Nine Years Ago, in the Detroit Isolation

  The library was nothing but bones now.

  It had been the old, musty kind of library—the good kind—with shelves made of wood and cozy corners full of chairs. All of those things had been wood stripped down to planks and pieces long ago, and used for fires. The books had suffered the same fate, although many still remained on the floor here, gutted, their pages torn out for kindling.

  The nameplates were still there, though: Science Fiction, Contemporary, all of the pretty words you would expect, engraved onto brass plates that hadn’t been worth stealing because they probably weren’t real brass. These were scattered under the other debris of the old world, and I picked my way through cotton fluff ripped from armchairs and colorful plastic blocks from some sort of kid’s corner, not to mention all kinds of torn pages, kicking it all aside to look for the section I wanted.

  The study rooms and offices had already been a bust. I had expected as much. Lore had asked for a monitor, not even computer parts, and I couldn’t even find that much for him. I’d been checking every building on this street, hoping to find an extra screen for my brother, and trying to ignore the gunfire that always seemed to be getting closer no matter where I was.

  I found another brass plate and stopped to run my fingers over the letters. Informational. I waded around some more, until I found a pile of computer books under a beanbag chair that no one had bothered to take. It wasn’t flammable, and even in the apocalypse, people knew it wasn’t comfortable either.

  On a warped spine, tainted by the rain that had gotten through the leaking roof, I found one title that might have been useful years ago, but not now: C++ For Beginners. Half the chapters had been gnawed away by mice, but it didn’t matter. Even at eight years old, Lore was far past beginner status.

  I sighed and reached into my pocket, pulling out his note: Monitor, LED, plug needs to be USB-C. That’s the rectangular plug I showed you before, with the sort of slot in it. Not a pointy metal prong at the end, that won’t work. Also, you’re the best brother ever. He had included a small drawing of the requisite plug, which was more info than I needed. He always wrote more than he needed to.

  He also tended to throw in little notes like that last bit, just to make us both feel better about these risky visits to city spaces. He hadn’t wanted me to come here for this, but his birthday was coming up. I’d forced him to ask me for something.

  I surveyed the interior of the library one last time. No screens, except a couple so broken I knew they wouldn’t be usable even if they booted up. My gaze landed on a door marked Maintenance. Would a library maintenance guy need a computer?

  I moseyed over and was pleased to find the door locked. That was good—it meant the room inside might not have been ransacked yet.

  I reached into the pack at my hip and rifled around until I found the credit card. It was marked with my mother’s name, and useless for anything but unlocking simple doors. It didn’t always work, but today, it did. I slipped the card into the gap between the door frame and the door, ran it up past the handle, and it clicked.

  I pushed the door open with a knee, swinging it wide, since there was no light in here. The power was dead, of course, but there was a desk. No computer on it, though. Just a hot water heater and the HVAC system and some old wiring snaking out of the wall….

  Huh. What’s that go to? I thought, stepping into the dark. I picked up the cord and followed it deeper into the room, where the darkness was thick enough that my eyes hadn’t adjusted yet.

  When the cord went taut, I knelt, feeling over the object. Blocky, plastic, about five inches wide by a foot-and-a-half tall. It was on wheels, and from the back sprouted more cords. This led to a keyboard, mouse, and….

  I grinned. A monitor! And not just that, but an entire computer tower to go with it! Lore was gonna be thrilled. His birthday present had definitely come early.

  Why was it on the ground, though? My eyes had adjusted now, and I could see one more cord leading off to a chunky plastic object. It was shaped like a fat dog bone—a game controller.

  This place was used by a kid. The thought hit me hard. A kid would come here and play, probably while his dad or his mom worked…. Another beanbag chair reinforced that idea.

  I tried to smile again, but it wouldn’t come. Where was that kid now? His parents? Or the better question might be—what had they died from? Probably not the blasts, since the Detroit area remained intact, but maybe the sickness afterward, or the Greyscale, or just by starving, or—

  That’s when I heard them. Boots scuffing concrete. Low laughter.

  I finished my thought: Or the gangs.

  I shot silently to my feet, sinking back into the shadows of the room. I froze, every muscle locked. Someone coughed, and it was close, too close. And too loud. They weren’t trying to be quiet.

  “You said they came in here?” a voice said. Male.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing in here but books.”

  “Maybe that’s what they want us to think.”

  I wanted to curse. A scout must have seen me. I didn’t know the gangs around here yet—we were new to the area—but all of them were bad news.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The light pouring in through the doorway flickered. Shit, shit. They were going to see this open door, and they were going to look in, and they’d see me. Forget the computer. I had to get out of here alive.

  I edged closer to the door, hugging the wall, until I dared press an eye to the door frame. Shady shapes drifted through the wreckage of the library, moving with the lazy confidence of people who weren’t afraid of anyone finding them here. They carried long-barreled guns over their shoulders, across their backs, or right there in their hands, ready to go.

  There was a metal book trolley about three feet from this door. I lowered myself, waited until I was sure they were all looking the other way, then scuttled out to get behind it.

  Immediately, I had a gun in my face.

  “Mmmm. Where do you think you’re going?” the man behind the assault rifle said. He’d been leaning against the wall, keeping watch and dead silent. He was tall, fat, tattooed, with dark skin and darker eyes. He wore a black motorcycle jacket and black jeans.

  My stomach sank all the way to the floor.

  Footsteps crunched behind me. “Grab ‘im,” the man said.

  Before I could even think to try running, hands yanked me back by the collar. I twisted, tried to throw an elbow, but a fist caught me across the jaw. Stars glittered across my vision, one of my ears ringing.

  Then there were four of them, crowding me in, fists and boots slamming into my ribs, my arms, my legs. Not hard enough to kill or even hobble me, but hard enough to bruise, to remind me I wasn’t in charge here, that they could do plenty worse if they wanted.

  I could fight. I knew how. But I couldn’t fight assault weapons. And I’d been hearing enough bullets today to know at least some of these things were loaded.

  “Thought you could sneak around on our turf, huh?” the fat guy snarled, crouching next to me. Even from feet away, I could smell booze on his breath.

  “I’m not—” I coughed blood onto the cracked linoleum, trying to sit up “—I’m just passing through.”

  “Yeah? You smell like a Reeker.” Someone drove a knee into my stomach, doubling me over. I gagged, gripping my stomach, which gave them the excuse they needed to go poking through my coat pockets.

  I had nothing worth stealing, not really. I knew better. You were less likely to be killed if you had nothing worth taking.

  But then they found my satchel. My knife went first. My lighter. A bundle of wires I’d hoped Lore could use. And then—

  “The hell’s this?”

  I looked up. The fat man held a scrap of paper between two fingers, unfolded. My brother’s handwriting caught some of the fading light.

  “Just a note. From my brother,” I rasped.

  “He sent you looking for computer parts. That mean he’s got a rig?”

  The gang went quiet for a moment. My heart went still.

  “We only just started building it,” I said carefully. “That’s what those wires were—”

  “Says here he showed you this USB thing. Seems to me he’s got parts already.”

  Another man spoke up. “A working computer would be worth a couple bars,” he said, speaking to the fat man. “We could grab Bob Barker and track back to where he came from.”

  Bob Barker? That wasn’t a real name. It probably belonged to a dog or something…. Oh no.

  The fat man smiled. “So you’re saying we don’t much need this Reeker alive, then?”

  “Yeah, boss. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “I’m not a Reeker!” I said. “Look, I’ve got bars. Almost ten of ‘em, but you’ll never find them if you kill me. Just let me lead you back, and—”

  The fat man lowered his gun back to my forehead, which shut me up quick. “Now, I know better than that, Reeker,” he drawled. “So, you got any last—”

  His brains spattered the wall behind his head.

  That’s what I processed first. The brains. The gunshot actually went through my mind afterward, like a weird echo, but that might be because there were so many of them suddenly, loud pop pop pops shattering the stillness of the library.

  I knelt there, numb, as the men collapsed around me. Some of them gurgled. Most just bled.

  Cold ran down my arms, but I turned slowly. A woman stood on the other side of the room, next to a plastic standee of a thermometer from a fundraiser. She held an AR15 in both hands, but it was aimed to the side, not at me.

  “You got a rig?” she asked. She couldn’t be a year older than I was, with hair dyed dark blue and a neon yellow raincoat. Three people stood behind her in smarter, less noticeable gear. They seemed to be half-made out of guns.

  “We won’t kill you for it,” the woman amended. “We just want to use it now and then. If you say no, well, we got a dog too. We can find out wherever you came from. So I suggest you say yes.”

  I swallowed thickly, then pointed at the maintenance room. “There’s a whole computer right in there. I just want to be left alone. You take that, and I’ll just go.”

  She shook her head. “That’s nice, champ, but I barely know how to turn one of those things on. I had a phone before all this shit went down. How ‘bout this? I lost my computer guy last month. Can you be my new one? I’ll let you keep both computers.”

  I looked between her and the two men behind her. They were well-equipped, and she was no barbarian. Ruthless, maybe, but she wasn’t like the guys in black had been.

  Lore and I had been sneaking around for so long, barely getting by, nothing but a knife between us and the world. Maybe a gang might work better. Maybe we could put down some roots, have some protection.

  “My… my brother can do it. Maybe. But he’s just a kid.”

  She smiled. It was a dangerous smile, but not one with ill intentions. It was a smile I trusted. It said, I’ll kill you, but only if you cross me. Be useful, and I won’t.

  She swung the rifle back over her shoulder, then stepped over the dead men to get to me. She held out a hand, and I let her help me up. Then she shook my hand.

  “I’m Ree,” she said. Up close, her eyes were almost as pale as her skin, but not blue. Hazel, I think. Pale brown if the light were different.

  “Talon,” I told her.

  We shook.

  Later that night, as the Reekers were moving Lore’s stuff to their safehouse—all under his watchful gaze—I pulled him aside. I wasn’t sure when we’d be alone next, and even if I had a good feeling about Ree, her trigger finger had not hesitated. I didn’t know how much we could trust these people.

  “Hey, kiddo,” I whispered. “We need a new way to write notes. That one got me in lots of trouble today.”

  He had to physically tear his gaze off his tower as they unplugged it from the generator we toted everywhere. His head rotated to me.

  “You mean, like a cipher?”

  “Yeah. Something simple, though.” I needed him to be able to explain it right now. “Simple, but not obvious.”

  He reached up and scratched his head, making me worry he had lice again. Or worse, fleas. I hated the fleas.

  “We could do an acrostic,” he said, smart enough to whisper, too. “First letter of every word is the real message.”

  “That’s too simple.”

  He considered that for a moment. I knew that, as a programmer, he had an interest in all kinds of codes. That included secret codes and ciphers, although usually in a programming context. Programming languages written in poems, that sort of thing.

  “A progressive acrostic?” he said, like a question. “First letter of first word, second letter of second word, skip any words that aren’t long enough, restart over after you get to five letters?”

  I let that land in my head for a minute. “I think I can figure that out,” I said. “With practice. Anyway, it will work for now.”

  Later, we could move on to something better, but Ree had just walked into our little basement hovel—it had once been a marijuana grow room—and she was looking at us now.

  I straightened and gave her a nod. She leveled that hazel gaze at me for a moment, and then she nodded, too.

  “That’s the leader?” Lore said. “Of the Reekers?”

  “Yeah.”

  He grinned and punched my shoulder. “Damn, Tal. You didn’t tell me she was hot.”