EYEHEARTZOMBIES

It wasn’t a long walk from the train station to the library, but the rain had started before the train was halfway from the suburbs to the city. The trip usually took about a half hour, so the rain had a fifteen minute head start on Seth as he trudged through a few puddles on his way to the library. He needed to go by Eden Medical Center, the hospital where his mom was sitting in a room in the cancer ward. She had been diagnosed just a couple of weeks ago, but it was really taking a toll on her, and on Seth. The doctors had given her some new drug that was supposed to fight the cancer on the cellular level; some sort of aggressive injection napalm, from how they described it. She said she felt a lot better, but moms are notorious for spin.

The rain was keeping him away, though. He told himself that, at least. It was raining and nasty outside and no one wants to go visit a dying — sick! — relative in the hospital when it’s this dreary outside. So he’d go sit in the library, read the newspaper and a few magazines, and when the rain broke this afternoon he’d pick up some flowers and go to the hospital. The weatherman on the radio had said the rain would end by two this afternoon and it was just eleven now. So four hours at the most. Surely he could kill that much time.

He tucked his head against the rain. “Shoulda worn a jacket,” he muttered to himself. “Mom woulda given me a hard time for this when I was little.” He picked up his pace as he rounded the corner of Parlor Street and Grand Avenue and saw the library just across the street. He looked both ways, like a good little boy, and started across the busy street that was Grand Avenue. There wasn’t a crosswalk at this intersection, so you were halfway taking your life into your own hands, crossing a speeding street in the rain. The only cars he saw were some taxis parked outside of the Williams Hotel down the street.

The library was a giant stone monolith from the city’s illustrious past. Standing three stories above ground, made of square-cut granite and marble, it looked more like a prison than a library. Stone steps, bracketed on both sides by stone lions, led up to the front door which sported a pair of the lion’s cousins, griffons. Hanging over the front porch was a giant chandelier that had always scared Seth as a child, thinking it would fall on his head as he walked into this church of learning.

The rain started to fall faster now as he climbed the steps and yanked open the front door. The lobby held a few wet coats and a couple of umbrellas were propped against the coat rack. Seth stomped his feet and jostled the water from his hair. It was short so it didn’t hold much, but he still felt like some shaggy dog, shaking his head like that. He hung his jacket up and swiped his feet on the welcome mat one last time.

The front lobby of the library was a bright contrast to the outer facade. A polished mahogany clerk’s desk stood front and center, immense and bright. The floor was checkered black and white marble here, and you could see several chandeliers, not half as large as the one outside, scattered back through the first floor of the library. To the right of the clerk’s desk was an open doorway leading to the bathrooms, as noted by a sign sticking out above the door with the ever-present man and woman on it.

Seth turned to the left and made his way to the reading area. This area was much more friendly. Hardwood floors, small tables with just a couple of hardbacked chairs around each of them. Soft, muted lamps with green shades. They always reminded him of the visors you saw bank clerks wearing in old movies and cartoons. In one corner was a small rack with long arms that held recent newspapers. Seth grabbed a couple, a national and a local, and went over to the magazine wall.

A large rack covered a portion of the wall. Magazines, encased in their plastic binders, sat in little nooks in the rack, all of them leaning a little to one side or the other. He scanned the titles and picked out a rock-and-roll one. Seth turned with his stack of pop culture reading and found a table. It sat near the wall of magazines and he could look out at the few other readers and the occasional person wandering through the aisles of books on the first floor. Most of these were fiction and new releases, non-fiction and biographies were on the second, with the third reserved for research and other books they didn’t want kids getting their grubby hands on.

Seth set down and began flipping through the music magazine. Somewhere in the stacks a man coughed and hacked, sounding like his lungs were raw. The man coughed a few more times, then the library went back to being quiet. Seth caught himself just flipping through the magazine without really reading any of the articles. “Guess I just don’t care anymore.” He had had a subscription to this magazine when he was a teenager.

He tossed the magazine aside on the table and picked up the national newspaper. Looked like all of the news was as it had been for the past few years. Some war somewhere, eating away at the country’s troops and resources, money at the forefront. A celebrity got married; a celebrity got divorced; a celebrity had a child; a celebrity died. A little snippet about some drug that sounded familiar. He kept flipping through the pages, his eyes on the paper but his mind somewhere else.

A pretty girl walked through the library, past the reading area and into the stacks of books. His eyes followed her, forgetting the closely-set type they had been taking in just moments before. She was close to his height, tall for a girl, so maybe five-foot-eight or -nine. Slim and athletic-looking. Her hair was just a few shades too brown to be called black. She disappeared into the rows of books.

Seth caught himself staring at the rows, his muscles halfway tensed to raising him from the chair. He swallowed and relaxed back down into the chair. “Wow,” he whispered, his hands still held up, his fingers still grasping like they were holding the paper. It sat on the table where he had dropped it when she walked by. He wasn’t normally this love-struck or horny, but something about her just grabbed him. He shook his head to clear his mind. “Come on, Seth, like she’s gonna go for some college kid like you. Besides, a girl that hot has to have a boyfriend already.” He chuckled. “Damnit, kid,” he muttered, you’ve gotten so emo lately. Pick it up.”

He reached down for the paper again and flipped back to the page with the article about that drug. “The Dangers of Metosomide” was the title. It was a short blurb, just a couple of paragraphs, but it filled him with a bit of dread. He finally remembered where he had heard that name before. It was the drug they had given his mother.