by Beth Hersant
“And she stood there and made a conscious decision.”
Patience nodded.
“I didn’t think they could do that,” Louella said quietly. “The virus — it’s supposed to destroy your ability to think.”
“We appear to have an exception to the rule.”
“How many followers does she have?”
“Somewhere between 250 and 300.”
A wave of nausea swept over Lou and she felt so exhausted, so physically wretched that for a moment she was unable to care about the mess they were in. But then she stopped heaving and asked, “When will they get here?”
“The lowlands are pretty marshy because of the rains so that’ll slow `em down. Still I’d say we have two days max.”
The bug passed quickly over the next twenty-four hours. Most of the group were back on their feet by the following afternoon. They were slow and wrung out and no one was at all sure how best to receive the 300-odd guests who were approaching the farm.
“Do we evacuate?” Sam asked.
Ginny piped up. “How many were in that horde from Midwood?”
“The one we beat? That was,” Patience searched her memory, “ninety-seven.”
“So we’re looking at three times that number,” Arnold said grimly.
“Maybe we should bug out,” Bib added.
“We have site B,” Louella said, taking a sip of flat ginger ale. “But it isn’t fully stocked yet and it’s nowhere near as secure as this place. Sam, what was your latest count on our ammo?”
“Nearly 5,000 rounds,” he answered.
“And Fletcher’s traps are still in place. That’ll slow them down and give us more time to pick them off,” Owen added.
Louella looked at Patience. “Can we take them?”
“I think so. And to be honest, swapping this compound for something less secure makes me really nervous. I say we stay.”
“All in favor?” the chief asked.
The decision was made. They’d stay and fight.
Patience, as the head security officer, was in charge of preparations for the siege. As she made her plans, Louella rose and went to check on the animals. They hadn’t had their troughs and feeders replenished in the last day and she was anxious to make sure they were all right. The cows and chickens were fine — she’d put extra food and water out for them when she started feeling rough. But Arnold’s pigs were boisterous in their pen, which usually meant they were hungry. She went to feed them, leaving the main compound for the wider fenced-in area that enclosed the outbuildings.
Lou was halfway to their sty when she saw the fox. It was just a russet blur on the periphery of her vision but in an instant, it had reached her. It was snarling — a low, rasping series of barks as it leapt. As Louella fought to keep its snapping jaws away from her face, she tried to cry out but couldn’t. After the illness, the struggle took everything she had and she couldn’t seem to draw enough air into her lungs to scream. The animal twisted in her hands and clamped its teeth down on her fingers. She lost her grip entirely then and the fox, now free, leapt at her throat. He caught her right below the jawline and bit into the loose flesh beneath her chin. There were shouts now behind her and she managed to yell, “Stay back!” Peg was screaming and fighting Alec who’d grabbed her to keep her from running to her mother. Louella dropped forward using her whole body weight to pin the fox to the ground. If she lost her grip again, it could attack any of them — Peg, Sam — and so she clung to the animal even as it bit her chest and arms and hands.
Patience quickly ushered everyone back into the main compound and took a position on the ramparts with a hunting rifle.
“Lou,” she called, “you got a good grip on it?”
“Yes,” Louella croaked.
“Ok, on the count of three I want you to chuck it aside. One, two, three!”
Louella threw the animal away from her and two shots rang out in quick succession. The fox lay still and Lou staggered to her feet.
She looked around vaguely for a moment. Her hearing had gone funny. She could hear her jagged breath very clearly, but everything else was muffled — the way sound reaches you underwater. And then she was moving, someone had a hand on her back and was guiding her into the main compound and into the kitchen where everything looked so normal. There were dishes in the sink and the notepad that she made her lists on sat on the table where she’d left it. She was dripping blood on the floor. I’ll need to clean that up, she thought absently. And then she was sitting in a chair as Wyn and Niamh buzzed around her.
Everything hurt. That wasn’t new. She was an old woman with an extensive collection of aches and pains. But this was on another level. It took her breath away. Wyn was surprised when she started inhaling and exhaling as if she was doing Lamaze. But it helped. The steady pattern was something to focus on while she endured.
Peg was in front of her now. “Don’t worry, mom. The iron’s in the fire. We’ll take care of this.”
Wait, Louella thought, iron, fire. What? Holy shit, they’re going to cauterize the wounds. She stammered for a moment before she could form the word, “No.”
“What?” Peg asked.
“Look at me. Do you really think you can burn it all out?”
In a rare moment of immodesty, she ripped her blouse open to reveal the extent of the damage.
Niamh leaned in with alcohol and gauze and cleaned an area just below the chief’s right shoulder. “I can see your collarbone, Lou.”
Peg was shaking her head, “No.”
“It bit down to the bone,” Wyn said quietly. He gently tilted Lou’s head back. “And here at your chin too. We could try to cauterize the wounds, but… I don’t see how I can get it all.”
“I’ll do it,” Peg said quickly.
“No you won’t,” Louella said calmly.
“But mom! It’s that or die! Come on!” she barked at the others. “Get the irons!”
They stood looking uncertainly from Lou to her daughter and back again.
“Peg, I’m sorry,” her mother whispered.
“I don’t want apologies,” Peg hissed. “I want you to fight! This is your life — your one life! You don’t just give it up!”
There was so much distress in her girl’s voice that Louella almost relented — anything to quiet that despair. But then her eyes fell on the little sign that James had given her — the one with the chicken that read “Hatching Plans” — and that old light bulb in her brain switched itself on once again.
“I will fight, but I’m gonna pick my battles.”
“What are you talking about?” Bib asked.
As Niamh patched her up and Wyn bandaged her ruined left hand, Louella explained. “Right now we have 300 husks on their way here. We can probably beat them, but Patience, you taught us that no matter how much you prepare, there are no guarantees. You should avoid a fight if you can.”
Pat nodded, “Yeah, because you can never truly predict the outcome.”
“And yet, that is our whole plan. Stay and fight and hope to win, hope the fences hold and everybody is well enough to do their job. Half of you are still struggling to tackle a piece of toast, let alone 300 rabid lunatics. So why don’t we broaden our options?”
“How so?” Levi asked.
“Plan A — you don’t fight. You go dark. Shut everything off. Wyn, you could tranq the animals so they don’t get scared and make noise. We could make this place look like nobody’s home.”
“But what if they check it out, anyway?” Patience asked.
“We give them something else to go for.”
Peg was sitting with her head in her hands and didn’t even bother to look up. “You’re going to use yourself as bait, aren’t you?”
“Yep. Lead them off Pied Piper style.”
“To where?”
And in her mind�
��s eye, Louella saw the bridge — that damned covered bridge that had haunted her as a child because it seemed to suggest the end of things. A few tears ran down her cheeks and she hastily wiped them away. “The bridge on Old Mill Road.”
“And then?”
“Well, they’ll have to crowd around the car to try and get in at me and then…”
Peg still hadn’t looked up and her voice was flat. “You’ll blow it up.”
Lou looked at Sam and Arnold. “James used to make his own ammo — we still have that gunpowder, right? Could you rig something?”
Sam, who’d just been asked to make a bomb to kill his own grandmother, started grasping at any other option. “But you said that was Plan A. What about Plan B? We’ll take them on instead.”
“Sweetheart, Plan B comes after Plan A, not in place of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The aim is to reduce the size of the horde. I won’t be able to get them all. But there will be fewer left for you to deal with.”
“What if they won’t follow you?” Ginny asked.
“Then I blow the car out front and take out as many as I can.”
“Is there a Plan C?” Peg asked, finally looking her mother in the eye. “One that doesn’t involve suicide?”
“No.” Louella rose and looked at her people calmly. “Whether we go with my plan or not, I’m still going to end this before I turn. So you might as well let me try.”
There was much to do. Levi souped up her car and filled it with gas — Louella wanted the biggest possible bang for her buck. In the meantime, Arnold, Alec and Sam filled a large plastic drum with Hodgdon Varget Gun Powder, only to be sent in search of a metal container instead. In answer to their questioning looks, Lou shrugged, “Shrapnel.” They finally found what they were looking for: a 20-gallon barrel that James had used to burn trash. They duct taped the holes on the side, filled it with black powder and then started on the fuse. They tried different sorts of string and different accelerants and in the end opted for yarn coated in some of Peg’s old nail polish. That seemed to burn pretty well. With the bomb complete, they strapped it into the shotgun seat of Louella’s Chevy.
Patience was about to get rid of the fox when the chief stopped her.
“Burn it after the horde’s moved on. In the meantime, I want you to get a thick pair of gloves and paint the perimeter fence with its blood. When the horde passes by, I want this place to smell dead.”
Pat obeyed the order. It reminded her of Passover, when the Jews daubed blood on their doors so the Angel of Death would pass by, sparing those inside. She was creeped out by the parallel, but then something else caught her eye. It was a small hole dug underneath the perimeter fence and the sight of it wrung an abrupt sob from her throat. This was all her fault. She’d been so tired and strung out, that she hadn’t checked the perimeter. Oh God. It was her job to protect this family, to train them and keep them safe. And now her mistake had cost them the chief.
She went to Louella, head bowed, ready for the fury and recriminations that she felt were her due. But Lou only shrugged.
“You forgot to check it? So did I. So did everybody. These last weeks have been one giant avalanche of crap. We’re ragged as hell and no, we didn’t remember to do that. So? There hasn’t been a sign of anything digging at the fences for months and now a fox comes along and it just happens to coincide with one of the few days we didn’t check?”
“You saying that all this is fate?” Patience asked through her tears.
“I’m saying that it is quite obviously my time.”
With the preparations made and a largely uneaten dinner put back in the fridge for tomorrow, Louella sat on the living room couch with Mae asleep on her lap. Peg sat beside her with her head on her mother’s shoulder and Sam curled up on her other side, holding his grandmother’s good hand. Lou could feel herself tottering on the brink of a real collapse. By this time tomorrow she’d be dead — a fact that seemed frankly impossible. To cease to be — how could she even wrap her head around the concept? Yes, she believed in God and Christ’s redemptive act on the cross; she believed in forgiveness and Heaven and love and light. But she was in pain and she was afraid. The storm that howled through her head was almost incomprehensible in its violence and grief. She wanted to cry and rage. She wanted God to understand that it wasn’t fair; it was too soon, her work wasn’t finished yet and why couldn’t the Supreme Being grant her, His child, a stay of execution?
They were childish thoughts, she knew, and in her childishness she did not care. She inhaled sharply and gritted her teeth so that she would not cry out. Peg heard that intake of breath and looked up at her mother.
“Are you ok? Do you need more painkillers?”
“No, honey. I’m fine.”
Her daughter’s face was pale and drawn. Her eyes were puffy from weeping and that is why Louella had to be very careful about what she said and did next. It was, she realized, a damnable opportunity. Damnable because she wanted to cry and yell and frankly she had every right to do those things. But what would it accomplish? If there was ever a way to make a child terrified of death, it was to let her watch her mother face it crying and screaming. It would be awful. She knew that, for Peg and Sam and the rest of them, how they viewed their own demise would be greatly influenced by how she reacted to her own. She could leave them absolutely horrified by the concept or she could give them a chance to view it more philosophically. Therein lay the opportunity.
It took a mammoth effort, but she got a grip on herself and said: “It really is ok.”
“Huh?” Sam asked.
“It’s all right — tomorrow, I mean. I’m not scared.”
The boy had no idea how to respond to that.
“You don’t have to give us one of your pep talks, mom,” Peg said quietly.
“It’s not a pep talk. I’ve just been thinking that the one thing in life that’s guaranteed is the fact that it’ll end. And yet people are so afraid of dying. You spend your whole life fearing the inevitable and why? I mean, take this mess. I die tomorrow and no, I’m not doing cartwheels at the prospect, but what’s the alternative? To sicken and become one of those things? To turn on the people I love?”
The others in the room were listening now as Louella continued. “As your mom, I taught you so many things. It was my job to teach you how to live. And now there’s only one lesson left.”
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“To teach you how to die. How to face it with a little grace. Because there is no reason why your passing has to be fearful and anguished. To step beyond the reach of all this pain and fear … can you imagine what it will be like to be safe again, and free? So I don’t want you to worry about me tomorrow; I’m going to be absolutely fine.”
Patience was up early the following morning and headed out to check on the progress of the horde. At the rate they were going, they’d be at the farm by midday. She returned home to find Bib fussing in the kitchen. The woman was cooking like a fiend: eggs and bacon and sausage and French toast and pancakes. There was talk of waffles and ice cream and that is when it really hit home — this was Louella’s last meal. Lou ate some of everything that Bib offered her, but she was not hungry. Whether it was due to nerves or the fact that her temperature had spiked, she really couldn’t tell. What she did relish was the view. A daughter and two grandchildren and her friends — all her people, healthy and well-fed and the kids growing strong. Even Ginny was doing better. And this home which had served them so well — Camp North Star with its band of inspired misfits. She’d done all right.
Soon, too soon, it was time to get ready. The animals were drugged; the children were ushered into the basement under the strictest orders not to make a sound. The others armed themselves and got into position and Louella stood alone on the porch. Peg hovered at the door and this was the biggest test of all. No, death
was not the ultimate evil and during the night she had come to accept the fact that God did not promise her a body that would endure forever. He promised the immortality of the soul. He’d promised Heaven — that’s what waited for her, right? And James and Eben and her mother and father. What will it be like? She’d often heard of an individual’s own personal hell, but what about your own personal heaven? In hers she could eat whatever she wanted and still maintain the body of an eighteen-year-old. She’d live on the farm with James and the kids and her animals. The fields would be green and the air mild. And Fletch would be sitting out at the picnic table tapping out his latest novel on an old typewriter. A summer idyll — that’s what her heaven would be.
It was ok to die. She’d made her peace with it and was surprisingly calm, but here was her daughter and she had to say goodbye. For all her religion and philosophy, she did not know how to walk away from this child. It took every ounce of her strength to say, “Go on, honey. Lock it up.”
With a sob, Peg closed the door and Louella sagged against it, feeling like the loneliest soul on earth. Then she stood up straight and got moving. The car was waiting for her on the road with the keys in the ignition. As she walked toward it, the people of Camp North Star saw her do things that seemed at once perfectly natural and utterly out of character. She always wore her long, gray hair up in a clip. It wasn’t an aesthetic choice. It simply kept it out of her face while she worked. But as she walked away from the farm, she tugged the clip free and tossed it nonchalantly over her shoulder. It looked so casual; and yet it was a calculated, almost choreographed move on Louella’s part. She would teach Peg and Sam how to die with a little dignity and courage and grace. And so the grand demonstration began. She ran her fingers through her hair and let it fall across her shoulders — the way she wore it when she was young. Leaning into the car she turned on Def Leppard’s Rock of Ages full blast and reflected with some regret that she’d never know what “Gunter gleiben glauchen globen” actually meant.
The music bolstered her up. That’s when she spotted the Jack Daniels Levi had left on her seat. She took a long drink straight from the bottle. As she walked to the rear of the car there was actually a swagger in her step that had a curious effect on the people of the farm. Despite their grief and their fear, they were hooked, intent upon watching this play out and seeing exactly what she would do. Her next move, in fact, was to grab that pack of Marlboro’s she’d found in Fletcher’s case. She had rolled it up in the sleeve of her T-shirt just like the guys used to do back in high school. She lit one using Fletch’s lighter, leaned against the Chevy’s rear bumper and watched the horde come.