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There are black and white plastic bags strewn everywhere. Many of them are broken open and spill out across the floor so that small rodents and freakishly large bugs can dive through the refuse. Luckily, the smell isn’t nearly as bad as it could be, likely because anything that was going to rot has already been decomposed and eaten.
Ferris and I tiptoe through the mess and make it out into what looks like the main hall of the first floor. We stand in silence for a few long seconds, each with nostrils flared to try and scent Biters or other humans. I don’t detect anything, but the state of the building is truly abysmal.
“If there are books here, they are probably moldy mush,” Ferris murmurs.
“You’re right,” I admit. “Let’s just turn back.”
Ferris looks apologetic but doesn’t argue. “Let’s at least try and find a different room to get out of.”
We walk across the hall to a door that’s closed. It’s risky, but maybe it being closed means there aren’t mountains of trash on the other side.
Ferris draws his handgun and pushes down on the door handle, slowly allowing the door to swing open. When it’s wide enough, he rushes inside, gun at the ready, and scans the space before gesturing for me to follow. The room is blessedly empty of trash, and instead it looks like a picture-perfect classroom frozen in time.
“Whoa,” I breathe. Is this what it used to be like? There are posters all over the walls explaining various scientific processes, but their once vibrant colors have faded into muted shades. There are round tables arranged around the room, shaped more like puddles than perfect circles, with small, child-sized chairs.
“Raine, look at this,” Ferris says, voice heavy. I turn around to see a giant map attached to the wall on some kind of roll. I look over and see a giant rendering of what this country used to look like before the massive floods.
Ferris points to the eastern part of the country. “These places didn’t even exist when I lived at my family’s compound.”
I notice several other maps rolled up behind this one and fuss with trying to figure out how to make it roll up so we can pull down the others. Eventually, we figure it out and spend the next several minutes staring in awe at the artistic rendering of our entire planet. I’ve seen maps similar to this one in Soline’s library, but it feels far more impactful to see it on such a large scale.
How many of these places don’t exist anymore? How many innocent people have died?
“Come on,” Ferris says. “Dair will be back soon.” I nod, but I have to force my eyes away from the map. I can’t forget, I tell myself. In just a few generations, massive amounts of shared knowledge will be lost from the human race. How long will it take for humans to forget each other? Maybe the reason we’re in this hellscape is that they already did.
I eventually turn away from the map and silently take Ferris’s hand. He squeezes mine in return, a show of support, maybe even understanding of the heavy emotions bubbling inside of me.
We end up walking back through the trash room and out that window to preserve the intact windows of the classroom and the contents within. By the time we gather our hidden bags and settle ourselves in the shadowy corner of the front stairs, Dair’s wolf is prowling toward us.
The big beast comes right over to us and rubs his face all over my neck and chest before butting his head into Ferris several times. “Yes, we’re okay,” I chuckle, and then Dair shifts back and quickly dresses as I hand him his clothes.
“Why do you two smell like trash?” he asks.
And at the same time, I inquire, “What did you find?”
His eyes narrow on me, suspicious, but ultimately, he answers. “As far as I can tell, this place is a ghost town. I didn’t get any recent scents, and no evidence of activity. There is a single grocery store that looks relatively intact, which makes me worry.”
“Why?” I ask.
Ferris is the one who answers, “Because that means that either everyone ran from here without supplies for a reason, or everyone that once lived here was infected and has since left.”
“A whole town?” I ask, nauseous.
“If one person mutated, it wouldn’t take long to spread in a small community like this. They might not have even had time to realize what was happening,” Dair explains.
I stand, jittery. “So do we check it out?”
Dair nods, grabbing his pack from Ferris. “We’ll investigate, but at the first sign of trouble, we flee. It will be hard to make it through the Wastes without a few rations, but we can do it if necessary.”
The store is suspiciously normal, kind of like the classroom we found. The whole town feels like a painting of a different time, like a single snapshot of what life used to be like. There isn’t any advanced tech here, no advertisement screens or data centers on the horizon, only the bare minimum number of solar panels. It almost feels like a trap.
Ferris is uneasy next to me, his scent tinged with the slightest burnt flavor, and Dair’s eyes haven’t stopped glowing silver since he found us at the schoolhouse. Dair grabs hold of the front door of the store and pulls hard, expecting some resistance from a lock on the inside, but it swings open with no issue. “Be vigilant,” he says, and then we walk inside.
The shelves are picked through but not empty like you’d expect from panic buying or looting in the immediate chaos after the collapse. There are also a lot of products that look handmade and even some jarred, preserved food, almost like once this community got cut off from the supply chains, they simply made their own products. I bet this is how things were for a lot of rural towns.
We find some decent supplies like two large, metal bottles to store water, a long length of rope, a multi-tool that Ferris salivates over, and a small collection of canned fish that technically expired a long time ago, but the metal cans are still in really good condition.
We distribute the new supplies between us and then head out, but as we exit the store, it feels like we’re being watched. I breathe deeply, trying to scent anyone, but I only smell the hazy air. Ferris and Dair press me between them, each grabbing a weapon in their hands.
