The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  Along the front window, next to the cash register, was a rack of pamphlets and brochures. The maps, unsurprisingly, were gone. There might still be power in some places, but the internet was gone and smartphones with their map apps were useless. But something else caught his eye.

  UNDERGROUND STORAGE FACILITY

  Dennis pulled the brochure from its place, the paper slick in his fingers. It was advertising tours of a place that had once been a mine and that now featured vehicle storage as well as server storage for big corporations to back up their data. It also had a food court and indoor park and a small “village” complete with high end shops. It was only a few miles away.

  “Take a look at this,” he said to Kelsey when she came out of the bathroom with her hair dripping and her clothes changed.

  She did. Then at him. He didn’t have to explain why he was showing her. She got it.

  Kelsey beamed. “What do you think? Betcha there’s lots of stuff in there.”

  “My mother used to tell me about a place where people could buy…like timeshares. In the event of the apocalypse. She was pretty derogatory about it, figuring that people needed to be able to stand on their own rather than do an a la carte type survival deal. But I’m pretty sure the place she talked about was here.”

  “Which means…there’s a group in there?”

  “Yeah.” Dennis looked at her. “Might be okay to hook with them, if we can. I mean, rather than trying to go it totally alone.”

  She frowned. “What if they’re like the last group?”

  “Then we don’t stay.”

  “But we didn’t pay the timeshare fee.”

  “If they’re not the group that’s there, or they don’t want to let us in, it’s still worth checking out. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” she said, but sounded hesitant. “I guess so. How long do you think it will take us to get there?”

  He studied the map on the back of the brochure, then checked it against the one he pulled from his backpack. “A couple hours. We could be there before nightfall.”

  “I say we do it.” She looked around the store. “Nothing else here?”

  “Maybe a few things.We should take what we can. If they’re hesitant about taking us in, maybe having something will sweeten the deal.”

  “Dennis…why, though?”

  He took her hands and pulled her close. “I trust people who were prepared in advance more than I do the ones who’ve just gone power crazy in the aftermath. You know? These people were invested in this place. It’ll have everything we need to survive. And I want you safe.”

  It was right thing for him to say. Kelsey beamed. She kissed him. And then again. They forgot about packing up the store for a while, their attention taken up with other things.

  After, together they stripped the store bare of anything useful, then packed up the bikes and headed off. The roads were bigger, becoming highways. It was easier to ride them than it had been on the rural routes, even when they had to weave in and out among the stalled or wrecked cars.

  “It’s getting cold,” Kelsey said when they stopped for a break. She shivered, looking at the sky, then into the distance. They’d reached the edge of a bridge leading into the city, which put them higher than everything else.

  Staying in the south would’ve made winter easier to bear. It had been his idea to head north. Dennis had some idea that tornados weren’t as common there, though thinking of it now as they entered the suburbs of Pittsburgh to find nothing devastation, it hadn’t mattered much. The whole point was that the storms weren’t normal. Whatever had come through here had been big. And bad.

  “Jesus,” Kelsey breathed from beside him. She put a foot on the cracked asphalt to steady herself. Under her feet, dead brown vines crunched. Even in the few months since everything had begun, the bridge had been overtaken by brush and growth, proof that what his mother had said was true. The earth would always take back what it wanted to. “What the hell happened?”

  “The end of the world.”

  She looked at him, brow raised. “Ya think?”

  Dennis, to his surprise, because it always surprised him that he could find any humor in this, laughed. “Something like it, anyway.”

  “The city.” She pointed. Smoke colored the air in several dirty plumes. Someone, somewhere, was burning something. “Let’s go the other direction, I guess? Bypass it? Go around?”

  In the distance, there came a sound like a low hum. A throb. They looked at each other.

  “I don’t know what that is,” Kelsey said, “but I vote we stay the fuck out of Pittsburgh.”

  65

  “It’s ridiculous!” The shout came from the back of the line, but echoed through the entire room.

  Maddy had her roller skates on, and she twirled in a circle. Arms out, she went slower. Arms in, faster. She was getting dizzy.

  “Who put this kid in charge? What kind of —”

  Maddy snapped her fingers, and the guys who hadn’t been Dad’s friends before but were now, they all were now, if Maddy wanted them to be, grabbed him by both arms. He kicked and struggled, that old man, ugly old man, Mr. Porter his name was. Maddy didn’t care, really. He was a jerk.

  Everyone who knew him stared without saying anything. The new people, the ones who’d come not long ago, they stared too, but with wider eyes. They wouldn’t say anything. Dad had told them it was their rules here, and if they didn’t like it they could get the hell out.

  “What kind of place is this, where a kid’s in charge of everyone else? I paid my money the way everyone else did!” Mr. Porter screamed, kicking. “I paid my money and why should I have to wait in line for rations? Why should any of us --”

  “Shut up,” Maddy said serenely, spinning. Spinning. “Take him to see my mother.”

  The men who had not been Dad’s friends but who now did whatever Maddy said, took Mr. Porter out of the lunch room. A few other people had acted mad, too, but when they saw what happened to Mr. Porter, they got quiet. The other ones, the ones who’d already been to see her mother, didn’t say or do anything. They would, they could, if Maddy let them. If she told the wiggle worms with the whispering voices to make them do or say something, whatever she wanted. They would.

  For now, it was enough to watch them staring in silence.

  “If you’re good,” she announced, “we can all have ice cream!”

  That was kind of a lie. The only cream they could have was the freeze dried pellet kind the astronauts ate, but it was, like her mom used to say better than nothing. Thinking of it now, she twirled again and again until the room moved even faster around her. She almost felt kind of sick, but with a twinkle of her inner thoughts, everything settled into place.

  Maddy stopped twirling.

  “I think,” she said, “it’s time everyone went in to see my mother.”

  8

  They’d talked idly about the end of the world, their fingers linked, sweaty thighs stuck to each other. Their heads on one pillow. It had been fantasy, something to distract them from the fact that their world was going to come to an end, no matter what they wanted. Yet here it was, the end of everything, and they were together.

  Somehow, they’d found a way to be together.

  Bill had never paid much attention to disaster preparedness, but to Maggie’s surprise he’d taken Jake’s advice about what was coming and how they needed to get ready for it. The men had gone into town with Bill’s truck and come back with it filled to overflowing with canned goods. Tools. Plastic tarps and bundles of rope and electrical wire. A generator. They’d filled the shed and the basement with shelves of supplies and spent hours boarding up the windows and the door. Making barricades.

  “I maxed out every credit card, and so did he.” Bill said this into the quiet of the night as they shared a bed.

  Not a pillow, though.

  Not touching each other, either. The distance between them had been there for a long time, but hadn’t felt so vast before. Maggie tho