Monsters (30 page)

Gainsborough was larger than life. He ate with both hands. A pork chop in his right, a torn piece of bread in his left. Grease ran down his full beard. His hair was gray, but slightly curly, giving it a natural wave that swept up and to either side. James found himself being drawn into the general’s energetic personality.

“McIntyre tells me you are a reader. This is good. Readers are not criminals. Readers are not wizards or witches. They are not to be feared. Readers are intelligent. They should be shown respect. But I ask you, what is more important than a reader?”

“I don’t know,” James replied biting into a delicious piece of pork.

“A writer. Without writers, there can be no readers. Writers are the originators, the creators.

“For a reader, there is only the past. All their efforts can only relive what someone else has written. But writers ... Writers command the future. That’s what we’re doing here, James. We are writing the future of mankind. We are not content to simply read about the past.

“No one ever accomplished anything by looking backwards. We must write the future. And our future cannot be one of submission to monsters. We must make our own future, write our own stories, and chronicle our own exploits, like your gallant rescue of my daughter.”

James was excited. As much as he loved his dad and their trips to the library, Gainsborough was right. Readers only ever looked back. There was never any talk of change in the future.

“Help me write the future,” the general said.

He had turned sideways in his chair, one arm resting on his knee while the other pressed against the table. His presence was overpowering, intimidating. This was a subtle, almost positive form of intimidation, something James had never known before. Not one that threatened harm or malice, but one that refused no for an answer, one that demanded compliance. James felt himself swept along by the current of a mighty river.

“We need good men. We need writers. We need those that read from the past and apply what they’ve learned to help shape the future.”

Gainsborough snapped his fingers.

“Bring me the table.”

A soldier brought over a small wooden box.

“Is it charged?” Gainsborough asked, opening the box.

“Yes, sir,” the soldier replied, backing away.

Gainsborough reached in and pulled out a thin, metal object slightly larger than a book but not as thick. He pressed something on the top and a light shone forth from the shattered, glassy surface, surprising James.

“Do you know what this is?” the general asked.

“No.”

“It’s everything.”

Gainsborough handed the flat metal rectangle to him. James was surprised by how light it felt. One entire surface lit up, showing a picture of children running in a meadow. The words “Slide to unlock” flickered and glowed at the bottom of the picture. At the top, the word “Tablet” appeared, and James guessed this was what Gainsborough meant when he said table. But that Gainsborough didn’t know the correct, more descriptive term surprised James. Gainsborough couldn’t read.

“Go on,” Gainsborough said, gesturing with his hand.

James ran his finger over the cracked glass and the image changed, showing a series of colored boxes arranged in rows.

“Hah,” cried Gainsborough, turning toward McIntyre. “Never ceases to amaze me.”

“What is it?” James asked.

“It is everything you’ve ever wanted to know. Everything you could ever learn. Touch the word ‘books’ and see what happens.”

James pushed his finger firmly against the glass and the screen before him changed, revealing what looked like a library shelf with a dozen books on it.

Gainsborough gestured with his hand, indicating James should swipe up and down. He did so and watched as hundreds and hundreds of book covers scrolled past his fingertips.

“Pick one,” Gainsborough said. He was clearly enjoying the sense of wonder sweeping over James. One title in particular caught James’ eye, jumping off the screen at him.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.

The book opened to the copyright page. Gainsborough made out as though he were flicking sheets of paper, and James copied, brushing his fingers across the fine cracks in the glass screen and watching as a page appeared to turn, revealing the start of the novel.

“How?” James asked, turning the tablet to one side and examining the edges and looking at the logo on the back.

“It’s not magic,” the general replied. “It’s technology. This is our past, all of it, hundreds of thousands of books, more books than you could read in a lifetime, and all of it on a device that weighs less than a single book.”

“So all we’ve lost,” James began, barely able to articulate what he was thinking. “All the books that were burned, all the desolate libraries, we can restore them with this?”

“Yes.”

Gainsborough took the tablet back from James, turning it off and placing it in the box.

“This is not just our past, it is our future,” he added. “We can reach these heights again.”

James was awestruck.

The soldier returned and took the box away, handling it with a sense of reverence.

“You see. We have much to offer a reader like yourself.”

James struggled to contain his excitement. “How many tablets do you have?”

“Just one that works. It is a tease, the promise of all that lies out there waiting to be discovered. There are unimaginable treasures like this just waiting to be uncovered in the ruins.”

Gainsborough stood. James started to get to his feet, but the older man signaled he should remain seated.

“We need good men. We need those that want to rebuild this world. Stay with us. Learn from us. Help us.”

The general didn’t wait for a response. He rested his hand on James’ shoulder and patted him as he walked away. For his part, James was still stunned by the tablet. He wanted to read those books, all of them, or at least as many as he could.

McIntyre followed Gainsborough. He leaned down as he passed James, speaking softly.

“Don’t get too comfortable up here. From tonight, you eat with the rest of the men.”

Soldiers formed up in lines according to rank and began crowding around the table, taking their food.

One of the servants helped Lisa stand, bringing her a pair of crutches. James stood as well, not sure quite what he should be doing next.

“You should leave while you still can,” Lisa said. “Before you get in too deep.”

She turned away from him before he could respond. Leave, he thought. Last night, that had been his intention. Now he wasn’t so sure. Part of him wanted to return to the farm, to be with his father, but a whole new world seemed to be opening up to him. And the prospect of getting his hands on the tablet again was too much, clouding his thinking.

Over the next few days, James found himself split between two work groups, farm duties and working in the library. The library was a disappointment. The books were either worthless, trashy paperbacks or technical manuals. Time with the tablet had to be approved by Gainsborough. James had a request in, but the wait was torture.

The farm was well organized. Originally it had been an annex of the prison compound, but Gainsborough and his men had extended it, clearing an adjacent park.

The walls surrounding the farm were made from scrap metal, bound together with wire. They provided an effective barrier against the monsters, keeping them at bay. The overturned, rusting hulk of buses, cars and trucks piled on top of each other held up sheets of metal and corrugated roofing iron over twenty feet in height.

In places, brick walls had been built, but James didn’t like the approach. He preferred the spike pits and wooden fences they used in the south.

In theory, the metal fencing and brick walls were more effective, but they also limited visibility. With the open fencing used around his farm in the south, James was able to see the approach of a monster long before it became dangerous. When the fences around the prison farm failed, no one had any idea what would come through because they hadn’t seen whether there were mountain lions on the prowl or bears foraging.

In the first month James was there, they lost four men to animal attacks after a loose car frame had been nudged aside by a nosy bear.

James got his tablet time, two hours a week. He had to contain himself, reading quickly but not so quick as to miss the heart and intent of the writers he’d chosen to read.

His father had once told him about the works of Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins but had never read them to him. Both authors had numerous books in the tablet’s electronic library, so James picked the titles that most interested him at first glance:
Demon-Haunted World
and
Devil’s Chaplain
. Why those titles, he wondered as he pondered what he’d read over the long days between tablet time.

What did his choices say about his attitude? The books themselves were scientific in nature, he’d known that when he’d chosen the authors, and yet it was their defiance that appealed to him. They refused to accept the superstitions and reasoning others took as the norm. Deep down, James wanted to have the same kind of penetrating, critical thinking.

For James, the week between his electronic reading privileges was unbearably long. The rationale behind the delay was that it took eight hours to charge the tablet for just a couple of hours reading, hooking it up to a transformer connected to the boiler. And there were others with higher priority access, those studying engineering and medicine. James was told he should be thankful Gainsborough had allotted him any time at all, and he was, but he wanted more.

He didn’t see the general much as the old man kept a close circle of confidants around him.

McIntyre was professionally detached, treating James as just another soldier, which he guessed he was.

Lisa softened in her attitude toward him, but she was still withdrawn, and he only saw her every second day or so, normally at a distance.

James wanted more of everything it seemed, and that frustrated him. He was a grunt, at the bottom of a pecking order he’d never consciously sought out.

McIntyre gave James and another young man an assignment to prepare and paint a harvest bin, a large metal trailer used for collecting corn and wheat. James had never painted anything in his life, let alone a steel structure some fifteen feet high.

Anders was a particularly robust farm hand and was happy to take the assignment. With more experience, he took charge of the task. After two days of scrubbing the flaking paint off the metal frame, they finally got to the point where they could start painting. The frame and axle had been originally painted in a deep green, while the vast empty bin was a dull red.

McIntyre came up behind them as they slaved away under the hot sun.

“Make sure you don’t leave any traces of rust on this thing,” he said, without so much as an introduction. James had his back to him, scrubbing a support strut with a wire brush and so was taken by surprise by his gruff voice. He turned to say something to McIntyre, but one of the captain’s aides was talking to him, pointing something out in the distance. McIntyre had a clipboard and was making notes as the other man spoke.

James wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

Anders was already putting a coat of red paint on the inside of the bin with a roller. He was high on a ladder, leaning into the trailer.

“What color do you want us to paint this?” James asked, gesturing toward the odd assembly of the vast red bin seated on the green chassis and frame.

McIntyre seemed distracted. He grunted, “Paint it the same.”

Anders went to say something, but McIntyre was already marching off toward one of the barns.

James and Anders were determined to impress the captain. With six hours of daylight left, they figured they could put their backs into the work and finish by supper. Working from the top down, they ignored the heat, liberally applying a thick coat of red paint to the entire trailer.

The two men finished as the sun sat low on the horizon. There was just enough time to clean the brushes and get back to the compound for dinner.

As they were packing up, McIntyre came storming over. The two young men stood shoulder to shoulder, proud of their work, proud to have finished painting in a single day.

“What in the blazes have you done?” McIntyre cried, his arm out, pointing at the trailer.

James looked at Anders, baffled.

Sheepishly, Anders said, “We did what you asked of us.”

“Bloody hell,” McIntyre cried. “Do I have to do everything myself? Is it too much to ask for you young bucks to follow some simple goddamn directions?”

“I don’t—” Anders began.

James cringed. Suddenly, it was clear what McIntyre had meant, and he felt like kicking himself for being such a fool.

“Why the hell did you do that?” McIntyre yelled. “Are you two idiots trying to make a fool out of me?”

“No, sir,” James replied.

“I told you to paint it the same.”

“We did,” Anders pleaded.

“No you haven’t. You’ve painted it all red.”

James felt stupid.

“But you said—” continued Anders.

“I told you idiots to paint it the same as it was,” McIntyre cried. “Red on top. Green on the bottom. Get the hell out of here. Go get cleaned up. I’ll deal with you two clowns tomorrow.”

Anders took the remonstration worse than James. From his sullen look, James could see he was disappointed in himself. James thought it was funny, although he didn’t dare say so while McIntyre was standing there.

That night, a cool wind blew in from the north, cutting through the humidity of the past few days. James was walking back from dinner when Lisa called out from somewhere above him.

“Hey, James.”

He turned and looked up. Lisa was sitting on a balcony, enjoying the cool of the evening.

“Please tell me that was deliberate,” she said, leaning forward, trying not to laugh.

Lisa didn’t have to say what she was talking about. James knew. He looked around, not wanting to call out loud in front of the wrong person and say something he might regret.