Life Sentence (27 page)

“Not now,” he shot back.

“No, I think it’s important. I think we can put our
guns down. I think I know part of what’s going on.”

“Don’t come out from behind that truck, Zoey.” There
was a pause. “Jonah, go listen to what Zoey has to say, then tell
me what we should do.”

Mr. Caine walked over to me, and I quickly told him
of how Will and two zombies had helped save me the previous day. I
told him how, according to Will, these zombies were more
intelligent than others, and were mostly cured of their appetite
for human flesh, though I had seen the one eat a man right in front
of me.

As I was describing this to Mr. Caine, I heard my
dad continuing to negotiate with the man. “She’s my daughter. And
the other guy, he’s just a school teacher. I’m sort of in charge.
You can just let them go, whatever it is that’s happened.”

Mr. Caine looked very surprised and worried at my
story. I knew Will had always been a free spirit at best, and a
little out of control at worst, and I’m sure Mr. Caine felt partly
responsible if something bad had happened as a result of his
adoptive son’s behavior.

“Jack,” he called out when I was done, “I think we
should come out and discuss this. I don’t think these people are to
blame for what’s happened, or their response to it.”

There was another pause before my dad agreed, and
Mr. Caine and I came out from behind the safety of the truck. The
man who had been talking to my dad was dressed in the kind of
clothes that Will usually wore when he was out in the wild—heavy
canvas with metal pieces sewn onto the fabric to protect him from
bites. He was probably my dad’s age, not as tall—kind of short, in
fact—but he had the same air of practicality and efficiency.

Unlike our clothes, his seemed to have some
insignia, like a military rank, and they appeared somewhat better
made than most of ours.

I tightened my hold on the grip of the M16 and
scanned the cars around us, but couldn’t see where the other people
were.

My dad put his hand on my shoulder. “Easy,” he said
quietly. “It’s not time for heroics. Just tell me what’s going
on.”

I repeated the story of Will and the intelligent
zombies. When I was done, my dad turned back to the
military-looking man. “We knew nothing about this. If this is true
what Will has done, we will deal with it. But this is not our
fault. You should let us go back to our city.”

“I believe you,” the man agreed. “I don’t think you
knew about this. But we can’t let you just drive away with some
vague assurance that you will ‘deal with’ this madman and his
zombies. If you leave here now, you might just protect him. And
then we will go to war. We’ve done it before, against smaller
groups who thought they could attack us or raid our supplies.”

Dad’s grip tightened on my shoulder. “Who said
anything about ‘smaller group’ there, fella? And how did this city
get to be ‘your supplies’ when you’re only here because we cleared
out all the zombies? I got a whole building full of weapons we’ve
never used before, just waiting for another guy stupid enough to
threaten us.”

Mr. Caine finally intervened. “Enough of the
posturing and threats, both of you. We understand that the River
Nation wants justice, and we’re sorry for the people who were hurt
and killed in these attacks. I take it you are someone in
authority?” He was being a lot more obsequious than I’d ever seen
him, but he’d judged the situation rightly, I think.

“Yes,” the man said in a less threatening tone. “I
am a commander of the military forces, Colonel Reiniger.”

Mr. Caine saw that he had gained some leverage. “So
if you were to come with us and oversee the investigation we make
of Will, you’d consider that fair, and you could report back to
your people whether or not we had done what was necessary to
prevent war?”

The colonel considered, and finally agreed to Mr.
Caine’s terms. Disaster was averted for the time being, though I
wasn’t sure we’d be able to punish Will to this man’s satisfaction,
so I thought the problem had just been postponed.

Five men armed with rifles emerged from among the
cars in the parking lot. They were dressed similarly to the
colonel, though each one wore a different insignia. The colonel
told two of his men to report back to their people in the city. He
then turned to us. “You may drive the truck back with the supplies.
We didn’t think anyone could’ve survived out here, without the
water as a barrier, so we understand if you need to build back up
your protection from the dead. We’ll follow you in our
vehicle.”

The colonel and his three remaining men walked out
among the cars as we climbed into the truck. Mr. Caine started the
engine. “Nice going back there,” Dad said. “I let things get a
little too heated.”

Mr. Caine nodded. “It happens. The ‘just a
schoolteacher’ comment was a little uncalled for.”

My dad snickered grimly. “I was just trying to talk
you two out of it. Your way worked better.”

We saw some cars shudder and jerk slightly, and then
the vehicle that had been pushing them out of the way came into
view. It was a Humvee, with the same sort of extra bumper for
pushing cars that our truck had. With some maneuvering, they turned
around, and we pulled out with them behind us.

To leave the parking lot, we had to go under an
overpass. I looked into the passenger’s side mirror at the Humvee,
and I thought I saw something drop down onto the vehicle. The
vehicle jerked one way, then the other, and crashed into a concrete
barrier.

After we heard the long burst of gunfire, we made
off in the direction from which it came. It sounded fairly close,
and Will periodically stopped to look around with binoculars. After
moving and searching like this for some time, he spotted something.
“There,” he said, pointing to the left. “There’s a vehicle moving
among the cars in that parking lot. We’ll be able to see better
from up on that overpass.”

We clambered up the embankment and over the guard
rail, and with his binoculars Will looked out over the parking lot
of a ruined shopping center. Several people moved among the cars in
front of us, and three emerged from a store, carrying big, white
bundles to a nearby truck. I heard a voice, though I couldn’t make
out the words, then more gunfire; the three people from the store
ran behind the truck.

The gunfire stopped, and there was more shouting.
One person came out from behind the truck and joined one of the
people who had been hiding among the cars. Their voices were low
enough that I couldn’t hear them, but I took it they were talking
again. Then the other two people emerged from behind the truck.

Finally, all the men among the cars came out from
hiding. Two of them went off on foot, while the others went back to
their vehicle, and the three people who had had the white bundles
got into the truck. The other vehicle maneuvered till it was behind
the truck, then they both started moving slowly, sometimes bumping
into cars and pushing them out of their way.

Will lowered his binoculars and looked around the
overpass, which was littered with vehicles and various other
things. I could tell he was formulating some plan, and part of me
wanted to help, but I also wasn’t really up to all this. Out of the
back of a pickup, which was smashed into some other cars, Will got
out two cinder blocks. He set them on top of the guard rail at the
side of the overpass. “The people in the truck are my friends,” he
said. “The one man is the man who raised me, and then there’s Zoey
and her dad. I don’t know what the other men are doing, but they
just shot at them, so it can’t be good. It looks like they’re
leading them somewhere. They’re going to drive out this way. You
two crouch down here, and after the truck goes past, try to push
the blocks over so they fall on the Humvee. I’ll go down and try to
stop them when they get out.”

As too often with Will and the other people, I felt
sure that words like “stop” meant “kill.” For people who could
talk, they certainly did way too much communicating in violent,
non-verbal ways.

“Can you two do this?” Will asked.

I doubted very much that I could. I most certainly
did not want to, but if the intelligent and kind-looking girl was
in danger, I felt I had to help.

“Can you do this?” Will repeated.

Lucy and I nodded.

“Okay. But please, stay up here. This is all too
dangerous, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

He ran to the end of the overpass. Across his back,
he carried the gun I had taken from the man I had shot, and he had
his own handgun out and ready to use.

The two vehicles slowly made their way through the
parking lot, as it was hard for them to find spaces that weren’t
crowded with abandoned vehicles. The cars thinned somewhat closer
to the overpass, and the two vehicles moved faster, though still
fairly slow.

The truck passed under us, and as the other vehicle
approached, Lucy and I shoved the two cinder blocks off. I could
hear glass shattering, then the sounds of brakes, then more
smashing glass and a heavier crunch of metal.

I heard car doors opening, and men cursing. Lucy
took my hand and led me to the other end of the overpass. I was
frightened, but I couldn’t let her go by herself. Besides, hiding
hadn’t done us any good the other two times these people had
decided on violence. We worked our way between the wrecked cars and
climbed down the embankment on the side facing away from the
shopping center.

As we scrambled down, I heard various shouts.

“No, Will! Don’t!”

“What is this, a trap?”

Lucy and I must’ve made some noise, because suddenly
I was staring down the barrel of a rifle. I was surprised to see
the intelligent-looking girl holding it. These people even had
their children use guns, which I found quite monstrous and
reprehensible.

I gripped Lucy’s hand tighter, and raised it, along
with my other hand, hoping this would be enough of a sign that we
meant no harm. The girl slightly lowered the hideous, black rifle
and called out, “Dad, they’re here. The two I saw before.”

She was near the front of the truck, closest to Lucy
and me. The tall man and another man were on the other side, closer
to the vehicle Lucy and I had dropped the cinder blocks on. Three
men were out on both sides of that vehicle. Will was beyond those
men, closer to the shopping center. Everyone was holding guns,
pointed at each other.

The tall man near the truck looked over his shoulder
at Lucy and me. He didn’t turn all the way around, but kept his gun
pointed at the other men. He looked us over. “These are the ones
you told us about, Zoey?”

“Yes, Dad.”

He turned away from us to keep his eye on the men
from the other vehicle. “Either one of them so much as twitches,
blow their smart zombie brains out. Let’s see if they understand
that.”

The intelligent-looking girl kept her gun slightly
lowered. “But, Dad,” she said.

“I need that order acknowledged, Zoey. Now.”

The girl raised the terrible rifle again. She
squared her shoulders and her muscles tensed as she lined up the
sights, the barrel pointed right at my face. “Yes, Dad,” she said
more quietly than her father had spoken. There was a little of his
edge in her voice, and though her pretty brown eyes still looked
extremely intelligent, she narrowed them and they did not look
nearly as kind. I was glad she was the one pointing a gun at us,
though—mostly because I felt more confident she wouldn’t shoot us
for no reason. I was glad the gun was pointed at me rather than
Lucy. But even more than that, I had a strange sense that if such
an intelligent, innocent person were to judge us a deadly,
implacable threat, maybe we needed to be put down.

“Jack! No!” Will shouted from the other side of the
people and the vehicles. “It’s not their fault!”

“No,” the tall man, Jack, responded, “it’s not their
fault, Will, it’s yours!”

“You can’t, Dad,” the girl said, though the barrel
of her rifle didn’t waver at all. “They saved my life.”

“We
can’t
shoot zombies? Will went around
shooting people, for God’s sake! Without letting any of us know, or
checking out what was going on. That’s what caused this, and now we
have to figure out a way to stop it. Shooting zombies is something
I definitely
can
do if it helps straighten things out.”

“But they attacked us!” Will shouted.

Fortunately, the conversation had not been
punctuated with gunfire, but at this point it degenerated into
incoherent shouting, in which I could make out variously, “No we
didn’t! … No they didn’t! … Yes they did! … No, you did!” I
suddenly felt very cold and empty—almost pained, even though I
wasn’t sure I could feel pain exactly. Lucy and I were going to die
simply because these people seemed to end all their conversations
with shooting.

I tightened my grip on Lucy’s hand and thought at
least I’d die with her, instead of alone. That was something. Maybe
I could even shield her if I could move fast enough once these
strange, monstrous people started their inevitable slaughter.

The girl lowered her rifle and took a step towards
us. She put her right hand out in front of herself, with the palm
towards us, as if to show she meant us no harm. For some reason it
occurred to me that, from the way she was holding her gun, she must
be left-handed, and I thought how ironic that was, since there was
an old superstition that left-handedness was evil, and she was the
only one behaving kindly, or even rationally. But that was only
superstition, and I didn’t think people believed in that
anymore.

I nodded and took a step back, pulling Lucy with
me.

The girl turned towards the men and shrieked, “Stop
it! Just stop it!”