tables at night because the bums would come by and steal them. The chains, maybe they were still out there. I squint through the darkness and try to make out the loops of metal. I catch myself. This is fucking stupid. I’m in a huge library. There must be hundreds of thousands of things in here, a good percentage of them usable as weapons. I turn on the flashlight and pull my dress shirt sleeve over the lens in an attempt to not draw too much attention to myself. I find what I am looking for soon enough: a giant fire extinguisher hanging from the side of a column near the escalator. I shine the muffled light on the side of the extinguisher and read the instructions on how to operate. Then I take it down and pop the pin: active. I pick it up and test its weight. Not too bad. There’s a handle on the top near where the nozzle comes put and I swing it around a few times. Solid. This will work. Just until I get across the plaza to the truck and grab the pistol from the driver side pocket. How stupid had I been to leave it in there?
All through this, Charley looks at me like: What are you doing?  (Yes, my first impulse, upon discerning the sex of the dog, is to name it after John Steinbeck’s road trip companion from a book I remember from middle school. I don’t remember much of the book except that it was one of the few books that I liked.) Stay here boy, I say. That same canine whine in response. Not that I’ll need to tell you twice you big baby. I undo the employee gate and lug the fire extinguisher through then press myself against the glass of the front doors and peer down each glass facade of the building. Clear. Or so it seems. There are these glass folds all the way down the front side of the building that are blocked by shelves and I guess the Pinschers could be hiding in these folds, but then again they might have decided to move on. Better eating elsewhere.