The Eleventh Plague

NINETEEN

The trees grew thicker as I went, choked with deadfall and thornbushes. I pulled myself over the fence that marked the northern edge of town. All around me were the night sounds of the woods: owls hooting and lizards skittering through the underbrush. Farther out were the heavier steps of larger things — deer or wolves or bears — making their own way through the dark.

I leapt over a fast-running stream and then stepped out into a clearing, caught in the silvery wash of the moon. On the far side were the remains of a barn. Its arid wood slats were pockmarked with nail holes and overgrown with moss and creeping vines. There was a large ragged hole in the roof.

The whole place was surrounded by rusting farm implements, hoes and shovels and pitchforks, and what I thought was an old tractor that was covered in vines and weeds.

This old barn, Jackson had said. North of town.

I crept up to the barn and slipped in through half-opened doors. The inside was lit with a few flickering candles that sat near an old mattress in one corner. I looked around but there was no one there, just piles of hay bound into moldering blocks against the walls, and rakes and a long rusty scythe hanging on pegs. Something rustled in the loft above me. “Jenny?”

An owl exploded out through the hole in the ceiling, startling me enough that I almost cried out. I steadied myself and crossed the barn to the mattress. It was covered with a quilt and a couple thin pillows. Scattered around it were scraps of paper, clothes and stubs of old candles, another dog-eared chemistry book. Near the head of the bed was Jenny’s sketch pad.

I peered into the dark corners of the barn to make sure I was alone, then set the rifle to the side and knelt down. I opened the sketch pad, tipping its face into the candlelight. The drawings at the beginning were mostly of people. Tuttle glowered from one page, surrounded by a dark halo, his ruler in hand. Sam sat in soft candlelight holding a pipe, a half smile on his face and a book draped over one knee. As I got toward the end, the people began to disappear and were replaced by trees, the barn, the school building, empty fields. If there were any people at all, they were seen from far away, their backs turned — dark, faceless walls.

“What are you doing here?”

I twisted around so fast I lost my balance and fell in a heap onto the bed, scrambling backward away from the voice. When I looked up, Jenny was standing over me in a bloodstained T-shirt, with a cat’s grin and a black eye.

“Nice squeal, tough guy.”

“I didn’t —”

“Whatever.” Jenny snatched the sketch pad off the floor next to me. “What are you doing here?”

I stood up warily, awkward in my backpack and coat. I searched the ground for an explanation. “I was … walking.”

Jenny turned and peered into the dark outside the doors. “There’s no one else here,” I said. “It’s just me.”

“I thought you were pissed at me.”

I shrugged. Jenny set the sketch pad on a pile behind the bed. “How’s your hand?”

I raised my right hand into the light and flexed my fingers. The bleeding had stopped, leaving my knuckles crusted with dirt and blood. The joints ground together when I moved them.

“We should clean it up,” Jenny said. She retrieved a plastic box from her bedside and stood in front of me. I just looked at her. “What? You want gangrene? Sit down.”

I slipped out of my coat and pack and did as she said, sitting down on the edge of her bed. Jenny grabbed my hand, examined it, then started scrubbing away with a rag. I hissed and tried to pull back but Jenny held my wrist tight.

“Take it easy, you big baby. If it’s not clean, I’ll have to amputate.”

I held my breath as she worked the dirt out of my wounds. Once my hand was clean, she spread some ointment from a small tube on it.

“How come Violet’s not doing this for you?”

“Caleb was there when I got back after detention.”

Jenny looked up with one arched eyebrow.

“They were going to have a vote tomorrow,” I said. “I left before they could.”

Jenny stopped what she was doing. Her dark eyes smoldered and she cursed under her breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have —”

“You didn’t make me do anything.”

“Your dad, is he —?”

“He’s with Violet.”

“Good,” Jenny said. “They won’t mess with her about a patient. Wouldn’t dare.”

Jenny tossed the tube of ointment back in the kit and took out a roll of gauze. She began carefully winding the bandage around my hand.

“Well, at least we denied them the pleasure of tossing us out,” she said. “That’s something, right?”

“Yeah, that’ll show ‘em.”

Jenny smiled and her breathing slowed as she looped the bandage around my fingers and across my palm. It was strange to see her hard surface swept away. Before, she seemed like a giant. A hurricane. Here she was just a girl. The air around her felt still.

“So you’re not going back?” she asked.

“No. You?”

Jenny glanced up at the rafters. “And leave all of this? It’s easier for everybody if I don’t. No place for me in their American fantasy camp.” She shook her head with a dark laugh. “I mean, it’s hilarious, right? Baseball games. Thanksgiving. American flags. They’re the ones responsible for blowing all that stuff up in the first place, and now they love it so much and want it all back? They even took Fort Leonard and built themselves a little nemesis.”

“Marcus and Violet aren’t like that.”

Jenny looked up from under her black hair. “No?”

“They took me in,” I said. “Took you in too. They didn’t have to do that.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “They mean well, I know they do, it’s just … they only go so far. You know? They get right up to the edge and then back off.”

I thought of Marcus’s hand on Violet’s wrist, holding her back. Violet yielding.

“Like with the Krycheks.”

“Jackson told you about that? I’m surprised. It doesn’t exactly paint Mommy and Daddy in the best light. I don’t know. Maybe it’s as far as they can go. Maybe it’s safer to just keep things as they are.”

Jenny secured the bandage with a pin, then put the rest of the gauze away and snapped the med kit closed.

“Well, I think you’re all set. Should heal up in a few days.”

“So no amputation, then.”

“I’ll keep my eye on it.”

I took my hand back, a little sorry to see it leave the cradle of her palm. We sat there, silently, on the edge of her bed. I needed to go find a camp for the night, needed to search for supplies, but I didn’t move. An owl hooted outside. The candlelight flickered.

“How is he?” Jenny asked. “Your dad?”

Her question brought a wave that reared up over me again. My throat constricted and there was a burning in my eyes that I had to fight back. But then Jenny drew closer and laid the flat of her palm against my back. Every curve of it, warm and rough, spread across my ribs and spine. There was maybe an inch between my leg and the calloused plain of her bare foot. A pulse of heat came off her, carrying along with it the scent of pine and spicy earth.

Everything in me calmed. The heat and noise faded away.

“Ever since we got here, I’ve been saying, ‘when he wakes up,’ and ‘when he’s better.’ It’s like I’ve been trying to pretend that Violet didn’t say he might never wake up.”

“Violet can be wrong,” Jenny said. “She’s not perfect. I mean, there used to be, like, tests and instruments and things that told us what was going to happen to us, but not anymore. Right? Now we don’t know much of anything. The future just goes in whatever direction it wants.”

She was right. I thought of the churn of the river tearing through rock and dirt. Who knew where it would go? What it would wipe away? Who it would spare?

“Did you really mean that stuff you said in the note?” I asked. “The stuff about the world spinning?”

“Yeah,” Jenny said. “I did.”

“What do you do about it?”

Jenny stretched across the bed behind me, curling around my back, and dug into a bag on the other side. “What are you doing?”

When Jenny sat up, her hand was closed into a fist. “What I like to do in times like these. When the world’s got you down.”

“What?”

Jenny opened her hand into the candlelight. A pile of fat paper cylinders sat in her palm. There was a twisted white fuse attached to each one.

“If you thought punching people was good,” she said, “wait till you try blowing things up.”

Sitting there in the palm of her hand, the little explosives seemed distant, almost imaginary, but a tingling started through my whole body anyway, like that moment when my bat connected with the ball and I ran the bases.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked.

Jenny’s grin shone all the way to the corners of her lips.