The Last Town on Earth (36 page)

The night before he was to return to school, he had woken up when he heard a noise coming from his mother’s room. He rose from his bed, the wood floor cold on his feet, and he pushed open the door as quietly as he could. Her bedside lamp was lit and she was sitting at the small writing table, her back to him, her shoulders hunched. The clock above her told him it was past three in the morning. She was crying. Was she as sad as he was that their idyllic time together was coming to an end? Was she as crushed as he was with the disappointment that he must return to school and she to that lawyer? Or was there something else? For one solid week—and for the first time he could remember—he had completely overlooked her emotions, her opinions, her thoughts. He had felt that her whole being revolved around him.

Maybe there was something else making her cry, some other aspect of her confusing adult world. Maybe there had been other reasons why she had chosen to stay home and avoid that lawyer. Philip walked toward her, and she showed no signs of hearing him until he put his hand on her shoulder. She was shaking slightly from the tears, but she put one of her hands on his, squeezing it. They stayed that way for a while, his feet freezing beneath him and the unimpressed clock ticking away the minutes. Eventually her tears slowed and she gave his hand a final squeeze. She told him to go back to bed and he obeyed, never having seen her face.

When Philip next opened his eyes, Charles was sitting in the chair before him, holding his hand. Philip wasn’t sure how long Charles had been there but felt from the sweatiness in his father’s palm that their hands had been clasped for some time. Charles, seeing Philip’s eyes open, began to speak.

“I know you feel at fault for this,” Charles said, his voice the slightest bit muffled by the gauze mask. “That’s why I wanted to tell you what Dr. Banes told me a few days ago.”

Philip gritted his teeth against the ache in his head and the light filtering through the curtains.

“I’ve tried to tell you that you aren’t to blame, but I know you didn’t believe me. You’ve always been willing to own up to the consequences of what you do, and I admire that.” Charles smiled slightly, and the look in his eyes was that of a man remembering what he loved about a dearly departed family member. Philip’s eyes had been closing periodically—he’d been slipping back onto the train—but now that he knew what was happening, the power of this realization and a deep, innate fear beyond any he’d felt before kept his eyes open.

“But you need to know that this is not your fault. I won’t have you think that.” Charles’s eyes welled up, and he exhaled a few times. “Dr. Banes told me that he was in someone’s house—whose house it was, that isn’t important. Someone very sick. He noticed a newspaper in the corner of the room, the
Timber Falls Daily.
It was dated a week ago, Philip. Well after we started the quarantine.”

Charles paused briefly, then said, “Do you see? Dr. Banes questioned the man’s wife, and she tried to deny it at first. But she finally admitted that her husband and some friends of his had sneaked off a few times over the past two weeks, to Timber Falls. To buy alcohol.” Charles shook his head. “We were guarding the road, but they took one of the Indian trails. Since then other men have confessed to Dr. Banes, confessed on their sickbeds, confessed that they’d stolen off to Timber Falls for other reasons. To visit girlfriends, to visit…prostitutes.” Charles stumbled over that word, embarrassed to say it in front of his son. “Not many men but enough. One would have been enough, really.” Charles’s right hand still clasped his son’s. “We don’t know how the town fell sick, Philip, and we never will know. There are too many possibilities. I so regret keeping you in that building for those two days.”

Charles paused. “I worry now that nothing I’ve done here has made any difference, nothing at all. But I’ve tried, and you’ve tried. You tried so admirably.” He squeezed Philip’s hand. “So I don’t want you blaming yourself, or feeling that you’ve done anyone in, because you haven’t.” His voice was now as firm as his grip. “I believe now that what’s happened here was simply meant to be, that this is something larger than all of us—larger than each of us individually and larger than all of us collectively. I don’t know why God would see fit to do this, and I don’t know what lessons we’ll draw when it’s passed. We can only press on as best as we can, and I intend to do that.” He swallowed painfully. “And I want you to be there with me.”

Philip had never seen Charles cry and never wanted to again. “Is Laura okay?” he managed to ask.

“She’s in bed still,” Charles said. “But she’ll be better.” From Charles’s tone, Philip couldn’t tell if he had some concrete reason to believe this.

Philip knew that all of this was important—Laura still being sick, some men escaping town to run wild in the disease-ridden streets of Timber Falls—but it seemed to glance off him. Soon Charles was gone, and Philip was back on the train.

The men were still packed so tightly that Philip could barely breathe. He had hoped it was from the emotion in his chest at seeing his father cry, but that had long passed, and still his breaths required great effort. Was it worth this pain? If it would always hurt this way, Philip wasn’t strong enough to continue. The flu had him now, its talons so deep in his lungs and heart that it would soon overtake him completely.

“You look bad, kid,” Frank said. He was smiling, the smile that had made Philip hate him so much at first—because how could he smile with a gun pointed at him, and how could he smile when he was trapped in a stinking prison? But that smile had disarmed Philip over time; eventually, it had made Philip like him, too quickly and too intensely considering how briefly they had known each other. Perhaps it was the pressure of the situation that had played with his emotions, but the fact remained that when Philip had realized what Graham had done, it was as if Philip’s own brother had been murdered.

“I
feel
bad,” Philip replied. “I feel horrible.”

“This train stinks. You notice that?”

“I can’t smell a thing. I can barely breathe.”

Frank was riddled with bullet holes, his army shirt in tatters, but thankfully, there was no blood. Philip didn’t know how Graham had killed Frank, but the bullet holes seemed as likely a method as any.

“You don’t think I was lying to you about the C.O., do you?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t really know what to think, you know? All I know is I liked you.” Philip thought of something. “Do you know where this train is going?”

“’Course. You don’t?”

“I guess I hoped I was wrong. What happened to all those other guys?”

“The hell with those other guys. The hell with everyone, is what I say. It’s just about you, you know? You can’t worry about other folks—you just gotta watch your own back. The hell with everyone else.”

“Then why’d you help the C.O.?”

“Look where it got me, kid.”

“Doesn’t mean it was wrong.”

“Didn’t say it was wrong. All I said is that if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t.”

Philip nodded.

“What?” Frank challenged, noticing the look in Philip’s eyes.

“Nothing, I just…That’s sad, I guess.”

“This whole mess is pretty goddamned sad, don’t you think? The hell with sad. And the hell with everyone. The hell with you, too.”

“Why?”

“I wish I’d gotten to France. I would’ve been a hell of a soldier. I would’ve rounded up hundreds of Heinies, captured ’em with my bare hands. I would’ve been a madman out there.”

“What kind of soldier do you think I would have been?”

Frank eyed him carefully. “You would’ve saved somebody’s life or died trying.”

It felt like the greatest compliment Philip had ever received.

“I gotta go now, kid.”

Frank was gone. Philip was alone on the train.

Later, he heard singing, the same song he had heard before, a song his mother used to sing to him, a lullaby. He stood there on the train listening intently, swooning at every word, until he thought to turn around, and there she was.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. She was so beautiful, an enchanting loveliness that surely spoiled every man who enjoyed her company.

“Just waiting to get off.” She peered out the window. He did, too, but everything out there was black—not an eventide darkness but a void.

“Can I come with you?”

She looked shocked and somewhat amused by his question. “Of course you can.” She seemed about to laugh but smiled instead, a wide smile, the one he would always work so hard to win when she was in one of her moods. He would do anything to see a smile like that. “You were always thinking I was going to leave you.”

He almost stammered a reply, but his throat felt too tight, not from the something but from love.

“Let’s get out now,” she said, holding her arm out for him.

He reached out and took her hand. She stepped off the train, through a doorway he hadn’t seen before, and he followed.

There was no train then, no featureless men. Everything had dissolved, faded away. The pain was gone and so was the something, the sharpness he had felt when he breathed. He felt his mother’s hand in his, and that was all. The train had stopped and there was no world surrounding it, no land and no sky, there was nothing at all except himself and a calmness he had never felt before.

Philip slept.

IV

T
he flu had laid siege to Commonwealth for more than two weeks when Doc Banes began to believe, cautiously, that the disease was abating. The number of new cases had seemed to be on the decline for four days, though Banes could not be certain, as there was no official way to tally the sick beyond the scrawled and decreasingly legible notes in his journal. The deaths, too, seemed to be slowing: fifty-two people had died, but only seven in the last five days. This accorded with what he knew of past epidemics, that they tended to be deadliest in their earliest days, that those who were exposed to disease first had the most severe cases. If the flu was indeed on the wane, that would be the first hint of good news since they posted guards.

Banes’s head hurt that morning as he visited the sick in their shut-in homes. After too many sleepless nights—too many nights of arriving home at three
A
.
M
. and being unable to let his mind drift—he had placed his bottle of Scotch by his bedside, had sipped at it until the warmth took him. He had woken up that morning amazed at how little was remaining in his bottle, a dull and dry headache making it even more difficult than usual for him to rise from his cold bed.

Banes was joined that day by Deacon, as he had been for nearly a week. Deacon had come down with the flu the day after Philip; for two days he had been as sick as the most wretched man in Commonwealth. And utterly alone, as no one had known he was ill, no one had knocked on his door, no one had missed his presence at the places he had always haunted more like a spirit than a man. But on that third day in bed, as Deacon lay there feverish and weak, God finally spoke to him. When he heard the voice from his sickbed there was no mistaking it. The Lord told him to rise from his bed, to aid the doctor in treating the afflicted. Suddenly the strength returned to Deacon’s body and he felt as youthful and lithe as a teenager. The Lord wanted him to help Doc Banes, and Deacon would obey. The timbre of God’s voice and the sound of the wind in the heavy branches above and the gentle roll of the doctor’s carriage were all deafening, and Deacon marveled at everything that he had never heard before.

Deacon joined Doc Banes the next morning, though he kept his revelations to himself, as he was still somewhat dazed by their power. Doc Banes was left to wonder how this formerly taciturn man had become the most eager nurse Banes had ever known, how he could sit there beside the dying and look into their eyes with an understanding that Banes dared not attempt, with an empathy that Banes and his years of hardened experience knew enough to run from. Deacon held hands, administered cold towels and pills, cleaned bedpans, and helped strip beds as if doing so were a supreme honor. A fever does things to people, Banes had noticed, and rather than question Deacon’s transformation, he simply felt thankful that for once the flu had changed someone for the better.

Everyone else remained a shut-in, whether healthy or not. And even though Banes was the one who’d told people to stay in their homes, he was beginning to realize how badly he missed the sight of women walking on the street, baskets in hand, dresses swaying. How much he yearned for the sounds of children playing, even if they would forever remind him of the children he’d never had. How much he needed—desperately needed—to see even so mundane a sight as two men approaching from opposite ends of a road, nodding as they neared each other and shaking hands. Just that simple touching, the clasp of two unfamiliar hands. Over those past two weeks Martin Banes had seen people die and people mourn and people suffer to unimaginable degrees, but he knew as he rode to the next house that if he were to see two strangers shake hands, he would collapse into tears.

Banes drove his carriage up to the home of a young couple who had already lost their two-year-old and now had a sick four-year-old. The mother had become ill the day before. Banes had already seen three families completely wiped out, like characters in a Bible story most people skipped over, but as he and Deacon approached the door, Banes dared to hope.

The first to see the specters was a little boy. His name was Harmon, and he knew that he wasn’t supposed to be outside. No little boys can go out, his mother had been telling him. Why not? The flu. But Harmon had been told that the flu couldn’t come to this town, that there were strong men standing guard and making sure nothing entered. How did the flu get in? he asked. Specters, his mother said. The flu was brought in by specters that the guards couldn’t see, specters that could slip between trees and move only during the second when the guards’ eyes were blinking.

Harmon had stayed inside for what seemed like years. Finally, while his parents slept, he slipped out. He hadn’t thought to wear a coat and he shivered in the bitingly cold air. He saw that the entire town was frozen with inactivity, that every street was empty, every door shut, every window covered. Being outside wasn’t any more interesting than being inside, he realized to his disappointment.

He passed the last houses and walked to the place where the strong men had guarded the town. Harmon climbed on a big tree stump at the edge of the hill, looking down at the lone road and the huge forest beyond.

He had been sitting there for just a minute when he saw the specters. There were four of them at first, gathered at the bottom of the hill. Then there were eight. Then he lost count. The trees down there shaded them so they were dark, barely more than shadows. That was just how he’d imagined specters looked. They seemed to be talking to one another, but he couldn’t hear them, which also made sense, as he’d assumed that specters only whispered, or maybe hissed.

Had they seen him? Harmon was little, so maybe they hadn’t. Scared, he climbed off the stump and hid behind it.

He had not thought specters wielded saws, but there they were, sawing into the big tree that lay on its side, blocking the road into town. They used two big crosscut saws, and soon they were pushing the cut tree off to the side, clearing the road. Then the specters disappeared.

Harmon was still scared, so he started walking home. He didn’t understand why evil specters would come to clear a road if they could slip through trees.

He was almost at the bend in the road when he heard the specters roar. A white chill ran up his frame at the howling as they stampeded toward him. Harmon turned around and saw the autos and trucks pulling up the hill, then he ran home as fast as he could, the specters licking at his heels.

There were no more books for Amelia to read, no more journals. There was no extra food to can, and it was too late in the year to do any work in the back garden. She had used up all of her yarn and had repaired every damaged garment she could find. After two weeks of being trapped, she felt she had long ago exhausted any potential avenues for enjoyment.

Except her daughter. Millie had a sunnier disposition than Amelia had expected, seemed so much happier than the vision of screaming, colicky malcontent that her father had put in her head. Horace had always complained about how difficult it was to raise Amelia and her brothers, never failing to mention any of the inconveniences that their existence had caused for him and their dearly departed mother.

Millie didn’t seem to mind that she hadn’t been taken outside in days, but after two weeks of it, Amelia was desperate. The previous night she had dared to voice the suggestion that going for a short walk might do them all some good, but Graham had sternly reminded her that they could run out for vital errands only, and certainly not just for the sake of enjoying the fresh air. The flu was still out there.

Since Graham’s strange altercation with Philip, he had left the house only a couple of times, as had Amelia—for quick errands, for emergency trips to borrow needed items from friends. They knew that many friends, such as Jarred Rankle, were ill. They had seen Doc Banes walk into and out of houses across the street, had seen the undertaker follow. They had seen the crape hanging in so many windows, the very houses themselves in mourning.

Amelia had noticed that Graham had been even quieter than usual the past few days. Every time she tried to broach the subject of Philip, he would darken, turn silent.

Amelia desperately wanted to take a walk, to feel the cold air on her face, to hear the wind. But as much as the confinement pained her, she told herself that this she could endure. She had endured her miscarriage and the death of her mother, and Graham had lived through the loss of his finger and the loss of friends in the Everett Massacre, had survived shooting that soldier. When all was well, you assumed that to suffer such a staggering blow would break you, but when such ills actually befell you, you somehow persevered. You didn’t survive to prove something to anyone, you didn’t press on simply because you wished to, and you didn’t endure because of what the preacher in church said. You survived because deep inside everyone was the simple, indefatigable need to press on, whatever the costs. And even if so much was stripped away that you no longer recognized yourself, the thing left was the part of you that you never understood, that you always underestimated, that you were always afraid to look at. You were afraid you’d need it one day and it wouldn’t be there for you, but in fact was the one thing that couldn’t be taken away.

After Philip had coughed on him those many days ago, Graham had stood out on the porch for a long while, so afraid he was contaminated that he couldn’t bring himself to open the door and enter his wife’s embrace. He had instead swallowed his pride by seeking out Doc Banes’s opinion. Banes had shaken his head at Graham. Graham couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so belittled. Banes’s eyes, the bags beneath them, and the bit of blood on his shirt collar bespoke real fear, true terror. The doctor simply told Graham to go to his family; there was nothing that could be done. And though Graham still was not impressed with the doctor’s expertise, he realized he had no alternative.

Graham was haunted by Philip’s accusation. No matter what he did to try to distract himself, he kept hearing the word
murderer
and feeling it in the most tightly guarded quarters of his being. It was there when he slept, it was there when he opened his eyes, it was there when he looked at his wife.

The second soldier had been a sacrifice, Graham reasoned. The man’s life was sacrificed, but Graham, too, had sacrificed a part of himself. With each passing day, the cost of that sacrifice seemed to grow beyond his reckoning. Every time he saw the undertaker emerge from a house with a body cloaked in blankets, it looked just like the bloody soldier lying at the bottom of his grave. Graham had killed that man to preserve everyone else, but it hadn’t worked. Each death was piled on top of Philip’s accusation, giving it the horrible weight of truth.

Millie was taking her morning nap while Amelia sat in her chair, staring out into the street. It had started to snow for the first time that season, and the startling newness of the snow, the beauty of it, dazed her. Her right hand was on her belly, resting near her unborn child.

Graham walked into the room and sat beside her, taking her left hand in his. She wanted to ask if he’d ever seen such a magnificent sight, the unusually large white flakes falling so slowly and straight it was as if they were being carefully lowered from strings. But she found she couldn’t speak. She just stared.

“There’s crape in the Wainwrights’ windows.” Graham pointed at one of the houses down the road. The crape hadn’t been there the previous day. “I wonder who it was.”