The Invasion

The Library Of Congress

Within and hour and a half I reached the
Library of Congress. I parked the car in front of
the door and walked in with my bag on my
shoulder. Seven other untouched looking cars
just like mine were parked up and down the
street. Once inside, I ran upstairs to a door with
the presidential seal on it. I typed in 237486 on
the keypad on the doorknob.
A siren began to blare. I ran around down the
stairs I had come up and looked around. My
adrenaline was pumping big time and my heart
felt like it wanted to escape from my chest. I
quickly glanced around and found a broken
window above. But how to get in there... The
ladder-in-a-can! I pulled one of the cans out of
my bag and opened it. Nothing happened so I
grabbed the other one and tried it too. There
was a POP and a red ladder materialized in
front of me. I propped it up against the broken
window and began to climb. The siren finally
shut off. When I finally reached the window I
scampered over the shattered glass and
managed not to get cut.
When I entered the vast room I saw the last
thing I could possibly imagine. Standing there
on a stool reaching for a book was a boy!
Medium build, short brown hair, and ripped up
jeans, it looked as if he had gone through a lot
to get here. His left hand was all botched up like
he had punched through glass. He jumped when
a piece of glass crunched under my feet.
"It's okay," I said to the boy quietly, even
though I was absolutely ecstatic to finally find
another human being in this world besides me.
"I'm a friend." He slowly turned to face me,
wide eyed, and when he saw that I didn't intend
to kill him he smiled.
"Phew! It scared me when I heard the sirens
start to blare and then to hear the crunching of
glass on the floor and you jumping through the
hole. I thought I was too late," he explained.
"I'm Kylan. Who are you?"
"I'm Anna. I'm from Indiana. How did you get
here and where are you from?" I asked.
"Well, I borrowed my parents' car, drove here,
and punched through that window," he pointed
to a broken window down the aisle. "Oh, and
I'm from New York."
"Can I help you with that hand?" I motioned
toward his injured left hand and pulled out my
first aid kit. Kylan nodded, and I took out the
tweezers and spray skin. He winced every time
I pulled out a shard of glass, and howled when I
sprayed on a new layer of skin. I bandaged it
up he said,
"Thanks! That feels much better! So, you
survived the raid too."
"Apparently, I didn't know until two days ago,"
I replied.
"Why did the sirens blare anyway?"
"Haven't you ever seen "National Treasure 2:
Book of Secrets". It's one of the oldies. It has a
code to this section of the Library of Congress.
When I tried to use it on the lock it obviously
didn't work. I noticed the hole in the window
coming in so I decided to use my ladder-in-a-
can to climb through it."
"No, I haven't seen that movie but I guess even
if I did then the code wouldn't work," he
laughed.
"So what are you doing here, exactly?" I asked
again.
"Well, I figured I needed to find out information
on Martians and this would be the place that
would have it. I've looked in the books at my
library at home and there was barely anything.
What are you doing here?"
"I figured that the FBI would have a plan and if
we could find their headquarters then we could
do it ourselves instead of waiting to die," I
suggested.
"Oh, that's logical. That never crossed my
mind."
"Have you seen anyone else who withstood the
raid?" I inquired.
"Nope, not yet. But I hope there are more of us,
although I seriously doubt it. No offense, but I
don't exactly want to be stuck with just us,"
Kylan laughed again. But you know what's
funny? I didn't get mad at him. Usually I would
immediately want to kill him after a comment
like that, but I didn't. This could be a good sign
that the medicine I took for years worked, and
that would help an awful lot. Or maybe it was
just Kylan.
"Yeah, I guess the same goes for me," I chuckled
back.
"Let's get to work. You know, saving what's left
of the world."
We spent the rest of the day looking through all
the books and writing down notes. The only
breaks we had were running out to the store to
get more supplies (like pens, notebooks, food,
and water) or to eat. Other than that, the wide
expanse of the secret XY section was what we
were confined to the majority of the day.
I fell asleep around 11 o'clock maybe, on top of
"Area 51: The Truth." Trust me, interesting
book, long day, too tired. I didn't even stand a
chance of keeping awake.
I awoke to find that Kylan had submitted to
sleep on the floor one aisle over and his grating
snore had woken me up. My watch read 8:30. I
stepped quietly over him to the mini
refrigerators by the entrance. I opened the
second one down and took out a turkey and
cheese omelet wrapped in plastic. I carefully
unwrapped the plastic and reached for a fork to
start eating. When Kylan finally woke, I was
half finished with breakfast and it was about
9:15.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," Kylan responded, rubbing his eyes.
"Nothing like sleep to help jumpstart your day.
Only six more bookcases left, huh? But we still
haven't found the location of the FBI's Secret
Headquarters!"
"I know, and I still can't remember the code for
the President's Secret Book!"
"Just, don't try. Especially since the first code
didn't work. But I guess since that's our only
shot then... It will come eventually," he soothed.
"But what if it's too late," I complained.
"We'll cross that bridge when we get there. For
now we have to just gather as much information
as possible."
We settled to continuing our work.
"I got it!" I shouted later that day. I quickly
wrote in my notebook. Kylan ran over to me
and watched as my hand scribbled down some
numbers, jumping up and down and humming.
I walked over to the fifth bookshelf from the
front of the room and began taking out all the
books. Up on the underside of the shelf was a 4-
digit dial lock. I twisted the little golden dials to
read 3794. Click. A compartment opened and a
small notebook fell out onto the shelf. It was
tattered leather and had the presidents seal on
the cover.
"Finally!" Kylan and I both shouted. He was in
shock that the code worked and his mouth
never closed until I opened up the notebook to
the first page and started taking notes.
Everything we needed was in this book. The
FBI's Secret Headquarters location had to be in
this book. I mean, wouldn't the president want
to pass this information on to future presidents?
By afternoon we had finished the president's
secret book and even taken a few pictures of
some photos that were stashed in the pages. By
the next day at dinner we had finished reading
all the books in the XY section. There was a
stack of 17 notebooks on the table when we
were done. All the notebooks were labeled in
permanent marker what the contents were. We
stole another backpack from Smith's to put our
work in, and loaded both our cars with gas and
supplies.
"Wow, I still can't believe we found it," Kylan
told me.
"I know! It was so obvious! Why didn't I think
of it before?"
"I don't know. But it wasn't your fault. I
couldn't think of it either," Kylan tried.
"Nice attempt, but that didn't help much. I still
feel stupid."
"Let's just go. We don't have much time left."
"Good idea."