Library

You gaze thoughtfully at the long row of brownstone houses for a long moment, thinking longingly of the possibilities of a soft bed, food and new clothes; in the end however you turn away from them and head instead for the beautiful stained glass doors of the library. The townhouses are of course a very logical place for survivors to search for goods and to take shelter inside and for those very reasons you couldn’t risk it, the chance of their being another group of unfriendly survivors inside; besides only a fool would try to search somewhere like that in the dark.

You try to keep to the thick shadows as you slowly approach the squat building, approaching them you gently tug the doors of the library open and step into the building; the light was dim outside and it is even worse in here despite a pair of small skylights embedded in the ceiling. Inside is a small, terrazzo floored, oval room; around its edges is some kind of large mural or painting though you can’t make it out any of its details; at the other end of the room is another pair of beautiful stained glass doors; after shoving these open, you step into the library itself.

The pale carpeted room is actually quite large given the size of the building and you can vaguely make out a long, dark wood desk of to your right and the tall shelves of the book filled shelves rising around you; embedded in the wall behind the desk you can make out a pair of doors, these constructed of much more ordinary wood rather than the beautiful stained glass of the others.

There is yet another pair of plain wooden doors in the wall to your left; they are labelled either with the word MEN or WOMEN and each bears a pictogram of a humanoid sillouette, dismissing these last two as unimportant for now you clamber over the desk, your swollen belly making the climb surprisingly awkward and difficult and head for the other doors.

The first door proves to lead only to a dark storeroom of some kind, the light in there is too bad for you to make out what’s on the metal shelving and you certainly have neither the time, energy or interest to bring out each item to examine them in the better light of the library; no, searching this room would have to wait until the morning.

“Oh, jackpot” you murmur with a wide smile as you open the second door, this one proves to be the employee lunch room or break room; a waist high wooden counter ran the length of one wall, cupboard doors embedded in the wood reveal cupboards below though you can’t make out what is in them. A pair of high backed wooden chairs bracketed a chess board and a rectangular coffee table sat in the middle of the room with a couch on either side, the break room’s long window drapes are fashioned of what proves to be a thick, soft fabric of some kind.

You stack the two wooden chairs on top of each other, there in front of the door, hopefully that would provide you with a little warning if anyone tried to enter while you were asleep. You grab two fistfuls of the curtains fabric and yank as hard as you can, ripping first one, then the other of the drapes loose from its rings. Draping the thick drapes over you like a blanket you lay down on one of the couches and, after forcing down another handful of beef jerky you drift off to an uneasy slumber, your stolen knife clutched tightly in one hand.