Agnes at the End of the World

by Kelly McWilliams

  Yet she felt the sonic armor all around her, felt she occupied some holy, protected space, so she didn’t scream. In a final effort, Agnes slid across the grass, putting her body between her brother and the diseased creature. Just as before, the humming increased, bellowing righteously.

  She kicked and heard a bony crack as her boot connected with its snout. The javelina staggered. She looked into the creature’s red-marbled eyes, and again and swift as shadow saw fear sweep across those glittering orbs.

  It was afraid of her. Why?

  The creature gazed helplessly, but Agnes didn’t waver. She brandished the spade like a hunting knife and plunged the sharp edge between the beast’s head and its spine.

  It shivered once, then fell.

  The humming ceased.

  Agnes wore a pair of heavy gardening gloves to drag the red creature with that awful crystal skin to the forest’s edge.

  Now she looked closer, she saw its fur wasn’t fur at all. The Virus had transformed the bristles into tiny spines, producing that horrifying sheen. Its unnatural carcass seemed enameled, like something from the Book of Revelation.

  In the meadow, Ezekiel babbled hysterically about the Rapture.

  “A demon means it’s the apocalypse. We’ll have to go into the bunker. Agnes, I’m afraid of the dark, I’m afraid—”

  Exhausted, she dropped the heavy thing she’d been dragging by the hoof. “Listen to me. You’re going to keep this secret. Like your medicine.”

  He recoiled. “But the Prophet—”

  Agnes pressed her lips together. Despite his promises, the Prophet had failed to protect them. He claimed to be God’s omniscient mouthpiece. So why had she and Ezekiel been exposed to this Outsider sickness? Why hadn’t he warned them about animals coming out of the forest? Why had an Outsider boy been the one to warn her, instead?

  Something was rotten here.

  Someone was lying.

  “That’s enough, Ezekiel.” Mired in her thoughts, she picked up that hoof again.

  Sickness, a Virus, the sound.

  Ezekiel’s insulin—a sin.

  Secrets, little things, a rotten whiff of lies.

  The javelina would’ve torn Ezekiel to bits if it hadn’t been for the hum. Agnes, on her own, couldn’t have stopped it. Now her whole body vibrated around a core of white-hot anger, wondering how much the Prophet knew about this threat—the horrible, red-hard disease that had come galloping across her meadow in the middle of the day.

  If Danny had spoken the truth, sickness raged everywhere. If the Prophet had read one newspaper, or talked to one Outsider, or even heard the news from God Himself, then he’d been lying to his people. The Prophet always said God sheltered them in Red Creek. But if that weren’t true—God, if that weren’t true—

  Her anger simmered.

  If she’d learned one thing from secreting Ezekiel’s insulin, it was that lies came in packs.

  So what else was the Prophet lying about?

  “Agnes?” Ezekiel moaned. “Agnes?”

  At the edge of the forest, the trees whispered an answer she didn’t want to hear.

  In bed that night, Agnes saw the shining red creature like a vision, and heard the thrilling humming in her mind.

  She saw herself, too—not a helpless girl at all, but a woman running to spear a monster, protecting herself and Ezekiel when the Prophet couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.

  She thought of Beth’s subversive list of Red Creek’s Laws. What if those Laws didn’t come from God? What if they existed not to keep them holy, but to keep them in line? She’d held back so many questions for so long. Now they flooded her, irrepressible.

  Why was her life harder than a man’s?

  Why must she always do as she was told?

  And why was Ezekiel’s life worth more to Outsiders like Danny and Matilda than to his own people?

  Her well-trained Red Creek mind tried to shut down her thoughts. Quiet, it sneered. What do you know?

  But her spirit wouldn’t accept that, after what she’d been forced to do today.

  For years, she’d gritted her teeth through fevers and broken bones, never touching money, attending countless sermons, speaking only when spoken to, washing and ironing, and caring for the kids without complaint, agreeing to marry when ordered to—for God, she’d do all that and more.

  But only for God.

  Obedience and faith aren’t the same thing, Matilda had said.

  Faithful, obedient Agnes. The future Mrs. Matthew Jameson.

  But what if God wanted her to be more?

  And the sound…

  “God, was that you?” she whispered towards and beyond the ceiling, her lips trembling.

  Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, God told Jeremiah in the Bible, and the words floated into Agnes’s soul, clear as an answer.

  She slipped out of bed. On the porch, moths buzzed around the faint glow of the lamp, snapping and dying. She picked up her garden spade, determined to unbury all her secrets.

  The humming returned as she dug. This time, it didn’t frenetically warn. This time, the earth thrummed contentedly, expectantly beneath her hands.

  She dropped her spade, unable to deny any longer that she’d heard the sound before.

  As a child, in the meadow.

  The earth had hummed a quiet hymn through her feet, and the stars had sung an ancient, silver song.

  She’d called it the prayer space, envisioning it not as a thing but as a place she inhabited. It was like standing at the holy altar or kneeling for evening prayers. It was the feeling that something holy—something greater—was watching you with patient eyes.

  Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart…

  Her still-twisted knuckle throbbed with the memory of pain.

  A just punishment for blasphemy, Mrs. King had said.

  Of course. Because no little girl could have such power in Red Creek, a land where they depended on fathers and husbands for everything—the word of God included. So, Agnes had buried the prayer space deep inside herself. Eventually she’d stopped hearing it altogether.

  Until today.

  She picked up her spade.

  She’d never forget how the prayer space had surged into a heartrending roar when she faced the javelina. The sound had done far more to keep her safe than the Prophet, or Father, or all Red Creek’s Laws put together.

  She struck Ezekiel’s cooler, buried in the earth that kept it cold, but she wasn’t digging for insulin. She rooted for the phone Danny had given her, the forbidden device wrapped tightly in a kitchen rag.

  Rebellion.

  She wouldn’t deny it any longer. Though tears streaked down her face, her mourning would have to wait. She looked at the sky, not surprised to hear the stars, singing like they always had.

  “God,” she said with quiet awe. “It is you.”

  The prayer space, real and true. As for Red Creek…

  Furiously, Agnes began to count its lies.

  12

  AGNES

  Technology is the doorway to sin.

  —PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS

  The next day, Monday, Agnes worried.

  The javelina had to be buried, preferably before it began to stink. Thinking of the ugly red carcass hidden near the forest, she dreaded burying it alone. But it was only a matter of time before someone from Red Creek discovered it, and she wasn’t ready for that. There was no telling what the Prophet might make of it, and she didn’t want the Rapture coming any sooner than it had to.

  I have to call the Outsiders.

  A craven piece of her still wanted to shelter in the life she’d always known, and in the Laws she’d tried so hard to love. But if God had called her name, then ignoring His voice would be more dangerous than anything she’d ever done.

  Agnes, you’ve got to be strong.

  After putting the children to bed, she locked herself in the bathroom and switched on the shower. Then she crouched benea
th the sink, praying the running water would mask her voice.

  But the phone was tricky, a black rectangle with a single button and a forbidding screen. Agnes fumbled with it so long she began to doubt.

  Then an image burst into her mind: the Underground Temple buried in the hillside. The end point of the Apocalypse Game, and of Ezekiel’s nightmares, too. The Prophet always said that when plague and destruction overtook the Outsiders, that’s where they’d go—deep underground, to await God’s will.

  But if Red Creek was a lie, it wasn’t God’s will they’d wait for. It was the Prophet’s.

  In the cold, dark bathroom, Agnes shivered.

  She flicked her fingers once more over the screen and watched it become a harsh square of blinding white light. Squinting, she kept flicking, sometimes tapping.

  How did anyone use these little black rectangles for sinning, or anything else, for that matter? Was she simply too backwards? Too dumb to figure it out?

  Suddenly, Matilda’s name appeared like magic on the screen. She had only to touch it with the tip of her index finger, and the phone began to ring.

  “Hello? Agnes?”

  Not Matilda’s voice. Danny’s.

  Her cheeks flamed. “Hi.” An awkward pause. “I need to speak to your mother, please.”

  “She just finished a forty-eight-hour shift. She’s asleep.” His tone changed. “What’s the matter? Are you in trouble?”

  Never speak to Outsiders. Treat the other sex like snakes.

  Agnes nearly hung up.

  It would be so easy to give up now. To bury the phone and all her doubts in the ground and marry Matthew Jameson in two weeks. With him, she’d live in a fine house with his children and wives and never make another hard decision, ever again.

  To just give up, and become obedient Agnes once more, would be like sinking into a warm bath.

  And drowning there.

  She took a breath, remembering the humming.

  No, not humming. God’s voice.

  “I killed a javelina. I think it was infected. With the Virus you told me about.”

  Danny’s silence rattled her. The Prophet always said that Outsiders were selfish and cruel. Why should he help her?

  “Hang on,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

  Agnes carried a flashlight and two shovels to the Kings’ cemetery. She flicked her flashlight on and off while she waited for Danny, trying not to imagine red-marbled animals creeping through the dark.

  She couldn’t have braved it without God.

  Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.

  “Songs of deliverance,” she said aloud, wondering if the psalmist might’ve known a prayer space of his own.

  Danny met her within the hour. His size startled her all over again—his broad shoulders, his pure height. Something inside her tugged and tightened when his eyes met hers. She was so grateful to see him, she could’ve wept for relief. But his eyes were badly troubled, raw around the rims.

  “Things are getting uglier every day,” he explained as they made their way to the forest’s edge. “This Virus—they say there’s never been a pandemic like it. Already it’s spreading on every continent. They’re putting military checkpoints in place. Quarantining the hardest-hit towns.”

  There was so much she needed to know. “What’s a pandemic?”

  “A disease that spreads around the world.”

  “How?”

  “Your javelina—its skin was red and shiny, right? Like ruby?”

  She nodded, thinking of Revelation—in which holy skins shone like gemstones—then repressed the thought.

  “That sheen is made of tiny filaments. Infected skin looks smooth as marble, but those filaments bristle, razor sharp. Like shark skin. If you’re cut, you’ll get sick. A few days of fever, and you’ll be just like them—compelled to infect others until you find a Nest. Every species is prone to infection. Birds, reptiles, people, doesn’t matter. All they have to do is brush against you.”

  They’d come to the forest’s edge.

  Women who cross into the forest will face God’s wrath.

  Agnes froze, unable to take another step.

  “What’s the matter?” Danny switched on his flashlight, illuminating the sturdy trunks of ponderosa pines.

  “The forest is forbidden. The Prophet says if women enter it, God will strike them down.”

  He cocked his head. “Do you believe that?”

  She looked up at the stars, trying to find her way into that place where the whole world echoed with brilliant sound. The prayer space.

  There. Stepping into it was like stepping into her garden. Peaceful, restful, green.

  Do you believe that?

  “No,” she said softly. “Not anymore.”

  And Danny smiled.

  After they’d buried the javelina, Danny taught Agnes how to use the phone more efficiently.

  How to turn it on; how to dial his mother’s number; his own, which he added. Then he showed her how to connect to the Internet, and how to type questions into a blank space and get a million answers in return.

  Miracles. It all seemed like miracles.

  “You can read about the Virus, Petra, in the news,” he said. “CNN, NPR, the BBC… they’re covering it day and night. I can teach you how to use the social sites, too—like Pangaea. That’s where people are posting pictures of what’s happening.”

  “How many people are infected?”

  “Millions so far, and it’s spreading fast.”

  As he talked, he flicked past photos of infected animals of every kind, and infected people, too. All of them were covered in a red, gem-like shine. Agnes hunched over the screen, forcing herself to look. Once creatures became petrified, they were highly aggressive—rabid, Danny said.

  “But that isn’t the strangest part,” he continued. “Once infected, creatures seek each other out. They fuse into these Nests. Look.”

  She registered people, a crowd, but they stood too close together. Squinting, she saw they’d tangled into a kind of statue. Limbs bent at unnatural angles. Faces and bodies jammed together in chaos. With that hard, red skin, they looked like they’d been turned to stone.

  And there were children.

  Too roughly, she pushed the phone away.

  “I know it’s ugly.” Danny watched her face. “Usually, Nests are burned quickly. The one in your forest is unusual that way.”

  Her mind reeled from her first glimpses of the darkness Outside, but what really stunned her were the glimpses of brightness. According to the Prophet, sin had overtaken the Outside long ago, and filth was all you’d find. Agnes saw now that this was an abject lie. Besides Nests, she saw people of all shapes, sizes, and colors, living in lands she’d never heard of, doing a thousand incredible things. She saw gorgeous bridges and graceful buildings, fascinating clothing and children smiling, laughing, or crying. It didn’t look like a hell world. It looked like the real world.

  “Are you okay?” Behind his glasses, Danny looked more skeptical than ever. “You’re very pale.”

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “Keep going.”

  “This is Pangaea.”

  He flicked open a new screen. A video played. Agnes couldn’t tear her eyes from the trio of teenagers, dancing in silly costumes and singing at the top of their lungs. Even through the phone, she felt their exuberance. Wistfully, she placed the tip of her finger on one smiling face.

  In Red Creek, Agnes kept a close leash on herself, ever aware of the Laws. But these teenagers were different. They were unafraid.

  “Those are my friends, actually,” Danny said bashfully. “We made this video last year. Bunch of idiots, I know.”

  “They’re not. They’re beautiful.”

  He grinned at her shyly, and unexpectedly Agnes felt herself fill with gladness. The prayer space had brought her to this moment, and maybe that meant God wanted to show her something greater.
Something more. Though for what purpose, she couldn’t imagine.

  Her vision misted with wonder and gratitude.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Why are you helping me?” she demanded.

  “Hey, I just answered the phone. And like I said, my mom worries. If you ever want to get out of here, you know who to call.” He paused, pressed his lips together. “And I want to help people, if I can. I want to be a doctor, one day.”

  A doctor. Agnes had never even met one.

  Reluctantly, she let the screen’s light wink out. She thanked Danny, knowing she’d never be able to abandon her family. Though she’d known that truth her whole life, she only now felt an ache taking root.

  Regret.

  “Agnes,” Danny spoke urgently. “Petra isn’t going away. If your Prophet isn’t taking any precautions against Petra, it might soon become too dangerous to stay.”

  I need more time, she thought as she picked her way up the hill after they’d said goodbye.

  Time to type her questions into the crystal air, and learn the answers. Time to think and, especially, to pray.

  Danny had already gone when the white pickup came tearing down the road too late at night.

  Barreling towards the trailer.

  Agnes tucked her phone inside her dress pocket and dashed around back to climb through the bathroom window. As she hauled herself up, she ripped her palm on a rusty nail. She bit back a cry. If a patriarch caught her outside at night, her pain wouldn’t matter anyway.

  She didn’t feel God anymore. Only heart-stopping, bloodcurdling fear.

  Smash. Shatter. Crack!

  From the bathroom, she heard boys’ voices and the sound of something pelting the trailer. She opened the door just in time to see Father lumbering down the hall in his long-john underwear.

  “Who is that? Who’s there?”

  The kids’ eyes were sleep dazed. Father tripped over Sam’s toy truck, and Beth made it to the front door first.

  She slammed it open. Yelled. Fell back inside the house.