Of Starlight and Plague

by Beth Hersant

  “You see, I didn’t even think of that,” Fletch said.

  “It doesn’t mean I’m right for the job,” Louella shook her head.

  “You’ve been doing the job.”

  “Will you at least consider another …”

  “I have. And I keep coming to the same conclusion. We need somebody tough — you got the kids out of Midwood when it fell. We need somebody strong — you’ve buried a husband and a son and still kept the farm going. We need somebody smart — you saw this coming before any of us. And we need somebody who loves this group — you cared enough to make sure that Ginny would still have a son and Emma a father.”

  “Fletcher Landis…”

  “Using my full name is not going to shut me up.”

  “But I don’t want this!”

  “Which is another reason why you should have it. If you wanted the job, well, there’d be something seriously wrong with you.”

  Louella looked at the others desperately. “Will somebody else say something?”

  Alec did. “All in favor?”

  Hands were raised, the motion passed and Louella was left sitting there, wondering what the hell just happened to her life. With an inarticulate groan, she rose and walked out the back door.

  Fletch gave her a few minutes and then joined her in the barn. He found her sitting on the floor of the cow stall. Joe, her Milking Shorthorn, had laid down next to her and rested its head in the old woman’s lap.

  “I know her name’s Joe,” Fletch said. “Is it short for Josephine?”

  Louella stroked the animal gently. “That’s what I tell everybody, but really I named her after Joe Elliot, lead singer of Def Leppard.”

  “You’re a weirdo, you know that?”

  “Not weird enough, apparently. If I was truly bonkers you wouldn’t have elected me to be your Grand Poobah or whatever the fuck you decide to call me now that all this shit’s my responsibility.”

  “I know you’re mad …”

  “I’m fucking furious. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “That you’re the best person for the job.”

  “Stop saying that!” She wanted this conversation to be private so she was whisper-yelling at him. “Tonight when I was making dinner, I went to take the sauce off the stove. The arthritis in my wrists … both joints just gave way and I damn near spilled the whole boiling mess down the front of myself. That’s me, Fletch. An uneducated, asthmatic, can’t-lift-a-pot-off-the-stove old woman. And you think I’m going to what? Lead you all to the promised land? I mean, what the fuck?”

  “I think you’re going to make Camp North Star the best it can be. And you’re going to do it because you love the people here.”

  “And what if I screw it up?”

  He shrugged, “You can only do your best.”

  Louella looked at him and he was surprised to see tears in her eyes.

  He knelt down in front of her. “Before you were a mom, did you know how to be a good one?”

  “No, and don’t even try to make the comparison. This is a hell of a lot more complicated than raising a couple of kids.”

  “How so? Planning for people’s future, providing for their needs, setting down rules, protecting them — are you gonna tell me that that job description doesn’t ring any bells with you?”

  Louella let out a long sigh and buried her face in Joe’s neck.

  “I suggested that you lead us because it’s a job you’ve spent the last forty-odd years learning how to do. And you’re good at it.” He rose and offered her a hand up.

  Joe moaned a low protest when Louella wriggled free. She let her friend help her up and he gave her a hug.

  Her face was buried in his shoulder, her voice muffled when she said, “You really are a prick, you know that?”

  “Yeah, but a lovable one.”

  “Which is the only reason you’re still alive.” And with that they headed back to the house.

  Back in September, Bethany Adams walked into her first day of eighth grade science class and realized that the only remaining chair was next to Abigail Williams. She cursed herself for not getting there earlier to get a better seat. Abigail, with her tatty clothes and greasy hair, was the class outcast. She was visibly dirty and her breath was diabolically bad. CariAnn, one of the most popular girls in their year, had made up a song about it (sung to the tune: Oklahoma!). “Haaaal-itosis, when the breath comes sweeping down the plains!” But it was more than just the hygiene issues. She was slow in school and hence had collected the inevitable label of “retard.” She lived in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of Crucible, PA, and her family was pure white trash. Her father was the town drunk, collecting his unemployment checks and food stamps and blowing the lion’s share of it on Old Crow Bourbon. And her mother, who had five kids by five different men, had run off with boyfriend number … oh, who the hell can keep track?

  Trash, retard, scumbag — these were the monikers used by people who never bothered to learn Abigail’s name. And Bethany Adams now had to share a table with her, probably for the whole year. The old taunts of “cooties” that had been hurled at Abby in Elementary School resurfaced in Bethany’s mind and she nudged her chair as far away from the girl as she could.

  And then class was underway. As Mrs. Hemmingway described the earth’s water cycle, Bethany grabbed her brand new Trapper Keeper and the pens she’d picked out at Woolworths. The desk in front of Abigail remained empty. Bethany started to take notes, but her eyes kept wandering back to the blank laminate tabletop in front of her neighbor. She tore a sheet from her notebook and slid it across to Abigail. She looked sadly at one of her new pens and then pushed that over as well.

  Abby looked at her wide-eyed, then slowly took paper and pen and started to copy (badly) the diagram Mrs. Hemmingway had drawn on the board. As the girl wrote, the sleeve of her shirt hitched up and there, on the child’s forearm was an old bruise. Bethany stared at it. It was massive and a deep greenish purple. Beside it there were five small circles: two were healing, sort of, and were crusted over with dirty white scabs. The other three, however, were newer — a swollen, bright, angry red. Holy crap, Bethany wasn’t listening to the teacher anymore, are those cigarette burns? At that moment Abigail caught her looking and hastily pulled down her sleeve. Bethany sat there, her heart racing. What the fuck? I mean … but words failed her. Quietly, she reached into her bag and took out her spare notebook. She slid this and half of her pens over to Abby.

  As the kids packed up their gear at the end of the lesson, Abigail handed the stuff back with a quiet, “Thanks.”

  “No, you can keep it,” Bethany said.

  “Oh.” Abigail stared in wonder at the nicest gift she’d ever received.

  It would be lovely to say that that was the beginning of a redemptive story — that through Bethany, Abigail was welcomed into the fold and found love and acceptance. But it was never going to be that simple. The girl was so starved for attention that she latched onto Bethany with a smothering desperation. It was less like the natural evolution of a friendship and more like a drowning man pouncing on his rescuer in order to stay afloat. And Bethany, who was jumping through her own hoops in an effort to fit in, found that her association with the class pariah weighed on her like an anchor. Case in point: Tobey Wilson, a really cute boy in her Social Studies class, came over to her locker one day. “The gang” was going bowling on Saturday and did she want to … but then Abigail bounded up to them and Tobey beat a hasty retreat. And the other girls were a nightmare about it. All through that fall, they teased her about her new “BFF” (Best Freak Forever) and asked her why she was “slumming it.” As Christmas approached, there were so many things she wanted to be part of. Lena was having a sleepover and they were going to order pizza and stay up all night watching horror movies like Silent Night, Deadly Night and Krampus and Stephanie was even going to swipe h
er older brother’s copy of Bikini Bloodbath Christmas which was almost like porn. And for New Year, CariAnn was having a party and Tobey was going to be there. If Bethany wanted to be a part of any of it, then she had to shake Abby off. It was a horrible thing to do, but maybe, just maybe if she did it slowly, if she quietly eased Abigail out of her life, then her feelings wouldn’t be too hurt.

  And so Bethany became very busy — projects due, doctors’ appointments, family commitments. Then one evening she was sitting in Moretti’s (the local pizza joint) with Stephanie and Tobey, and CariAnn, Jake and Lena when she happened to look up to see Abigail standing at the window, staring in at her. She’d told Abby that she couldn’t hang out because she was grounded. She’d been lying so much lately and now finally, she’d been caught. Bethany felt sick — she knew exactly what she’d just done, but the feeling was tempered with a guilty relief. It was over. She was free to choose her own crowd and her own path and not have to carry someone when she could barely sort out her own shit.

  In another moment, Abigail was gone. And it was during her long, cold walk home that she encountered the dog. And it bit her.

  She got sick — really sick — and too weak to get out of bed. The fever rolled over her in great dark waves. Occasionally, she’d drift to the surface, literally gasping for air and you’d think that these moments of awareness and light would be a reprieve. But no. The first time she surfaced it was to the recollection of Bethany sitting there, laughing with all those bitches who’d made Abigail’s life a misery. With their jokes about her hair and clothes and shoes — they had a seemingly infinite capacity to find things to make fun of. And now Bethany was one of them.

  This hurt Abigail more than the cootie jibes, the ostracism, and the fact that, except as the butt of many jokes, she was invisible. Because this time someone had seen her — actually seen her — only to turn away. This time she had dared to hope. Proverbs 13:12 reads, “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” And that is correct. Truly, it pained her more than the virus that raged through her scrawny body.

  Another wave of delirium rolled her under and she thought no more of this. That was the supreme irony of New Rabies as experienced by Abigail Williams. The disease was preferable to her life. The next time she awoke, her father was in her room, rifling through her drawers, looking for her hidden stash of money. He obviously needed another bottle.

  “Where is it?” he demanded.

  When she didn’t answer, his temper flared. But the wave rolled over her again, pulling her away from him and down into a darkness, safe and quiet and still.

  In this key aspect, her experience of New Rabies was different to that of most victims. The horror people felt as the virus whittled away at them — that didn’t trouble her. The reason? It had already been done. While her father was unfamiliar with the psychological concept of soul murder, he had effectively accomplished it with his daughter. He had stripped the child of all pride and potential. Other people were so attached to themselves, to the capital “I” of their being, but Abigail’s identity was based on negation. It was not about who she was or what she needed or who she could be. It was about what she could not be a part of. It was based on rejection and neglect. There was nothing about herself or her life that she was particularly attached to; there was nothing about herself that she was proud of. She had been raised to believe that she was worthless and stupid and unwanted. And so who cares? So what if the virus strips you of your identity? It could not take what she did not possess. Instead, it offered her an escape — a glorious, black oblivion and the chance to lie back and float, dizzy and giddy, on the wave.

  Her final coherent thought came at three a.m. the following morning. She sat up in bed with a sudden urge to go find her father. She rose and shuffled into the old man’s bedroom.

  He awoke the moment her teeth fastened on his throat. But no matter how much he thrashed and flailed, he could not shake her off. If someone had been present to observe this last act of violence in the Williams’ house, they would have been struck by an odd sense of déjà vu. The scene that played out in that bedroom was not a human act of murder. It was like something out of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom — oddly reminiscent of the way a lion brings down a cape buffalo. When a lion takes down large prey, it will fasten its teeth on the neck, crushing the windpipe. Unable to draw breath, the buffalo suffocates.

  The human trachea is less than one inch in diameter at the front of the throat. Abigail bit through the thyroid cartilage and fastened onto the windpipe. And she simply did not let go. While the man felt all the animal panic of having his air supply abruptly cut off, the girl experienced a moment of power, of control. The blood in her mouth sent a rush of euphoria through her. And for the first time in her life she was a being without pain or fear. Hope deferred may maketh the heart sick, but (as the Proverb goes on to say), “when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” In this case: a new life born out of New Rabies.

  With the bite delivered, Abigail strolled casually out of the room and never thought of her father again. She reached the bottom of the steps, fumbled with the lock on the door, and stepped out into the wide world. In Crucible, there was a section called “the patch” where most of the houses were clustered, and these were now under assault by the infected. Abby joined in. As a large man ran past her, she stuck a foot out to trip him. She leapt onto his back and bit and clawed at him until he was finally able to buck her off. She lay in the snow then — panting and sated as he fled.

  Soon, however, that feeling of repletion began to fade. Eager to restore it, she rose and recommenced the hunt. And she did get some good bites in — there was a woman trying to run in slippers. Abby tore out her calf. And there was a chubby kid she chased down and killed in her fervor. But she was kept on the periphery of the fighting by the sheer violence of the main protagonists. The biggest, strongest and fastest of the infected were on point and the battle they waged as they tore through that neighborhood was so far beyond her capabilities that she was shunted aside.

  She found herself standing outside a house. Screams echoed inside, but the crowd of infected at the door was so dense, she couldn’t get in. She looked down at herself — at her gray sweatpants and snow-encrusted socks. All her life she had cleaned and bandaged her own wounds and looked after herself. It was an ingrained, programed response to any moment of violence and so she turned and walked into one of the houses that had already been hit. A man, still clutching a shotgun, lay in the front hall. His throat had been torn out and he’d been disemboweled. She knelt by his feet and began to tug at his boots. They were laced up and she had quite a job getting them off because she’d forgotten that a simple pull on the laces would untie them. Her exertions began to attract attention as more and more of the infected stopped to investigate what she was doing. Had she found more prey? Apparently not and still they were intrigued. They watched as she finally yanked the shoes off and put them on her own feet. Standing with her new boots in the man’s spilled guts, she pulled a coat off the rack by the door.

  There were eight infected peering in the doorway now, looking at her as she stood there in her too-big coat with sleeves that flapped down past her hands. They saw her turn and walk quietly down the hall and into the living room. They followed. The room was empty and they were just about to leave when Abigail approached the couch. Her head cocked first to one side and then the other. And then with one swift movement, she wedged her fingers under the sofa and heaved it up. The couch was old — the seat cushions were supported by wire mesh and springs below which there was a gap where crumbs and loose change collected against a thin bit of fabric stapled at the bottom. That fabric had been cut away and, in the gap between wire and floor, there lay a thin boy in his early teens. Abigail had used the same trick to hide from her dad once and now she smiled down on the boy as he cried and begged her to leave him alone. But it doesn’t work that way — it never works that way and so Abigail tore into
him and the others followed suit.

  As the sun rose in Crucible, she ambled from house to house followed by a growing contingent of the infected. Walking through the rooms, she checked every possible hiding place and delivered another dozen people to the waiting horde. She may not have the brute strength needed for the sort of melee she saw last night, but she had spent a lifetime hiding from beatings and that instinct had survived in her when everything else had been burned away. She’d been prey for so long, she knew precisely where prey would hide. And so Abigail emerged as the undisputed leader of the horde.

  Chapter Ten

  Roller Coaster

  “There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.”

  William Frederick Halsey Jr.

  “The horror no less than the charm of real life consists precisely in the recurrent actualization of the inconceivable.”

  Aldous Huxley

  To begin with, being the leader of Camp North Star wasn’t too bad. Everyone started calling Louella “Chief” and really, she just carried on doing what she would have done anyway. She hatched plans. They were simple and logical:

  1.Complete the fortifications on the main part of the complex — the farmhouse, enclosed garden and barn.

  2.Extend the security fencing to protect the outbuildings and keep Arnold’s drove of pigs safe.

  3.When their basic security needs had been met, she suggested they divide each day into three parts:

  A.Continued work on improving defenses and running the farm.

  B.Training.

  C.R and R.

  The assembled company sat quietly, waiting for her to elaborate.

  “I saw a program a while back on the old west. The pioneers who thrived were the ones who constantly worked to better their situation. And that’s what we’re gonna do here. When we aren’t tied up with planting and the harvest, we need to keep improving this place — adding more defenses, hell building more accommodation so we can all have more privacy and space. And we’ve got to set up the lab so Wyn and Niamh can get started on the vaccine.”