Life Sentence (15 page)

It rained on and off for the next two days, but
after that we saw Will again. It was early in the morning, with the
sun just breaking over the horizon. I was glad he was back so soon,
but also apprehensive about going to this place supposedly
associated with me.

After he let us out, we followed the road for a long
time, at the slow pace Lucy and I could maintain. Will told us
about life with the other people like him, how they grew food and
protected themselves from us, the ways they had relearned how to do
basic things like make paper and cloth and generate electricity and
drill wells for water. He seemed pleased and proud of everything
they’d built and done, as well he should be. I was almost glad to
lack speech at that point; I could hardly come up with a list of
even the most meager accomplishments in our group, and it would’ve
been quite embarrassing to admit it out loud. I was a little proud
that Lucy and I had planted some of the dandelions in little flower
pots by our storage unit and set out more containers to catch the
rain water, but even that had been her idea.

In the middle of the day we stopped to rest in the
shade of some trees. Nearby, some bushes and vines grew over an old
fence, and as Lucy and I sat, Will picked some berries there and
ate them.

After that he sat down with us. He reached in a
pocket and got out a little handmade leather pouch, from which he
got a cigarette and a lighter. The cigarette was obviously
handmade—the ends were rolled and pinched shut and the paper wasn’t
a pure white, but grayish-beige.

“It’s a lot easier than the flint and tinder,
especially for a smoke,” he said as he lit the cigarette, careful
to cover the flame so Lucy and I couldn’t see it. “But I guess
eventually we’ll run out of all the lighters and matches. Maybe by
then we’ll make our own.” He blew the smoke away from us, which was
considerate. “It’s cornsilk. I saw one of the old-timers doing it
when I was younger. Some of them get so desperate for cigarettes.
Real ones ran out years ago, and we haven’t found any plants or
seeds to grow our own tobacco yet. I don’t know if there are enough
people to make it worth growing, though some of the old timers talk
about it all the time, how they want a real cigarette or some
dip.

“But I remember how when I was little—you know, in
the ‘regular’ world—all you heard was how you should never, ever
smoke or chew, it was like the worst thing for you. Funny that
people thought this was so dangerous and deadly.” He considered the
tiny little roll of paper with the glowing end and shook his head.
“They didn’t know shit about dangerous and deadly. And I know our
world is all messed up, Truman, but sometimes I wonder if the old
world was messed up in its own way, or if nothing’s changed.”

I couldn’t offer any better response than a
shrug.

Will looked like he’d gotten an idea. “You want
some? I really doubt it’d hurt you at all.”

As with everything else, I didn’t remember if I were
a smoker or not. I had some image of professors smoking pipes, but
that was all imagination and mystique. Will’s musings had me
curious enough about it to try. I looked to Lucy. She shrugged. I
looked back to Will and nodded.

He smiled a little. “Okay. Not this one; it’s too
short already and you’d burn yourself.” He inhaled deeply from his,
then dropped the end on the ground and crushed it under his heel.
He lit a new one and handed it to me. “Careful. Hold it with your
fingers as far from the lit end as you can. I have no idea how
it’ll taste to you, so just go easy.”

I inhaled it cautiously, afraid the smoke would be
hot and burning, like when I had tried to eat, or like the fear I
always had of flames. But for whatever reason, it felt only
slightly warm and a little tickling. I tried inhaling it deeper,
and the sensation was a little more pronounced, but really no more
profound than if I’d sat out in the sun. I held the cigarette away
from my mouth, looked to Will, and shrugged.

He took it back and crushed it under his heel like
the other. “That’s what I figured. It’s all about the fruit being
forbidden. I only like them because I was told not to. You try it,
with no one telling you one way or the other, and it’s nothing to
you. Interesting.” He got up. “Well, let’s get moving. We won’t
have too much time to look around.”

As we continued down the road, a group of red brick
buildings became visible in the distance. After a while we passed
through gates with the school’s name on the side. As Will had said,
some of the buildings were collapsed, but since most were brick,
the majority had survived.

“I don’t know if you remember, Truman, but it
happened in the summer—I mean that’s when the world ended—so there
wouldn’t have been many people here. And I can’t think why anyone
would try to escape to here, so that’s partly why the place is in
such good shape.”

I didn’t remember, but I nodded.

Will gestured to one building. “That’s where I found
the brochures. It must be the administration building. Does
anything look familiar? Do you want to go in that building?”

Things did look vaguely familiar, but I had to shake
my head tentatively at the first question, since I really couldn’t
identify anything. I shook my head more definitively at the second
question. If the people in that building had made up the brochure
with the vague and hyperbolic slogan I couldn’t quite fathom, I
didn’t want to go in there.

We continued among the buildings. The gymnasium had
been a newer building, but its huge, flat roof had collapsed under
years of rain and snow accumulation, pulling down part of one wall
with it. The library was in much better shape. The doors were
locked, of course, and being an older building, the doors weren’t
glass, but heavy wooden ones, so I thought we might not be able to
enter.

“You want to go in here, Truman?” Will asked.

I nodded.

“Wait here.”

The windows on the bottom floor had metal bars
across them, but Will clambered up these with amazing agility and
soon he was hanging onto a rain spout, kicking in a window on the
second floor. He climbed in, made his way down, and opened the main
door for us.

Lucy and I entered. The entryway was dark, since
there weren’t many windows there, but the room off to the left had
high ceilings, with enormous windows extending the full height of
the room. Sunlight fell upon scores of wooden bookcases full of
books. I ran my hand along the spines and realized how poor my
collection at the storage facility was. No longer did I have to
sort through tattered books of how to program in Pascal, or
inspirational novels based on the Bible: here I had copies of
Pascal and the Bible! Now an anthology of selected and abridged
works was not the best treasure I could hope for—the complete books
were here before me!
This
was a room and a feeling I did
remember—not vaguely, but vividly, as if it had happened many times
and with particular intensity. This was a
real
library. And
now it was mine. Carefully, I selected a few volumes to take back
today. There’d be time to come back for more, but I wanted a few
right away.

Will was also marveling at the library, looking up
at all the books stacked high around us. “Milton and Jonah are
going to love this!” I must’ve growled reflexively, because I
didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t stand the thought of someone taking
these from me.

“Oh,” Will said. “You don’t want me to tell
them?”

I hung my head a little. I hadn’t written these
books, and I hadn’t worked for them; I’d just found them, so I had
no right to snatch at them like I was doing.

“It’s all right,” Will said. “I can put off telling
them if this place is special to you, Truman. But does this mean
that you can read, too?”

I nodded, still keeping my head down.

“Wow. That’s more than I had expected or thought
possible. But if you can read, you should have first dibs on the
books. I think you have little enough at your place. Don’t
worry.”

I was quite overwhelmed that Will, like Lucy, was so
much more kind and willing to share than I was. I vowed to be a
better person in the future.

It was getting late and we had to start back. On the
way to the door, on the librarian’s desk, I noticed an old manual
typewriter. All the other desks had darkened, useless computer
screens on them. I wasn’t positive why this desk had a typewriter,
but I thought I remembered libraries and other offices using paper
forms, some of which could be filled out more easily with a
typewriter than a computer. I tried to pick it up. It wasn’t too
heavy.

Will saw me with it and came over to help. “Wait,
Truman. There’s probably a case for it somewhere here. It’d be
easier to carry. There might be some spare ink and ribbons
too.”

In the cabinets, we found the case and the extra
supplies. Will fit everything inside the case, which had a handle,
like a suitcase or Lucy’s violin case; it was easy for him to pick
up and carry.

Near nightfall, we returned home. Will gave the
typewriter to Lucy, and he led the others to the far side of the
compound while we waited at the gate. Lucy seemed troubled, as
though I might like her less for having seen things from my other
life. I looked deeply in her right eye, and even put my hand on her
right cheek, and I think she realized she was mistaken. I hoped
so.

Will let us inside and began to wrap the chain
around the two metal poles of the fence and the gate.

With a high shriek, two small people lurched from
behind one of the buildings. They looked to be about a foot shorter
than Lucy, not small children, but pre-adolescents, one boy, one
girl. I remembered pushing past them before our previous outing
with Will. Maybe because of their age, they were much quicker than
the other people in the storage area. They seemed to have waited
for us behind the building. They also seemed to move in concert, as
though they had planned this together. They crashed into the gate,
throwing Will off balance and making him take a step back. The girl
wriggled through the opening in the gate as the lock and chain
clattered to the ground.

The others in the storage facility slowly approached
us, filling the space between the fence and the one building, as
well as the area between the buildings. I dropped the books and for
a second I didn’t know what to do. Both children were now through
the gate. Will grabbed the girl by the throat with his gauntleted
hand and pistol-whipped the boy to the ground. Will kicked him in
the face, then stepped on his throat, pinning him.

I took a step toward the gate—I had to secure it—but
Lucy put her hand on my shoulder. She dropped the typewriter as she
shook her head at me. Though her eye was as tranquil and lofty as
ever, the snarl on her lips shocked me with its morbid hunger—and
perhaps even with its cruelty.

Will, holding the two children at bay, glanced
between me, Lucy, and the crowd approaching the gate.

“Truman,” he said in a voice that sounded
surprisingly calm, “I know you’re scared, but you need to close
that gate, whatever happens. You need to do it
now
.”

I looked into Lucy’s eye for what seemed a very long
time; I needed to know what she was thinking. Was she trying to
save me or the children from getting hurt? Or had hunger driven her
to it?

Even over the increasing moan of the crowd, I heard
Will pulling back the hammer on his gun. It had the mechanical
finality of a clock before an execution.

“Blue Eye,” he said, “that gate is going to be
closed and locked now. If you and Truman don’t do it, I’m going to
kill these two and lock it myself. If you do it for me, I promise I
won’t kill them.”

Her gaze moved towards Will, and their eyes met.

“Please trust me,” he said, sounding more concerned
for us than for himself.

I looked to Lucy and thought she nodded slightly. I
took her hand and pulled her to the gate. I was too clumsy to
handle the lock myself anyway. Lucy helped me thread the chain
through the fence, then she locked it.

As the crowd reached us, I let it carry me forward
and push me up against the fence. I lost Lucy in the crowd.

“Remember,” Will said, “trust me. I’ll be as careful
as I can, but I’m not going to be gentle.” He tossed the girl as
hard as he could, and she flew several yards before landing on her
back. She immediately rolled over and began to get up. Will trained
his pistol on her. My eyes widened and I let out a wail, but it was
nothing compared to the cry of rage, despair, and betrayal that
Lucy sent up from somewhere in the crowd. The others droned on with
their meaningless, emotionless moaning.

The pistol exploded, louder than I could’ve
imagined, and Will’s arm jumped upward a little. A dark, chunky
spray shot out of the girl’s knee onto the cracked pavement and
weeds. She collapsed with a groan, then rose up on her hands and
slowly pulled herself towards Will. But without her one leg she
could get little traction and could barely move.

Will holstered his gun. He lifted the boy by the
neck and one leg, then swung him a couple times and threw him part
of the way over the fence. The barbed wire there snagged the boy’s
remaining clothes and he was stuck.

“Truman,” Will said, still very calm, “you’re going
to have to pull him over. Hurry. I have to get her over too.”

As Will walked over to the girl and picked her up, I
tried to push through the crowd to where the boy’s head and right
side hung over. Everyone else reached for Will and followed his
motions, ignoring the boy, even though the barbed wire seemed to
cause him pain as he struggled and it tore into him. I noticed
something I’d seen before with us—there was no blood on the cuts;
we had none left in us, it seemed.