- I wasn't a big fan of books…

  - But now? It's a godsend.

  - Fiction, nonfiction, post-apocalyptic how-to guides, even that suspiciously sticky cookbook from 1997—I'll take them all.

  - Knowledge is power, especially when you're trying to make a zombie-proof base out of rust, plywood, and spite.

  ---

  Moving out of the Overhole was weird.

  Packing up your life into a few duffel bags and crates always felt more dramatic in the movies. But ours was more like an awkward break-up with a building. Jules folded the bed sheets like we might come back someday. Alex did one final circuit check and whispered something to the wall (probably “Don’t blow up without me”). I gave my sewer rat lair a salute and closed the door behind us. It didn’t even squeak. Rude.

  Gail had already scouted the ex-bandit base—soon to be our base—and while it wasn’t completely a deathtrap anymore, it still needed work. Lots of it.

  Gail took command like a man who’d designed castles in a past life. He paced the perimeter, muttering about line-of-sight and kill zones and “funnel points” like we were laying siege to Mordor. Which, fair. Some days Cleveland really did feel like it had a lava moat.

  Alex, meanwhile, was buried in a mess of wires, tools, and foul language.

  “Who the hell loops a live wire through a plumbing pipe?” she screamed from a second-story window.

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  “Unity Group?” I guessed.

  She held up a scorched pair of pliers. “Unity Group deserves jail.”

  Jules and I took charge of the junk. And by junk, I mean everything Unity left behind that wasn’t weapons or weird trophies. Stacks of moldy mattresses, a half-eaten couch, and what might’ve been a shrine to a microwave. We didn’t ask questions. We just chucked.

  After a full day of cleaning, organizing the armory, and pretending we weren’t just glorified raccoons with a budget, the place looked… livable. Not nice, but livable. The kind of place where if you died, it wouldn’t be from tetanus.

  Still, I felt like I wasn’t pulling my weight. I needed to do something bigger. Something useful.

  And that’s when the idea hit me. Books.

  ---

  “Let’s hit the library,” I said the next morning.

  Jules blinked at me like I suggested we rob a beehive.

  “You hate libraries.”

  “I hate quiet libraries,” I clarified. “But we’re not going for story time. We’re going for blueprints. Knowledge. Survival stuff.”

  She raised a brow. “You sure this isn’t just an excuse to sneak into the adult humor section again?”

  “I’ll have you know, 'Fart Jokes Volume 3' saved my life once.”

  Jules sighed. “Alright, let’s go.”

  ---

  Libraries and bookstores were surprisingly intact. Not untouched, just… skipped. Guess most people during the apocalypse went for guns and beans before Botany for Beginners.

  We hit three places that day, all of them quiet, eerie, and crammed with dust. Zombies weren’t the biggest issue—though we did have to whack a runner with a globe (RIP geography). The real threat was getting trapped in the maze of bookshelves. That’s how you die in horror movies. And the Dewey Decimal system.

  We loaded up on everything useful we could find. Gardening. Engineering. Cooking. Food preservation. Water filtration. And even a few very battered classics for morale. Jules found a book on herbal medicine and her eyes practically sparkled. I found a survival guide from the '80s that said you could kill a bear with a soup can. Filed that under Maybe Don't Try This.

  We also grabbed stuff for fun: joke books, pulp novels, even a half-complete set of Goosebumps. Jules smuggled in a romance book when she thought I wasn’t looking. I said nothing. I also totally didn’t sneak in a pop-up dinosaur encyclopedia. Nope.

  ---

  Back at base, we dumped the haul in what used to be Unity’s meeting room. Now it was the library. Gail even nodded in approval once, which I think counted as a standing ovation from him.

  Jules and I immediately dove into the base-building books. We sat side by side, flipping through diagrams and arguing about the structural integrity of tire walls versus scrap metal fencing.

  “I think we need more distance between the outer gate and the main door,” Jules said, tapping a spot on the sketch we drew on a whiteboard.

  “Why? You scared someone might knock?”

  “I’m scared someone might drive a truck through it.”

  “…Okay, fair.”

  We worked late into the night, making plans, sketching out supply lists, and debating which part of the wall should be booby-trapped with tripwires and cans.

  It was weird. Domestic, almost. If your definition of domestic included traps, crossbows, and scavenged books on primitive carpentry.

  And for a moment—just a small one—it felt like we weren’t just surviving anymore.

  We were building something.