—PSALM 27:13
Agnes sped through layer after layer of darkness on her way out of Red Creek. In the rearview mirror, the iron gates shrank into the night and the church steeple withered to a lonely hillside cross. Ahead, a green sign blared: HOLDEN, 33 MILES.
The truck pitched as she hit the gas—wanting, needing to fly. The prayer space was with her, thrumming inside her chest like a second heart. She was deeply relieved to still hear God singing in everything. Part of her had been afraid that the prayer space would vanish the instant she left home.
Trees whistled as she flew down that road, and the asphalt glimmered in the moonlight, whispering infinite possibilities beneath the rubber of her tires.
She’d finally made it out, but new fears washed in like cold water on a tide. Where would they go? What would they do? And would Ezekiel ever forgive her for saving his life?
In the passenger seat, he clutched Sheep and wept pitifully.
Agnes waited it out, her damaged knuckle whitening against the wheel. She’d had no choice. It was run or die.
He hiccupped. “Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere better,” she promised. “Somewhere safe.” He didn’t need to know that she had no idea where that might be.
“What about Sam?”
She blinked rapidly, fending off tears. She couldn’t think about the other kids now. She had to focus on driving, on getting them far away from the bunker’s hungry maw. She still felt it tugging like a magnet, threatening with every heartbeat to pull them back in. After so much terror, it was impossible to believe they’d truly escaped, and panic coursed through her veins.
The bunker steps, the people of Red Creek urging her down, down—
She leaned harder on the gas and the hill crested. A moment too late she realized she was going eighty. Too fast. Her stomach dropped as the truck lifted into the air. They thudded at the hill’s bottom with a nerve-jangling jolt, and Ezekiel lost it.
“I want to go back! Take me back! Take me back!”
“Calm down. Your blood sugar—”
He pointed an accusing finger. “If you don’t take me back, you’re going to hell, Agnes. You’re going to hell, hell, hell!”
She winced. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t thank her one day.
Compulsively, Agnes checked the rearview mirror for headlights. There was nothing but darkness behind, and despite her fears, her rational mind knew the mirror would stay dark. To the Prophet, one little boy and a rebellious girl weren’t worth the trouble—not now that the Rapture was at hand.
They skidded again. If she didn’t get hold of herself, she was going to crash, and if she wrapped their truck around a tree tonight no one was coming to save them. She’d seen such a thing once before, when one of the Hearn boys went joyriding in his father’s truck. He’d struck a tree and wound up with a crushed windpipe. The people were too faithful to call an ambulance, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered. He’d died within the hour.
She made herself slow down, then stopped the truck on the side of the road. She needed to catch her breath, still her shaking hands. Ezekiel beat his heels against his seat, howling like a hellcat. She ignored him.
In the pitch dark, the highway lamps were empty glass eyes. Danny said the power had been out for weeks, but Red Creek ran on generators, and she hadn’t been prepared for the reality of true night. In the parked truck, it was hard to keep her spirits up. The idling engine ticked like a clock. Even with Ezekiel beside her she felt very much alone. More than anything in the world, she wished Danny were with her now.
She scrambled for the phone in her dress pocket, needing to reassure herself it was still there. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt its weight in her hand. Ezekiel studied the black device, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. He wasn’t screaming anymore. Just rocking, back and forth. The stars appeared frozen beyond the windshield, silver needle points in the black fabric of the sky.
“I want to go home.”
“We can’t,” she told him. “Everyone’s already inside the bunker.”
“We should be there, too.”
“Why, Ezekiel?”
He looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “Because God wanted it.”
“No. The Prophet wanted it. And he has nothing to do with God.”
His face twisted. “You’re lying! Take me back!”
“You’ll die if I do. You don’t want to die.”
“I want to go to heaven!”
The word flamed from his mouth and scorched her. Heaven was something Agnes hadn’t thought of in a long while. She’d been too busy trying to save her family. Now doubt pricked her heart. Was she absolutely, 100 percent certain she was going the right way? That heaven wasn’t lost forever behind them?
The prayer space hummed a warning, and she looked up to see a stag crossing the road. Its coat was red marbled in her headlights, its eyes stony and unafraid. It slowed as it neared.
Ezekiel whispered, “See? A demon.”
But Agnes didn’t see that at all. She saw a poor, sick creature sniffing the air, then deciding their truck was only metal and not worth its time.
She remembered the Book of Habakkuk. After the prophet’s home burned to the ground, his faith scrambled on like a deer finding its footing even in desolate, dangerous places. She prayed hers could do the same.
Illuminated by the headlights, the stag twitched its crimson tail and trotted away. Stone hooves echoed on asphalt. The prayer space waited until the deer disappeared, then fell quiet.
No, she didn’t doubt her choice. Dark as it was, the Outside could never be as bleak as the fate she’d left behind. She just needed a safe place to get her bearings, that was all.
The phone rang then, and Agnes and Ezekiel both jumped.
“Hello?”
A crackle. “Agnes?”
She couldn’t believe it—Danny. Thank God. “Danny, we just left Red Creek, and now I don’t know where to go. Are you at the hospital? Can we come see you?”
“Not—”
He broke off, and for a terrifying instant that felt like free fall, he was gone. Disappeared into thin air.
“—but my mom already left to go after me, very dangerous on the—”
“Who’s that?” Ezekiel asked, curious in spite of himself.
She held a finger to her lips. “Danny? I can’t hear you.”
“—make it to the Third Municipal Library? We’ll be here for—”
Suddenly, another voice on the phone. Strong. Authoritative. Even the airwaves obeyed that voice, and the reception evened out.
“Agnes? This is Matilda. Do you have a road map? You’ll find Gila’s library marked.”
Agnes reached across Ezekiel to open the glove compartment. The closure dropped open like a mouth, and she riffled clumsily among the documents.
“Agnes, dear? We can’t stay on the line.”
Deep in the glove box, she found a yellowish, weather-beaten road atlas.
Relief. “Yes! I have a map.”
“Good,” said Matilda. “Keep your phone charged. We’ll see you soon.”
Ezekiel calmed when he understood they were going to meet Matilda. Agnes didn’t know how much he remembered of her, but he must’ve felt some reassuring connection to the woman who’d saved his life.
She gave him the job of navigator and that helped, too. By the shine of the overhead light he traced the intertwining roads—Agnes never would’ve guessed a world could contain so many—to a town called Gila.
“We’ll go back to Red Creek soon,” Ezekiel told her in a tone she didn’t dare contradict. “We’ll go back for Beth and Mary and Faith and Sam.”
Gila’s library was located on the outskirts of the city, well past Holden—or anywhere she’d ever dreamed she’d be. Agnes resolved to drive through the night, because she felt safe inside the truck, and even safer on the move. Trees rushed past the window, dark shadows blurring. She kept focused on driving—brakin
g at stop signs, scanning the horizon.
Then Ezekiel asked, “Where are the other cars?”
And just like that, she panicked again. Because Ezekiel was right—the road was too empty. With so many millions of Outsiders living in the state, shouldn’t someone else be traveling, even at night?
Millions are already infected, Danny’d told her, and lots of people are running for the coast. Arizona’s emptying out.
“The Rapture,” Ezekiel mumbled. “That’s where. God’s punishing them.”
“Not every Outsider deserves to die.” Agnes willed him to understand. “Lots of them are perfectly good.”
Ezekiel’s face was glum. “The good ones are all in their bunkers, I bet.”
She sighed. “You didn’t want to go down into the bunker. Not when you were standing right there. Remember how dark it was?”
He sniffed.
She spoke gently. “It’s not the Rapture. I promise we’ll find other people soon.”
But they didn’t. The night grew older, and she felt an eerie, overbearing silence hovering like a vulture. Terror bled into exhaustion, and she wished she could crawl into a hole and sleep for a year. But she had to keep driving, despite her nagging fear that they’d fled too late. That the world she’d worked so hard to reach was already gone.
Another fluorescent sign: LEAVING HOLDEN. GILA 60 MILES.
Agnes pressed the gas pedal, determined not to let the empty, endless miles rattle her. Even if Holden was completely abandoned, it was just one town. Just one place. In Ezekiel’s hands, civilization’s map was sweeping, and somewhere they’d find a home among those squiggled lines. The Outside world was vast, and they’d only just arrived.
Sixty miles to the library, she mouthed. Only sixty miles to go.
25
BETH
I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.
—PSALM 31:12
There was nothing holy about the bunker; nothing sacred about the dark.
Beth knew that within seconds of being forced down those stairs. At first, her fight had been for show, a ploy to buy Agnes time to slip away. But then, as her husband raged, as he pushed and prodded her more like livestock than a bride just married in the sight of God, something snapped—and Beth struggled in earnest.
She didn’t want to go down into the Temple.
So she fought. Slapped and kicked, bit and roared.
She would’ve kept fighting forever if it hadn’t been for the heavy pop of her shoulder, the red explosion of pain as it came free of its socket. Even then, she’d thrashed as well as she could in her wedding lace, running on pure terror. If she’d had the strength, she’d have killed Matthew Jameson for just one more breath of clear night air. And she’d have run, like Agnes, as far and as fast as her legs could carry her.
As for her newfound piety?
Now that it was too late, it was crystal clear: She owed these people nothing. For the last few weeks she’d lulled herself into a Red Creek sleep, but down here, she was wide-the-hell-awake.
A single bulb was the only light swinging at the bottom of that horrid flight. The bunker smelled cellar damp, and little kids wept in their mothers’ laps. She didn’t have time to notice anything else, because Mr. Jameson was barking about the Devil’s influence and spitting words like quarantine. Pained red stars shot across her eyes and she couldn’t parse it all, but he wanted her kept away from his other wives and kids, she understood that much.
His voice—her husband-of-a-night’s voice—was riddled with disgust.
New Beth, the post-egging Beth, wanted to cringe and beg and die of shame. But Old Beth had finally woken up, and she thought, Right back at you.
“Put her with the other sinner,” someone said, and before she could blink, she was thrust into a closet.
Poor dying Magda was there, and Beth’s shoulder pain, of course, but precious little else. Not even light.
For a while, she beat the door with her one good fist. Exhausted, defeated, she slumped.
I made a mistake.
Or, as Cory would say: I fucked up.
And boy, had she ever.
Dark. Horribly dark.
She’d thought her eyes would adjust, but hours passed, and the darkness remained heavy, thick. Beth’s left arm was useless, a throbbing weight at her side. The way it hung from her shoulder nauseated her.
She marked the time in sermons—she could hear the Prophet preaching on the other side of the wall, reciting those apocalyptic exhortations they’d all heard so many times before.
She heard the one about the Outsiders blazing in fire and brimstone and dearly regretting their earthly sins. And the one about the chosen people, descending into the Underground Temple. The Prophet barely even took a breath before launching into the discourse about the pale horse—“And he who sat on it had the name DEATH, and killed with sword and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.”
She rested her head against the door as muffled words washed over her. An arm’s length away, Magda wept.
And wept and wept.
“What did I do to deserve this?”
“Spread rumors about me, for one thing,” Beth snarled, trying to rub some feeling back into her left hand. “Convinced those boys to egg my house.”
Magda cried harder.
Beth regretted her words. The girl wanted a sharp smack in the face, maybe, but she certainly hadn’t earned her brush with a demonic dog. No one deserved that.
Beth couldn’t see Magda through the dark, but she could hear fever chattering her teeth. The Prophet said demons couldn’t harm the righteous, so if Magda were hurting now, she had no one to blame but herself. It was like dream logic. Old Beth had never quite believed in curse by stomach flu, or damnation by sniffle. But she hadn’t questioned it as much as she should have. Sometimes, it was just easier to go with the flow than to fight the red current.
At least, until the current threatened to swallow you whole.
Beth tapped her forehead against the wooden door, unintentionally disturbing gauzy spiderwebs. She hated spiderwebs. Hated the dark, too. Screams smoked in her throat and she was sure that after another hour, she wouldn’t be able to swallow them. And if—when—she did scream, it’d be torture for the twins and cannon fodder for the patriarchs.
Do you hear? they’d say. Those are the shrieks of rebellion, the mad wailing of the demon…
Magda moaned, and Beth jerked, jostling her dislocated arm. Sweat broke out all over her body. Flush against her skin, the wedding lace began to itch. How many hours had she spent sewing on those stupid faux pearls?
Magda will die in this closet, she realized. But what about me?
A selfish thought, but then again, she’d never wanted to be a saint. She’d only ever wanted to have friends who laughed with her, and a sister who loved her, and someone cute to talk to when loneliness spiked. And for that—and, maybe, for blind stubbornness, too—she’d been doomed to this.
Not fair. Not freaking fair.
“I’ve had word that one among us has broken with our faith,” the Prophet droned. “She fled the sanctuary tonight and took an innocent with her. We will pray for the child’s dying to be painless. But for the girl—I’m told her name was Agnes—we pray for eternal destruction and unending pain. Amen.”
Beth nearly laughed out loud.
Jesus, Agnes. She’d made it out.
Of course she had. Things always worked out for her sister. Fierce pride coursed through her, and in the shadow of that pride lingered jealousy, dark and chilled. Jealousy had a shadow, too—and it was rage. Beth gripped that emotion like a drowning woman grips a floating branch.
“How could you leave me and the kids?” she murmured into her hands. “How could you?”
But she already knew. Agnes would do anything to save Ezekiel.
And it was Beth’s own fault she’d wound up here. Her own fault that Sam and the twins must face the dark, too.
But Beth refused to bear the brunt of the blame. That belonged to the Prophet, and the patriarchs, and the horror that was Red Creek at its heart.
Murderers, she thought. Murderers!
Having seen the bunker for herself, Beth felt positive no one was meant to see the light again. The cold, damp bunker, already smelling ripely of human waste, was a mass grave.
And maybe she deserved to die, for being foolish enough to believe marrying Matthew Jameson would make her safe.
Staring into the impenetrable dark, Beth ground her teeth and swallowed her screams.
Silence. The people had been ordered to sleep, to save their strength for the coming of the Lord. In the hush, Magda’s small movements were a lot louder—and she smelled a lot worse. Her stench reminded Beth of the mouse carcass she’d discovered behind the range ages ago, only stronger. And, unlike the mouse, she could talk.
“I’m changing,” Magda rasped. “My skin—it’s feels tight. I’m scared, Beth.”
If she were Agnes, she’d be holding Magda now, trying to comfort the dying girl. Agnes wouldn’t hesitate—hadn’t hesitated either to pick up the dead mouse, saving Beth from having to dispose of it. Her sister did things like that out of kindness and unthinkably vast reserves of love, but also because that was simply who she was. Who she’d always been.
Think. She needed to think.
If God hadn’t reached out and personally cursed Magda, then it all went back to the dog. The dog brushed Magda, and if Magda touched Beth—well, she didn’t know what would happen, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be kisses, giggles, and a barrel of laughs.
She scooted closer to the door, cradling her bad arm and ignoring the guilty hammering of her heart. She couldn’t risk touching Magda because there was still a chance she’d get out of this, somehow.
Wasn’t there?
You’re a survivor, her mother had told her once. Not like Agnes. You’re the survivor.
Her mother might’ve been wearing that hat ass backwards, as Cory would say, but could she have spoken truth? Didn’t Beth want, more than anything, to survive? To see the sun again, to feel the breeze, to smell the scent of vanilla, or anything other than Magda’s awful stink?
Agnes at the End of the World Page 13
