Life Sentence (2 page)

And that leads me to a memory I was thinking of
again this morning, for about the millionth time. It led me to
think more about memories and how they work and why they matter and
why I might want to write down those from my twelfth year before
they flit away or mutate or whatever it was that happened to this
other, older memory. This memory—which I think is my earliest
recollection of anything in my life—is that I’m playing freeze tag
with a bunch of other little kids, all of us about four years old.
We are playing in a large field. It’s hot and sunny, but in a nice
way—not uncomfortable, but just perfect and invigorating. Bugs—not
the kind that bother you, like flies and mosquitoes, but moths and
butterflies and dragonflies and even an occasional bee—zip and
bounce over the grass, which is pretty tall compared to us little
kids, above our waists. There is a line of trees edging the field.
I am frozen, waiting for someone to tag me and unfreeze me. I look
back over my shoulder, and I see the adults farther away, under a
big tree out in the field. They have the tailgate down on a pickup
truck and they’re getting food out for everyone. My dad turns
toward me, and I see his face, see it change from the expectant and
happy look he usually has with me to fright. He shouts something,
but I can’t make it out. He runs to the front of the truck and
fumbles under the seat, then he runs toward me. I see he has a gun
in his hand, a big pistol. Now he’s shouting and waving, but I
still can’t understand what he wants.

That’s when I hear something else, like a dry
whisper, incoherent but so insistent. It’s almost like the wind
through the city streets, filling up the dead places between the
empty buildings. But this is closer, quieter. And most of all, I
know as soon as I hear it that this sound is personal, intimate,
meant only for me. I turn and the dead man whispering his inhuman
desire for me is right on top of me. He’s naked, dry, scabbed,
scarred, and withered. He grabs my bicep at the same moment I start
to scream and try to pull away. His mouth opens as he leans
down—grey, mostly toothless, the tongue wriggling obscenely. I
twist myself around and turn from him, screaming more loudly and
shrilly, but there’s no getting my arm free. I hear the shot and
the dead man’s nose and eyes disappear, a ragged hole in his face.
The mouth is still there, but now it’s silent and the tongue isn’t
moving. The dead man turns slightly and collapses next to me, but
the hand is still clamped on my arm. I thrash about, not looking,
not thinking, just screaming and writhing, and now the hand’s grip
finally loosens slightly and its long, blackened nails are dragging
down my arm, scratching me. I throw my head back and howl with a
mixture of rage and revulsion and relief as my whole tiny body
springs back and away, landing at my dad’s feet.

This is one of those things that I think I remember,
but I’m not sure. I think if I asked my dad, I could find out
whether this memory was real, but I don’t want to. I don’t ask. I
never have. I think I remember a moment of perfect, carefree joy,
and I think I remember a moment of sudden and extreme terror. I
want to hold on to both—to the possibility of both, not the
certainty. To be certain of the horror that afternoon would be too
much for me to bear, I know it would be; it would expand and grow
till it blocked out everything good and beautiful I’ve ever had. To
be certain and convinced that such a horrible scene never happened
would be a lie and would further shut me off from those like my
parents and Will who know they’ve seen such things, many times
over, and much worse. To be certain of the joy would be to fall
back into the ingratitude I mentioned before, to take for granted
or pretend I deserved such bliss—then, now, or ever. To know for
certain it had never happened would again be too much for me to
bear. So I hold the both of them in this perfectly balanced,
perfectly uncertain memory, one that I’ve never shared with anyone
until now.

As I say, it’s funny the things you remember, and
funnier still the things you think you remember. And funniest of
all? To be—not just to
have
, mind you, but to actually
be—
such a willing, willful collection of memories, sometimes
choosing and sometimes refusing to choose from among all the things
you think you remember. But that is what I am, and I suspect it’s
what you are too, if you’d admit it. My name is Zoey—survivor and
heir of a dead world. And these are my memories of one tiny part of
my life.

This is my journal. My name is Wade Truman, though I
didn’t know that for a long time. There are a lot of things I don’t
know so well, even now. I do know how to type, for some reason, but
I don’t seem to know as many words as I think I should. I try to
learn new ones, but it’s hard for me to study. I lose concentration
or something happens to distract me. All my memories start a few
years ago, yet I’m sure I existed before that, because when my
memories start, I already knew lots of things, just not perfectly,
and all the different ideas and memories—if that’s what they
are—don’t necessarily connect. So it seems like I’ve remembered all
sorts of complicated things and words, but forgotten some very
basic and necessary things, like how to walk right. And how to
talk.

I remember the first time I tried to talk. It is, in
fact, almost my first memory, right from when I first awoke, lying
on my back on the pavement. The concrete felt hard and warm on my
back. But inside I felt cold. I had no idea where I was. I heard
sirens and gunfire in the distance, and closer to me, this low
moaning punctuated with growls and wails. I sat up. I could see
blood all over me and all around me, and there were people around
me, and they were all bloody too. They held their red, dripping
hands up to their mouths and they slurped and chewed as they eyed
me and growled.

I looked down and saw that I was torn open in the
middle, and a lot of my insides were gone. It didn’t hurt, though,
not exactly, which surprised me, though I wasn’t sure what pain
felt like. I was just surprised I didn’t feel much of anything,
even though something was obviously wrong with my body and pieces
of it were missing. All I felt was a little cold and stiff. And
that was when I first tried to talk.

At first my mouth just moved noiselessly, and I
thought maybe the part of me that could make speech was missing
too. I felt my throat and that seemed intact, but no air was coming
out to make the sounds, so I concentrated on breathing in and
exhaling. I tried to say something like, “I’ve been hurt,” but
nothing came out right. It didn’t sound like words, but all harsh
and wrong—just raspy, wheezing sounds. It sounded a lot like the
moaning I heard all around me.

Even though I couldn’t understand what the moaning
meant, I was speaking the same as everyone around me, and that made
me feel better, though I was disappointed that I couldn’t
communicate with anyone. I still feel bad about that, like I’m
missing something much more important than my intestines or my
liver, whose absence I really haven’t noticed over the years.

I now live in this group of buildings with the other
people like me. They can’t talk either. I must have known how to
type very well before, since I can still do it, even though I don’t
remember how to speak. The typing came easily, even if it still
seems slow and none of the other people here know how to read it. I
suppose I must have known lots of ideas and problems and questions
before, because even though I don’t breathe or sleep or talk, I can
still think of a lot of things, and I wanted to write some of them
down since I can’t say them out loud anymore, and I thought other
people might be interested in them.

The older man, the one who makes me feel uneasy and
scared, he put us here not too long ago. The other people who can’t
talk must also feel scared and uneasy around him because, like me,
they walk slowly away whenever he gets near. At the time, I didn’t
know why he put us here, as we were fine where we were, I thought.
Maybe it was to punish us, as I heard later that he was going to
put us in a prison. He can talk. He spoke to us loudly, but with
kind-sounding words, so I didn’t mind going where he wanted, if it
made him happy and he thought it was best for us.

The older man led us out of the city after he found
us there. He had two dogs to help move us in the direction he
wanted. It was funny, but as we walked, I wondered why I hadn’t
thought of it on my own, to leave the city where I had been at
first, and I couldn’t really tell why. It just hadn’t occurred to
me.

I made a note that I’ve tried to remember since
then, not to sit around doing nothing, though sometimes it’s so
difficult, and the urge is almost overwhelming, just to sit down
and forget all the things that need to be done. But giving in to
that urge just doesn’t seem right, because I remember as we walked
away from the city that it felt so good to see different things,
all the fields and trees and flowers and other things. There is a
whole world out here, and we should feel good about it. “Good”
isn’t the right word. “Grateful”—we should feel grateful for it, I
think.

We walked out of the city, about twenty of us, and a
younger man joined the older man. The young man didn’t make us feel
uneasy or scared the way the older man did, just by his presence,
though as soon as I heard him, I felt a little scared; he seemed
harsher and angrier than the older man.

As he talked with the older man, a lot of people in
my group tried to get close to him, to attack him. They felt
threatened by him, I think, and so did I. They also felt hungry,
I’m sure, because I know I did, but I didn’t want to attack
him—partly because the kinder, older man seemed to be his friend,
and also because I remembered back when I was first in the city,
years before the man took us out, I had been with some other people
who couldn’t talk and they were all battering on a door to a big
building. The door gave way and we all rushed in. There was
screaming, and blood everywhere.

I felt hungry, so hungry. It gnawed and tore at me,
the hunger. I had been hungry for as long as I could remember,
since waking up days before. So when I saw someone on the floor,
with other people tearing her apart, I took some. I even punched
and clawed at others to get them out of the way so I could tear off
a bloody piece of the woman. I just wanted the hunger to go away,
but it was a cruel joke on us as much as on her.

When I ate some, it burned my mouth, literally. My
mouth had been so dry and cold, and now it felt like it was being
scalded with burning liquid, and like I was drowning in the
slippery, greasy wetness of her blood, all at the same time. It was
the most awful thing I’ve ever felt. I clutched my throat and shook
my head from side to side and tried to swallow, and I was sure it
was going to kill me, the burning and drowning sensations were so
intense, first in my mouth, but then even worse in my throat, like
throwing up backwards, even though later I realized I wasn’t sure
what throwing up felt like; I just remember it was very unpleasant
and it burned. But what was worse was that once I swallowed, it
seemed to make me even hungrier. My stomach—or whatever was left of
it—had been a dull, pained pressure in my middle, but almost as
soon as I swallowed, it gave a wrench, and its insistent demand
filled me completely, as if my limbs and head could feel hunger as
well—as if every part of me were writhing, twisting, screaming in
need.

From somewhere I suddenly remembered that drinking
salt water was like that, and many people lost at sea died when
they drank the sea water, because the more they drank, the
thirstier they got, until it killed them. Isn’t that funny, that I
should suddenly remember that? And from where? I had just awakened
a few days before, and I knew I hadn’t heard that particular fact
anywhere since waking up. I still am not sure. But I knew from then
on not to eat, because it just made things worse.

So I didn’t want to attack the younger man and I
didn’t press forward with the others. But I could hear the two of
them talking, even as I hung back.

“Do you want me to help herd this bunch to the
prison, Milton?” the younger man said.

I didn’t like that at all, because I knew what the
word “prison” meant. The other people didn’t react to this
description of where we were going, they just kept grasping at the
younger man. But I hung my head, for I remembered what I’d done
back in the city to the woman I’d partially eaten. I felt like I
deserved going to prison, though I was surprised it had taken them
so long to catch us. I didn’t think all the people with me had been
there when we had eaten the woman and the others, but maybe they
had eaten other people or done other bad things, and we were all
being punished together.

The people with me didn’t seem to understand what
was being said, they just milled around as the man called Milton
kept them back. “Stay behind me, Will,” he said to the young man.
“We’ll take some of them to the prison, but it’s getting too full.
I’d like to take some to that fenced-in place we found a while
ago.”

The younger man called Will said, “That can’t hold
many.”

“No, but Jack says it’s not close to anything
important, and he’s marked it on the map so people don’t stumble on
it by accident. And it’ll help ease the overcrowding. Don’t worry,
Will, we’ll find other places. We have to.

“I’ve been watching them. They fight each other
sometimes, and some of the bigger and more violent and aggressive
ones hurt the smaller. They even hurt the women and children among
them. It’s wrong. They don’t eat them, of course, and that makes it
even worse, like they’re just doing it out of cruelty or rage, and
I had always hoped they wouldn’t be capable of that, at least.
Sometimes they hurt them to the point where they can’t move, and
then you or I have to put them out of their misery. That’s not
right. I’d like to put the less aggressive ones somewhere
else.”