Bad Glass

Terry was still seated on the sofa, facing the wide window. His hand was up on his forehead in a pose of absolute fatigue. Struck by the tableau, I fished the camera out of my backpack and started taking pictures. I framed it so that the bottom part of the vertical photograph showed barren hardwood floor, struck slightly out of focus. And then, up in the top third, there was Terry, seated on that ratty old sofa, surrounded by stacks of books. He was front-lit, as sunshine broke through the clouds on the far side of the glass. His shadow—nothing but a slumped head perched atop the sofa’s elongated width—stretched back into the room, darkening the polished floor.

The Weight of the World, I thought, considering titles. No … The Weight of Civilization.

When I thought I had the shot, I holstered the camera and reslung my backpack.

“Take care of her, Dean,” Terry said, still holding that pose, head down, hand up on his forehead. He must have heard the shutter from across the room. “Don’t let anything happen.”

I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. Then I followed Taylor out the door.

We climbed stairs up to the third floor, then crossed to the next building over, once again making our way across a makeshift bridge. The buildings on this block were all close together, but still, crossing these spans, feeling the wood wobble beneath my feet, was a nerve-racking experience, and each time I found myself holding my breath and keeping my eyes fixed on the far side. Three floors up, the fall might not prove fatal, but it certainly wouldn’t be pleasant.

When we reached the third building, we continued to climb. The building ended up on the fourth floor. We stepped out of the stairwell onto a tar-papered roof.

“Terry likes heights,” Taylor said. There was a small tent set up on the corner of the roof. Arrayed around its entrance were several potted plants and a small charcoal grill. A thin ribbon of smoke curled up from the grill, guttering up toward the sky. “He linked up all of these buildings to give us territory, but he himself prefers to sleep out in the open.” She was smiling widely, her affection for the old man beaming through. “The first floors of these buildings are all boarded up. There are only two entrances, one on each end of the block, and Terry keeps them guarded. It’s his own medieval castle, you see. Only here, no one’s trying to storm the gates.”

The next building on this side of the block was much taller than the one we were standing on. In fact, it was the tallest building in sight, stretching at least ten stories tall, an imposing brick edifice, each side a dark red face stubbled with tiny windows. Taylor stepped to the edge of the roof and gestured up toward the building’s top floors. A lot of the windows up there had been covered over, and I could see the glint of aluminum foil in those recessed squares, glimmering like silver teeth between narrowed lips. “The tower,” she said. “I used to live up there … for a while.”

The buildings here were not quite even, and the bridge over to the tower was skewed, slanted down at a fifteen-degree angle. Thankfully, somebody had set up a handrail, though it didn’t feel much sturdier than the planks bouncing beneath my feet. Once again, I held my breath, not letting it out until Taylor grabbed my arm and helped me down on the far side.

We ended up in a stairwell. Taylor pulled a flashlight from her pocket and led the way down, casting shadows back and forth across each riser as I struggled to keep up. She didn’t pause when we reached the bottom. She shouldered her way through a heavy fire door into a cold and musty basement.

It was like stepping into a long-abandoned crypt: the penetrating cold, the touch of moisture, a slight hint of rot floating in the thick, stale air. There was a dim light at one end of the main corridor. Taylor touched my arm—a brief, tentative touch—and started toward the light.

The corridor ended in a large industrial kitchen. There were stainless steel tables running along all four walls, and a cooking station stretched down its middle, complete with stove tops and a wide ventilating hood. The floor was dark red tile, and it dipped down toward a drain in each of the room’s four corners. The smell of rot was stronger here.

The light was coming from a pantry on the far side of the room. Taylor gestured with her flashlight, then led the way over to its entrance.

There were three people in the pantry, and all three lay stretched out on the floor. At first, I thought they were dead, then one of them—a large black man wearing a bright red knit cap—groaned and turned over, burying his sweaty face in a blanket on the floor. The other two—a girl sporting wild black dreadlocks and a stick-thin man with a scraggly, unkempt beard—remained still. The girl had her face pressed up against the man’s chest. She was shivering, despite the sheen of sweat glistening on her cheeks.