Life Sentence (23 page)

The man was less coordinated than the woman had
been, but definitely more aggressive and stronger. He shook me off
several times as I tried to get a rope around him, then finally he
turned his attention from the truck and threw me down. With a
snarl, Lucy grabbed his right arm. It never ceased to amaze me, how
savage she could be. I scrambled to my feet and got a hold of his
left arm. It was a struggle, but together Lucy and I wrestled him
over and got his hands behind him so she could tie him to the
tower. The grey tape worked better for this than the ropes or
chains, I noticed.

By now the last two people had arrived at the truck.
One was another child, and the other was a man who, like the woman,
had climbed up on top of the truck’s tire. Will punched him with
his gauntleted fist, but couldn’t quite get him to fall. Finally
Will stepped back, picked up a shovel, and hit him in the face with
it. He could easily have killed the man, but he just smacked him in
the face with the flat of the shovel—not gently, but definitely not
hard enough to kill. The man fell back and Lucy and I dragged him
away much more easily than the previous one. The two children were
small enough that we could each carry one over to the tower and
secure them.

When we finished, Will climbed down from the truck.
I hadn’t liked doing any of it, especially with the children. It
just didn’t seem right to fight with them when they couldn’t
understand that what they were doing was wrong, or understand we
were only trying to keep them from hurting others. But seeing how
desperately they all struggled in their attempts to get at Will, I
didn’t see any other way. I remembered the day Milton explained to
me why we should be locked up; he had made it seem so much more
just, as well as easier for me to accept. Since I couldn’t give
such an explanation to these people, I could only feel glad that it
was over with as quickly as it was, and that at least it had gone
better than the grotesque violence back at the house with the men.
These people, even though we couldn’t communicate with them, didn’t
seem as bad as that; the other men, even though they could
communicate and reason, had been much more intent on hurting others
more cruelly, with lingering pain and humiliation.

One woman we had bound, closer to the truck, never
stopped looking at Will and moving her mouth, growling and snarling
with a low, simmering ferocity. And the more savage she was, the
more I had to fight back an urge to kick her in the face, just to
make her stop behaving so bestially. Both her behavior and my
reaction were embarrassing, and I just wanted it to end. I was
again confused about what we were, or what exactly we were meant to
do here.

Will watched the woman too, and I think he sensed my
confusion. “It’s okay, Truman. We didn’t cause this. We didn’t make
things the way they are. Well, I mean, maybe we did, like the whole
human race is responsible, but not just you and me, and not her. We
try to stop people from hurting each other. And we try not to hurt
people. But sometimes people still get hurt. I can tell you don’t
like that. And, well, that’s a good thing, when doing something
even a little bit wrong still bothers you. But not everyone feels
bothered by it. Not these people here, and not those guys back
there at the cabin. That’s just the way it is. I guess it’s the way
it will always be. Now come over here and help me.”

I calmed somewhat and nodded to Will. He and I
picked up the woman and put her with the others, then Will sat on
the ground in the shadow of the truck, hiding from the people so
they would calm down a little. He looked out over the fields,
watching for the approach of anyone else. Lucy and I sat a little
back, facing the other way, so we could keep an eye on the ones we
had tied up, and also look for more in that direction. None
appeared.

It was getting late. I didn’t know about Lucy and
Will, but I felt exhausted. I just wanted to sit and rest, but I
sensed there would be more to do, what with the new threat to
Will’s community.

As the sun went down, Will looked to us. “You two go
over into those trees there, farther away from the fence. The other
people from our city should be here soon. I’ll tell them what
happened, and I’ll join you as soon as I can. Be careful. Don’t go
too far.” It was always nice, how he expressed concern for us. Lucy
and I walked off and sat among some scrubby little trees, maybe a
hundred feet from where Will and the truck were.

After it had just gotten dark, headlights
approached. The moon was up and bright enough that I could see a
little of what was going on. There were a lot of people and several
vehicles. One tall man and another man spoke with Will before he
left them and trotted through the grass to where we were. It took
him a second to find us, but then the three of us started walking
through the trees, away from the people.

When we had gone a little ways, Will said, “Those
people will keep an eye on the fence until they can fix it in the
morning. They’ll take the zombies to one of the holding areas then
too. I told them I’d scout around out here, see where those guys
came from. I need to keep moving, so can you guys stay with
me?”

We nodded.

“All right. It’s not really safe for me out here at
night, and I can’t really follow the tracks anyway. So let’s get
back on the road. I saw a billboard there when we came out here
earlier. I’ll climb that and we can all have a rest.”

The billboard—or what was left of it—stood a little
ways away from the fence. The pole and the frame that had held the
sign were still there. The sign itself was long gone, of course.
Lucy and I sat at the base of the sign.

“Thanks, you two,” Will said. “I don’t know if I
could’ve saved Zoey if you weren’t there. And I want you to know
that it’s true what I said to her: I think it’s okay you killed
that guy. Not just okay, in fact, it was a good thing, a brave
thing.”

Will took a step away from us and lit one of his
cigarettes. I could see the end glow against the night. He exhaled
and talked more quietly. “The eating part isn’t so easy to get
over, but I still think you’re a good person and you should be
treated with respect. I mean, I know all of us are taught to
respect you, but now that I’ve met you two, I don’t know if locking
you up is always the right way. If you’re still members of our
community, you should do things to help out, like you did today.
I’m sorry you had to see all that. It was ugly, and you two are
nice and shouldn’t have to see things like that. I wish more people
were nice like you.”

He finished his cigarette and crushed it out on the
ground. “Now I’m going to go up there, tie myself down, and try to
get a little sleep. I hope you two can rest a little too. I guess
you don’t sleep or get tired exactly like we do, but you look tired
and you did a lot today.”

Lucy and I both made our little affirmative wheezing
sound. Will leaped and caught the bottom of a ladder that led up to
a narrow platform under where the billboard used to be. He pulled
himself up and in a second he was above us, lying down and going to
sleep.

Lucy and I leaned against each other, quiet and calm
for the first time that day. The moon had risen higher, casting a
lovely, softening glow on the fields. As with speaking or even
bleeding, I envied Will’s ability to sleep. For as soothing and
beautiful as the moonlight on those fields was, I would have much
preferred to just stop remembering and thinking about all the
terrible things I’d seen that day, to have just a few hours of
release. Considering all the things—many of them beautiful and
good, I’m sure—that I had somehow been forced to forget, it hardly
seemed fair that a whole new set of horrors had been shoved into my
memory and could not be forced out or even softened.

The moon set, the stars wheeled, and finally the
horizon lightened to purple, then red, then orange. The sun warmed
me and I felt slightly better after the previous day’s events and
the night’s cold and damp. I did not know that equally important
and terrible events would take place that day, even if it began as
another beautiful, summer morning.

Sometime late in the morning, my dad came up to the
truck Fran and I were sitting on as we kept watch. “Hey, you two,”
he said in his kind and jovial tone. It made me relax to hear him
back to his more normal tone, without the concern and fear of the
night before. “They did a lot more damage to the fence than we
expected. We don’t have all the supplies we need. I don’t think we
even have enough back in the city. We weren’t expecting this kind
of damage this time of year, and right after the usual damage that
the spring storms do to the fence.”

He held up a tattered, multi-colored sheet of folded
paper and gestured with it to my right. “I checked the map. Just
past the fence over that way, there’s the edge of where we’ve
scouted in any detail, and I’ve got one spot marked as still having
building supplies. Milton’s been through there several times, so it
should be quiet. Jonah and I are going to take a truck and try to
find the stuff we need. Mostly posts and fencing. We got the
concrete and the equipment and we can add the barbed wire later.
You want to come with us, Zoey?”

Fran and I stood up and stretched. “Sure, Dad. Do I
need the rifle?”

“Yeah, bring it with you.”

Fran gave me one of her slight smiles. “You be
careful, kid,” she said as she rubbed my head. “Get us some stuff
so we can finish this up and get on home to your mom. I don’t like
sitting out here getting sunburned because some animals messed up
everything we’ve worked for.”

“I will,” I said. I climbed down, and Fran resumed
her watch.

As my dad and I walked to the other panel truck, he
smiled at me and reached around to look at my black eye. “Bad day,
kiddo.” He’d be strong and optimistic in front of Mom, but he knew
I knew how he really felt, if that makes any sense. “Sorry you had
to get up close and personal with some bad guys, princess. It
happens. I’m glad you were strong. Fran and Vera were lucky you
were there. But if you need to go home or anything, just say so.
You don’t have to be all tough in front of your dad.”

I nodded. “I know, Dad.” I understood that I had
fought as best I could, but I also knew that Will and his friendly
zombies were a big part of why we were all still alive. If it were
a source of fear that you didn’t know where the threats and dangers
would come from every day, it was an odd kind of wonder that you
also never knew where help might come from—unasked for, unexpected,
unpredictable.

We got to the other truck, where Mr. Caine was
waiting for us. Dad and I got up in the cab with him. Mr. Caine was
driving and my dad sat between us. As Dad had said, it was a short
drive to the remnants of civilization—ruined buildings and a denser
concentration of wrecked and abandoned cars. There was a big city
out here beyond the fence, and these were the outskirts of it. When
we had first built the fence, the city was full of zombies. Even
now, with so many hiding places, we couldn’t be sure that Milton
had found them all, and the city was considered the most dangerous
area beyond the fence. We would never venture farther into it than
these outskirts.

The older people had tried to describe how cities
used to be set up. This was hard for younger people to understand,
because our own little city was set up in such a haphazard,
irregular way—some parts alive and occupied, while others fell into
disrepair and disuse—you could no longer tell what they had once
been used for. The way people described it, the center of a really
big city had extremely tall buildings—dozens, sometimes as much as
a hundred stories tall, as impossible as that seemed now. These
huge structures were filled mostly with offices—which were a tough
concept in themselves, as explaining what people did in “offices”
quickly involved more arcane subjects having to do with money or
government or even something called “insurance,” for which people
could find no adequate analogy or rationalization in our present
world.

Farther away from the city center would be the
houses and industry. Then even farther out would be more housing,
and most of the stores, especially the big ones that sold large
items—things like construction supplies or equipment, appliances,
car dealerships, those kinds of things. There were some
complications in these discussions with older people, of course,
because some claimed that a really long time ago, back before most
of the older people were born, there were stores in the central
downtown, and only later did those move to the outskirts or
suburbs. This was then further complicated because in some cities
the stores had actually moved back downtown in the years just prior
to the outbreak, in a process called “urban renewal,” and some
rundown buildings in the downtown had been transformed into very
expensive housing, a process called “gentrification.”

It was at this point that the description and my
questions began to break down into complicated, circuitous
tangents, because I would ask why they had ever moved out, if only
to move back again. As often happened, the details confused and
confounded my ability to envision or understand how people used to
live. But that day as the truck slowed to a crawl through the
increasing number of buildings and vehicles and debris, I could
tell we were entering the suburbs of a once large city, now just
ruins, wreckage, and supplies to be scavenged for survival.

“There,” my dad said, pointing to the remnants of a
shopping center on the right side of the road. One of the stores
had obviously sold building supplies.

The grass in the parking lot grew between the cars,
up to the tops of their wheels. Many of the vehicles were
blackened, obviously having exploded and burned twelve years ago.
The people’s bodies had either walked away or had become food, or
had just crumbled into nothingness when I was still a baby.