Ruth glanced back at Nick, who had pushed himself up again. He was steady and his breath was coming in great whoops. She could see his legs shaking with the effort. The quarter moon emerged from the shattered clouds and cast a cool light on his face and over the crowd, turning them to marble.
“Ruth,” he said quickly, “it’s okay. It’s done.” He sucked in one great deep breath and then shoved off with his feet. He held his breath, kicking only once, wildly. After a few moments, his eyes rolled back and his head dipped forward. Ruth heard a few struggling wheezes and then there was nothing more. One of the men climbed the ladder and checked the pulse in Nick’s dislocated wrist. He nodded briefly to Father Preston. The first notes of a hymn spilled into the soft summer air, a woman’s voice, high and sweet overwhelming the crickets. The rest of the crowd joined. The Infected heard and began shrieking. Juliana turned and vomited. Ruth held her up as her body shook with the violence of the expulsion. “Go inside, go lie down. You don’t have to watch this,” Ruth said in her ear.
Juliana shook her head and wiped her mouth. “If I leave, they’ll grab you. Come inside with me. You don’t have to watch either.”
But Ruth did. She was somehow responsible for all of it. She had to be there. “If I don’t, they might do something worse,” she whispered.
The hymn evaporated, and the crowd became ominously silent again. Ruth turned around. Gray was walking over to the other bound man, the father of the boy Ruth had shot. The stepladders were moved.
“No!” cried the man, “No, have mercy! Please, my wife is very pregnant. I was only trying to protect my baby. What choice did I have?” He wept while they arranged him on the telephone pole and rebound him.
“You could have left the boy with us. We offered to care for him for the rest of his days,” said Gray and turned back toward Juliana, “an offer I extend to everyone inside as well.”
“You would have worked him to death,” the man sobbed, “You would have used him up and starved him or beaten him. I’ve heard of those camps to the south, I know what they do to the Infected there.”
Father Preston looked sympathetic as he leaned over the man. “We aren’t like the heathens to the south. I wouldn’t allow anyone under my care to come to harm.”
The man struggled and ignored the priest. He turned to the men tying him down instead. “What do you want?” he asked, “You want food? I’ll show you my stockpile. You need shoes? I’ve got good boots. Just let me go back to my wife. I won’t cause any more trouble.”
A thought seized Ruth. Nobody but her had heard what his request was. Nobody knew he had abandoned Connor but her. “It isn’t his fault,” she said loudly over the man’s cries. He stopped and stared at her. “He asked me to bring Connor to the hospital. I told him there was no room. No food. That he’d have to take the boy back with him. He said the boy had tried to kill his wife, that he was afraid he’d get loose and kill the baby. He couldn’t bring him back. He didn’t know I’d make the choice that I did.”
The man looked confused for a moment but quickly jumped on the thread of the lie. “I didn’t know she’d murder my boy,” he cried, “I asked her to take him here. That’s all. You can’t do this!” The people binding him paused and looked at Father Preston, who was frowning and staring at Ruth in consideration. He turned to the man.
“Ruth is well known for what she does. You must have known when you brought her the boy.”
Lie, Ruth willed at him, keep lying. You’re almost free.
But the man hesitated a fraction of a second too long. “I don’t believe you!” shouted Father Preston, “You stand upon the doorstep of death! Yet you compound your sin by lying. Finish it,” he waved a hand at the men on the step ladders and they began raising their victim onto the post.
“Please,” yelled the man to Ruth, “please, my wife, my new baby. They’ll starve. Don’t— ”
The man groaned as he was lifted from his feet. Ruth sprang away, darting into the hospital, leaving a weeping Juliana on the step. She sprinted down the hallway, sliding and banging into room doors which caused fresh fury from the Infected. She flew up the steps and tore open her pack. The gun gleamed with the reflection of the moon. She checked the last remaining bullet and kept the safety on as she raced back down the stairs and out onto the walkway.
Juliana was covering her face with her hands, but looked back when Ruth came tumbling out of the doorway. The man was screaming in pain and terror, so nobody else paid attention to her when she came out. Juliana’s eyes widened as she saw the gun, but she sobbed and nodded. Ruth aimed, but her hands were shaking. She took a deep breath and fired.
The screaming stopped and she grabbed her friend before the mob realized what had happened. She pulled Juliana through the door and closed it, locking it from the inside. She handed Juliana the gun and ran down the hall to the kitchen. The mob was shouting and rounding the corner of the building as she slammed and locked that door too. There were a few smashing blows, but then someone called them off and the crowd retreated. Ruth returned to Juliana in the hallway. They watched the mob scatter, their torches like stray sparks swirling from a fire into the dark. Rain began to fall on the field, dropping heavily on the hospital’s patched roof in a soothing roar.
The Infected stopped screaming one by one, dropping off to sleep. The dead men creaked as their ropes twisted and rubbed against the wet wood. At last, exhausted and numbed by grief and terror, the two women wandered up the stairs to bed. Juliana was pale and shaking as she crawled onto the bed, but she fell asleep quickly in the cool, damp air. Ruth slumped against the wall outside her door and fell asleep at the top of the stairs with the gun on her lap, her hand clenched around the grip.
Chapter 18
Ruth peered through thick spirals of gray fog at Nick’s body. There was no breeze and the corpses didn’t rock or twist on their beams. She wanted to take them down and bury them in a quiet place. She wondered if she should try to find the other man’s wife. She didn’t even know his name. How many pregnant women can there be? She thought, but she had larger problems at the moment. Gray had not left the hospital unguarded. A woman was crouched over a campfire between the two crosses. She pulled a dead gull out of a pot and began to pluck it, occasionally scanning the hospital for movement. Another man made a circuit along the path, parting the fog every few moments only to disappear again into it. They both had weapons. Ruth had no doubt they’d been instructed to use them on her.
The cart of dirty dishes and laundry still sat in front of the door on the walk. The place couldn’t function without the things on it. Ruth checked her gun. The bullet she’d used last night was the only one she’d had left. It had been the one Nick had given to her. But she was the only one who knew that.
Gray had gone a step further and bolted them in with the heavy crossbeam Juliana used when she left the hospital. There was a crank to pull it back up, but Ruth knew it would move too slowly and loudly to surprise the people guarding the yard. She glanced down the hallway to the distant kitchen door. The fog was thick, but it was a long way around the building and she’d have to walk right by the woman and her fire. That left waiting for Juliana to do it or going through the ruined wing, and Juliana was exhausted and ill.
Ruth had crept down the stairs so her friend would keep sleeping. She looked at the boarded up door to her right and then glanced back outside. The male guard was lost somewhere in the gray. The woman was deeply intent on scraping pinfeathers from the dead bird.
The boards came off smoothly with one twist of a hammer. Ruth was surprised. The structure had to be rotting faster than she’d thought. She pushed on the door gently. It scraped over some rubble about halfway open. She stopped and held her breath. There were no sounds from outside. She slid through, her belt buckle clinking the edge of the door. She stopped to clear the bits of wood and drywall that had stuck under the door. She didn’t want to retrieve the cart only to draw attention to herself on the way back in.
T
his side of the building was a mirror image of the other, except that it ended abruptly in gray fog halfway down, where the walls had collapsed. She edged her way down. The floor seemed solid, but the roof showered her with dust as she moved toward the opening. She could hear the footsteps of the male guard scraping over the cement outside. They died away and she slid carefully down the rubble hill and into the long grass.
The front of the building was lined with hedge. They had been small once— neat, squared, hip-high things. Eight years of wild growth and tangling with the building’s heavy curtain of ivy had made them a snarled nest of dead branches and rabbit warren under a skin of green. Ruth crawled under the edge of the hedge. She had to scrape along the dirt to avoid being snagged in the dry, brittle claws of the brush and it bothered her that she could see nothing of the guards or the cart until she got much closer. She froze as the footsteps returned and then multiplied. She tried to peer through the dusty covering of leaves, but she could only see boots.
“How much longer do we have to stay? I got kids at home waiting for food. I can’t spend all day here,” said a man’s voice.
“I hear you, brother, but we can’t let that murderess escape. Who knows what she’ll try next. Maybe she’ll come after us for revenge, or our families. You saw her yesterday, she’s capable of anything.” It was another man. Not Father Preston. Gray perhaps?
“But I have to feed my kids—”
“Relax, you and Breanne will be relieved shortly. We found another of her accomplices and the construction crew will be here shortly. Besides, I don’t think food will be a problem for much longer. Father Preston says time is running short. He wants to press things along. If they don’t cooperate in a few days—” the voice paused and spoke lower, but Ruth was closer than he knew. “We’ll take out that garden. In fact, if you want to get out of guard duty early, you can go take care of that dog the caretaker keeps. We don’t want them to have any chances to stop us and a dog could be a problem. I’ve got rat poison in the wagon.”
“Where am I going to find dog food?” scoffed the guard.
The other voice laughed a grating, hate-filled sound that made the pit of Ruth’s stomach grow chilled and tight. “That bitch passed off cans of dog food as regular food to me once. She doesn’t know I still have a few. It’ll be like sweet karma.” Gray laughed. “Or you can bean it in the head and we can roast it up with Breanne’s bird. Have a regular feast.” The other man laughed too. “C’mon,” resumed Gray, “let’s get you set up with the supplies you’ll need. Breanne, the construction crew will be here shortly. Care to help us unload?”
The woman grumbled but Ruth could tell the request was not optional. How badly these people must hate her, to go to all this trouble. No, she thought, it’s not me. It’s the whole world. They hate what their lives have become. The choices they can’t make. I’m just a symbol of it. She heard scrabbling as the woman shuffled over to them and they began walking toward the road. Ruth waited until the footsteps were almost gone, then pushed her way through the thick brush, scraping her arms on the jagged branches. She darted for the cart and swung the bar up on the door, surprised at her own speed. Once inside, she pulled the cart down to the kitchen. The Infected heard and began yelling. Instead of starting breakfast though, she paced the kitchen.
Bernard had to be warned. The dog was his reason for existing. But there was no way she could leave now. The guard would be back now, or would come back when she heard the noise of the Infected. And the construction crew— Ruth spared a pitying thought for whoever they had captured. All those families, just trying to do the right thing. Would they all be Father Preston’s victims? How long could she allow this to go on? There was an obvious solution and Ruth was avoiding it.
She dumped the dirty bowls into the sink and started pumping water into the basin. Yesterday had been chaos. She’d been frightened and exhausted, angry and grieving. But in the cold morning stillness, she knew she couldn’t let anyone else die for her. She scrubbed furiously at the dishes, wanting just this one task to be really, truly done. Done for Juliana. Just one thing really finished, not left trailing and looping like her whole life, before the steel beam rose up in the field and she gave in to them.
All these years, she’d struggled on, afraid to die, but suffering the whole time. She was kinder to strangers than she’d been to herself— than she’d been to her own son. The seven years since Charlie and Bill died hadn’t been living; they’d been a continuous, hopeless streak of hell. When Juliana died, there’d be no more kindness left in the world. It was fitting that someone like Preston should win.
Ruth swiped the clean bowls with a frayed towel, not really seeing them. She slammed them onto the table one after another. The Infected wailed without pause. No peace, even in my last half an hour, she thought. But there would be silence soon enough. She wandered into the dark pantry and felt the hot bubble of a sob burst in her chest. It spilled into her throat before she could stop it. She leaned over a large empty bin and let the cry out. She sank down to the floor and closed her eyes. The wooden bin still smelled crisp and sweet like the apples it had held long ago. The sounds of rage from the hospital were muted.
Ruth felt a cool hand on her shoulder and opened her eyes. Juliana crouched next to her.
“They are going to keep killing people,” said Ruth.
Juliana nodded.
“And I heard them planning to raid the garden and poison Bernard’s dog.”
“That’s not entirely unexpected,” said Juliana calmly.
“Eventually, they’ll get tired of waiting and burn this place down or storm it. I have to go out there, before anyone else is hurt.”
“No, Ruth, you can’t. It won’t make any difference. A group that angry is never satisfied. It has to burn itself out. It’s like a pressure cooker; it has to spend its steam for a long time before it’s all gone.”
“I can’t just let them keep crucifying people.”
“We won’t. You were right about the hospital, Ruth. These people are all going to die. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. And if you’re right about what that man with Father Preston intends to do with them… I can’t just abandon them. But I can’t just— I can’t ask you to do what you’ve been suggesting with them. I know there’s no cure coming. I know they’ll probably starve or freeze. But I have to give them a chance. And I have to give you a chance.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re going to let them go. We’re going to fight for our lives and for theirs.”
“But they’ll run rampant over the city!It’s been years since the Infected were loose in the city. The people who are left think they’re safe!” cried Ruth.
“You think they’re any better off with these zealots in charge? They aren’t going to stop. They’ll judge and crucify anyone they don’t approve of. This is just the start. Look at what we’ve been through. We survived the end of the world, Ruth. All the chaos and murder and looting and violation and suicides that happened with it. We fought it off. We built this place—”
Ruth shook her head. “You built this place. My only purpose these last several years has been murdering other people’s loved ones. I couldn’t even help my own. My life’s been pointless and cowardly.”
“Ruth, I’ve thought for a long time about what you do. Sometimes, when the people here scream or scratch their faces bloody or chew away their own skin, I think you’re right, that you’ve been right all this time. But I keep hoping, and I keep going. Not once, in all these years, not even after Father Preston recovered, have I thought of what you do as pointless or cowardly. And this place wouldn’t be here without you. Don’t think that I don’t know where our supplies came from or who has been caring for the garden when nobody else will. We built this place together. And I’m not going to let a bunch of slavers and murderers walk in and take it over. Someone’s got to stand up to them. The people that aren’t with them are frightened. Or will be. They’re scattered and lo
nely. You and I have what might be the deadliest army left on the face of the earth. Is it better to let them starve when I’m gone? Or live out the rest of their lives being beaten and worked to death? At least this way they’d have a chance. Not just to survive, but also to do one more good thing with their lives, to use this terrible Plague against people that want to hurt their families.”
Ruth was silent for a moment. “Wouldn’t we be just as guilty of using them as Father Preston would be if we gave them to him?”
“I’m not going to force them to kill or starve them so they want to. I’m just going to let them go. I hope some of them run away and live. But I know some of them will attack the first thing they see. It’s what they do.”
“How do we stop them from tearing each other apart?”
“We have the poppies,” Juliana said. There was a distant screech of metal as another steel beam was set in place. Ruth nodded grimly.
“When?” she asked.
Chapter 19
Father Preston was calling for her to come out. A woman outside moaned in pain and the Congregation’s hymn floated over both in eerie harmony. The kitchen was hot and thick with sickly-sweet dust. Ruth’s back ached as she divided the straw into individual portions and then wrapped them for the kettle. They were a dozen doses short.
“We don’t have enough,” she said and glanced up at Juliana. Juliana rubbed a greasy arm over her sweaty forehead. It left a brown smear of poppy dust behind.
“Isn’t the early crop ready?”
Ruth shrugged. “I didn’t get a chance to check. But we need to warn Bernard anyway.”
“I wish we could save the food.” Juliana sighed and cut another disk from the coffee filter.
“I’ll get what’s ripe, but it’s still pretty early. And we had to plant late this year.”
Juliana sighed. “I know. I think about it constantly.” She plunked down into a nearby chair and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. “A week earlier or a few extra feet plowed or a couple more hours of weeding and watering and we wouldn’t be here. Everything would have been okay for another year.”
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