Agnes at the End of the World

by Kelly McWilliams

  The words were so heartfelt they melted Beth’s memory of any strangeness.

  Agnes had always had that funny habit of cocking her head like she was listening to some mysterious song. The shock Beth had felt when her sister kissed her must have been nothing but static electricity, and her dark, pupil-black eyes only a trick of the light.

  Eyelets fastened. Fingers linked.

  Then the bells tolled midnight, and Beth breathed in deep, determined to meet whatever the future might bring.

  Before dawn, she’d be a patriarch’s wife.

  21

  AGNES

  Glory in the Rapture. Glory in the eye of God.

  —PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS

  The wedding was over in a brutal ten minutes.

  What bothered Agnes most was that there wasn’t a single flower in the church—not even for Mrs. King’s casket. Beth dazzled in white—she was twice as beautiful as any girl ever married there—but no one cared, and no one wept when Father gave her away.

  Their mother attended for once, but her face was puffy, her vision unfocused. Did she even recognize her own wedding dress?

  There wasn’t even any cake.

  Beth deserved better. So much better than this.

  But she bore up well. If Agnes weren’t so heartbroken, she’d feel proud. As she watched Beth hold her head up at the altar, her eyes meeting Matthew’s with only the slightest tremor, she realized there’d never been any reason to protect her from her secrets. Agnes would have done anything to go back to that night when her sister asked for the truth, and she’d denied her.

  How wrong can a person be, God? How could I have been so mistaken?

  After the ceremony, the Prophet summarily gave Mrs. King’s eulogy and then, finally, his great announcement. With his arms outstretched beneath his black robe, he looked like a vulture, declaring:

  “The Rapture has come at last!”

  Agnes gripped the pew’s wooden edge, readying herself.

  She would kiss the children goodbye, hiding her tears, then slip out with Ezekiel. They’d run for the trailer, grab some clothes and the cooler, then take the truck. With any luck, they’d be halfway to Holden by the time anyone missed them.

  With the Rapture breathing hard and fast, who’d care where she had gone?

  She glanced once more at her siblings, trying to memorize each of their faces.

  Sam reminded her of a string bean, balanced as he was on the verge of a growth spurt. Pimples were already sprouting at his temples. He was full of agitated hope. He quirked a smile at her, then playfully yanked Mary’s blond braid.

  The twins, half-asleep in the pews, leaned on each other. They looked like porcelain miniatures, little figurines asleep. She bent over their heads and knew with a sudden contraction of her heart that they wouldn’t remember her last kiss—they were just too tired.

  Father held her mother’s hand tightly, his shoulders tense. He would force his wife into the Temple if he had to.

  But Agnes didn’t think he’d have to force her. Her mother looked exhausted. Spent. Her hair mussed from her bed.

  She met Agnes’s glance across the aisle.

  Was there a tiny spark of interest buried in her numb expression? She’d never know—not if she meant to live.

  As for the rest of the faithful, she mourned the women and children—especially the children. The little Hearns and Jamesons and Kings she’d watched grow. They’d sicken in the putrid air, starved for light and fresh food. But her greatest fear was Magda, who leaned on her older brother’s shoulder, panting even in the cool church air.

  Agnes swallowed. Magda would be sick soon—petrified and vicious like the dog. But the faithful didn’t know that, because they didn’t believe in sickness. Only in good and evil, demons and angels.

  They’d be sitting ducks.

  She took Ezekiel’s hand—don’t look back—and together they headed for the door.

  It was bolted. Locked.

  Her hand fell away, fluttering helplessly.

  “What’s wrong?” Ezekiel asked.

  Agnes had no words. Only an awful, sinking feeling.

  “We go now, tonight.” The Prophet’s voice tolled like a heavy bell. “Fathers watch your children, and husbands your wives. See that they reach the Underground Temple, for the Devil is working still…”

  Agnes turned slowly, fearfully. The Prophet gestured for their attention, but she could only think of Ezekiel.

  How he’d looked as a toddler, reaching up to her from his crib. How she’d promised to always protect him.

  How for her foolishness, they’d face the rotting dark.

  22

  AGNES

  For this we were chosen. To live, when the filthy and bloodstained must die.

  —PROPHET JEREMIAH ROLLINS

  In the pit of night, Agnes and Ezekiel stood on a grassy hill at the top of a staircase leading deep into the ground. They were two in a line of three hundred slowly descending into the Underground Temple.

  Agnes wanted to bolt—to run—but her legs were leaden, the muscles impossibly heavy and useless. She heard Ezekiel’s breath jagging in her ears, and her own breath, too.

  There was no longer any hope of escape.

  One by one the congregants descended those stairs. Faithful. Calm. Obedient.

  No matter how she willed them to open their eyes—to see clearly just once before it was too late—their gazes were mirror empty, mirror bright. They’d been raised to believe this was their destiny, and that God protected them no matter what. They’d been raised like cattle for this slaughter.

  Weeks ago, Agnes would’ve walked down those stairs without a second thought. Tonight, she was horror-struck.

  The Hearns, the Sayleses, and the Kings—except for the already dead Mrs. King—all burying themselves alive in a common grave.

  Agnes’s family was next in line, with the Rollinses and the Jamesons bringing up the rear.

  She hadn’t found a single chance to run. Father kept a close eye on his children as they walked from the church, because the Prophet had warned: “Watch the little ones, that they don’t succumb to weakness.”

  Was this really how her life would end? And Ezekiel—without his insulin…

  The bunker door was an open mouth ahead of her.

  Father descended, holding his wife’s knobby elbow to guide her. It’d been years since Agnes had seen them touch.

  Resignation swamped her mother’s dull, wandering eyes, but when she spotted Agnes, she seemed to wake.

  “Beth,” she hissed—mixing up her own daughters. “Beth, what’re you still doing here?” She shooed her with her emaciated hands. “Get away, get away!”

  “Sweetheart,” Father whispered into her hair. “Calm down now.”

  And together, they disappeared into the dark.

  Then Sam—oh, Sam!—she groaned, watching him bravely beginning his long-awaited adventure, shredding her soul in the process. She wanted to call out some final words to him but couldn’t think what she’d say.

  Be brave? He was already brave. I’m sorry? He wouldn’t understand.

  She couldn’t watch the twins go. She could only look up at the moon and focus on not screaming. The moon glowed cold, indifferent. She didn’t know, dear God, how much grief a body could bear.

  Then it was Agnes’s and Ezekiel’s turn.

  She peered down at the twisting, narrow stair. The Underground Temple smelled of cement and stale air. She heard voices—tinny, trapped.

  Ezekiel balked, backing into her legs. “I don’t want to go!”

  Her eyes darted. She could feel the people behind her, a current of bodies prepared to push and prod if she resisted.

  Earlier she’d caught sight of Magda in the crush, the girl sickly, shivering with fever. Soon she’d be raring to snap, touch, bite. One would sicken, then another, and another, and then they’d fuse together to feather a fearsome underground Nest.

  The faithful thought they were shelterin
g from the Outsider apocalypse.

  But they were so very wrong.

  She recalled the psalm: The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.

  “Go on. Your turn.” Mr. Jameson spoke impatiently from behind her, with Beth, his beautiful bride, beside him. His beard was full, white. In the moonlight, his eyes were steely.

  The prayer space. It will help me.

  She dove deep inside herself and tried to find it. But terror overwhelmed her. She couldn’t hear anything. No humming. Only a vast silence.

  Distraught, her eyes fluttered open.

  She should’ve gone with Danny when she’d had the chance. She shouldn’t have let Beth talk her into attending her wedding. Now she’d failed herself and Ezekiel, too.

  Shivering and powerless, she felt cruelly forsaken by God.

  What had it all been for anyway? The phone, the Outsiders? Her slow, painful awakening? Where was her power when she needed it most?

  A wild, unexpected shriek came from behind her.

  Beth was having a fit, rolling in the grass, soiling her wedding dress.

  “I won’t go! I won’t go!”

  She was kicking and screaming like a tantrummy toddler or a woman gone mad.

  But Agnes knew better.

  I’ll make sure you have a chance to slip away, she’d said.

  Tears pricked her eyes. Oh, Beth. Oh, my sister.

  The patriarchs rushed her. “The Devil’s infected her! Hold her!”

  The men formed a circle, and the remaining women and children stared—embarrassed, frightened, appalled. Mr. Jameson picked Beth up bodily and hauled her towards the hatch door, knocking Agnes roughly aside. Beth gripped the walls, refusing to be forced.

  “What’re they doing to her?” Ezekiel moaned. “What’re they doing?”

  “Dang it, she bit me!” Matthew Jameson howled.

  All eyes were on Beth, and Agnes had her window.

  Her chance.

  She backed away slowly at first, working herself and Ezekiel deeper into the dark. One step. Another. Her hands trembled as she slipped into a circle of trees, her arms wrapped around Ezekiel’s small, heaving chest.

  “Be very quiet,” she whispered. “Don’t make a sound.”

  They faded into the shadows. She prayed death wouldn’t notice them, that the men with torches wouldn’t turn their way.

  Mr. Jameson pried Beth’s hands from the hatch. He forced her down the stairs, and the grim procession resumed, Beth’s screams fading.

  Agnes stood frozen, staring at the place where her sister had been but moments ago.

  I’ll always remember this, she swore to Beth now. I’ll never forget what you sacrificed.

  The Jameson family, one by one, went down into the bunker. The Prophet’s twenty-one children, led by eleven obedient wives, went down into the bunker.

  None looked back.

  The Prophet himself was the last to go. Agnes wondered what he thought, as he stared across the moonlit fields.

  Was he hearing some scrambled version of God’s voice in his mind? Or wondering where His God had gone?

  Then he, too, took the stairs and pulled the heavy hatch closed after him.

  Sealing Red Creek’s three hundred into the rapturous dark.

  23

  AGNES

  When the Rapture comes at last, there will be no safe haven in the tortured world Outside.

  —PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS

  Insulin. Fresh vegetables. Bread, cheese, a change of clothes. Ezekiel’s Sheep—don’t forget that—and crayons, too. Flashlight, spade. All the secrets buried in her garden—spare meter, syringes, batteries. Socks, car keys, dish soap (who knew why?), and a gallon of milk that would spoil if she left it, spoil like Red Creek because no one was coming back.

  The sight of dishes moldering in the sink and Sam’s toy truck, forgotten on the floor—Too much, don’t think about it.

  Phone in her dress pocket, but what was she forgetting? Something important. What?

  “Agnes?” Ezekiel stood, disoriented and afraid.

  “What is it?”

  He was staring at the unmade beds. “I don’t want to leave them. I don’t want to go.”

  “But, Ezekiel, there’s no insulin in the bunker. Remember?”

  “The Prophet said the Lord will be there.”

  Her braid had come undone, unraveling down her back. “It’s lies. Only lies.”

  “I don’t care. I want Beth. I want Sam.” He was coming apart, crumbling. “Agnes, I want to go back.”

  “We can’t,” she said, more sharply than she’d meant to.

  Her pack on her back. Keys in hand. There was still time for the Prophet to count his faithful and decide to come after them. She doubted he’d bother, but she couldn’t take the risk.

  The phone. She typed:

  We’re leaving now, Danny. Are you very far away? Can you meet us somewhere?

  Ezekiel tugged her sleeve. “Agnes? I changed my mind. I want to go back.”

  She whirled on him, exasperated. “Ezekiel, you just have to trust me.”

  He darted for his cot, the safest place he knew.

  Agnes scooped him up before he could get there, and he yowled like a cat, beating his heels against her belly. She hardened her heart as she headed out the door—the screen slamming behind them, shocking the aluminum walls. The picnic cooler was beneath one arm, and her brother in the other, her strong muscles straining.

  “Agnes, take me back!”

  Suddenly, she remembered what she’d forgotten. The important thing.

  “Darn it,” she muttered, heading back inside the house.

  She dropped Ezekiel and went to her side of the bed. She’d hidden what was left of Beth’s diary beneath the mattress. It was all that remained of her sister, whom she already counted among the dead. She pressed the book tightly to her chest.

  A note. I owe her a note, just in case.

  She grabbed a pen, ripped a sheet from the diary, and scribbled, knowing Beth would likely never find it.

  Agnes had seen the bunker. She knew it was a tomb.

  She heard another door slam—the bathroom, this time—and a fumbling as Ezekiel tried to lock himself inside.

  “Ezekiel! Hold still!”

  She hurried. He hadn’t succeeded in locking the door—it was a bolt lock, and he was too short to reach it.

  He sobbed when he saw her.

  She lifted him, ignoring his agonized cries. She’d nearly reached Father’s white pickup when fear gripped her.

  What if the gas tank was empty or the engine was dead?

  She opened the door and thrust Ezekiel into the passenger seat before running to the driver’s side. Hands shaking, she turned the key in the ignition. The engine started. The tank was half-full.

  She breathed out.

  She heard Danny’s voice say, Parking brake, then put it in drive.

  Check the rearview mirror but ignore the screaming child.

  “Agnes? Agnes?”

  Headlights bored holes into the dark, illuminating empty trailers, the abandoned town.

  She jammed the accelerator. Beneath her, the truck ripped to life—rushing forwards, defying gravity. A feeling as powerful and frightening as freedom itself. She roared down the road, past the church she hoped never to see again, onto the main road leading to the gate. She was nearly there, nearly escaped, and she tasted freedom on her tongue like something sweet.

  Now she thought if she focused hard, she could uncover the prayer space from where it was hiding inside the hovel of her fear.

  She couldn’t close her eyes while driving, but she could open her mind. She could meditate on peace and prayer and let the sense come alive.

  Think big like God, she thought. Think wide.

  The prayer space exploded awake. It rippled around her, Ezekiel, and the truck, taking in the road and the night sky, singing and calling and whooping for joy like a bird suddenly
released from a wire trap.

  Driving, she heard the world come alive again, and she held tight to the knowledge that everything was connected and that God was the connection running through everything. The prayer space was inside her and beyond her, too, speaking and chanting and humming sweetly through every seemingly separate particle.

  Where have you been? Tears flooded her cheeks. Where have you been?

  She heard the tight ringing of Red Creek’s great, spired gate, wrapped in locks and chains. Their village, closed for the Rapture.

  Seat belt? Danny’s voice echoed.

  “Ezekiel, can you buckle up?” She snapped her own belt into place.

  He was crying hysterically. She wished he could feel what she did: the warm glowing rightness of what they’d done to survive.

  She wouldn’t get out of the truck, couldn’t risk that one of the patriarchs had gone topside to find them. She reached across Ezekiel’s lap—he slapped at her arm—and snapped his seat belt into the buckle. On the slippery gravel, she lost control of the truck for a moment, and her muscles tightened.

  What am I doing? I can’t drive.

  It’s all about confidence, Danny had said. Check your mirrors. Get your bearings. Don’t be afraid of speed. Oh, and don’t text and drive.

  Why, oh, why hadn’t he texted her back?

  She slammed on the accelerator, feeling the truck lurch beneath them. Ezekiel gripped the leather seat belt, eyes wide as they sped towards the gate.

  “Agnes!”

  “It’s a big truck,” she said. “We’ll be okay.”

  Letters in rusted iron read RED CREEK in an arch. She focused on the prayer space; the stars, singing silver; and the sky beyond. They should be trapped by now—slowly dying in the Underground Temple—but they weren’t.

  They were free.

  The truck struck iron with a deafening crash, but Agnes didn’t dare close her eyes. The gate gave in an instant, and then they were Outside.

  PART TWO

  24

  AGNES

  I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.