Agnes closed her eyes.
The prayer space billowed around her, a protective cloak. She nudged it with her mind, pushing it past its natural edges. Sweat broke out of every pore in her body, and unconsciously she ground her teeth, stretching, reaching.
Miraculously, the prayer space obeyed.
It spread its tendrils beyond the Prophet to the front of the church, and just at the limits of her reach, she heard it—a rising red moan.
The knowledge fell into her lap like a stone tablet: Something frightful would happen here today. Prayer space or not, Agnes feared she’d be powerless to stop it.
Powerless, as always.
“Ezekiel,” she whispered. “You’re going to have to be very brave. Okay?”
He swayed on the pew. She steadied him.
“What’s wrong with him?” Sam asked.
Agnes didn’t have time to answer. In the next instant, there was a loud sound—a real-world jolt of metal slamming—that echoed in the rafters and made the faithful jump. Along with the kids, Agnes craned her neck to see the Prophet dragging an animal before the altar with an iron chain.
It was shaped like a dog, marbled red, infected, snarling, and thrumming at the prayer space. A gasp swept the room and Mr. Sayles’s hand jittered on the organ. The instrument groaned balefully.
“Behold. The demon!”
The Prophet beckoned for his eldest son, Toby, to take the chain.
Beth murmured, “Oh, God.”
“Wow, oh, wow,” said Sam, squirming in his seat. Too excited to sit still.
Only Ezekiel knew enough to be afraid. He buried his face in Agnes’s arm, and the childish gesture stoked Agnes’s rage. The church brimmed with children, but the Prophet cared nothing for them—he never had. The animal growled, the sound low and juddering in its striated throat.
“Outsiders say this dog is sick, but don’t believe them,” the Prophet crowed. “Thousands of demons like this one now march across the face of the earth. But nor should you be afraid, for they can’t harm the righteous. Toby?”
The prayer space flickered, warning again, and more surely than she’d ever known anything, Agnes knew: The Prophet’s son was going to set the creature loose.
She jumped up, ignoring the eyes turned towards her. “Beth, help me get the kids out.”
“What?” Beth looked scandalized. “No.”
“Just do it,” Agnes snapped.
“If you leave, everyone will know you’re in rebellion.” Beth’s eyes were wide, her hands clutching the fabric of her dress.
Agnes grabbed her by the arm, ready to force her to stand.
But it was already too late. Toby unleashed the animal and took a quick step back. The dog, now free, eyed its audience warily.
No one spoke as it walked dazedly down the aisle, its marbled claws clicking against the hardwood. Its head swiveled from side to side, taking in the frozen onlookers: the Kings, the Hearns, the Sayleses, the Jamesons. Men, women, and children draped in linens that wouldn’t protect them when the mad dog bristled its crystal fur or bared its crimson teeth.
Get up, she thought hard at them. Get up and run. Get up and go!
The faithful feared the dog, but they feared the Prophet more. None dared move. Their leader stood at the pulpit watching them with hungry, fevered eyes.
The dog was getting closer. Feet away. Inches. Too close for her and her siblings to run. She could smell its sour smell, like clotted sweat, like death by fever. She couldn’t tear her eyes from its shine-slick coat, the color of blood and disease. And the way it moved—jerkily, mechanically…
Agnes braced herself, because the prayer space was above all protective, and in another moment, she knew it would—
Howl.
The sound, like nails shrieking against a chalkboard, exploded behind her eyes. An invisible wall shot up between her and the infected animal. The dog, nearly at her elbow, hit the sonic wall and stumbled back. It studied her, and something crept into those unnatural orbs: a pure, crimson terror.
Just like the javelina, it feared her.
No, not her. God’s voice.
The Prophet shrieked, “If you are righteous, it cannot harm you! But if you have sinned, your soul will die!”
Across the aisle, Mrs. King dropped her knitting needles with a clatter, and Agnes lost her focus. The prayer space evaporated.
The petrified dog lunged for Mrs. King. She screamed, and chaos broke out. Everyone seemed to be running in different directions. Mothers shouted for children, and children for mothers. The only still point in the riot was Matthew Jameson, sitting straight and calm in his abandoned pew.
“No one leaves!” the Prophet bellowed. “Do you hear me? No one leaves!”
Ezekiel took off running, darting and weaving through the crush. Agnes’s first instinct was to sprint after him, but she couldn’t leave the other kids behind. She grabbed Sam’s arm and pushed the twins in front of her, jostling them towards the door and wishing for another set of arms. But Beth pulled Sam away, forcing him to watch, to stay.
Agnes tried reaching for him again, but by then the twins were trying to crawl into Father’s lap. Her arms were aching, empty.
Father shouted, “Sit down, girl!”
Panicked, she sought wildly for Ezekiel.
Then the shot rang out.
Prophet Rollins wielded a pearl-handled pistol. A wisp of smoke escaped its muzzle. In the aisle, a dark pool of blood slowly spread beneath the slain dog.
“Three have failed God’s test! Three!”
She craned her neck to see beyond the throng.
Her Sunday school teacher, Mrs. King, was bleeding freely and weeping on the floor. The Prophet’s eldest son, Toby, shrieked and gripped his thigh.
And Magda Jameson nursed a bloodied arm. The dog had only brushed her, but Agnes’s mind flashed back to what Danny had said: Petra spread through broken skin.
Magda would rash, fever, and, finally, turn.
At the pulpit, the Prophet bellowed, “The Rapture has come. The Underground Temple will shelter us from God’s wrath. Hallelujah, for the Outsiders will die!”
Everyone in the church was staring at the Prophet, rapt.
But Agnes was done, her stomach sick.
She moved past the twins, searching for Ezekiel. He was curled in a ball in the back, arms wrapped around trembling knees. She picked him up and hurried for the door.
“Who goes there!” The Prophet interrupted himself, and Agnes froze. “What are you doing, girl? What faithless sedition is this?”
He was looking right at her, and except for Mrs. King’s pained bleating, the church had fallen silent. Her arms trembled supporting her brother’s weight, and her cheeks flamed.
They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
She squirmed under all their scrutiny, but the Prophet’s was the worst. Those eyes, glittering spitefully.
“Well?” The word sounded like a gong.
“I—” Her voice faltered.
Everyone stared at her—Father, the kids, the other families—and she felt voiceless, just like in Sunday school.
Conflicted, too, because she was leaving Beth, the twins, and Sam behind. They gaped at her like she was a stranger.
Her whole life she’d been raised to do as the Prophet asked, to do as men asked—but she couldn’t, not this time, because Ezekiel, even more than the others, needed her. Stress and fear could wreak havoc on his blood glucose. And he just might be the only one of her family who wasn’t too brainwashed to be saved.
She opened her mouth to say, I’m so sorry, but my brother has to go.
Only nothing came out. Not even air.
“Sit down,” the Prophet ordered, already preparing to ignore her, taking her obedience for granted.
And Agnes wanted to sit. Truly, she did. Because obeying was so much easier than the alternative.
But Ezekiel shook violently, and snot ran from his nose. She could still see
the look in the dog’s fever-crazed eyes.
And the Prophet was a gun-toting madman who pretended to hear God’s voice.
She took one shuffling, pained step towards the door.
“What are you doing?” The Prophet roared. “I said, sit down!”
His stunned look would’ve been laughable, if she didn’t know she’d pay for this.
She pulled away from his gaze and ran, her boots beating time against the background of horrified silence spreading through the church. Sorrow welled up as she thought of Toby and poor Magda. Both infected now and dying. She wanted to shout for the other kids, but then Ezekiel vomited down the front of her prairie dress.
She struck the church door with her shoulder and gasped to breathe the pine-scented air.
She glanced down at her dress, making sure Ezekiel hadn’t vomited the deathly, black fluid she remembered from his first crisis. She exhaled, seeing it was only nervous spit up.
“How do you feel?” She dabbed at his chin.
“Bad, Agnes,” he mumbled.
High. As soon as they got home, she’d check his blood glucose and administer a correction shot. Silently, she thanked God for his insulin.
“You’ll feel better after your shot,” she said firmly. “I promise.”
They were alone beneath the sun. None of the faithful would follow them yet. None of them dared.
After all, the Prophet was preaching his greatest, most long-awaited sermon.
The Rapture was here.
18
AGNES
On Judgment Day, we shall shelter in the Underground Temple, with food enough for four hundred days.
—PROPHET JEREMIAH ROLLINS
Keep going.
Her legs cramped, but Agnes willed herself to hurry. Ezekiel sobbed in her arms.
After the Prophet loosed the dog, Ezekiel ran even before she did. Hope shone inside her, because that meant he wasn’t a creature of the church—not entirely. Not yet. Was it insulin that inoculated him? Was it the javelina before? Was it his youth?
Or was there something special inside her baby brother—that same something that had always given him nightmares about the Underground Temple?
Punishment was coming as soon as church let out. If she were lucky, Father would only force her to fast a few more days. Ezekiel had been sick, after all. Truly, he had needed air.
But she’d also disobeyed the Prophet’s direct order in front of everyone—flouted the will of God’s representative on earth. But what did that matter, now she’d decided to run? She told herself she was not afraid; there was nothing Father or the Prophet could do to hurt her anymore—and yet her heart battered at her throat.
Spying their meadow, she struggled on. Before Father came home, she needed to text Danny. And she needed to talk to Ezekiel—to prepare him.
Please God, let him listen. I won’t run alone.
“Demon,” Ezekiel whispered. “A demon got Mrs. King.”
Inside the trailer, Agnes had wrapped Ezekiel in a blanket. She’d checked his blood glucose and given him a correction shot. Now she rocked him, stroking his duckling-soft hair.
“It wasn’t a demon.” She wiped his runny nose. “The dog was sick. Like the javelina.”
“I didn’t tell anyone about the javelina, Agnes.”
She beamed. “I know.”
“But today, the Prophet said the dog was a demon—”
It was time to tell him the painful truth. “The Prophet lied.”
Ezekiel’s thumb fell out of his mouth. “He can’t lie.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Father told me, and Mrs. King, and—and you, Agnes!”
She winced. “I was wrong. So were they.”
He’d stopped shivering, becoming wary. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I made a mistake. I’m so sorry.”
Ezekiel sank back against his pillow. “We’re going underground for the Rapture. Right?”
His voice sounded decades older. Agnes could kill the Prophet for frightening him so.
Do you believe we’ll soon witness the coming of the Lord?
“Ezekiel. Listen to me. That dog wasn’t a demon, and this isn’t the Rapture. I won’t let you go down into the bunker.”
In fact, she couldn’t. The faithful kept enough canned food in the Temple for four hundred long, dark days, but not a drop of the insulin Ezekiel needed to survive. It would be his death sentence.
“I don’t want to go down there,” he whispered. “But won’t we burn if we stay here?”
“The Rapture is a lie, and the world won’t end like that. It can’t.”
He was unconvinced. But this was her chance, and Agnes wasn’t about to let it slip away. Slowly, in the back of her mind, a plan was falling into place, a path that stretched into the forest and beyond. She didn’t like where it was leading, and she didn’t like that she saw herself and Ezekiel walking that path alone.
Ezekiel peered curiously over her shoulder as she took out her phone. Last night, she hadn’t had time to bury it. All morning, it had been burning a hole in her dress. Immediately, a warning flashed brightly across the screen.
STATE OF EMERGENCY. CITIZENS ARE INSTRUCTED TO REMAIN IN THEIR HOMES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Fear fluttered in her chest. What did that mean?
She tapped the screen with her thumb, brushing the warning away. She needed Danny.
“What’s that?” Ezekiel craned for a look. “What did it say?”
“Shh.”
She texted: Danny, I need your help. Please come get me.
While she waited for his answer, she flicked the kitchen curtains, looking for any sign of Father. The road was clear, so she showed Ezekiel her favorite Pangaea video, to distract him. The one of Danny’s friends, dancing awkwardly and laughing. He watched, transfixed.
“What’re they doing?” he asked.
“I don’t really know. Would you like to come Outside with me and see?”
His brow wrinkled. “We’re not allowed Outside. You know that. It’s not allowed.”
Agnes, I can’t. No one’s supposed to be on the streets. Soldiers everywhere.
She hesitated. She was asking him to put himself at risk. But what choice did she have?
Danny, please.
“Ezekiel, listen.” Now was the time, terrifying as it might be. “I need you to be very brave…”
And she told him everything.
Ezekiel listened, and he was brave.
When she left him alone to meet Danny—Meet at the Nest, or someone might see, she’d texted—she believed in her bones that Ezekiel wouldn’t turn her in.
How will you find the Nest? Danny wanted to know. You’ve never been.
Agnes smiled grimly to herself, knowing exactly how she’d find it.
She’d follow the sound.
The prayer space was a powerful sense. It could lead her through the forest, lighting her way with echoes and hums and lilts of bright sound.
But was she strong enough to bend it to her will?
She closed her eyes, pouring her soul into that single effort.
Exhaustion fell on her like a mountain, as if she’d been praying endlessly for hours. But it worked. The Nest’s hum clung like a fog to the loamy ground. She trudged across the meadow, following, listening, following.
Soon the leaves above blocked out the light. The hum burrowed into her bones. Traveling deeper into the maze of cypress, juniper, and pine felt like entering some unearthly cathedral made entirely of sound.
God is very close.
She wanted to see the Nest. It was more than just a rendezvous point. The Nest was a slice of the real world, and she needed to know what she was running to.
She lifted her skirt to hop over a creek into a circle of damp earth. Pine needles snapped beneath her boots. Leaves cast spectral shadows on the forest floor and the humming deepened.
Then she saw them with her own eyes.
The Nested cr
ows.
Revulsion rolled over her in waves because there was nothing beautiful about them. They were a rupture. A bizarre ugliness. She was going to be sick, but she couldn’t look away. And even if she did squeeze her eyes shut, she knew she would still hear them, in the prayer space.
Because God’s voice spoke through them, too.
A chill worked through her as she realized, more strongly than ever before, that the divine didn’t only dwell in beauty, but also in pestilence and horror.
Thou hast showed thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment.
“Agnes?”
Danny strode through the brush. Her fear faded. She knew she’d been right to ask him here.
Before them, a hundred birds knotted into a tall, tree-like shape, locked together, yet alive and shivering. Beaked faces, black wings serrated with feathers, and leathery talons interlocking. They’d melted into one another like glass, and she couldn’t tell where one bird ended and another began. A red resin glazed their backs. They shivered mindlessly in their crystal trap.
The Nest was something you had to see for yourself, just as you had to break a bone to know real pain. It solidified all she’d thought, all she’d learned. Red Creek was a lie, and all these years she’d been living blind. There was more Outside, much more. Some good. Some bad.
And some—inexplicable.
This Nest, she understood from Danny, was something entirely new to the world. And yet, growing up she’d drunk the Bible like milk. She couldn’t help but think of Job’s leviathan and the description of its red scales: They are joined one to another; they clasp and cannot be separated. And she couldn’t help but think of God’s chariot in the Book of Ezekiel, pulled by crimson beasts with four faces, its shining red wheels rimmed with eyes.
“It’s a Virus,” Danny said gently. “That’s all.”
Yes. She knew now that the way she saw the world was just one framework among multitudes. There were many ways to see; countless avenues to understanding.
The thrum of the birds rattled her bones. She stepped back, crunching leaves. The prayer space didn’t shriek, but she sensed it on alert. Aware.
Agnes at the End of the World Page 10
