I finish my own whiskey but I don’t dare ask for more, even though the soft buzzing in my ears relaxes me, makes me want to sink onto the couch and fade into an alcohol-induced sleep. I know the story of the wheat farmer’s daughter, of course, but he’s never spoken about what Cooper knew before he died, or if he suspected the woods held a sickness that might trap us within its boundary.
“There are too many risks in allowing you, or anyone, to go beyond our community. I hope you understand that.” He clears his throat. “Your leaving would only make things worse.”
My mind flicks back to the truck. To the photograph. Did Travis Wren make it to the community, as Bee said, or did he die out in those woods, illness rotting his body from the inside? His corpse somewhere in those trees, his grave unmarked, becoming part of the land.
Levi reaches out and takes the empty glass from my hand, placing it beside the bottle of whiskey. For a moment I think he’s going to refill both our glasses, and I watch intently. But then he speaks without turning around. “Cooper used to say that people on the outside crave something they can’t describe, a thing they have no words for: a forgotten taste at the back of the throat, the feel of a westerly breeze without the grit of pollution. They long for something they don’t know how to find. But we have found it here, within these walls. We pay a price for it certainly, we sacrifice something, but it’s worth it… don’t you think?” He turns around, leaving the glasses on the table. “This way of life gives us more than it takes. And we’d be stupid to give it up.”
I nod at him, a wave of guilt sliding along my spine for all the times I went down the road.
“And the truth is—” he continues. “We don’t know how far the illness has spread, if it’s gone beyond our forest.”
I swallow tightly. “What?”
“There might not be anything left, Theo.” His eyes cut slantwise to the front window. “There might not be anything out there.”
I feel myself wanting to step closer to him, as if I’ve misheard.
“Even if you made it through the trees,” he goes on before I can ask what he means, “even if you made it out to the main road, there might not be any help to be found. No medicine. No doctors. Nothing.”
“You think the disease—” I catch myself, swallowing the words, choking on them.
The few who remember the outside, who’ve been there, have often talked of what they left behind: cities and wide oceans and electricity so abundant you never run out. I’ve always assumed it was still there, all of it, just waiting for us—for the day when it might be safe to move beyond our walls back into the world. I had always believed that if I made it through the forest, to the world beyond, there would be nothing out there to fear.
Maybe I was wrong.
“We can’t know for sure,” he continues, mouth pulled flat. “And I don’t want to frighten the others, but we have to protect what we have built here, just in case.”
I feel the room tilt slightly, the candlelight flickering in spasmodic patterns. I reach out and grip the edge of a chair.
“If you see anyone try to sneak past the gate,” Levi says now, his tone lowered, like he doesn’t want anyone beyond the walls of his house to hear. “I want you to stop them.”
I swallow, and release my hold on the chair.
“If anyone tries to leave, I want you to do whatever you have to.” His eyes settle on mine. “Do you understand?”
If Levi is right, and there’s nothing beyond our valley after all, then even if I’m immune, even if I made it through the trees, there might be no help to bring back. “I understand,” I say, a nagging ache tugging just above my left ear, like a scab not yet healed.
He steps forward and claps me weakly on the shoulder, and in his eyes I see the weariness of a man who hasn’t slept. Whose hair is beginning to gray at the temples. A man worn down by the strain of too many burdens within a community he’s trying to protect.
I feel sorry for him suddenly, and also like I don’t really know him at all.
He releases his grip on me and turns back to the cabinet and the waiting bottle of booze.
I walk unsteadily to the door, and when I glance back, he’s reaching for the bottle—he’s going to have a glass or two before he sinks into sleep, maybe he’ll finish it, pass out with the bottle tipped over beside him on the couch. He has the look of someone who’s venturing too close to madness.
I yank open the door and let myself out, breathing in the damp night air.