by Megan Hart
“The batteries that gave the power to the cars and the lights and the telephones killed the babies. Made barren the mudders and the vatters. Stole avay the future. But for the Plain Folk, not. We the batteries did not use. And born our babies were, and lived they did. And around us, no more moving on the world. No Rapture there was. No end of days. Chust a slowing down.”
“What?” Tobin cried, sitting straight up like he’d been stabbed. “What did you say?”
But Samuel had no time to answer him, because the floor came up to smack Tobin in the face.
−
34-
“You’re awake.”
Was he awake? Tobin squinted one eye open.
“How do you feel?” Elanna’s weight sank the bed next to him.
“I’ve never spent more time in bed, feeling like crap, than I have the past two months,” Tobin said sourly.
The room was plainly furnished, but the bed was comfortable. Sunshine streamed through lace curtains. Elanna brushed the hair away from his forehead, and he reached up to grab her hand. He kissed it, then held it to his cheek for a long moment.
Then he noticed her clothes. “Don’t tell me they’re turning you into one of them.”
She looked down and laughed self-consciously. “My others were dirty. This was all they had. Don’t laugh. You’re wearing a nightgown.”
Tobin felt the thick material with his fingers, and peeked under the covers. He was, indeed. His legs looked spindly and weak sticking out from the bottom of the hem, and he quickly dropped the blanket.
The look didn’t exactly suit her, either. The severe cut of the dress and the white apron overtop hid the feminine attributes he’d grown used to noticing. And yet, with her auburn curls pinned up in a tidy bun, her face had a shining luminosity he’d never seen before.
She touched her hair, as though noticing that he noticed. “I didn’t put on the head covering. At home, only married women cover their heads, and then only when they pray. They seemed to find that strange.”
He thought covering your head at all for any reason other than to keep the sun or rain off seemed strange. He didn’t say that, though. He’d learned not to laugh at faith.
He sat up, expecting his head to roar with pain. It didn’t. “I feel better.”
“I should hope so,” Elanna said. “You’ve slept a day away.”
“Not much of an superhero, am I?”
She frowned at him. “What?”
“Never mind.” He had to remember that she’d probably never read a comic book. “I’m starving.”
“I can bring you something to eat. Rachel is a wonderful cook. And they have such great food, here, Tobin, you won’t believe it! And it’s all new, and fresh! If they don’t grow it, raise it, or trade for it, they don’t have it.”
“Something to eat would be great, but in a minute.” He knew all about the food. He curled his fingers around hers. “We need to think about getting out of here.”
Her expression closed against him. “We can talk about it later.”
“No,” he said stubbornly. “Not later, now. We don’t want to be here when the Gappers come. Whoever they are. Whatever they are. They sound like bad news, them and their thundermakers.”
“Tobin, we can’t just run away,” Elanna protested. She cast a quick glance toward the closed door. “These people have helped us.”
“And you heard Samuel! He wants us gone!” he said harshly, not caring who heard him.
She pressed a finger against his lips. “Nobody’s going to chase us out until we’re both well enough to travel. Enoch told me that, no matter what Rachel’s father said. It should only be a few days. And…Tobin…” she sighed. “I like it here.”
That answer didn’t satisfy him. If anything, it frightened him a little. “This isn’t where we’re supposed to end up, anyway. As soon as we can get someone to drive us back to the car --”
All at once he remembered what Samuel had told them. “No,” he said with a mouth gone suddenly dry. “Not the car. We can’t use the car!”
Now she looked puzzled again, and tried to soothe him by rubbing his head. He pushed her hand away, gripping her fingers hard enough to make her wince. He released the pressure, sorry to have caused her pain but too excited to stop now.
“He said it was the batteries that made people stop being able to have children,” Tobin said.
A look of understanding rose in her eyes. She pressed her hands to her stomach, tears welling in her eyes. “That’s why we...that’s why the Tribe survived. The Reb and the one before him, probably the one before him too, they said the same thing. That we survived, had children when the others didn’t, because we kept the sabbath and they didn’t. It was when we didn’t use batteries, didn’t use power. That’s why we lasted when they didn’t, and still...all this time,” she whispered. “We could have just stopped using them completely. We could have stopped killing the babies?”
“You didn’t know,” he said, and could see that his words didn’t soothe her.
“These are good people, Toby. Please don’t judge them so harshly.”
He thought of the roar of thunder, and the men who weren’t men spilling over the barrier. He thought about the guns. “Samuel was right. I want to get out of here before those Gappers, whatever they are, get back. It can’t be good.”
“We have no car. And neither one of us is in the best condition to start walking across the country again, Toby. I haven’t forgotten those damned weeks after we left the city. I don’t think I can face something like that again.” She paused, seeming almost embarrassed. “Not until I’ve stopped bleeding, anyway. A few more days. That’s all.”
“You heard what Samuel said,” he told her as calmly as he could. “And I know you remember those girls, those Gappers, looking for us. They wanted to kill us, Elanna. Whatever arrangement they have with these people won’t help us. They have guns!”
A discreet knock on the door interrupted them. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t grateful for the disruption. “Come in!”
A white-capped and dark-skirted figure entered the room under the burden of a heavily laden tray. The girl was followed by another carrying a pile of folded clothes. Yet a third girl entered, carrying a basin and pitcher. A fourth, giggling, came behind the others carrying a small square of something white and a towel.
The small room was suddenly filled with overpowering femininity. Tobin didn’t know where to look or how to act. The girls, all except Elanna, were busy putting down their burdens. And giggling.
Elanna looked annoyed. “Thanks, but I can take care of him.”
“Mudder Stolzfus these things sent,” said a pretty dark-haired girl. She stole a look at Tobin, and her cheeks colored. She giggled again.
“You can leave them here,” Elanna said coldly. “And you can leave us alone, too.”
“We came to help redd up the room,” another girl said. She giggled too.
“If you want, we can spread the bed across,” the first and seemingly boldest said, which set the others girls into peals of squealing laughter. “Make the sheets smooth for you.”
“Thank you, but I think we’ll be fine!” Elanna repeated, twisting on the bed to glare at all of them in turn.
They caught the hint. Still giggling, stumbling over each other, the girls left. The room seemed a lot larger after they’d gone.
Elanna got up and pulled the tray, and the small table on which it rested, over next to the bed. Delicious smells made his stomach growl. Tobin’s mouth watered.
“Soup,” she said. “Bread. Some milk. Something they call butter. You spread it on the bread. And these red things are called red-beet eggs.”
Tobin tore into the food with relish, slurping up the hot, salty soup and dunking the thick chunks of bread into it. The butter melted into the broth, yellow globs of sweetness floating on the top. He ate those, too.
As he ate, Elanna fidgeted around the room. She lifted things up and put them down. She arr
anged the curtains, then put them back they way they’d been. She lifted the pile of clothes and set them down without looking at them.
“What’s wrong with you?” Tobin asked with his mouth full.
“Those girls were looking at you like they wanted to eat you,” she said sourly.
He had to stare at her for a long, long moment before he could speak. When he did, he nearly choked. He’d forgotten to swallow.
“Are you…jealous?” He asked incredulously.
She whirled to look at him. “Of course not.”
Her face told him she was lying. She didn’t give him the chance to call her on it, though. She thrust the pile of clothes, the towel and the white square at him.
“Here,” she said. “I’ll be waiting outside.”
Just like that, she was gone. Tobin stared after her thoughtfully, unsure what to make of her outburst. Jealous? A warmth crept into his stomach, and he smiled. He knew he shouldn’t be glad, but he was.
The white square turned out to be soap. Though unscented, its lather was rich and foamy. He didn’t have enough water to bathe as thoroughly as he wanted to, but the pitcher gave him enough to at least scrub away most of the grime.
When he tried on the clothes, he found them to be a good fit. Well, almost. After struggling for several minutes, he realized the pants had no zipper, just a series of buttons. The hems rose to just above his ankles, and the waistband was a little tight. Other than that, though, he looked all right. He looked Plain. All he needed was a beard, he thought, and rubbed his chin. Give him a few more days, and he’d have that, too.
He went downstairs feeling refreshed. His head still ached a little, but not too badly. His other aches and pains had faded too. The sleep had done him good.
“Ah, Tobin Vinter!” Enoch said when he came into the kitchen. “Better you are feeling?”
“Much, thanks,” Tobin said.
“Better he is looking, too,” Rachel said with a chuckle. “Not so strubbly!”
Elanna wasn’t there. Tobin was about to ask where she was when he saw Samuel sitting in the corner next to the stove. The old man saw him, too.
“To the rest of my story you can listen now?” The old man said, with a twinkle in his eyes. “Not falling asleep you will be this time?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Tobin said. He sat on one of the straight-backed chairs. “I’m ready.”
”About the Gappers you want to know,” Samuel said, the traces of his good humor gone. “Men and women living together, not married. Shameful. Soldiers from Indiantown Gap. A military base it was, a long time ago. When the world began to slow down, not everything so smoothly died. War there was, sometimes. People who thought what they wanted they could take, without caring. Babies there were few, but soldiers we had in plenty.
But the government who wanted them there couldn’t last forever. Soon food they stopped shipping. Clothes and supplies, and weapons, too. The soldiers, the Gappers, down to Annville they came to trade for what they needed. In their thundermakers, their tanks, riding. And for awhile all right that was.”
“Why did they go back?” Tobin asked curiously. “Why didn’t they stay here? Join you?”
Samuel snorted. “Soldiers they were. What else did they know but war and for war preparing? Young men, foolish men. And their women, not so foolish, ain’t?”
Samuel laughed a little. “But soon, not so young. But babies they had, that we know. Why? What protected them? Some government something or other, ain’t?”
He laughed again, more bitterly this time. “A few only at first, then more as passed the years. Whatever gave them children blessed them vit girl babies more than boys. So the parents trained them as they had been trained. But soldiers, waiting always without orders, crazy become. And the longer there they stayed, the crazier they got.”
“How do they survive up there?” Tobin asked.
“Supplies we send to them, every new moon time,” the old man explained. “And then alone they leave us. Until now.”
“Until us, you mean.”
The old man didn’t say anything, just nodded.
“Why’d they build the barrier?”
Samuel shrugged. “Who knows what they fight for? Somevun not liking what the other says, or wanting what the other has. Some following vun, some the other. So some leave, and the ones who stay behind, they are not wanting them to come back. The barrier they build to keep them from getting through.”
“But I saw people.” Tobin paused and shuddered, remembering the sight of so much death. “They fought, didn’t they?”
“Ja.” Samuel leaned forward over the table, his blue eyes piercing. “And those girls, those kinder, the fight they vun. Ten years ago, only. Some of them only five, six years old. Against men, they fought. And they killed. And to our town they will come to find you, if looking for you they still are, and if here they find you, us they will kill like those men at the barrier.”
“Haven’t you ever tried to fight back?” Tobin asked, even as he thought about the carnage at the barrier. These people couldn’t stand against guns.
“We Plain People are,” Samuel said with affronted dignity. “We fight not.”
Tobin swallowed heavily. “What makes you think they’ll come here looking?”
“Because something they vant, you have,” Samuel said. “Enoch told me that in a car you came. A car stuffed with goods.”
Again, what he had made people want to hurt him. Tobin spat out a curse, feeling filthy even as he did so. The old man barely flinched.
“They look for you, will,” Samuel said. “Track you, they will. And they will track you here, I do not doubt. They must not find you here.”
“No.” Tobin wiped palms damp with chill sweat on his trousers. “No, I don’t think that would be very good for me or Elanna.”
Samuel sighed, his eyes sad. “Selfish Yankee. Not good for you? Or for your woman? My family I am worried for. My home.”
“We’ll go as soon as we can,” Tobin said.
“Go now,” Samuel said.
−
35-
Elanna didn’t know what had passed between Tobin and Samuel Lapp. She was afraid to ask. Tobin flew out of the kitchen into the yard like he was on fire. His eyes were terrible, haunted.
When she saw him stumble and nearly fall, she ran to him although it made the ache in her womb flare into a stabbing pain. “Toby!”
“I’m all right.” He shook off her hand when she tried to steady him.
He leaned against a tidy fence post, head down. He wasn’t breathing hard, and he didn’t seem to be in pain. Elanna waited, quietly. She was used to waiting.
“We need to leave,” he told her. “Before those Gappers come here.”
She ran her fingers along his arm, down to where his fist clutched the wooden post. He trembled, and she realized he was using every effort to hold himself upright. She put her hand on his, trying to offer him strength without insulting the tender ego all men had.
“They frighten you,” was all she said.
“Hell, yes, they scare the shit out of me!” He turned on her.
“Enoch says --”
“Samuel says they want us because of the car, and our stuff,” Tobin broke in grimly. “Just like the Tribe.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not like the Tribe.”
He softened, letting her fold her palm into his. “I’m sorry, Elanna. Worse than the Tribe, maybe, but still the same. They want us because of what we had. They’ll probably want to know where we got it, and where they can get it.”
“So we’ll tell them!” she said angrily. “Big deal Toby, so we point them in the right direction! They won’t find much. Not like what you knew about when you came to the Tribe.”
The resentment filtered through her tone before she realized it. He heard it and flinched. He turned away, face stony beneath the rim of the straw hat like Enoch’s.
“I left a map for them,” was all he said.
> She didn’t speak for a moment, just stood next to him and watched the children playing in the dirt. In the distance, beyond the houses and the street, were the fields. Still mostly brown, even now, she knew that the green would soon begin breaking through. She’d like to see that.
“If you think we should go,” she said, “then we’ll go.”
“It’s not just for us. Even if we tell them where we got the car and the food and the clothes, do you think that will be enough for them? Samuel told me they’re soldiers, Elanna.”
