Holly should have been done with it already. By now she should have a fist full of cash and be back with Jimmy, looking to score a bag of entertainment for later. Instead, she was halfway to Florida and was wrestling with an unusual bout of conscience.

She’d meant to take this guy’s leather satchel before they’d gone ten miles. Usually she pulled her trusty little Springfield 9mm out of her purse as soon as the guy she’d hitched a ride with started giving her looks that said her little skirt and red boots were doing their job. She’d never felt so much as a twinge of guilt for taking every last dime she could find on an asshole like that. In fact, she delighted in seeing the lustful gleam in their eyes replaced with first shock, and then shame. Admittedly, every now and then the shame turned to anger, but that never led to any trouble because Jimmy was always standing at the driver’s side window with his big, ugly .45 before anyone got worked up enough to start swinging.

This guy, though, wasn’t showing signs of getting worked up at all, even in ways she could take advantage of. In fact, he hadn’t given her so much as a second look. It ought to be irritating, but wasn’t for some reason.

She thought his name was Phillip, but details like that rarely stuck with her. When she slid up next to him at the counter of that backwoods diner outside of Bowling Green and ordered coffee with a fake tear in her eye, he was “the Satchel Guy.” Yesterday it’d been the “Blonde Guy with the Cadillac”, and last week they’d taken well over a grand from “the Tan Raincoat Man”.

Guys usually took their time, bought her a little lunch, and played twenty questions while trying to decide if she was a psychopath or a sexy little raven-haired gift to open later. This guy, though, Phillip or the Satchel Guy or whatever, seemed to be different. Instead of all the standard questions, he just offered her a ride, before she even finished the well-rehearsed heart-wrenching yarn about being a penniless college girl with a blown engine trying to get home to see her sick grandmother in Panama City.

After she accepted the ride, he surprised her again by how much he liked to talk.

He started by talking about salt.

“Salt has thousands of uses,” he claimed. “I never leave home without carrying a little extra, just in case. It’s one of the most common and useful items in the modern world. It’s good for cleaning, laundry, personal hygiene, and of course food preservation, just to name a few. You can’t have too much salt with you.”

Holly hid a grin with the back of hand while she watched him pick up the nearest salt shaker and slip it into his jacket pocket as he spoke.

He offered to buy her lunch, as long as she promised to pay him back when they reached Panama City. She ordered an egg white omelet and wheat toast, and somehow he talked the waitress into bringing her a whole carrot cut into narrow sticks as well.

He explained. “If I’m going to buy your lunch it’s going to be a nutritious one. Carrots are very good for one’s vision and are full of vitamins.”

The guy was obviously little bit off center, but not off-putting. Charmingly unusual. He even stole a salt shaker for her as they left the diner.

He didn’t stop talking after they hit the road. He explained the marvel of how his skin tingled after base-jumping Angel’s Falls in Venezuela. He said he wanted to watch a colt born one day because until he did, he’d just have imagine how it would make him feel happy all over, inside and out, to see a miracle like that.

She turned to him somewhere near the Alabama border. “Phillip,” she began, unable to pretend any more that he didn’t have a name, “if there was one thing you had to do with your life, what would it be?”

He didn’t even pause to consider before replying. “I’m going to swim from Panama City, Florida to New Orleans. I don’t know if I can do it, but I had a dream where God told me I could, and to take a bunch of salt with me. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Don’t you think that’s crazy?” she replied. “How far even is that? Hundreds of miles? There’s no way.”

He shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to swim in the Gulf of Mexico. I think people should use their lives doing what they want. It’s a gift, they should use it. I’m just glad I have a reason to try.”

The further they traveled the more certain she became that he was different for more reasons than just because he wasn’t looking to take advantage of some helpless twenty year-old girl on a road trip through Alabama. He was different in another way; innocent, considerate, almost child-like. Maybe a little defenseless.

Holly had never taken anything from someone that seemed so completely without guile. So she rode along with him down I-65, hoping that sooner or later he would prove to be as selfish, ugly, and broken as every other man she’d ever met. The tops of her ears burned, though, because she knew it was a futile hope.

So she kept waiting, trying to figure out how she was going to pull that Springfield on this poor sap, or how she’d rationalize it later. Somehow, that got her all the way from the little country diner outside Bowling Green, Kentucky to somewhere just north of Montgomery, Alabama.

Jimmy, who was never more than half a mile behind them, had to pissed enough to start kicking teeth out.

They stopped at a cheap motel outside of Montgomery as the sun was just starting to creep beneath the horizon. She said they could just get one room and she’d sleep on the floor, but he insisted that she have her own. Of course, she could pay him back when they got her home.

Phillip went out to get something for dinner and Holly took a shower, hoping that would settle her mind.

It didn’t help.

Her cell phone was ringing when she stepped out of the bathroom. When she retrieved it from the bottom of her purse, the tiny screen told her she’d had four other missed calls. All from the same number.

“Jimmy,” she said, opening the phone, “everything’s fine.”

“Fine, my ass, Holly,” a gruff voice replied. “I’ve been driving for nearly six hours and here it is sundown and still we ain’t got paid. I’m going to be sleeping in the damned truck while you’re all tucked in and snuggly with that asshole. What the hell is your problem? Is he too much for you? Did you finally find one that scares you? Do you want me to come in there? I noticed he drove off for something; I could be just waitin’ for him when he gets back. We’d be out of here in ten minutes.”

“No, no, Jimmy. I got it. This guy’s nothing. I’ll take care of it. No problem.”

“You better, princess. I’m tired of waitin’. If you don’t got it done by eleven tonight, I’m coming in and takin’ care of it.”

The line clicked dead as she heard someone enter the room on the other side of the wall separating her room and Phillip’s. She dressed quickly and was just pulling a shirt over her head when she heard a knock at the door connecting the two.

“Yes?” she said through the door.

“I got us something to eat.”

Holly glanced at her purse and briefly considered pulling the gun out and greeting him with it when she unlocked the door, but still wasn’t sure how she would live with herself afterwards.

She flipped the bolt instead. “What have you got?”

He was smiling broadly as the door opened. “Peanut butter, jelly, wheat bread, celery and milk. Just like grade school. Hard to get more wholesome.”

Of course, she thought guiltily. “Sounds great.”

After dinner, they talked a little longer, and she surprised herself by telling him, honestly, how intrigued she was by the way he’d described jumping from that cliff in Venezuela. If she did nothing else with her life, she hoped to be able to feel that tingle.

Phillip just smiled and said it was time to go to bed.

Two hours later, she lay in her room wondering how she was going to get out of this mess. He was a genuinely kind, considerate person, and if she didn’t do something, Jimmy was probably going break his head open just for the inconvenience.

When she couldn’t stand lying there uselessly any longer, she picked up her purse and knocked on the door between the rooms. “Phillip?”

“Are you alright?” he asked through the door.

“Yeah, I just,” she said, “um, I’ve never itched this bad before. I think my bed has bedbugs or something. Do you mind if sleep over there?”

“No, no, that’s fine,” he replied, opening the door. Walking back to his bed, he grabbed his pillow and the comforter and said, “I’ll just sleep on the floor.”

“No, there’s no need…”

“I insist. You’re nearly half my age, I wouldn’t feel right.”

With a sigh, she climbed into bed with her purse beside her and waited. Before long, Phillip’s breathing became slow and regular. When certain he was asleep, Holly sat up in the dark and drew the gun from her bag.

Holly checked the clock by the bed: 10:50. Ten minutes to eleven, and Jimmy would not be late.

“God help me,” she whispered.

Exactly nine minutes later, she heard the handle on the room’s front door twist. She wondered if he’d paid for the key or beaten it out of the night clerk. She raised her gun. And then Jimmy burst in, the door banging against the interior wall.

She flicked on the lights, and Jimmy, seeing that he was pointing his gun at her, gave her a look of confusion. She gestured with her own gun towards the foot of the bed and he followed suit just as Phillip rose from the floor.

“What’s going…oh!” he exclaimed.

“Give me your money, all of it, NOW!” Jimmy bellowed.

Phillip raised his hands calmly. “My wallet is one the table. That’s all I have.”

Jimmy grabbed the wallet and removed everything inside. “Sixty bucks? Bullshit. What else have you got? Don’t mess with me!”

“That’s all I have, I swear it. You can shoot me or knock me around all you want, it won’t matter. That’s all the money I’ve got.”

“Don’t lie to me, asshole. Where’s the satchel? I know you’ve got a satchel. Hurry up or your head is gonna go splat against that wall!”

“Splat,” Phillip said, smiling to himself. “That’s onomatopoeia. I always thought those were funny. The satchel is there on the floor, but there’s no money in it.”

Innocent. Defenseless. In the middle of being robbed, and struck with the notion to point out unusual language. Holly’s heart was lead in her chest.

She turned her gun on her boyfriend as he pulled a thick bundle of papers from the bag on the floor. “What is this? Sunny Hills Mental Rehabilitation…Order for Release?”

“Jimmy, let it go.” It was nearly a whisper.

His face flushed crimson in anger. “You dumb bitch! We followed him all day for nothing. I’m not gonna let it go! Now I’m gonna shoot him out of spite!”

He pointed that ugly .45 at Phillip, still standing in his sleep pants at the foot of the bed.

Three loud cracks echoed through the room, two slightly higher pitched than the third.

Phillip collapsed in a heap on the floor instantly. Jimmy looked down at two red splotches growing on the left side of his chest. She’d fired twice and hit him squarely both times, right on target.

His left arm fell to his side, useless, dropping the big gun. His eyes widened in surprise. “Bitch,” he muttered and dropped to the floor.

She got out of the bed and walked over to him by the doorway. Already, he was staring at the ceiling with dead, lifeless eyes. Relief washed over her.

Phillip coughed noisily from the floor by the bed. It was a wet, gurgling, awful sound.

She knelt down beside him. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. We have to get your help.” She reached for her bag to grab her phone, but he caught her arm by the wrist.

“No. Too late,” he said weakly. “Holly, I wasn’t supposed to swim in the Gulf. I was sent to you. The dream I had…about you. I’ve been sick all my life. Got hit too hard playing football in high school. My head has been messed up ever since. I wasn’t going to live a long life. You can. You will. I know it.”

His voice began to shake and slow. “Had to…get rid…of him. He was…poison…heavy. Now, you…can fly.”

Tears rolled down her face and she fought the urge to sob.

“No…tears. Fly. Look…bag.” He reached up slowly and wiped a tear from her cheek.

She clasped his hand and held it to her chest as he struggled through a few last breaths. He’d been the only man who’d ever done something beside take from her, and he was gone.

When she finished sobbing, Holly looked through his bag. It was stuffed with his medical and mental health records. But at the very bottom, in a little pocket to the side, she found five hundred dollars and a plane ticket to Venezuela.

She picked up her bag, surprised at its lightness without the weight of her handgun, and pushed the cash and ticket inside. Slinging it over her shoulder, she stepped over the body of her former boyfriend and opened the motel room door.

Without hesitating, she walked out the autumn night, into a world that suddenly seemed brand new.

She had a plane to catch, but first, she had to find some salt.

A minute later, he was walking past the counter into the office proper, his search for more enjoyable foods momentarily forgotten.

He checked all three desks in the open room, but found nothing but dusty personnel folders, aging memos, an attendance sheet with a long list of names marked “Absent”, and the couple of framed pictures he noticed earlier.

He walked to the doorway on the left in the back of the room. The short hallway beyond was completely dark. The sun had apparently gone down while he was in the kitchen, meaning that what little light had been coming through the windows was gone.

He found three doors on the right side of the hallway, each leading to an individual office. The first had a plaque above it that read “Principal”, the second, “Vice Principal”, and the third, “Security”. He spent a significant amount in each of the first two, hunting in the dark for some kind of binder or folder on the desks and bookcases he found inside. No luck, though; everything was covered in three years of dust, and didn’t look to have been disturbed the least bit.

Thom guessed he’d been searching for probably an hour, at least, and his stomach was beginning to rumble. He finally admitted that the goal had probably been futile to begin with, since he didn’t even know if the journal existed, or what exactly to look for, if it did.

Telling himself he would give the last room only a cursory glance, he stepped into the security office, which was easily the smallest of the three. It had probably begun its life as a supply closet or something like that. Nonetheless, he immediately found it the most interesting. Directly in front of him as he stood in the doorway was a wall of screens displaying security camera video feeds from throughout the school.

Monitor One was labeled “Main Entrance”, and had a clear view of the set of doors just outside the main office. Monitor Two was apparently watching the “Rear Entrance”, and Monitor Three had the word “Subject” written on a piece of tape below it. That one was pointed directly at the empty hospital bed where Thom had spent most of the past seven weeks.

He wanted to be furious that she’d been watching him for so long without his knowledge, but the fact was that two months ago, he really probably needed to be watched closely. And he had to admit that continuing to keep a watchful eye on her only patient seemed prudent, especially given how important she claimed he was. Still, he didn’t like it, and would definitely be adding that to the list of things he needed to discuss with her.

Eight monitors, in all, made up the wall of video displays. The cafeteria, the windowed hallway upstairs that looked out over the courtyard and parking lot, the gym, the library, and even the stairway he’d come down were on camera. He wondered if the footage was recorded someplace too, or just displayed real-time. Had Ana been going back to watch what he’d been doing when she wasn’t here? Something else to ask her.

He stopped looking at the monitors and did a quick visual sweep around the room. There was little else of interest, but to his left, he found a bookshelf holding what were almost certainly old, recorded security tapes. One of the shelves, though, had three 2-inch binders instead of tapes. The first binder was labeled “Subject 1″, the second “Subject 2″, and the last “Subject 3″.

Elated, he quickly grabbed the third and opened it. The first page held nothing but a picture of himself in that same hospital bed, still wearing the IV and either comatose or asleep. He guessed it was taken when he first got here. He flipped through it quickly, finding pages and pages of hand-written notes. He set it aside carefully; he would come back to that one.

Thom then pulled the “Subject 1″ binder from the shelf. The first page had a similar photo of a younger-looking woman, but unlike his image, she was clearly still connected to a respirator. The bed and the room in the picture were unlike anything he’d seen elsewhere in the school, so it must have been taken at a differently location. He flipped through the pages like he had his own journal, but pausedon the last page where he found the word “Deceased” in large letters. One sentence below that told him everything he needed to know, “Expired following removal from life-support”.

He was just about to go back to the first page of the journal when a flicker of movement caught his eye from the wall of video. His heart leapt into his throat when he realized a dark figure was standing outside the door on monitor two. It was shorter than average for a person, although he couldn’t be sure because whoever was out there seemed to be half-crouching and was bobbing erratically. The poor quality of the video feed made it impossible to tell much more, but if pressed, he might have said it was probably male and likely older.

Thom stood petrified, the binder in his hands forgotten, as the figure leaned forward toward the door and pressed its face to the glass. One hand, the left, came up to touch the door, just beside its head. The face bobbed three of four times slightly, like an animal testing for a scent. The other hand slowly grasped the door’s handle.

“Oh, Jesus, no.”

The figure tugged against the handle. The door held firmly, apparently locked.

Unaware that he’d been holding his breath, Thom exhaled slowly, quietly.

The short figure jerked the handle several times, forcefully, using its whole body.

“Shit. Give up, dammit. Go away.” It was barely a whisper.

On the screen, the figure stepped back from the door and looked up towards the sky. It opened its mouth and released a horrible screech that made Thom think of a furious, wounded cat. Even more chilling was the realization that he could hear it clearly from inside the building – the security monitors had no audio.

He stood helpless and watched the thing on the monitor raise its hand, form a fist, and swing it against the glass door. A spider web of cracks formed instantly. It leaned forward, apparently inspecting the damage.

Thom’s heart hammered in his chest. He held his breath again.

The thing’s hand made another fist, and swung a second time, hitting the center of the cracks. Glass exploded from the door.

Thom’s hands went numb. A cold chill swept through him.

The figure stepped through the broken glass, either not feeling or not caring about the jagged shards still held in the door’s frame.

Panic overwhelmed him. Deep inside, his mind screamed to do something, anything; run, hide, grab a weapon. But he couldn’t think, didn’t know how to react.

Something was in the building. Something was looking for him.

Thom was paralyzed with fear.

Thom negotiated the broad steps carefully, coming to a large landing where the staircase turned the opposite direction before continuing to the floor below. He felt immeasurably stronger than when he woke up weeks ago – almost new again, really – but the possibility of toppling over and rolling to the bottom was still very real; he hadn’t walked down stairs with his own legs in a long time. His left hand clung gingerly to the railing, just in case.

His slippers slapped against the hard steps as he moved, bouncing echoes around in the space slowly coming into view. He cringed without knowing exactly why, since there couldn’t be anyone down here except Ana. Disturbing the otherwise absolute quiet was nerve-racking, though, which played right into his blossoming paranoia. Going barefoot might have been less unsettling, but he really didn’t want to catch a cold, or worse, from a chilly floor that hadn’t seen a mop in at least three years. Especially over a little noise that no one but a few rats was around to hear.

He reached the bottom and was very glad he’d thought to bring a flashlight. A few windows here and there let in a measure of pale autumn afternoon light, but not much. It was late enough too, that the sun would be reaching towards the horizon before long.

He thumbed the flashlight on and took a look around.

A long hallway ran from where he stood at the bottom of the steps to a set of double doors, roughly 50 yards away. He could just make out the word “Gymnasium” above them. Immediately to his right were two sets of glass doors leading outside, and just beyond them down the hall was the school’s main office. He thought the external doors were likely the main entrance.

Taking a few steps forward, he turned to this right and looked into the office. Behind the wooden counter intended to separate the administration personnel from the students were three standard-sized desks, two along the wall to the left and the third facing him from the middle of the room. They still held a few stacks of file folders and some errant paperwork, which meant they likely belonged to the secretarial staff. The center one even had a picture frame or two, face down on an oversized 2007 desk calendar. Hanging from the back wall was a large grid of staff mailboxes, a few of which contained unclaimed mail. Finally, he noticed a narrow doorway at the far back of the room on the left, which he figured would lead to the infamous principal’s office.

Making an about face, Thom found himself looking at the school’s cafeteria. It was completely open and took up the entire left side of the hall running from the stairway to the gym. Twenty or twenty-five circular lunch tables were spread relatively evenly throughout, reaching all the way to the back of the room where archways opened to the food service area that would have served hungry students back when there were still students.

Since he was nearly sick to death of reconstituted soup, beef jerky, and instant oatmeal, finding a better variety of canned good seemed a lot more interesting at the moment than digging through old records or looking around in the gym. Shooting some hoops was definitely on the to-do list, if he could find a basketball that would hold air, but food absolutely came first. He stepped forward into the lunch room and walked toward a door bearing the label “Kitchen Staff Only”.

The grey swinging door squeaked loudly as he pushed past it into the kitchen area proper. Once inside, he found stainless steel work tables and kitchen appliances, and a dingy floor composed of tan tiles. The two work tables stood in the center of the room, to his right as he stood near the door. Behind them, along the back wall, was a large metal griddle next to several gas-powered burners, all under a big ventilation hood. A single pot sat on one of the burners, which he guessed Ana used to make soup for him. There were several other pieces of equipment along that same wall whose purpose eluded him since he’d never been in a kitchen with commercial-grade appliances before.

Directly in front of him were two large metal doors with clasp handles and a third plain-looking one which reminded him of a closet. He stepped to that one first and tried the doorknob, which twisted easily. He pulled the door open and nearly clapped when he saw a shelf full of cans that meant he’d found the pantry. The happiness was short-lived, though, as he took stock of what was available in the little room. Cans of chicken soup, cans of bean soup, cans of tomato soup, two cans of dark red kidney beans, and a can of creamed corn that looked like it was from the 70′s. On the lowest shelf he found some tomato paste and a huge can labeled “Beets” that was bigger than a gallon-sized can of paint.

“Looks like it’s going to be soup for a while yet,” he mumbled, disappointed.

He exited the pantry, closed the door, and stepped to the larger doors. He suspected one was a freezer and the other a refrigerator, so wasn’t terribly surprised when he pulled the handle of the first and a wave of frigid air rushed past him. It was a fairly sizeable walk-in freezer, but held nothing other than one rather oddly-shaped hunk of whitish meat. Pork was his best guess, but he couldn’t be certain. His mouth watered profusely at the thought of devouring a big, juicy roasted hunk of meat, and he briefly considered grabbing it. Unfortunately, though, he didn’t know where to begin trying to cook it in a kitchen like this. Besides, being frozen, it was probably too late to make for an evening meal tonight anyway. He left it alone and let the door swing shut, which produced a thud as it hit its frame and then a click when the handle clasp settled into position.

Thom immediately reached for the next door, which had to be the fridge. He was even more disappointed with its contents, two shelves of labeled bags which appeared to contain blood, a stand-up rack of vials, and several small bottles of various types of medication. Ana was obviously using the refrigerator for medical supplies needing to be kept cold.

He thought the blood seemed a little unusual, at first, until he realized it was bagged to hang from IV hooks like the one he drug around weeks ago. He knew that athletes often used blood transfusions as a way to increase strength and stamina, and it wouldn’t surprise him if Ana had done the same thing to him early on. There was little question he could have used the help, and she didn’t seem to have any problem doing whatever she saw fit to him medically.

He took a closer look at the rack of vials. To his untrained eye, they appeared to be samples for testing, the kind that your doctor drew when you got a physical exam or were sick and needed some type of exotic-sounding cell count. Each was labeled simply, with just a number and a date. Two vials were labeled with a “1″ and both were dated well over a year ago. Six or seven carried a “2″ and were least six months old, while more than a dozen had a “3″ and all seemed to be from the last couple of months.

He might have considered it just a coincidence, but the saying “it was a small world” had been around since well before he theoretically became one of the last real people in it. So, no, no coincidence; the contents of those number “3″ vials had almost certain been taken from him in the very recent past. However, just as he couldn’t figure out how Ana had taken out his IV without him realizing it, he was baffled at how she’d drawn samples of his blood unbeknownst to him. Sure, the first few probably weren’t hard to get when he was still mostly in a coma, but the most recent vial was dated two weeks ago, long after that IV line had been removed. She’d clearly had to use a syringe, if these actually were his samples, and it unnerved him to think she could just stick a needle in his arm and take blood without waking him.

In that case, a circus running through the room probably wouldn’t wake him, and he wasn’t comforted by the idea that he was sleeping that soundly when dangerous people were supposed to be looking for him. He wondered, not for the first time, if she was slipping him some kind of tranquilizer at night. It was definitely time to have a very serious talk with Ana about what she was giving him.

Right on the heels of that thought, a more significant question occurred to him and he cocked his head to the side quizzically. “If the number threes are mine, where did the number one and two samples come from?”

Thinking back over all the conversations he’d had with her over the past two months, Thom tried to pull out anything that might give him a clue about the other two sets of vials. Unfortunately, nothing was forthcoming.

Simply asking her would, of course, be the quickest way to find out, but she wasn’t exactly at his beckoned call. There was no telling when she might appear again when he was awake, and this kind of thing would prey on his mind until he had an answer. A research journal or notebook of some kind might shed some light on it, but he couldn’t think of time when he’d seen her with anything like that.

That thought, actually, suddenly struck him as a little odd. She seemed an extremely meticulous person; in fact, she reminded him of a girl from his intro Psychology course that wrote down every word the professor spoke in class, verbatim. The girl never had a button undone, a shoelace loose, or a hair out of place, which is exactly how he pictured Ana in her college days, assuming she’d had any. Either way, if she was taking samples and tracking his rehab scientifically at all, there had to be some kind of research journal, somewhere. If he was lucky, it stayed when she left.

“The office”, he said to himself. Surely if such a collection of notes could be found in the building, it would be in the main office.

The day after his trek up and back down the hallway, Thom struggled through the fire doors leading to the library. He managed to make it to the other side without incident and was greatly relieved to find a working prop foot for the massive door once he had it wedged open. It hadn’t occurred to him before starting the endeavor, but halfway through he realized how much more trouble pulling the door open on the way back would have been.

Nearly the entire day was spent rummaging through the remains of the school’s library. It turned out to be a high school, which was a lucky coincidence. A library intended for teenagers meant newspapers, some magazines, and more importantly, stacks of books containing pages full of words rather than colorful pictures. An elementary school would have had him pulling at the stubble on his head.

He perused the card catalog, noting the new books his favorite authors had published while he slept, and picked out a couple to spend the day with. He also found that several series he used to enjoy reading had progressed with the addition of new books. Well, they were new to him, anyway. At least there was that as a minor benefit to a decade-long coma.

The hours slipped past, and soon the sun was nowhere to be found in the few windows available on this side of the building. The light outside was a pale grey, which meant the sun was close to setting. He thought about trudging up the long hallway to watch it slip below the horizon from the viewing area windows, but decided to pass on that today. He’d been out of the room for long enough and had eaten nothing all afternoon but a few strips of jerky and bag of trail mix he’d barely remembered to pack into the pockets of the tattered robe Ana had recently left for him.

He shuffled back to the room with a couple of books, thankful to finally have something to do at night besides consider the possibility that he was actually already insane and living out an elaborate apocalyptic hallucination. Or worse, that he wasn’t. The unrealistic lives of the characters in the mystery he’d chosen for the night were a welcome diversion.

The IV disappeared a few days later, although he couldn’t figure how she had removed it without waking him. Regardless, having the thing removed brought a new sense of freedom. Especially now that he’d made making daily trips to the library and was beginning to feel strong enough for a slightly more extended tour of the building.

Just beside the library entrance was a double wide set of steps that led down into darkness, obviously intended for use by large groups. He desperately wanted to see what was at the bottom, but didn’t relish the idea of being stranded down there, or worse, losing control and taking a tumble. So he instead contented himself with sticking closer to “home”.

Over the course of the next several weeks, he developed a kind of pattern that seemed to help ward off insanity. In the morning he’d have a light breakfast, often consisting of something his mysterious caretaker had left for him the previous night. If she hadn’t, it would be dry oatmeal packets made with water heated from an electric burner plate she’d gotten at his request. He’d then freshen up as much as possible given the circumstances before strolling down the hallway to the library.

A few hours later, when the legs began to feel the stiffness of sitting still for too long while reading, he would have a small lunch of dried meat and stale granola and then stretch himself out before going for an exploratory walk through the halls. By this time, he’d made his way through every door and hallway to be found on this floor.

The school was laid out in a simple grid pattern, with six parallel halls of classrooms, each ending in two long hallways running perpendicular to them. One of the “end” halls, as Thom thought of them, was made of a wall of windows providing a view to the outside world. As he had guessed earlier, it overlooked the courtyard and also offered a view of an empty and overgrown parking lot. The other “end” hall ran adjacent to the library, and had large matching staircases at both ends.

Four of the halls of classrooms seemed to be dedicated largely to a particular subject each, specifically English and other languages, mathematics, social studies, and the sciences. The remaining two halls were comprised of a kind of hodge-podge of other topics, including everything from home economics to what must have been health, judging by the posters of reproductive organs all over that room’s walls. He considered those two halls, which were the ones farthest from “his” science hallway, to be the “elective” halls.

Without spending a significant amount of time in any one classroom, he made a point to open the door of each room at least once over the course of those weeks. Each day a different door would swing wide, and he’d step in for a moment or two to survey the room. Occasionally, doing so would trigger a foggy memory of his own days in high school, which he thought should have swept over him in an emotional wave of nostalgia. Instead, he just stood in the room a moment or two longer, with the feeling that he was watching an old movie of someone else’s life, from long ago.

Finally, seven weeks to the day after waking up in an unfamiliar room with a thirst that surely meant death could not be far off, Thom stood at the top of the large stairway next to the library doors. Much of his strength had returned, making it a relatively simple matter to walk the whole of this floor without having to stop for rest or recuperation. He’d seen everything there was to see at this level; it was time to find out what secrets, if any, hid in the darkness below.

He checked the large, police-style flashlight Ana had given him, flicking the switch on and off a few times to make certain it was in working order. He chuckled at his own foolishness; it was a simple flight of stairs, not the path to Hell. There was likely nothing to find down there but a few rats and some yellowing textbooks.

Taking the first step, he began his descent.

He did as she suggested and took a walk the next day. Whatever she was giving him seemed to be doing its job, as he managed to shuffle all the way up the hallway after leaving his room and turning left. At the end of the hall, he came to a set of gunmetal grey double doors, each with an inset window roughly a foot square. Already feeling the strain of his effort, he didn’t dare try to push either open. The result likely would have left him sprawled out on the floor, wedged between the door he’d pushed and the one still closed. Even if he did manage to open it and shuffle across the threshold, getting the mobile IV hook through while trying to hold a steel fire door didn’t seem much like a good idea.

He settled for cupping his hands to his face and peering through the window. He couldn’t see much beyond the doorway, though; it looked like just another hallway running perpendicular to his own. Along the far side of the hall was a wall of windows, which appeared to overlook some kind of courtyard.

He turned around and shuffled back toward the open door of his room, passing a number of other closed doors along the way. Looking through the window in each doorframe, he found classroom after classroom, each dedicated to a branch of physical science. Seeing all the other science classrooms confirmed his suspicions about where Ana had him stashed.

“Why’d she pick a school?” he wondered quietly to himself. Of all the places in a supposedly empty world, it seemed strange to take him to an old school. Why not a huge high-rise, with hundreds of floors in which to hide and limited points of entry? Or some random suburban house, nestled in a cookie-cutter neighborhood. For whoever was looking for him, that seemed like it would be trying to find a needle in a haystack. For some reason, though, this place gave him the eerie feeling of being exposed.

He reached his doorway, paused, and then continued past it. The price for so much walking around would likely be steep tomorrow morning, but he wasn’t quite ready to climb back in bed yet, not while the other end of the hallway beckoned. He chuckled to himself at the thought of being “adventurous” by walking to both ends of the same hall in one day.

“You’re a regular action hero, Tommy boy” he mumbled under his breath.

Passing another group of closed doors, Thom found more science rooms just like at the other end of the hall. When he reached the big double doors, though, he found something much more interesting. Looking through the window, he saw another perpendicular hallway, but no matching windows looking out into the world. Instead, a set of stairs wound downward to his right, and beyond the hallway he could see into an enormous open room, lined with dozens and dozens of bookshelves. He was just down the hall from the school’s library.

Besides finding himself alive after waking from a decade-long coma, it was the only really good news he’d gotten in a week. With the library close enough to make regular trips without taxing himself, he’d finally have something to do with all the time he had alone. Reading had never really been his favorite hobby, but it was certainly better than waiting to hear voices in your head.

Exhaustion was creeping up as returned to the room, a not too subtle reminder of exactly how far away “feeling normal” seemed. He climbed into bed and made a note for Ana, in case he was asleep when she checked on him next. He wrote that he’d like to do without the IV, if possible; wandering the empty hallways would be much easier without it.

Thom expected to be asleep quickly, after the day’s tremendous effort, but plans for spending the coming weeks rereading favorite novels and researching the events of a decade missed had his mind racing. For the first time in weeks, sleep came only with effort.