by Beth Hersant
“So take him far away.” Bib could see where this was going and was getting upset.
Owen piped up. “You all convinced me that a long trip was too dangerous. And that was to reach my parents. Now you want to do it for him?”
“We’ll …,” Bib stammered, “we’ll scare him off.”
“Then what?” Louella asked quietly.
They looked at her in confusion.
“Here’s a man who, the minute society fell, engaged in gang rape and beat the shit out of his ex-wife. Say we let him go … then what? You think he’ll just turn over a new leaf? Find Jesus?”
“Does it matter?” Sam asked.
“Letting him go,” Louella explained, “seems like the most moral option for us — we certainly wouldn’t have to get our hands dirty. But if he goes out and hurts someone else, that’s on us. We had the opportunity to stop him and instead we turned him loose.”
“That’s not our responsibility,” Alec said. “Seriously guys, is that our problem?”
Louella leaned back in her chair. “You tell me. This is our defining moment.”
Owen sighed. “Actually, it is our problem. In the absence of law, moral rule (whatever form it takes) will be determined by the strongest groups. That’s us, folks.”
“As one of the strong, I’m asking you do we or do we not have a moral responsibility to protect other survivors?” Louella’s question was met with silence and so she pressed on. “Let’s make it less abstract. If we pick up a survivor in the future and find out that she was raped by that man, will you be able to look her in the eye? Or can you just shrug it off and say ‘Tough break, kid’?”
Bib slumped forward, elbows on the table massaging her temples in a way that announced she was working on a migraine of her own. “No,” she murmured. “It would be our fault.” She looked up at the others, pleadingly. “But to kill him — it’s against the …”
“Law?” Owen asked gently. “There is no civil authority, no state and federal law. That’s why he did all those things in the first place. He didn’t expect that there could be any consequences. But the same law that would have deterred him is also not there to protect him now. The only law we have is our own.”
Bib tried one last time. “But we’re not killers.”
Arnold took her hand. “Sweetheart, I shot and killed Leon Shaw today.”
“But that was in a fight!” She was crying now. “You were defending Patience. This is an execution!”
“I know,” Louella fished a dog-eared packet of tums out of her pocket and popped two in her mouth. “Nevertheless, it is one of our three options and we need to take a vote.”
There was a heavy silence in the kitchen as the votes were counted. The children watched, wide-eyed, as the verdict was announced. Death. Louella closed her eyes and bowed her head. She had expected this, hell she’d voted for it, but now she felt like she might pass out. Yet again, here was another awful job that she could not delegate. She could not possibly inflict this on anyone else. And so now, she would have to be a fucking executioner too and the realization made her want to curl up and die. But then Niamh was at her elbow, wanting her to take a stronger dose of her meds before she went out to the barn. Louella felt so ill that she followed her without question and did not notice the look that passed between Peg and the medic.
Niamh proceeded to dither about — checking her blood pressure, listening to her heart, asking questions that she already knew the answers to and still Louella was too preoccupied to realize that anything was amiss … until she heard the shot.
Out in the barn, Peg stood looking down at the man she just killed. Wilford Bishop hung from his handcuffs in an attitude that resembled prayer. She understood now. To do this kind of work diminished and hurt you in a way that could not be properly defined or truly mended. But that’s why she had to do it. Fletcher hadn’t been dead for a week and her mother was still sick — there was no way that she was going to let Louella walk into that barn with a gun. It was too much. And so she sacrificed a cherished piece of herself to protect her mom from this. She wiped hastily at her eyes and headed back into the house.
Chapter Sixteen
Rock of Ages (Reprise)
“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
Frank Herbert
“There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognize when a job is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.”
Ellen Goodman
Lightning flashed and the rain bucketed down, effectively calling a halt to the day’s wheat harvest. Therefore Louella had a rare afternoon off. She used the time to sort through Fletcher’s belongings. She redistributed his clothes among the men, although his t-shirt collection raised a few eyebrows. There was his beloved Billy and the Boingers shirt and another that read, “Legally, it’s questionable. Morally, it’s disgusting. Personally, I like it.” And then there was Louella’s favorite: “I think, therefore I’m dangerous.”
That was the easy part. Going through his briefcase was much more painful. It was filled with intimate reminders of her friend. He’d kept the receipt for his 1993 Harley-Davidson Wide Glide. That had been a beautiful bike and he’d ridden it across the country writing about all the things he saw and experienced. That book, simply called Blacktop, had prompted critics to compare him to Robert M. Pirsig and some had even called him the next Kerouac.
Scrunched up at the bottom of the case was a scrap of hotel stationary (from the Fairmont Hotel and Resorts). A phone number and the name Kate was written on it in loopy script and the woman had actually left a lipstick “kiss” on the paper. Kate was Fletcher’s one big regret. They’d met in San Francisco and, by all accounts, he should have stayed there with her. But he struggled with the notion of love versus liberty. In his mind, the two were always diametrically opposed. He’d loved his mother and that had enslaved him; it had chewed up his youth in an unending slog of need and dependency. He’d grown up thinking that to love someone is to subordinate yourself entirely to their needs and desires. And so when Kate came along and yet again someone proclaimed their love for him, he bolted. He could not abide the thought of shackling himself to yet another person. It was only years later, after seeing how James and Louella’s marriage had turned out, that he realized: Love, at its best, is the freedom to be exactly and completely who you are. Anything that requires the abnegation of the self, the need to be something less, is not love. He told Lou that he could have had that with Kate, but by then she had moved on — married some accountant or banker or something and they had a kid.
Louella set the phone number aside and extracted an old picture of herself, taken back in the days when she looked like a young Stevie Nicks. She lingered over this for a moment, marveling at the girl she’d been — so happy in her world and utterly ignorant of all the wonder and the horror that was to come.
Next she found his fountain pen and the lighter she’d given him when he left for college. It was a cheap thing really, but pretty in its way. It had an eagle in full flight on the front and the words, “I’m free” etched on the back. It turns out that he wasn’t just keeping the lighter for sentimental reasons, because the next thing she extracted from the bag was a pack of Marlboro cigarettes.
“I knew it,” she muttered, shaking her head.
Louella gave up smoking decades ago when she and James started trying for a baby, but it had not been easy. A cigarette for her had always signaled a moment of relaxation and without that prompt, she’d found it hard to switch off. She was fidgety and didn’t know what to do with her hands and, in the end, just freakin’ crabby. Fletch, himself an avid smoker, offered to quit with her, reasoning that it would be easier if
they did it together. But Louella had always suspected that he’d never quite kicked the habit.
“And now you’re busted,” she said sadly and another wave of grief washed over her.
She sniffled loudly and pulled the last item from the briefcase: a battered old leather journal that contained ideas for his books. She flipped through it. Apparently he’d been mulling over an idea for a new novel — a book about a global pandemic and a group of survivors in a remote cabin. Gee, she thought, I wonder where you got that idea from. Beneath a brief outline that started with a mad scientist conducting experiments on an island (à la Dr. Moreau), he’d listed two quotes to use in the text. The first was by Og Mandino: “I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.” It was accompanied by a note about the characters rising to meet their challenges, becoming more than they ever thought possible. He wrote, It is a fundamental irony of tragedy that the darkness is ultimately necessary. We only see things through contrast — we see the light (the brilliance inherent in human beings) most spectacularly when it is surrounded by darkness.
The other quote, from an unknown source, read: “The situation is deteriorating faster than I can lower my expectations.” Louella laughed out loud at that. God, it was true. They’d had three funerals in quick succession: Fletcher’s (which had just about killed her) and those for Wilford and Catherine Bishop. Cat lasted two days at the farm before finally succumbing to her injuries. She was cremated with a full service and prayers, but no one had any words to say over Wilford. They just stuck him on a pyre, set it alight and walked away.
It had been a harrowing time for the group and was swiftly followed by a harvest that she had to bring in with the help of novices. Most of them had never done anything like it before and so it was more arduous than usual. And then, of course, there were the security concerns. To go into the fields risked contact with infected animals, and so it was a palaver of guards and guns and protective clothing. And now the weather was working against them.
That, it turned out, was not the last of the complications. When the sky cleared and work resumed, Louella was showing young Thomas Gerber how full the grain bins needed to be in order for the wheat to dry properly. Although quiet by nature, the boy was uncharacteristically silent.
“Is something the matter, Tom?” she asked.
“I don’t feel so good,” he said and promptly threw up on her shoes.
That was the first case of stomach bug at Camp North Star and soon it spread throughout the farm. Max Brooks touched on this idea in his novel World War Z. He maintained that having a fortress was only one part of the survival equation. Within those walls, illness could spread like wildfire. Imagine a beleaguered, exhausted group trying to bring in the harvest as more and more of them fell ill. Those still on their feet had to look after their stricken friends. And so, while they’d managed to get the wheat and alfalfa in, the corn harvest was delayed. When more rain hit the crop moldered. Louella soon realized that eighty percent of it was no longer food safe. And the last, salvageable twenty percent? She had to let it rot in the field because another problem reared its head.
Having gone down with the bug early on, Patience rallied quickly. Once back on her feet, she left the farm to conduct one of her regular recon missions. These were quiet sweeps of the valley to search for survivors and keep tabs on the known pockets of infected that dotted the countryside. Thankfully all was peaceful and there was no sign of any intruders near the farm. She was just about to head home when something small, a mere glint in her binoculars, caught her eye. She drove up the old jeep trail to a high ridge to get a better look. What she saw made her blood run cold. The infected. Moving in a slow herd across the farmland to the north. Using Jacob’s Method of crowd counting, she estimated the horde to be 4,000 strong. And they were headed straight for Camp North Star.
Louella was just throwing a load of sheets into the washing machine (little Isabella Rhyne had gotten sick in her bed) when Patience broke the news. There were only a few members of the group present to receive it — Bib and Alec and Lou and Owen. All the rest were in bed — not dying, but certainly feeling like they were.
“What the hell are we gonna do?” Bib asked.
“We saw off the last horde,” Owen said.
“Yeah, but 4,000! Can we really handle that many?”
“No,” Patience said. “We can’t.”
Louella asked, “How long before they get here?”
“It’s hard to say. They’re moving slow and there’s some rough terrain between them and us, but I reckon we have no more than three days.”
“We could evacuate,” Alec said. “Wait until they pass and then come back.”
Louella switched on the washing machine and washed her hands. “People can barely make it to the bathroom before they get sick. How the hell can we evacuate them and all the animals?” She sighed. Truth be told, she wasn’t feeling particularly well herself. “Patience, you’ve got maps in your car?”
“Yeah.”
“Go get ’em.”
In a few minutes, the Pennsylvania road map was spread across the table and Patience was running one thin finger in a wiggly line. “They are moving parallel to Route 88 down from Carmichaels. I take it you’re thinking of trying to redirect them?”
Louella nodded. “In theory, all we have to do is give them something interesting in a different direction.”
“Like what?” Bib asked.
“An explosion would be the best thing — lots of noise and fire and smoke,” Patience said.
“And then once they’re headed there, they’d have no reason to come back this way,” Louella murmured.
“Ok,” Owen said, “so what do we blow up?”
“What about Webster’s out toward Garard’s Fort?” Bib asked.
“It would make a helluva bang,” Pat smiled.
Webster’s Petroleum Products, according to their website, offered a range of services including the delivery of on-road diesel and gasoline, farm diesel, industrial lubricants and home heating oil. Everyone in the area who lived off the main gas grid, relied on Webster’s to heat their homes through winter. And those stockpiled supplies would just be sitting there on a barren stretch of the T616 to the west. Pat’s plan was simple: torch the place. It would by necessity be a solo mission; Owen went down with the bug that night, Bib was pale and unable to take any breakfast, and that left a grand total of two able bodied people (Alec and Louella) to stand guard at the farm.
Up on the ramparts, Louella watched Patience go. The chief had already been sick twice that morning. With so many people ill, it had gone unnoticed so she took a bucket up with her and tried to keep watch. It was an exercise in futility. For the first couple of hours, she got sick once every twenty minutes or so and she was so violently ill that her eyes streamed from the exertion. Even if the husks came waltzing right up to the fence, there was little she could’ve done. But she kept to her post. And in those moments (right after a bout of nausea) when the adrenalin flooded her system and her mind cleared, she prayed to God to keep Pat safe and please, please let her mission be a success. She couldn’t imagine climbing back down the ladder to ground level, let alone packing up the farm to evacuate.
For Patience, her first act of arson was a simple enough affair. All it required was the liberal application of petrol and a match. She set light to the buildings and the tankers and then retreated to a safe distance to watch. And the result was spectacular — a conflagration unlike anything she’d ever seen. The flames and smoke could be seen for miles and the intermittent explosions as gas tanks ruptured sent echoes down the valley. Watching them through her binoculars, she saw the horde stop and turn to look. The husks seemed to be on a hair trigger — any stimulus was enough to set them running, full pelt, in search of prey. Patience laughed out loud and punched the air in triumph as they took off in t
he direction of the fire.
Then she noticed one tight knot of husks who had not moved. These had been at the front of the group and as the vast majority of their fellows rushed toward the diversion, this group stood motionless around one small, grime-streaked figure.
“What are you waiting for?” Patience whispered. With growing horror, she watched the girl (for it was a teenaged girl, she realized) shake her head ever so slightly and then continue walking in the direction of the farm. The others followed.
“How many? How many?” she hissed and started counting. She’d gotten to 223 when the wind changed direction and a cloud of acrid smoke obscured her view. It was time to go. She may have significantly whittled them down, but a horde was still coming. And these, it seemed, could follow orders … and think.
Louella had nothing left in her stomach and so just dry heaved every hour or so. Patience brought her some water to sip.
“Did it work?” Lou’s voice was a thin rasp.
“Let’s just get you to bed,” Patience said, trying to pull the chief to her feet.
That prevarication frightened Lou. Her hand shot out to grip Pat’s arm, hard. “Did it work?”
“Mostly.”
“Meaning?”
Patience sighed. “The vast majority of them went toward the fire. It’s just … there were some that didn’t. They just stood there around this one infected girl and watched the others rush off and then she shook her head and carried on in this direction and they followed her.”
“She was their leader?”
“That’s what it looked like.”