“No!” shouted a voice from outside.
Eric brought his eyes up. From the wall of greasewood thirty yards from the pile of books, sprinted a small figure, arm upraised. The soldiers’ heads swiveled to spot it. Soldiers in the trenches whipped around and repointed their guns. Still running, half the distance covered, the arm snapped down and one of the soldiers by the fire dropped; his hat flew one direction and the rock flew another. Clawing the muslin out of the way, Eric slapped his hand against the glass. A smothering sense of deja vu swept through him. “Rabbit! Stop! Stop!”
Even from the window, Rabbit’s scar was visible, his face contorted with effort and rage. “Not the books!” he shouted, and another rock smacked one of the soldiers who had held a torch. Rabbit reached the pile of books, snagged a torch, and flung it away. One of the soldiers in the ditch fired a long burst, missing Rabbit but shredding the side of a tent. The loudspeaker erupted in a panic, “Don’t shoot, you idiot.”
Eric drummed the flat of his hand against the glass. “Run, Rabbit, Run!” Rabbit bent over the pile and grabbed the other torch. Flame had barely touched the books. As if breaking a paralysis, the second soldier with a gun, reversed it, stepped forward, and delivered a business-like blow to the back of Rabbit’s head, sending him sprawling into the books. The torch tumbled away across the bare dirt.
Hand on the window, Eric’s breath froze.
For a moment, all was still.
“Kill him,” said Federal, and the soldier who had hit Rabbit put his gun to his shoulder and fired four single shots into the still body.
In Eric’s thoughts, nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Something strangled sounding came from the loudspeaker.
Another scream. Inarticulate. From the same wall of grease-wood, Dodge lunged into the quad, Ripple hanging on to the back of his shirt, pulling him back. Cloth ripped. Ripple fell back; Dodge tumbled forward, began crawling toward Rabbit and the books.
The soldier, still aiming his gun at Rabbit’s back, looked at Dodge. As huge as a bear, a dark shape, bent low, emerged from one of the tents. Moving with dark fury, it crossed the distance, swept through the soldier who never saw it coming, and met Dodge who was still crawling, carrying him and Ripple into the brush.
“Get them away, Teach!” yelled Eric through the glass. He pounded the glass again. “Away, away,” he wailed, dimly aware that Pope was pulling at his belt. Soldiers boiled out of the ditch, some running to the tents, some standing as if struck dumb, some pointing their guns at the library. Pops of light flashed from the ends of their muzzles.
“Get down! Get down!” bellowed Pope, as he, in a move surprisingly strong for a wheelchair-bound man of his age, yanked Eric from the tall window that seemed to crystallize, suddenly going opaque, cascading to the floor all at once.
“Damn,” said Pope. “I didn’t want it to go like this.” Bullets whizzed over their heads, knocking holes into the high ceiling tiles. He crunched over the broken glass. “Get me to the radio room. I broke the remote.” Numbly, Eric pushed him across the library. Glass shattered elsewhere, then the shooting stopped. They made it to the radio room, and Eric rested his back against the door frame after propelling Pope in. Black dots swam across Eric’s vision. Bands of pressure pulled in his chest. He wheezed painfully. He pushed the palm of his hand against the pounding in his forehead. The last glimpse he’d had out the window rose before him: Teach and the children were gone; the soldiers were firing at the building; and in the middle of it, bright as a sun, the pile of books blazed around the silhouette of Rabbit, his arms thrust straight from his sides, his legs together, burning, burning, burning in the mid-day light.
“Eric,” said Pope, and something in his tone brought Eric out of the pile of books. Leaning back, his head resting on the back of the chair, Pope almost looked as if he were relaxing, but his hand pressed hard against a growing patch of red on the white smock shook Eric out of his anguish.
“Can’t let the barbarians sack the library,” Pope gasped. “Can’t have them spreading our books about, ripping pages they can’t read.” He sucked a breath in sharply and shuddered. “Quick,” he said. “Turn on the radio and say, ‘five minutes and counting.’ Then you have to flip all the switches on that panel. Get to the tunnels.” He pointed to the array he had tested earlier, to the far right switch on the bottom row. “Last one is the front doors. No delay.”
Trying to help the librarian sit up so he could breathe easier, Eric reached around the chair and braced his hand against its back while moving Pope. Eric’s hand came away red, and he wiped it on his pants. Pope looked at the stain.
“Hardly slowed, did it.” He coughed a fine spray of blood.
“What will happen?” asked Eric, hugging the man close, as if by holding him he could keep him alive. Through the blood-soaked smock, Eric felt the rapid flutter of Pope’s heart. Pope bubbled, coughed again, and Eric thought he might die right then, but Pope took another breath and said, “Diesel bombs on timers in all the buildings and in the brush.” He moaned. “Campus… surrounded. They won’t get out.”
“How does that help?” said Eric. “We can’t burn the library ourselves.” Breathing in short, quick puffs, Pope twisted in his chair. “Got… to. For sixty years…” He grabbed at Eric’s arm and gripped. “…I’ve planned on Alexandria.”
He panted twice more, then seemed to relax, breaths coming slower and slower until after five or six, he quit.
Eric faced the array. All the switches pointed down. He thought, the last switch is the library. If Pope is right, then this might be the last library. There aren’t others in other cities. This is it. The world is empty. Just a few hundred people, maybe a thousand, and no one else. All the learning is here. All the books. Outside, shots were fired. More glass broke. Shouting.
He turned on the microphone and said, “Five minutes and counting.” He thought of Rabbit dying for a pile of books. Rabbit, who had rubbed his legs when they were sore, who smiled only secretly when he thought no one was looking, the orphan boy with scars on his face who believed everything that an old man had told him about the value of knowledge.
Using both hands, he flipped all the switches but the far right one. Their lights glowed at him. His finger rested on the last switch. Its sharp plastic edge felt sharp against his skin. He pulled up until it jumped into the upright position, and its light lit. A dull thud of a vibration against his feet and a slight pressure against his ears told him the diesel burned in the library below.
Chapter Twenty
LOST AND FOUND
A stranger’s house would feel less threatening than this, Eric thought. He stepped cautiously across the threshold. Glass littered the living room carpet. A needlepoint, a gift from one of his mother’s friends, hung crookedly on the wall. It doesn’t feel like home, he thought. Nothing’s right. We’re in the wrong house.
Eric recognized titles in the hanging bookshelf above the couch, Time Life Home Repair Series: Plumbing, Finding the Lost Railroads, Birds of the Rocky Mountain West. A yellowed and water-stained newspaper lay on the carpet beside his father’s chair, its headline still readable: “Military Enforces Quarantines.”
It didn’t smell like home. Even with the picture window broken, a rotten, wet stench permeated the room. None of the familiar smells came through: Chapstick, Old Spice, toast, fingernail polish, Mr. Clean. The light was wrong. Unimpeded sunlight cut sharp shadows on the walls instead of the soft lights and darks he recalled.
None of the right sounds. No washer groaning in the utility room. No big band tune from the stereo, no vacuum cleaner. Glass crunched beneath his foot. Like an empty church or a mortuary, the noiseless air seemed expectant and patient, even brooding. The entrance into the hallway that led to the bedrooms and his dad’s office loomed like an abyss. He heard a whimper, a tiny, beat puppy thing that sounded pathetic in the empty living room. He realized he’d made the noise himself. He stepped back and bumped Leda, who caught the backs of his arms. “Steady,” she said. “What’s the smell?”