Pandemic: Dead Ahead

"Bagel's done, little man," I said. "Looks toasted to me."
"Can I have it?" Paul asked.
I handed it to him. "Might still be a little hot."
He bit into it as I placed the lid back on the can of Sterno. We were sitting out on the porch, working on cold weather training. Paul ate his bagel with an emergency blanket wrapped around himself, one of those thin foil deals.
"Mmmm."
"How's the emergency blanket working, buddy?"
"Good. It's snuggly."
"In an emergency, you can use that to warm up. You can use it as a signal mirror for help. You can make a fire reflector or a shelter out of it. About the only thing you can't do is fold it back up."
Paul finished his bagel.
"Can we go draw with chalk?"
"Sure."
We walked around to the sidewalk out front. I knelt down and scrawled a message on the sidewalk, with an arrow pointing at my house. Paul sounded it out."
"Send....beer."
"You never know."

I pulled the meal out of the oven. "Pork chops with garden stuffing. Here you go, guys."
"Any word on when the library reopens?" Tif asked.
"Right now, it's completely up in the air. I've had someone e-mailing me almost daily to ask. The state library association has closed libraries indefinitely. I got an e-mail today from the boss, telling me to find some ways to do adult programming online."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. We talked about it; I had her guarantee me that this wasn't going to be permanent. I don't want to be pressured to keep everything online once we're back up and running."
"It's all we have right now, though," said Tif.
"I know that. I also know that our dependence on technology has made everyone much stupider and less capable. We have people who can't read maps and do math, because they're dependent on machines to think for them. I don't want to participate in my own obsolescence."
"I always did think you overstated that. It's the future."
"So was thalidomide."
"There's no changing things, though."
"Which is why we're all sipping New Coke in our Edsels. Of course it's possible to change things. All you have to do is refuse. Which is what I prefer to do."
"She just wants to keep the library in the forefront of everyone's minds."
"I know. And I know it's all we have. That's why I'm going along with it, to some extent. I have a couple of ideas."
"Like what?"
"I thought I'd start with a tour."

After dinner, I rode my bike down behind the library and parked. There was a homeless guy on the patio who left when he spotted me. I looked over the backup library shelves, which had gotten somewhat disorganized. Leaving the general public to mess with your stuff will do that.
I spent the next fifteen minutes clearing it up some. Hardbacks, paperbacks, fiction, nonfiction, childrens, comic books. Once I had it looking pretty good, I got my bike and rode around to the side door.
For the first time in four weeks, I entered the Ross Library. It was a record even from before I'd worked there. The place looked like hell.
Someone had been stopping by the pick up the outside book drop, but the books hadn't been scanned in. A note at the desk said they needed to be quarantined first. Huge stacks of books were piled all over at the desk. Mail was dumped. It was depressing as hell.
I pulled my mail out of my mailbox, and found the Ipad there. New Boss had left it so I could use it to do some programs from home. I slipped it into my pack.
The tiny alien I'd left on my desk was unmoved. The ghosts, apparently, had calmed down. I sat down at my desk---I'd expected it to feel somewhat foreign to me after all that time, but it felt good, a relief....Not like coming home, precisely, but maybe like coming to the home of a relative who made you feel safe.
I turned on my computer and checked all my messages. There was a nice note from the mayor, thanking my for the series of columns I'd been writing and attempting to keep people upbeat. There was a note from a woman named Linny, whom I'd met through the crisis contact webpage I'd been running, updating me on how things were going. Linny and I had begun to become friends over the past week, though we'd never met.
The phone rang on my line. I picked up. "Ross Library."
"You're not supposed to be there. We're closed."
"Oh, hi, Boss," I said. "Just picking up the tablet."
"Good. Now go home."
"You sure? I could---"
"Lou. You're like a crack addict. We're closed. Go home and spend time with your family."
"I come to this job so I don't have to spend time with my family."
"Look. I miss work, too. What's your shirt say?"
I looked down at myself. "Aliens made me do it."
"Appropriate. Now go home."
She hung up.
I turned on the tablet and tried the passwords, which the Boss had left me on a post-it. I was in. I was going to have to play around with the thing some, and I'd hate every minute of it. But it was all I had right at the moment.
I tried to think of anything else I might need. Historic files, documents. I had no idea when I might be back. That wasn't a normal thought.
But it wasn't a normal time.

My wife was asleep on the couch when I walked in the door. Paul was walking around in the living room. He ran into the kitchen and handed me a piece of paper with some writing on it.
DO CUM BAK DAD SUN.
Do come back, Dad, soon.
"I was worried about you," he said.
I gave him a hug. "It's okay, little man. You know who's been teaching you all the survival stuff lately? I know how to survive. Nothing's gonna hurt your daddy."

I stood at the end of the street, holding the tablet. I held it up, facing me, and took a deep breath.
And then took another deep breath.
And then lowered the tablet.
I turned around and looked at the E.H. Young House, the last remaining home from a tobacco family in Lock Haven. It was still there. I lifted the table again, and lowered it again.
No matter how you cut it, I felt stupid.
I give tours to people, goddammit. Not machines. No matter how you phrase it, there's nobody here. I feel like I'm giving a tour to my fucking microwave.
Finally I raised the tablet, bit down hard on my back teeth, and hit the button.
"We're here at the E.H. Young House, the last remaining home of the tobacco industry in Lock Haven. Young had tobacco fields and ran a cigar shop down the street. His company created the popular Vest Pocket Cigar, back when tobacco was still a big industry in town."
I hit the button again, turning it off. It hadn't killed me. It sucked, but it hadn't killed me.
I moved off down the street.
I stopped and did the Gardner House and the Gross House, and then stopped in front of the Harvey House. When I raised the tablet, a guy came out the front door at me.
"Hey! What're you doing?"
"Little historic research, sir," I called back. "Your house was built in 1906."
"1898, actually," he said. "Someone told me that. They just didn't have deeds before 1904."
Where do people get this shit? I said,"That's simply not true, sir. Deeds have been around since the country was founded. In Clinton County, they go back as far as 1839."
"What're you, some kind of smart-ass?"
"I'm the county historian."
"Well, what if I don't want my house researched?"
"I mean, legally I can research anyplace I want."
"Oh yeah, mister smart-ass historian?" He advanced toward me, coughing menacingly. (If you don't think it's possible to cough menacingly, you haven't lived in Lock Haven during a pandemic.) I leaped back, putting about another fifteen feet between us.
"Hey!"
"Yeah? You want some of this?" He moved forward, spitting in my direction.
Coronavirus or no, this guy was nuts. I bolted around the corner and down into the alley. Then I cut up into someone's yard. When I felt I'd lost the guy, I walked back to the corner and filmed myself with the Harvey House visible behind me.
"This is the William Harvey House, built in 1906. It's the only house of its type in Lock Haven. You might know it as a Jacobethan Revival style, or you might know it as sort of Spanish-looking, but not really." And I turned off the tablet and took off down the street.

I watched as my friends all appeared on my computer screen---Zach, Barb, Mel and Jim, Tracey, New Boss. A Zoom meeting. A goddamned Zoom meeting. I sat and tried not to visibly give off too much attitude about doing things online.
"Hey, guys," said Zach.
"Hey, man," I said. "Got your Easter card. I miss you, too."
"Wait a minute," said Mel. "did he write that he missed everyone? I no longer feel special."
"I do miss everyone," said Zach.
"The board wants us to do what we can from home," said New Boss. "Part of that is programming. Lou has a blog for the library where he'll upload his programs. If anyone has any ideas, you can participate."
Paul came in quietly, hugged me, and walked out. I was sitting in my office, my camping equipment behind me---You could see one of my whips on the webcam. I wondered if that counted as bringing a weapon to work. I wondered if I could drink a beer during this meeting. Two of the dogs, Duke and Gwen, were sitting contentedly on the chair in the background.
"We're allowed to enter the library just for retrieving work-related items," said New Boss. "Nobody is to be doing actual work in the library. But you're allowed to go in and out quickly, to pick things up."
I tuned out. That made it feel more like a regular staff meeting.
Paul came in and hugged me at one point. Gwen jumped on my lap and licked my face. I looked up as I realized New Boss was saying my name.
"What else did you have in mind?" she asked/
"Thought I'd do a haunted tour."

"Lock Haven, Pennsylvania," I said. "Some say it's a very haunted place. The Native Americans used to call it Otzinachson, which according to some sources meant 'The Demon's Den.' It's a place where anything paranormal might happen. Tonight I'm going to tell you about some of this. Follow me."
I lowered the tablet, which had been focused on me, with the downhill part of Lock Haven in the distance. I was adjusting to this, learning to make it sound a bit more like a normal tour. I still hated it, understand. But I was adjusting.
I walked downhill and filmed in front of the Shoemaker house, and then uphill to where Great Island Cemetery had once been. The sun was going down; the light was perfect for this. I raised the tablet and began talking, but then turned it off as someone came around the corner.
"Mind if I ask what you're doing?" he said.
Goddamn it. Not again.
"I'm recording a historic tour for the library," I told him.
"Oh, yeah? This house historic?"
I'd been aiming the camera at myself, getting the view over my shoulder behind me. He thought I'd been filming his house. "Well, I was filming that direction, see...."
"Yeah, but is the house historic?"
"No, I was filming over there. It used to be a cemetery."
"Oh, yeah? I didn't know that! I'm gonna have to look into that!"
"Once this is all over," I said,"Come see me at the library. I'll give you the information."
"Okay, I'll do that."
It was nice to not have been spit at. The bar had been set real low lately.
I lifted the tablet and gave it another take. "The area behind me was once the Great Island Cemetery, founded in the 1700s. It was moved in 1918. At the time, there was said to be two ghosts, a woman in white, and a woman in black."
I heard something from my pack, and recognized the sound of my EMF detector. Something had set it off.
I was giving my haunted tour, and the ghosts approved.

I sat down on my back porch and filmed a quick clip....The porch where Ida had died. I gathered up my stuff and went upstairs to upload the videos.
There was a message on my computer from the mayor, telling me to check my front porch. I walked downstairs.
"What're you doing?" asked Michelle.
"Joel sent me a message telling me to check the porch."
A small box was sitting on our porch. I brought it inside and laughed.
"What is it?" asked Paul.
"You remember what we wrote on the sidewalk yesterday?" I said.
Paul thought about it a moment, then lit up. "Send beer!"
"Yeah." I pulled a bottle of lager out of the box, and smiled. "Joel and Mitzi sent beer."