Page 21 of The Dead of Summer

Within the library, the silence is always singing.

It’s only been a few days, but already I know the music of this place.

Mornings begin with a funeral dirge on the main stairs as socked feet bring sleepy, never-sleeping survivors to breakfast. Then there is a sullen symphony of chewing and scraping through the latest meal of barely warm oatmeal.

The next hours are a stressed adagio as we do our jobs as quietly as possible, knowing the weepers are most active in mornings and afternoons.

Midday, when the weepers hide in shadows from the heat, is when we are allowed to speak above a whisper, but hardly anyone does.

Depending where I am in the afternoons—yet another atonal adagio—my ears pluck out different notes.

The squeal of the book cart is an ironically gleeful high C.

The shushed child’s wail starts at an A-sharp and settles a few steps lower at a hiccuping, simpering G.

And at night, with people settled into makeshift bunks among the open stacks of the upper floors, I begin to know the private elegy of each person’s crying. The soft keening has no real intonation, but the musicality of it is inescapable.

Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I sit at the organ.

It’s a relic left over from the library’s former life, in the exact same spot on the second-level balcony, overlooking the sanctuary.

It still works—Willy used to make me practice here on slow afternoons in the offseason, and it was always a mortifying affair.

Too many buttons, too many keys, and a sound as loud as angels screaming.

I hated this organ, but now I find it comforting just to look at.

I hover my hands over the keys, and I imagine all the sounds of the library’s silence draining out of my ears, dripping down my fingers, into endless silence.

“You’re not thinking of starting a sing-along, are you?”

I open my eyes, the imagined music echoing a second longer before I realize someone outside my head is talking to me. Willy stands at the top of the stairs.

I retract my hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry, I trust you. But the wiring of this old building is weird, and I’m pretty sure the lights of the tower and that organ are on the same breaker.

Which is now on. So, just be careful, okay?

” Willy looks older now. Years and years older, like his whole life just caught up with him.

“The truth is, I’ve been looking all over for you.

How did we ever find each other without cell phones, am I right? ”

It’s evening. If we don’t have assigned chores, we can do whatever we want.

Mostly people attend Wendy Pretendy’s nightly read-along for the kids.

After that, the adults close themselves into the common room and argue.

The other teens and I sit at the top of the stairs and whisper about our theories.

How long do we have? How much food is left?

Is anyone coming to help us? It’s hard to tell how tonight’s meeting went—Willy’s emotions are often concealed under the inexhaustible smile of Wendy Pretendy’s makeup—but if he’s come looking for me, I’m guessing the adults finally need some help.

I reach for the recorder in my pocket. Since Dr. Pfaff gave it to me, it’s felt like a weight pulling down on my conscience. I haven’t recorded anything, but I also haven’t told my friends the mission she gave me.

“Can I come in?” Willy prompts.

I take my hand out of my pocket and nod. This moment is not for Dr. Pfaff.

The light in the library is always dim because of the paper covering the windows, but just enough light spills from the tower to turn Willy’s face into a mask of worry.

He uses a filthy rag to mop the makeup from his cheeks while he asks me how I’m handling everything.

I know all the right answers to fend off worry; it’s remarkable how similar these conversations are to ones I used to have with Willy, in a room kept just as dark, as Gracie lay between us in her hospital bed.

“I’m hanging in there.”

“We’ll get through this.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“But I am worried about you.” Willy cuts through the awkward small talk.

“We’ve barely had a moment alone since you got out of quarantine.

I’m sorry about that, kiddo. I’ll admit, there was some pushback to your arrival, and some of the adults think I’m playing favorites letting you guys stay here, but screw them.

You’re like my own children. I hope no one has been giving you a tough time? ”

Most of the people here survived the outbreak because they were already in the library, or close enough to be grabbed by Wendy as she rushed inside.

Wendy couldn’t convince any doomsday people to flee the slow onslaught of weepers, but she did manage to save a few of their kids.

Three doomsday adults—and Harrigan—scrambled after their kin, inadvertently allowing themselves to be saved, too, but for some reason they resent Wendy for this.

They whisper about her and hold small meetings in the theology section when they think no one will notice during her nightly read-alongs, which their children attend without complaint.

And they seem to think Bash, Sam, and I are a sign that the library’s status as a sanctuary just got a lot shorter.

They tuck their small kids away from us and serve us daggers at every meal.

“Everyone has been very welcoming,” I say. There’s no need to worry Willy more.

“How are the others doing? I’ll admit, I’m a bit worried about Bash.”

I nod at the corner quickly. Willy jumps. Bash sits in a beanbag chair, unmoving, unreactive, a book limp in his hands. He’s been like this since we got here. These days I always make sure he’s near me, even though he might as well be miles away. Even now, he shows no sign of hearing Willy.

“Bash? You okay, kiddo?” Willy whispers a little louder. Bash turns and it’s like he’s a wooden puppet being repositioned by invisible hands. His eyes find Willy, and he gives a stiff thumbs-up.

“Hey, Willy?” Bash asks in a far-off voice. “How come you have my grandma’s rifle?”

It’s a strange question, but one I instantly know is valid. Bash knows about stuff like this. Willy takes a second too long to reply. “Because I was with her during the outbreak.”

I have to tell myself to breathe. Willy’s evasiveness was probably a minor mercy, to spare Bash from the loss of one more family member. And this time, instead of shying away, Willy lifts up his chin and faces the truth head-on.

“I should have told you, Bash. I’m sorry. I was checking on her like I always do on Sunday, and I heard people screaming, and …” Willy swallows. “I wanted to take her with me, Bash.”

“You left her?” I hate the accusatory tone in my own voice.

“No. No.” Willy’s eyes shine in the dark. “I tried to take her with me. Carried her, but then we had to run. She told me to go, and I did. I wish I left her in her own home. But instead—”

Willy’s hand trembles over his mouth, and he doesn’t finish the story. He looks at Bash with such raw shame, I have to stare at the organ keys.

“I’m sorry,” Willy says.

“It’s okay.” Bash turns back to the book in his lap. He has been on page 139 of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea for two days.

“Should he be reading that?” Willy whispers to me. By now most of the survivors have accepted that the thing infecting people is some kind of ocean-borne coral.

“Exposure therapy?” I shrug. Bash has always loved books about boats and monsters of the sea, even before he worked at the library.

He’s read everything here a dozen times.

He likes real boats, too. He used to make us go to the pier when the tall ships arrived, and he’d name each line and sail within the creaking structure.

I asked him once why he loved boats, and he described for me the unimaginable power of the ocean, both its tendency to destroy and its capacity for life.

Yeah, but why boats? I had pressed, and he said, Because atop all the crushing power of the sea, a ship’s ability to float across infinity comes down to being absurdly fragile. And that’s fucking cool.

Right now, I think of Bash as a boat. Floating and fragile, but with cracks I can’t reach. I just hope he doesn’t sink.

“Sam seems to be doing all right,” Willy offers.

This is true. Sam has surprised everyone with his affable personality. Even the doomsday people like him, maybe because he’s an outsider.

“Now, Elisa. She’s been better since you guys arrived, but … something is on her mind. I asked, but she won’t say. Any ideas?”

“Imogen Pfaff,” I say plainly. Because, duh .

What are the chances that Elisa’s nemesis would just happen to be at the library the moment the town descended into a weeping, pastel carnage?

Yet Dr. Pfaff is here, hiding in her office with her little red notebook and books, barely interacting with the other survivors.

She attends meals, speaks to no one, then vanishes back into her work.

“I’ve noticed that, too. The first few days, I was certain Elisa was going to smother Dr. Pfaff in her sleep, but alas: no pillows,” Willy says.

Of course he knows about Elisa’s longstanding hatred of Imogen Pfaff—we used to torment the poor director with pranks anytime our class visited the Anchor’s Mercy Institute of Oceanographic Studies.

Our parents were too busy during the day to take a call from the principal, so Willy bailed us out every other month, it seemed.

“But I’m not talking about how Elisa feels about Pfaff,” Willy says. “She mentioned some kind of fight. She said she was scared that the last words she said to you weren’t very nice, and I notice you two aren’t talking. What’s that about?”

The fight with Elisa feels like someone else’s life.

I shrug. Truth is, I still feel an ugly urge to gloat in Elisa’s face.

I told her something was wrong, I told her this island was sick, and she mocked me right outside the library doors.

The very same doors that are encrusted with giant, mutant people-barnacles.

The urge never lasts, though, always souring to a slick guilt that bubbles in my stomach when I think of all the things I missed—Aunt Maddie as the first weeper potentially, and the exploded aquarium, and the unspoken pattern of sickness.

I had the answers, but I refused to ask the question, and now the world is ending.

I ignore Willy’s question and ask my own. “That day when the weepers showed up … I heard my mom was seen walking in the dunes. Maybe to the beach. Do you think …”

Willy closes his eyes a fraction too long, like I’ve made him flinch.

“She’s out there, Ollie. If it means more time with you, she’ll survive anything. She’s already proven that once, hasn’t she?” It seems like there’s more to say, but Willy’s eyes flick back to Bash. “Lights out in a few. And cover that organ up, will you?” is all he says.

I close the organ, then shake Bash out of his stare-off with his book. He permits a stiff hug from Willy before floating away.

“Ollie.”

I stop, one foot already on the stairs.

“We might be here awhile, you know that, right? I see lights at night on the water, but they won’t come close to the island. If we had a radio, we could hail them, but right now it’s just a waiting game. Help will come for us. We’ve just got to be here when it does, okay?”

“We won’t run away, don’t worry.”

“That’s not what I mean. Look, you don’t have to talk to me, but I wish you would talk to each other.”

He means the Suds.

“I have never seen love like what you have with your friends. Love like that can outlast anything. The world isn’t ending, but even if it was, the Suds should survive. Do you get what I’m saying?”

I nod, thinking it’s good Willy doesn’t know how bad the cracks are between us.

But then I wonder if, in a way, he is asking for my help.

Until this second I was solely focused on outlasting a clock forever ticking me toward death, but the way Willy looks at me makes the music in my head ring with a new, far-off hope.

What if I stop waiting, and start helping?

“Put Bash on cooking duty,” I tell Willy. “He’s always had bad anxiety, especially in big crowds, but if you give him a job, he can do it, and he loves to cook.”

“Like Pizza Monster?”

“Exactly.”

“I see. Thank you, Ollie. Get some sleep.”

I head upstairs to where we’ve turned the teen room into a makeshift dormitory. I lie between Bash and Elisa, thankful for them even if it feels impossible to break the silence between us. I haven’t talked that much in days, and the conversation’s heaviness pulls me into a deep sleep.

In the morning, we trudge downstairs to breakfast, but there’s a new melody weaving through the silence.

Bash. He’s humming. When it’s time to go to our jobs, he bounces off to the kitchen.

I glance at the job board. Willy is right.

Even if the world ends, we cannot end with it.

As I head to my own job, a plan begins to form.