The Book (40 page)

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Holden was saturated. His face, his hair, his body, drenched as he hid behind one of the larger bookcases in the corner behind a glass display case that rushed with water. It seemed that everyone had left the main building because the smoke was getting stronger and the smell was consuming. The sprinklers had done their job to keep the flames from overwhelming the nearer shelves. But Holden remained. He had to know that their group had enough time. Once he felt comfortable enough protecting the fire, he would use the single-use phone to call Winston to ensure that the truck was on its way before he left through a side entrance.

Then the water stopped.

All around him, the trusty sprockets in the ceiling had ceased sending their failing mist of water onto the flaming shelves below. Holden expected a slight hiccup between the tank and the city’s water supply, but he hadn’t –

The thought came to him like a moth to the flame and Holden scrambled for the cell phone in his pocket. He called Winston to double check that everything was going to plan, but the response wasn’t good. Marion hadn’t called him yet. When they hung up, Holden didn’t know what to think. According to Rosemary, more than enough time had passed. And with the water no longer reaching the fire sprinkler system, it was only a matter of time before all the books in that building were destroyed.

Holden ran from the corner and into the flaming inferno. Something was going wrong. The trucks should have been on their way. The water should be running. Things should have been moving in the right direction, but Winston told him to get off the phone and call back in five minutes. Both of them knew that something had either happened to Rosemary or something had happened to Marion. Regardless, it meant that he was no longer safe. Holden did his best not to imagine Marion in pain as he crept along the soggy floor, through the climbing smoke, toward the center of the main reading room.

He knew that the inner circulation desk had the best vantage point. From there, he would be able to see through the doors and assess his safety. But when Holden got there, dodging the crumbling book cases and flames that licked at his limbs, he found more than he expected. Lying behind the counter, unconscious beside a toppled garbage can, was a woman with short, black hair and Japanese floral tattoos lacing her shoulders. It was Marion. Holden froze in the shock of it. Either someone had brought her in from outside or she had come in to find him and someone –

Holden heard a noise behind him and spun on his heels, just long enough to see the man’s deformed face through the smoke before an oversized book crashed into his nose and sent him sprawling to the floor. From the man’s cheek to his forehead were the words:
Don’t Read The Book
, branded and melted into his buckled skin. The man who had silenced Holden as he reached out for his daughter had now silenced him as he reached out to the world.

If Holden had ever read the story,
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
, he would have recalled a very specific sentence as his mind drifted in the scorching heat.

“
No doubt the little goblin in the snuffbox was to blame for that.”

* * * * *

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The phone.

Hearing the phone was what startled the two of them awake.

The overtly entertaining jingle that had been preprogrammed into the device burst out in whatever hollow space they found themselves in. Smoke burned their eyes and invaded their nostrils with heat and ash and sulfur. Holden heard someone coughing. He heard the tone in their exasperated voice and he turned, through some dark veil of green haze, to see who it was. But his eyes burned and he had to close them.

“I’m trapped.
I can’t move!
”

Holden felt the rope around his wrists and struggled in place. “I can’t either. I’m tied up.”

“Where are we?”

“I’m not sure.” He squinted and tried to adapt his eyes to the dark but it was no use. The only light that streamed a fog in the smoke came from a green exit sign, with a little white figure running toward an open white door – free to escape and yet ever frozen in that position.

“Marion, we’re still at the library.”

His eyes adjusted to the dark quicker than he realized, because he saw the layer of smoke at his ankles which could only be there, and not at his eyes, if it were coming through the floorboards or from below the frame of the door. Holden wrestled again with his binding. It dug caverns of red flesh, but it was no use. He was now a part of this chair and the binding was strong. So strong that his hands were numb and cold.

“Holden, I’m scared. What happened?”

He turned to try and see her. “I was hit in the face by one of the Agents. He must have gotten you too. You came inside to find me, didn’t you?”

“Rosemary didn’t come out and then the fire was growing and growing. I knew something was wrong. Holden we have to get out of here!”

“Marion. They turned off the water.”

“What?”

“The water supply to the building. I hadn’t thought of that. Marion, they were expecting us. The whole time I thought they had underestimated me. But I was wrong. They knew we would do this. I played exactly into their hands. Maybe they even arranged my escape from the Publishing House.”

“Guys like me make their job possible, Marion. They go into the fire assuming that all systems are working. I know fire. It’s my job to know. They aren’t putting this out.”

At that moment, Holden noticed that another figure was in the room with them. It was slumped to an awkward position on the floor. He could tell by her frame that it was a woman. It had to be Rosemary. What frightened him and created gooseflesh along his skin, was that she wasn’t tied to a chair.
She wasn’t tied to a chair.
That meant that they weren’t worried about her helping them escape. From where he could hear Marion’s voice, something told him that she wouldn’t be able to see Rosemary. And he wouldn’t tell her.

“Do you think they got the books out?” she coughed. “Or do you think that Rosemary betrayed us?”

“No Marion, I think she did her job the best she could. And if those books don’t get out, it’s okay.”

“
Okay?!
We didn’t fix anything and we’re going to die in here!”

Holden coughed in the smoke and realized the room was quickly filling with it. “I don’t regret anything. If you and I die in here, we die knowing the truth. Free. That’s a gift that millions of people in this world don’t have and something I wouldn’t give up for anything. Die in the truth or live in a lie…today is a good day, Marion. Remember what is happening back at home. People will win.”

“Just not today.”

“No.” He nodded, his eyes burning. “Not today.”

“Holden…I love you.” She exploded in a fit of coughing and he didn’t know what to do to console her. With a raspy voice, she asked, “Can you do me a favor?”

“Yes.” The hot smoke was so thick now and he knew that they wouldn’t die from the flames. They would already be asleep by the time the fire reached that room. “What is it, Marion?

Holden thought back to all the songs he had ever heard in his entire life. He allowed the digitized mind that had been nurtured in The Book to scroll quickly through them until he reached the perfect song. His voice was meek and gentle. And he began with a hum.

“
Little darling, it’s been a long, cold lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
.” Holden coughed and felt the room getting brighter as he continued. “
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun and I say it’s all right.”

Before moving into the next verse by The Beatles, Holden noticed that a small flicker of flames had eaten its way through one of the walls. In those tiny seconds, he was able to see more of the space around him and understood that they were in some sort of storage room for old religious artifacts. There were Bibles in glass cases and other books with ornate paintings upon the pages. His eyesight was fading, but through dizzying concentration he could see a large, polished cross on the wall beside him, reflecting the golden flames that mixed eerily with the green glow across the room.

And as he continued singing, Holden noticed a wooden plaque above the door that had been locked against them, that barred them from a freedom that the man in the green, exit-sign world continued to strive toward without success. The plaque of wood had a verse from the Bible carved into it. And as Holden began to grow dizzy, his mind pulling away from life as he strove with effort to stay conscious, he continued to read the verse over and over, picturing Jane and Winston and their group, and how he knew that, regardless of how they failed that day, they would triumph.

“
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes. Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
” Holden stopped singing and, with a whisper he said, “I love you Marion.” Through the crashing of shelves and fixtures across the structure, he waited to hear her respond.

But she didn’t.

She was already asleep.

Holden focused on the plaque as the edges caught fire. And just before his eyes closed for the last time, he read the verse and mouthed the most perfect words from the most famous book.

“
Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words will remain forever.”

* * * * *

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A squawk came through on the walkie-talkie and it rattled the glass table in the meticulously maintained hotel room. But the old man standing at the window didn’t flinch. It seemed as if he had lost his hearing in the shock of what his eyes were absorbing.

Below him, crowds of people gathered along the rain-drizzled streets, curious about the plume of smoke that rose high into the sky above the capital like the darkened twin of the Washington monument. Winston’s shaky hand reached out and touched the cold window and he rested his palm against it, bracing himself from falling over as he saw flames between his wrinkled fingers from the dome in the distance. His tottering legs wanted to give out and tumble him through the glass to the ground as the walkie squawked again.

By some cruel joke, the clouds parted above, and the ever-insisted rain stopped trying to put out the fire. It was almost as if the sky had been intimidated by the darkened cloud that formed over the government building, and the sun shot rays of warm light through the smoke to break the darkness with milky beams.

Within an hour, Winston and Moby were miles away from the borders of the nation’s capital while every media outlet in the world streamed videos of Holden setting fire to the library from some hidden camera. Bold text of propaganda blazed beside the black and white film. They spliced this brutal act, the dropping of his lighter and the flames bursting from the card catalog, with images of the fireman that never arrived fighting diligently with an inferno that would never cease. Outside, on the respected lawns of the capital, people were on their knees, hugging one another and crying at the horrific scene. An hour after that, a building that the government claimed was the Publishing House for The Book exploded. This act was also blamed on Holden Clifford, the man they all recognized from eleven weeks of television ads, who had now been deemed the leader of
The Free Thinkers
.

Those unfamiliar with the controlling contents of The Book heard this news and were devastated by the fact that so many stories would be lost from the digital corruption and that, almost more importantly, the explosion would take The Book offline for a multitude of weeks. And when it came back on, some things could be different. Pages from their favorite books would be missing. And some of the world’s most treasured stories could be gone forever because no hard copy existed, thanks to the terrorist, Holden Clifford.

They saw his face constantly in the media and were reminded of his evil deeds week after week. Children were taught in school about him. And it did not take long for everyone to agree that Holden Clifford was the clearest representation of evil. Within a year, the entire world had grown to hate him.

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ADDENDUM

It is time we finished.

Allow me to begin.

The section you are about to read is an addendum to the original version of the story I wrote eleven years ago. We are attaching it to the back of our book and reprinting in full due to the recent outcry for understanding. We apologize for the delay, but the government controls too much and paper is the only technology we can trust. As you have witnessed with your very eyes, there has been success. But I only ask that you remain patient and appreciate what little I am allowed to divulge.