The Names We Take - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Debut author, Trace Kerr (she/her) is a lifelong Pacific Northwesterner who never uses an umbrella when it rains. When she's not prowling the shelves of indie bookstores in Spokane, she co-hosts the Brain Junk podcast and writes books about undaunted queer teens and magic. Trace is a former bookfair coordinator and a published short-story author. The Names We Take is her first novel. Follow her on Twitter at @teakerr or online at www.TraceKerr.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CHAPTER 1

Purple gondolas hung above the river like a cluster of grapes at the end of the growing season. Just downstream, a froth of mist boiled from rapids cascading under the concrete span of the Monroe Street Bridge. Even the second floor of the library vibrated with the water’s thunder. Pip rested against a bookshelf and admired the ferocity. She could remember swinging over the falls in a gondola when she was little, laughing at the idea of danger.

Now she knew better.

Danger was the feeling of hunger eating you from the inside out: a tickle in the back of the throat, a virus racking the body with coughs. She trembled at the memory of people hacking their lives away in overfilled hospital rooms.

It was quiet as death in the library and Pip relaxed into the silence with a sigh.

Quiet meant safety.

She tucked a thick book into her backpack and cinched the top. It had been a year since One Mile Cough killed her old life. One year since she’d read anything other than instructions: how to use a camp stove, how to reheat a pack of freeze-dried food, how to clean a wound. Her hands trembled at the thought of reading an honest-to-God book.

Now her pack was full of them. A belated seventeenth birthday present to herself in the middle of May. Pip flopped her pack onto the floor and used it like a pillow. Pressing her ear against a hardback book inside the pack, she looked over the city of Spokane. Rising above basalt columns and piles of rock lining the shore, a pall of black smoke dropped the ashes of the houses that burned onto those that hadn’t. Ash filled the air with black flecks; they floated like birds in the up-currents over the river.

The Spokane River split the downtown down the middle. Half a dozen bridges spanned rolling waters. Paths wound through a vast park where Pip used to hide and sleep at night. A large mall and the swankier shops were on the same side of the river as the library. They hugged tight to the riverfront.

Going north or south from downtown meant heading uphill. The South Hill neighborhoods and expensive homes built in the 1800s watched over this side of the river. On the other side, older businesses and rougher neighborhoods crawled down to the water. Divided by geography, no one survived the virus. Rich or poor, they’d all died.

She looked back at the water.

Keep your eye on the river, she thought. Pretend it’s just an ordinary day. A regular day of living on the streets and coming in to use the bathroom to clean up. Not the nightmare of surviving One Mile Cough.

Metal rattled against stone. Pip sat up. It sounded like someone was on the first floor.

Footsteps echoed up a long set of stairs and she instantly regretted agreeing to Whistler’s idea ‘to do something fun for once.’ Crawling to the end of a curved bookshelf, she dragged her pack along the floor and peered around the corner.

Too many shelves in the way.

The metal security gate, dropped by the last of the library staff after the library closed to the public for good, rattled. Loose chunks of the grid dangled to the floor, making hollow clunks against the tile as someone pushed through the gap.

“You’re too fat for the hole,” a woman chuckled.

“Shut it, Navvy,” a deep voice grunted.

A chorus of mean laughter bounced around the open spaces of the second floor, snapping at Pip like little dogs. She used the noise to cover the rustle of her backpack straps slipping over her shoulders. Palms sweating, she chanced a look and saw a pale woman and two white men carrying plastic milk crates into the how-to section.

Literary fiction took up most of the right side of the library. How-to and self-help was farthest from the entrance, all the way in the back. She counted herself lucky as they disappeared into the stacks. The young adult area was filled with a maze of chest-high bookshelves used to enclose a reading nook. It made for tons of places to hide. And the newcomers were noisy.

She slipped between two close-together shelves and moved at a steady creep, hunched over to keep her pack from peeking over the stacks. What she wouldn’t give for the protection of Whistler’s automatic rifle. But no, she thought and massaged a cramp forming in her calf, today just had to be his day to start an art project.

Another laugh came from the how-to stacks and Pip belly-crawled to the end of the last shelf for a clearer view. Between her and the ragged hole in the security gate was a stretch of open floor past the check-out desk. The crash of a milk crate full of books hitting the floor almost sent her bursting into a run, flushed like a hunted bird.

She gasped, covering her mouth with a hand smelling like the dusty calm of books. She inhaled long and slow.

“How many of these do you want?” the young guy who’d dropped the overfilled crate shouted.

Indistinct mumbles answered his question. The bigger man, the brunt of the fat joke, set his half-filled crate down and took some books from the other crate, evening the load.

“Damn it, Curtis. If it shifts in the truck and makes a mess, Navvy’ll beat your ass.”

The big guy wore a greasy camouflage jacket unzipped over a rounded gut. Even though his clothes were dirty, he looked cleaner than most. Like he’d bathed recently. Pip’s nose wrinkled in disgust. He was probably a trader, someone with resources and access to things like bathing water. Which meant he wasn’t a good guy. Anybody with anything worth having after the devastation of One Mile Cough probably took it from someone else. They were here to take, and wouldn’t care who they hurt in the process.

At least one of these three was armed. Most people carried weapons now, or they didn’t survive long. The distance to the exit suddenly felt a lot farther. She settled onto the floor and hoped for invisibility.

“This is stupid. Who’d want to learn about bees?” Curtis’s voice had a nasal quality, probably from the giant kink in his nose. It took a hard right on his face. Somebody’d punched him and really put their effort into it.

“We’re taking anything people might want to trade.” The big guy in the jacket, Camo, waved a book about gardening in Curtis’s face. “If you think you’re going to leave The Skins and start working for me, you’d best learn to start using your brain.”

Pip gave Curtis a once-over. The Skins were a loose group of ragged boys running wild through Spokane, terrorizing everyone. Curtis looked like he’d fit right in. He wore their signature haircut. He’d buzzed his hair so the pink of his sunburnt scalp gleamed through blond stubble.

Curtis hocked and spat on the library carpet. “The house wasn’t my fault.”

The teasing smile melted off Camo’s face. “Setting the fire was stupid.” He waved towards the wall of windows behind Pip. “Half the town’s burnt up.”

“We got three kids—”

“You girls done with your tea?” A lanky woman with bleached blonde hair poked her head out of the stacks. She was much closer than Pip would’ve liked. “Hurry up, this place gives me the creeps.”

“Watch out, Navvy, the books, they’re comin’ for ya,” Camo taunted.

She flipped him off.

Pip rose up to her knees, preparing to run. She couldn’t risk being seen. It would be three against one. Who knew what they’d have in mind.

Curtis tripped over his feet and the bleached blonde shoulder-checked him. Pip closed her eyes, gathering courage while books tumbled off...