Chapter Text
It was quiet in the library, which wasn’t uncommon. The hordes of students with burns, tattered clothes, and life long trauma were.
Prospero snipped the end of a bandage and waved for the next person. Pre-med students had been delegated to nurses, tending to boils and bruises gained from escaping collapsing apartment buildings and running in acidic rain. They were basically guessing when it came to the physical damage. God knows how they were going to deal with the psychological.
The thin carpeting was making his knees ache but he continued cleaning cuts and rubbing in disinfectant. His own wounds were checked on periodically, by him of course. They included the myriad of bruises from the stampede of students escaping the Dickens Dorms, burns from the rain along his legs, torso, shoulders, and face, and a constant worry in his head of what was to come next.
All his belongings were certainly gone. Dickens Dormitory was nine stories tall but when the floodgates had opened in the middle of the night eleven days ago, it hadn’t taken long for the acid to eat through the ceiling and reach sleeping students. The pained shrieks of his floormates were what awoke him. Thankfully, his whole floor had made it out alive.
He knew not all were so lucky.
One of the other pre-med students tapped him on the shoulder, nodding to where the Deans were clapping their hands for attention. The four hundred or so people who’d heard their intercom announcement that Nevermore Library was safe and open drifted over.
“We’ve decided that it’s time to take action.” The surlier of the couple, Mourn, looked straight at him. Prospero tried not to flinch. “We’re sending out groups to search campus for supplies. Don’t be afraid to take what we need to survive.”
Before Prospero could object with the questions he had, mostly ethical and legal, Mourn shouted, “You, you, and you, head to all the nurse’s offices and grab what you can. Stop by Flynn Pharmacy afterward, we need all of this.” The latter yous, a tall Black man icing a bruise and a Japanese woman with bad burns, were handed some loose paper and a map of Baltimore State College.
Prospero nodded to the two. The woman gave a wide smile, the man winked back. A shiver went down his spine. He had a strong feeling that the two wouldn’t be the type who walked in silence around their destroyed college campus.
“I’m Eulalie.” The woman whispered, seemingly teleporting over to his shoulder. “This is Duke. He’s French.”
“He could probably tell that, Eula.” Duke smirked. “Undecided and anthropology. You?”
They were asking his major? During what was arguably the Great Flood? Dregs of dread and grief stirred at the thought of normalcy, but Prospero managed to grit out, “Pre-medical.” He turned curtly, heading for the staircase. He’d hoped that the coldness would give them the hint that he didn’t want to talk, but had forgotten that he didn’t need to be included for them to still converse.
“Can’t believe Berenice is stuck with-”
“Did they get the radio to work?”
“I’m thinking of trading with Professor Poppet’s, her bed for my helmet.”
“That thing was a life saver, mon cœur.”
Their endless conversation faded into the distance as Prospero sped up his ascension. The only reason why Nevermore library was chosen as the college’s new base was because it was over a story underground. Accessible only by an unused, windowless building, it seemed even the Storm had forgotten about it.
His heart palpitated as he got closer and closer to the top of the staircase. Leading into a claustrophobic lobby with beige ceilings, dirty yellow carpet, and an iron door, Prospero had come up plenty of times for fresh air-or as close to fresh air during a climate crisis induced apocalypse one could get.
He’d never opened the door. Despite hearing other students who’d snuck out saying that the rain had mostly dried, his hand still hesitated over the knob. What was even left outside? Corpses, both human and animal? His only reference for dead bodies were his textbooks, and God knew no amount of reading could prepare him for the experience. The end of the world had already proved that.
Eulalie, Duke, and their hurricane of noise entered the room. Secretly, he was grateful for the interruption. Outwardly, Prospero grimaced. He’d have to open the door now.
Muscles hissing from the strain of the heavy door, Prospero closed his eyes. Stealing a few more moments to himself, trying to prepare, but his other senses spoiled what was out there.
Eulalie gasped. Duke swore lowly in French. It smelled wet, acrid, just like that night. He half-expected to hear the gush of torrential rain but winter wind whistled in his ear instead. No birds. No cars. No people.
Disgust curled through his stomach like smoke. The stone path to Nevermore was clear but in the distance-his mouth dried. Sturdy dormitories reduced to concave squares. Personal affects buried in dirt, their owners hiding or worst. The tall lampposts that had guided him home after long nights of studying were lining the roads like raised crosswalks.
Prospero swallowed. Despite it’s disuse, Nevermore had still been treated with a surprising amount of upkeep. And with the reasons behind the disaster above, nobody within wanted to be the cause of another.
In shorter words: Nevermore was clean. This was absolutely not.
“Oh my god!” Eulalie ran into the once manicured lawn, now reduced to unsightly formations of singed grass. “I remember this!”
In her raised hand was a crumbled poster. Silently, Prospero held out his hand for the map. Duke quickly handed them over to join his friend.
“Me too. Free Tarot Readings. We went there, didn’t we? Pluto got told there were good things coming in his love life.”
“Oh and look,” The sounds of straightening paper. “Magician. Like you!”
“What’s it mean though?”
“Upright magicians mean creation and manifestation.” Again, they were at his side without warning, splashing into puddles with no abandon for the pants he’d worked so hard to bargain for. “It’s willpower and ability.”
“You think that’s me?”
“Of course it does!” She stuffed the wet poster into the pocket of her jacket. It was probably what she’d worn when fleeing-a purple puffer jacket patterned with branches. The pull down hoodie was covered in staring black eyes. Prospero looked back down at the map. “You’re incredibly motivated.”
“Hard not to be right now, mon cœur.” That was untrue. There were plenty of people, staff and students alike, who’d spend the past week not talking, eating, or sleeping. Just sitting in dark corners or armchairs with wide eyes and shaking hands. Prospero avoided falling into that pit by working until the worries couldn’t reach him. Like he did before the Storm.
“Did it predict this?” Eulalie questioned aloud. No answer was elicited from her friend, whose eyes were now trained on the soiled path. It wasn’t like Prospero expected her to get the hint, but his grip still tightened on the map when she continued. “I remember being told I’d have a success in finances soon which . . . I’m free of student loans now!”
“No, you’re not.” Prospero muttered. Contact to the world outside the college was destroyed by the Storm dissolving their phone lines. Nobody had risked leaving campus-at least not yet. But institutions and governments weren’t destroyed just like that. There would, eventually, be peace. He’d bet money on it.
Not that he had any money. And even if he had any, what it would be worth in this new world?
A spike of anger twisted in his gut. Eulalie turned her wide grey eyes on him, unperturbed. “We never got your name.”
“Prospero.”
“Where are you from?”
Icebreakers were his own personal apocalypse. “Manhattan.”
“You don’t seem like a New Yorker.” He tsked. “New Yorkers are very unbothered. You seem incredibly bothered.”
He didn’t respond. Duke jabbed him with his elbow, sending cold, oily sensations over his skin. Winter coats and steam ironed trousers made up most of Prospero’s closet, protecting himself from others and all the biological (and emotional) troubles they brought with them. Now he was stuck wearing trade offs from other students, ill-fitting and unwashed.
Disgusting. Prospero had his gloves though. They were the first thing he’d reached for that night.
“It’s proper to answer someone when they ask you a question.”
“She did not ask me a question.” Prospero snapped. “She’s being judgemental.”
“Pot calling kettle black.” He nodded to Eulalie. “Ask him now.”
“Ask me what?” Rarely did Prospero loosen the cap on his anger but he could feel the seal breaking.
“What your deal is.” Eulalie looked him up and down. Frowned. He was clearly found unsatisfactory. “You never talk unless you need something or disagree. People have seen you cleaning your corner with whatever you can find. Most don’t like you because you’ve hoarded so much stuff to yourself.”
“But you saved so many lives at Dickens. You carried three people down six flights of stairs. But you haven’t talked to any of the people you helped outside of medical care.” She tilted her head. “What makes you tick Prospero? Why do you care but not let anyone know?”
The force of her words sent him reeling. His brain should have made him feel even more paranoid. Watched, impressed upon, and a reputation as a selfish, overworking loner? His worst nightmare.
The emotions ran hot and cold through him but he clamped a thick lid on them before they could escape. Squared his shoulders and met her gaze. Whatever did make him tick, she wasn’t going to be the one to figure it out before he did.
“You’re going to make a horrible anthropologist.”
He’d speared a nerve. Eulalie stopped. Duke was glaring at him. Good. Prospero was far from mean but he was going to be a doctor. He knew how to make things hurt.
Despite it all, Eulalie was still watching. “You don’t like being perceived?” Reading him like an encryption. He raised the map to his face in a futile attempt to stop her but he’d obviously stoked her curiosity with his reactions. “Or you fear vulnerability. Is it because you’ve been hurt before or you think of yourself as unlovable?”
Duke had taken to walking right in front of him, keeping him from escaping. Whatever the FBI was doing at the moment couldn’t be worst than this. “You’ve never had any partners, nobody’s claimed you as their friend, you avoid personal questions like the plague.” The word hung in the air. They’d faced an apocalypse in their lifetime before and Prospero had been right. Life had returned to normal.
“Someone said you’ve been wearing gloves since you were seventeen. The lockdown scared and changed you. You declared as soon as you were admitted. That makes sense, you’ve already shown how dedicated you are to your work.”
“Eulalie, I guarantee whatever you hope to achieve with this will not get me on your good side.” His words left white clouds in the air. “I have a question for you. Why do you care? What makes you open your mouth without thinking? Because I think you’re missing your psychology classes and think yourself smart enough to ‘know’ people who you don’t, which displays high amounts of selfishness and egoism.”
“Don’t.” Hot skin hovered near his neck. Duke was about to hit him, looked like he still wanted to. Preposterously, Eulalie looked delighted at his rant. “I really like what you said about me, even if it was made to hurt. One day, I’d like to hear what you think without anything tainting it.”
“Get to the point.”
“Anabel Lee wants you.” Duke snapped. “She’s been scoping you out since you got here. Think she wants you to complete her clusterfuck.”
“Ada, Montresor and Will.” Eulalie corrected. As she strolled backward through puddles, the eyes of her sweater stared up in the murky water. “We think she’s planning to coup the Deans. Take the supplies for her group and leave campus.”
“Whose we?”
“Look around.”
Prospero combed through his memories of the past week and a half at Nevermore, trying to remember their faces and who they spent time with. He couldn’t remember. They had all blended together in the background as he tried desperately not to break down.
Trying to shake off those experiences, he clarified, “So what is this? You want me to join your clique instead?”
“Clique? What is this, Mean Girls?” Duke snorted then muttered, “Monte, perdant, on va fouiller.”
“Well, that’s what that was all about. I was-!”
“Evaluating me. Seeing if I’d fit with your group.”
“We’re also a clique.” Eulalie shrugged. “And I don’t think you’d like us.”
“I don’t think you’d like me either. Your boyfriend certainly doesn’t.”
Eulalie smiled and reached her hand forward. The animosity on Duke’s face was instantly erased as he grasped it with love. It cracked in the air like electricity. Prospero could’ve charged his phone with it. Should’ve. “True on both accounts. We wanted to warn you, give you a real choice. It felt fair, especially after everything that’s happened.”
“So what you’re saying is,” Prospero stopped to collect himself. This was getting absurd, and that was saying something right now. “To make up for the fact that nobody was warned about the Storm, you’re telling me about Anabel Lee Whitlock’s plan to leave and take me with her?”
“Yes.”
Merry and Mourn had nothing on Eulalie. Nobody had anything on this woman. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
“Join her. Leave with her. You’ll like her.”
“That’s not a compliment.” Duke said, fingers tightening around Eulalie’s. Protective, despite the fact that nothing seemed to affect her. “There is nothing behind her shark eyes, just like there’s nothing beneath those gloves.”
Prospero clasped his hands behind his back. He didn’t know other people had taken notice of his gloves, but then again. He clearly didn’t know a lot of things. “I care about people. You said it yourself.”
“I’m not disputing that.” Eulalie acknowledged. “But I know you’ll prioritize your urges to push everyone away over that care.”
That was too close. Prospero forced a smile. “Whose in the way of your relationship? Is it the Storm or a person?”
“You’re deflecting.”
“So are you.”
Prospero observed as Eulalie turned to Duke, silently asking for permission. “Our best friend.” He answered, running his thumb over Eulalie’s. “Now your turn.”
“I don’t know Anabel Lee.”
“Liar.” They said in sync.
“She’s a Whitlock.” The pre-law student hailed from the same sort of family as Lenore Vandernacht. An encompassing yet invisible wealth that you’d never know about unless you were looking for it. “That’s all.”
Whatever they were planning to say next, Prospero cut them off by pointing up at the building they’d approached. “We’re here. Nurse’s office is on the third floor.”
The door was falling off it’s hinges. Dust was already collecting on the floor, along with some strange mold. Nasty. The couple were quiet for the first time as they wandered. The first floor was mostly unaffected, including the staircase.
“Think it’lll hold us all?” Eulalie asked, the first drop of doubt in her voice.
Duke pressed his foot to the first step. It held. “Only one way to find out.” He held out a hand to help up his partner, and shockingly, the other for Prospero.
“Don’t go soft on us.” Duke clarified as he grasped the other man’s wrist. “If this building goes down, you’re carrying her out first.”
Prospero glowered. “I’m leaving you both here to die.”
“Une blague! Le mur de pierre a du sens de l’humour!” Duke laughed. It echoed in the stairwell.
The nurse’s office was suffering the effects of the Storm. What was once a window was now a gaping stretch in the wall. Acid was still actively working its way through the floors. Some of the cabinets had been completely destroyed by a printer that had dropped from the fourth floor-or sixth, Prospero mused as he stared up at the multi-layered hole in the ceiling. But some still had salvageable supplies. He silently ticked off the checklist memorized in his mind. Gloves. First aid kits. Those damned blue face masks. Prospero would give anything for an N95 like the stash he kept in his dorm for whenever he felt under the weather.
He pushed the memory down. He really needed to stop thinking about his dorm.
While her partner stuffed hand sanitizers and disinfecting wipes into a mostly upright cardboard box, Eulalie was drawing cat whispers onto her face mask. “We should find something to roll all of this.” She announced. “Like what delivery people stack boxes on.”
“Hand trucks.” Prospero corrected, rifling through the kits. Antibiotic ointments, Ibuprofen, bandaids. So far they’d been working off a supply of various first aid kits found in Nevermore, Merry and Mourn’s office, and all the apartment buildings that had been evacuated. He was already mentally writing out a list of all the people he’d have to immediately check up on. “Shall we look?”
A three tiered trolley from someone’s office. A dolley cart in a storage closet. Another dolley, one of the few upstanding things on the top floor. They were scavengers, taking what they needed from the dead.
The word pulled something within him, not guilt, but a distant memory. A conversation before class with his lab partner. She’d just finished watching a show and was raving about it to the group. Prospero didn’t watch television often but he respected that student. Liked the premise, the genre. It’s name . . . Scavengers something. He’d kept it in the back of his mind for what to do should he find himself without assignments one evening.
The memory seemed years old but it couldn’t have happened more than a month ago.
Occasionally they ran into the other groups. They’d trade tips-this building was completely collapsed, this one was overrun with animals already, this one had a weirdly large supply of fire extinguishers-and be on their way. Duke and Eulalie still chattered in the background, a mix of English, French, and Japanese that could only possibly be comprehensible to them.
So Prospero was left with his thoughts.
Anabel Lee Whitlock-an excellent student from London who was president of multiple clubs, many started by her, who always had a flock of people following her. The Queen Bee with her attendants.
Prospero paid very little attention to the people around him but Anabel Lee was hard to miss. And now she was recruiting people to leave.
Could she really coup the Deans? They’d been good at quelling disagreements, even more vigilant at enforcing their rules. Maybe her intention wasn’t to overthrow them but gain the attention of all of Nevermore to leave with her.
But where? None of them knew anything about what was happening outside. Unless Anabel Lee had already snuck off and gotten in contact with outsiders, or maybe one of her allies? Ada, Montresor, Will-none rang a bell.
He was beating around the obvious mental bush. What was he going to do now that he knew? Leave with the so-called ‘clusterfuck’ or stay in Nevermore? The choice was obvious. Prospero would’ve stayed even without Duke and Eulalie’s warn-interference, he corrected. He had a place in the library, an autonomous pillar of the survivor’s new community. He wasn’t going to trade that, and his safety, to become some pawn in a wasteland game of chess.
His handcart was piled with supplies, instant heatpacks and splints peeking out the top. Time crawled around them, making the three hours seem like three thousand. Or maybe it was just the fact that the world was ending and Prospero wasn’t feeling very optimistic for humanity’s fate.
They only had Flynn Pharmacy left. Located at the edge of campus, Prospero had taken often trips for masks, gloves, and disinfecting spray. Most of the remnants of the previous Rite-Aid had been erased during reconstruction.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Stripped down to it’s skeleton, it was still the same store people needed to live.
A hard stone was settling in his stomach. Pain killers. Adderall. Seroquel. Premarin. Candesartan. Insulin.
Prospero’s hands shook as he pulled down his mask. That wasn’t even half the list of drugs people needed. Glass crunched under his feet, muffled by the buzzing in his ears. Everything had been destroyed. Shelves, cabinets, and refrigerators reduced to rotting tangles of steel. Puddles of rain slurred on the floor, tinged with the melted orange of prescription bottles.
They’d never stood a chance. People were going to die. His textbooks filled in the details, though he didn’t need them to predict the future. Bodies and minds would slowly break, Nevermore would go quiet with sobs and goodbyes, a mass burial with no family to tell stories.
“Prospero.” Duke was speaking. “Are you listening?”
He nodded sluggishly.
“We did a few circles. There’s nothing left.” The other man’s voice broke off. After a few moments, Duke admitted dejectedly, “We should head back.”
The walk back was quiet as Eulalie pushed farther ahead, hood pulled up to hide her tear soaked face. Duke trailed behind, face stoney.
It didn’t feel right to not talk about it. “People are going to die.” Propsero rasped. It came out louder than he intended. Eulalie walked farther ahead.
Duke made some sort of face. “Do you even know why the Deans sent us out? They were perfectly content sitting in Nevermore while people did the work without them having to organize it. They finally took action because people are already dying. Rationing insulin. Skipping days. Sleeping it off.”
Prospero stopped. Was Duke right? He had seen increasing numbers of people sleeping but he’d just. He hadn’t looked close enough. He didn’t know about anything it seemed, until it showed up in his face for a check up.
“What are we going to do with them once they-?”
“Is that seriously the only thing you have to say?” Duke snapped. An oncoming storm swirled in his eyes. “What we’re going to do with their fucking dead bodies?”
Unjustified anger surged in him. Like paint that coated fine at first but faded in a kiln. “It’s a valid question!”
“For someone like you.” Duke scoffed. “Of course the only thing you care about is the possibility of corpses by your precious corner.”
“You two really love to make assumptions.”
“Maybe because you don’t give us any reason not to.”
“Maybe you still shouldn’t because humans have multitudes.”
“Humans.” He sneered. “That’s rich from you, mur de pierre. Maybe you should show a little compassion because your fellow humans are being killed.”
“I’ve shown plenty of compassion.” Sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it-he’d done plenty of that. Compassion haunted his thoughts like a ghost.
“The most compassionate thing you’ve done was Dickens. All you’ve done since was your job.”
“And what have you done?” Prospero snapped. “Talk and talk and talk, and sometimes interrogate, while the world burns outside.”
“The world was always burning outside.” Duke snarled. “It just hadn’t affected you yet. I did everything I could to stop this-!”
“Congratulations, I’m so thankful of your service.” Prospero reveled in the fury that flashed in Duke’s eyes. He was itching for a fight. Needed a spark that would cleanse him of all the emotions filling him like gasoline. “You did incredible.”
“I was fucking incredible.”
“We’re so fortunate you protected us.”
“Just because we talked during this doesn’t mean we don’t care!” Duke screamed. If birds were still alive, they would’ve flown away. “We’re doing everything we can to keep going and make this better!”
“You don’t think I feel the same?” Prospero’s voice cracked. He hadn’t shouted in a long time. “I care! I’m trying! I-!”
“Prospero.” They both freezed. Eulalie was standing at the exterior entrance of Nevermore. She cut a striking figure in the dusk light, more spectre than woman. “We’re here.”
Duke shook off the tension with shocking ease, propping the door for his partner to enter through. One of their professors was standing by the stairwell to make sure they got back. While Duke spoke with her about what they brought, Prospero dashed down the stairs. He needed to find Anabel Lee, her allies, the Deans.
“It’s nice that you care.” Eulalie. At his shoulder again. Her eyes were rimmed with red but still looked at him with that astute intelligence. “Duke cares too.”
“You think that’s why we got into it? Because we care too much?”
“Not really.” Eulalie shrugged. “It was nice meeting you, Prospero. I hope you make the right choice.”
The right choice. She still assumed he was going to leave.
Anabel Lee was exiting one of the backrooms, accompanied by the Deans. She looked upset. He saw what he could do to gain her favor-arrive in a moment of weakness, comfort, offer unwavering support. The seconds to do it ticked down as Prospero stood frozen.
He swallowed. And adjusted his gloves. She didn’t matter. Not right now. Right now, he had patients to take care of.