November 15, 2009—On Liberty
Almost two months ago I was pretty average. Two months ago, if you handed me an ax I would think about splitting logs or maybe hacking down a fallen tree limb. That’s not me, not anymore.
It isn’t Utopia. I probably don’t have to tell you that. It’s not paradise, not by a long shot. But I think I can say something now that I could never safely say before: it’s my home.
Sure, I thought the bookstore was pretty good and I thought the apartments above that would work too, and I really hoped the arena could be a permanent thing, but this—this—is a real home with real buildings, real privacy, real beds and people willing to create a community. I think that’s the difference. We’re of one mind here, not in some bizzarro hive-mind way, we just want the same things. We want stability, safety, the chance to rebuild something lasting.
There are walls here, tremendously thick walls that might have bothered me once, but I’m used to it. In this life, in this day, a home has walls. We do what we can to keep them out and to keep us safely in. There’s a moat about thirty yards away from the walls. When the moat gets too full we set it on fire. The walls are reinforced with wooden spikes but none of the undead ever manages to make it that far. The village really is more like a fort, a reinforced campground, but there’s no discriminating here and all of the living are welcome. If someone manages to make it to the gates then they deserve to come inside. That’s the rule.
We keep the barricades primed with fire, we keep our soldiers armed and vigilant and we try to do good things, small, good things that make a difference to someone. It’s easier to set a pit of zombies on fire when you know the next morning you’ll be teaching Spanish to little kids. The roads are mostly dirt and gravel and the buildings that were burned up are slowly being rebuilt. There’s a flag flying above the town center, a white background with a green infinity symbol. It means all are welcome and it means we will go on, go on forever.
We’ve started a school, the Clarke School. I proposed we call it the Julian Clarke School of Dastardly Snark but that was pretty unanimously shot down. Ted teaches biology and chemistry, Renny gives art classes and I do what I was going to school to do: I teach books.
It’s funny, my mom was always the better scholar. When I applied to grad school I had the eerie feeling that everyone knew me and that’s because they did. Well … they knew my mother. They were her colleagues; her admirers more like. She blazed a fucking trail through their dry, exclusive academia Club House and showed them that a woman could read a book and make up bullshit theories as well as they could. I wanted to do that too. I wanted to live in a world where men stuck up their noses at me and I took a hold of those noses and shoved them into my long, preposterously overresearched papers.
I never really got to do that. I never found those people, those snobs that hated me because I was a woman or because I wasn’t smart enough, witty enough, crass enough. And maybe they don’t exist now. Their place in the world has been snubbed out. What I did find is a bunch of little kids without a school, without books, without teachers.
And she’s not here, my mom, not yet. I look for her every day, of course, taking a moment or two out from teaching to go sit on the walls and watch and wait. I’m not giving up hope, not yet, not now when I know that incredible things can happen, that people will surprise you with their will to live.
What I do know about my mom, what I know for sure, is that she would be proud. I don’t know if you can think back, way back to when you didn’t know Treasure Island or A Tale of Two Cities or The Three Musketeers, but these kids are hearing the stories for the first time. I know it sounds dry but it isn’t. Those books weren’t in Fort Morgan—Liberty Village—when we got here. The library had been ransacked, destroyed, all but burned to cinders. And so two days ago I helmed a rescue mission of sorts. As far as I’m concerned, Stevenson, Dickens and Dumas were prisoners somewhere and it was my duty to help them. Now they’re safe, cherished, right where they belong: in the hands of children who thought their lives were over. You don’t know what misery is until you look at a six-year-old and realize that they’ve experienced greater tragedy in their short life than you will ever live to know.
But they smile. They smile now when we sit together in a circle in the gutted post office and take turns reading aloud. They look to me for guidance, for explanations.
“What does ‘sublime’ mean?” they ask. “What is ‘bespattered’?”
It’s not all good. It’s not all simple. There are, of course, difficulties. There are, of course, surprises and shocks. I thought that when I left that park I left behind a group of friends that I would never see again. But I was wrong. In fact, not only did Ned, Evan, Mikey, and Collin survive, they beat us here, the crazy bastards.
We didn’t run into them until the second day. The first day was, well, pretty much nothing but eating, sleeping and relaxing. They gave us chickens roasted over a fire and we ate like savages, tearing the charred meat off the bone, reveling in the hot juices running down our faces. I think I remember a moment then when Renny smiled and there were bits of char and chicken stuck in her teeth and I felt relieved, as if I had carried the four of us on my back all the way here. It isn’t true, of course. We all took our turns shouldering the burden. I didn’t tell her about the stuff in her teeth; she looked too contented and free.
Day two brought a whole truckful of surprises. When we finally woke (sometime around noon I think), there were guests waiting outside of our lodge. Lodge is a generous word, I guess, but the right one. The lodges aren’t big but they’re sturdy, made with the same technique pioneers used to build their frontier homes. Colorado is kind of ridiculous that way, but the fact that they’ve wholeheartedly embraced adversity with a rousing frontier spirit is remarkable, inspiring. Anyway, when we (Ted, Renny, and I) finally managed to drag our asses out of bed, we found Ned and his kids waiting outside. Evan was wearing his Pirate Wall-E costume, something Ned had helped him with several days after Halloween had come and gone. According to Ned, Evan wouldn’t take it off, not until “Allison got to see.”
After the shock of seeing them again, and the delight, I had the task of finding Collin. Ned told me of his presence and survival with his usual charm, reminding me with a clandestine wink to be strong and stand up for myself. Ted and Renny stared at him as if he was speaking in gibberish, but I knew exactly what he meant. So I left them to catch up and tell stories. There would be time, after all, to hear all about Evan’s Halloween and I wanted to know how they had come to find us here. Ned wouldn’t say, of course. He just said: “Ask Collin, it’s his fault.”
I found Collin helping with the new orphanage, a big building made of rough-hewn timbers in the northeast corner of the town. He was finally out of his black fatigues, wearing a faded gray T-shirt and jeans, looking darling and shabby and English. His gun lay a safe and close distance away, well-kept and leaning against a wall.
I brought him lemonade.
“Thanks,” he said. We walked a ways from the construction. The lemonade was lukewarm. We’re still working on how to make ice efficiently. He sipped the drink for a moment, watching me with his dark, serious eyes over the rim of the paper cup.
“I’m glad you made it,” Collin said. He wiped at the sweat building at his temples. “I knew you would.” There was a smile there I couldn’t quite place, a self-satisfaction that made me wonder.…
“Shit.”
“What?” he asked, and I could see his smile peeking out from behind the edges of the Dixie cup.
“C in C. You’re C in C.”
“Mystery solved,” he said, inclining his head as if to an old, respected colleague. “Well done, Holmes.”
“That’s … that’s how you knew to come here? You were reading the blog?”
“We stayed with a family in Rockford who were kind enough to let us use their computer,” he said. Of course, part of me expected him to withdraw, for that old, familiar remoteness to drag
him away from me, but his face remained painfully open, eager even. The other part of me hoped against hope that there was something to fight for. He hadn’t changed physically, not at all. There was a new scratch on his cheek and a bit more gray at his temples, but otherwise he stood there, tall and erect, exactly as I remembered. But there was someone new looking at me, someone with an unfamiliar urgency, a voracious curiosity I had never seen before or had somehow managed to forget.
And I felt myself retreating, preparing for the letdown that was surely coming. He would mention her any minute and that would be the beginning of our long and tortured friendship.
“How the hell did you manage to get here?” I asked.
“By truck, by car, anyway we could,” he replied, lowering the lemonade cup. He looked down at the cup, fidgeting. “I was sorry to read about your friend.”
“Yeah. He would’ve liked it here.” It was the only thing I could think of to say. I felt a lump building in my throat and quickly looked down at my feet. I didn’t want to talk about Julian.
“And Lydia?” I asked.
I hadn’t seen her yet, not hanging around with Ned and his kids or sulking in the background. Finn, oddly enough, was missing too. At the arena he had been like Collin’s redheaded shadow, always pacing somewhere in the background with his gun and his black temper. It was hard, after so many weeks, to expect anything but the worst. I could only imagine what Collin must be thinking of me, of what I said about her, about him.
“Good,” Collin said, searching my face. “She’s good … I mean, the last time I saw her, she was doing rather well. As well as one can be, I suppose, considering the times.”
“Good,” I said, trying and undoubtedly failing to mask my curiosity.
“And you?” he asked. “You’re—”
“Good.”
“Good!”
“It’s good. I mean, it’s nice to see you,” I said, shoving my hands into my back pockets. My cheeks prickled with heat and only grew steadily warmer as I mentally ticked off the number of times I insulted Lydia on the blog and the number of times I said something completely asinine about Collin. And Odysseus—oh Jesus, Odysseus … There are sinking feelings and then there are quicksand, clawing for your life, wishing you were dead sinking feelings. I suddenly had a very bad case of the latter.
“So wow, you’re here, that’s … I’m glad. I’m glad we’re all here, together,” I said, rambling.
“Me too.”
“Jesus, Collin! Are you going to tell me or just let me suffer?”
He grinned with almost childlike sweetness and I knew he had been waiting for me to ask, to let the curiosity get the better of me. It was nice to see him out of army fatigues, wearing civilian clothes, looking more like a professor, a teacher, an ordinary man and less like a soldier. At last he drew breath and began to speak, slowly.
“I want to say it’s complicated, but I don’t think it is,” he said, ruffling his hair with the heel of his palm. “She stayed behind in Rockford and Finn as well. It was their decision and I … I’m just glad they’re happy and safe.”
“You mean, they—Finn and Lydia—are together? Together together?”
I could feel that breakfast I didn’t eat spinning in my stomach.
“Yes, exactly.” He chuckled. “She was kind enough to let me know about the … Well, her change of heart. I should have seen it coming, really, but as it turned out I was a bit distracted,” he said, idly spinning his lemonade cup. His eyes, his smiling eyes, were glowing in the cool, muted sunshine.
“That’s … crazy. I mean that’s unbelievable, Collin. I’m so sorry,” I said, knowing that sympathy was my duty, my absolute first duty as a friend. I’d save the happy dance for later, in private.
“No you’re not,” he said, rightly. “And neither am I.”
“But she left you, for a younger man—I mean, your nephew.”
“Surely her actions are defendable when one considers mine,” he said quickly, laughing again. Then his cheeky smile faded to a frown. “Hm. Silly me. I thought you might be pleased.”
“Pleased? Pleased? I—you—fuck you!”
I could feel my heart, the damned thing, lifting right out of my chest, trying to float out of my throat and up to the clouds. If I could bottle that feeling … But I couldn’t, it was too much feeling to hold on to. Collin dropped his cup on the hard, frozen ground and rushed to hug me. We held each other and I searched, as I always do, for something important to say. Graciously, Collin saved me the embarrassment.
“Every day was just a version of the one before, a day of trying to forget you. I had to do something. I had to find you,” he said, and it’s that voice, that beautiful golden voice that came to me over the radio so long ago and guided me, like a ferryman made of light, to a new life. “Maybe it’s good I wasn’t with you,” he said, kissing my face. There were still fresh bandages there from my little Jeep mishap at the movie theater. “You very nearly gave me a heart attack with some of those stunts you pulled.”
“And you’re not mad?” I asked. “About what I wrote?”
“No, no of course not. A little annoyed maybe,” he said, laughing. “But never mad.”
* * *
There are, as always, disappointments. My mom is still missing, Ted flirted with an early death and a good man died to get me here. But there are joys too. There’s winter to look forward to, a season of survival, of hardship and teamwork. Teamwork attempted with a partner, a good partner. I think we’ll go looking for Little House on the Prairie soon, Collin and I, heading another expedition to restock the library. It should offer some much-needed perspective. We’re not that bad off. We’re never that bad off. And Dapper will get to romp in the snow. Evan and Mikey will get to build snowmen and maybe Collin can teach us to build igloos. Collin and I are hoping to build our own lodge before winter shows up. We probably won’t be able to build one fast enough but God knows, we’ll try.
And soon the first really dangerous frost will come and maybe that will slow down the undead. Maybe the gunfire at the walls will stop. Maybe when the snowflakes start to gather against the cold glass panes, and we need to boil water to stay alive; maybe then, when the windows are embroidered with icy lace; maybe then we’ll know a moment’s peace. Spring will follow after that, and maybe my mother will make it here, bringing with her the smile I know so well, the face that isn’t my face, the love that is definitely my love. Maybe then a stillness will fall and each of us will look up at the sky and say: it’s not so bad, the undead are coming and we might not get out, but for once that’s really not so bad.
And maybe I lied. Maybe this is Utopia in a way—a tangled, difficult way.
A paradise of infinite possibility.
COMMENTS
Isaac says:
January 2, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Checking in to say we’re safe and sound, just rough around the edges. Canada is beautiful and stark this time of year. I won’t hope for anymore updates from you guys. It’s been months since your last post. I’m going to just keep believing you’re doing well and making us proud in Liberty Village.
steveinchicago says:
January 16, 2010 at 3:31 pm
still going. made it christmas and beyond. we’re thankful for every day we get and thankful that you made it to where you were going.
Norway says:
February 2, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Oslo gone, Drammen gone, undead coming north. It’s alright, though, we’re ready for them. I thought I had read this thing for the last time and said goodbye forever. I keep checking back. Always. Just in case. I’ll probably keep on checking, every few days maybe, staying optimistic until the lights finally go out.
The Witt-Burroughs Press
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Independence, NY 12404
September 10, 2108
The New University of Northern Colorado
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> Liberty Village, CO 80701
Dear Professor Stockton:
Thank you for your continued interest in our press. We owe our longstanding success to devoted individuals such as yourself.
It is with deep regret that I must deny your proposal to have Ms. Hewitt’s story included in our forthcoming collection. While I appreciate your interest in the project and admire your dedication to scholarship, I cannot in good faith include this woman in a project designed to laud what is best and most noble about our species. I am, quite frankly, perplexed as to how you ever imagined that such a vulgar, bloodthirsty recount could merit standing among the likes of Shana Lane and Simon Forrest, artists of the highest caliber both morally and spiritually. Dr. Marion Moore will feature prominently in this collection. You will of course recognize Dr. Moore as the brilliant scientific mind responsible for the Z-12 compound, the odorless, colorless chemical that proved harmless to the living and extremely lethal against The Infected. Her work could almost single-handedly be praised as the invention that made widespread containment possible. Despite what her few detractors might say, it was only through Dr. Moore’s painstaking research that we were allowed to pinpoint the exact location of the West Virginia facility where the killer virus—for whatever reason—was developed, engineered and ultimately unleashed.
Therefore, Mr. Stockton, I must be candid and say that I am personally offended by your suggestion that Allison Hewitt belongs in our collection. I find her fluid, unidentifiable morality as repugnant and unconscionable as her confessed actions. Murder? Theft? This is the face of the faceless masses, you say? Someone like Dr. Moore saved us from further tragedy. What, exactly, is Ms. Hewitt’s great contribution? We here at the Witt-Burroughs Press strive to promote change, to demonstrate that even when faced with the greatest possible adversity, humanity strove forward bravely and righteously, not wallowing in savagery and demeaning the very characteristics that separate us from The Infected. We will not, nor would we ever, include this woman in a work meant to inspire its readers.