In Another Life

by Liesel Browning

  “I’ve got it tucked back here,” Manny said. Sadie stood with her arms crossed and watched as Manny pulled a torn bit of blue tarp off of a small bicycle. She nearly laughed at the sight of it. It definitely looked like something a kid designed, with oversized wheels and garish stripes up the side.

  “Wow,” Sadie chuckled.

  Manny grinned. “My best work. I know it looks crazy, but it handles great.”

  Sadie shook her head. “Hopefully he’ll get the chance to try it out.”

  “They were letting him out for walks and stuff last spring,” Manny reminded her as she put the ridiculous bike away. “Once they finish this round of treatment…”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You remember what Vanessa said?” Manny reminded her. “How Christian is helping them find the cure faster?”

  “I know, I know,” Sadie said. It didn’t make seeing him in pain…or worse, not being able to see him at all…any easier. The first time Christian was quarantined in the hospital during treatment, Sadie was surprised at how hard she’d taken it. She thought her visits to see him, nearly every day since their arrival, were done out of duty. He was her brother, so she was supposed to visit him. And yet…

  “As soon as they say so, I’m letting him try it out,” Manny said.

  Sadie nodded. “Okay. He’ll love it.” Sadie thought to look over at the clock on the wall. Keeping real time was something she was still getting used to, though she was rarely late to work or anything. She saw that she needed to head over to the auto shop. “Thanks,” she said. “You guys coming over tonight?”

  “Well, I thought Johnny and Hank were gonna hang at our place, and you and I would catch up at your place,” Manny said. She stepped up to Sadie and ran a hand down her side. “I really love you in that jumpsuit, by the way.”

  “Oh, do you?” Sadie teased, squirming away from Manny’s touch, just a little. “I thought you were all wrapped up with Courtney.”

  “I didn’t tell you?” Manny chuckled. “Courtney’s knocked up.”

  “Good girl,” Sadie deadpanned. “Fulfilling her duty.”

  “She got all repentant,” Manny said. “Whatever. I’m not into pregnant chicks, anyway.”

  “And yet, when it was you, you expected me to…”

  Manny leaned in and kissed Sadie. Just a little, just enough to leave her wanting more. “That’s because you’re a good friend,” Manny said. “And I wanna spend time with a good friend tonight.”

  “So you can go after that newbie tomorrow?”

  Manny chuckled. “Vanessa’s got her sights set on the newbie for herself,” she said.

  Sadie pulled a face. “You make us sound like a bunch of animals. Like we’re salivating whenever Vanessa gets a vibe off a new resident.”

  Manny kissed Sadie one more time and sent her away with a swat on the butt. “Wear that jumpsuit tonight.”

  “No way.” Sadie waved to her good friend, her lover, before leaving the warehouse and biking to the auto shop, another tin warehouse, this one located on the south end of town.

  SC was four square miles of walled-in oceanfront land, much of it still under development. All of the rubble from the war, and the years following, were cleared away, and more and more cute little houses were popping up all the time to accommodate the ever-growing population. SC had also added a smaller, walled in portion to the north of the main area, where the new science lab had been under construction since before Sadie’s arrival. That area could be accessed through a steel gate…always under guard, of course.

  Sadie had little interest in the science lab. She just looked forward to getting through her day of tinkering with the armored vehicles and not talking to the other mechanics. A lot of people in SC kept to themselves, so nobody thought much of it, and they let Sadie be. The auto shop supervisor, Helen, knew Sadie was capable, and gave her complex repairs to complete on her own.

  Sadie’s days in the shop flew by quickly. Ever since she was an angry teenager, stuck on the farm, she’d found that messing around with the truck and losing herself in those tasks was a great way to pass the time. The armored trucks weren’t all that different under the hood from what she’d learned on, and she forgot her worries, forgot about Christian and Manny and Amelia, as she repaired engines and replaced batteries and poured fluids.

  *

  Sadie held Amelia’s hand as she led her around the farmyard. It was a warm summer day, Amelia’s second summer since arriving on the farm the previous spring, and Sadie led her to a cluster of jack pines. They sat amongst them, partially hidden from view, and Sadie talked a bit while she ran her fingers through Amelia’s growing hair. It was past her ears now, a light blonde, as though she’d spent the last few summers like she always had: at home in California, on the beach with her friends and siblings.

  “My dad’s gonna show me how to change the oil in the truck today,” Sadie said.

  “Really?”

  Sadie shrugged. “He says I need to know how to do it.” Sadie kind of liked the thought of learning such a practical skill. Maybe she’d go back to La Ronge, or on some scavenging hunt, with her dad sometime, and see if she could find a rundown car. Maybe Dad would tow it back to the farm and let her fix it up for herself. Her own car. Such a normal thing for a kid to dream about.

  Though Amelia had no interest in trucks, or cars of any kind, she asked if she could sit in the garage while Sadie worked. Sadie shrugged. “Sure.” After over a year on the farm, Amelia still didn’t like to leave Sadie’s side. And Sadie had to admit, she preferred having Amelia around, too.

  But at lunch, when they all sat down to the egg sandwiches Amelia prepared, Glenn said, “Sadie and I are fixing up the truck here this afternoon. I’m heading into town tomorrow, Amelia, so I need you to decide what I’m taking in for trade.”

  Amelia looked surprised. “Me, Glenn?”

  Glenn smiled a little. “I’ve seen you keeping track of our stores,” he said. “So I’m putting you in charge. Can you do that?”

  “Okay, Glenn,” Amelia said.

  “And, uh, you can write out the list for me, can’t you?” Glenn asked before taking a sip of his water.

  “She knows how to write, Dad,” Sadie pointed out.

  “All right, well, I haven’t seen her do it,” Glenn said, smiling a little at Amelia.

  “Could I come out to the garage and…and watch you? When I’ve finished?” Amelia asked, clearly nervous to be making such a simple request.

  Glenn looked a little surprised. “Well…well, sure, sweetheart. Of course you can.”

  Sadie rolled her eyes and bit into her sandwich. It was weird when Glenn tried to be affectionate with Amelia, like she was his daughter now or something. He’d never really been that way with his own daughter, especially since they’d come to the farm. And Amelia didn’t like it, Sadie was certain.

  They left Amelia alone in the kitchen as they went out to the garage. “You girls can take on more responsibility, I think,” Glenn said thoughtfully. Sadie wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She felt like she and Amelia already did a lot around the farm…who was Glenn to complain, when he was drunk on moonshine whenever he could get his hands on it? But then, she wasn’t sure if he was actually complaining, or what. Glenn was hard to read sometimes, and Sadie found this most annoying about her father. He could be so…cryptic.

  Sadie didn’t say anything as her father led her into the garage. He raised the door, then raised the hood of the black truck, still in pretty good condition after just a few years. It’d gotten them all the way up here after the war, and took Glenn all over the place, foraging and looting and trading, but it was only a little dinged up. Glenn worked to keep it in top shape.

  Sadie stood aside as her father checked the engine and the other parts of the truck that Sadie didn’t yet know about. Glenn noticed her standing back and waved her over. “Come on, now,” he said. “Take a look.” He handed her the flashlight, and started discussing the different parts
of the truck and how they worked. Sadie wouldn’t remember much of what he told her that day, but she’d pick it up over time.

  When Glenn got under the truck to change the oil, Sadie got down on the ground and watched him work, her chin resting on her hands. “Can you believe I used to pay to have this done for me?” Glenn asked as he drained the oil. “50 bucks, just to have the oil changed. And I thought it was a hell of a deal, having a few punk kids do it for me while I sat around answering emails.”

  Sadie had nothing to say to her father’s recollections of their former life. She still thought about it sometimes, but it seemed so far away to her. She’d been on the farm for three years now, three and a half, really, and there was a lot about her life in Iowa City that she just couldn’t remember anymore.

  When Sadie got up to retrieve the new oil for her father, she looked out through the garage door and saw Amelia walking away, heading back into the house. She thought to call out to her, see if she was through with her chore and ready to join them, but her dad was talking again. She got the oil and listened politely and said nothing.

  That night, when Sadie and Amelia were in bed, Sadie asked, “Hey, why didn’t you come out to the garage earlier?” She’d been hoping for a reprieve from her father’s stupid stories.

  “I popped in,” Amelia admitted. “You and your dad were talking, so I didn’t want to…”

  Sadie rolled her eyes. “He was just talking at me. Like he always does.”

  “Still,” Amelia said. She turned onto her back and looked up at the ceiling, her hands resting on her concave stomach. She’d put on weight in the last few months, especially with all the potatoes they’d eaten through the winter, but she was still too thin. They were both lying on top of the covers, it was such a mild night, but Sadie wanted to cover tiny Amelia up with a blanket. She wanted to protect her.

  “Still,” Amelia said again, staring up at the wood-paneled ceiling, “At least you have a dad to talk at you.”

  “Well, you can go ahead and have Glenn,” Sadie said. “He can talk at you instead.” She felt Amelia stiffen next to her. “Geez,” Sadie sighed, “That was mean. I’m sorry.” She reached up and took one of Amelia’s hands. Sadie’s hand rested against Amelia’s sharp hip bone.

  “It’s just, you know, been the two of us for so long,” Sadie whispered. “I just get…frustrated. I think if you hadn’t come here, we’d really hate each other.”

  Amelia laced her fingers with Sadie’s. “Don’t hate your father,” she whispered.

  “I don’t,” Sadie said. But sometimes she did. She kept this to herself.

  “Did you learn a lot about fixing the truck?” Amelia asked.

  “Not really,” Sadie said. “But I think I could change the oil now, if I needed to.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Johnny told Sadie he was gay when they first arrived in SC. “I never wanted Remy to know,” he admitted. “When we went down to the Peg together, we’d sometimes, you know, get some together, but when I went alone…”

  With the whole marriage issue hanging over their heads, Johnny and Sadie attached themselves to each other. All things considered, it made perfect sense to Sadie. He was technically the only man she knew. And when she found out that Johnny and Hank liked spending time together…well, everything just seemed to fall into place. So Sadie and Johnny got married just a week after Amelia’s wedding.

  Johnny and Sadie shared a bed, but rarely shared each other’s bodies. They slept together, in the Biblical sense, every once in a while, so that they felt they were putting in some effort to procreate. Sadie hadn’t had so much as a pregnancy scare, and she wasn’t all that concerned about it. There were no shortage of children running around SC, and she hoped the church would back off on all that.

  Sadie hated going to church each week, a requirement for all SC residents. Do your job, live peacefully, go to church, make babies…it wasn’t a bad trade-off, Sadie knew, but she still hated it. It made her think of Glenn, with all the preaching about gratitude, all the preaching about looking to God for answers to the zombie problem. “We’re all doing our part to fight the good fight,” Pastor Steve said from the pulpit at some point every Sunday. “God is on our side.”

  The two-hour service was a mixture of preaching from Pastor Steve and his cohorts, and community news and issues with members of the town council. Sadie’s friend Vanessa often stood at the front of the large church and led discussions on trash cleanup in the community, and the importance of conserving water. It made Sadie giggle to think of Vanessa, this pillar of the community, with her head buried in Sadie’s snatch.

  Besides the two-hour service, community members were expected (though not officially required) to stick around for lunch and socializing in the church’s dining hall. Skipping this part every once in a while wasn’t considered a huge deal, but making a regular habit of it was noticed. Sadie and Johnny had it down to a science, skipping every couple of months, like clockwork.

  Sadie was already looking forward to the next time she could safely skip the post-church lunch, but it wouldn’t be that day. She had a headache from too much moonshine the previous night as her alarm went off. Sadie pulled herself out of bed. Johnny wasn’t there; no doubt he’d stayed the night with Hank again.

  Sadie pulled on her robe, a gift from Amelia when they were trying to pretend that things were still okay between them. It made her think of Amelia every time she slipped it on, but she couldn’t get rid of it. Besides, many things made her think of her ex-lover. There was no point in trying to avoid it.

  Sadie threw together a simple breakfast. She ate alone and took a shower, changing into a long corduroy skirt and a cotton blouse. She had a pair of tall boots that she saved for church, too dressy to be useful, though they were used and a bit scuffed from another life. Nice shoes were hard to come by, even in SC, where most people wore sandals half the time. Sadie thought briefly of Amelia’s pink heels, which she’d no doubt be wearing to church.

  Sadie kept her hair short, as she had on the farm. She even wore that same old bandana to work. She only took a couple of minutes to brush her hair, tussling in a bit of “hair balm” that she’d gotten from a little shop in town. She had balm for her lips, too, to keep them from getting too dry. She wished she’d had something like that back on the farm.

  Sadie walked to Manny’s house, located just down the street. She didn’t lock up her little yellow house before leaving. There was no need to lock anything up in SC, where everyone had everything that they needed, and perhaps a bit more. Sadie thought nothing of it anymore, though it used to give her a twinge, to think of leaving her house open to anyone who might think to come rooting through her well-stocked cupboards and fridge.

  There was only one incidence of theft in SC since Sadie’s arrival. Someone went into a little pink house when the owners were at work, stealing a bunch of food and the family’s radio. The culprit was a recent arrival, a young man who was still in the habit of thieving and hoarding. He was put on trial and expelled. Expulsions didn’t occur very often, but the SC council had a zero-tolerance policy for things like theft and violence. It was a big deal, something that people still talked about.

  Despite the lack of locks, Sadie knocked at Manny’s door. It was never a good idea to sneak up on people in SC. Her friend was still in her robe, nursing a hangover from the party they’d attended the previous night. “You let me drink too much,” Manny complained, letting Sadie in.

  “I’ve never had a say in how much you drink,” Sadie reminded her. “You better get ready.” It was a bad idea to be late for church.

  In the kitchen, Sadie found Johnny and Hank having breakfast, dressed in pressed slacks and nice shirts. Hank and Manny’s baby was sitting in her wooden highchair, playing around with bits of pancake.

  “Hey, good morning,” Sadie greeted them. She sat down next to her husband while Hank got up to get her a plate. “Nah, I’m all right,” she insisted.

  “You check on the
batch this morning?” Johnny asked. He’d turned their little yellow shed into a mini-distillery. His whiskey was the most popular on the black market in SC. Sometimes it was the one thing he seemed to care about.

  “I got up too late,” Sadie said. She avoided her husband’s eyes, knew he was annoyed. Well, the whiskey was his little pet project. It’s not like she expected him to tend to her plants, not that he minded enjoying the fruits of her labor.

  Manny was brushing out her long, dark hair as she came out to the kitchen, wearing a long dress and sandals, her usual church outfit. “Are we ready?” she asked. She stooped down to wipe her daughter’s sticky face.

  “We’ve got time for you ladies to eat,” Hank insisted. “You don’t want to wait until lunch. Chicken soup and dried up bread, that’s no good.”

  “We’re gonna skip lunch,” Manny said. Hank frowned. Manny took their baby and left after church the previous week, too. She’d be skating on thin ice to do it again. “Okay, let’s go so we can get some decent seats.”

  Sadie wasn’t sure what this was supposed to mean. She didn’t want to be seated too close to the front. She often zoned out, staring at the simple decorations around the church. Glenn would have approved, Sadie found herself thinking once. He’d sometimes railed against the ornate megachurches that were so popular in another life, going on about how such places strayed from the teachings of Jesus, all that. Church always made Sadie think of her father.

  Sadie walked to church with her husband and friends, the people she considered to be her family now. A family she’d chosen for herself, in a way. As they made their way along the wooden walkway, Johnny’s hand slipped into hers. Sadie looked at her husband and smiled. He was a good guy. She could have done much worse.

  The church was a big white building with an old-fashioned steeple. Wooden steps led to the double-doors, where residents were streaming in for the mandatory service. As Sadie and her family pulled up to the back of the line, Sadie saw a woman with a blonde braid running down her back, her arm linked with the bearded man at her side. Amelia and her husband Zach.