The Eleventh Plague

EPILOGUE

It was a Saturday, but there I was anyway, sitting at the edge of Tuttle’s new desk, a copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in my hand, facing a crowd of kids who were looking up at me expectantly.

“Who wants to read the next chapter?”

Everyone’s hand shot up, everyone’s except Claudia’s, of course. She was a small girl with long blond hair and freckles. She almost never spoke in class and seemed paralyzed by shyness. Tuttle said that sometimes you have to force them to do what they need to do.

“Claud? How about you read some to us?”

The little girl shook her head vehemently. I left the edge of the desk and sat down on the dirt floor beside her, slipping the book into her lap and leaning in close to her ear.

“How about you just read it to me?”

Claudia’s blue eyes shone as she sucked back the fear.

“It’s okay,” I said, nudging her shoulder with mine. “Go ahead.”

Claudia lifted the book up off her lap. Her first words came out in a halting trickle. There were snickers and I threw out some hard glares to silence them. She stumbled over the next three words, then let the book fall into her lap.

“Claud…”

The book fell to the floor and she ran out — crying, I was sure. Great.

“Eddie, can you pick it up?”

Eddie, the oldest in the bunch, nodded, and I went off to find Claudia. I left the log cabin schoolhouse we had built on the site of the old school and walked out into the grassy field. It amazed me that, even months later, I could still smell the smoke.

I had been doing the little ones’ Saturday classes for the last month or so while Tuttle healed from his broken arm and smoke inhalation. He did the weekday classes himself, gasping and wheezing, but he said the weekends were too much. I was hesitant at first, but once I got into it, I found that there was something strangely comforting about being in the new school and, despite what Jackson and the others thought, the little ones were actually kind of fun.

I found Claudia out under the big sycamore tree at the top of the hill, her chin in her hands. Across from her, a crew of twenty or so people raised the roof on one of what was going to be a few new cabins behind the school. Claudia was lying on her stomach, staring not at the construction but at what lay beside it.

Twenty-three wooden crosses.

They were set out in neat rows in the grass, most of them surrounded by bouquets of wildflowers, cards, or keepsakes of the person who lay beneath them. Twenty had died that night, along with three injured who followed soon after. Claudia’s dad was there. Her brother too. Her mother had died years before.

“Hey,” I said, landing nearby.

“Hey,” Claudia said, pulling at the grass and tossing it aside.

“You okay?”

The little girl nodded, her pigtails swinging. “I don’t know why we have to come here on Saturday too.”

“Makes you one day smarter.”

“My mom told me when she was little they had Saturdays and Sundays off.”

“It’s a brave new world.”

“What does that mean?”

I picked a strand of grass and twirled it around my finger. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Something Tuttle says.”

“Are you gonna teach us when Mr. Tuttle dies?”

“Jeez, Claud.”

“Well?”

“I’m pretty sure Mr. Tuttle will live forever. Like a vampire.”

Claudia laughed, and I figured this was my chance. I reached around to my back pocket and threw my own copy of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory down in front of her. She leaned back from it like it was diseased.

“I think you’ll like it,” I said.

“But… why?” Claudia asked, looking out at the graves. “I mean, it’s not even real.”

I searched for something Tuttle might have said then, but found nothing. I looked from the graveyard up to the roof as it was carefully nailed into place by a work crew that was half Settler’s Landing and half Fort Leonard, distinctions that were fading more and more by the day.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess… maybe it makes you realize that other worlds are possible.”

Claudia considered that and, even if she didn’t seem totally convinced, she opened the book to the first page and began to read. It came slowly at first, like the words were nettled things too large for her mouth, but gradually they tripped out more and more easily. She read as the workers muscled up the roof and the wind blew the smells of sawdust across the grass. Other worlds.

I hoped it was true. That the leap of faith we all took was a beginning and not just a blip, soon to be wiped away like so much had been wiped away before. Like Mom and Grandpa and Dad. As much as things had changed, I still heard their voices and felt their hands guiding me, though their grip seemed looser each day.

Another family had already stepped forward to take Claudia in, just like the Greens had done for me. In time I hoped she would feel at home and the world would move on for her, leaving everything else safely behind.

By the time Claudia reached the second chapter, I could tell she had forgotten I was there. The words moved from the page and out of her mouth, like a mill wheel dipping into the water, lifting it up and casting it down again in a glittering shower. After a while, the workers took a break, moving off into the shade of the trees and swatting the sawdust off themselves. Even when the rest of the kids broke free from the school and poured into the yard in a riot of shrieked laughter, Claudia didn’t move.

Her words rose up into the air, up beyond the trees and into the sky.

I walked into town, past the scars from the fight with the slavers. The fires had spread quickly and destroyed more than half of the houses in town. The ones that couldn’t be saved were torn down and replaced by what were little more than rough log cabins, neat and warm but small. They were integrated with the houses that still stood, giving the neighborhood an odd mixed look of past and future. Though sometimes it was hard to tell which was which.

I headed out through the front gates and crossed the forest to the highway. Once I got to Dad’s grave, I knelt down beside it and carefully cleaned away the week’s accumulation of leaves and twigs and discarded acorns. The wood marker that sat at the head of the swell in the grass looked old and dry, the letters in his name already fading. I’d need to replace it soon. I used to come every day, but soon the demands of school and of a town that needed to be rebuilt kept me back.

Once I was done cleaning the grave I stayed there for a time and then leaned over the grass, pressing my hands deep into its waxy depths.

“Hey.”

I jerked my hands back and turned around to find Jenny standing over me, in a T-shirt and jean jacket. The bill of Violet’s old baseball cap was pulled down low over her eyes. Back near the tree line, her horse, Wind, was tied up and munching on grass. His sandy flanks glistened in the sun.

“You must have ridden him far.”

“Farthest yet,” Jenny said, pulling off her rawhide gloves and stuffing them in her belt before flopping on the ground next to me. “I swear I could see the Rockies.”

“You could not.”

“Well… it was something.”

“Any trouble?”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Always.”

“You didn’t have to shoot anyone, did you?”

Jenny pulled off her cap and leaned on her elbows in the grass. The sunlight hit her face like a splash of cool water. “Not today, Steve-O. Not today.”

Jenny closed her eyes and lay down next to me, her chest rising and falling gently, a glisten of sweat like a mist of diamonds on her forehead.

As soon as things calmed down, Jenny had set about tearing apart the Starbucks down the highway and hauling it in pieces back to town. It had taken her weeks, but when it was done, she’d been able to trade it all for Wind and a rifle of her own. From that day on, she’d throw herself onto her horse and disappear, always heading west, always pushing a little farther each time, stretching the boundaries of her world like a rubber band.

Every time she came back, we would stay up late and she would tell me stories of the things she had seen, so excited you would have thought she’d uncovered a field of gold when it was no more than a new tract of houses, or an abandoned car rusting in the woods.

“You should have seen it,” Jenny murmured into the air above us. “Animals everywhere. Everywhere. I saw elk and mountain lions and beavers. I even found this whole herd of buffalo. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe. I ran Wind right through them. It felt like flying.”

Her eyes were distant, locked on the cloudless blue, glazed with joy at remembering.

“Is today the day?” I asked… and immediately regretted it. Jenny’s eyebrows drew together, making a gloomy little wrinkle. She checked on Wind over her shoulder.

“I think so,” she said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

I turned on my side to face her. I had said it a hundred times before and I’d say it a hundred times again. “It’s still dangerous out there.”

“I know that.”

“Dealing with the slavers wasn’t magic. There are others — the army and a thousand other—”

“I know, Stephen.”

Jenny turned onto her stomach. I plucked a blade of grass and settled it between my teeth. We had had this fight before. I knew when it was over.

“So, how’s shaping the minds of the next generation going?”

“I’m just helping out.”

“Then what?” Jenny asked. I could feel her staring at me. “Have you thought about it anymore?”

Jenny laid her head on my chest. Her breath went in and out, reminding me of a swing arcing up toward the sky and then falling again, over and over.

“Okay,” she said, and after a long while she drifted off.

I lay there, the heat of Jenny’s body beside me, the far-off smell of sawdust floating through the air.

Behind us, Wind shook his mane and stamped his foot into the grass, eager to be on his way.

“You ready, tough guy?”

When I opened my eyes, Jenny was adjusting Wind’s saddle and harness. Her rifle sat in a handmade leather case along his side. She pulled it out, checked it over, and replaced it. Then she drew on her gloves and cap and mounted Wind in one smooth, liquid motion.

Jenny guided Wind over to me. I pulled myself up onto the back of the horse between her and her rolled-up gear. Jenny turned Wind around and we trotted off toward Settler’s Landing, racing him when we reached the main road, his hooves making a machine-gun rattle against the asphalt.

We came to a halt out in front of the Greens’ just as Jackson stepped down off a ladder that led up to the house’s gutters. “Hey, cowgirl!”

Jenny slid down off Wind’s back. “Hey, Jackie boy! What’s happening?”

“I’m a gutter slave today,” he said, wiping the muck of wet leaves from his hands before giving her a quick hug. “Mom and Dad inside?”

“Yep.” Jackson pulled the ladder off the house and carted it around back. After Jenny got Wind tied up in the park across the street, we went inside to the smell of baking bread.

“Hey, you two!” Violet called out from the kitchen as we came in.

Marcus was coming down the stairs and grabbed Jenny as soon as he saw her.

“Whew! Somebody smells like a horse.”

“Yeah, I gave up on trying to make it go away.”

“Well, sit down,” Violet said. “We’ll have lunch ready in a minute.”

“So what’s out there these days?” Marcus asked once we’d all sat down and passed plates of food from hand to hand.

“It’s mostly quiet,” Jenny said, handing me a bowl of potatoes. “I hear about more towns going up though. Little ones, but it won’t be long until it gets crowded around here.”

“Are you talking to people?” Violet asked, trying to sound casual but under the table she was probably twisting a napkin into tight knots.

“Only if they look friendly, Mom.”

“And if they don’t?”

“I shoot them on sight.” Jenny grinned, but then pulled it back when Violet didn’t so much as crack a smile. “If I see more than a couple people together, I run and hide. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. It’s fine. I promise.”

We ate lunch while Marcus quizzed Jenny about how many people she had seen, what kinds of animals and plants, any sign of a government. Then we lingered there, drinking glasses of sweet tea that Violet made from an herb she’d discovered growing wild in the woods. It was my favorite time, everyone sitting there with the afternoon sun streaming in from the porch window, yellow as a dandelion, voices mixed with the bright clinking of forks and knives on plates.

The months after the fight hadn’t been easy, even for us. It had taken time to mesh back together again. But, like everything, it couldn’t last. I knew that as soon as Jenny slid her plate out in front of her.

“I’m going to go past the mountains.”

The silence was like a granite wall. Violet looked over at Marcus. He swallowed and set his fork down neatly next to his plate. “To do what?”

“To see what’s there.”

“It’s not a vacation,” Marcus said.

Jenny leaned across the table on her elbows. “Look, you need a scout—”

“Why does it have to be you?” Jackson asked. He was sitting across from Jenny, his fork still in his hand, his fingers white around its metal body. He was trying to cover it, but I could hear what was in his voice. Something welled up in Jenny’s eyes, but she pulled it back.

“Because I want to,” she said. “And because there’s no one who will be better at it than me. We can’t sit here with our heads down and hope everything’s going to be okay. The slaver, the one with the dreadlocks, is still alive, and there are more like him. You need to know if there’s danger out there, or people like us we can join forces with.”

Marcus and Violet exchanged a look and entwined hands.

“You know it’s true.”

Violet pulled in a shaky breath. “You weren’t meant for one place,” she said. “I know that, but… we just got you back.”

Jenny set her hand on top of Violet’s, and along with Marcus they held on to it.

“I’ll come back,” Jenny said. “I’ll always come back. This is my home.”

There was more talk, but the sound of it dropped away for me. I dug my thumbnail into the soft wood at the edge of the table and wondered if it was true, if she really would come back or if there would be a time when that rubber band stretched as far as it could go and would snap, releasing her into the world, never to return. The thought of that was more than I could stand.

“I’m going too.”

I didn’t even know I’d said it out loud until the talk at the table went silent. When I looked up, everyone was staring at me.

“Stephen…” Violet began.

“I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’s what I want to do.”

Violet glanced at Jenny, who dropped her hand onto mine, squeezing my palm under the table.

“Well…” Violet said after a long pause. “I guess we better get both of you packed up, then.”

Violet pushed away from the table to gather things for Jenny, and I went up to my room, Jenny’s old one, and packed my things. Soon Jackson drifted into the doorway. I folded a shirt and a sweater that Violet had knitted for me and placed them down in the bottom of my bag.

“You’re really going?” Jackson asked.

I picked up the rest of my clothes and tucked them in the bag. “I’ll be back,” I said. “We’ll be back.”

“What books do you want to take with you?”

“Those are yours.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s just…”

I pulled my tent out of the closet and started folding it up. “What?”

Jackson leaned against the edge of the door and crossed his arms, his eyes on the messy carpet at my feet. “Nothing,” he said, and disappeared back into his room.

I got the tent into its pack and lashed it to the outside of my backpack, then went back through the closet, looking for anything I’d missed. The bat and glove that Jackson and Derrick had given me as a present at the start of the season sat in the corner. I ran my fingertip down the face of the bat, dipping in and out of its dents. The well-seasoned leather of the glove smelled spicy and sharp. I left them there at the back of the closet.

I was about to close my pack when Jackson reappeared with a stack of paperbacks in his hand.

“Take them,” Jackson said. “If you don’t, you’ll have to spend all your time talking to Jenny. I’ve read them all. That Piers Anthony is really good. And the Peter Straub.”

“Thanks,” I said, stuffing my bag with the books. “You guys have a good game today.”

Jackson studied me with that penetrating look of his, the same one I had seen for the first time as he’d struggled along behind the wagon that brought me here. He’d changed so much since then, and I was sure he would change more. I wondered how long it would be until Jenny and I would be back this way and who he would be then. I wondered if I’d even recognize him. If I’d recognize any of them. Or if they’d recognize me.

Jackson ran his fingers down the door frame. “Yeah. We’ll try,” he said quietly. Then his shoes whispered down the carpeted hallway and he descended the stairs, leaving me there alone.

I took my bag’s straps in my hands, but it felt like it was full of bricks. I couldn’t move. I stood listening to the hollow silence of the house until Violet’s voice drifted up the stairs.

“Stephen?”

“Coming,” I called weakly, but it was a struggle to lift the pack up off the ground and place it on my shoulders, a struggle just to reach the door. I stopped in the doorway and ran my hand down the smooth wood alongside it. Marcus had covered over the spot where Jenny had caved in the wall months ago. All that was left now was a small depression in the plaster.

The house was empty by the time I got downstairs. I moved through the silent place like it was a museum, remembering the strangeness of it all when I’d first come there: the smell of the food, the sounds of people talking.

I made it through the kitchen and the front room to find everyone waiting outside, gathered around Wind and finishing their good-byes. I threw my pack down at the horse’s feet and hugged Violet and Marcus. Sam appeared from his house and shook my hand. I didn’t know what to say. Violet squeezed my arm, then hugged me tight again. Her eyes began to glitter with tears that she sniffed back. Marcus gave me a firm handshake before laying his arm over Violet’s shoulder and walking her across the park along with Sam.

Jackson hugged Jenny again. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

“Come back, okay?”

“I will,” Jenny said. “I promise.”

Jackson didn’t move away or take his hands from her shoulders.

“Yo! Jackson! Quinn! Time’s wasting! Let’s go!”

Derrick and Martin and Carrie were crossing the park, heading toward the road that led to school and the baseball field. Martin was throwing the ball up high into the air and racing to get under it. There was a snap as it fell into his glove.

Jackson’s hand slipped off Jenny’s arm and he glanced at me one last time.

“See ya,” he said, then ran off and joined his friends, disappearing down the road with them and a wave of others who followed.

“You ready?”

Jenny was standing with Wind’s reins in her gloved hand. I nodded and lifted my pack up off the ground to load it onto Wind with Jenny’s equipment, her tent and rifle and provisions. I stopped when Jenny’s hand fell on my arm, holding it down.

“What?”

Jenny looked at me evenly. “Go,” she said.

“What are you talking —?”

Jenny nodded over my shoulder. A stream of kids stormed out of their houses and surged down the road toward the school to join Jackson and the others. Claudia trailed the group, tossing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into the air and catching it over and over. I couldn’t lie — I felt a pull toward them. But then, behind them, came Sam and Tuttle and Mr. Allison, who still looked fearsome with his scraggly hair and eye patch.

“They’re talking about building a church,” I said, watching them go. “Forming a government. Mr. Allison even thinks he can get some of the electricity back up. It’s just like you said. They’re going to start the whole thing all over again. Take us right back where we started.”

“Then maybe they need someone to keep an eye on them.”

“Jenny—”

She pulled me close. “Look,” she said. “Forget the future. Forget them. Forget me. You spent your whole life following somebody else. This is your world now. What do you want?”

My heart thumped. Jenny placed her palm in the center of my chest, covering it. Everything that had happened to us spun through my head.

After the storm and the deaths and the fires and the guns: What did I want? I closed my eyes, desperate to hear Grandpa’s voice, or Dad’s, or Mom’s, but there was nothing.

There was just me.

“I want a home,” I said.

I don’t think I knew it was true until right then, but it was. Jenny leaned in and set her lips lightly on mine. The sweet, spicy smell of her mixed with the clean wood of the town surrounded me.

“This is your home,” Jenny murmured into the small space between us. “You fought for it. Don’t be afraid to take it.”

My breath caught in my throat. I thought I could stay right there with her forever, but I knew that she had a path and so did I. After so long, mine had led me here and hers led… out there.

I kissed her and stepped away. Wind jerked and snorted as Jenny glided up onto his back, and the muscles in her arms stood out as she tried to hold him still. He was as ready as she was.

“Hold the fort down while I’m gone. Okay, Stephen? Don’t let them do anything too stupid.”

I nodded. A stone, thick as a fist, was resting in my throat.

Jenny twisted around in her saddle and took a last look around the town, the houses, the park, the road.

“My God,” she breathed, then gave the reins a quick shake. Wind exploded out across the park and up the road. Jenny paused at the top of the hill and raised her hand high in the air and then there was a great joyous whoop and that was it.

She was gone, but she’d be back. I believed. I hoped.

I turned to face the park. The neighborhood had gone soundless and empty, like a ball suspended, weightless, in midair. I could have believed that there was no one else around me for miles until a voice snapped through it all.

“Yo! Stephen! Let’s go! We’ve got work to do!”

Derrick had come back to the head of the road to school and was standing there with his arms out, a ball cap arranged messily on his head.

I started walking, slow at first, then faster, following what felt like a string fastened to my chest, yanking me forward.

Derrick broke into a run, so I was alone when I reached the field. An excited chatter overflowed the small wooden risers that had been built earlier that month. I let my hand slide across the wood of the stand as I passed. It had been planed smooth and smelled powdery and clean. Everyone was there: the Greens, Sam, Claudia with the book balanced on her knees, Tuttle with a stack of papers to grade.

I dropped my bag near the stands. Violet nudged Marcus and shot me a wink. Jackson was off in the outfield having a catch with Martin. They stopped when they saw me. Jackson was still for a moment, unsure, then he raised his arm and waved, a broad smile on his face. I waved back and trotted out onto the field.

“Let’s do this, people!” Derrick shouted as we all converged on home plate, pushed forward by the cheers from the seats behind us. We formed into a tight knot together, Jackson on one side of me and Martin on the other. Carrie and Wendy and John Carter stood opposite. “Now, I need everybody to keep in mind that Stephen has decided to join us today, so we’ll all have to up our game to compensate for how much he sucks.”

Martin popped Derrick on the back of the head. “Jeez, Derrick, shut up already and let’s get going!”

As the group broke up and everyone moved to their places, I looked past them, out toward where the forest shrouded the Henry house in green and shadow.

After the fight with the slavers, a trial was organized with a judgment of banishment seeming all but sure for the Henry family. Sure, that is, until Marcus stood up and, to everyone’s amazement, spoke on their behalf. He said it would be too easy to send them out into the world like some gang of unruly children, only to become someone else’s problem. It was Settler’s Landing’s responsibility, Marcus said, to make sure nothing like this ever happened again.

And so they were stripped of any power they had and were made to work and contribute like anyone else. So far it had worked, but like many of the wounded from that night, I wondered what would happen when Caleb finally recovered. Would Settler’s Landing’s mercy and Will’s death really make him a different person, or would he still hear dark voices as I had once heard Grandpa’s?

“Hey, man, you ready?”

Jackson was at the end of our team’s line, holding a bat out to me.

“You’re up,” he said.

Maybe Jenny was right, I thought. Maybe they really did need someone to keep an eye on them.

But there would be time for that.

The bat seemed to vibrate in my hands as I took it and stepped up to the plate. John Carter checked the bases, then wound up and set the ball tumbling through the air. When it was time, I unfolded my arms in a smooth arc. There was a crack as the ball sailed out into the air over everyone’s heads, streaking past the houses and across the wide emerald field. A roar went up from the stands and from my friends massed behind me.

The outfielders scrambled for the ball as I dropped the bat and ran, tagging first and second easily. As I strained past third, Jackson yelled for me to stop, but I just threw my arms into the air, laughed, and dove toward home.