by Susan Kim
“I didn’t say I was definitely going to see Levi,” Sarah replied. Unlike everyone else in town, she spoke in a fussy, formal manner she had probably picked up from all her reading. It was yet another thing that irritated Esther about her sister. Sarah pushed a few grains of uneaten rice into a plastic container, which she sealed and put away. Then she finished wiping the silverware.
The plates, bowls, and cups were chipped and cracked, yet they were mostly a matched set, what had once been a pretty green and purple. Thanks to Sarah, the entire apartment was tidy and clean. Unlike the other homes in Prin, filled with piles of filthy blankets and clothing and utensils, their place was almost stylish, and the curtains in the windows were white.
The walls were decorated with tattered ads Sarah had found in town—mysterious posters for Absolut vodka, Continental Airlines, New York Yankees. There were even several shelves of books, which Esther had barely glanced at. “Besides,” continued Esther, “why do you think Levi will even talk to you? You haven’t seen him in years. And all he cares about is how much gas people bring him. He don’t care about anything else.”
“Doesn’t, not don’t,” said Sarah, her face flushing. “And he’s not like that. He’s a good person.”
Esther shot her sister a look, sensing something in her she hadn’t seen before. She knew that when they were much younger, Sarah and Levi had been close friends and that she had taught him how to read. But that was about all she knew. Esther had a hunch she might be able to find a new point of vulnerability. “Well, if he’s so good, how come we never see him?”
Sarah shrugged, seemingly unaffected, as she stacked the plates, her back to her sister. “Levi’s a busy man,” she said.
Esther scowled, looking down. There was a design on the countertop that she jabbed at with her finger. “Busy bossing everyone around.”
Sarah’s voice hardened.
“If he didn’t run things,” she said, “we all would have died a long time ago. And I don’t see you turning down food you don’t work for.”
Esther’s hunch was right; she had touched a nerve. Still, she flinched from the uncomfortable truth.
She could not deny that she lived off the food that Levi provided and that Sarah not only earned, but prepared as well. Esther didn’t know the first thing about how to pound the otherwise inedible rice and beans into flour, or how to mix it with water and pat it into flatbread. She had never once stoked the firebowl with charcoal or cooked watery porridge on its blackened grill. These were all Sarah’s jobs, and while Esther had always taken that for granted, she realized that it did not strengthen her position. If anything, it made her even more of a child, someone not to be taken seriously.
“Besides, who’s better?” Sarah said. “The mutants?”
“Don’t call them that,” Esther said under her breath.
Her sister didn’t stop. “At least we didn’t go around attacking people, like the mutants.” She emphasized the hateful word. “We’re better than that.”
“Whatever’s happening now, it’s not their fault,” said Esther. Sarah rolled her eyes, but her sister continued. “Maybe they’re just hungry. Besides, they mostly don’t hurt people… only buildings and things.” And despite herself, she opened up. “They’re nice, Sarah, they really are. Maybe one or two of them are bad, but—”
Sarah snorted. “Oh, please,” she said as she started putting the dishes away. “I wish to God you’d stop socializing with them. You and your little friend Star—”
“Skar.”
“And that lunatic in that building, with all the cats. What’s his name? Joseph? You’re not a baby anymore, Esther. It’s about time you weaned yourself away from all of them.”
Esther tried to rein in her emotions, but she could feel her control slipping as tears sprung to her eyes. “Why do you hate my friends?” she asked.
“I don’t hate anybody,” said Sarah. Her voice sounded frozen. “I’m only looking out for you, since apparently you can’t do that yourself.”
A sob escaped. Furious and ashamed, Esther pushed her fists into her eyes to keep tears from falling.
Sarah sighed, and her tone softened. “I just wish you weren’t so… naive, Esther.”
Esther felt a new stab of annoyance. “You know I don’t know what that word is,” she muttered.
“Do you really think they want to be your friends?” Sarah said. She spoke softly, almost gently. “They’re all probably waiting to break in here so they can rob us blind.”
“Rob us? Of what? Our matching coffee cups?” Esther managed to say. Tears were running down her face and she wiped her nose with her sleeve.
Sarah gazed at her; you could almost see something settle in her mind. It was what Esther feared all along and she cursed herself. She had once again driven her sister in the opposite direction.
“Thank you,” Sarah said. “If I wasn’t sure about whether or not to see Levi, I am now. Why all this trouble is going on, I honestly don’t know. But I’m sure he’ll put an end to it.”
Esther was overwhelmed with bitterness—at her failure to keep her sister from going to the Source, and her inability to control her emotions, to play it cool. To strategize, as Skar would say.
“Fine,” Esther yelled. “Fine!”
She pushed past her sister.
Sarah’s voice betrayed mild panic. “Where are you going?” she called after her. The only response was the slam of the front door. Inside one of the many cupboards, something fell off a shelf and broke with a small crash.
Once outside, Esther walked blindly through the darkness for several blocks before she calmed down enough to think. She could sense rather than hear a pack of feral dogs rummaging nearby. The animals were cowardly yet, when desperate, had been known to attack anybody unwise enough to be outside at night, alone, without a weapon.
Esther sat on a street corner, her ears keyed to a possible attack, adrenaline coursing through her body. She knew it was stupid to be outside, yet she needed to make a physical statement, to create some distance.
After an hour, she went back.
She suspected her sister would sit up waiting for her, as she had so many times in the past; in fact, she secretly wanted it to be true. Yet when Esther returned, she found Sarah in her room, asleep. As she stood over her, Esther experienced a strange, twisting sensation in her stomach. She had an impulse to touch her sister’s long, black hair, fanned out on the white pillowcase and framing her face, but at the last second, she changed her mind.
Instead, she went back to the main room and sat alone in the dark. Stubbornly, she decided she would wait to watch the sun come up.
Hours later the first rays of light found her sound asleep, fully dressed, curled like a cat on the far end of the couch.
Miles away, someone else was watching the sun rise.
It was a solitary boy on a bike, on the major roadway that passed by the outskirts of Prin. At sixteen, Caleb was lean and deeply sunburned, with a strong jaw and hazel eyes that, despite his distrustful gaze, had once been gentle.
Like Esther, Caleb chose to protect himself from the sun in his own way. He wore a long-sleeved denim shirt, jeans, canvas gloves, and a battered Outback hat. In his backpack, he carried a few belongings. His vehicle was a scuffed black mountain bike with patched tires that had seen many miles.
He had been on the road for months and could finally see his destination on the horizon: a glimpse of the lone church spire that marked the town of Prin.
And still, he hesitated.
He unzipped his backpack, took out a green steel bottle, and swished it around. As he feared, it was nearly empty. The sun had only just risen and the morning was still cool. Yet the sky was cloudless and he knew it would be another day of blazing heat.
By the side of the road was an old gas station, abandoned and in ruins. In front, Caleb noticed several rusty old oil barrels. One of them was uncovered and now brimmed over with rainwater from a recent storm.
Cal
eb walked his bike to the edge of where the grass used to be and released the rickety kickstand. Then he crossed to the barrels and looked down. The water was so clear, you could see all the way to the bottom, where a pink pebble lay. He couldn’t help himself; he stooped to smell it, and at its irresistibly cold scent, he imagined plunging his head into it, opening his parched mouth and swallowing, gulping, drinking as much as he could without coming up for air.
His eyes were closed and his lips were at the surface of the water; at the last second, he gave a shudder and forced himself to pull back.
That would have been suicide.
The trembling surface reflected the cloudless sky above him. It also reflected his face, which shocked him with its gauntness and its look of need.
Making up his mind, he uncapped his green bottle, lifted it to his lips, and emptied it within seconds. It was only a few mouthfuls of hot and metallic water, but he savored every drop.
Then Caleb got back on his bike and headed for town.
THREE
AS MOTHS DANCED AROUND THE BRIGHT SPOTLIGHTS OVERHEAD, SARAH waited outside the Source, nervously brushing back her hair.
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 stumbl
ed, 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.