Juliana cleared her throat and both Ruth and Father Preston jumped when they realized she’d entered the room. Flustered, Ruth blushed and walked quickly over to her. Father Preston merely nodded and walked toward the patient rooms. Ruth disliked him even more for being so cool after her own agitation.
Chapter 10
It was Vincent’s fault that he was here. Even after all those years, Father Preston still had not forgiven him. He knew it wasn’t just this city. As soon as he had recovered, almost at the moment Ruth had tried to smother him with a towel, Michael Preston had known with overwhelming certainty that the Plague had wiped out most of the world. It was like another sense— like trying to scratch a phantom limb. The months when he was ill had been a bloody blur punctuated with sharp memories of violence and guilt. He wasn’t going to tell that to her. She was not his judge, not even his peer.
He stood at the long window, its thick glass netted with silver diamonds and his gaze dissolved somewhere beyond, somewhere in the waist high brush and grass that seemed to swallow up the edges of the great city, to erase it. He hadn’t noticed the silence of the city when he first recovered, or the darkened lights like faded gems. He’d been too consumed with his own memory to notice the world outside. But before he’d even seen the notices and billboards peeling, dissolving, tumbling in the wind like old leaves, he knew that the whole world was gone. That millions must have died, entire continents become empty. Still, in his heart, he blamed Vincent for it all.
And why not? The monastery had been isolated enough. Without Vincent, they might have avoided the outbreak altogether. Michael Preston had been a very young priest then. Very young and consumed with passion for his calling. But Vincent had returned from his missionary work in mid-November that year, a defeated man. He had been gone many years and Father Preston didn’t know him well. Brother Vincent had suffered a breakdown of some sort, unable to face the interminable famine and drought a moment longer. So he’d been ordered back to the seclusion and quiet routine of the monastery to rest and recover. Some of the novices envied Vincent, he had an air of something ancient and exotic, as if he were a broken relic that had made miracles once and was now sent home, powerless.
But Michael Preston could see the melancholy in the man, and he scorned the ragged edge of a fraying faith that Brother Vincent displayed in his despair. Father Preston had avoided him whenever possible, afraid to be infected with doubt. But Vincent brought more than doubt with him. He brought the December Plague back with him too, though no one knew until far too late.
It had been so slow and creeping at first. There was no television or radio at the monastery, no papers were delivered. Only the brothers who worked at the monastery’s shop knew what happened outside, and they got it in rumors and gossip from the customers. By the time the Plague had spread far enough to gossip about, most of the customers had stopped coming in and the shop stood empty.
Vincent had complained of dizziness and exhaustion. The elder brothers thought it was still a product of his mental breakdown. They dismissed him from chores and the early prayers so he could rest. A few weeks later, he woke the brothers with shrieks from his small cell and bit the first man who ran to his aid. It was thought his mind had simply snapped and a doctor was called in. But the December Plague was just beginning to be felt. It wasn’t even a rumor in the mouth of the world. So the doctor had given Brother Vincent a sedative to calm him, and recommended moving him to a hospital for treatment of psychosis, but the elder brothers refused. The monks would give him the care he needed and tranquility and solitude would bring him back to himself. So the doctor had shrugged and written a prescription for a sedative to keep Vincent calm.
But Father Preston knew then, and was still convinced years later, that Brother Vincent had been stricken because he committed some grave sin of despair or heresy in his heart. For a few more weeks the monastery went on as usual. Each man completed his daily tasks and shared quiet meals, each tried to pray although Vincent’s shrieks occasionally punctured the thick silence of their meditations. But then the brother assigned to care for Vincent became first erratic, then angry with everyone, and finally as violent as Vincent had.
The doctor was called again. This time he didn’t arrive alone. Men in thick plastic suits arrived within minutes of the call. A few were carrying guns. The Abbot protested, but the men in the suits, while apologetic, entered anyway, guns and all. A few more of the brothers were complaining of dizziness or stumbling by this time. The men rounded them up with Vincent and his unfortunate keeper and put them all in a large bus where they sat, restrained. Those who weren’t yet mad were frightened and stared at their quiet home through the dusty windows.
The doctor tried to explain through his ventilator, but even he didn’t know much. It was a disease, spreading through the air. Nobody knew how many were already infected. The soldiers would take Brother Vincent and the others to a facility in the south where they would receive the best medical care the government could offer. The doctor was hopeful that removing them would stem the infection of the monastery. The Abbot looked worried, but Father Preston was relieved to be rid of them, Brother Vincent in particular. Ill or not, Father Preston had been uneasy to know a doubter shared their community, now he would not have to worry about Vincent’s cowardice spreading to the others, or himself.
A few days longer, the serenity and smooth flow of monastic life reigned, even though the missing members meant more chores for the remaining brothers. It fell to Father Preston to deliver the sermons to a local church while the brothers were gone. He sat late one night composing his first, choosing a grim passage that would compare his flock to the people of Moses during the plagues of Egypt. The hallways were quiet, the evening prayers long past. Hunched over his small desk, the swift pen shooting aching cramps through his clenched fingers, Michael Preston was in bliss. If ever heaven could exist on earth, for him it was when the passion and fire of faith flowed through him, made him a conduit and he felt as if he spoke with a divine voice.
Father Preston’s belief was never gentle or nurturing. He had no patience for the weak or the wavering, because he didn’t understand it. He was young enough to hold to not only the spirit, but the letter of the religion. Anyone who did not, he was convinced, would never feel the searing righteousness that he did. It was his comfort when forced to hear confessions. He would listen and mouth the words of atonement and forgiveness, but they never touched his heart. It was unjust, he thought, that the weak should be admitted to heaven. It wasn’t enough, his secret heart cried, to be merely good. Any old sinner could turn good in the face of fear. It required so much more devotion to be truly deserving and blameless. To be like him.
There were few people whom Father Preston looked up to, or evoked affection from him, beyond the pallid warmth that came from Christian duty. Even his own natural family had fallen short. Even in the monastery he’d chosen, Father Preston admired none except his Abbot. The Abbot had been even younger than Michael Preston when he became a monk. He had not stepped foot beyond the monastery gates in the fifty years that followed. He had little contact with the outside at all, only receiving those visitors who were absolutely necessary, such as the doctor. He wrote and received no letters and the only news he heard was from returning missionaries, like Brother Vincent. He expressed no longing for anything beyond what the monastery provided.
It didn’t occur to Michael to wonder if he were truly keeping to the laws of the faith or if he had fled to the arms of the church to escape temptations that were too strong for the Abbot to resist. In Father Preston’s eyes, the elder priest was wholly and unswervingly devoted. Perhaps he lacked the acid zeal that bubbled in Michael’s heart, but Father Preston chalked it up to age rather than weakness or wavering. He revered the Abbot. It was as much for his approval as that of a distant deity that Father Preston diligently performed abhorred tasks or spilled his heart into his sermons and meditations.
It was the Abbot, mostly, that he thoug
ht of as the December night blew in between the loose panes of his room’s small window, curling around his cramping fingers and turning his breath to smoke over the burning words he wrote. A loud thud reverberated against the wall in front of Father Preston. He glanced up from the page as the thud was immediately followed by a harsh yell and then a wet, gurgling shriek that trailed away. Father Preston leapt up, the chair clattering to the stone floor behind him. He tore open his door and was at the neighboring cell in a few strides. The door was cracked open, but the interior was utterly dark. The brother who lived there had retired hours before. Father Preston hesitated. Silence was supposed to be kept until morning prayers. But a snuffling moan from the cell broke his paralysis.
“Brother Andrew, are you ill? I heard a disturbance.” He took a step into the dark room and his bare foot slid in the slick warmth of a spreading puddle. “Brother Andrew?”
His eyes adjusted a little to the dark interior. A shadow darker than the room was hunched over in front of him. It rocked gently and its breath bubbled and slurped as if it were emerging from water. Father Preston reached for the light switch, half of him still outside in the hallway. Other doors were opening now and brothers peered sleepily out at him. The electric light blazed and the thing on the floor reeled back shielding its face with two wrinkled, blood-blackened hands. Brother Andrew lay on the floor, his head tilted back to look at Father Preston with the blank whites of his eyes. His neck was a crater, a sudden volcano still trickling. Father Preston realized he was standing in a thick sludge of blood. He stumbled backward with a yell. The other brothers flung their doors open the rest of the way and hurried toward him. The thing on the floor was a man. He ignored Father Preston and hunched over Brother Andrew again.
“What are you doing?” cried Father Preston, “What have you already done?”
But the man didn’t turn. He put his face down onto Brother Andrew’s chest. One of the others had reached the room. It was Brother Matthew, the Abbot’s attendant. His eyes grew large but he splashed through the blood to kneel beside the man, thinking him overcome with grief. The man’s head jerked to the side and Andrew’s body twitched. Father Preston realized what the man was doing just as Brother Matthew reached up to gently touch his shoulder. Father Preston lunged forward to stop him just as Brother Matthew said, “Reverend Father, are you injured?”
The corpse jerked again as the man whipped around to face Brother Matthew. A strand of stringy flesh hung from the Abbot’s teeth. The silver cataract in his right eye flashed as he sought out the source of the voice. The stubble on his cheeks was stiff and dark with gore, each whisker standing like a needle with its own droplet of blood. The Abbot snarled like a lion interrupted mid-feed. He leapt at Brother Matthew who flung his arms over his head to protect himself.
“Please! Reverend Father—” cried Brother Matthew. Father Preston heard a chorus of gasps behind him and knew the others had arrived. The shock was too great to feel disappointment or anger with the Abbot, but a pang of sorrow pierced him at the thought that the others were seeing his idol fall. He leapt forward and tackled the older monk just as he was about to close his teeth on Brother Matthew’s arm. The Abbot writhed beneath him, arms grabbing and scraping at Father Preston, but his strength had mostly gone with his youth. Father Preston wondered how he’d gotten the better of Brother Andrew at all. Perhaps only because of surprise.
“Calm down, Father,” Preston begged him in a low whisper, trying to hold him still. “Please, it’s me, Michael. The others don’t know yet, they didn’t see. Calm down.”
But the Abbot just growled. The brothers were beginning to murmur behind him and Brother Matthew began to rise.
“Shh,” urged Father Preston in a shaky voice. He held the Abbot’s head still with his hands and kneeled over his chest, pinning his legs. The Abbot’s nails scratched at Father Preston’s face and arms. “Shh,” he urged again, but the Abbot’s chest rumbled with a deep and resonant roar. Father Preston glanced back at the others. They craned to see over each other and muttered amongst themselves. Brother Matthew took a step toward the Abbot. Father Preston whirled back again, desperate. Instead of the warm, noble guide he’d worshiped, Father Preston saw only a wild beast, a struggling animal cornered and vicious.
“Please,” Father Preston hissed, but the Abbot only continued to roar. So Father Preston slapped him.
He had lived in awe of the Abbot for so long, had such a dread of altering the hierarchy that he had expected the entire world to stand still, to teeter for a moment on that slap. But nobody stopped, time did not slow to a crawl and the guttural shout of the Abbot didn’t fade into the background. Nothing changed, except that now Brother Andrew’s blood was smeared over Father Preston’s palms too.
The lack of response, the permanence of the scream despite his best effort to stop it, sent an icy quake of fear through Father Preston. It quickly melted into anger. Father Preston raised his hand again. But Brother Matthew had reached them.
“Don’t, Brother Michael. He’s sick. He doesn’t understand. He— he can’t stop himself.”
Father Preston glared at him for a moment. “Sick? This isn’t sick, this is madness. This is possession,” Father Preston lowered his voice, “He was eating Brother Andrew. This is evil. Some demon has taken up residence in the Reverend Father’s mind—”
Brother Matthew shook his head. “You heard the doctor. This is what the Plague does. There’s nothing supernatural here. Just illness.”
“Then the Reverend Father has committed the gravest of sins. Brother Matthew, this is a man we’ve followed for decades. He cannot be a murderer— an— an abomination.”
“He’s sick. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. We don’t have time to argue this, Brother Michael. Our Abbot needs medical care and Brother Andrew lies unattended and exposed. Help me get the Abbot back to his room so I can call the doctor.”
The Abbot snapped his teeth together, trying to bite, as they lifted him to his feet. He struggled but they kept a tight grip. The circle of monks who had gathered around Brother Andrew parted for them, but no one spoke. Father Preston could feel their eyes on his back during the entire agonizing trip down the hall. He tried to be gentle, but the awkward writhing of the Abbot exhausted him and Brother Matthew both. They dropped him onto the narrow bed and fled out of the room quickly. Father Preston pressed his back against the door to prevent it opening as the old priest flung himself at it over and over, as if he were a small child having a tantrum.
One of the Afflicted banged into the cell door nearby, and Father Preston shook himself. It took him a second to realize he wasn’t in the dark abbey but standing in front of a sun drenched window in the only operating asylum in the world. His thumb ached and he looked down. His thumb still marked his place as the rest of his hand clenched the book until it nearly folded around the thick finger. He forced himself to relax. He looked around to make sure he hadn’t been seen, but Ruth was nowhere in sight.
Chapter 11
Ruth stood up from the bench as Father Preston walked away. She forced a smile for her friend. “Here I am, as requested. Just point me in the right direction,” she said.
Juliana gave her a hesitant smile. “I tried to keep him out of the office this morning. He must have slipped by me while I was serving breakfast. Sorry.”
Ruth shook her head. “You don’t have to worry, I’m an adult and still semi-civilized at least. I can handle Father Preston. So, what’s first?”
“I thought you could help me with bathing and rebandaging. I think I’ve got one with gangrene too.”
“I’m sorry, Juliana, I should have realized. I didn’t bring my kit.”
“I have what we’ll need.” Juliana began walking down the hallway.
“But all we have here are bandages and sedative,” Ruth called after her, “I’ll go back and get the tea tree ointment from the station. Do I need any instruments?”
Juliana turned around and shook her head. “No, it’s spr
ead too far. He was picked up a few days ago, been living off rats in a garbage pile near the old garbage transfer station.”
Ruth shuddered. When the world stopped working, lots of survivors had piled their trash in vacant lots and near transfer stations for the first few months, thinking it would get picked up any day, when things got back to normal. As people died, the trash piles stopped growing, but there was no one left to clean them up. Ruth had treated several survivors who had been desperate enough to scavenge in the hills of plastic bags. The rats and the wild dogs were bad enough on their own, but she’d told everyone she could find to steer clear, the threat of rabies was one of her worst nightmares.
She’d never dreamed a human could survive for six years in one of those trash piles. As larger prey grew scarcer and more wary, the Infected must have moved to smaller, more dependable sources of food. She wondered how many Infected had burned to death in the massive tire fire a few years earlier.
“Is that why I’m here?” she asked, catching up to Juliana.
“I wouldn’t ask you to do something I refuse to,” said Juliana, “I asked for help because this has gotten too big for me. Or maybe I’ve found myself smaller of late, I don’t know,” she explained tiredly.
Ruth put a hand on her friend’s arm. “What are you talking about? You haven’t been yourself lately. Are you feeling all right?”
Juliana waved her away. “Yes, I’m fine, just tired and constantly playing catch up.” Ruth followed her to the kitchen, watching carefully. She couldn’t see anything alarming about the other woman, but she promised herself to persuade Juliana into a checkup when they finished for the day.
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