What are you up to?
“What are you up to?” Peter mumbled.
Jeremiah scratched his head, wondered if he’d said those words aloud instead of thinking them. He closed the door and left the boy to his typing.
The Rochester house was a dust cloud. The entire family had masks on, even the two youngest, who swept at the dust with their feet. Jeremiah and Rose knocked on the open door but didn’t wait for an invitation to enter. They just started shoveling and sweeping. Eventually the four adults and the older Rochester boy managed to choreograph their efforts into a systematic pattern of dust removal, starting high on the cabinets, light fixtures, and counters, then allowing it all to settle before starting on the floor. Jeremiah suggested working from the back of the house to the front, and Reginald agreed. Before long, Rose and Emory were discussing how things might be arranged and repainted, if they could get their hands on any paint. Both women looked relieved to have another woman to talk to.
Jeremiah killed ten tarantulas with his shovel while Reginald clobbered eight, the two of them making a sport of it. Behind the mask, Reginald showed the hint of a smile. Without prompting, he told Jeremiah how they’d come by that cop car. Theirs had short-circuited out somewhere in western Kansas, and they’d taken off on foot, carrying what they could. But they hadn’t even gone a mile before stumbling upon the cop car, complete with a man in uniform behind the wheel. The cop had died due to what Reginald assumed was suffocation: his face and mouth had been so covered with dust. So they’d buried him in the dust, marked the grave with a couple of boards they’d fashioned into a cross, and then driven back to get their belongings.
Jeremiah leaned on his broom and smirked. “Gave me a scare seeing that car drive into town.”
Reginald looked confused, like in the middle of all their cleaning he’d forgotten that the man in his house was wanted all across the country. Then he nodded. “I suppose it did.” Reginald was quiet for the next few minutes, giving Jeremiah space.
The sun was down, and with no electricity—there was no telling when the poles would be fixed, if ever—their only light was from candles and kerosene lamps. They were about to give up for the day when a gunshot sounded, echoing in the dusty streets. All four adults paused to look out into the night, as if waiting for another shot.
“What was that?” asked Emory.
Jeremiah said, “A gunshot.”
“I know that, but . . . ?”
Jeremiah pointed to his shoulder. “The other day, Josiah had a rifle in his hands. To make a long story short, he shot me.”
“It was an accident,” Rose quickly added, after seeing Emory’s hand flash to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Jeremiah said, “But sometimes accidents can be prevented. We need to search all the houses, Rose. See who that was.” He shook his head. “We should have done what we did at Daddy’s house.”
“What?” asked Reginald.
Rose said, “Secured all the weapons.”
“Better late than never,” said Jeremiah. “Come on.”
Reginald said, “I’m coming with.”
“No, you’re not,” said Emory. “You’re not leaving me here alone with the children in the dark.”
And that was that.
Jeremiah found a wagon they’d once used to haul wheat to the silo. He dusted it off and said it would do for holding whatever weapons they took from the homes. The wheel spokes were rusted and caked with hardened dirt, but after a few revolutions clumps fell and the wagon was easier to pull.
Rose carried a lantern and together they ventured through darkness. They started on the north side of town and worked south. Many homes were unlocked, and the owners did little more than stare as they confiscated knives, handguns, rifles, and other potentially harmful items. Doors that were locked, Jeremiah kicked in. One man sat in the dark with a loaded rifle on his lap. Jeremiah slid the weapon from his slack grip and moved on.
At each house they attempted to give water to the residents, but very little water got in. Most trickled down chins and throats and wetted shirt collars. After an hour they dumped what they’d confiscated into the shed in the Worsts’ backyard and then went out for more. They’d yet to find a body to go along with the gunshot they’d heard. After an hour they began to wonder if they’d even heard the shot at all.
They found Mr. Mulraney in his kitchen with an apple on his lap and a knife in his hand. He had a small cut on his right thumb, and a tiny chunk had been taken from the apple, like he’d had a notion to eat but just couldn’t make it happen. Rose cut the apple and offered him a slice, but Mr. Mulraney, although his eyes were open, was unresponsive. Jeremiah wondered how long he’d been sitting there. The spot on the apple that had been open to the air was brown, and the blood on his thumb had clotted.
Leland Cantain sat at his dining room table holding a butcher knife. Rose took it from him, and Cantain muttered, “From dust we come, and to dust we shall return.”
Jeremiah told him to go to sleep, and Cantain closed his eyes.
In the hospital, Sister Moffitt sat cross-legged on the floor while her patients slept. She held rosary beads and muttered something that could have been prayer.
Sheriff McKinney stood outside his house next to a ladder that stretched to his roof. He seemed frozen though, as if contemplating, and then he mumbled something about getting the dust from his gutters before the weight ripped them clean off. Jeremiah walked him back inside and sat him down on a dust-covered sofa. As McKinney mumbled nonsense, Jeremiah emptied the house of weapons, and on his way out he folded up the ladder and placed that on the cart for good measure.
The cart had gotten so heavy by now that it took both of them to pull it. Jeremiah used one hand to hold the lantern and on they went, making another drop-off back home.
They found Richard Klamp balled up inside his Buck stove, trying to start a fire with a Zippo lighter that sounded dry as the land. He kept mumbling that he was cold and “was just trying to get a fire going.” Rose walked him back to his bedroom, tucked him in, and told him to never try to do that again. Richard said, “Okay, then,” and started sucking his thumb.
Ned Blythe was lying on the floor in his food store, covered by a pile of canned goods and bottles of smoked rabbit. He’d fallen over while taking inventory on what few canned goods remained, accidently knocking an entire row of shelving onto himself. Jeremiah pulled him out, walked him home, and confiscated everything he saw, even the can opener resting on the counter.
They found Phillip Jansen sitting atop his kitchen table, holding on with one hand to an empty mailbag he’d somehow latched to the overhead light fixture. He said he’d been trying to change the lightbulb but couldn’t find his ladder. Three more empty mailbags rested on the table around him. Jeremiah and Rose weren’t sure what the mailman was going to do, but he put up no fight when they ushered him down from the table and searched his house for anything potentially dangerous.
Father Steven was in church, lying atop the altar with a small wooden cross in his hand. It looked too sharp for Rose’s liking, so she took it. They walked him to the front pew, where he stretched out and went to sleep.
Dr. Craven had returned to the spot on the floor where they’d found him yesterday. At first they thought him dead, but then his chest rose and fell, and a small push of breath moved dust across the floorboards. They carried his slight weight back to the bedroom and placed him atop the bedcovers.
“From dust to dust,” he whispered.
Moses Yearling was in bed inside his Bentley Hotel room, clutching one of his TNT rockets. He had enough explosives to bring the entire hotel down, so they cleaned his room of it all, replaced the rocket he’d been hugging with a spare pillow, and then tucked him in.
Orion’s door was locked. Jeremiah heard him snoring but kicked the door in anyway. Orion’s eyes opened, but he didn’t move from his fetal position in the middle of the floor as they searched his dresser. Instead of moving him to his bed, Jeremiah sli
d a pillow under his head and then covered him with a blanket.
Four hours into their mission, they entered the house where the boy William Trainer, who everyone in town called Windmill, lived. Rose’s lantern blew out, so she took a minute to relight it. William’s parents were asleep in their bedroom, but not on the bed. His mother lay on the floor holding a pair of scissors. It looked like she’d been trying to cut her own hair; the right side was still long, while the left had been hacked off above the ear. The father snored in a chair beside the window with a deck of cards and a bottle of hooch in his lap. That was no surprise; the man was a known gambler and drinker. Jeremiah attempted to give him some of the booze, but Mr. Trainer wasn’t having it. It trickled out of his mouth like the water they’d been trying to force down everyone’s throats.
They entered a narrow hallway, where another door swayed as if windblown. The hinges creaked when they opened it fully. Windmill was inside, sitting on a rocking chair that faced the window, slowly rocking.
“Windmill,” said Jeremiah.
No response.
Jeremiah stepped closer. A rifle rested beside the rocking chair. Windmill’s limp left hand hung inches away from the barrel. There was a hole in the ceiling, directly above the chair, and dust sifted down from it. “This was the gunshot we heard.”
Rose agreed.
William blinked. “Ain’t no boy.”
“Windmill, can you hear me?”
“Saw me a rabbit,” he said. “Tried to shoot it.”
“Windmill?”
“Ain’t no boy.” Windmill rocked faster. Spoke faster. “Ain’t no boy, Ellen. Ain’t no boy.” Louder. “Dust to dust. Ain’t no boy.”
Jeremiah lifted Windmill from the chair and held him in his arms, hugging him like his drunk father probably never did, and Windmill slowly began to settle.
“Ain’t no boy,” he said softer. “Saw me a rabbit on that ceiling. Tried to shoot it.”
Jeremiah looked over Windmill’s shoulder to Rose. “He was lucky.”
They walked Windmill to his bed and pulled the cover up to his neck. Rose kissed the boy on his forehead, and they left the house with their arms full. Outside the moon showed bright against a dark purple sky scattered with stars. It felt good to get out of that house, where the air had been thick with whatever ailed the town.
The temperature had dropped while they were inside. Rose took deep breaths of the crisp outside air and exhaled plumes of vapor. She hugged her arms while Jeremiah held the lantern. Twenty feet away was Deacon Sipes’s repair shop, where Deacon and his pal Toothache lived in two separate apartments above the garage. Rose hesitated to go in after what she’d seen hanging in there the day before. Jeremiah told her he’d go in alone, but she shook her head and insisted she’d follow.
“Reporters report, Jeremiah.” She grabbed the lantern and led the way.
From a window on the front side, a ray of moonlight cut diagonally across the shop, revealing hundreds of jackrabbits hanging from the ceiling, hovering over rusted car and tractor parts, old tools covered in dust, and a cluttered desk that probably hadn’t seen honest work in months. The ropes holding the rabbits shifted in the breeze, spinning the jacks slowly from the ceiling beams, and Jeremiah looked away to avoid their eyes. The whole place smelled of death.
Jeremiah and Rose shuffled instead of walked, as if the dust-covered floor could give way any minute. Jeremiah ducked beneath some of the lower-hanging jacks, sidestepped to avoid others.
“Deacon?”
The lantern went out.
Rose sucked in a breath, fumbled to relight it.
A dead rabbit brushed Jeremiah’s shoulder. He swallowed hard, closed his eyes, and imagined collapsing into his bed back home, wishing they hadn’t saved this place for last.
Something moved in the dust around his feet.
Rose’s lantern glowed again. It shook in her outstretched arm. “You seen enough?”
“Deacon?”
No answer. They heard nervous breathing across the room. The floor shifted, a quick tunnel of movement, and then it disappeared into the shadows.
It was a rabbit. A live one, skittering around that cold dark place.
The lantern went out again. The smell inside the shop was getting to them both. Rose relit the lantern, and Jeremiah shuffled on toward the back of the room, where the breathing was louder. Then he saw them—Toothache and Deacon both sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, each holding a rifle and pointing it at one another from only a few feet away. Their breath was visible, jetting from their nostrils and parted lips.
Maybe the two men had been trying to shoot that rabbit and ended up freezing with the barrels keyed on each other. Or maybe they’d gotten paranoid and frozen right in the middle of shooting one another. Whatever happened, they seemed to have forgotten it. They stared past each other into the dark corners of the room.
Jeremiah called their names, but neither man responded. He hurried to remove the weapons from the two men’s slack grips, counting their blessings that the triggers hadn’t been pulled, because both weapons were loaded.
Deacon’s grimy hands stole Jeremiah’s attention.
Grease and grime beneath the fingernails.
Jeremiah suddenly dropped to one knee, dizzy—something from the past churning in his mind.
Those hands around somebody’s neck.
He opened his eyes and stood, weak-kneed. “We gotta get out of here, Rose.”
“Jeremiah, what is it?”
He hurried from the shop and she followed, oblivious now to the rotating rabbits brushing their arms, shoulders, and heads as they ran.
Once outside, Rose doubled over, hands on her knees, breathing as if she’d been holding it in since they entered the shop moments ago. She looked up. “What happened to you in there?”
He was breathing as rapidly as she was. He’d brushed up against Deacon years ago, and his mind had just given him a glimpse of the vision he’d seen back then—back when he saw visions. A reminder that Deacon Sipes was not to be trusted. Had he really killed a man?
“Just a bad feeling, Rose.”
“It was more than that. The blood rushed from your face, Jeremiah.”
He couldn’t answer what he didn’t fully understand himself.
Jeremiah stood straight and held her like he’d done Windmill, and she released herself to his embrace. Her chest rose and fell against his stomach. As he rubbed her back, the sharp angles of her shoulder blades reminded him of bird wings beneath the cottony fabric of her dress.
They stood that way under the moonlight until he could feel both of their heartbeats slowing. He rested his chin atop her head. “I don’t know what story could be more interesting for you, Rose. Me or the town?”
“I think at this point they’re one and the same, Jeremiah.”
As much as he couldn’t fully explain it, he couldn’t deny it either.
They pulled that last load back to the Worst house and secured it all in the shed.
On the front stoop he said, “You writing tonight?”
She grinned. “No. And I’m not staying in that hotel either. I think I’m asleep on my feet, and your couch in there has my name on it.”
They went inside, physically and mentally exhausted, but Jeremiah was hopeful they’d done the right thing. It was the only thing they could think of to keep the town safe from itself. He only wished they’d taken more of the water they’d tried to give them. Bodies can’t live without water.
He didn’t let Rose sleep on the couch. He insisted she sleep on the bed he’d been using, and she didn’t argue. She was snoring softly three minutes after her head hit the pillow.
He closed the door and walked down the hall toward Peter’s room, turned the knob, and ducked his head inside. They’d been gone for hours, but the boy didn’t look like he’d moved from the chair. And he didn’t look up from his typing either. More folded pages had been added to the stack he’d already accumulated.
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nbsp; Jeremiah was too tired to ask questions. He closed the door and found the couch in the living room much to his liking. He blew out the lamp, and the room fell to a darkness so thick that even the moon struggled to penetrate it.
He drifted off to sleep minutes later, to the sound of that typewriter clacking.
Had there been any trees left for the birds to nest in, perhaps it would have been a morning fit for birdsong.
The windows were open throughout the house, and a fresh breeze circulated.
On the couch, Jeremiah rubbed his eyes and swung his feet to the floor. Rose stood by the living room window. Coffee steam enveloped her face as she drank.
Had last night been a dream? A nightmare of a different sort? Visiting all those houses in the darkness? Minutes before he roused on the couch, he’d heard that dust man laughing. But now the blue morning sky looked stolen from a painting.
He stood from the couch, glimpsed all the dust still covering the land, and realized that last night had been as real as the hard life they were all now living. And that morning blue could at any minute turn black and unbreathable.
“Morning.” Rose nodded toward another coffee mug on the table behind her. “Come look.”
“At what?”
“Out the window.” She sipped more coffee, grinning.
He joined her. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“The mailboxes.”
Jeremiah saw the Worsts’ mailbox and then all the other boxes up and down and all around the town, the mailboxes Wilmington and Orion had crafted, all with their tiny yellow flags pointing upward like flowers reaching for sunlight.
Jeremiah didn’t hear the typewriter. “Where’s Peter?”
“He’s on his bed,” said Rose. “Deep asleep.”
“You think he did this?”
“I do.”
Down the road, the doors to the Bentley swayed open, and out stepped Orion in blue pajamas and slippers. He moved in painful slow motion, but he was moving nevertheless. He paused on the porch, surveying the town with all those yellow flags raised. Orion stepped over a dust drift and used the handrail to navigate the dust-covered steps, favoring that injured shoulder from when he’d fallen days ago. Eventually he made it out to the hotel mailbox. He squatted down and stared at that yellow flag like he doubted it was real. How long had they gone without mail?
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