The Last Town on Earth

by Thomas Mullen

  When she was a few feet from the guard, he turned around and nodded a silent greeting. It was Graham Stone. Elsie knew he was friends with Philip and Mr. Worthy, but she had rarely come into contact with him. She found herself intimidated by his wordless gaze, the solidity of his posture, and the rifle that lay across his arms neither casually nor rigidly.

  “Um, the kids at school wrote this letter to Philip,” Elsie said without looking him in the eye. “Mrs. Worthy asked me to deliver it to him.”

  “I’ll see he gets it,” he said, releasing the barrel of the rifle with his left hand, which Elsie saw had only three fingers, and taking the envelope.

  He kept his eyes on her for another moment and, seeing that she had nothing else to say, turned back around. His shadow stretched across her feet and then it was like he was a statue. He seemed in no rush to deliver the letter, and she wondered how he would do it, whether there were proscribed times for deliveries or if he had lied to her. She blushed when she realized there was nothing she could do to stop him from opening it, and the thought broke her from her brief trance and chased her back down the empty path.

  She had walked less than a minute when she stopped and caught her breath, then turned around. Graham was in the same spot. He didn’t seem to be reading the letter, and he obviously trusted that she was walking home.

  Beside Elsie, a narrow trail split off and led into the woods. She slowly began to creep toward it. She had tramped over the trails all around Commonwealth, had explored them when her family first moved here, and had continued the habit despite her mother’s criticism that such wanderings were unladylike.

  Elsie loved the woods. Her grandfathers had been river drivers and lumberjacks, so perhaps this was them surfacing in her, some hereditary predisposition that made her feel particularly at home when tramping beneath Douglas fir and climbing over fallen branches and pungent pine needles, collecting pieces of driftwood by the river. The trails were where Elsie escaped when she was tired from the drudgery of school and the store and housework, when she needed to disappear. Her mother had hoped she would outgrow such jaunts, but they had become more intriguing to her since her family had moved to Commonwealth, which was so newly carved into the woods that the trails cut behind most of the town’s homes. She could wander through the woods and wind up in someone’s backyard, or reach the edge of a street where some men or women might be talking, letting the afternoon slowly drift by. She’d hide beneath the low-hanging branches, careful to stay in the shadows, and listen. Even the most boring topics were interesting when you weren’t supposed to be hearing them. Often she didn’t know what people were talking about, didn’t even know who some of them were. But it was real life. She liked spying because she was such a good student, she told herself; she wanted to know everything that was happening.

  Secretly, she loved knowing there were things she had seen that others hadn’t. Like seeing the men bury the dead soldier. Not even Philip’s own sister knew about the dead soldier. Did Mrs. Worthy? Suddenly, there were big secrets in Commonwealth, and she didn’t know who held them, who was unaware of them, or how many secrets she had yet to discover.

  So much had changed since the quarantine. People were terse on street corners, conversations by front doors were cut short, brief nods were replacing warm handshakes. No one was sick, but everyone was acting as if disease were stalking them and they needed to swiftly make their way to the safety of their homes. Kids weren’t allowed to play outside as often as before—mothers called them in, asked the friends to go back to their parents’ house. The quiet air of the men who guarded the town seemed to have infected everyone to some degree, and Elsie didn’t like it.

  She’d even spied on some of Philip’s first shift of guard duty, when he’d stood out by the post with Graham for an uneventful afternoon. She had watched them, sitting beneath a fir tree and feeling the sun briefly poke out through a thin spot in the clouds as the two men shifted their weight from one foot to the other. How unlucky, then, that she had missed the most interesting events. She would have loved to see the confrontation with the first soldier, to hear what Graham and Philip had said to him, to see what an actual soldier looked like up close. Had they really fired a warning shot, as Philip had said, or had he embellished the story for her?

  Elsie knew this trail wound to the other side of the storage building, where Graham wouldn’t be able to see her. She crept forward, careful not to step on any twigs and give herself away. The forest was thick here, the low branches all but blocking her from view, but she noticed when Graham moved. She stopped, peering out through a break in the trees, and watched him walk toward the storage building. She saw him slip the letter under the door, heard him knock on the door and go back to where he had stood. Then he was motionless again.

  Elsie walked on, and the trail dipped down a slight hill until Graham and the building were out of view. But after a minute’s walk, the trail tracked up again. A couple hundred feet to her right was the back of the storage building. Graham wouldn’t be able to see her, as he was on the opposite side of the building, but she was careful not to make enough noise to attract attention. The ground was still damp from the rainfall early that morning, and she realized her shoes would be filthy, necessitating a trip home to clean them before showing up at the store. But it was worth it, for there was the back of the building, close enough to toss a pebble at.

  She was at the edge of the woods now. She could see that the building was in disrepair, with a few holes at its base. They were too small for a man to fit through, but she could probably do it. Philip might even be able to, she thought. Maybe she could throw a pebble at the building, attract his attention, coax him out. She stood there in a crouch, her posture the picture of guilt. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this, but she hadn’t been able to resist.

  She picked up a small stone. All she had to do was throw it. She listened. She could hear something, murmuring. She couldn’t pick out words or even voices, but it must be Philip and the soldier. What were they talking about? Was Philip all right? The stone started to feel slick in her palm.

  Something snapped behind her and she turned around, panicked. She couldn’t see anything; it was only the sound of the forest. But she realized that just because Graham had stayed in one place for the past few minutes didn’t mean he wasn’t about to start pacing around the building. She could be discovered. And just what did she intend to say to Philip? She thought it wrong for him to be trapped in there, but she couldn’t take it upon herself to set him free. What would the town do if she were caught? And what if the soldier truly did have the flu?

  More murmuring from inside the building. It sounded no different from voices she’d overheard in houses throughout town. She was no more than thirty feet from the building. So close to Philip. But only when she was close enough to hear his laugh—there it was, rising above the murmurs for a brief, glowing moment—did she realize how far they were from each other, how separate this new quarantine had rendered them. She traded the stone from one hand to the other and back again, over and over. Then she placed it on the ground, silently.

  The trail seemed darker as she walked back home.

  XI

  “I see your two twigs,” Philip said, eying Frank carefully, “and raise you three.”

  After requesting playing cards from the morning guard, the two prisoners had scoured the building in search of something they could bet with. They found plenty of twigs—enough so it would probably take many hours for either of them to bankrupt the other. They’d started playing at least two hours ago.

  Philip was beginning to enjoy Frank’s company, but Charles’s warning about the guns still left him unsettled. Which was why, the next time Frank wandered downstairs to “use the facilities,” as he called it, Philip had gathered the rifle and pistol, carried them to the front of the vast room, quickly opened the door, and placed the weapons right outside.

  They’d been playing for hours when they heard the midmorning whistle
, just as Philip was raising Frank three twigs. Frank took the bait, then each player traded in two cards. Philip took a three of hearts and a seven of clubs, which gave him absolutely nothing.

  Frank bet a twig. Philip raised him three more.

  Frank scrutinized his foe. Then he dropped his cards. “Fold.”

  Philip raked the twigs into his stash, dropped his cards facedown, and started shuffling.

  “At least tell me what you had,” Frank said. “I had two kings.”

  “Do I have to tell you?”

  “Not technically. A gentleman would.”

  “Do gentlemen play poker?”

  “Of course.”

  Philip kept shuffling. “I had nothing.”

  Frank slapped his thighs angrily. But he was smiling. “You’re a hell of a bluffer. I thought you had a royal flush or something.”

  Three hands later, two of which Philip won, they were interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “I was just thinking it was time for dinner,” Frank said.

  Philip put down the cards and walked over to the door.

  “You’re a regular ringer, kid. After the war, you and me should tour the West, take on some high rollers.”

  Philip put his hand on the doorknob. He was already tired of opening the door, quickly picking up the tray of food and bringing it inside, then closing the door. This time he took an extra moment to look down the street, squinting at the brightness of the outside world. In the distance, closer to the second storage building, was one of the guards. First he was just a silhouette before the glare of the sun, then Philip recognized Graham’s face. And his scowl.

  Philip closed the door, the image lingering.

  “Everything all right?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah,” Philip said, then carried over the tray. He sat down and took his first good look at the tray, which held two chicken sandwiches, apples, cups of water, more cornbread, and an envelope addressed to Philip in Rebecca’s handwriting. Philip put the envelope in his pocket.

  “So how long have you folks been keeping people out of the town?” Frank asked.

  “Almost two weeks now.”

  “You going to run out of food eventually?” Frank took a bite of his sandwich.

  “They say we can go at least a couple months if we need to. But the doctor doesn’t think we’ll have to.”

  Frank’s eyebrows shifted and he seemed to almost say something, but he opted for silence and another bite. Philip put one of the pieces of cornbread next to Frank’s plate. Frank, his mouth full, nodded in appreciation.

  After they finished their meals, they looked at the cards, somewhat disappointed. Poker had been a welcome diversion for a couple of hours, but the long day stretched before them.

  Philip swallowed. His throat was not sore. He did not have a headache. He was neither feverish nor chilled. He had no cough and no sneeze. All seemed well.

  “Your sister makes good cornbread,” Frank said. “She pretty?”

  Philip shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “How old is she?”

  Philip saw where this was going. “Too young for you.”

  Frank smiled. “Relax, kid. I’m just teasing. I’m not interested.”

  “You got a sweetheart back in Missoula?”

  “I do.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Michelle.”

  A pretty name, Philip thought. He himself had once nurtured a crush on a Michelle in Portland—or was it Eugene? Those years were a geographic blur in his mind, but he remembered Michelle, the red dress she always wore, and the way she laughed at his jokes more than at anyone else’s.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Two months ago. Two months, one week, and four days.” Frank grinned ruefully.

  “What’s she look like?”

  “As a matter of fact—” Frank reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a thin leather strap that looked like a billfold. He removed a small photograph and handed it to Philip. Staring back at him was an attractive brunette, closer in age to Philip than to Frank, with large brown eyes and hair almost as straight as that of the Chinook Indians who lived outside Everett. It was just one picture, but if that was how she really looked, she would have been one of the prettiest girls in Commonwealth, Philip thought.

  “She’s sweet,” Philip said, handing it back.

  “It was tough to leave her for this.”

  “You’ll see her again soon,” Philip said. “They say the war’s almost over.”

  “Yeah,” Frank said, his eyes clouding.

  “Why didn’t you marry her? You wouldn’t have been drafted then.”

  “Yeah, I would have. They changed that law—anyone who gets married after the war started is treated like a single man as far as the draft is concerned. Too many fellas had gotten out of the first draft that way, so Uncle Sam got wise. Marrying her would only mean there was a chance I could make her a widow. I didn’t want to do that.” Frank looked at the picture again. His eyes were hard.

  “So what’s she doing now?” Philip asked, hoping to dispel the black cloud that suddenly hung around his companion.

  “Rolling bandages with the Red Cross ladies. Saving peach pits.” Pits were collected by the government so their carbon could be used in the production of gas masks. “Same as everyone else.” Frank put the photo back in his pocket. “So after forty-eight hours of this, they’ll let us go?”

  Philip nodded. “Sure.”

  “They’re not going to change their minds? Decide to leave us in here for a week? Or a month?”

  There were so many other things for Philip to worry about that he hadn’t even considered this possibility. He found Frank’s question too horrible to ponder. “No. Just till tomorrow night. Unless one of us gets sick, I guess.”

  “Well, I don’t aim to get sick.”

  “Me, neither.”

  They looked at each other, knowing their fate was bound together. I could feel fine tomorrow, Philip thought, but if he starts coughing and shivering, we’re in here to stay.

  Philip rushed to break the uncomfortable silence. “Want to play another hand?”

  They played and Philip won again, his ace-high full house beating Frank’s two pairs. He raked ten more twigs into his pile.

  As Philip shuffled the cards for the next hand, he thought he heard something. He looked at Frank’s hands, one of which was in his pile of twigs, which had diminished noticeably after Philip’s last few victories. Frank’s hand twitched a bit when he realized he was being watched.

  Philip dropped his cards. “I saw that.”

  “What?” Frank feigned innocence.

  “You snapped one of your twigs!”

  “What?”

  “You snapped one of your twigs to make it two twigs—you’re sitting over there minting yourself more money!”

  Frank decided to give up his act. “Okay, so I snapped one of ’em. You got me. It was too long anyway.” He grabbed a twig and flung it across the room, as if this would make up for his embezzlement.

  Philip was unsure how big a deal he should make of the fact that his opponent was a confirmed cheater. “I have to watch you like a hawk, I guess.”

  Frank sighed. “I won’t do it again. C’mon, deal the hand.”

  Philip taunted him: “I thought this was a gentleman’s game.”

  “Just deal the damn cards.”

  After another hour in which Philip’s collection of twigs grew, Frank announced he wanted to lie down. He pillowed his head on a folded blanket and shut his eyes; soon he was breathing so heavily that Philip figured he was asleep. Frank certainly seemed to be enjoying his reprieve from military drills and push-ups, or whatever it was they did over at Fort Jenkins.

  Philip walked toward the fireplace and threw more wood on the fire. It was warm enough during the day, but the previous night had been cold, and Philip wasn’t looking forward to another struggle with sleep.

  He sat down and read Rebecca
’s letter. It seemed to have been written the night before; she mentioned how difficult it would be to go to school the next day and said that both she and Laura were worried about him. But this short time would pass quickly, she assured him, and tomorrow night they would have supper as a family again.

  Philip was about to read the letter a second time when there was a knock on the door. He stood up hesitantly—it was too early for another meal—and walked toward it. After the requisite wait, he opened the door. There in the light of day, just on the threshold, was an envelope with his name written on it. He grabbed it and stole a brief glance farther outside, hoping to confirm whether the guard was indeed Graham. But out in the distance the solitary figure had turned his back, and because Philip knew he shouldn’t stand there with the door open, he looked back down and closed the door, the room falling prey to the darkness once more. The back could have been Graham’s, Philip figured, but maybe not.

  The handwriting on the envelope was a mystery. It looked feminine, though—certainly it wasn’t from Graham or Charles. Philip paused, then opened it. The one-page letter on plain white paper was signed Elsie.

  A letter from Elsie! He had tried not to think of her that day, had tried to focus on making it through those forty-eight hours, to concentrate on the soldier, to lose himself in the card game. But it had been all but impossible to keep her completely out of his mind, impossible not to wonder what she was doing, whether she was thinking of him.

  He sat down beside the lamp. Embarrassed, he looked back to make sure Frank wasn’t watching, then he unfolded the letter again.

  Dear Philip,

  I couldn’t believe it when Laura told me this morning what has happened. It was so hard to have to sit in class for the rest of the day and pretend to concentrate on what Mrs. Worthy was saying. She never called on Laura all day—she must have decided to go easy on her—but twice I was called on and both times I hadn’t been listening. I had been so preoccupied.