Wasteland (Wasteland - Trilogy) (6 page)

Before she left, she had primped in front of her cracked mirror, combing her long hair so that it lay across her shoulders in a style she thought was pretty. Now she tried to make it stay that way.

She had never been this close to the enormous building; few in Prin had. She stood in front of the giant steel front door that rose and lowered, powered by electricity. Posted at a discreet distance on all sides were armed guards, silent and hooded. Sarah had approached one with trepidation earlier that day. She had passed along a note, requesting to speak with Levi, not knowing if she’d ever get a response. To her surprise, within a few hours, she received a note back, inviting her for dinner that night, alone.

Now the guards urged her forward and ushered her inside.

Sarah entered, nervous and excited. She adjusted her eyes to a dark and cavernous interior, lit by electric lights kept low.

Towering shapes hulked on all sides. They were giant shelves that rose to the ceiling, all of them fully stocked with oversize cartons. Sarah made out some of the words printed on them:
THIS END UP. POWDERED MILK. DEHYDRATED CARROTS. WHEAT GRAIN. 200 GALLONS. POLAND SPRING WATER. HANDLE WITH CARE
.

Then, emerging from the shadows was Levi.

Like everyone else in Prin, Sarah had not laid eyes on him in years. Levi was now a tall seventeen-year-old, with dark eyes and a mouth set in a hard line. He wore only black: jeans, button-down shirt, leather boots, all of which set off the extreme pallor of his skin. Yet when he recognized her, he smiled; and in that instant, he became the old Levi again, the boy with the watchful eyes she’d once known so well. The boy she had taught to read and who she thought might one day propose to her.

“Sarah,” was all he said.

Levi escorted her through the dimly lit Source. When they rounded a corner, she almost cried out in shock. A single electric light overhead threw deep shadows into the surrounding cavernous space. It illuminated a large table, laid with a rich cloth and piled high with plates of roast rabbit and salted flatbread, enough to feed at least a dozen for days. There were also strange foods she had never seen before: bowls of steaming, fragrant liquids and soft, glossy breads that were still hot.

As they started to eat, Sarah told herself to focus. She knew that she was there on serious business. Yet for the longest time, she couldn’t speak. She could only eat, ravenously. On the table was something new to her, a bottle of dark purplish-red liquid.

“Have some,” Levi said, hoisting it.

Before she had a chance to answer, Levi was filling her glass. At first, Sarah winced at its sharp taste, but with each sip, she found she liked it more and more. By her second glass, she was simply listening as Levi spoke of small things: her health; Sarah’s sister, Esther; the people in town. Sarah was thrilled by the thought that despite all of his power, her old friend evidently still cared about her and remembered names and details from a long-ago time, their shared youth.

Esther was wrong about him,
she thought.

She was only vaguely aware that, unlike her, Levi had eaten very little. He grew silent, watching her from across the table with an unreadable expression as he toyed with a glass of the purple liquid he had barely touched. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something; and she remembered that, of course, that was why she was here.

Sarah guiltily wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin and cleared her throat.

“Levi,” she said, “as you probably know, the mutants have been attacking, and it’s getting worse. There’s no one in town strong enough to do anything.” She heard the contempt that had crept into her voice, but she didn’t care. “They need your help.”

She thought of the twelve-year-old who had arrived in town five years ago and broken into the shuttered and locked Source when no one else could. Before then, Prin was a ghost town inhabited by a few dozen, a wasteland on the verge of extinction. Through sheer intelligence and willpower, Sarah thought fuzzily, Levi had single-handedly transformed it. Sequestered in the white building, he became the hidden engine that kept the town running.

Now he would save it again.

“They need weapons,” she said, in a rush. “Real weapons, not just sticks or rocks. They need knives, arrows, clubs . . . whatever you can spare.”

Levi inclined his head in a slight nod but said nothing. The purple liquid had made Sarah expansive and uninhibited. She spread her hands out in a naked appeal.

“You’ve been so generous already,” she said. “If you could supply them with arms, they would forever be in your debt.”

There was a long pause before Levi answered.

“I see,” he said.

He picked up his glass but only studied the liquid inside. An idea seemed to come to him and he looked up.

“To be honest,” he said, “I’m not even sure if we have what you want in stock. Weapons, knives, clubs . . . I don’t know if we’ve seen much of that kind of thing around here. Have we?” He addressed this last part to his guards, who murmured negatively.

Levi’s guards were all clearly armed. Sarah was confused. “Are you sure you—”

Levi set down his drink and stood.

“May I show you something?”

The way he asked it wasn’t a question. Unsteadily, Sarah got to her feet. Swaying from the drink, she took a final, surreptitious bite of rabbit before following Levi out.

The guards kept their distance as Sarah trailed Levi through the endless, murky recesses of the building. She struggled to keep pace with her host. It was not easy, for he walked swiftly, sure of the path. Silver things flashed on his wrists and fingers—rings, watches, bracelets—and Sarah focused on them, as if they were stars in the night sky, to keep from getting left behind.

The crowded shelves towered above her.

In her inebriated state, Sarah knew they represented wealth of the most genuine and therefore precious kind. In a world of poisoned rain, scorching heat, and ashen skies, even a single jug of water, one of the hundreds stored here, perhaps thousands, held the balance of life and death to the people of Prin.

Sarah extended a hand to touch one of the cartons. But before she could, a guard materialized from nowhere and shoved her aside.

“Keep close,” Levi called from a few steps ahead, “and don’t touch anything. There are things that can hurt you if you’re not careful.”

Only then did Sarah realize that the shelves were encircled with loops of heavy wire, the kind she had seen on a few buildings downtown: wire studded with razors that could easily slice through leather, let alone human skin.

Levi stopped. He pressed something on the wall and the air was loud with humming. In front of them was a wide ramp that led to a lower floor, and now it began to move on its own. Levi stepped on and gestured for Sarah to follow.

Sarah hesitated, frightened. Then she finally stepped on because Levi was far ahead and she stumbled, nearly falling. Terrified, she clung to the moving handrail, until she reached the lower level, where Levi was waiting for her.

He set off again through darkened aisles, then down a narrow hallway, where more guards kept watch over a battered steel door. Behind that, a poorly lit stairway led even farther downward to a series of hallways with low ceilings.

Levi stopped at a doorway. A small sign next to it read:
BOILER ROOM
.

“Here we go,” he said. Then he opened the door and flicked a switch set into the wall.

Sarah gasped.

The blinding overhead light revealed a windowless room that was furnished sparsely, with a desk and single chair. The rest of the place was empty except for one set of shelves. Unlike the ones upstairs, however, it was not stacked high with supplies, nor was it guarded by barbed wire. Instead it was filled with books: dozens of them, battered and mildewed. Compared to the meager collection in Sarah’s home, this was a veritable library.

“You kept them,” was all Sarah could manage to say.

Levi smiled. “I figured since you bothered teaching me, it was the least I could do.”

Sarah ran her hand over a row of bindings and this time, no guard rushed forward to push her out of the way. She marveled at the titles and names she remembered, books she had salvaged from vacant homes and looted stores many years ago and later used to teach Levi how to read: John Grisham,
The Joy of Cooking
,
American and European Furniture: 1830–1914
,
A
Cavalcade of Jokes
, Stephen King, Richard Scarry. The Bible. The Brothers Grimm.

Levi had been a difficult student, moody and hotheaded. Yet he was diligent and had a hunger to learn. Within a year, his abilities had equaled and then surpassed hers. Sarah hoped that since they were both twelve, their relationship might shift into something deeper. But then Levi ended the lessons. Not long afterward, he broke his way into the Source and disappeared from the streets of Prin.

Sarah had always wondered where the books had gone. And now, she blushed as it occurred to her why he had held on to them all these years.

“Sarah,” Levi said.

She turned to him, her heart pounding. He was holding out a book to her. She took it, uncomprehending.

“This was one I found especially interesting,” he said. “But you only gave me the first volume. Do you have the other?”

Puzzled, Sarah turned the book over in her hands. She couldn’t recall ever seeing it before. It was an academic volume, dense and impenetrable. She flipped through it, but had never heard of any of the words: “Topography.” “Aquifers.” “Spring flow measurements.” “Hydrosphere.”

“I might,” she said, handing it back. Frankly, it wasn’t the kind of book she liked or understood, but she had several such volumes she rarely glanced at. “It could be in my house. I’m not positive what books are there.”

Levi nodded, refusing to take it. “Why don’t you hold on to it?” he said. “Because I’d really appreciate it if you could find me the second volume.” Before Sarah could respond, he added, “We’ll talk again when you do. And by then, I just might have some more weapons in.”

Sarah understood. If she could find what he needed, this meeting wouldn’t be their last. And as she was thinking this, he was seizing her by the waist and pulling her close. He kissed her, lingeringly.

“Let’s keep this our secret,” he murmured. “All of it. All right?”

Sarah couldn’t speak for a second. “Yes,” she said.

Her voice almost sounded normal, even though her face was burning. She couldn’t hide the smile that covered her face.

Moments later, Sarah was outside, walking, if unsteadily, away from the Source. The white of her robes seemed to give off an unearthly glow in the bright glare of spotlights that sliced across the darkened parking lot.

From a tiny window hidden high up in the Source, Levi watched as the girl was swallowed by the surrounding darkness. As before, his expression was unreadable. He thought about the past and, for a moment, almost felt sorry for Sarah.

Then he shrugged it off. She was like everyone else in this world: just a means to an end.

Levi returned to his office. There he examined the handmade maps of Prin he had drawn, the laborious approximations of its physical layout that were tacked up on his walls. They had taken him more than five years of careful study and reflected the locations of not only each of the forty-seven Excavations to date but every Gleaning, as well. Still, they had not brought him closer to what he was seeking. Frustrated, he was tempted to tear them all down.

Levi had come to Prin, drawn by a rumor of its hidden clean waters. He met Sarah, who taught him how to read. Most books he found worthless; yet one convinced him that the notion of an underground network of springs was true. All he needed was a little more time to locate it, but time was running out.

Unlike everyone else, he always knew the supplies in the Source were limited. In the last few months, they had reached dangerously low levels. He recently had doubled and tripled the workloads, driving the town to exhaustion, and increased the punishments for shirking. It was a delicate balance, squeezing the greatest amount of work out of the people before getting rid of them.

Sarah’s unexpected appearance had given him new hope. If anything, he was annoyed at himself for not having thought of this earlier.

He needed the book, the companion to the text Sarah had given him so many years ago. With any luck, she would soon find it and bring it back to him, as trusting and unquestioning as a dog. And just as easily satisfied, with a little affection and a good meal.

Someone broke into his thoughts.

“Is she gone yet?”

Levi nodded, without looking, as a girl encircled his waist with her arms. She had sand-colored skin and hair, her eyes were a vivid blue, and her thin clothing fit close and tight to her figure. Her name was Michal and she was perhaps fourteen.

“Then can we eat now?” she continued.

Levi looked down at her. “Sure,” he said.

The two headed back upstairs to the dining area, where guards stood watch over the ruins of the table. Even hooded as they were, they resembled wild dogs themselves, staring at the leftovers, their eyes visible and gleaming in the spill of the electric light.