The Eleventh Plague

by Jeff Hirsch

  I turned and shot him a hard glare. He staggered backward as I tore past Derrick and up the road.

  The Greens were both gone when I got back to the house. I slammed the door behind me and threw my coat in a heap by Dad’s bed, fuming.

  How could I have been so stupid? School. What was I thinking?

  My fingernails found the scabs on my palm and sank in. I gritted my teeth. I wanted to break something. The chair by the fireplace. The frames on the mantel filled with pictures of idiotic smiling boaters, tanned and lying about in the sun, with no idea that their world was about to come crashing down around them.

  I wondered how it would feel if I put my hand through the window above Dad. The glass would tear through my skin and scrape along the bones, maybe shattering them. I flinched at the idea of it, but still my hand collapsed into a fist and drew back. Just then, there was a rattle next to me as Dad’s chest rose slightly and then fell again.

  My fist fell open. Will wanted me kicked out of here, and hadn’t I helped him enough already?

  I break something, maybe Marcus gets mad, maybe that’s strike two….

  I sucked in an angry breath, and slowly the redness that clouded my vision flowed out of me, replaced by something cold and dark, something empty.

  “You okay?”

  Startled, I turned to see Violet standing in the doorway, a big medical book tucked under her arm. I found a nearby chair and pulled it up to Dad’s bedside. I sat with my back to her as a tidal surge of guilt rocked through me. This is where I should have been the whole time. I took Dad’s hand in mine. It was light as a handful of grass.

  “I imagine they’re getting a game started over there. I’m surprised you didn’t join them.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Violet was sitting in a chair just behind me. She had grabbed an old ball cap off a nearby table and had pulled it down over her hair. The book lay open in her lap.

  “It is the national sport, you know.”

  “It was the national sport,” I said. “I don’t understand why you people talk about America like it still exists. My grandfather would say it was” — I searched for the phrase. I had heard it a thousand times growing up, generally whenever one of us suggested a slightly shorter hike or a little more sleep — “like square dancing on the Titanic.”

  Violet’s book closed softly behind me. I didn’t move. My eyelids felt heavy watching Dad’s shallow breathing rise and fall.

  Outside, the remaining leaves of fall swayed in the fading sun. Two kids, a boy and a girl with wide, bright faces, were playing out in the park. I looked away and my eye fell on Violet’s cabinet, the cabinet that only I knew was lighter a few bottles.

  “Why are you people helping us?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “You don’t know us,” I said, surprised at the wave of disgust rising in me. “You’re giving us medicine, food, your home, and you’re just getting in trouble for it. It’s stupid.”

  “You’re what was put in front of us,” she said.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Violet crossed her arms and looked out the window over my shoulder. “Because there was a time when people helped each other,” she said. “And that made the world a little bit better. Not perfect, but better. We’d like to think we can have that time back.”

  “But what if you’re wrong?” I asked.

  Violet shrugged. “Maybe we are on the deck of the Titanic,” she said. “Maybe the Collapse isn’t over and this will all be gone tomorrow. I don’t know. What I do know is what it’s like out there, we all do, and even if I can only have a little break from it, if I can be the kind of person I was before all this happened, then I’m going to take it. Even if it’s just for a day.”

  Violet tossed the baseball cap into my lap.

  “You know what I mean?”

  She left without another word, entering the kitchen and leaving me alone.

  I shifted in my chair. Outside, leaves swayed across the blue sky. Dad lay before me, as still as ever. I turned Violet’s threadbare cap over and over in my hands.

  There was a squeal of laughter and the two kids flew by the window. They were maybe six or seven years old, the girl with a long stream of golden hair. The boy was taller and thin as a sapling. They were both holding sticks that had colored streamers attached to the ends so as they went by they were a streak of red and purple and blond, like a flight of brightly colored birds. I pulled the cap down over my head and watched as they banked into the sunshine and disappeared into the park.

  FIFTEEN

  I skipped school the next day and spent it searching for Jenny but had no luck finding her. I ended up standing in the field east of the school, watching Jackson and the rest gather for their daily baseball game, choosing sides, lining up, swinging their bats through the crisp air.

  I had never played baseball, but with how much Dad talked about it I almost felt like I had. He pitched throughout high school and was a passionate Padres fan. Sometimes to keep us entertained on the road, he’d recount major games he had seen in painstaking detail. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and let myself drift closer to the game, finally finding a spot to sit in the grass.

  No harm in watching, I thought. Just for a few minutes.

  Derrick and Jackson’s team was lining up for the first at bat. Martin threw a battered plastic helmet to a broad-shouldered girl, and she took a few practice swings before making her way to the plate. She hunkered down, eyeing the tall pitcher sharply, and let the bat hover over her shoulder. She was ice-cold and didn’t move an inch on his first two pitches but unloaded completely on his third and sent the ball rocketing into the blue sky. She made it to second, then stopped, cheating out toward third.

  “Carrie V.”

  Jackson had strayed from the game and was standing just a few feet in front of me. I half expected him to tell me to beat it, given how I’d acted after school the previous day. But he just stood there and watched the game, his hands in the pockets of a worn pair of khaki pants. Soon he eased down next to me. I set my palms in the grass, ready to get up and walk away, but for some reason I didn’t. I just sat there, watching.

  “She’s one of our best. The pitcher is her boyfriend, John Carter. She knows him inside and out. Almost always gets a hit off him.” Jackson turned to face me over his shoulder. “You can play, you know. If you want.”

  “I gotta get back to my dad.”

  A shrimpy kid with long hair made his way nervously to home plate with the encouragement of his teammates. “Stan,” Jackson said. “Not our best player. Hey, where were you today?”

  “I was out,” I said, quickly. “Just … looking around.”

  “So what did it say?” Jackson asked.

  “What?”

  “The note. The one Jenny made me give you that got you tearing out of school.”

  “Oh. Nothing. She was” — I scrambled for a lie that might sound even slightly convincing — “messing with me.”

  It sounded weak. Jackson gave me a little sideways look, then returned to watching the game. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s Jenny, all right. She can’t leave well enough alone.”

  It was silent for a moment as Stan took a couple practice swings. I felt another twinge of guilt. Jackson didn’t have to come over and talk to me, not after how much of a jerk I had been.

  “I was looking at your books,” I said. “The other day. It’s a really good collection.”

  Jackson turned back. “Thanks. I do chores for people and they give me books in return. You like to read? You can borrow them anytime if you want.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’d be great.”

  Jackson nodded and turned back as Stan took a couple practice swings, then lifted the bat over his shoulder. The ball came streaking toward him. For some reason Stan stepped closer to the base as he swung, bringing his right leg into the path of the oncoming ball. Jackson saw it just as I did.

  “Oh, this is not going to be good.” />
  The ball slammed into Stan’s thigh and he went down cursing.

  “Every other time,” Jackson said. “I swear, the kid gets hit by the ball more than he hits it. Aw, man, now we’re one man down. I better go. See ya, Steve.”

  Jackson hopped up and ran to his team, stopping to check in on Stan, who was sitting on the sidelines. I stripped off my coat and lay in the grass, watching as Jackson and Derrick conferred. They seemed to be having some kind of argument. Derrick was waving his arms and refusing some request of Jackson’s, but Jackson kept at him until Derrick finally relented. He turned away and began waving to someone behind me to join the game. I looked back, but no one was there.

  Oh no.

  “Hey! Steve! Hey! Over here! Yoo-hoo!”

  I tried to ignore him, but Derrick made it nearly impossible. Soon he was jumping up and down on his toes and calling in a high-pitched squeal. The whole team was watching now, and a rush of embarrassment hit me. I started to retreat back to the Greens’, but something made me stop and look around.

  The grass, holding on despite the coming of fall, was thick and green. There was the slightest chill and the smell of wood smoke in the air. Where was I going? Back inside the tomb? To my dad, who, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t help? It was true that soon all of this would be gone and we would rejoin the trail, but I was here now. This was my world. Would it really hurt to live in it, just for a day?

  Before I knew it, the grass seemed to be moving under my feet. I trotted, head down, toward the game.

  “It’s okay, everybody!” Derrick shouted as I reached the edge of the field, hanging back from the team. “Our savior is here! Steve will fill in for Stan.”

  “Can he even play?” someone shouted from back in the lineup.

  “Can he play?” Derrick repeated, dumbstruck. “He’s a heckuva lot better than any of us. His dad was an actual New York Yankee before the Collapse. Taught him everything he knew.”

  The flash of embarrassment hit again as the team erupted into a chorus of oohs and aahs.

  Derrick leaned in. “You, uh, do know how to play, right?” he whispered.

  “In theory.”

  “Well, you’re still one up on Stan,” Derrick said. “Anyway, you’re at bat!”

  “Oh wait, maybe someone else should —”

  But Derrick was already pushing the bat into my hand. He and the others were cheering me from behind the fence to home plate. I felt like I was being pushed onstage to star in a play I didn’t know any of the words to.

  “Hit and run!” Derrick shouted. “Just hit and run!”

  “Tear the cover off it, Steve!” Jackson yelled.

  “Don’t suck,” Stan called from the bench.

  My stomach quivered, but I found myself raising the bat to my shoulder, readying myself for a fresh disaster. I took a deep breath and got into a slight crouch, eyes on the pitcher. He nodded at the catcher behind me, then started his windup. Before I could move an inch, the ball slapped into the catcher’s glove.

  “Well done,” he said, smirking as he tossed the ball to the pitcher. “I think you’re a natural.”

  “It’s okay, Steve!” Jackson shouted. “That one wasn’t yours!”

  The pitcher turned back, a big grin on his face. I raised the bat and crouched, scowling. He wound up and threw, but this time it was like everything slowed down. I could see the white ball tumbling toward me. The voices behind me elongated. I brought the bat around in a quick arc, and as it connected with the ball there was a sweet, sharp crack. The ball sailed out into the field, over the head of the pitcher, into the outfield.

  Dopey and amazed, I watched as the ball lifted into the sky and over the trees whose top branches moved in the wind like hands waving good-bye. I turned back to my team, bat dangling from my hand, eager to share this incredible triumph, but they were all standing on the tips of their toes, looks of terrified anticipation on their faces.

  “Don’t just stand there, you moron!” Carrie screamed from second, shattering the moment. “Run!”

  Oh! Right! Now I run!

  The bat clattered at my feet as I took off. I passed first base easily, then skidded in to second. The baseman there was pivoting toward the outfield and raising his glove, his eyes squinting to track the ball headed his way. In a second he’d have me, so as I got closer I threw my shoulder out and it connected with his right arm. It knocked him off balance enough to make him miss the throw. The ball bounced off his glove and bobbled into the outfield. While he was scrambling for it, I was leaving him behind and making for third base in a cloud of dust.

  Carrie waved her hands wildly to get me to stop, but it was like there was this engine in me that was running nearly out of control and there was no way I could stop it even if I wanted to. It felt too good: my feet ripping into the soft dirt, my lungs and legs pumping madly, the distant sound of cheering. Finally Carrie was forced to abandon her base and run for home. Following her, I rounded third, digging in and pushing myself faster. I was halfway there when I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye — an arm reeling back to throw a ball.

  “Dive!” Jackson shouted.

  I threw my arms out in front of me without thinking, as though I was diving into a huge, clear lake, and I sailed across the next few feet, weightless, stretching for home. When the ground leapt up to meet me, it was like jumping headfirst into concrete. The impact rang through me and I got a face full of dirt, grass, and bits of rock. When I could move again, I rolled painfully to my side and saw the catcher standing there with the ball in his hand.

  He dropped his arm to tag me, but stopped when he saw my outstretched fingers, straining, but definitely, without a doubt, touching the flat gray rock that was home.

  We played until the sun sank behind the trees and cast gold-streaked shadows across the field, then we gathered up our equipment and started the walk back to town. I trailed behind the main pack with Jackson, Derrick, and the other side’s pitcher, John Carter.

  “You did good, Steve,” Derrick said. “I mean, you kind of tanked after that first run, but —”

  I surprised myself by giving Derrick a playful shove, knocking him into Jackson. He was right — after that first run, I had struck out three times in a row. When it was time for us to play defense, I was stuck safely way out in right field.

  “So you really never played before?” John asked.

  “No. Never.”

  “Not anything?”

  I scooped up a pebble from the road and skipped it down the asphalt. “Dad found this old football once, out behind a Walmart. We’d play catch with that sometimes.”

  Up ahead, Carrie drifted toward the four of us, falling in next to John and taking his hand. “You guys up for going to the quarry?”

  John said sure, but Derrick hedged. “I don’t know. I really have to do my homework and then get right to bed.”

  “Shut up, Derrick,” Carrie said. “What about you, Steve? It’s just this place out to the east, like a manmade pond. We go there after games sometimes.”

  I looked over my shoulder, back to where Dad lay in a deep coma at the Greens’ house, but the tug I felt toward him seemed fainter than it had before. I knew he was safe since Violet was with him. And hadn’t she said he would have wanted me to go to school if I could? Well, maybe he would want this too. Me playing baseball. Me with people my own age. Having a life a little bit like he must have had back before the Collapse.

  “Yo!” Carrie called out. “Everybody! Quarry!”

  We continued up the hill and then moved out to the east of town, past the fields and into the trees as night began to settle around us. After a while the path opened up into a circular clearing, the ground at the center of it falling away in rocky steps, leading down to a pool of water that was dotted with the reflections of stars that were just beginning to appear.

  Everyone scattered when we got there, breaking up into smaller groups of two or three or four and finding places around the pool.
One kid, the third baseman from the other team, dipped his hand into the water and pulled out a net that was filled with mason jars. He unscrewed the top off one, took a long drink of whatever was inside, then passed it around the circle.

  When it came to me I dipped my nose in and caught the smell of rotten fruit and a nose-singeing tang of alcohol. Home brew. Grandpa used to trade for it sometimes when we had some salvage to spare, and he would get blisteringly drunk on it after dinner. Mom would generally lead me into the tent for a reading lesson whenever he got going.

  I took a small sip, then winced. “So, how did all of you end up here?” I asked.

  “We were coming north from Georgia,” Martin said from his place behind me. “And we ran into, like, this entire ex-US army regiment. Dad decided we’d go through these caves he found to get around them. Took us five days. Five days with no food. My brother” — Martin’s voice hitched, then he continued — “he was really freaking out. Cried the whole time until we found our way out. We had no idea where we were, but a few weeks later, we found Derrick and his folks. And then Jackson and his. Now here we are.”

  As soon as he stopped talking, Martin stared down into the dark water, his face cloudy and distant. I knew why, of course, could tell from the millisecond stumble after he said “my brother.” It was the same one I always made after saying “my mother.” Somehow between that story and now, his brother was lost. I nudged Martin with the edge of the jar and held it out to him.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Others told their stories and as they did I looked around the group, noticing things I hadn’t seen before. A long jagged scar along the forearm of the blond kid who played right field. A deep smudgelike burn mark peeking out from under the sweater of the redheaded girl sitting on the other side of me. The more I looked, the more I saw them, those telltale marks of lives lived after the Collapse. How had I not noticed them before? Was it possible that they all had lives like mine at some point until they came here?

  What would have happened, I wondered, if Dad had stood up to Grandpa when I was little and insisted we leave the trail? Could we have ended up here? Would we be living in houses and going to school and cookouts and baseball games?