The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella Read Online Free

to get from the armory. “Meet me at the docks. I want to be on the water in a half hour.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “To see the Librarian.”
    The rook looks at me with a mix of bewilderment and disgust.
    *
    I smell the man in the final casemate before I get there.
    Castle Williams is round, because supposedly that made it harder for ships to hit during the Revolutionary War. Circled around the inside wall are a series of casemates—domed rooms designed to hold up the walls of the fort and support the huge weight of the cannons pointed out into the harbor. A little like a honeycomb.
    Years later they were fitted with bars and used for prisoners. Sometimes up to forty men in a room, so many they’d have to sleep in shifts. Plenty of room for one guy, so I feel less bad about this. When it’s warm out, at least.
    When I get to the bars outside the cell I can’t even see him. His latrine bucket is overflowing, spilling onto the floor, but the casemate looks empty otherwise. Then a shadow in the back moves, and he comes shuffling toward me, dragging a chair.
    He’s still holding onto some weight, even though rations have been cut. I know the guards aren’t sneaking him food. I’m one of the few people on the island trying to keep him alive. Probably the only one. His skin is pale and ragged, his head bald on top, with long strands of greasy hair hanging from the sides.
    He sits in the chair so hard he almost falls out of it. When he’s composed himself he says, “Are you here to kill me?” His voice is high, nasally, and a little hopeful.
    “We’ve been over this,” I tell him. “I’m not going to kill you.”
    “Then let me out.”
    “You know I can’t do that.”
    “I’m better.”
    “People like you don’t get better.”
    “Then why don’t you kill me?”
    “Because you’re still useful,” I say. “The main branch of the library. The one near Times Square. You know it?”
    He nods. “I remember it well.”
    “I need a book on corpse decomposition.” I nod toward the haphazard rows of books that line the back wall of the cell like bricks. “Unless you have anything like that here.”
    “I do not. Why so interested?”
    “Because the world is full of rotting corpses that are walking around trying to eat us. I’m thinking maybe it would be good to learn a little more about them. Which I guess means I need to find the medical reference books when I get to the library. Where do I go when I get inside?”
    “Why that library?”
    “More books, better odds. Where do I go?”
    “I could say anything right now and you’d have no idea if I was lying.”
    “You could. But maybe you won’t.”
    He leans back in the chair, looks at the overflowing bucket, stretches his neck and runs his eyes along the dome brick ceiling. “Why do you keep me alive?”
    I crouch down and lean against the wall opposite the cell, hold the gun in my belt so it doesn’t fall out. He asks me this question every time I visit, ever since the day I put him in here. And I always tell him the same thing. “Because I’m tired of killing people.”
    He smiles. The kind of smile that could scar a child for life. “That’s close, but not the whole truth. One day, I hope you tell it to me.”
    “The floor plan.”
    He closes his eyes and moves his lips, like he’s praying. Without opening his eyes he says, “Go in through the main entrance. The doors flanked by the lion statues. Go up the stairs. At the top of the first set of stairs, next to the display cases, there’ll be a room with the library’s reference texts. Those should help. The stacks are on the floors above that.”
    “Good.” I point at the bucket. “How long since someone came and cleaned it?”
    “Four days. They drop off food but they don’t always swap out the bucket.” He gets up and winces, doubles over a little, then straightens up fast, like he’s hoping I didn’t see.
    “Lift up your shirt,” I tell him.
    “If you reprimand them