Life Sentence

by Kim Paffenroth

  We agreed immediately.

  By the time we got near the huge gap in the fence, several of the people who can't talk had walked through and were now wandering into the fields. As Will had predicted, the people heard the truck and tottered towards us. Will drove through the gap in the fence and stopped the truck next to the base of a huge, metal tower, the kind that holds the wires that used to carry electricity.

  Will climbed out of the truck as we got down from the back. "All right. Let's move," Will said. "If more show up and we get in trouble, I can always climb up the electrical tower, but for now you guys go to the back of the truck."

  Lucy and I shuffled toward the rear of the vehicle as Will climbed up into the bed of the dump truck. He made his way over the various things there till he was near the back, where we were. The other people were approaching, moaning with increasing volume and what seemed like excitement. Will handed some of the ropes and chains down to us, then tossed more of them, along with the rolls of tape, farther away from the truck.

  "They'll head for me. It'll be hard for them to climb up, so you should be able to yank them off pretty easily. I don't think they'll understand you as a threat or know how to respond to someone who's the same as they are, pulling on them. Drag them away from the truck and either tie them up, or at least tie them to the base of the tower. Work together. I only count six of them, so it shouldn't be too hard."

  The first man had approached us and began clawing the side of the truck. He didn't seem as emaciated as most of us. His jeans were a faded blue and his shirt was reduced to tatters. His shoes were completely gone. He seemed almost unaware of me and Lucy, even as Lucy slipped a chain around his waist. She passed it over his shoulder and back down, then she and I pulled on it. Rather than turn and attack us or try to untangle himself, he kept trying to pull towards the truck; he couldn't get much traction in the grass, so it was fairly easy for us to move him. We got him to the base of the electrical tower and secured the chain to it with a padlock that was hanging on the chain.

  A man, a woman, and a child were now grabbing and groping at the side of the truck. The child would be the easiest to deal with, but the woman seemed more dexterous and she had already climbed partway up the side, standing on the left rear tire. I tied a thick rope around her ankle and pulled her foot out from under her. Will was struggling with her as well, and finally her other foot slipped and she fell to the ground. I held her down and Lucy tied her up.

  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.

  Chapter 19

  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.

  In parts the cars were packed so tightly it didn't look like we could get the truck close enough to retrieve the supplies from the store, but with some judicious ramming-the truck had an extra bumper welded to the front for just such a maneuver-we got right up to the building.

  We got out and Dad gave us flashlights. Rechargeable batteries were at a premium, but we'd need to use them today. Dad surveyed the building. Past a ruined fence there was a big door into the main building. It had been glass and was smashed open. "All right. Zoey, I can't have
you going in dark places like this. This is past the fence. There are real monsters here. Stay put. I mean it." His tone dropped enough to express the necessary sternness and seriousness. "We'll get the stuff and you can help load it on the truck."

  Dad and Mr. Caine disappeared into the store. Some holes in the roof let in a little light, so it wasn't completely dark, and I could watch their flashlights move through the shadowy space, sometimes scanning up and around, trying to catch sight of what we needed. They stopped, and there was some clanging and banging. Then the flashlights moved back towards the door, until I could see the two of them pushing a big, flat cart piled with metal poles and rolls of fencing. "It's lucky, the stuff we need isn't far inside," my dad explained. He looked between us and the truck. He seemed to think for a minute before he decided it was safe. "We'll go back and get some more. It'll only take us a couple minutes for each cart load. You wheel it over to the truck and start loading it on, Zoey."

  I walked over to the truck as they went back into the building. I raised the truck's back door, and set the M16 and the flashlight on the edge of the truck's rear loading area. My 9mm was in its holster on my belt.

  There were no cars or other hiding places between the cart and the truck, so I relaxed a little. I pushed the cart slowly to the back of the truck. The rolls of fencing were too heavy for me to lift. The poles I'd be able to get on the back of the truck with some difficulty, but it made more sense to wait for help. I decided I could at least get the poles and the fencing off the cart, so Dad and Mr. Caine could use it on the next trip. I moved the stuff down onto the cracked pavement and rolled the cart back to the door, almost at the same time as my dad and Mr. Caine emerged with another load of supplies.