I stood and moved farther out from our cubicle so I could see the main gate, but I kept my hand on Lucy's shoulder. The gate was closed, but the other people were congregating around it and making noise.
Then Will came running along the fence and-quicker than I thought possible-he climbed it, threw a tarp over the barbed wire at the top, and pulled himself over to our side. He looked at me, then ran back towards the others, who were slowly turning away from the main gate to catch up with him. A second gate separated the area around the office from the storage units, and Will pulled this closed and wrapped a chain around it and locked it. Lucy and I were trapped in here with him, and he was safe from the other people, who were now locked in the area between the two gates. I didn't like this at all, and I helped Lucy stand in case she had to get away or hide. I didn't know what to expect.
Will approached us. I kept Lucy behind me and extended my arm to keep her from attacking Will. On her feet she moved more slowly and awkwardly than I, so I could keep her back, but it was an effort, and I was trying also to watch Will.
He approached slowly with his hands out in front, his palms towards us. I noticed his clothing more than I had before, now that he was closer. He was dressed all over in a heavy material, denim or canvas. It was patchwork, like it had been worked on and repaired many times. He also wore a glove on his left hand, and this, along with his left arm, had bits of metal sewn on to the thick fabric. It was obviously a kind of armor he'd made to keep people from biting him.
"Easy there," he said quietly, though his voice was still hard, commanding, not like Milton's soothing tones. "I just want to talk some more, and Milton keeps taking me away like you need privacy or something." I was happy to see that Milton understood what I was feeling and had been considerate. "I just want to find out what you know. You obviously understand what I'm saying. Can you speak?"
I shook my head.
"All right. But we're communicating okay so far. Is this your girlfriend?"
I looked back at Lucy. I didn't want to embarrass her, as obviously I had never referred to her as that before. But she took her eye off Will and stared straight at me, and I knew she wouldn't mind. I nodded.
Will shook his head. "Wow. That really takes some getting used to. You don't…?" He shook his head more vigorously. "No, never mind that. I can see where Milton was right about some things being private. Okay. You don't seem to want to eat people, is that right?"
I nodded again.
"It doesn't look like she or any of the others have the same tastes."
I shook my head.
"All right. Milton's always talking about how you all are still part of our community, and we should respect you. And most of the time, I see all of you just bumping into each other and trying to eat people, and I think he's lost it, and we should just shoot you all in the head." Lucy got very agitated at this. I really didn't know how much speech she understood, but something insulting and threatening seemed to have gotten through at that point.
With an inhuman snarl that rose to a shriek, she shoved past me and lunged at Will. She was far too slow and clumsy to catch him by surprise or overpower him, and I was sure she'd be dead in seconds. Will stepped into her lunge and brought his gauntleted left hand up; her mouth clamped down on it. He was big enough and strong enough that from that position he could hold her at bay and keep her arms from reaching him. Given how muscular he was, and how obviously used to fighting, I suspected he could snap her neck from that position too.
I stepped towards him, and even though I was faster than Lucy, I hadn't even taken a full step when the barrel of an unbelievably huge revolver was in my face. I didn't know much about guns, but I was pretty sure that when the hammer was pulled back-as it already was when Will raised it to my face-then it was really bad to be where I was, in front of this end of the barrel.
Besides its size-which was beyond belief, so much that I couldn't believe Will could hold it rock-steady at arm's length like he was-it was also an exceptionally shiny revolver, which starkly contrasted with the infinite blackness inside the barrel. For the first time that I could remember, I realized what death was, and that I did not want to die. But I also knew I had to defend Lucy.
Will shook his head very slightly. "No," he said, staring me right in the eye. "I'll paint that wall with your brains before you twitch, Mr. Smart Zombie. And then I'll do the same to your girlfriend. So why don't you explain to her-however you explain things-that it'd be a good idea for her to let go of me. All right?" He clenched and unclenched his teeth from the pain her bite was obviously causing him.
I kept my eye on the gun and took a step back. I didn't understand the thing he had called me, but I understood what needed to happen. I placed my hand on Lucy's shoulder and held her gently as I gave her the low wheeze that we used to express something indistinctly positive or affirmative; we hardly had the exact vocabulary for what Will wanted me to communicate, nor for what I really wanted to say, which was that I loved her and didn't want her to be hurt. She was unbelievably taut, vibrating from the anger and exertion of clamping down on Will's hand. I squeezed her shoulder more, but still gently, and I kept up the low sound until finally I felt her relax slightly. Will's hand slipped from her mouth, and she and I stepped away from him.
Will took a step back as well. "Okay. Now the gun stays out when we talk. I was trying to say something nice, lady zombie. I said that I think of shooting you all because you act like animals, or worse. Having a whole pen full of you is too much like having a pen full of rabid, starved wolves. I don't like it. But you two seem to be different." Will tilted his head to indicate me with his chin. "He doesn't eat people, and you both seem to understand it when I talk. And you seem to like each other. He almost got his head blown off just now, trying to defend you. There are plenty of real people who wouldn't do that for a girlfriend, or anyone else, and there are plenty of real people who'll hurt and kill for less than food."
Again, I didn't understand in what way Lucy and I weren't "real," but there was hardly a way for me to pursue the issue. "So I'm trying to say that maybe you two aren't so bad, and I can take you out sometimes to see other stuff. Would you like that?"
As happy, indeed idyllic, as things were here with Lucy, I had been thinking that eventually we would want to go out and see what else there was, once I got over my fear of wild animals, violent people, and other dangers. From what I had just seen, few people could be more dangerous than Will, so it might be useful if he came along with us. Lucy still seemed sullen and aggressive, but I could tell she'd been thinking along similar lines. We both looked back to Will and I nodded.
Will nodded as well and holstered his gun. He looked more closely at me. "You remind me of someone. I think it was my fifth grade social studies teacher. He was my teacher that last year, when we still had a real school and subjects and books." He shook his head. "Social studies? What the hell is that, now? Things that don't exist." He looked like Lucy, almost snarling. Then he relaxed a little. "But he seemed nice, is what I'm trying to say. You look a lot like him." He looked even more intently at me, squinting his eyes. "No, couldn't be, that would be too much of a coincidence. Do you remember who you were?"
I took a very slow step towards him as I reached in my pocket and offered him the identification card from Stony Ridge College. He took it and glanced at it, and looked more closely at me, then handed the card back to me. "Yup, that's you. The people who raised me after my real parents died, the man used to be a college professor. He's nice too. But it's not like having your real parents." He shook his head. "Well, Truman, I hope we can be friends. Does she have a name?"
I wasn't about to mangle Lucy's name with my voice, and even if I did, she'd never heard herself called by that name anyway. It applied to her only in my dim mind. Still holding her, I pointed to her eye with my other hand.
"What?" Will asked. "One Eye is her name?"
I shook my head.
He looked at her more closely. "What? Blue Eye
? Yes, it is unusual, not like the eyes you all usually have. So, lady zombie, may I call you Blue Eye?"
Lucy nodded slightly. I think she even smiled a little, and coyly.
"Thanks. The next time I come back, we'll go somewhere. I'll check a map. It'll be fun for a change."
He went back to the gate that was holding the others back. He unlocked the chain he had put through, yanked it off, and ran back towards us. He tossed the chain over the fence, then he was up and over it before the other people could even get the gate open. I watched him walk away and wondered what I had gotten us into.
I led Lucy by the hand back to the sofa and we sat down. I felt so drained from the intense and conflicted feelings of fear and devotion I'd felt when Will had drawn his gun. But at the same time, I knew I owed him a debt of gratitude. Because as I gazed down into Lucy's perfect eye, I could see she knew my feelings and commitment better than I ever could've explained them to her on my own. We leaned against each other and I felt closer to her than I ever thought I could feel towards anyone ever again.
Chapter 9
Finally, the day arrived when I would take my first vows. I dressed in the plain grey pants and sleeveless shirt that Mom had sewn for me. I spent most of the day alone, away from others, according to the custom. I had read up on rites of passage enough to know it was standard to separate the inductee from the community before she is reintegrated with her new status. The intellectual understanding of it from books and the real experience of it were as different as reading a cookbook and eating, for throughout the day I could feel how inappropriate it would be for me to be around others right then. I didn't just understand the necessity of my being alone, I craved the loneliness as much as I both craved and feared the rites I knew would come at the end of it.
During these hours alone, I fasted and tried to prepare myself mentally for the commitment and devotion necessary. I had also read enough to know that my time alone and my attempts to contact the higher, non-physical or metaphysical powers of the world would have been called "prayer" in the old world. It was still a fair enough label, if one could subtract all the trappings of organized religion-which I knew about only from the books I had read, and a few scattered comments from older people, who seemed ambivalent about it, overall. Organized religion was as alien to our life as were the concepts of state and government and money. But just as we retained the need and desire to be in a community with others, so also we yearned to commune and unite with something more than our own weak, mortal selves, even if every creed and sect that had ever promised such a union were now dead, so far as we knew. And on the day of my vows, this longing was acute, filling and stretching me much more than the physical hunger compressed and tightened my small body.
As I prayed, I asked no questions, made no requests, but only felt the deepest gratitude and vulnerability before the world. And from somewhere both within and beyond me, I felt the certainty that those feelings were directed towards something that would never ignore, scorn, or abuse them. Such feelings have filled many of my days before and since, but I remember vividly that it was on that day I first became fully aware of them.
Finally, a couple hours before sunset, my parents came and we climbed into the big SUV Dad used for longer, special trips, when fuel conservation was not an issue. As we drove away, people lined the streets and waved, sending us off. The guards at the gate ushered us through the two bay doors, and then we were on our way into the countryside. Dad and Roger were up front. Mom sat in the back with me, and she'd squeezed my hand when we first got in, but then she'd retreated slightly to the other side of the vehicle, and we were all quiet for the trip. As Mom had said on our bicycle trip, we covered a lot of land quickly with the truck, reaching the very edge of our domain in far less time than Mom and I had taken for a much shorter trip on our bikes. We arrived at a grove of trees on one side of the road, with two other vehicles parked under them, and some people standing and sitting around. Dad pulled up beside them and turned off the truck.
We got out as Milton, in his "dress" white robe, strode up to us. It was always amazing to me, how much energy he still had at his age, and living the life he did, out among the dead most of the time, living off the land. The other people there included two sets of the guards that patrolled the outer fence; this far out, and expecting to stay after dark, extra precautions were always in force. There were also two families with children who would be up to take their vows next year; Max and his parents were one of these families.
Milton smiled at me and laid his hand on my left shoulder. "Welcome, Zoey. Please be at ease as much as you can." He turned to the other families to include them also. "That goes for you other children as well. Nothing here is meant to frighten or upset you. It is only meant to teach you of the world we live in, and our responsibilities in it, and to do so in a reverential way-for of all feelings, reverence is the one most appropriate and necessary in our world. And now, everyone, please follow me."
We all followed him into the woods a little ways, my mom and I at the front of the group behind Milton. My dad had taken his MP5 submachine gun out of the back of our truck; it was a small, nasty, indiscriminate weapon that I'd never trained with, but like every weapon, I knew its use and capabilities-in this case, throwing lots of slugs around in a short amount of time at close quarters. Dad slung it over his shoulder. The other men were similarly armed with submachine guns or assault rifles, the kinds of weapons one wanted when near so many of the dead bunched up in a group.
The steps of the ceremony had been explained to me, and last year I had attended one as preparation. I felt a freezing stab to my heart when the moaning began off to our right, though I didn't miss a stride or flinch. Neither did my mom, so far as I could tell, watching her out of the corner of my eye.
As we walked on, the moaning did not crescendo, but stayed steady; it was a rather subdued and calm sound. Slowly the chill released my heart and I could begin to feel what Milton had described-reverence, not fear. Stepping slowly and deliberately, I could tell clearly that if anything demanded reverence for its power and ubiquity, it was death, which was calling to us that warm summer night-constantly and incessantly, with neither malice nor love, but only with complete and patient inevitability.
We stopped in a small clearing in which there was a large, flat rock, about the size of a small, low table. Some of the other men handed out and lit torches. Dusk was rising around us. With every passing minute, the trees closed in nearer and nearer to the clearing we were in. I sat down on the rock, with my mom standing behind me, facing in the direction of the moaning. At first, I could almost think I saw shapes moving in that direction, but in just a few moments, no matter how hard I strained to see, there was only darkness there among the trees.
Milton now stood before me and addressed us briefly before the actual rites began. "At one time, when I was much younger, in a different world, when people thought of rituals or religion, they most often thought of something called faith or piety. I'm not sure I can tell you so much about those virtues in our world today, for we who have seen so much have little inkling or desire for things that are unseen, and we have little to put our trust in, little to believe is steadfast and reliable."
He looked right at me, and I felt as if he could see the things I'd been thinking during the day when I was alone. "Zoey, if any among us have faith, it might be you, I think, as I look at you now. But if you do have this mysterious, precious quality, then all the rest of us can do is look upon you with awe and rejoice for your wonderful and unknowable gift." He returned to looking at the others, but the memory of his gaze and the strength it gave me lingered. "But I can say that tonight we celebrate two other virtues that I know all of us can share with Zoey-hope and love. To me, she has always embodied these, as a sign of hope and love's triumph over despair and wickedness. So Zoey and Sarah, if you are ready, we will begin."
Milton handed my mom a pair of hair clippers-old manual ones, not electric, so they would still work. A
s he handed these over, he spoke the first words of the ceremony proper: "Hope for the future often requires a sacrifice in the present."
I felt the cold metal touch my scalp as my mom intoned, "And love for others always requires a sacrifice of oneself." I felt the slight motions as she started to shave my head. I stared straight ahead, all my muscles tense, too tense. This, too, I knew from my reading, was a pretty standard part of initiation rites, marking the inductee as physically different from the rest of the group, with strange markings or clothing. It also tended to erase gender distinctions and put the inductee in a threshold state outside of normal social conventions.
Again, the experience was quite a bit more vivid and consuming than the theory. With each motion of the clippers and each tickling tumble of my hair down my neck, I felt colder and more alone and vulnerable. And with the first pinch, followed by the moist warmth of blood on my head, there was considerable discomfort to the operation, which I countered by biting my lower lip and gripping my knees with my hands as hard as I could. I knew it was a tradition that the rite was considered especially auspicious if the shaving were done without a drop of blood being shed, or with a lot of blood. Therefore, after the first nick, the person clipping felt a strong temptation to make more "mistakes." I knew my mom would do anything to avoid hurting me, and I knew that both she and my dad were especially practical and non-superstitious people, but I also knew-and more importantly, I respected-that tradition drives much more of what we do than many of us would like to admit. So once I felt the first accidental cut, I expected-even craved-more. And I was not disappointed.
With my head bloody and bare, I sat as Milton and my mom gathered up as much hair as they could from the rock and the surrounding ground. Again, from a purely objective, intellectual perspective, I was sure that drawing some blood was intended to help with the next part of the ceremony, but at the time, gripping my knees and trying not to shake or cry, the only thing I felt was the most intense hope that my hair and some of the blood on it would work and the rite would continue well.
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