The Last Town on Earth (37 page)

V

T
hey knocked on the first door in town, taking a methodical approach. Bartrum had told the men they would need to be careful not to skip over any houses, since they all looked alike. J. B. Merriwhether shifted nervously on his heels, standing in the back with his hands at his sides.

The woman who answered the door was thin and young, perhaps twenty, and appeared to be a few months with child. Her face had a near-ghostly pallor, and her eyes widened at the sight before her: six men on her doorstop, all of them with badges shining on their lapels.

“Morning, ma’am,” Bartrum said with a brusque nod. “Can we see the gentleman of the house?”

She nodded without speaking and went to fetch her husband. Since she had left the door open, Bartrum casually strolled inside. Four of his cohorts followed, but J.B., as instructed, stayed at the edge of the porch, keeping watch in case anyone tried to climb out a window.

The young missus returned with a man who looked even younger than she, though he was at least eighteen, of that J.B. was certain. The husband’s eyes, too, were blue, and his hair was a light blond.

“Morning,” said the young man. “Name’s Ils. What can I do for you?”

“We’d like to see your enlistment papers.” Bartrum tried to say it without smiling, and he was almost successful. He knew this would be a long day, knew the slackers would offer denials and pleas and perhaps even threats.

But this man was no slacker, apparently. He showed mild surprise at the request, but he turned to his wife and asked her to retrieve the papers from his bureau. After she was gone, Bartrum told him, “You’re supposed to keep those on you, son.”

“I do, sir, whenever I leave the house. We’ve just been shut in from the flu for so long now, I haven’t gone out in a while.”

“It’s Sheriff, not sir. Sheriff Bartrum.”

Ils nodded, appearing more worried. “My apologies, Sheriff. I didn’t realize we had a sheriff here in town.”

“I’m sure you folks are used to living lawlessly, son, but those times are changing.”

Ils’s wife returned with the papers, which Ils quickly shuffled through, his hands beginning to shake, before finding the right ones. He handed them to Bartrum nervously.

The sheriff took his time looking them over, but it was obvious they were legitimate. Mr. Ils Bergman had indeed enlisted months ago, upon his eighteenth birthday, and had been deferred as an essential war worker.

Bartrum handed them back. “All right, son. You remember to keep these on you at all times, understand?” Ils nodded. “And if this war lasts much longer, they say they’re going to drop all those worker deferments, so you’d best be ready.”

By the time Ils had said, “Yes sir, Sheriff,” Bartrum had already turned around, J.B. and the others following.

Miller stood in the middle of the road, leaning against one of the four trucks they had driven into town along with their Fords. It had taken a while to procure the trucks from nearby towns and municipalities, to impress upon the local mayors and assorted panjandrums the need for them, the dangers of having slacker towns hiding in the woods. One mayor was particularly reluctant until Miller mentioned the possibility that Commonwealth was harboring spies, the same spies who had killed those boys at Fort Jenkins. Then the mayor not only lent him a truck but the use of three officers for the raid.

They were twenty men all told, some of them from Bartrum’s force but most of them volunteers who had been deputized for the occasion. There were Winslow and J. B. Merriwhether and other upstanding businessmen alongside brawny toughs like Hightower, the muscle that would be necessary when some of the slackers resisted. Miller and Winslow stood out by the trucks they had parked in the middle of the main street, observing the three groups of six men as they began knocking on doors. Bartrum’s gang came away from the first house empty-handed, but it wasn’t enough to make Miller worry. He’d pored over the enlistment records and had seen only a paltry number of men who claimed to be from Commonwealth. Yet he knew the town had a viable mill and therefore had a few hundred able-bodied workers, knew that the town must be chock-full of slackers. The trucks would not be empty for long.

Once the men were in jail, where they belonged, they could be questioned on the subject of spies. Miller had hoped to get information on that matter from Charles Worthy, but since the haughty mill owner had been less than forthcoming the previous visit, it had to be done this way. Miller didn’t like getting his hands dirty, but neither was he one to shy away from a fight.

The snow was falling more heavily, and though the first few flakes had melted the moment they hit Miller’s jacket, they were beginning to stick as the snowfall thickened. His hat and jacket were dusted with white, the picture of a man blending in with surroundings he wanted nothing to do with. He used his gloved hand to wipe away some of the snow, a black slash cutting across his chest. That was when the yelling started.

J.B.’s group found its first slacker in the next house.

The man who opened the door was perhaps a decade older than Ils, right in the middle of the age range for enlistment. He had a dense mat of thick hair and a prominent wart stood two inches south of his right eye. The type of face policemen probably wished all criminals had, J.B. thought: ugly and full of distinguishing characteristics. The man, Gerry Timlin, moved with a ropy muscularity that surely served him well as a river driver.

“May I see your enlistment papers, please?” Bartrum said as his men hung around him, snow draping the air behind them.

Gerry shook his head, confused. “What papers?” His voice was scratchy and weak, like that of a man who had not spoken in days. Then he coughed into one of his hands, and J.B. realized he wasn’t just ugly, he was sick.

The flu had abated somewhat in Timber Falls, at long last. Many were still sick, but death was no longer commonplace, which was how Miller had been able to wrangle enough healthy and strong-willed patriots for the raid. If not for the flu, they would have done this two weeks ago.

But here in Commonwealth, J.B. was learning, the flu was still strong.

Bartrum made a loud exhalation, feigning annoyance with an air of practice. “Did you enlist for the army, sir?”

Gerry stood speechless. He looked at Bartrum’s badge and considered, but he clearly wasn’t used to being spoken to this way. “Who’s asking?”

“Skip Bartrum, Timber Falls sheriff.”

Gerry’s eyebrows shifted. “You ain’t sheriff of my town.”

Bartrum’s expression was unchanged. “We’re with the American Protective League, smart guy, and that makes us deputized wherever our boots should take us. And unless you have some papers to show us, you are under arrest for failing to enlist, for shirking your obligation to your country, and for being a yellow-bellied bastard.”

Gerry finally seemed to understand the trouble he was in when two of the men sidled up beside him. They were both as big as he was, and he was not at his best. J.B. stayed outside, nervous at the escalating tone.

“Gerry?”

The men looked into the house and saw a woman nearly as tall as her husband. She had broad shoulders, a full bosom, and a mean face that made the deputies grateful they were there for her husband and not her.

Gerry didn’t reply, so she walked up beside him. She glared at Bartrum—if his badge impressed her, she didn’t show it. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry to say, ma’am, your husband did not enlist for the draft,” Bartrum replied. “He is under arrest.”

He nodded to the two men, who clamped their hands on Gerry’s forearms and started leading him off the porch. Gerry was still too stunned to do anything but follow, and he coughed again, this time unable to catch it with his hands and instead spraying it on Bartrum’s chest.

“You can’t do this!” Pauline Timlin screamed out at them after a moment’s shock. “He’s a sick man! He’s been in bed all week!”

“Rest assured, there are cots in the Timber Falls jail,” Bartrum said with a smile as he followed his men and their captive.

The smile reminded J.B. that he was supposed to feel good about this. After all those days of mourning, of being helpless to stop the flu from ravaging his family and his town, finally there was something he could do, a wrong he could right. There were slackers in this town, and he would damn well help jail every last one of them.

Inside the house, the three Timlin boys, aged three to nine, arrayed themselves in the doorway in differing degrees of undress. Then their mother screamed and chased after Bartrum, slugging him in the arm.

“That’s enough!” the sheriff shouted at her, rubbing his surprisingly sore forearm. “Get back with your family, ma’am, or we’ll cart you off, too!”

But after he turned back around to watch the men load Gerry into one of the trucks, the back door of which Miller had helpfully opened, Pauline let loose a wordless howl and charged forward, her outstretched hands aimed at the back of Bartrum’s shoulders. As J.B. stood in amazement, one of the other men interceded, catching her midway, using all his strength to block her charge. He managed to step forward, slinging her onto the ground. Pauline landed roughly on her backside, cushioned only slightly by the growing pillow of snow.

The younger Timlin boys started crying.

Gerry, enraged at seeing his wife so mistreated, lashed out at his captors. He managed to shake off the two men who had been leading him toward the truck, but before he could get any farther, Hightower socked him in the gut. The punch seemed to carry all the weight of Hightower’s recent pain, all of the agony of his dead sons. Gerry doubled over, gasping and dropping to one knee. Within a few seconds he had been thrown into the back of the truck, wheezing.

Bartrum unholstered his revolver. The gun was pointed only at the ground, but it was threatening nonetheless. “Tie his hands,” he told the men.

J.B. didn’t like violence but he remembered Bartrum’s instructions: they would need to quash any resistance as roughly as possible to discourage anyone from following suit. There were many more houses to check.

The oldest Timlin boy, Donny, ran to help his mother up. As the men tied up Gerry, Bartrum gave Pauline a calm and steady look, then walked to the truck.

“Go run to Mr. Worthy’s,” Pauline whispered into her son’s ear. “Tell him he needs to get over here—now.”

Donny ran.

Not every house in town was occupied. As the flu had stretched on and food supplies had dwindled, a number of families and single men had abandoned the town, running from starvation and from the flu. They left despite the fact that Charles Worthy still owed them for their labor the past few weeks, despite the fact that they had once willingly fled from the same towns where they were now returning. But this exodus had not been as large as might have been expected, as so many had become too stricken to travel. Although many knocks were answered by silence, there were still plenty of houses for Bartrum’s men to raid.

There was less coughing in the Worthy house that morning. Rebecca was putting water on the stove for tea when she saw an unusual sight: Philip walking into the kitchen.

“Well, hello there,” she said, smiling. This was the farthest Philip had walked since his first day with the flu, when he had wandered over to Graham’s in a delirium.

He smiled back, looking weak but overjoyed to be standing there, to be coming back to life. She asked him how he felt, and he said hungry. An auspicious sign. She began to heat oatmeal for him, and he sat down at the table.

“It feels good to move around,” he said slowly. He seemed to be remembering how to talk, his tongue awkward, his body stumbling its way through the most basic movements. He had been in bed for ten days, they’d told him the previous night, when he’d been well enough to sit up and carry on a conversation.

He had wanted to walk around the house then, but his parents had asked him to stay in bed a bit more, to continue resting. They did not tell him that his recovery was unexpected. Doc Banes had leveled with Charles and Rebecca halfway through the illness: he did not think Philip would survive. The symptoms and their severity were following the same pattern as those of the men and women who had already succumbed. Philip’s flu had begotten pneumonia, and he was having trouble breathing. When Banes gave his dismal diagnosis to Charles, he was expecting that Philip’s lips and fingers would be blue the next day and that he’d be a corpse the day after that.

But the good doctor had been wrong. Philip hung at the threshold for so long that his parents weren’t sure if this was just the devil trying to wring every last drop of suffering from his victim, or if Philip was actually recovering, albeit gradually. Days later, here Philip was, sitting at the kitchen table, eating oatmeal. Rebecca didn’t believe in miracles, but the vision before her left her wondering how to classify such an event.

Philip had never been heavy, but he’d lost even more weight, his jaw and cheekbones more prominent than before, his skin the color of stones at the bottom of a river. He looked like he had emerged from a grave, not a sickbed.

Rebecca carried another bowl of oatmeal past him, heading toward the stairs. “I’ll be right back. I have to take this to Laura.”

“Is Laura still sick?” His voice was gaining strength, but it sounded small beside the hugeness of this question.

“She’s much better,” Rebecca said. “She’s worried about Elsie.”

Rebecca stopped, wondering how blunt to be. She had seen how he acted around Elsie, had seen her writing a letter to him in school once. But after so many near-sleepless nights, after seeing the town collapse around her, she lacked the strength to soften the blow for him. “Elsie’s very sick,” she said. “The doctor doesn’t think she’s going to make it.”

Long after Rebecca had ascended the stairs, Philip sat at the table, staring off into the space just above his empty bowl.

The world looked different. He couldn’t believe how long he’d been ill. Only twelve days had passed between shooting the first soldier and then becoming sick; an entire lifetime had been crammed into those few days, or so it seemed. And now ten days more had passed with no reliable record except disturbing dreams, conversations he wasn’t sure were real or imagined.