Life Sentence (9 page)

I wasn’t sure if Mom and Dad had ever talked to
Max’s parents, so I wasn’t totally sure what his dad’s aloofness
towards me meant. I always wondered how much the parents went along
with their kids’ ideas of who was a weird or undesirable member of
the group. I mostly looked at my bike as he opened the door to the
warehouse and escorted us through.

“Have fun. Be careful,” he said as he opened the
other door to let us out.

We got back on our bikes and pedaled away as the big
door clattered closed behind us. I looked over my shoulder, back at
the brick wall. There were eight small, dull-green rectangles on
this side of the wall—four on the ground, and four on brick shelves
built into the wall about five feet up. I couldn’t read the writing
from this distance, but I knew what it said on each of them—”FRONT
TOWARD ENEMY.” Claymores. Not the sword—though I’d seen one of
those at the museum, and not even my dad was strong enough to run
around swinging that as a weapon. These were M18A1 anti-personnel
mines. One and a half pounds of C-4 and seven hundred tiny steel
balls behind a plastic casing. They were set to be triggered by the
roof guard, rather than with anything as dangerous and
indiscriminate as tripwires—or what the manual termed “Victim
Initiated Detonation.” Apparently, in the old days, such mines were
just left lying around, ready for a victim—like a child—to detonate
them. Even with the mindless dead wandering around, I couldn’t
imagine being that callous and brutal. Dad, of course, had pointed
all this out to me; he made me read the operations manuals for
nearly every weapon we owned, and for many we didn’t. As with
learning to fight with sticks, my knowledge of lethal—or even just
harmful—things extended far beyond what was only useful against the
walking dead.

Pedaling between the two buildings, for the next few
seconds Mom and I would be in this gate’s kill zone, or what the
manual termed “the area of optimal lethality and coverage.” If
everything—and I mean absolutely everything—fell apart and there
was a real horde of thousands bearing down on us, the guards were
supposed to try and lure them into this area between the two
buildings and in front of the wall, rather than let them bang away
on the softer targets of the building walls, which even undead
hands could probably break through pretty easily at this point,
given the inevitable rust and rot from twelve years of lowered
maintenance. Considering how the dead herded together, this would
pack a few hundred walking bodies into a rectangular area that
would then have thousands of little steel balls flying through the
length of it at very high velocity. No guaranteeing how many would
hit heads, but definitely some, and enough of the rest would just
ruin someone’s day, as my dad would put it. I was proud to know all
this, and glad to have it here, just in case, but I was also really
glad when Mom and I cleared the edge of the buildings and were in a
land of less lethal constructions and more living sights.

The roads out here weren’t completely cleared of
wrecks, so we slowly weaved between them as we pedaled down the
road. Plants grew up through the pavement everywhere. The decaying
suburbs and industrial parks around the perimeter of the city
trailed off into farmland and countryside, dotted with partly
collapsed hulks of buildings being reclaimed by the land. Some of
the fields here were cultivated, corn mostly, with some wheat and a
little bit of cotton, and some fields were left to grow as grass
for livestock. On the right the rows of an orchard stood out. The
grass between the trees had been kept down, and there were even
rows of smaller trees, planted recently to replace the old ones as
they gave out. Butterflies and moths flittered everywhere, and a
few cows and sheep grazed in one field, but we didn’t see or hear
any people.

My mom looked back at me and smiled. She was always
so busy at home, I knew she liked going out like this. She didn’t
even have her hair in a ponytail, and it cascaded, unfettered,
behind her in the breeze. Such a concession to being carefree
always meant she was feeling happy. Even with a few streaks of
grey, she still had the most beautiful brown hair, especially
compared to my dull, black locks, which neither curled nor shone
like hers. I was glad she was looking so happy.

We turned left down a road, and after a little ways
we came to a bridge across a small river. The bridge had collapsed
into the water, and logs had been washed down in successive floods
to accumulate around the partially sunken, crisscrossing bands of
metal. We turned right to follow a smaller road alongside the
river. For a while we were under trees, which felt nice, as the
rest of the ride had been under the warm, early summer sun. Then we
came out from under the canopy into an overgrown parking lot by the
river. The river at this point was backed up behind a small dam,
over which it spilled; on the opposite side of the river you could
see the remains of a run and a mill building that had used the
falling water for power.

We parked our bikes and looked around. There was a
line of trees next to the water, but otherwise the area was open on
this side of the river. There were the remains of a small building
at the far end of the parking lot, and you could still see the
metal frames for swings and slides sticking up out of the grass.
There were some picnic tables made out of concrete under the trees,
and we put our stuff on one. I had my jacket and I draped it over
the concrete bench; the HK 9mm was in one pocket and the magazine
was in the other. Mom didn’t know about that yet, but out here
especially I knew to have it nearby.

We took the two cloth sacks we had brought and
started looking for strawberries. We’d been to this field before,
so we knew there were lots here, and we weren’t disappointed.
Oddly, strawberries were one of the things every old-timer swore
was better in the old days, even though food in general was
something which many found to be superior now. Older people would
go on about how much better milk tasted now, or how much bigger and
juicier blackberries or corn were now, but apparently human
agricultural science had found one of its few victories with the
strawberry; I thought it was strange that that was the best they’d
been able to do, but I was also sure allowances had to be made for
the faultiness and selectivity and wishfulness of people’s
memories. Either way, the small, bright red berries seemed fine to
me, as tart and firm as they were. But long before we had exhausted
the supply to be picked, we had worn out our backs; strawberries
are one of the worst things to pick, since you’re either doubled
over, or on your knees the whole time. We grimaced, then laughed as
we stood up and went back to the picnic table to rest and have
lunch.

Mom and I ate some of the berries we’d picked as we
got out our lunch—crumbly bread and hard-boiled eggs again. We’d
brought our own water, as the river could be muddy this time of
year, and there were enough animals out here that giardia was
always a worry, especially with runoff into bigger streams like
this river. We ate in the shade and listened to the water cascade
over the dam.

“It used to take just a few minutes to get here by
car when I was little,” Mom said. She could get wistful, too, like
Mr. Caine, but now she seemed mostly happy as she ran her hand over
the gritty top of the picnic table. “We’d have picnics here when I
was little, with my parents. And when I was bigger, like in high
school, this is where you’d go when you wanted to be alone, you
know, with other kids.”

“With boys?” I mostly wondered about them to myself,
but since she’d brought it up, I thought maybe I could get some
more information on the mysterious other half of humanity.

She blushed, but not as much as I thought she might.
“Well, yes. Things were different back then.”

“Boys were different?”

She smiled. “Um, no. I’m afraid boys will never
change much. But yes, when I was a little bigger than you,
sometimes I’d like to be alone with a boy.”

“What did you do then? Did you, you know, kiss? Was
that different back then?”

She looked a little shocked, but she also smiled.
“Zoey! And what do you know about kissing boys?”

Now it was my turn to blush, and with my skin, which
I was convinced was so gross and ugly, I knew the florid pink
showed a lot more and a lot less attractively on me than it had on
my mom. “Just, you know, kids talk about it, that you’re supposed
to do it.”

She watched me as she nodded and chewed slowly.
“Well, yes, when I was your age, and a little bigger, people would
talk about kissing all the time, how important it was that you do
it. So I guess that part isn’t very different. And people talk a
lot about things they know very little about, Zoey. I think that’s
the same now, too. You shouldn’t ever do something just because
people are talking about how you’re supposed to.”

“I know, Mom.”

“I know you do. You’ll be fine. Those little
shits—pardon my French, but they still make me so upset—all beat
you up when you were little. I don’t think anytime soon you’ll be
doing anything for them because they tell you that you’re
‘supposed’ to.”

I smiled, not at the real content of what she was
saying, but at the funny expression about French; I wondered if
there was anyone left anywhere who still spoke French. I doubted
it.

“But anyway, what I meant is how different it was
when we’d come here to be alone, because when you left town back
then, this was about the first place you’d come to where there
weren’t many people. The whole way out here there were restaurants
and gas stations and houses and you’d see people and cars
everywhere; and just now we came all the way out and didn’t see
anyone. And back then, there’d have been a bunch of people even way
out here, especially in the summer. If we were here back then, the
parking lot would be full. There’d be hundreds of people here, more
than we have in our whole community.”

I nodded. I was more interested in boys, but I
hardly wanted to press the point, and she had put some of my
questions into perspective. “It doesn’t sound so nice, when you
talk about it that way.”

“Hmm, I suppose not—not to someone who’s not used to
those kinds of crowds. But it was nice, in a way. Like when all
different people were having picnics—my gosh, the things you’d hear
and see and smell. I would walk around while my parents fixed
lunch, and I could go walk all around here for several minutes
without hearing any English, just all kinds of other languages. And
the food—I mean, we’d have sandwiches, and some other people would
have other regular stuff like hamburgers, but I’d also smell curry
and lamb and chili and all kinds of spices I didn’t know, things
I’d never expect to see at a picnic. I remember Indian women in
their colorful saris, and one time, over on the other side of the
parking lot, I saw a whole crowd of maybe thirty people, all facing
the same way. I thought they were posing for a group photo. Then
they all fell to their knees at the same time. They were Muslims,
and it was time for their prayers. I sometimes wonder if there are
any Indians or Muslims left anywhere. Do you ever think of
that?”

I nodded. In school, Mom taught us Spanish, and Mr.
Caine did the best he could to teach French—though he admitted it
wasn’t what he was good at; I often wondered how many other
languages were now gone forever, every last speaker of them reduced
to mute undeath. But most of the time, speculating about what might
have happened to other people made little sense when we were busy
enough here.

She shook her head. “I hope there are. I miss all
those wonderful differences between people. It’s just that life is
so plain now.” She smiled and ruffled my hair with her hand.
“Except you. You’re as fancy and beautiful as anything I ever
need.”

I frowned and pouted. That summer I could be
insufferable, which I half-realized even at the time. “Stop it,
Mom. My hair and my skin and everything looks funny. I wish I
looked different. And I know after the vows, I’ll look even
worse.”

“No, you stop it. We just talked about not listening
to what stupid kids say who don’t know anything.”

There was a moist, slapping sound off to our right.
We both turned. A wet sneaker had made the sound on a large, flat
rock next to the river. The sneaker was on a foot, which belonged
to about three-quarters of what had once been a man, sometime back
before I was born. Now it was a shambling, slimy bag of clothes and
flesh. And death. It had plenty of that, and was eager to share. It
rose up as it brought its other foot out of the water and turned
towards us. It grinned. Well, let’s say it opened its mouth in a
way that made me think it was very eager to get closer to us,
though the normal, human feelings of joy or humor were long gone.
It took another step, slowly but very deliberately and somewhat
more dexterously than I’d been taught to expect.

My mind went completely over to my training and the
cold analysis of the situation. I scampered around to the other
side of the table, where my jacket lay. Mom had jumped almost as
fast and was rummaging through the picnic basket. “Shit,” she
muttered, a little alarmed, but overall much more in control than I
might have expected. “I know I put a .38 in here. Here it is!” She
brought up a short-barreled revolver, not the standard four-inch
barreled one I usually used. “The ammo is in my jacket pocket.”

“Don’t worry, Mom.”

“We’ll have to shoot it. We can’t leave it wandering
around this close to town, inside the outer fence. Milton is way
out in the wilderness.”

“I know, Mom.” I had the 9mm out and was sliding in
the magazine. I racked the slide and chambered the first round,
just as Mom slapped a handful of cartridges onto the table. By the
time I turned and raised my weapon, the thing had taken another two
steps; as I said, it was way faster than I liked, and I was glad we
wouldn’t have to load the revolver in this situation. Its right arm
was gone, but otherwise it was in better shape than most, unless
they’d been hiding in buildings and protected from the elements.
This one still had some clothes and both its eyes and ears. When it
grinned, I had seen that it still had most of its teeth. I made a
note to ask Dad if maybe the water preserved them better, so we
could plan accordingly. I squeezed the grip as I sighted. Then I
squeezed the trigger as I exhaled.