The Last Town on Earth (27 page)

“That the first man died, the Canadian. But that was a couple days ago, and I can’t get the doctor or my dad to tell me anything.”

Philip breathed for a moment. He thought about lying but couldn’t. “Three more men died yesterday, Doc said. I don’t know about today.”

She looked away again, and he saw tears welling up in her eyes.

“But a lot more people are sick than dying—those guys were probably the worst off, you know? I’m sure your mom’s gonna be fine.”

“Doc Banes said something to my dad this afternoon—took him into another room and closed the door. My dad wouldn’t tell me what it was, but a couple hours later, I saw him in the parlor and he looked like he’d been crying. He still won’t tell me.” The tears fell down her cheeks and she looked down, ashamed.

Philip hesitated, then put his arm around her, squeezing her shoulder. “Doc Banes doesn’t know everything,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what he said. He’s been wrong about a lot of things.”

He wasn’t a good consoler, he figured, because her crying grew louder, and before he could say anything else, she collapsed in to him, her masked face on his chest and one of her hands behind his shoulder. He kept his left hand on her back, rubbing gently, not sure if he should say anything else. He felt his heart race as her back rose with each breath. But at the same time, he felt his own eyes welling up from the weight of so much sadness pressing itself against him. Those men outside the mill were right—this
was
Philip’s fault, and all he could do was sit there and hold her and be thankful for the fact that she didn’t blame him, at least not yet.

By the time the tightness in his throat had faded, Elsie was quiet.

Eventually, she pulled back. “Sorry,” she said, sniffling again. “Now I’m all a mess.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said, taking his left arm back. She reached into a pocket for her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. The mask was wet from her nose and the tears. “You can take that off if you want,” he said, smiling slightly. “I mean, if you’re only wearing it for my sake.”

She paused, then pulled the mask down around her neck. It was the first time he’d seen her face since before he’d been placed under guard.

“All right,” she said, then smiled back at him. “Though I’m not to blame if you sneeze later tonight.”

“Deal.”

He sat there silently while she wiped her eyes again.

“Thanks for sending me that letter,” he said at last.

He saw an instant of confusion cross her face, as if the letter were something she had written many years ago and remembered only dimly. “Sure. Figured you must have been a little lonely in there.”

“I think I read it ten times.”

“Really?” She smiled.

“There wasn’t much else to do.” He had read it many times since, so boredom was no excuse. “I would have written one back, but they told me I couldn’t send anything out.”

“And now I’m the one trapped someplace.” She rolled her eyes, somehow managing to smile at the situation.

You kiss her yet?
Frank had asked.

“Maybe I could write you back then.”

“That’d be nice.” She looked back at him, and her eyes didn’t seem as red. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be stuck in there, so you might have to write more than one.”

“I’d be honored.”

“One a day.”

He smiled. “Yes, ma’am. Should they be a certain number of pages?”

“You can decide that.” Then she added, “At least one full page each.”

“I can ask Laura to write you, too,” he said, then regretted it, fearing that he’d shattered a moment he hadn’t known how to handle.

“Okay,” she said, looking at him calmly. “I’d be more interested in reading yours, though.”

The way she said that made Frank’s question echo in Philip’s head again. Without thinking further, he leaned close to Elsie and she to him, and they kissed there in the dark building. It was quiet then, and all he could hear were the strange sounds their lips and mouths made. The kiss felt good, as if it were the first good thing Philip had felt in days, weeks, and it was worth any nervousness he may have suffered. She tasted like apples and smelled like something sweeter—he wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew it was something he wanted to keep with him. At some point, he drew his lips from hers but kept his arm around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder and they sat there in the flickering lamplight, the shadows dancing in the aisles.

It was cold in the store and she felt warm, leaning against him. He didn’t care if kissing someone from a sick house was unwise—he didn’t see how what he had just done could possibly be considered a mistake. He knew he had done plenty of things wrong in the past two weeks, but this wasn’t something to doubt.

Elsie shyly asked Philip how long he’d wanted to kiss her.

“Remember the time we were collecting driftwood and I found that piece that looked like a shield?” It had been a few months ago. He’d found a large, thin slice of bark that had somehow sheared off a tree’s trunk. It was soft and brittle from its time in the river, and perfectly pentagonal, as if someone had painstakingly carved it that way.

“I still have that shield,” she replied, smiling. “It’s under my bed.”

He smiled back. “I’m glad I gave it to you. I should have kissed you then.” So they kissed again.

Eventually, Elsie said she should go home. “My dad’s likely to think something’s happened.”

It was even colder outside than before, and Philip could feel the air’s thin fingers prying through his jacket, sliding in through the buttonholes, and digging into the pockets where his fingers were bunched into fists. The reality of the flu seemed to return when Elsie fastened her mask back on. Philip regretted losing sight of her lips.

“You should probably let me go on ahead,” she said. “If my dad saw us walking together, he’d be angry because of what the doctor said.”

“Okay.” Philip wanted to say something else, but nothing he could think of felt right. “I’ll write you” was all he said.

“Okay.” Just as he was wondering if she was smiling through the mask, she pulled it down again, stepping toward him to quickly kiss him on the lips. And then she did smile, for a full second or two before the mask returned, smothering her lips again, and she turned around to walk home.

He stood there buzzing for a moment, thrilling in his good fortune. He waited as the wind grew colder, until she had disappeared beyond the light of the streetlamps. Then he turned around and started walking, quickly, but not toward his house.

Philip felt wonderful and horrible, nervous and bold, excited and confused. He had imagined such a moment for longer than he could remember, and it had finally happened. Yet he had never planned on it being initiated by Elsie’s need of consolation, had never expected his joy to be tempered by guilt.

He was amazed that she felt the same way about him as he did about her. That she had confidence in him. For months he had been too afraid to kiss her, so with his heart still beating too quickly and his nerves still shivering, he felt the courage to do something else he’d been afraid to do.

He walked faster, heading straight for the storage buildings.

XI

T
he town seemed even quieter than when Philip had first come upon Elsie, if such a thing were possible. And darker: there were no streetlamps, and he carried no light with him, all the better to stealthily make his way. Nearly every window was dark. As Philip walked farther, the occasional ominous sound he heard above the crunch of his boots was coughing. He heard it emanating from one house, then, a few blocks later, he heard another answering its call. Then another. It was as if the houses themselves were whispering to one another, spreading news of the flu.

Philip was close to the storage buildings when he saw a sign of life at last. Three blocks ahead, a carriage pulled by a fatigued horse turned a corner onto the road where he walked. Philip retreated to the side of a house. Why was he hiding? It was the flu, he realized, making every innocuous or mundane action seem freighted with new meaning, wicked purpose. But maybe what he was doing really was wicked—he wasn’t honestly sure.

Philip saw a lamp bouncing lightly above the head of the driver: Doc Banes. Of course—who else would be out? The weary doctor was returning from a house call, apparently, with his ubiquitous bag beside him. By now he would have been performing house calls for over twelve hours. The old man’s head hung so low that Banes might not have seen him even if Philip had stayed on the road. Philip both wanted and did not want to know what Banes had been through that day, how many patients he had tended, how many worried family members he had tried to pacify, how many fevered foreheads he had caressed, how many ominous verdicts he’d rendered.

In a moment Banes was gone, hurrying toward either his home or the next stop on his nocturnal tour. Philip thought about the list of sick men’s addresses he had made for the doctor that morning and wondered how long the next day’s list would be.

Philip walked back onto the road after the carriage had passed. The moon had disappeared and the black sky gone starless, his view of the heavens obstructed by invisible clouds. Here in the quarantine, they were cut off even from the sky.

The storage buildings gradually emerged from the darkness. Two lamps sat on the ground, and standing between them was a guard, a lumberjack named Lightning. This was good news: Lightning was a hulking but gentle man and none too bright. Someone had once joked, “You’re just lightning quick, aren’t ya?” and the name had stuck.

Lightning’s back was to Philip, and only when he was a few feet away did Lightning stir, cocking his head and then whirling around awkwardly. He pointed his rifle at Philip.

Philip held out his palms, stunned that Lightning would point the gun at someone coming from this direction. But then he understood—he had woken Lightning up. The guard blinked as if shedding the fog of his dreams, and his voice was slurred.

“Wha—whoozat?”

“It’s me, Philip Worthy,” he said, cautiously stepping into the glow from the lamps.

Lightning lowered his rifle. He was swaying a bit, as if sleep might conquer him again at any moment.

“You all right?” Philip asked.

“Yeah, yeah, fine.” Lightning had a deep and thick voice. “You s’prised me.”

“You the only one out here tonight?”

“Yeah. There’re usually”—a slow yawn—“two of us here, but now too many guys are sick.” Consciousness gradually returned to Lightning’s large brown eyes. “So, uh, why are you out here?”

Philip swallowed, steeling himself once more. “I want to talk to Frank.”

“Who’s Frank?”

“The soldier. In there.”

The gears in Lightning’s head turned slowly. “You mean the spy?”

Philip nodded. He still couldn’t refer to Frank that way.

“I can’t let you do that. Nobody goes in and nobody goes out, except when we feed him his meals.”

“He’s not sick, is he?”

“Who, the spy? No, he’s healthy. But—”

“I’m going in there. I won’t be long. Don’t worry about it.” Philip took a couple of steps toward the door he had once been trapped behind.

“Philip, you can’t do that.” Lightning sounded neither stern nor threatening—he mostly sounded stunned that someone was disobeying the rules. It was as if this possibility hadn’t occurred to him, and now that it was happening, he was powerless to stop it.

“Then shoot me,” Philip said as he kept walking. Even if Lightning had been unarmed, holding Philip back would have been a simple task for a man his size. But the thought of using his strength that way probably didn’t occur to him. Philip heard Lightning curse himself, bemoaning his bad luck that the rules should be broken on his shift. “I’ll be right back,” Philip promised.

Philip opened the door. Immediately, the smell of the place brought everything back: dead wood and twigs coupled with the odor of men locked up, of air that didn’t circulate. And the darkness: as soon as he shut the door, it was as if a hood had been placed over his head by an invisible executioner. He stood there for a moment, hoping his eyes would adjust, and gradually saw a faint light trickling up the cellar stairs. He made his way toward it, shuffling his feet lest he trip over something.

“Hello?” he asked hesitantly, but heard no reply. They must be keeping him in the cellar, Philip decided. His deliberate footsteps made little sound, and he wondered if Frank was awake down there. When they’d been prisoners together, they had gone to sleep early, for lack of anything better to do. Now that Frank was completely alone, the boredom could only have intensified, laying slow siege to his mind.

Philip’s footsteps on the wooden stairs were louder. “Hello?” he called out again.

“Yeah?” The voice was quiet, subdued by layers of anger, resentment, resignation. The face wasn’t much better.

Frank was sitting on the ground, a few feet from the lamp, leaning against a wooden beam to which his feet were apparently chained. The growth on his cheeks had thickened into a full-fledged beard, and a mangy one at that. His hair was disheveled and looked darker than before, probably from the dirt he’d been sleeping on, and his forehead was sooty as a miner’s. There was a blanket beside him and, in the corner of the room, the latrine bucket. The lamp cast its shadows upward, so Philip couldn’t quite see Frank’s eyes—they looked like dark holes cut into a mask behind which no man stood.

“Philip,” Frank said, mild surprise in his voice. Philip couldn’t tell if Frank had been asleep, but his overall demeanor and appearance was that of an eremite hiding in his cave, only recently stirred from a long hibernation. “Been a while.”

Philip saw that Frank’s wrists were crossed and bound by thick rope. On the ground a few feet away from him lay his billfold, containing the photograph of his beloved back in Montana.

“So what’s happening in the outside world?” Frank’s voice was cautious, with a hint of friendliness but no more.

Philip thought. “Well, for one, I kissed that girl I told you about.”

“Attaboy. She slap you?”

“No, but she should have—her mother’s real sick with the flu. Doc doesn’t think she’s going to make it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She’s not the only one. Dozens of people are sick, and a few have died already.” He knew he sounded angry, and he was glad; he felt an urge to strike Frank. He stepped closer, only a few feet away, and that was when he saw that one of Frank’s cheeks was bruised, a large welt gone yellowish beside his right eye. Maybe he had fought back when they’d first chained him up, Philip thought. The appeal of violence disappeared as abruptly as it had flashed through his mind.

“So why should she have slapped you?”

“People think I have something to do with the flu getting into town. For letting you in here.”

Frank looked away. “You know I don’t have anything to do with the flu.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Maybe you don’t. Maybe none of us do.” Frank’s voice was calm, dreamlike. It sounded almost like he was talking to himself, or imagined that he was. “Maybe we’re just here to run around for a while until we die.”

“Or until someone else kills us.”

“Yeah.” Frank eyed him carefully. “You know, I really wanted you to kill me, Philip. Not at first, obviously, but after you got the drop on me. Down on my knees. I really wanted you to do it.”

“Why? So you wouldn’t have to try and kill me?”

“I did try to kill you. You were right when you said that—if I hadn’t tripped out there, I would have shot you dead. You’re a lucky bastard.”

“Then why did you want me to…” Philip couldn’t finish the question.

And Frank couldn’t answer it, apparently. He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was different, thicker but also weaker. As if he had just emerged from a nightmare, one that had left him badly shaken.

“You’ve gotta get me out of here, Philip.” He sounded desperate, a tone of voice he’d never adopted before, not even when Philip had been pointing a gun at him.

“Why?” Philip thought of Elsie crying on his shoulder. “Why in hell should I help you?”

“Because otherwise they’ll hand me to the army to hang.”

“Because you’re a spy?”

Frank shook his head. “They have you thinking I’m a spy, too?”

“All I know is what you told me.”

Frank raised his voice. “Philip, I’m not a spy. I don’t even know a word of German. I was doing my duty to my country, and now I’m being held prisoner by a town full of men who didn’t even enlist.”

“So what’s this about dead soldiers and spies, goddammit? What in hell am I supposed to think?
Who are you?
”

“I’m who I said I was. My name is Frank Summers. I’m a carpenter from Missoula, Montana. I got a father and a little sister, and I’ll bet they’re shaking their heads right now, trying not to believe the lies the army’s telling ’em about me. I need your help, Philip. If you don’t let me out of here, I’m a dead man.”

Philip was close enough to see a pleading light flicker in Frank’s eyes.

“I mighta thought I deserved to die out in the woods,” Frank continued, “but I’m not thinking of myself right now, you understand? I’m thinking of my girl, of my old man and my family. It’s them that shouldn’t have to mourn me, to hear those lies and feel shamed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I did lie to you—I wasn’t in a naval accident. And if the wonderful people of this town had let me go after forty-eight hours like they’d promised, I wouldn’t have headed back to Fort Jenkins—I would have run to Canada or died trying. I got some family out there, cousins of my old man. I figured I could hide there till after the war ended, then maybe…” He shook his head.

“So you’re a deserter?”

“I am not a deserter.” Frank said that with an angry pride. “I was ready to get to that goddamned front and kill as many Heinies as they could point me at.”

Philip waited. Then: “So you’re not a spy and you’re not a deserter. Then why are you here?”

Frank sat in silence for a moment, head down. The shadows from the lamp crawled up his forehead. “Remember that other soldier you told me about? The one in the grave by the road into town?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m just like you, kid. I’m a murderer.”