Agnes at the End of the World

by Kelly McWilliams

  “I was afraid, all right?” she bit out. “I thought no one could hurt me as long as I was a patriarch’s wife.”

  “You gave up.” His voice was venomous.

  “I didn’t have a lot of choices!”

  His eyes darkened. “I wanted to save you. But you avoided me like the plague.”

  “I made a mistake.” She couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice. “Now I just want to forget. Please, Cory. Can’t we just leave?”

  “You’re taking the easy way out, making the same mistake all over again. You’re abandoning your family.”

  “Agnes abandoned them first.” It appalled her, how petulant she sounded. “It’s Agnes you should be angry with, not me!”

  He drew back, wintry.

  Discordantly, she thought of the canyon’s edge and the first time they’d really gotten serious about fooling around.

  Are you ready to do this? he’d said, his eyes so sweet, hopeful. And she’d told him, Yes.

  But her answer was different now. She didn’t care if she was being selfish. She wouldn’t stay in Red Creek to wait for Agnes. Even for Cory, she wouldn’t stay and die.

  “I guess you’re not the girl I thought you were.” Cory dried his eyes on his sleeve. “You can take the truck. But I can’t go with you.”

  Beth stared out the window. She couldn’t believe he was breaking up with her—and for the second time. “What will you do?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Pray. And wait.”

  “Cory,” she pleaded. “Don’t.”

  He smiled thinly, then stepped out of the truck.

  Beth felt cold, bloodless. Apparently, Cory had already forgotten that he owed her his life. Apparently, he’d just assumed she’d bend to his will when it mattered. The men of Red Creek had always tried to control her, silence her. But Outside, she could build a new life, have everything she’d ever dreamed of.

  Except, of course, for Cory Jameson.

  It was all so unexpected—the thought of going on without him.

  “My sister made it out alone,” she said tremulously. “Somehow, she took Father’s truck and… made it out.”

  Cory squinted. “Can you drive?”

  She tugged nervously at her collar. “Agnes did it. How hard could it be?”

  She slid into Cory’s seat, and he watched skeptically while she fumbled with the ignition, leaning his forearm against the window well. She breathed in the smell of him, that smell she loved even better than the scent of vanilla, and all at once felt utterly terrified. Her sister was the earth and the stars, but Beth was made of altogether flimsier stuff. And she still wanted Cory, whose love had meant the world.

  Tears burned. “I don’t understand. How can you not see it’s foolishness to stay?”

  His blue eyes held hers. “How can you not see it’s rebellion to leave?”

  Rebellion.

  At the sound of that awful word, Beth shifted Mr. King’s truck into gear, and Cory took a quick step back.

  “You really are your father’s son,” she spat.

  His face crumpled like she’d shot him.

  She wanted to take it back, but the truck was already rolling downhill, and she grappled with the wheel. She forced herself to focus on driving, swallowing her last regrets.

  Only once did she glance in the rearview mirror.

  But Cory was already gone.

  51

  AGNES

  What does it feel like to receive a message from God?

  Stand in a deep cave and shout the words you think you know; then hear them echo back, alien and estranged.

  —AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS

  In its way, the end was gentle. Zeke grew tired over the course of the day, and then, late that evening, he fell into a sleep from which no one could wake him.

  That night, Agnes didn’t scream at God or dramatically renounce her faith. Moses could rail and Job could shake his fists and even Jesus might yell at a fig tree, but she… she would simply have to accept it, as women had always accepted such terrible things.

  Zeke was dying.

  And it was Agnes’s job, alone with him inside their tent, to watch him go.

  Every half hour, Matilda took Zeke’s vitals, frowning ever more deeply, and fiddled with the IV that pulsed water into his body. Otherwise, she left Agnes alone with her grief.

  Agnes swore to see this through. To sit at Zeke’s bedside with dignity and grace. It was the last, best thing she could do for him.

  It was nearing midnight, six hours since he’d fallen asleep. In her mind she heard the Prophet reciting, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. She envisioned him anointing her brother with oil.

  And who will speak for our brother Ezekiel?

  In her head, she addressed the weeping faithful—and Beth, especially. Even in her imagination, she found it hard to meet her sister’s eyes. You couldn’t keep him safe? those eyes said. You abandoned me for him, and you couldn’t even keep him safe?

  Beth wouldn’t forgive her for this, and neither would Agnes forgive herself, even if she lived a hundred years. But still she didn’t understand her mistake—where she’d gone so wrong.

  She thought back to the morning at the cave: the test and the infected wolves. For what had she been tested? If she wasn’t meant to save Ezekiel, what was her destiny?

  She stroked his cool forehead, singing softly to him. His lips edged white and his eyes rolled with dreams. She prayed they were good dreams—that he was playing in their meadow with Sam, that the twins were playing fair, and that he ran faster than he ever had.

  Someone rustled the tent fabric.

  “Agnes?” came Danny’s voice.

  She sighed, thinking, Not now. But his voice quaked with worry, and so she set herself aside. “Come in.”

  He unzipped the tent, letting in a crack of moonlit dark. Benny trotted in behind him, freshly fed. The cat hurried to Zeke’s side—his master, prone on a messy pile of sleeping bags—and curled beside his head.

  “Guess what Max and Jazz are doing.”

  Agnes blinked at him, not in a guessing mood.

  “They’re searching Mercy’s rubble, for insulin. They’re not giving up. None of us are.”

  Her lips quirked. Outsiders were indomitable, even when they were clearly beaten.

  “Zeke’s dying,” she told Danny. “What I’m trying to understand is why.”

  He nodded. “Want company?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I brought your bag.” Danny hefted it. “Your phone, too. It just finished charging.”

  “Why’d you bother? Service is out.”

  “Yeah, but you have a voice mail. Jazz noticed. She said you got a call earlier?”

  Agnes froze.

  Beth. Had she left a message?

  She flicked her thumb across the phone’s crystal screen, her nerves taut. At first the message was garbled, then the voice became clear. She put her hand over her mouth, astonished.

  “Agnes, you’ve got to come back, you’ve got to come home!”

  Danny mouthed, Who is it?

  Agnes shook her head, listening hard.

  Beth’s voice pattered urgently, the words cascading out of her. “Red Creek needs you. The people in the bunker are sick. Cory and I think—no, we know—that you can save them.

  “Do you remember what you used to tell me? You said the earth hummed. The Prophets heard it, too… only they thought their power existed only to serve them. They never saw a larger purpose.”

  A muffled sound. Agnes was mortally sure her sister was crying away from the phone. On the other side of the line—on the other side of the world—Beth blew her nose.

  “You can save them, Agnes. You have to come back. You can save them all.”

  The phone beeped. The message had ended.

  She’d gotten it wrong.

  Red Creek is my Zion.

  She’d been going the wrong way the whole time. She stuffed her fist in her mouth to
stifle a sob.

  Danny knelt beside her and stroked her knees, saying, “Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay,” but she barely noticed him. Beth had sounded so desolate—so lost.

  “I wasn’t there when she needed me,” Agnes cried. “I wasn’t there.”

  “Who, Agnes? Who needed you?”

  “Beth!” she cried out. “But, Danny, that’s not the worst thing. God’s voice… it told me…”

  She couldn’t speak for weeping.

  She’d always blamed the Prophet for leading the faithful astray, but was it possible that it had all begun with a misinterpretation, as she’d misinterpreted God’s directive? Was it possible that faced with the many tones of God’s mysterious voice, every human person was primed to hear what they wanted to hear?

  Danny stroked her hair. “What did God tell you?”

  She took a shuddering breath. “God said, Your test is over. Now return to Zion. But I didn’t understand, don’t you see? Just like the Prophets, I got it wrong.”

  She gripped Danny’s shoulders, her nails digging into his flesh.

  “I thought I was supposed to find Zeke a new Zion. But, Danny, there’s no haven on the Outside. That was the only true thing the Prophet ever said. And it was right there in the message, when God told me to return.”

  “Agnes,” he soothed. “You can’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known—”

  “But I did know!” The words flew out of her, and her hands released him to tug at the ribbon in her hair. “I saw how far the world had fallen. But I was too focused on finding my baby brother a home, when I should have been trying to—to make him one. That’s what God asked of me, but I didn’t listen. In God’s eyes, I’ve been in rebellion ever since.”

  Beside her brother’s placid face, Benny flicked his tail, irritated by the excess of emotion.

  “Losing Zeke is the real test,” she whispered. “It wasn’t the wolves or the cave. God struck Ezekiel to see if I would only use my power to serve myself. Or if I would finally learn that it’s not about me at all.”

  Danny’s eyes were wide and pained. “If that’s true, Agnes, that’s a cruel God you follow.”

  Looking at her brother, Agnes sagged.

  Danny tossed her pack aside to take her in his arms. It was what he’d come for, after all.

  The bag, tossed so carelessly, struck a tarp-covered rock with a heavy, metallic clunk.

  Agnes’s eyes widened at a memory.

  She pushed back from Danny, marveling. Because though she knew her God was, in fact, sometimes a cruel one, the prayer space had shown mercy.

  Mercy, at last.

  “Wait. There’s one more thing left to try.”

  Danny’s eyes followed hers to the bag he’d cast aside.

  Beth, just stay where you are. Beth, I heard you, I’m coming.

  “He’s not going to die,” she breathed, and nearly toppled over, grasping madly for the bag.

  52

  BETH

  God’s word is a combustible, fragile, infinitely mistakable thing. Even handled with the greatest care, His words can detonate in an instant in the palm of your hands.

  —AGNES, EARLY WRITING

  Driving was harder than it looked.

  Beth wished to God she’d paid more attention to Father’s maneuvering. But that girl from before—the girl who’d gone quietly to Walmart and back again, never letting her feelings be known except in her diary—had truly been an indolent creature, completely uninterested in learning to fend for herself.

  Driving, Beth told herself she didn’t feel guilty for abandoning her home. After all, even if her sister did get her voice message, she’d have no reason to believe she held the fate of Red Creek in her hands. Agnes hadn’t seen the miracle in church or read the Prophets’ diaries. Why would she think she could heal the faithful with a touch?

  In her shoes, Beth wouldn’t believe it. She’d think her sister had lost her mind.

  She drove past the midwife’s hut and the horrible white clapboard church, steering a little more steadily with a few minutes’ practice under her belt.

  At last, Red Creek’s iron gates came into view.

  In Sunday school, Mrs. King used to say her “heart lifted” whenever she thought of their Prophet, and Beth always used to roll her eyes. But now she knew it was a real thing—your heart could leap inside your chest.

  She was finally going Outside.

  The gates loomed larger, coming closer, and she felt a pinch of anxiety.

  What if they were locked?

  But they were thrown wide open. Broken. A ruptured chain dangled from a hinge, and tire marks zagged the ground.

  Agnes? Was that you?

  Then, at long last, Beth was on the road to Holden.

  33 MILES, a green sign read.

  She wanted to sound the car horn, wanted to shout or sing or scream. Instead, she scrabbled with the radio dial, hoping to land on a station playing the evilest kind of secular music—rock and roll. But the truck’s radio fuzzed. She wondered if Mr. King had broken it, so his children couldn’t channel the Devil on the sly.

  The sun slipped below the trees, trapping her in a thick net of darkness. Enclosed spaces still sickened her, ever since her time in the closet with Magda. She’d felt fine a moment ago, when she could see the twilight sky through the window, but now…

  Why was it so dark?

  Streetlights ranged on either side of the two-lane road, but every last lamp was blind.

  Headlights! How do I turn on my headlights?

  “Cory—”

  She’d already turned to ask him before she remembered—she’d left him behind.

  Her heart plummeted.

  She jiggered with the rods on either side of the steering wheel but only set the wipers to swishing, and then she couldn’t turn the damned things off. She tried to read the cryptic symbols etched into the plastic, but they only confused her more. She drove erratically, stomach fluttering, squinting to see the road’s faint white lines.

  “Damn it.”

  She couldn’t turn her lights on—such a simple thing!—and she knew what Cory would say, if he were here.

  God’s refusing to show you the way.

  Even in her head, he was infuriatingly smug. And worse, in this dark, her mind kept wandering back to Magda’s gleaming red eyes.

  If you knew for sure that Agnes would be back in a week, would you wait?

  Yes, of course.

  What about a month?

  She hadn’t given up on Agnes for impatience’s sake. She’d given up because Agnes was well and fully gone.

  A year?

  “Oh my God,” she shouted. “Don’t you get it? Agnes is never, ever coming back!”

  And that’s when the face jumped out of the dark.

  Beth pitched forwards in her seat, saved from flying through the windshield only by the tension of her seat belt. Her forehead careened off the steering wheel and something warm and wet dripped into her eyes. She felt like she’d been punched in the chest, and for a moment, she couldn’t remember how to brake. Her feet scrambled for purchase, and she accelerated, lurching forwards.

  Something crunched and decompressed beneath her wheels. At last the toe of her boot found the correct pedal, and despite her panic, she brought the truck to a stop.

  An all-consuming dread settled on her in the cricket-chirping dark.

  Please, God, don’t let it be a person.

  The map light switched on when she opened the door. The air smelled of pine, burnt rubber, and something far crueler.

  Shaking and mangling a prayer, she unbuckled her seat belt and stepped out of the car. She heard what sounded like a birdcall—only her breathing sped up, knowing what it really was.

  A human whimper of pain.

  The moon barely illuminated the awkward geometry of the body in the road, angled and doubled back on itself in impossible ways.

  It was a man. She’d driven over his legs, breaking them, tugging them out
of shape. He looked like a marionette some careless child had tossed aside.

  She stood over the man on the road, cursing herself for not forcing Cory to come with her. She didn’t know what to do.

  My first Outsider and I’ve killed him.

  She could go to jail.

  Couldn’t she? She didn’t really know.

  “This isn’t my fault,” she muttered. “It isn’t.” She whirled on the man. “Why were you walking down the middle of the road at night, anyway? What are you, suicidal?”

  It was difficult to tell, but she thought she saw his Adam’s apple bob once. Regret crashed over her. She knelt to cradle the poor man’s head.

  Then she recoiled in disgust, gasping, scrambling away.

  It was just her luck that the man she’d hit was Red Creek’s miserable Prophet, and that he was still alive and watching her with crow-black eyes.

  53

  AGNES

  Sometimes the most dignified thing to do is accept the mystery in all its troubled glory.

  —AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS

  Agnes had forgotten about the radio, the one the Burn Squad captain had given her. When Danny dropped her pack, it landed in her memory with a heavy, metallic clunk.

  In the tent, Zeke’s breath labored on, Benny blinked his yellow eyes, and Danny vigorously shook his head.

  “One, the Captain planned to be in California by now. Two, even if they’re still in Arizona, these radios don’t have a lot of reach.”

  “We’ll reach him. I know we will.”

  “Agnes, I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”

  “Don’t worry.” She fumbled with the radio’s antenna. “He’ll answer.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Faith.” She sank her thumb into the plastic button. The radio crackled.

  “Agnes,” Danny warned. “He’s a captain of a Burn Squad. Even if he can help us, who’s to say he will?”

  She remembered the Captain’s winking, gold cross. The anxious way he’d given her the radio to begin with.

  “I believe he tries to do the right thing,” she told Danny. “He’s just—gotten it wrong sometimes. But then, so have I.”

  She brought the radio to her lips. “Captain? Are you there?”