“Jeez, that’d be great,” he drawled, half sarcastic, as always. “But you’d better take the rifle. You were incredibly sheltered, before. Have you ever even seen a walking red person?”
Agnes ducked her head, thinking.
Should she tell him that she was safer outdoors than anyone else at the library, because she’d been for some unknown reason graced with the power to hear the sound of every rock and stone and red creature?
Should she tell him she believed she heard God’s voice, and that it protected her when infection was near?
No. Even the people of Red Creek, primed as they were to see God’s face in every shadow, wouldn’t believe a story like that. And the Outsiders were troublingly quiet on the subject of God. The prayer space must remain her secret.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said.
But Max wasn’t listening. He’d already disappeared back into his movie, his eyes transfixed.
The well was a quarter mile away. Before the world turned upside down, it had been a curiosity, nothing more. A flyer read: MAY 21ST: LEARN ABOUT GILA’S HISTORIC WELLS! Fortunately, the cobbled relic still provided potable water.
Agnes carried two buckets down the path, marveling at how far the sky stretched without a forest to curtail it—a view of gold sand and white-blue air in every direction—while Ezekiel trotted beside her.
At the library, her brother’s moods followed a mysterious rhythm. Sometimes he was perfectly content to trail Matilda like an adoring shadow. Other times, he sniped at everyone.
Agnes understood. Sometimes she felt so grateful to be Outside, she wanted to sing for joy. But in the mornings she woke with a scream climbing the rungs of her throat, certain she’d been forced down into the bunker after all.
For Ezekiel, today was a bad day.
And this time, he was harping on sweet, cotton-candy Jazz.
“She’s indecent,” he said primly, plainly referring to the way she dressed: in shorts and tank tops and strapless dresses.
“She just dresses like all Outsiders do. You’ll get used to it.”
“I won’t.” He kicked a pebble. “I won’t because God hates it.”
“All those Laws… they’re just made up. Remember?”
He glowered. “She looks like a Jezebel.”
“Be nice. They’re our new friends.”
“They’re Outsiders.”
She looked down at his agitated face and spoke very clearly, so he wouldn’t forget.
“Yes, Zeke.” She used Matilda’s nickname for him, because she could tell he liked it. “But we’re Outsiders now, too.”
Confusion clouded his face, and he nearly stumbled. A little boy caught between two worlds is never steady.
But he was young. He’d adapt.
Gila’s hot, dry air felt like sand, scraping her face. In the low desert, thorny plants ranged, determined to grow despite the lack of water or shade.
Gray cobbles led to the well. Her buckets clanked as she set them down. Then she rolled up her sleeves to work the pump. Zeke sat on the well’s opposite side, pressing his back against the coolness of its stones. She heard him scraping the dirt with a twig, doodling.
She’d already filled one bucket when something caught her eye. Inside the lip of the well, someone had painstakingly etched letters in the rock.
She hung her head upside down, pressing her ribs against the cobblestones to read:
THERE IS NO GREATER SIN
THAN TO DENY GOD’S GIFT TO YOU.
J. ROLLINS, 1922
She gasped and gripped the edge to steady herself.
The Prophet’s name was Jacob Rollins, but he hadn’t been born in 1922, when the etching was made.
He hadn’t been born—but his grandfather, Jeremiah Rollins, had.
Coincidence?
Rollins could be a common surname. Maybe the well had been built by someone completely unrelated—a John or a James?
Yet her skin prickled, thinking how deeply ironic it would be if Red Creek’s founder were responsible for the life-giving water they drank every day.
In his travels before Red Creek, had Jeremiah Rollins ever lived in a place called Gila?
Ask the prayer space.
“Agnes?”
“Hang on a second, Zeke.”
He sighed dramatically, but she ignored him. This was important. She stood on her tiptoes looking over the dewy edge of the well, listening to the plunk, plunk of water dripping into the abyss. With blood rushing to her head, she closed her eyes and opened her heart.
She heard: the blue-white sky roaring to life above her and the parched earth rasping, thirsting; a red coyote, dully wandering in the far desert valleys; Gila’s human Nest shimmering to the west; Zeke’s heart beating.
And the etching, beckoning.
Eyes closed, Agnes reached into the cool dark well to run her fingers over the letters.
An electric shriek ran up her arm, the feel and sound of a human being—a girl—crying out in abject pain. In the prayer space, the sound shot up her spine and into the base of her skull, lodging like a needle.
A face flashed before her eyes, one she recognized from old photographs.
Red Creek’s founding Prophet, Jeremiah Rollins.
He’d been here, in Gila. And he’d hurt someone. A girl.
She leapt out of the prayer space as fast as she could. She stumbled back, tripped, and fell hard onto the sand.
“Agnes!” Zeke rushed to where she lay trembling. “You fell, Agnes. You fell down!”
She opened her arms to Ezekiel and held him against her chest.
“I’m okay.” She rubbed his back. “I only tripped.”
But her mind wandered away from him, thinking how harrowing it was that Red Creek’s first Prophet had been here, in her haven on the Outside. What did it mean that of all the desert towns, she’d come to this one—and seemingly by accident?
There are no accidents anymore. God’s eye is too much on you.
Shivering, she felt in her bones that this was true.
“Look.” Zeke pointed into the distance. “Someone’s coming.”
Jazz hurried their way, her sandals slapping against the ground. Her tanned legs glowed under the sun. Spotting them, her face contracted with worry.
“Oh my God, are you hurt?”
“No.” Agnes stood, fighting dizziness. “I’m okay.”
“She fell,” Zeke insisted, surprising Agnes by addressing the Outsider girl directly—and asking, in his way, for help.
“Let me see.” Jazz took her hands as if she and Agnes might dance, looking her over from head to toe.
Her cheeks burned with mild embarrassment. “Really, I’m fine.”
Jazz turned to Zeke. “Good news. I think she’s going to live.”
Did Ezekiel almost smile—at the girl he’d called a Jezebel?
“I’m glad I ran into you.” Jazz’s smile dazzled. “I’ll help you carry the water.”
On the path back to the library, Jazz stole curious looks at her.
“I can’t believe you’re really from Red Creek,” she said quietly, so Zeke couldn’t hear. “I told you I wrote a report for school? It’s like a strange dream, meeting you.”
A strange dream.
Agnes shivered again, glancing over her shoulder towards the well.
Jazz couldn’t contain herself any longer. “What was it like? I mean, did you know girls who were married, with sister-wives? Did you really have to pray for hours? Did you stockpile food for the apocalypse?”
Agnes had expected to be dragged into darkness by such questions. But she only laughed, amused to find an Outsider so curious about her rural, mouse-brown life.
“Yes, we stockpiled food and prayed. And we practiced plural marriage.” She paused. “My sister became a sixth wife.”
Jarringly, she remembered the twins, so sleepy on Beth’s wedding day, who wouldn’t remember her final kiss. How were they now? Were they suffering even as she laughed with
a stranger?
“I lost my sister, too,” Jazz said. “My whole family, actually, when the Burn Squad came. After, Max and I just ran. We would’ve starved if we hadn’t found Matilda. We slept for days, you know, when we first got here. We just—slept.”
Without thinking, Agnes set her bucket down. Jazz looked stunned but pleased when Agnes hugged her, trying to sop up some of the Outsider’s raw pain.
Zeke had stopped walking to witness this embrace.
Baffled as he looked, she was glad he’d seen it.
Jazz patted Agnes’s hair in a happy way, her color high. “So, what’s the deal with you and Danny? Are you guys—you know—together?”
Agnes’s jaw dropped. “What makes you ask that?”
“Well, for one thing, the way you look at each other.”
Agnes hadn’t thought much about boys—or men—back home. She’d always been too busy, too worried sick to let herself feel. Even engaged to Matthew Jameson, thoughts of men and women together had barely brushed her mind.
But now…
Well. Zeke wasn’t the only one struggling with how to be, Outside.
She cleared her throat. “He’s been very kind, that’s all.”
“Ah.” Jazz didn’t press her. “He’s good-looking, in a funny sort of way. He’s very tall.”
Agnes turned her head to hide her smile.
Danny was good-looking—in a funny sort of way. And he was undeniably tall.
As they walked in companionable silence, Zeke trailing behind them, Agnes wondered if Jazz had just crossed over the line from Outsider stranger to friend.
31
AGNES
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder.
—PSALM 107:14
The boys were shouting in the makeshift kitchen. Fighting, arguing. It sounded rough.
Jazz had peeled off to practice her yoga on the granite steps, a discipline that seemed to consist of contorting her body into odd shapes with animal names. Agnes wished she’d stayed to watch her—that she and Zeke weren’t overhearing this ugly fight.
They stood outside the door with their buckets sloshing water, unsure of what to do. Angry male voices reminded her of home. Agnes resisted the urge to chew her nails.
“She just got here, how could you give her your chores?” Danny yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Why are you jumping all over me?”
“It isn’t safe out there, that’s why, and she’s got a little kid with her.”
Zeke shot Agnes a dark look. He didn’t appreciate being called a little kid.
“We haven’t seen any infected,” Max said. “What could happen?”
“Anything could happen. And you know she isn’t like us. She doesn’t know anything.”
Agnes’s first instinct was to turn away, pretend she hadn’t heard. But then she’d be acting just like the girl she’d been back at Red Creek—the pale creature who took orders and tried to stay out of everyone’s way—and not the new girl she hoped to become.
Agnes might not have read as many books as an Outsider, but she’d known to run from the bunker, hadn’t she?
More important, Ezekiel was watching. His eyes saying, See? Listen to what those heathens think of us.
Agnes steeled herself, then opened the door. “Leave him alone, Danny. I offered to go.”
Max rolled his eyes. “Thank you. That’s what I’ve been saying.”
Danny stared at her, eyes bloodshot, puzzled, and angry.
Well, she could be angry, too. In Red Creek it hadn’t been allowed, she’d been forced to act sweet and easy as milk. But here, she didn’t have to let things go.
“I’m not weak like you think,” she told Danny. “You complain because there’s no air-conditioning here? Back home, we never had air-conditioning.” She ticked her fingers. “Or dishwashers, or washing machines, or instant noodles with powdered cheese. I was on my feet twelve hours a day. I think I can handle a trip to the well, thank you very much.”
Both boys looked chastened. Agnes pushed past Danny on her way to drop off the buckets, and Zeke fell into step behind her.
“Agnes—” Danny started.
But Zeke shot him a look of utter disdain, and the Outsider boy fell silent again.
Strong as he’d seemed before, Zeke looked lost at dinner. His eyes never focused, and he showed no appetite, even for macaroni. Watching him, Agnes frowned.
Danny tried to draw him out. “Hey—would you like to learn to suture a wound? I have a human arm—well, a plastic one—in my backpack just for practicing. What do you think?”
Danny looked at Agnes for approval, but she wouldn’t meet his eager eyes. She kept hearing him say, She isn’t like us. She doesn’t know anything.
But she appreciated that he was trying with Ezekiel. She nudged her brother. “Well? What do you say? Would it be neat to learn how to stitch up a wound?”
Zeke stared sadly into his bowl, just as if he hadn’t heard.
A sharp pain pierced Agnes’s heart, knowing how much he’d lost.
I’ll never be able to make it up to him. Never.
“Do you have a favorite movie, Zeke?” Jazz asked. “Did you ever watch any… television?”
Jazz colored quickly, remembering Red Creek’s strict rules.
“No,” he said bleakly. “Movies are sin.”
“Wait a second,” Max chimed in, much to Agnes’s irritation. As much as she liked Jazz, she wasn’t a particular fan of her boyfriend. He struck her as disrespectful and lazy. “Are you telling me you’ve never seen any of the Batman movies? Superman? Spider-Man? Aquaman? Captain America? The Avengers?”
Zeke shook his head, a cautious gleam in his eyes.
“Holy cow.” Max slapped his forehead. “The real sin is that a guy like you has been deprived of the classics his whole life. There’s so much we’ve got to catch you up on, dude.”
Agnes fought the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose, wishing Max would at least try to speak to him like the child he was. She’d understood only half the words that came out of his mouth, and Zeke would surely understand fewer.
Zeke’s eyes narrowed. “Batman—is that like Satan?”
Matilda’s fork froze halfway to her mouth, and all heads swiveled to Max. Agnes held her breath.
“Well.” The Outsider leaned back in his chair and stuck a toothpick in his mouth. “Batman does live in a cave underground, but his whole thing is, like, fighting for justice for the oppressed. He’s more of a badass savior figure, if you know what I’m saying.”
To her utter shock, Zeke nodded avidly. “A savior. Like Jesus?”
Max roared with laughter. “Jesus in a leather bat suit? You know, maybe. But the thing about Batman is, he doesn’t have any superpowers. Just loads of cash and a burning desire to save the innocent citizens of Gotham.” Passion enlivened Max’s face. “Does that make him more or less relatable to regular joes like us? That’s the question.”
Agnes caught Danny’s exasperated eye roll.
But Zeke was staring at Max like he was the second coming. “How come you know so much stuff?”
“I’ve just seen lots of movies, that’s all.” Then, suddenly shy, Max added, “If you want, I can show you one after dinner.”
“Oh, I don’t know if—” Agnes began, but stopped.
Zeke was smiling.
Grinning so bright and wide, he might’ve been back home in his trailer, talking to Sam. Agnes bit her lip, torn between hope and grief, promise and loss.
Matilda winked at her. This is a good thing, she seemed to say. Let the boy grow.
Agnes looked at Max with fresh eyes.
Danny coughed. “Hey. There’s that cat again.”
An orange tabby had wandered into the kitchen with a hungry look in his eyes, his fur matted.
Jazz punched Max lightly on the shoulder. “I told you I didn’t imagine him.”
“Poor thing must’ve bee
n hiding,” Matilda said. “I guess someone forgot to take him when they evacuated.”
Zeke leapt to his feet. “Who could forget him? He’s beautiful!”
The cat made his way straight towards Zeke. Pets were never allowed in Red Creek. Zeke eagerly extended his hand to pat that dust-covered head.
“Do cats like macaroni? What’s his name, anyway?”
“He’s not wearing a tag,” Matilda said. “Would you like to name him?”
Zeke sucked in a breath and Agnes hid a smile. He wouldn’t be able to hold out against the Outsiders for long. Their world was just too interesting.
“Benny,” Zeke announced. “His name’s Benny.”
Danny’s eyes found Agnes. She nearly smiled at him, before she remembered him saying, She isn’t like us.
His hopeful smile dropped away.
Matilda set down her fork. “Now, I have to ask. How much insulin do you and Zeke have left?”
Zeke stiffened, and Agnes squeezed his shoulder. “Enough for a few weeks.”
Matilda sipped her water. “Mercy Hospital is operating some fifty miles west. In a few days, we should pool our gas and drive there.”
Agnes picked nervously at a scab on her palm. “You’re sure they’ll have his medicine? They won’t run out?”
Matilda nodded. “Last I heard, they’re in it for the long haul. Someone’s got to look after the stragglers, after all.”
“You’re diabetic, guy?” Max asked Zeke. “Which type?”
“He’s type 1,” Agnes answered for him.
Type 1, she understood from Matilda, was an autoimmune disease. The nurse had told her many times that it was no one’s fault. Not hers, or Zeke’s, or even God’s.
Zeke, who’d never actually heard the word diabetes before, just blinked.
“My cousin was diagnosed type 1 in college,” Max continued. “No problem, except he’d always wanted to be an astronaut, and I guess people with diabetes aren’t allowed in space.”
“What’s an astronaut?” Zeke asked.
Again, looks flew around the room, and Danny winced. Agnes tried not to look too curious—she didn’t know what an astronaut was, either.
“Uh—you know,” Max said. “The guys that walk on the moon.”
Agnes at the End of the World Page 17