Free The Dead in River City by S.A. McGarey Page A

looking out the window, he saw Malcolm pacing in front of the
building with a megaphone in his hand. His zombie girl was standing beside him
like a soulless automaton, and his crowd of Dead Ones was still standing behind
him.
    “How long are you going to hide in there?” He said
through the device.
    Malcolm couldn’t have heard Alan even if he had
decided to respond. It looked like Malcolm was ready for a siege, and he was
determined to win.
    “Smart move, coming to the library.” Malcolm
continued. “I doubt you’ll find anything useful though. When it comes to
history, I’m virtually a phantom.”
    Alan hated to admit that he was right. They hadn’t
found much of anything, and he was sure that they would find nothing more.
Malcolm was still having his one-sided conversation through his megaphone, but
Alan elected to ignore him. His taunts would do nothing to further the
situation. Alan tuned him out and turned his attention to Kendra.
    “I’ll be honest, I have no clue how we’re getting
out of this.” Alan confessed.
    “I know.” Kendra replied. “I don’t know either.”
    Alan thought for a moment. “We’ll need to find food.
If we don’t, this siege won’t last long.”
    “Let’s go check the break room.” Kendra suggested.
“It’s a long shot, yes, but it’s all we’ve got.”
    Alan nodded and helped Kendra to her feet. Together,
they went down the stairs to the pitch-black first floor. They turned on their
flashlights to illuminate the path to the break room. They were beginning to
shake off the musty smell of the library, but it became replaced with a new
smell.
    The library’s break room had the smell of food gone
rotten. The library staff would have kept their food in the refrigerator, and
since it lost its power, there was no way of keeping the food inside from going
bad. Both Alan and Kendra winced at the smell, but tried to ignore it as best
they could.
    “Let’s not open the fridge.” Kendra suggested.
    “Agreed.” Alan concurred.
    Ignoring the fridge, they took to looking in the
cabinets. There was very little to choose from. There were some boxes of
crackers, all of which were stale. Other snack foods were also there, but all
of them were no longer any good for eating. Kendra found a few bags of popcorn,
but they had no real way to cook them. They didn’t seem to be finding anything
that they could eat. Both their hearts sank.
    Alan slumped down in a chair next to the table.
“Well that was worth practically nothing.” He said.
    Kendra stood, pondering over everything, trying to
find the way to solve the problem. After a few moments, she began to connect
the dots, and slowly, a solution came together. She picked up the 2 bags of
popcorn, grabbed her flashlight and darted out of the room, with only a quick
“Come on!” to get Alan to follow.
    Alan ran after Kendra, trying not to trip over
anything, or run into the furniture. Kendra ran out to the main part of the library,
and stopped, looking around and formulating her plan. Alan caught up to her
mere moments later, somewhat out of breath. “What… are you… doing?” he asked,
pausing between his words.
    “I need you to go find some books.” She replied.
“Find anything in bad condition that is still somewhat intact. If you find any
books that nobody would miss, bring them upstairs. I’ll go hit the non-fiction
books and find some older, virtually useless editions of some books. Find
whatever you can, and bring it upstairs to me.”
    “Why am I getting books?” Alan asked, full of
confusion.
    “We’re gonna make a fire.” Kendra replied as she
went up to the second floor, taking the steps 2 at a time.
    Kendra went upstairs, leaving Alan downstairs with a
dumbfounded look on his face. He went to work following Kendra’s instructions,
finding whatever books were either broken, old, or just plain bad. Kendra
looked around on the slightly better lit second floor, finding old volumes of
reference books, some books