Life Sentence

by Kim Paffenroth

  I slipped my arm and leg from around her. "Mom?" I croaked, my voice sticking in me. "You're going to bring Ms. Dresden's baby back in here, aren't you?"

  "Yes, Zoey, I just dropped my bag." She came through the door carrying the bundle, which she had wrapped with white cloth tape. The head was poking out, moving a little side to side and moaning. "Zoey," Mom said, "go to my bag and get a surgical mask for Rachel. Sometimes they spit."

  I nodded and went to get the mask. Once I'd put it on Ms. Dresden, Mom handed the bundle to her. "It's a boy," she announced.

  Ms. Dresden nodded a little and rocked the thing that would've been her child in a better, kinder world. Unlike a normal baby, it watched her intently, its cloudy eyes filled with that mixture of forlornness and bestial hunger that one can always imagine in the eyes of the dead.

  The tears came slow and steady now from its mother. Not the previously violent sobs of denial and rage, but the calmer bathing as her soul sank down into abiding sorrow, accepting the small comfort that comes from embracing enormous pain.

  Mom brushed Ms. Dresden's sweaty, red hair off her forehead. It was so red and glistening that for a moment it looked as though she had removed a bloody gash from there. Mom smoothed the hair back, then gently stroked her pale face, swollen but still so overwhelmingly pretty, and now so weak and vulnerable. "I'm so sorry, Rachel. I'm so, so sorry."

  Ms. Dresden looked up at my mom, and pulled the mask a little away from her mouth to speak. "I shouldn't have said those awful things, Sarah. I don't know what to say now. Please forgive me."

  "Of course, Rachel. I've heard a lot from women in labor. Don't worry about me. I've always said you were a nice girl. I know you are."

  Ms. Dresden turned to me. "You too, Zoey. I'm so sorry I said those things and hit you."

  "It's okay," I said.

  "You hold him a while, Rachel," my mom said. "You need to. It's natural. And when you need to put him down, I'll put him in the other room, so he's safe. I think Zoey should sit with you for a while, if that's okay. It's harder when you're alone."

  We both nodded.

  Mom and I sat in the living room among the guns and rock posters for what seemed like a long time while Ms. Dresden held her baby. Afterward, Mom put the baby in the bathtub and closed the bathroom door. She and I gathered the bloody towels and made a clean bed for Ms. Dresden, propping her up with fresh blankets and pillows. Mom left, and the two of us sat alone, not speaking, just sitting there, Ms. Dresden in her bed, me in a chair next to her.

  "Zoey," she said, breaking the silence, "I know it sounds funny, when so much has happened, but I can barely see straight, I'm so hungry. Someone left some stuff for me. It should be on the stairs down to the basement, where it's cooler. Please bring me something. It doesn't matter what."

  I went to the kitchen, where the door to the basement was. There was still enough daylight coming in that I could see a few steps down into the darkness. Hanging on the wall was a large haunch of smoked deer meat, and on the steps was a bag with berries in it, and another with hard, dry bread. In the kitchen, I found a knife to cut away some of the hard rind on the meat, and to slice the bread into smaller chunks. I picked through the berries to get out the moldy ones, too. I took the good parts to Ms. Dresden and we sat on her bed, chewing silently till we were full. Then she lay back. I put the food in the bags and returned it to the basement stairs. Then I sat back down on my chair next to her.

  I lit a candle when it got darker. More light might've been nice, but most of our candles were tallow, and the smell wasn't pretty.

  Ms. Dresden spoke up again. "That was gross what I said about your dad. I know your mom and dad are nice and they don't talk about me. I should've remembered that, and I also should've respected you and not tried to hurt you, especially not that way. You've always been a nice girl, too. I'm so sorry."

  "It's hard, when you're sad and in pain, to be nice. I know."

  "I guess that's right. But still, I shouldn't have." Though the candlelight made the room look slightly sinister, Rachel's face looked serene and softened. "I need to sleep." She scooted over a little on her bed. "Sit next to me if you want, if it'd be more comfortable. Or I'll be okay if you want to leave."

  I sat next to her. "It's okay. I could stay a while. Mom will come get me later."

  Protect the living. Honor the dead. I had done what I had trained to do, what was necessary for survival. Survival meant life continued, and life was hard. This was true, and I now saw how difficult truth was.

  As she finally sank into an exhausted sleep, Ms. Dresden's breathing fell into a rhythm that matched the frail wheezing from the thing in the other room as it struggled against its bonds. Though identical in rhythm, the latter had the ragged pant of desire, frustration, and restlessness, while poor Rachel's spent body was only soft, yielding, finally without struggle or pain. I leaned against her as she slept and just breathed in all her feminine, fecund, and profane scent-warm, solid, and enduring. Though there was a pain in my heart so cold and bitter I could taste it, metallic and sharp, slowly I felt my bones soften and settle onto Rachel's small but powerful frame, till I too fell asleep.

  Chapter 12

  It rained on and off for the next two days, but after that we saw Will again. It was early in the morning, with the sun just breaking over the horizon. I was glad he was back so soon, but also apprehensive about going to this place supposedly associated with me.

  After he let us out, we followed the road for a long time, at the slow pace Lucy and I could maintain. Will told us about life with the other people like him, how they grew food and protected themselves from us, the ways they had relearned how to do basic things like make paper and cloth and generate electricity and drill wells for water. He seemed pleased and proud of everything they'd built and done, as well he should be. I was almost glad to lack speech at that point; I could hardly come up with a list of even the most meager accomplishments in our group, and it would've been quite embarrassing to admit it out loud. I was a little proud that Lucy and I had planted some of the dandelions in little flower pots by our storage unit and set out more containers to catch the rain water, but even that had been her idea.

  In the middle of the day we stopped to rest in the shade of some trees. Nearby, some bushes and vines grew over an old fence, and as Lucy and I sat, Will picked some berries there and ate them.

  After that he sat down with us. He reached in a pocket and got out a little handmade leather pouch, from which he got a cigarette and a lighter. The cigarette was obviously handmade-the ends were rolled and pinched shut and the paper wasn't a pure white, but grayish-beige.

  "It's a lot easier than the flint and tinder, especially for a smoke," he said as he lit the cigarette, careful to cover the flame so Lucy and I couldn't see it. "But I guess eventually we'll run out of all the lighters and matches. Maybe by then we'll make our own." He blew the smoke away from us, which was considerate. "It's cornsilk. I saw one of the old-timers doing it when I was younger. Some of them get so desperate for cigarettes. Real ones ran out years ago, and we haven't found any plants or seeds to grow our own tobacco yet. I don't know if there are enough people to make it worth growing, though some of the old timers talk about it all the time, how they want a real cigarette or some dip.

  "But I remember how when I was little-you know, in the ‘regular' world-all you heard was how you should never, ever smoke or chew, it was like the worst thing for you. Funny that people thought this was so dangerous and deadly." He considered the tiny little roll of paper with the glowing end and shook his head. "They didn't know shit about dangerous and deadly. And I know our world is all messed up, Truman, but sometimes I wonder if the old world was messed up in its own way, or if nothing's changed."

  I couldn't offer any better response than a shrug.

  Will looked like he'd gotten an idea. "You want some? I really doubt it'd hurt you at all."

  As with everything else, I didn't remember if I were a smoker or not. I
had some image of professors smoking pipes, but that was all imagination and mystique. Will's musings had me curious enough about it to try. I looked to Lucy. She shrugged. I looked back to Will and nodded.

  He smiled a little. "Okay. Not this one; it's too short already and you'd burn yourself." He inhaled deeply from his, then dropped the end on the ground and crushed it under his heel. He lit a new one and handed it to me. "Careful. Hold it with your fingers as far from the lit end as you can. I have no idea how it'll taste to you, so just go easy."

  I inhaled it cautiously, afraid the smoke would be hot and burning, like when I had tried to eat, or like the fear I always had of flames. But for whatever reason, it felt only slightly warm and a little tickling. I tried inhaling it deeper, and the sensation was a little more pronounced, but really no more profound than if I'd sat out in the sun. I held the cigarette away from my mouth, looked to Will, and shrugged.

  He took it back and crushed it under his heel like the other. "That's what I figured. It's all about the fruit being forbidden. I only like them because I was told not to. You try it, with no one telling you one way or the other, and it's nothing to you. Interesting." He got up. "Well, let's get moving. We won't have too much time to look around."

  As we continued down the road, a group of red brick buildings became visible in the distance. After a while we passed through gates with the school's name on the side. As Will had said, some of the buildings were collapsed, but since most were brick, the majority had survived.

  "I don't know if you remember, Truman, but it happened in the summer-I mean that's when the world ended-so there wouldn't have been many people here. And I can't think why anyone would try to escape to here, so that's partly why the place is in such good shape."

  I didn't remember, but I nodded.

  Will gestured to one building. "That's where I found the brochures. It must be the administration building. Does anything look familiar? Do you want to go in that building?"

  Things did look vaguely familiar, but I had to shake my head tentatively at the first question, since I really couldn't identify anything. I shook my head more definitively at the second question. If the people in that building had made up the brochure with the vague and hyperbolic slogan I couldn't quite fathom, I didn't want to go in there.

  We continued among the buildings. The gymnasium had been a newer building, but its huge, flat roof had collapsed under years of rain and snow accumulation, pulling down part of one wall with it. The library was in much better shape. The doors were locked, of course, and being an older building, the doors weren't glass, but heavy wooden ones, so I thought we might not be able to enter.

  "You want to go in here, Truman?" Will asked.

  I nodded.

  "Wait here."

  The windows on the bottom floor had metal bars across them, but Will clambered up these with amazing agility and soon he was hanging onto a rain spout, kicking in a window on the second floor. He climbed in, made his way down, and opened the main door for us.

  Lucy and I entered. The entryway was dark, since there weren't many windows there, but the room off to the left had high ceilings, with enormous windows extending the full height of the room. Sunlight fell upon scores of wooden bookcases full of books. I ran my hand along the spines and realized how poor my collection at the storage facility was. No longer did I have to sort through tattered books of how to program in Pascal, or inspirational novels based on the Bible: here I had copies of Pascal and the Bible! Now an anthology of selected and abridged works was not the best treasure I could hope for-the complete books were here before me! This was a room and a feeling I did remember-not vaguely, but vividly, as if it had happened many times and with particular intensity. This was a real library. And now it was mine. Carefully, I selected a few volumes to take back today. There'd be time to come back for more, but I wanted a few right away.

  Will was also marveling at the library, looking up at all the books stacked high around us. "Milton and Jonah are going to love this!" I must've growled reflexively, because I didn't mean to, but I couldn't stand the thought of someone taking these from me.

  "Oh," Will said. "You don't want me to tell them?"

  I hung my head a little. I hadn't written these books, and I hadn't worked for them; I'd just found them, so I had no right to snatch at them like I was doing.

  "It's all right," Will said. "I can put off telling them if this place is special to you, Truman. But does this mean that you can read, too?"

  I nodded, still keeping my head down.

  "Wow. That's more than I had expected or thought possible. But if you can read, you should have first dibs on the books. I think you have little enough at your place. Don't worry."

  I was quite overwhelmed that Will, like Lucy, was so much more kind and willing to share than I was. I vowed to be a better person in the future.

  It was getting late and we had to start back. On the way to the door, on the librarian's desk, I noticed an old manual typewriter. All the other desks had darkened, useless computer screens on them. I wasn't positive why this desk had a typewriter, but I thought I remembered libraries and other offices using paper forms, some of which could be filled out more easily with a typewriter than a computer. I tried to pick it up. It wasn't too heavy.

  Will saw me with it and came over to help. "Wait, Truman. There's probably a case for it somewhere here. It'd be easier to carry. There might be some spare ink and ribbons too."

  In the cabinets, we found the case and the extra supplies. Will fit everything inside the case, which had a handle, like a suitcase or Lucy's violin case; it was easy for him to pick up and carry.

  Near nightfall, we returned home. Will gave the typewriter to Lucy, and he led the others to the far side of the compound while we waited at the gate. Lucy seemed troubled, as though I might like her less for having seen things from my other life. I looked deeply in her right eye, and even put my hand on her right cheek, and I think she realized she was mistaken. I hoped so.

  Will let us inside and began to wrap the chain around the two metal poles of the fence and the gate.

  With a high shriek, two small people lurched from behind one of the buildings. They looked to be about a foot shorter than Lucy, not small children, but pre-adolescents, one boy, one girl. I remembered pushing past them before our previous outing with Will. Maybe because of their age, they were much quicker than the other people in the storage area. They seemed to have waited for us behind the building. They also seemed to move in concert, as though they had planned this together. They crashed into the gate, throwing Will off balance and making him take a step back. The girl wriggled through the opening in the gate as the lock and chain clattered to the ground.

  The others in the storage facility slowly approached us, filling the space between the fence and the one building, as well as the area between the buildings. I dropped the books and for a second I didn't know what to do. Both children were now through the gate. Will grabbed the girl by the throat with his gauntleted hand and pistol-whipped the boy to the ground. Will kicked him in the face, then stepped on his throat, pinning him.

  I took a step toward the gate-I had to secure it-but Lucy put her hand on my shoulder. She dropped the typewriter as she shook her head at me. Though her eye was as tranquil and lofty as ever, the snarl on her lips shocked me with its morbid hunger-and perhaps even with its cruelty.

  Will, holding the two children at bay, glanced between me, Lucy, and the crowd approaching the gate.

  "Truman," he said in a voice that sounded surprisingly calm, "I know you're scared, but you need to close that gate, whatever happens. You need to do it now."

  I looked into Lucy's eye for what seemed a very long time; I needed to know what she was thinking. Was she trying to save me or the children from getting hurt? Or had hunger driven her to it?

  Even over the increasing moan of the crowd, I heard Will pulling back the hammer on his gun. It had the mechanical finality of a clock before an execution.
>
  "Blue Eye," he said, "that gate is going to be closed and locked now. If you and Truman don't do it, I'm going to kill these two and lock it myself. If you do it for me, I promise I won't kill them."

  Her gaze moved towards Will, and their eyes met.

  "Please trust me," he said, sounding more concerned for us than for himself.

  I looked to Lucy and thought she nodded slightly. I took her hand and pulled her to the gate. I was too clumsy to handle the lock myself anyway. Lucy helped me thread the chain through the fence, then she locked it.

  As the crowd reached us, I let it carry me forward and push me up against the fence. I lost Lucy in the crowd.

  "Remember," Will said, "trust me. I'll be as careful as I can, but I'm not going to be gentle." He tossed the girl as hard as he could, and she flew several yards before landing on her back. She immediately rolled over and began to get up. Will trained his pistol on her. My eyes widened and I let out a wail, but it was nothing compared to the cry of rage, despair, and betrayal that Lucy sent up from somewhere in the crowd. The others droned on with their meaningless, emotionless moaning.

  The pistol exploded, louder than I could've imagined, and Will's arm jumped upward a little. A dark, chunky spray shot out of the girl's knee onto the cracked pavement and weeds. She collapsed with a groan, then rose up on her hands and slowly pulled herself towards Will. But without her one leg she could get little traction and could barely move.

  Will holstered his gun. He lifted the boy by the neck and one leg, then swung him a couple times and threw him part of the way over the fence. The barbed wire there snagged the boy's remaining clothes and he was stuck.

  "Truman," Will said, still very calm, "you're going to have to pull him over. Hurry. I have to get her over too."

  As Will walked over to the girl and picked her up, I tried to push through the crowd to where the boy's head and right side hung over. Everyone else reached for Will and followed his motions, ignoring the boy, even though the barbed wire seemed to cause him pain as he struggled and it tore into him. I noticed something I'd seen before with us-there was no blood on the cuts; we had none left in us, it seemed.