ZWD: King of an Empty City by Thomas Kroepfl

paused for a moment in my line of sight and bent over to take a breath. I could tell he was tired and had been running a long time. He stood up and raised his arms over his head and took a few quick breaths, then looked behind him again. He looked over at where my zombie was and he shook his head, and then started to run again. He disappeared down Second Street. My zombie turned and started to walk to where he was standing and I watched as he moved through the little gate that separated the library garden from the sidewalk. I didn’t notice it last night, or that it was open. But my zombie walked straight to it and then turned down the street, slowly following the runner.
    I didn’t know what to think about the runner. I wanted to help him. I wanted to invite him into the library. I was a little shocked that he was there. He was the first person we’d seen moving around in a long time. We knew there were more people, but they were keeping themselves hidden. These days you say hi to your neighbor with one hand raised and a knife in the other behind your back. That’s a sad statement, but true. The clock said five-thirty and I hadn’t slept yet, so I went back up to the third floor and found the reading room she’d made into our temporary home. She was curled up under the table, using her coat as a pillow. I stretched out on the couch that was against the back wall. I was out in no time.
     
    I woke to the smell of coffee. When I stepped out of the reading room the clock said noon. She was sitting on the floor sipping a cup with a stack of books scattered around her. She’d been very busy while I slept. I went over to the windows at the front of the library and looked out; my eyes traced the off-ramp up to the I-30 bridge, where the runner had come from. It was too far to make out details, but I could see a large group of zombies meandering around up there. That told me all I needed to know about the runner. He and some friends were either trying to leave the city by the bridge or they were trying to scavenge from the empty cars up there and someone made a noise, then the zombies were on them like white on rice. What’s that old saying, “you don’t have to run faster than the lion, you just have to run faster than the other guy”? The guy this morning was faster than the other guys.
    The library had a coffee shop on this floor, a way to bring in revenue and compete with Starbucks, get people to sit in here and sip coffee while they read. There were a few different healthy snacks like power bars and dried fruit, so I picked out breakfast and joined her at her spot among the pile of books. I told her about the zombie last night and the runner this morning.
    She’d been busy herself. She decided to close off most of the other exits by moving things in front of them or locking the doors. She didn’t want to mess with the next floor, she just wanted to find out what we needed and get out of here. She locked the elevators to open up here and went downstairs to check the library computers for different subjects. The Internet was still down, she said, but the in-house system still worked. The phones were still out and she found nothing on the television in the break room. There was an NOAA radio but it was broadcasting nothing. Everything was the same as it had been for weeks. We kept checking, though.
    Her subjects ranged from cooking to farming, solar power, electricity, canning, tools, locks, knots, ship rigging, home repair, renovation, carpentry, camping, and wilderness survival. She was sitting there with a notepad on the floor next to her and she’d flip through the books looking for things, then either toss the book behind her or sit it in a stack she deemed important. I picked up the book on ship rigging and thumbed through it. “See if you can figure out how to make one of those things where I have it bookmarked.”
    It was bookmarked on a picture of a three-pole pulley system with a couple of block and tackle