Another scan of the bookshelf rewarded her with four more volumes that caught her eye: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy, and The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
She took the depleted PRD and The Land That Time Forgot over to the small cot and stretched out. Her aching body thanked her, her muscles finally relaxing after a day of driving. She turned on the small lamp on the bedside table, then placed the PRD under it to recharge. Yawning, she opened the book. She’d read only the first page when her eyes closed, and she drifted into oblivion.
She woke from a nightmare. In it, the night stalkers had infiltrated the shelter, creeping along the floor toward her cot. She sat up, scanning the room. The small table light still burned brightly. She peered under her cot and the neighboring one. Then she made a circuit of the shelter, checking under the table, listening at the air vent, making sure the door was still locked. It was. Sighing, she drooped her head, rubbing the back of her sore neck.
She padded back to the cot and lay down again, taking off her boots and covering herself with the blanket. She lay there, staring up at the ceiling, unable to fall back asleep. She looked at the book next to her, then to the depleted PRD. It glowed softly, showing that it was fifty-six percent charged. She picked it up, scanning the contents, which were different from the one she’d found in the first shelter. She selected a new video.
Raven’s face appeared, his long black hair waving in the wind.
“It’s my second time on the restocking run, though last time I was only five and don’t remember it too well. Can’t believe what a wasteland it is out here. When you’re brought up with books, you think the world is like they describe.” He looked down, twisting the corner of his mouth. “But it’s not.” He looked behind him, where a crumbling road led into the distance. “We skirted around a Badlander camp today. I could tell my dad was pretty damn scared, but he tried to hide it.” He held up three books. “We’re putting more field guides in all the shelter libraries. Books on weather, animals, survival. Came across this score in an old burned-out library a few towns back.” He held up a thick green volume. “It’s called the A Green Beret’s Guide to Survival, and it’s chock full of great information. I’m leaving it here.” He thumbed through the book, then set it down. “It’s amazing we find any books at all now.” He stared up at the sky as raindrops began to fall. One splashed on the lens. “Got to get inside.” He reached over and switched off the camera. The file closed.
Still not tired, H124 got up and walked to the bookshelf. There she scanned the titles for the survival book, finding it on the bottom shelf. She pulled it out and brought it to the bed. Holding it in her hands just as Raven had, she felt connected to him. Though they’d never met, she felt a strong sense of familiarity. For a while she flipped through the volume, seeing sections on what to do if you’re dying of thirst or freezing to death, and how to build a temporary shelter. It was an amazing resource.
She picked up the old PRD. She selected another video from it. Raven stared back at her. He sat cross-legged outside a decaying building, on a dead street that looked like hundreds she’d passed herself.
She turned up the volume to hear his voice. “If you looked at any of the field guides we placed in the shelters, then you probably saw images of all the animals that used to live here. Pretty amazing, right?
“My family has handed down stories of huge bison herds roaming the western plains. Predators like bears and wolves hunted in the forests. Birds migrated across thousands of miles, back and forth from a whole other continent to the south.”
He looked away from the camera. A collapsed building stood behind him, as broken cement and rebar stretched into the horizon.
“If you’ve been watching these, then you might have seen my previous entry on the Sixth Extinction. Thought I’d give more specifics. See, before humans held so much power over the earth, things were different. Back then, when climate changed on a global level, plants and animals could slowly move north and south, changing habitats so they could survive. There were times when huge ice sheets covered the area where I’m standing. Animals moved south to warmer areas, then moved back north again when the ice receded.
“But with this most recent climate change caused by humans, animals and plants couldn’t do that. The change in climate happened way too fast. Cities and roads and fences had fragmented the land so much that animals couldn’t move freely enough to save themselves. Plants couldn’t grow in the asphalt of the cities. Animals were killed as they tried to cross roads and fenced lands. People shot them. Eventually, creatures like the bear and wolf survived only in patches of protected land called national parks. But they were separated from others of their species, and couldn’t cross between the
