Part 17 (1/2)

”We don't need last names anymore,” she said.

That sank in for a while. Then, he nodded in agreement.

Later that night, long after he'd drifted to sleep in a four-poster single bed decorated with beige lace, with the windows open and the river mumbling its secrets in the dark, his bed moved, jarring him awake. Leda snuggled against him, and they made love. In the midst of it all, in the heated, pa.s.sionate ecstasy of it all, Eric imagined their sounds echoing among the empty buildings, the silent town, with no one to hear.

Chapter Twenty-one ALEXANDRIA.

Lost in shock, Eric was shrouding Pope's face with a clean smock that had been draped over the back of a chair, when a young man rushed into the radio room. Eric ignored him. The motion of hiding the face felt studied and graceful. He released the smock's shoulders and the cloth settled on Pope's features. Only the hands resting on the armrests remained uncovered. ”He asked me,” said Eric, and he waved at the switches, each with its ominously glowing light above it. He added, ”You know, they killed a boy.” The man stared at the dead librarian, his mouth open. Finally, he stuttered, ”We only have a minute or two. Hurry.” He hustled Eric out of the room and down the stairs. Apathetically, Eric allowed himself to be led.

At the bas.e.m.e.nt entrance, the young man blurted to the elderly woman what he'd seen and heard, then joined a line of people heading through the bas.e.m.e.nt door. She turned to Eric. ”You helped him?” Eric nodded. ”Thank you,” she said. Her lined eyes scrunched closed for a second. ”He was a visionary. The staff will miss his guidance.” She gripped his hand tightly, then returned to directing the line of people.

”I'm sorry,” Eric said to her back. He thought, I should find this fascinating. Where did these people come from? What were they doing in the library? But he felt numb. He could see Rabbit running across the quad to save the burning books. The unyielding surface of the gla.s.s still rested on his palms. He thought of a term from the Gone Time, the slow motion replay, and that's what was happening in his head, over and over, Rabbit dashed toward his death. Everything else seemed to be happening too rapidlya”events rusheda” and he didn't feel he could keep up.

”Quickly, quickly,” she said and coughed. An acid bite flavored the air. She patted each person on the shoulder. All wore white smocks. Most were young, under thirty, and several children took their place in line. A few carried boxes, a few, one or two books, but most were empty-handed, their faces nervous but controlled. The evacuation seemed rehea.r.s.ed. Noxious smoke billowed across the ceiling. Within a minute, the last one pa.s.sed through. Eric bent low to avoid the fumes.

”You need to hurry too,” she said.

Age and brittleness overwhelmed him. Joints acheda”elbows, knees and fingersa”skin and muscles dangled from his bones. He felt like an empty vessel. Eric sat on the floor. Flame crackled but he couldn't see it through the murk. This seems fitting, he thought. He didn't have a plan, just an urge to quit, to let the library burn all around him. Rabbit died, he thought, because of me. I brought him here, and he died for nothing. I destroyed the library. The long journey's a failure. We can't be helped. The effort to keep his head up seemed too much. ”I'll stay,” he said. Metal groaned from deep in the smoke, and then something crashed heavily.

”Come on,” she said urgently, and pulled at his arm. ”The building's doomed. You're not.” She dragged him backward a few feet, and mostly through her effort, not his own, he clambered through the trap door and into the tunnels.

”Move,” she said. Low wattage bulbs lit the tunnel until it curved out of sight. The last of the other people disappeared around the turn as he watched. ”We have to be beyond the campus before the perimeter goes up.”

”Perimeter?” said Eric dully.

”Yes.” She pushed him in the back, almost knocking him over. He staggered forward through the shallow water, splattering gray splotches onto the curved walls. She said, ”We've extended the tunnels.”

”The perimeter!” Eric could see again the scene in the quad, but instead of Rabbit, he watched Teach carrying Dodge and Ripple into the greasewood, the thickly wooded, dry brush that choked nearly all the open s.p.a.ce in Boulder. Eric picked up his pace, outdistancing the elderly woman. ”Teach is with my grandson out there. I've got to warn them!”

Eric turned into the first cross-tunnel, even though no lights illuminated its length. Blind, he ran forward, brus.h.i.+ng his hand against the wall, feeling for a ladder. He pictured Pope's map on the wall, each number representing a bomb in the outlying buildings and the s.p.a.ces between them. Even on a still day, the ring of fire would close in and burn out the center. The fire would create its own draft. Federal and his men would be trappeda”that would be Pope's Pyrrhic victorya”but so would anyone else. Behind him, the elderly woman shouted, ”It's too late. If they're within the perimeter, it's too late.” Sound and touch guided him as the rough cement ripped at his palm and each step shot splashes of water up his pants legs. She shouted something undecipherable behind him. Still, he ran, sucking great gulps of moist tunnel air. Finally, his hand slammed into a ladder, and he swarmed up the rusty rungs. But even as he climbed, comprehension came to him, and the futility of his effort slowed him down. With no surprise, he found the padlock holding the trap door closed at the top of the steps. Back down the tunnel, he heard the cautious footsteps of the old woman.

”We're on a countdown,” she called. ”We have to get out.” Her disembodied voice came up to him. ”You can't help him by dying down here.”

Eric said, ”Why burn the whole university? Why burn the books?”

”I'll show you, but you have to come right now. We may already be too late. Besides,” she said as Eric descended, ”with all the shooting, your friend would have been smart to leave. He's probably far away.” Bile rose in Eric's throat. Teach's strategy isn't running, he thought, it's to get off the main path and then not move. Teach's strategy is to hide. He could be crouched behind some bush on campus right now, still as a deer.

”Hurry,” she said. ”Time is running out.” She beckoned, her form outlined by the light behind.

”We're at least ten feet deep,” Eric said, defeated, realizing that what she'd argued was true: he could do nothing. ”Burn it to the ground and we wouldn't know.” Everything's gone, he thought. Dodge outside, unaware of the danger to come, and in the library, flaming fingers reaching everywhere, flowing across the rows and rows of books. Perfect tinder, a book: dry, thin, crisp. Irreparable.

”It's not that,” she said, panic rising in her voice. ”The tunnel's wired too. We have to be beyond it or we'll be trapped. You weren't supposed to stop.”

Again, he found himself running, more like shuffling now, following her through the lit tunnel, pa.s.sing one cave-black side pa.s.sage after another. Whatever youthful energy that had spurred him up the ladder was gone. He sucked thin lungfuls of air that came and went too quickly to help; water weight dragged at his pants' legs. He thought, How long since I threw the switches? They went past another side pa.s.sage. She talked as she kept up behind him, panting out words. ”Big explosive ... seals the tunnel ... little ones .

.. along the way ... finish it.... All entrances . . . blocked. Tunnels . .. collapse.” He thought he heard Dodge's voice in his mind. ”Grandfather,” it called. Fear and guilt spurred him on. Maybe, he thought, Teach will get him off campus. We'll meet up. Then I can take him home. Eric pushed the possibility that Dodge might die down as hard as he could, determined not to think about it. He picked up his pace. Lights flicked by faster. We have to get home, he thought. Pope's message was not all negative. I'll get Dodgea”oh G.o.d! let them escape!a”and we'll warn Troy and Littleton. We can get upstream into the mountains, drink only rain water. Pollution may be rampant, but it might be slowing. Radiation might be higher, but maybe not deadly; Pope didn't say.

”There,” she gasped, pointing ahead to a large green box mounted on the side of the pa.s.sage that became more visible as they rounded the slight curve. It blocked two-thirds of the tunnel, leaving just enough room for a person to fit through. ”The bomb ... We have to be ... beyond it.”

”How much time?” The box loomed before them, and as Eric approached, he sidled to the opposite side, away from the explosive.

She slowed, as if a sudden movement might set it off. Her white hair had pulled free of the ribbon that held it back, and strands of it stuck to the sides of her face. ”Chemical fuse. Five minutes minimum. Eight or nine minutes tops.”

Dodge's voice came to him again, a remote echo, ”Grandfather?” Eric stopped and c.o.c.ked his head, listening, the bomb within arm's reach, and the old woman collided with him, her eyes wide and wild.

”Go,” she hissed, and pushed by, careful not to touch the box.

”Did you hear that?” He remembered the vivid memories that had come more and more often lately, the inability to separate what was happening with what he recalled. But the voice sounded real.

”What?” She kept moving farther down the corridor, putting distance between her and the bomb. Indecisive, he took two steps the way they'd come.

”Don't be a fool,” she said, backpeddling.

”I thought I heard something.”

She kept retreating. ”I have to go,” she said, almost apologetically. ”I've got a responsibility. Pope's dead.” She started running again and shouted back to him over her shoulder, ”I 'm the Librarian now.” Her footfalls banged away.

Eric ran to the first cross tunnel. ”Dodge?” The sound bounced back from an unseen, far wall. He listened intently. Water seeped out of a crack over his head and dripped steadily onto the floor. Around each small bulb suspended from the ceiling, a subtle nimbus glowed, casting edgeless shadows of pipes and conduits on the walls. ”Dodge?” he cried again.

Clanging echoes of his own voice bounded around him. He looked back. The woman was gone, and he staggered forward, alone, in the tunnel whose bare walls offered no hope in either direction. Chest hurting, hand sc.r.a.ped, wet and loggy with fatigue, he felt profound isolation, like a marble in a long tube rolling nowhere. Forward or back, he could barely tell the difference.

Further down, from the next branch, a voice called, ”Eric?” It was Teach. Slime underfoot nearly cost Eric his footing as he rushed to the opening and turned into it, running several paces away from the lit tunnel. ”Dodge!”

Out of the darkness emerged Teach and the children. Teach said, ”When the library caught fire, I guessed you'd go underground. I broke another lock.”

Dropping to his knees in the shallow water, Eric pulled the slender young boy to him. Dodge's wet face trembled against Eric's own.

”Rabbit,” sobbed Dodge.

”I know.” Eric stood. Tears marked the dust on Ripple's cheeks. ”We have to run. There's a bomb.” Catching Teach's eye, Eric said, ”What about Federal?”

Looking grim and determined, Teach fingered his knife. ”He's dead.” They started toward the lit corridor.

The lights went out.

Dodge tightened his grip on Eric's hand. Ripple inhaled sharply. Pure blackness.

”Was this supposed to happen?” said Teach.

Eric extended an arm and walked forward until a damp wall blocked his path. He lost his orientation. Which way? he thought. Did I come from the left or the right? Sickly, he recalled reversing directions several times before he'd got here. And, he thought, how much time has pa.s.sed?

He'd thrown the switcha”that started the bomb's timera”covered the body, ran down two flights of stairs, climbed into the tunnels, ran some distance in them, went back for Dodge, Teach and Ripple. How much time?