It felt tingly and swollen, as if it had been pumped full of helium and was floating up to the edge of space. In fact, Nathan felt like his whole body was floating free of the floor of the crew cab, and up towards the ceiling, bumping around inside the truck like a balloon…
Next time he woke, he was as cold as ice. He’d been wrapped in a blanket, though. The engine was still running and the blowers were still on, but the truck wasn’t moving. No one was with him in the crew cab. He tried to call out, but the fever was ruining his ability to talk. He could only be glad that his floating body had come back down to earth.
The windows were dark, he saw. It was night again.
Had he slept all day? More than that? He had no way of knowing how much time he’d lost to the fever.
He couldn’t hear voices, either. A sudden panic gripped his chest. Were Cyndi and Tony okay? Where were they?
He sat up, shucking the sweat-damp blanket from his body, and the rush of cold that hit him then turned his heart into ice.
Family First.
Family FIRST.
A wave of blackness rolled over him again.
20
“Webishtew?”
Huh?
“Mr. Tolley? Webishtew? Ah… long time since I speak English.”
Nathan’s eyes flickered and his face creased in continued confusion at the voice. It was soft, male, accented European, and completely wrong.
“Ah. Yes. You do not understand. You, Mr. Tolley… you are an English. And webishtew… it means, I think, ‘how are you?’”
Nathan sat up sharply and opened his eyes. Where he’d expected to see the inside of the Dodge’s crew cab, instead he saw a room that was fully constructed from wood, suffused with a golden light coming from one window that had frost bunched in its corners. Through the glass, a rolling plain of snowy fields ran all the way up to a low hill where the skeletons of trees moved in a stiff breeze. The golden light wasn’t really coming fully from the window but was, in reality, the light being reflected off all the wood in the room. Nathan could even smell resins and wood shavings, as if the room had been freshly cut and constructed just that morning.
“I heard you calling in your sleep. I came to see if, by God’s grace, you had woken from your fever, and found that, by glory, you have.”
Nathan lay on a bed under a rough hemp blanket and, next to him, sitting on a well-made, if obviously home-constructed chair, there rested a full-bearded man in plain clothes. He had a care-worn but pleasant face and was holding out a hand for Nathan to shake.
“You are feeling better, yes?”
Nathan took the proffered hand and shook it. The grip came across as firm and confident, the man’s skin being calloused and rough. This was a man who worked with his hands, and Nathan felt an immediate affinity with him.
“Where am I? Who are you?”
“My name is Jacob Anderson. You are in my home, Mr. Tolley.”
“How…?”
“You have many questions, but you must rest more. You have been very ill. Near to death, I think. Naomi, my wife, will bring you soup in a short while.”
Jacob got up and clutched a broad-brimmed black hat, which had been resting on his lap, to his chest. “Praise be to God that you are awake, Mr. Tolley. I will take the good news to your wife and son immediately.”
“Where are they?”
“In the hands of God. As are we all. Now rest, Mr. Tolley. There is water there next to the bed, and the blankets are warm. Naomi will light the stove when she brings the soup. Please. Everything is in hand.”
Jacob was a tall man, the top of his head reaching up not far from the pine boards running across the ceiling. It was difficult to judge his age, but Nathan guessed he wasn’t far from his own. Jacob’s boots were heavy, and they plodded him to the door in a rustle of thick overcoat and black linen pants.
Nathan reached out a hand, and although he felt kitten-weak, he tried to move a leg off the bed. “Wait…”
Jacob turned. “Yes, English?”
“My wife. Boy. How… are they? Are they okay?”
Jacob clomped back, lifting Nathan’s leg by the ankle, sliding it back under the blanket and saying, “They are well, and they are safe. You are less well, but just as safe. Please stay in the bed, and rest. All things, by God’s grace, will be revealed to you presently. But please remain in this bed.”
“But…”
Jacob patted the blanket. “Rest now.”
With one smile and a small wave of the hand, Jacob was gone. Nathan lay his head back on the pillow, feeling for the first time the chill of the unheated room against his cheek. He felt shivery and drained of all energy, as if he was still travelling in the hinterlands of a fever. The blankets were as Jacob had said, warm, and so Nathan pulled the covers closer to him.
He had no memory of coming to this place, or of Jacob or whoever Naomi would turn out to be. All he could remember was the floating, tingling, and the arguing, and then… nothing.
Nathan tentatively felt at the wound in his head. The skin was firm and dry, the scab there hard and crusty, but there was no heat. The infection had gone and the wound was healing.
When his fingers came away, he caught the whiff of something sweet and vegetable—as if the crust on his scalp had not just been the residue of healing but had been this mixed with some other medicament.
As his hand came down, Nathan next felt the thick growth of beard that covered his cheek. A good three weeks or more of growth there. That shocked him. Could he really have been out of it for that long?
There was another matter to attend to, though; his bladder was straining in his groin, and he’d need to take care of that sooner than later. Being under a blanket and in a strange room in an unknown house might make that a more difficult operation that it needed to be, so he tried to push it from the front of his mind to the back.
Jacob Anderson was Amish. That much was clear. The beard without the mustache, the peppering of Godliness through his speech, and the European Dutch-German accent told him as much. Nathan had never met an Amish man before—or spent any time in Amish country—but Cyndi had.
Her family had originally been from Michigan, and before moving first to Albany and then to Glens Falls, she’d grown up on the outskirts of Walnut Creek Holmes County, Ohio, near one of the largest Amish communities in the region. Her dad had traded furniture with them for plows and meat. As a dedicated hunter and woodsman, Cyndi’s dad, Connor, had appreciated the Amish way of life, with their traditional values and their skills—many of which he’d taken the time to learn, and then pass onto his daughter. It made sense to Nathan that, if he’d been incapacitated, and Freeson’s feet had been shot, that Cyndi would have made the decision to seek out a place and people she felt safe and at home with, thus giving Nathan the time to work though his fever.
Seeing the reason in her choice, his love and admiration for his wife couldn’t have been fuller in that moment.
However, no matter how much he might need rest, Nathan couldn’t wait to get up any longer, not with the pressing matter of his bladder—he had to find a john.
He pulled back the covers, swung his legs out of the bed, and put his bare feet on the cold floor. He was dressed only in a long white night shirt, and he didn’t feel the constrictions of underwear. There were no shoes he could see to slip onto his feet, so he’d have to go looking barefoot.
As he stood, he could feel the weakness in his muscles, and by the looks of his arms and his legs, he guessed he’d lost thirty pounds.
Still, he felt okay standing, and moved to the nearby window.
Snow was the prevalent image. Drifts and swirls surrounded the five wooden houses and three barns in near proximity, all of which marked this out as a small community rather than an isolated farm. In fact, this room, and one of the houses fifty yards away, had the feel of being brand-new. Beyond the barns, Nathan could see the spars and exposed rafters of another house in mid-construction.
This
was a community that was expanding.
A couple of dark figures in black hats, mustache-less beards, and long overcoats were walking between the houses. A woman in a white head covering—a kapp, Nathan remembered them being called from conversations with Cyndi—was leading a goat into one of the barns.
The community wasn’t exactly bustling with movement, but it was a community.
Bladder.
Turning from the window, Nathan saw the china pot under the bed. It was a white, wide bowl with a handle, and its use was obvious.
To his straining bladder, it looked exactly like salvation.
Nathan reached down, slid the empty bowl out from beneath the bed, rearranged his night shirt, and began the blessed relief of filling the basin.
It was only when he heard the small screech, the soup bowl dropping to the floor, and footsteps running away down the hall that, in his blissful, eye-closed relief, he realized he hadn’t noticed Naomi come into the room to bring him his food.
The next three weeks passed in something of a blur.
Nathan’s idea that Cyndi had led the group to this settlement had been correct. When they’d gotten over the phase of hugging, kissing, and expressing general relief that Nathan’s body wasn’t another one they’d have to send off in a Viking funeral, Cyndi had explained what had happened.
“We got here with just enough fuel to spare. We had no medicines, no food, nothing. And we were finding nothing en route. Everything’s been looted already and everyone, everyone, Nathan, has left the east, either going straight south or, we’re guessing, heading for Detroit. The cities and towns were burning. We couldn’t even get close. The weather was hard, but we carried on. Syd and Tony fed you water while I drove.”
Tears appeared in her eyes at remembering the journey he’d been comatose throughout. “I thought you were going to die. And then you slipped into the coma. I don’t know what kept you alive, honey. I just don’t know. Dave got a fix from the satellite and I saw exactly where we were. We were no more than twenty miles from here. Fuel was down to fumes, so we lit out. Made it here, and Naomi and Jacob remembered me and my dad and they took us in. They took us in without a word of complaint, Nate. They’ve fed us, looked after us, and Naomi fixed your head. We’ll never be able to repay them.”
And standing up half naked, whizzing in a bowl as Naomi came into the room, probably wasn’t the best place to start, Nathan thought.
There had been much more hugging after Cyndi had finished filling him in, and having her back in his arms was the best relief of all.
Tony was thriving, and the Andersons had five children from ages two to seven. The couple hosting them—tall and thin Jacob and his Naomi, dark-haired, plump, and open-faced—had been busy. And meanwhile, Tony had simply enjoyed playing with their kids in the family room in front of a well-stocked fire.
The community itself was made up of four families, the Andersons, Troyers, Yoders, and Schwartzes, with more planning to move in as evidenced by the Graber family, who’d recently traveled here from their own isolated farm in order to build a new family home in the killing weather. These Grabers were hardy and strong. They could work two hours straight in the cold before coming in for warm drinks and food, their fingers and noses blue from the cold but their spirits high. There was much laughter in the evening as the families got together to eat and talk, praising God for His abundance and beneficence.
Freeson’s frostbite had healed after a fashion, as well. He’d lost two of the smaller toes on each foot, and had patches of raw skin on his heels, but Cyndi’s work had given them a fighting chance. Naomi had treated them with the same poultice and drink. Both medicines appeared to be made from the same ingredients—honey, lemon, pepper, and horseradish. It was much better for use as an ointment than as a drink, Freeson had told him, making a face. But as with Nathan’s head, it had worked wonders on Free’s feet. Now he could walk well enough and was getting better by the day.
For everyone else, however, their time in this community was a different story. Lucy wouldn’t cover her head or her cleavage as a mark of respect to the Amish—“I am not a nun!” Nathan had heard her shout to a Troyer who’d remarked on her immodest dress.
For their part, Dave and Donie were antsy and fractious. Nathan couldn’t put his finger on why, and they didn’t really want to talk much beyond calling the Andersons’ settlement a “technophobic hole.”
Syd, however, seemed to be getting the worst of the experience. Every day, she found a way to fall out with Naomi or any of the other demure, head-covered, morally judgmental women in the settlement. Part of the deal for living with the Andersons was that those who could work would work. Perhaps this setup was too much like a watered-down version of the Seven-Ones for her to cope with, Nathan found himself wondering. Women in subservient roles to men. A devout, kind people, but lacking any modern sensibilities. And, simply, Syd refused to help with house chores.
“I don’t cook,” she’d say.
“Well then, Miss Syd, you can clean.”
“Ms.”
“Ms.?”
“Yes, Ms.”
“This is an English word? What does it mean?”
“It means I don’t have to clean, cover up my head, or live like a CAVE WOMAN!”
“Mercy!”
Cyndi had been doing her best to pour oil on the troubled waters, but Syd’s stubbornness wasn’t evolving. While Nathan’s strength returned, she spent the days sullenly sitting by a window, staring out into the wild winter with Saber at her feet looking mean.
As the third week of his recovery came to an end, Nathan knew that a choice would have to be made as soon as possible.
Stay, or go?
“It’s not where I want to give birth, if that’s what you’re asking…” Cyndi said baldly to Nathan as they’d lain in bed and Nathan had sought counsel.
“Free’s happy. Well, whatever passes for happy in Free’s world. Tony’s settled.”
Cyndi gave him a whole bunch of side-eye. “I know, and that’s great. But he’s the only one who has. But he’d settle on a razor blade if we asked him to. He’s that kind of kid.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
Cyndi draped an arm across Nathan, and he could feel the swell of her belly pressing into his side. “I like it here. I do. I like Jacob and Naomi. It reminds me of my dad and growing up around here, but I can’t let nostalgia get in the way of good medical care.”
However comfortable he might feel there, and however settled his son had become in such a short span of time, Cyndi was still pregnant. No matter how good the Amish might be at popping out children by the half-dozen, the lure of Stryker’s Detroit, with its promise of hospitals, education, homes, and work meant that staying here with the Andersons wasn’t so viable a state of affairs, regardless of how kind the Amish families had been to his family. Especially when over half of Nathan’s extended friends and family literally hated every second of living here with the Amish. Things would come to a head and poison this well sooner rather than later, he knew. They should get out before the Andersons’ settlement became a place to which they could never return.
So it was no surprise that the sense of relief was palpable, on all sides, when Nathan communicated as much at the dinner table one night, three weeks after he’d woken up. “Mr. Anderson, I don’t know how to thank you for the hospitality you’ve shown to my family and my friends, but in a couple of days, we’re going to have to move on. It’s only a hundred and fifty miles to Detroit from here, and we’ve got a good chance of making it there if we set out soon and press hard. The weather doesn’t look like it’s going to be changing any time soon, and we need to be in Detroit before it gets worse.”
Syd almost running from the window to throw her arms around Nathan told him everything he needed to know about his decision.
21
Leaving the Andersons’ settlement wasn’t as easy as Nathan might have hoped. For a start, they were all out of gas, and an Amish co
mmunity wasn’t going to have a gas station on hand. Secondly, walking the one hundred and fifty miles to Detroit through the depth of the Earth’s tilted winter wasn’t a prospect any of them relished—especially Freeson, whose frostbitten feet, now ninety percent healed, were still painful to walk on.
“Nathan, we have everything here,” he’d argued when the possibility of walking had come up.
“We don’t have a hospital, Free, and in a few months, Cyndi is going to need one big-time.”
Freeson had looked down at his own feet. Seemingly more out of concern for his frostbite injuries than shame over asking Nathan to choose here over Detroit. In the end, Freeson had nodded and, scratching his head, said, “I guess we’ve come this far, so I suppose we should see it through. Hardly worth leaving Glens Falls if we don’t.”
They’d shaken hands on it, and Freeson had gone up to his room to help Lucy pack their things.
Alone again, Nathan stared into the fire in the Andersons’ family room. Had it been worth it? He knew that he’d had to be persuaded to leave all that he’d known and had worked for, but along the way, he’d been pushed into making decisions that even a few short weeks ago he would have balked at, or hid his head in the snow to avoid making. If nothing else, Nathan thought, he felt like a better man. The night before, laying in his bed in the resin-scented room with Cyndi, she’d taken his hand and placed it on the swell of her five-and-a-half-month pregnant belly.
“Did you feel that?”
Nathan had shaken his head, thinking that perhaps his hands were too calloused and work-worn from a thousand engines to feel the growing life within. Cyndi had stopped breathing and relaxed, so that he could almost feel her willing the person within her to transmit something, anything, to his or her father.
Nathan had waited, willing it, too.
When the movement had come, in the gentlest of ripples beneath Cyndi’s skin, the smile across both their faces could have outshone the sun on a summer’s day.
After the Shift: The Complete Series Page 22