Will and Rachel drove up to the dock with their two fellow exiles, Truman and Blue Eye. They unloaded their few possessions into it-including, I was surprised to see, what I thought were the cases for a violin and a typewriter. It was only later that I found out what these things were doing there. When they were through, there was a long and very desperate farewell between Will and his parents. Ms. Wright tried hard to control herself, but you could tell her anguish was unbearable, and in the time I've known her since, she often seemed not the same person, but withdrawn and less full inside.

    While they were saying goodbye, Rachel and the two zombies were sort of left alone. It was a good moment for me to speak to them. I walked over and hugged Rachel with all my strength. I pressed my face into her beautiful red locks and we both wept softly. "You take care, kid," she said. "You be strong and keep an eye on these people. You're good at that."

    I stepped back, nodding and dabbing my eyes. There was nothing I could say to her to take in the enormity of her decisions. I felt little fear for her. Everything she did, she seemed to do out of love and hope, so what fear or regret could either of us have?

    I turned and handed Truman the little pack that Will had given me when he went off in pursuit of the men he thought had attacked us. "Will gave me this to hold on to," I said. "I don't know whose they are, but perhaps you'd like to take them with you."

    Truman took it and opened it, and he looked very happy to have it back, though he held back a smile. As with the typewriter and violin, I only found out later what the pack contained.

    Truman set down the pack, and Blue Eye helped him get out a sheaf of papers from a bag he was carrying. They handed them to me.

    "You wrote this?" I asked. He nodded. "You don't want it?"

    He shook his head. He slowly put his finger on my chest and pressed.

    "You want me to have it?"

    He nodded.

    All I could do that day was thank him for it. Later I would find out what he had written and all they had been through.

    They then got on board the boat. It was a good sized sailboat, which the people of the River Nation, despite all their bellicose bluster, had helped us equip. Mr. Caine and my dad helped with the lines, and the boat pulled away, slowly at first, till the current nearer the middle of the river picked them up and they started moving faster. They left us behind, drifting serenely down the huge waters of the river-Rachel and Will, together with Truman and Blue Eye, who I later learned was called Lucy, though I suppose she herself would never know that name.

    After that day, I spent the rest of the summer with the people who train our city's guard dogs. Sometimes I even had to wear the big, padded suit while the dogs learned to bite, hold, and take down an assailant. With my intense fear of canines, it was a punishment both more and less traumatic than I could've imagined. When I first heard of it, I could barely breathe, I was so terrified. And for the first several weeks that I worked with the animals, I'd come home and sob uncontrollably till I fell asleep. I almost succeeded in driving a wedge between Mom and Dad, and nearly got her to relent. But she had been so aghast that my silence had endangered me that she resisted my crying till it abated. Those weeks left me with a vivid memory of pain and fear to remind me never to ignore or keep secrets from others. But once I was past the first few weeks, working with the dogs was just another part of my life in our community, a necessary job, one that most of the time was more enjoyable than some others. I never got to like dogs, but I respected and valued them after that.

    Since that summer, I have often imagined all the adventures they must be having. I only imagine good ones-the lost cities they rediscover, the other people they meet, even other smart zombies who befriend them. It's wishful thinking, of course, and they may well all be long dead by now. But it is a hope, and as Milton said, of all other virtues or feelings, hope-together with love-is the one we rely on the most in our world. I think those four people had a purpose-first, to leave us a record of what they went through and learned that summer, and then to leave us with such a hope that their learning and growth were not for nothing, that it enabled them to accomplish more.

    In my imaginings, they never stop or settle down, but just keep going. They find a bigger boat and cross the ocean and they take the paintings off the walls of the Louvre before they rot away completely; they hang them on the bridge of their ship so they can enjoy looking at them, and also so they can show them to others. Everywhere they go, people think what a strange and wondrous group they are-two living, two dead-and they send them on their way with more stories and good wishes-like an Odysseus, Dante, Ishmael, or Gulliver. They are always wandering, because, of course, they never quite fit anywhere they go, as they couldn't quite fit here among us. In that way, they're more like another wanderer, Cain, but I always feel that their road is quite different from his.

    If they were marked by us for exile, I like to think they were also given a protective mark by something higher, more permanent, and wiser than we are. It was just that our rules, our categories, couldn't understand or accommodate people who were uncomfortable in society, or people who felt more comfortable with those of the other group than they did with those of their own. Will had been right-we do tend to treat the dead as either precious idols, or deadly demons. That they were still just people is too hard for us to comprehend; dealing with the few living people is complicated and confusing enough.

    In my head, they don't just wander, of course. They each find their own happiness in their little ark. Lucy plays her violin to crowds all over the world, and people remember what beauty is and they want more of it. Truman keeps reading and learning, till eventually he writes new books and they drop these off at new ports for people to learn from. And Will and Rachel have a brood of children who grow up knowing this strange new world and only the good possibilities of it. For them, death and life coexist without fear or ignorance, and only killing is a terrible mystery they fear and shun. And for them, freedom is more a reality and necessity than we can ever know in our community.

    Our life here in the city after they left has been much less adventuresome or dramatic than any of my fantasies. The people of the River Nation lived quite differently than we did. They had retained some government, strangely loose and harsh, and at times more restrictive and burdensome than we could tolerate or understand. And although everything was still traded by barter among them, because their villages had been spread out along the river, they also had a more complex, varied economy than ours.

    When I later read Truman's journal, I smiled at Will's cornsilk cigarettes; tobacco became widely available once we began to trade with the River Nation, since their colonies extended down to southern areas where they could get the deadly but comforting little weed. Little by little, our lives have become intertwined and melded with those of this other "nation"-one nation combined with one non-nation, forming something for which we still have no name or word.

    As we adapted to their economy, so they took up our ways of dealing with the dead. They realized that much of their growth and safety had been due to Milton clearing the dead out of nearby areas, and they were grateful to us, and also eager to give up their own practices of cruelly executing the deceased. Eventually, Milton got too old to constantly be out in the wilderness, rounding up the dead, but by then there were enough people that it could be done without him. The dead were also getting slower, tired, more fragile, and increasingly posed less and less of a threat.

    Of course, my own individual life bears little resemblance to my fantasy of the four people who left us that day, except in the one detail of begetting children. I grew up and married, one of the first brides of our time to wear a real dress, one we had salvaged from the dead city; even though it was meant for the prom, it was beautiful, its sequins catching the sunlight just right. I sit here writing this now, my belly huge with my first child. I suppose that's part of what made me want to put everything down on paper-so the story of Truman, Lucy, Will, and Rachel wouldn't be lost for my children, but they would always know of the sacrifice, difficulties, wisdom, and mistakes of those four from years ago. It is my tribute to them, because I know I'm here only because of them, and as I learned that summer, gratitude and reverence are as important as hope, and as potent as love.

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