Last Rites (3 page)

Now when he looked at them he could think only of destruction, sinking down into the murky water, maybe getting caught on something so he couldn’t get free; or he would think of the days of misery that would follow if they did escape the ship before it sank, days of trudging along the shore until they were found and killed by other dead people. Or live ones.

Will had explained to them, however, that since Rachel wasn’t getting better, they’d have to get the ship moving again. He expressed hope that there’d be people downstream—a camp, a city, whatever they had set up, and they might have doctors and medicine. Any group that had survived this long must have something more than they had on the boat. It didn’t seem like a very good plan to Truman, but he understood how Will couldn’t bear to watch Rachel suffer and do nothing about it. Truman felt the same frustration, and it must have been much worse for Will.

“All right, Truman, just keep us out in the middle away from the banks,” Will said, standing next to him as Truman gripped the wheel. It seemed easy enough, but what if something went wrong?

When he and Lucy had worked on the deck before, she had been able to raise and lower the sails, which she was doing now as Truman steered. “Good, Lucy,” Will said as she raised the mainsail. “We’re just going with the current, but raise the mainsail so long as the wind’s good. You don’t need the jib. And if the wind shifts, you can reef the sail. See, Truman—don’t be so worried.”

They sailed along for a few minutes, the only sounds the drone of insects, the occasional snap from the sail, and frequent bird calls from shore. Will clapped Truman on the back and smiled at him. “I’m going to go check on Rach. Just call me if anything changes. You’ll be fine.”

Truman nodded and watched Will slip down the stairs in the companionway. He turned his attention back to Lucy, who stood beside the mast with her back to him. As he often did, he wondered what she was thinking. They communicated more now, but he knew that didn’t keep her from being nearly as much a mystery to him as she was to Will and Rachel. She liked working on the ship, he knew that—the sails, taking care of the water, even mopping the deck. She had the dexterity for fishing, more so than he, but she didn’t have the patience for it; sometimes she’d get a worm on a hook and cast, and then hand the rod to Truman while she went to do something else. He liked that, when they’d cooperate on some task neither could accomplish alone, like when they dressed her late at night. He felt so close to her at times like that. But her impatience was a big part of her, too. She tried to keep down the hunger, thank goodness, but there was always something so angry about her—frustration at everything around them, and especially, Truman thought, at herself.

They were sailing along nicely when Truman noticed clouds off to the west. Typical summer day, with storms sometimes coming through, and these looked far enough away that he didn’t worry. Then the wind shifted suddenly, coming at them hard from the starboard. The wheel almost slipped out of his grasp, the force pushing against him was so strong, and he started really fighting the wheel to keep them in the middle of the river.

Lucy had immediately seen the problem as well, and she moved to reef the sail before they were driven too far to port. Truman looked with rising alarm as she struggled with the line. It must’ve fouled in the block, and the wind in the sail was putting so much tension on the line she couldn’t free it. He’d seen this problem before, when they’d helped on deck, but with Will there, it hadn’t posed much danger, as he could help and still leave someone on the wheel. But Truman couldn’t leave the wheel unattended or they’d fly downwind, maybe even run aground. He was about to call for Will and hope he got up on deck quickly enough, when Lucy finally freed the line and lowered the sail. The force pushing against the wheel eased, and Truman felt safer.

Lucy turned toward him and dragged the back of her hand across her forehead. She even graced him with a little smile and a thumbs up. He shook his head at her but returned the gesture.

Even without adrenaline flowing, there was no question that excitement and danger still intoxicated them—it’s just that such things made Truman feel weak and disoriented, while they seemed to make Lucy feel emboldened, invigorated, sometimes even a little playful, like the way she was acting now.

Truman watched Lucy secure the sail and settle down by the forward hatch. She often liked being a little distant from the others, even him. They had the whole night to sit together, after all.

She’d brought the portable CD player with her on deck, and now Truman heard some nice classical music in addition to the background noises of the river. It was a symphony, he could tell that much, but he didn’t know music like Lucy did. He thought it might be Mahler, as she’d been listening to that a lot lately.

As she listened to the music, Lucy began working on a pile of long, thin leaves they’d collected days before. She’d gotten good at weaving them into baskets for various things.

Truman relaxed a bit after their excitement. The ship was back on course, and the wheel didn’t feel so unnatural or dangerous to him anymore. He could do this, he thought—though he still doubted if it would do any good.

The storm coming in from the west would be a problem tonight, but by then Will would have anchored the ship and they’d be all right. Except for Rachel. Truman wished he had been a real doctor, and not just a professor of philosophy—a job which he wasn’t sure had been particularly useful or enjoyable in his previous life, and which had definitely not benefited them in their present existence in any tangible way. The only difference he could observe was that it perhaps made him a bit calmer than Lucy. But even that wasn’t entirely true. It just made him better able to articulate the anger that she felt as an inchoate, undifferentiated rage. He, on the other hand, could distinguish various ways in which the unfairness of Rachel’s situation maddened him. But what did that accomplish? Lucy roared; Truman seethed. There wasn’t much to recommend one over the other, and both were equally impotent, a fact that could only further infuriate them both.

As Truman reviewed all this, and tried to think if he could offer any better advice or propose a better plan than Will’s, he became focused on some wisps of cloud to the port side far ahead. They almost looked more like trails of rising smoke rather than rain clouds. He resolved to point them out to Will when he came back up.

While Truman studied the smoke, letting himself get more hopeful that they might find help, Lucy turned off the CD player and started fiddling with the portable radio. She’d always done that, had always been curious about the possible existence of other live humans. Truman didn’t know why, and if he had looked closely at her when she was turning the dials on the radio, he wouldn’t have seen the kind of hope or curiosity Will or Rachel would display, but something more like concern and anxiety. It was a fear Lucy indulged in rather vigorously and enthusiastically, and one that Will had encouraged now that they were actively seeking other people.

Truman was so engrossed with the clouds ahead that he didn’t notice the swirling, squelching static sounds of the radio at first. He didn’t even notice when those sounds resolved themselves into music. Not the stirring orchestral sounds of a moment ago, but a driving beat and a male voice singing something insistent and urgent, followed by a chorus of nonsense syllables in a more cloying tone.

“Truman!” Lucy shouted after a moment. It always sounded more like “Tra—Man” when she said it; she couldn’t really form her lips to make the long “O” sound.

Her cry yanked Truman out of his reverie and drew his attention to the radio she was holding up. Truman stared as a tinny song with a lot of snare drum and cymbal crashes leaped from the speakers. He was mesmerized by it. It took him immediately to a dark gym full of young people—happy people in brightly colored clothes, all of them laughing, moving their bodies to the music without talent or form, but with a vitality that demanded attention and longing. He no longer smelled the rankness of the river in summer, but instead the forgotten scents of perfume, cologne, flowers, a little bit of tobacco smoke, and that sweet smell of fake cherry flavoring laced with the sting of ginger and bubbles. The scene staggered him, both for its overwhelming, sensuous beauty, and for the guilty, bitter sadness he felt at having forgotten it for so long. It was one thing not to have thought of it since he died—most of his former life was swallowed up in that uncaring abyss of Lethe. But Truman knew as the music transported him that he had not thought of that darkened gym for years and years before his death, and that was his fault, his ingratitude and dishonesty.

“Will!” Truman shouted with equal amounts joy, fear, and hope. “People!”

Will bounded up the steps to the deck, his hand not far from the .357 Magnum on his hip. He saw no one besides Lucy and Truman, both of whom stared at him dumbly. The sail was down—that struck him as odd, but the ship was still safely in midstream, and the two dead people were just listening to music. It wasn’t like Truman to get all excited over nothing.

“What? What is it?” Will asked.

“That’s right, New Sparta!” a frenetic male voice answered Will from the radio. “That was Duran Duran—definitely one for you old-timers, really old school! When those guys tell you they’re ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’—they mean they really want to get with a lady!”

The man stopped talking and the sound of rapidly squeaking bedsprings came from the radio. Then the man laughed. “Someone says that today, they probably don’t mean anything so nice!”

A moan rose from the radio, like dozens of dead people, followed by the sounds of shattering glass and screaming. The man laughed again. “You’re listening to Crazy Man Kaufman! How about one more song before we send some news and announcements your way? Here’s one not quite so old!”

Another song started, this time with a female singer. Will thought it sounded familiar, but wasn’t sure.

Lucy turned the radio down some. Will could hardly believe it. Over the last couple days he’d nearly given up. He hadn’t really slept, and he gnawed down his fingernails, thinking of what he might have to do if Rachel didn’t make it, steeling himself for the event. Now all that fear suddenly evaporated at the words of this goofy radio announcer, calling out to listeners in—what was the name of the city? New Sparta? That sounded funny. Will knew it meant something else, but all he could remember was, way back in the old world, the only place you’d hear the word “Spartan” would be in the name of high school and college sports teams. But who cared now? They had named it whatever they wanted to.

“A radio station?” Will asked, beaming at Truman and Lucy. “There are people somewhere near here who have a radio station!” He gave Truman’s shoulder a smack. “They’ve got to have medicine and doctors, then! You can’t have a city that big and not have other stuff, like doctors. How will we find them, though? We can’t have passed them upriver, I don’t think, or we would’ve heard the broadcast before. But if they’re not right on the river, we might sail past them and not know it.” Will frowned.

Truman pointed down the river. Will considered the wisps of cloud there. “Yeah, you’re right, Truman—that may be them. It doesn’t look like just regular clouds.”

Truman then pointed to the storm advancing from the west.

“Oh, yeah,” Will said. “Is that why you reefed the sail?”

Truman and Lucy both nodded.

“Good job, guys. We’ll have to deal with the storm tonight. Oh damn, the boat rocking makes Rach feel even sicker.” He felt bad for her, but still confident the worst was over. They might even make it to this city before nightfall. Who knew? Anything good seemed possible, and nothing bad seemed real or threatening anymore, but more like just a nuisance.

The song ended and Crazy Man Kaufman started talking again. “Turn it up,” Will told Lucy, taking a step toward her.

“Hey, everybody—the city council is glad to announce that work is almost done on the Victory Amphitheater on the riverfront!”

There was the sound of saws and hammers in the background.

“We’ll announce the first concerts there real soon!”

Applause.

“The place was supposed to be done earlier, but, well, you probably remember it got pretty messed up. Really big cleanup before they could even start rebuilding. But until it’s done, check out the Dead End—that’s always open!”

There was the moaning of the dead again, but it ended with laughter this time instead of screams.

“Just outside the north wall you got all your favorite carnie games, shows, something for everyone! Come on by!”

More laughter and some kind of strange pipe music that Will didn’t really recognize, he hadn’t heard it in so long.

“Oh, sorry, time to pay the bills!” There was the ka-ching of a cash register, another sound Will barely remembered. “Be sure to stop by our sponsor, Freedom Food, in the south city market. Freedom Food has the only poultry and pork”—the sounds of clucking and squealing came from the radio—”that’s been certified as meeting New Sparta city regulations, by city-council-appointed inspectors. You owe it to your family to buy Freedom Food.”

Stirring martial music for a few seconds.

“And now, let’s have some more tunes before the Crazy Man calls it a day!” The radio went back to playing pop music, and Lucy turned it down again.

“The guy said ‘riverfront’!” Will exclaimed, smiling at Lucy. She didn’t exactly smile back, but sort of nodded slightly and bared her top teeth. Always hard to tell what that meant, but Will didn’t care too much at this point. “We just have to keep going and we’ll find them and get help!”