Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

A good book is like a fine meal. Every bit you take only increases your enjoyment , and although you’re curious what dessert is at the end, you’re sorry to finish it since you know nothing can compare to that first taste, even if you sit down to the same meal again.

Some people are gourmets, carefully savoring the taste as they consume the portions in their proper order. Others are gluttons, choking tomes down as fast as they’ll go, sometimes even starting with the dessert first.

Me, I’m a glutton who likes his desserts. The first thing I read will invariably be the last chapter of the book. My literary-minded friends find this heretical, but for me the focus has always been the journey, not the destination. And there’s always the chance that things will go differently, and that the ending I read at the beginning won’t be the one I arrive at when the book is finished.

I remember the first time that happened…

The note was creased and worn, as if it had been worried over for some time. Erased words were still visible beneath their replacements and sometimes a whole lineage could be traced. The first words had the smudged look of old pencil, but the last were fresh enough to rub off on one’s hands.

I want to tell my children about a day that was so bright and clean and pure that you could shout possibilities to the heavens and no one would question them. I want to tell them that I devoured that day, let its juices drip down my chin; I want to tell them that I lived that day as fiercely as if it were my very last.

What I will tell them, if indeed I tell them anything at all, is how I spent that day behind my desk, watching it blossom and fade in snatches. Through a window here, a door there, sunlight dancing its life away on tiled floors. I will tell them how I emerged only as the day was cooling and dying to embers about me.

Zero gravity does funny things to your mind. One minute you’re clinging to the floor, then it becomes a wall, then a ceiling. Tim had a little zero-g training, but nothing had ever been this bad. His one ride on the Vomit Comet paled in comparison to the real thing, and even that had filled two puke bags. Tim was on a nonstop roller coaster with shifting directions, and it was making him sick.

Angrily, he thought of what he’d been told before signing up for the trip—that the artificial gravity was foolproof, that there was no need for any specialized training, that no commercial craft’s gravity had failed in over ten years.

Then again, the men in those fancy suits were safely on terra firma, and who could have predicted such a catastrophe?

“You don’t understand me,” Brown cried. “This city’s about to fall! She’ll be killed if she stays! I’m just trying to do my job!”

The bartender sighed. “Listen to me, Marine. Perhaps you are right; perhaps when the rebels come they will kill Ms. Anne. But perhaps not. Perhaps the rebel at the very front of the column was a schoolmate of hers. Perhaps the soldiers that burst in here know her from playing in the streets. She grew up here, and cannot believe the land would allow any harm to come.”

“But…”

“I have survived several coups, Marine. I will survive this one as well. The men are always thirsty. They are thirsty for other things as well, and if Ms. Anne wishes to wait, to see her old school friends’ faces when the men come for her, who are you to deny her? Go. Ms. Anne does not want to leave, and I will shoot you if you try and take her.”

The book had obviously been well-used; it was worn and tattered, so much so that Kim could barely make out the title: “Collected Rhymes and Verse, 5th ed. 1919. Brylhard Faberhart, editor.”

She ran her hand over the cover, feeling the decaying cloth that held the volume together. Gingerly, Kim made her way to the attic window. Carefully, she opened the book and held it up to the light. Written in ink on the first page were the words “To Francine, with love and hope, from John. Dec. 24, 1920.”

“He gave this to her,” Kim murmured. “He gave this to her less than a week before he died.”

An ancient Ford Model T lies in the center of the field, slowly rusting away. Bare rungs that once held a roof jut nakedly into the cold morning air. Stiff oxidized springs squat forlornly where a driver had once sat; the soft padding long ago dispersed by countless mice and birds. The entire front end of the vehicle is missing, its parts no doubt scavenged to prolong the lives of other vehicles. It looks like the skeleton of some forgotten animal, forever lifeless and condemned to stand as a memorial to what once had been.

“Are you sure this is it?” Sam says.

Her grandfather pokes a finger through what looks like a bullet hole on one of the rocker panels. “How could I forget?”

The town had an eerie stillness about it, a kind of emptiness that cut into Carl more deeply than the chill February breeze. Walking down the street, not a soul stirred: the sidewalks were vacant, the cars were parked and locked, and the store windows were fogged and frosted. Carl knew that the subzero temperatures had forced everyone indoors, but he still felt a kind of grinding uneasiness as he walked along.

A shape appeared at the far end of the block. Carl felt a bit of relief in seeing another soul, and was about to cry out a friendly hello when he noticed something very strange about the other person’s gait.

“Hey, are you all right?” he said. A moment later he gasped—a sound that quickly became a shocked yelp.

Harve shook his head. “No. I won’t. You can’t make me.”

“Why not?”

Harve’s eyes flashed. “I don’t need to explain myself to you!” he shouted, “I don’t owe you anything! I said NO, and I mean it. Now leave me alone.”

“You’re just afraid,” came the reply. “You’re a coward and a weakling.”

“Wrong.” Harve said through clenched teeth. “I despise you–and I’m not going to let you have you the pleasure of seeing me give in.”

“I’ll make you.”

“Good! Go ahead and try. Nothing could be better than spitting in your face when you try to muscle me into doing things your way.” Harve smiled bitterly. “Go ahead and try.”

“All right. I’ll enjoy wiping that smile off.”

This was too grievous an insult to bear. The Marching Wildcats stood for a moment, stunned, until big Jacob Yotz held his sousaphone aloft and uttered a guttural cry before heaving it at the ground. The crowd and the players froze, watching silently as Yotz pried a piece of piping from the mangled instrument at his feet and charged forward, screaming.

The tubas followed him, and then the trombones, the trumpets, and the entire band. The percussionists threw aside their heavy drums, brandishing their sticks as the Marching Wildcats erupted into hoots and hollers and charged. They plowed into the enemy, cutting a swath through them as the Battle of the Band was joined.

Joshua nodded. He glanced out the window, eyes streaming with tears. The intense light had faded from his eyes, and now they brimmed with sunlight.

“So what do we do now?” Margie said. “They’ll be looking for us. When Wright doesn’t report, they’ll send someone out.”

“We’re stabbed the Entente in the back,” Lightoller sighed. “We’ve stabbed the Germans in the back. Everybody here is going to be wanted wherever we land.”

“We’ve got to go on,” Joshua said, finding his voice. “Henriques and Lily gave us that obligation through their sacrifice. If we sit here, if we turn ourselves in, if we give up…we’ve betrayed everything they gave up for us.”

There was silence for a moment. “So what do we do now?” Margie asked again.

“We live,” Joshua said, “and we keep on living.”