Ashes

PENANCE

It caught Gran next.

Small red sores appeared in the wrinkles of her neck and face. In the candlelight of the kitchen, the sores sparkled like jewels. Father wouldn't look at her anymore. I'm sure he would have locked her in the spare bedroom, except the beds were already occupied by the corpses of Bobby and Mother. The house smelled of corruption and ointment.

Father had started wearing his mask again. He sat in the living room, watching the Web screen, hoping the misery of others would ease his own. At least they hadn't cut our electricity, though our water service had been terminated. I guess they figured that the Penance wasn't transmitted by electrons. But Father made us use the candles anyway. He said the fire was God's purifying light, now that we had been robbed of the sun.

Gran sat at the kitchen table, her eyes glassy, the candle's flame reflecting off her pupils. I dipped a towel in the bowl of gray water, wrung it out, and patted Gran's face.

"Don't waste it, Ruth," she said.

"Shh," I said. "It's no time to be brave."

"The saints may not bring any more."

"Have faith," I said.

The saints hadn't brought food or water in three weeks. Maybe the army had finally wiped them out. Maybe the Penance had caught them. Or perhaps God had called them home.

Gran's eyes welled with tears that she couldn't blink away. I wiped at the fluid that leaked down her face.

"You should be wearing your gloves," she said, her voice raspy.

I kept wiping. I hung the towel over the back of a chair and squeezed some ointment from a rolled-up tube. The gel was cold on my finger. I touched it to Gran's sores, at least the ones that hadn't burst open.

"You're warm," I said.

"The fever." She shivered under her dusty blanket.

"Tell me about the mountains," I said, both of us needing her stories. Gran had grown up in the Appalachians of Virginia. Now the mountains had become a mecca as hundreds, maybe even thousands if that many were left, escaped the city. Some of them were already infected, carrying in their hearts the thing they were fleeing. From the Web news, back before the army had taken control of transmissions, we had learned that people were killing each other there, too. But when Gran lived in the mountains, it was a place of peace.

Gran drew the blanket more tightly across her chest. "We had a little cabin," she said. "In the morning, you could see for miles, the high ridges like islands above the ocean of fog. The air was so clean you could taste it, maple and oak and pine, with just a touch of woodsmoke from the chimney. Your father, he looked so much like Bobby-"

Her voice broke. The tears welled up again at the mention of my brother. I fought back the water that threatened to pool in my own eyes. I reached for the towel, but Gran shook her head and smiled. "The tears don't sting anymore."

The curtain over the doorway parted and Father came into the kitchen. The mask made him look like an insect. His eyes were large and frightening, distorted by the goggles. He went past us without speaking and opened the refrigerator. The buzz and murmur of the Web screen protected us from the awful silence of the room and the world outside.

We watched as he thumbed through the stack of cheeses. He pushed aside the packages that had been opened. He found one he liked, put it in the pocket of his coveralls, and pulled a bottle of wine from the lower shelf. Then he rummaged through the cabinets.

He pulled out a can of tuna. He looked past Gran to me. "Have you touched this?" he said, his voice muffled by the filters of his mask.

I shook my head. Father dropped it in his pocket. He had his own can opener, fork, and knife. No one could touch his utensils. He even slept with them.

"What's on the screen?" I asked, hoping to get him to stay for a moment.

"The army says the war with the saints and scientists is nearly over," he said. "I should have joined the army while I had the chance."

My heart spasmed and then sank in my chest. The extermination of the saints meant there would be no more midnight deliveries. "What will we do for food?" I asked him.

"We shouldn't expect others to spare us God's punishment," he said. I waited for him to deliver another sermon, parroting the Commander-In-Chief's press conferences. About how we had brought the plague among us by our sinning ways, how the world had to be cleansed, how the scientists conspired with Satan to deliver us unto these dark ages.

Instead, Father went back through the curtain, the wine bottle tucked under his arm. He couldn't even spare us a sermon.

"Your father used to go into the woods with his hatchet," Gran continued, as if recalling fond memories at a funeral. Like Father was already dead. "He'd cut me a little pile of twigs and say, 'Here, Mommie, these are for the fire.' I made a big deal of putting them in the fireplace and rubbing my hands together, then blowing into the flames."

She shivered again, either from nostalgia or fever. "I'd say, 'It's a magic fire.' And the next day, frost would be thick on the trees and grass and creek stones. We would put on our mittens and go walk in the woods, the leaves like a crisp carpet under our feet. Our breath made clouds in front of our faces." She glanced at the curtain that hung over the entry. "He believed in magic, back then."

"Blue heaven," I said, trying to make her forget her pain. Gran used to say, "When I die, Lord, take me back to blue heaven."

"Looks like He'll be taking me there soon."

"Do you want to go?" I asked.

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth collapsed into creases. "Only the Lord knows the proper hour."

I felt for her hand. Her skin was like damp tree bark. "No. I mean, do you want to go now?"

"Don't tease an old woman," she said.

I leaned over the table and lowered my voice, even though Father was in the warm cocoon spun by the Web screen and alcohol. "I found a way out."

She looked at me, her eyes cold, dead of hope. "No. I heard the hammers and nails. The soldiers buried us. In here with the Penance."

The Penance had started in the cities, New York, Los Angeles, Miami. We watched on the news, the videos of hospitals and people in ambulances and doctors trying to explain the Penance away. Father would shake his head and say that the sinners had brought God's wrath. When the army closed off the roads leading from Charlotte, my parents shared a prayer of thanks that we had been spared.

But the Penance didn't stop among the highrise buildings, and barbed wire and barricades couldn't hold it back. It reached the foothills where we lived, just as surely as it stormed the beaches and jetted across the oceans. And the army chased it, growing in might along with the Penance, two great careening forces. They both came to Barkersville and hemmed us in.

In the beginning, it was only one house. Megan, from my eleventh grade class, came to school one day with the sores on her face. The school officials sent her home. After school, as I walked down her street on the way to our house, the trucks pulled up. Soldiers in gas masks got out, carrying guns, boards, ladders, and tool belts. They nailed the doors and windows shut, then added a layer of plywood over the boards. Megan's father tried to fight them off, but they hit him with the butts of their rifles and pushed him back inside. Megan screamed as they boarded her window.

I heard her screams every day, even when I crossed to the other side of the street. On the fourth morning, I tried a new route to school, one that took me well out of my way. On those other streets, more than half the houses were boarded up, an "X" spray-painted in red on each barred door. A thin dog rooted in the garbage that covered the sidewalk. The few people that were out looked at me warily, and moved away as I passed their yards.

I ran the rest of the way to school, anxious at being late. Soldiers covered the playgrounds, their shouts the only sound in a place once filled by games and laughter. They were sealing off the building, chaining the doors closed. I hid in the trees and watched as students tried to escape from the upper windows. The soldiers climbed their ladders and hit the kids with hammers. I went home, my stomach aching, my hands trembling.

The next day, Mother came home, her face in her hands. She was a doctor, and we thought she was crying over the misery she witnessed as the Penance devastated her patients. Prayers hadn't helped them. Neither had medicine.

Father pulled her hands apart. She had sores on her face. Father slapped her. "Wicked whore," he said. "You have brought the pestilence among us."

She was packing her clothes when soldiers rolled their trucks into our yard. Father had called them, hoping they would take her away and spare the rest of the family. After all, why should we suffer for her sins?

The soldiers grunted from behind their masks. Father held his arms wide in welcome. He was a big disciple of the Commander-in-Chief by that time. The army was doing God's holy work, only following orders, he said.

They drove their nails even as Father cursed them. He pounded on the door that had been slammed in his face. He kicked at the wood that surrounded and bound us. He picked up his Bible and slammed it against Mother's head. He fell to his knees and wept prayers.

The soldiers drove away. Gran and my younger brother Bobby hid in the bathroom until Father's rage subsided. I helped Mother to her room. She collapsed on the bed.

"I'm going to hell," she said.

"No, you're not."

"I have sinned." She shivered and grabbed my hands.

"We have all sinned," I said. "But God is merciful."

"I helped them," she said. "I worked with the scientists and I prayed for the saints."

"Just try to get some rest. I'll bring you a cold drink."

Her face was raw and red, her eyes wide. "What have I done?" she gasped to the ceiling. "What have I done to deserve this, O Lord?"

God may have forgiven her, but she never forgave herself. She died two weeks later. Then Bobby got the sores.

"What did I do wrong?" Bobby asked. He was ten years old. He was Father's favorite, everybody's favorite. Even mine. But then, he was the son, and I was only the daughter.

"Nothing," I said. "Sometimes even God makes mistakes." God would forgive me this blasphemy, because my intent was pure.

I kept him hidden from Father. By then, Father was so obsessed with the Web reports that he didn't even notice Bobby was sick. When Bobby died, I put him in the spare bedroom with Mother.

Gran stayed in the kitchen most of the time. The saints had chopped out a small hole in the kitchen window, just large enough for Gran and me to send out whispered confessions. Sometimes at night, cheese or canned foods or bottles of water would be shoved back through the opening. Some nights, the streets were filled with the noises of trucks and gunfire. On those nights, no food arrived.

One time, just as the sun was sinking and throwing its red light through the opening, I heard a scratching sound outside the wall. I thought it was a saint. I whispered, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

No one answered. Confessions were usually rewarded with material goods, sustenance, the manna of the damned. I called again. Gran, who was asleep at the table, twitched once and fell still.

"Ruth," came a guarded voice. Saints weren't supposed to use mortal names.

"Who is it?"

"John. From school."

John. I recognized the voice. He sat behind me in Social Studies, quiet and smart, his hair always a little unkempt.

"You can get in trouble," I whispered through the hole, wondering how he had escaped the school. Unless, like me, God had chosen him to be tardy that day.

"I'm a soldier now."

My pulse raced. I pictured him outside the house, in his crisp uniform, a hammer on his belt, a rifle strapped over his shoulder. I wondered which of the nails he'd driven into our doors and windows.

"Has it caught you yet?" he asked. The dying day had made the sky more deeply red. A little of that blood-colored light leaked through the wall.

"No," I whispered. "My brother Bobby died. Mother, too."

"I'm scared."

Soldiers weren't supposed to be scared. They were doing God's work.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"The Penance is catching some of the soldiers. I heard a rumor today that even the Commander-in-Chief has it. I just wanted to tell somebody I was sorry."

My stomach ached, my face flushed. I wondered whether it was the first rush of fever or just hatred of this unwanted confession. "Don't say these things," I said. "God will strike you."

"Let Him strike," John said breathlessly. Night had fallen, leaking through the hole in the wall like a black oil. A truck sounded on the street, men shouted, and a siren wailed several streets away. I lit another candle and waited near the hole, but I heard no more of John.

Father bathed himself in the light of the Web screen. In the beginning, the videos had been of bodies piled high in the streets as solemn news anchors reported the latest death tolls. Health officials spoke of concentrated efforts to find a cure. Eventually these gave way to army television. Most of the time the Commander-in-Chief occupied the screen, his fist lifted in righteous indignation, his eyes bright with hate, his mouth contorted by his sermons. Father raised his fist in unison with the image.

"Kill them all, and let God sort them out," was one of Father's favorite slogans. I avoided him after he began wearing the mask. Most of the time, I stayed in the kitchen with Gran, the farthest room from the bathroom, where our wastes had fouled the air. We slept in the room that I had shared with Bobby.

One night I heard a tapping, a squeaking of metal and the slight crack of dry wood. I was afraid, because the sound meant change, and all change was for the worse. I prayed the night away, and somehow God spared us. The next morning, as I pressed at the wood that covered the window, anxious for a glimpse of the new sun, one of the boards fell away. Others were loose, too, enough for a person to wriggle through. I could hardly keep myself from bursting through and falling onto the green grass outside, but I was afraid soldiers might be watching.

I waited until evening to tell Gran. Her eyes misted over. When I was through describing my plan, she lowered her head.

"It's our only chance," I whispered.

"It's the Lord's will that we be punished," she said.

"Maybe it's the Lord's will that the boards are loose."

"The wicked can't flee their own wretched hearts."

"Gran, Gran," I said. "Not you, too. Why would God want to punish you?"

"No one is clean. All have come short of the glory of God."

Father gave a shout from the living room, joining in a televised cheer for the Commander-in-Chief.

"We only have enough food left for a week or so," I said. "We'll die in here."

"I'll die anyway. Here, there, what's the difference?"

Her words hung in the air like smoke from a fatal gun. She would die, sweating and shivering, writhing in the sheets, chewing her tongue as the blood poured from her ears and eyes.

God is blind to suffering. We make our prayers anyway.

"In the autumn, the mountains look like a rumpled patchwork quilt," Gran said. "Your grandfather would sit on the porch with his easel and paints. He used oils because he believed that the long drying time made him more patient, more careful."

One of his paintings hung in the living room. It was of a neglected flower garden, bright marigolds and morning glories and tulips fighting the weeds for sunshine. Grandfather had been Jewish. The Commander-in-Chief said the Jews may have brought the pestilence among the faithful. God delivered it, but the Jews spread it. Either the Jews or the Catholics. Oh, yes, and the scientists, as well. Satan's forces were legion.

"I would make him tea," Gran said. "Hot tea. He would blow on top of the cup until it was cool enough to drink. I can still see the funny face he made when he blew, his eyebrows scrunched down and his lips curled."

"Did Father want to be a painter, too?"

"No, but he liked tea," she said. She coughed, and a fleck of blood appeared in the corner of her mouth. "You look a lot like him, you know. When he was your age, I mean."

I couldn't believe my father had ever been my age. "When did he join the Church?"

"When he was your age."

"Is that why you joined?"

She blinked. "I just…joined. Like we were supposed to."

A new sore was erupting, above her right eyebrow. I dabbed at it with the towel. She weakly pushed my hand away.

"In the mountains, you can touch the clouds," she said. "You're closer to God there. Even the rain is sweet. Your father used to catch it on his tongue."

"Thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy," I said, repeating one of Father's slogans.

"Why hasn't the Penance moved into you?" Gran asked.

Who can know the workings of the Almighty? I shrugged. "By the grace of God," I said. "Though I am wicked and surely deserve the Penance as much as anyone."

She seemed satisfied with this, and let her chin droop against her chest.

I stood and went to the refrigerator. I wasn't hungry. I thought of the mountains, of exodus, of flights from persecution. I closed my eyes, shamed by my cowardice and doubt.

Father turned up the volume on the Web screen. The Commander-in-Chief was raving, his voice like thunder, saying "And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels, 'Go, and pour out the seven vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.'"

I remembered the time I was twelve and Bobby, then six, got a goldfish for his birthday. One morning the fish had floated to the top of the glass bowl, belly-up, lips sucking for life, gills undulating weakly. I took it from the bowl and flushed it down the toilet. When Bobby came in the room, I told him the goldfish had crawled to the river during the night. Heading for bigger water.

I wondered which sin I would pay for, the lie or the killing of a fish.

I turned to face Gran. "I'm sorry for talking about it," I said.

She merely nodded, too weak to argue.

"It's a test of faith," I continued. "I suffered a moment of weakness. I promise to be strong."

"Don't make promises to me," she said. "Make them to the One that matters."

"Please don't tell Father," I said, clasping her hand.

She pursed her pale lips. Father came through the curtain. The sound from the Web screen filled the kitchen as he held the curtain open. The army was singing a hymn. Even though I couldn't see his mouth, I knew Father was moving his lips to the rhythm. His eyes were moist, fogging his goggles.

"Sing," he shouted, the mask vibrating from the force of his voice. "Sing that we may find salvation."

Gran joined in with her thin and sweet alto. "…I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind…"

I added my voice to the multitudes. "…but now I see."

Father removed his mask, his face wet with tears. The candle's flame bobbed and swayed with our breathing. Beautiful music flooded the house, overpowering the silence of corpses and drowning out the rumble of the army truck rolling down the street. We soared into the second verse, a family united, a nation united, all under God. Father rubbed at his cheek. The first reddening had appeared there, the sores a day or two away.

We sang the hymn, and half a dozen more. Father went back to the Web screen and his Bible, the bottle of wine open on the table beside him. Gran hobbled down the hall to pray over the two bodies, then I heard the door close as she went to bed. I filled my pockets with canned meat, cheese, and crackers.

That night we went through the window. As I pushed the boards away, I wondered if a saint could come disguised as a soldier or if an angel might carry a claw hammer. The Lord worked in mysterious ways.

Gran may have heard the noise, may have been awake in the darkness mouthing her prayers. But she said nothing. Or perhaps she was already dead, growing stiff as her fluids leaked into the mattress.

Bobby was heavy, but no heavier than a wooden cross. He would slow me down, make me an easier target for the soldiers. But my blood is certainly no more precious than that of Him who had gone before.

I headed north, toward the mountains. Sinners have little to lose. We can't run from the Penance. But the sinless surely deserve to rest in peace. Bobby will sleep in a blue heaven, where the dust of his flesh shall mingle with the clouds.

And this I pray.