I go in the direction where the arrow is pointing and find another arrow in the same place on the other side of the room. Should I follow? My zigzagging course was completely arbitrary. This is something substantive to follow. Could the arrows lead somewhere worse than my aimless wandering? I don’t know. I decide it is better to follow something than nothing, so I follow where they point. I continue counting rooms but remember where I began going straight following the arrows. I can always backtrack or just turn left and rejoin my previous path further on.

  The arrows are all small and clearly hand drawn. Some are more neatly inscribed than others. I follow them for three thousand rooms. Whoever made them used a different strategy than I did. When faced with a room that has a wall instead of an opening on the far side, the arrows turn first turn left then go straight until they can continue to the right. If there is no left option, the drawer went back to where they could turn left. There is no return to the original straight path, which complicates reconciling this way with my previous path. At first, I try to remember and make mental adjustments, but soon I decide that it is ridiculous to fixate on my original plan. It was hardly a plan. I just need to follow the arrows and if I want to get back to where I started, I can just follow the arrows in reverse. I still count though, to track approximate time and distance, but I count them separately beginning with A-one.

  At room A-three thousand seven hundred twenty-seven the arrows disappear.

  “Now what?” I say. The sound of my own voice in the still silent rooms creeps me out. I realize I haven’t seen or heard another person in two days. I don’t know if that has ever happened before in my life.

  The arrows were at least a sign of life in here. Maybe the person who drew them just ran out of ink. If I follow the rules I’ve learned in following the arrows, I can keep to the trail without them. I wasn’t really looking for them in every room anyway once I got into the rhythm.

  I resume walking. Seven rooms further on a strange thing happens; the floor dries out completely. It’s also silent. The lights here don’t hum, buzz, or flicker. I keep going until the next wall blocks me. The arrows don’t resume, but I keep to the pattern.

  Four hundred rooms later, I begin to get concerned. I’ve been drinking water as I need it, knowing I could always refill my bottle, but there are still no dripping sprinkler pipes or heads in this area. At some point, I’ll have to go back to where there was water and reconsider what to do next. My hunger is also increasing, and I do not feel as strong as I did yesterday.

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  When I step into room A-four thousand five hundred ninety-four, I’m surprised to hear a slight squelch to my footstep. The rooms ahead are starting to get wet again. I go back a few rooms to one that is fully dry and repeat my previous sleep preparations. I’m exhausted and it’s better to sleep where I am fairly comfortable and dry than continue to somewhere I’ll be damp and shivering through the night again.

  ---

  When I wake in my slightly warm carpet tube, I don’t panic this time. I feel like I’ve slept enough to continue, so I climb out and dress again. I resume the imaginary trail towards the damp rooms and soon the rooms once more have humming, buzzing lights and the floors get wetter and wetter. As I pass into room A-four thousand five hundred ninety-nine, I notice an arrow.

  The arrows continue through room A-nine thousand five hundred eight. For the past few rooms, the ink has been patchy, like the pen was running out of ink and here, there is only an indentation of an arrow on the yellow painted side of the opening into the next room. There are a few more rooms with indented arrows, then a room with an uncarpeted floor. The padding and many of the tack strips are also missing. The concrete is dark from wetness. When I step onto it, I realize there is about an eighth of an inch deep of standing water.

  My footsteps splash through the next few rooms, which are also devoid of carpets and pads. I soon discover what happened to them. In the entrance to room A-nine thousand five hundred seventeen is blocked by a five-foot-high pile of carpets and pads. They are stacked and compressed in a sloping mound beginning in the middle of the room I am in and peaking in the opening. I can see that the next room is full of water to that height and it is running down and through the dam into the surrounding rooms. The four sprinkler heads in that room have all been removed and water is flowing steadily into the pool.

  I cautiously climb the incline of wet material until I can look out into the room. It only has one other opening, which is similarly dammed. The water in the room is crystal clear. At the bottom, I see a human skull. I stare at it in disbelief, trying to think of what else it might be, but it’s clear that someone drowned here. The other bones are still weighing down clothing, jeans and a shirt with finger bones sticking out. I can see two boots that must still have foot bones inside. I get the impression this was a male.

  How long ago must it have been? There’s no smell. Could this be the arrow drawer? Did he give up? Whatever decay there was must have been washed away by the flowing water. There’s no sign of anything growing in the water. No fungus or algae.

  I make a circuit of the pool room. The arrows do not continue anywhere. All of the surrounding rooms are bare concrete from their carpets and pads being harvested.

  A grim thought occurs to me. I have to sleep on it. I walk to the nearest room that still has its carpets then another hundred rooms where it’s not so wet, where I lay out my things and roll up my carpet cocoon bed. While snuggled inside, I lie thinking about what to do tomorrow.