The Eleventh Plague

TWENTY-TWO

I avoided the main road, following the decaying perimeter fence as it wound through the woods before jumping it and heading toward Settler’s Landing. My steps felt lighter than usual as I walked through the bare trees. It was funny trying to imagine Jenny out with me and Dad on the trail. Somehow I couldn’t see her trudging along, donkey in tow, picking up scrap.

Maybe we won’t even go back on the trail.

I stopped dead in the middle of the woods, surprised by the thought. I rolled it around in my head like it was a jewel I had just discovered.

Was it possible? After all, Dad had been talking about it before the accident, and now with Jenny along, maybe we really could make a new start. Settle somewhere. Go west and see what there was to see. There was a whole world out there.

I laughed a little to myself. The idea would have terrified me just weeks ago. How had that changed? Was it Jenny? Was it Settler’s Landing? Did it even matter? Hope was hope and I’d take it.

I clambered down a hill and leapt over a stream. The trees opened up above me. The sky was thick with looming gray clouds. The way the temperature was dropping, I wondered if I might actually see snow this year.

Usually we were down in Florida by this time of year, since real winter storms could sometimes last for weeks on end. The last time I’d seen snow was during a freak storm years before. We had just gotten to the Canadian camp in early April, when the day suddenly grew cold and snow began to fall. It had seemed like a miracle. The trading camp had buzzed around us, everyone rushing to celebrate before it was gone. There’d been a bonfire and food roasting on spits and a three-man band whose music had floated above the camp.

Mom and Dad and I had stayed behind while Grandpa went out looking for tobacco. We’d gathered around our campfire in a semicircle of folding chairs, cooking a skinny chicken on a spit, a plastic tarp angled over us to keep the snow off. We knew from experience that several hours from that moment we would have to take refuge to escape the drunkenness and the fights that inevitably broke out after a big party, but that was later. Right then the air was full of laughter and music and the clean-smelling snow that had painted the muddy camp around us a fresh, brilliant white. I had The Lord of the Rings on my lap but was listening to Dad talk about his days as a theater usher in San Diego while Mom talked of wild party after wild party and teased him for being a nerd.

“So how did you guys meet?” I’d asked that night.

Mom had glanced at Dad. I was maybe eight then and they’d only recently started talking to me about the Collapse and the war.

“P Eleven had just started up,” Dad said. “There were rumors about a quarantine in San Diego, so your grandparents and I piled into the car, using Grandpa’s military ID to get us through the roadblocks. We thought we’d head out east to this old army installation in the desert to wait things out. On our way out of town, we stopped for gas at the station your mom’s parents owned.”

“By then my whole family was gone,” Mom said. “My sister, Sarah, went first, then Dad, then Mom.”

Mom’s face had darkened, remembering it.

“I heard the bell ding as your dad and his folks pulled up. I came out from behind the station to meet them. I was filthy. It’s funny — I was such a prissy little thing when I was little, playing dolls and insisting everything I owned be as pink and frilly as possible. But by that point, I barely bothered to wipe the dirt off my face before going to fill up their gas.”

Dad had held out his hand, stretching it across the space between them, and Mom had taken it.

“I pumped it for your grandpa, and when I was done, he dug down into his pocket to pay, but all he had was a hundred. When I told him I didn’t have change for a hundred, he started yelling and screaming, claiming I was trying to cheat him! I laughed. I was like … the world is coming to an end, man! I mean, the sky is falling! I just buried my entire family out in the desert, and you’re having an aneurysm over your eleven dollars and fifty cents in change? Finally I just said forget it. Go with God, Ebenezer!

“So he took his hundred and jumped in the car, but by that point your father here had gotten out of the car and said he wasn’t getting in until his dad agreed to take me with them. Well, if you thought your grandfather had been impolite before, imagine the tidal wave of profanity that erupted when number one son decided to stage a little coup. Your grandpa screamed and hollered, he stamped his feet, even hit him! Can you believe that? Hitting something as adorable as your father? Didn’t matter, though. Your dad was a brick wall. He wouldn’t give an inch. Not one inch. I hadn’t said two words to him yet! And here he was … my noble man.”

“Why’d you do it, Dad?”

Dad had locked eyes with Mom over the orange flames. The snow swirled behind him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Didn’t really even think about doing it till then. It was just … the second I saw her, it was like a jigsaw puzzle. You know? You’ve got all these pieces and, on its own, each piece is a splotch of blue or a bit of green. But then a bunch of them click into place and you’ve got the sky or the grass and the whole thing just makes sense.”

I’d recognized the look that came over his face then. He got it a lot when looking at Mom. It was like he was seeing her as she was right then, bright and rosy in the fire’s glow, but at the same time seeing her as she was on the day they met, and when they’d first kissed, and when they’d snuck away from Grandpa to be married, and then as he imagined she might be ten years down the line, then twenty, then thirty, and finally as the old woman he had no idea she would never have the chance to become.

It was like he was looking at his whole life with her in that one moment.

I stepped out of the tree line and into the Greens’ backyard. There were no candles lit in the windows and I couldn’t hear any sign of movement from inside. Still, I skirted around the edge of their backyard garden toward the front door. I knew they wouldn’t mind my coming, but I thought it would be better if they didn’t see me. Hiding behind the corner of the house, I peeked out into the neighborhood.

It seemed strangely quiet, empty, almost as if everyone who lived there had picked up and moved on the night before. I told myself it was just my imagination.

I came out around the side of the house and went up the front steps, letting myself inside. Dad lay in his usual place, looking exactly as he had the night before. His face, more and more drawn as the days passed, was still framed with his great swirls of black hair, shot through with veins of white.

He had become a different person the day he met Mom, like a switch had been flipped inside him. He stood up to Grandpa in a way he never had before, and then they somehow managed to hold on to each other as the world tore itself to shreds around them. They even had me when the idea of bringing another person into that wreck of a world must have seemed crazy at best.

I thought maybe the man he was back in the plane, the one who rescued those two people, was the man Mom knew emerging again after being so long without her, the man who wouldn’t admit that the world was really over.

She would have been so proud of him.

I realized, maybe for the first time, that I was too.

“Jenny wants to come with us when we go,” I said quietly, my hand on his shoulder. “I think you’ll like her. I was thinking maybe we won’t even go back on the trail. You know? Like you said before we came here? Maybe we’ll find someplace to have a house. Maybe we’ll —”

I stopped myself short. It was fine when it was all in my head, but it felt foolish to imagine that life out loud.

Driving back the sadness I could feel swelling inside me, I knelt down by his bed and collected the books, piling them up in my arms.

“I’ll be back soon,” I said.

I reached for the doorknob, but as I did I noticed the coatrack that hung on the wall next to the door frame. Something about it struck me, but for a second I didn’t understand what or why. And then I got it.

It was empty.

Each time I had seen the Greens come inside, they would take off their jackets and hang them on the coatrack’s pegs. If Jackson or Marcus ever forgot, Violet would ride him until he took it from wherever he dropped it and hung it up.

The Greens should have been upstairs, maybe a half hour or so from getting up and starting their day. So why was the coatrack empty?

I set my books on the floor and stepped into the kitchen, listening intently for any sound coming from upstairs. Nothing. From the bottom of the stairs, I could see Jackson’s door hanging open into the hall. The stairs creaked as I made my way up, but there was no answering sound from any of the rooms. There were clothes scattered on Jackson’s floor and his bed was disheveled, like he had gotten up and dressed in a hurry. I made my way to the end of the hall, to Marcus and Violet’s room, and found it the same way.

So what? Something came up and they all decided to get an early start. It’s nothing.

It made sense, but I didn’t believe it. Maybe it was that weird abandoned feeling I’d noticed as soon as I’d gotten to town this morning. I went downstairs and peeked out the front door. Just as I did, a door opened and slammed shut somewhere across the park. A man ran from his house and then down the road that led to the school.

I closed the Greens’ door behind me and eased out onto the porch. I knew I should take my books and go back to Jenny. After all, what happened in this town was no longer my business but, curious, I went down the road toward the school.

I reached the edge of the parking lot just as the man threw open the school’s front doors and disappeared inside. I circled around the side of the building, looking in each window as I had that first day, but saw nothing until I came around to the back of the school and looked in the window above the main classroom.

The room was packed with what I was sure was every single resident of Settler’s Landing. A hundred people or more. The desks and chairs were pushed aside and everyone stood facing Tuttle’s empty desk in tight groups. A murmur rose and fell in waves. I eased the window open.

Violet and Jackson were at the front of the mob. Violet stood behind Jackson with her hands on his shoulders. His face was cast down and his arms were crossed tightly over his chest. He leaned into his mom the way a scared child would. That was how everyone looked, afraid and waiting.

The doors at the back of the classroom flew open and Tuttle came in, followed by Caleb and Will and, behind them, Marcus. They all looked tired and pale. Their clothes were dirty and in some places torn. Each one of them was armed. The crowd hushed instantly as Caleb swept in front of Tuttle’s desk. He bowed his head, his hands clasped tightly in front of him.

“Poison,” Caleb said simply, letting it hang in the air without explanation. “The people of Israel were beset on all sides by the godless. Animals, starving and hungry for destruction. Unable to stand against the people of God in the field, they conspired to come into their land in parties of two or three as spies.”

Caleb paused, searching the crowd. I pushed farther away from the window.

“The people of Israel took them to their heart. They dressed them in their clothes and gave them food and water and fellowship. After all, they thought, there were so few of them, what harm could there be? The people of God grew proud of their kindness and generosity, barely noticing the poison that had infected them, like a brackish stream pouring into a clear lake, until soon the water all around them was murky and foul. The people of God said to one another, ‘But where is our home? Where is the land of God that was?’ This is how the weak and the profane destroy the strong and the righteous.”

The crowd held its breath as he scanned its faces.

“Last night, our home was attacked.”

The crowd didn’t move, except for some parents who pulled their children tighter.

“Two or more raiders from Fort Leonard, perhaps guided here by former members of our own community, came for our livestock, firing their weapons into the air to start a stampede. Whether their goal was to steal them or to simply run them off in order to weaken us before a larger assault, we don’t know. My family gave chase but was unable to overcome them.”

My first instinct was to laugh, it was so ridiculous, but the reaction from the crowd made it clear that this was deadly serious.

“Like you all, I know the danger of the world around us,” Caleb continued, his voice softening, growing warm, “how it presses against us every day. For years now we have been safe in our anonymity, blessed by God in this place, but I fear, I fear deeply, that such a time may be coming to an end. These new times will demand not only vigilance but also action. It’s my opinion that we cannot sit idly, waiting to be attacked again. If we are to be truly safe, we must act now before the danger grows. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but I propose the only course of action I feel is responsible. We must gather a force and, as quickly as possible, move to end the threat of Fort Leonard once and for all.”

The people of Settler’s Landing didn’t hold back. Their agreement was absolute and automatic in a way that was frightening. Men yelled. Some stomped their feet and pounded on the walls. Down in the crowd, I saw Derrick and Martin and Wendy and the rest, all of them with their parents, and all of them shouting their approval.

Down at the front of the group, though, Jackson melted even farther into Violet’s body, his skin waxy and pale as he imagined, I was sure, what was to come.

Caleb soaked in their approval as Sam entered the room, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He looked haggard, his clothes in disarray and a salt-and-pepper growth of stubble on his ashen face. Marcus leaned in, nodding, as Sam whispered to him. The two then slipped out the doors together and I moved away from the window to follow them. I thought that if I had the chance to stop the madness, this was it.

By the time I made it around to the parking lot, Sam and Marcus were talking to a small group of armed men. They spoke briefly, then Sam took the men east over the hill and out of sight. Marcus quickened his pace across the lot and toward town.

“Marcus!” I cried out. “Marcus, wait!”

Marcus turned back. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here, Stephen —”

“It was us,” I said, catching my breath.

“What?”

“Me and Jenny. At the Henrys’ last night. We didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a stupid prank to get back at Will and them.”

Marcus checked behind us, then yanked me off the road toward the shelter of the trees. “Someone said they were from Fort Leonard.”

“That was me. It was dumb. I know. I’m sorry. Look, just tell Caleb. Tell him it was us. We’ll go, we’ll really leave this time. There’s no reason to do what he’s saying. Build an army? Marcus, that’s insane.”

“It’s too late, Stephen.”

“No it’s not. Go back in there and tell them.”

“No,” he barked, almost knocking me back. “Caleb came and got a group of us right after it happened last night and we went out to Fort Leonard.”

Something sunk inside me.

“What did you do?”

Marcus drew a shaky breath, then dropped his eyes to the ground between us.

“Marcus, what happened?”

“We found their settlement early this morning. Figured out one of the buildings was a food storehouse. Caleb had the idea we should raid it like we thought they’d done to us. It seemed simple; the whole town looked to be asleep, but … there were two guards. They fired at us. Caleb shot one. I got the other.”

I jumped as the school doors boomed open behind us and the crowd started pouring into the lot out front.

“Maybe we can talk to them,” I said. “Talk to Caleb, explain. Maybe —”

“The people at Fort Leonard were getting together before we even left,” he said. “It won’t be long before they come looking for us. Our only chance now is to get them before they can get us.”

The rumble of the crowd grew louder as it reached the road.

“You should go. Take Jenny and get out of here. Go to the old casino on the other side of the highway. We’ll come get you when things have calmed down.”

“But, Marcus —”

“Did you listen to that speech? He thinks you two were a part of it, Stephen. That you helped them. We tried to tell him you weren’t any harm, but I don’t know what he’s going to do. Just go, Stephen. Get back to Jenny. Now!”

Marcus left to join the mob as it swarmed up the hill. I slipped into the woods and ran as fast as I could, throwing myself over the fence and dashing off again. Jenny had been alone for more than an hour. The trees rushed by me as I ran leaping over rocks and brush.

I was little more than a mile out when I first smelled smoke.

The air thickened the closer I got. My eyes stung. My heart pounded and I ran until my legs burned, ran until I blew through the trees and came out into the clearing where I was faced with a wall of flame and gray smoke.

Jenny’s barn was on fire.