Agnes at the End of the World

by Kelly McWilliams

  The fuzzing continued.

  “You have to let the button go,” Danny explained.

  She released it.

  Silence fractured her heart with doubt. She glanced at Zeke. In profile, he looked like Beth. Same cheekbones, same nose. He would be a handsome man one day, if he survived this.

  “Hello?” someone snapped. “Who’s on this channel? Identify, over.”

  Danny was at her side in an instant.

  “Captain?” She spoke, never breaking eye contact with Danny. “It’s Agnes. My brother’s very sick. We need insulin. We need you to come to Mercy Hospital.”

  “Over,” Danny whispered in her ear, his breath tickling. “You have to say over, so he knows it’s his turn to speak.”

  “Over.”

  “Agnes.” In the Captain’s mouth, her name was an entire tragedy unto itself. “I don’t know how you’re getting such a good signal, but it’s too late. We’re south of Phoenix, on our way to California. We’ve got three hundred stragglers in tow. Three hundred desperate people who need our help, understand? Over.”

  Danny’s shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch, and for a moment Agnes felt daunted.

  Then the still, small voice spoke.

  There’s nothing left of California, God said. They’ll die in the desert.

  Agnes nearly dropped the radio.

  Danny steadied her. “Are you okay?”

  Three hundred people.

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. She saw now that returning to Red Creek—the land God had called Zion—was a holy work, generations in the making, and God was invested in every second of it. Even when the patriarchs went horribly astray, God had kept faith in Red Creek and planted a new seed: her.

  It was her destiny to defeat the Virus.

  After all, hadn’t she lived her life among hardened, red-marbled human hearts, like Father’s and Mrs. King’s? Didn’t she understand better than anyone how faith and home and family could be twisted into something ugly—something not unlike a petrified human Nest?

  “Captain,” she said slowly. “You haven’t been able to reach anyone in California. Not for days. Over.”

  A pause. Then, “How do you know that, Agnes? Over.”

  Danny’s eyes were skeptical, cautioning. She ignored him.

  “I know because we’re like you. We journeyed to Mercy with perfect faith that it would still stand when we arrived. But there was no city in the wilderness. Only rubble.” She swallowed, daring to take the greatest chance—and wagering Zeke’s life on it. “And I know because God told me. You’re leading your people into death, Captain. You’re going in the wrong direction. You wear a cross, so ask your heart. Over.”

  Her voice cracked and Danny stared.

  “What have you done? The Captain thinks in terms of orders and authority. He doesn’t listen to his heart.”

  She thought of the prayer space and the people who had been set in her path: Jazz, Max, Matilda, Danny. None of them believed exactly in the God of her understanding, but all of them had proved themselves creatures of astounding heart.

  And that was no accident. No accident at all.

  “Just wait,” she told Danny breathlessly. “You’ll see.”

  He looked into her eyes and registered the determination there. With a sigh, he slid an arm around her waist. They both held their breath, waiting.

  The radio chortled. “Look, Agnes. I don’t know if you’re crazy or—or just what. But unless you have some alternative, you’re on your own. All of us are. Over.”

  “But I do have an alternative,” she gasped into the radio. “I can lead you to a safe place, a land protected by a forest on one side and a canyon on the other. A land the infection has barely brushed. The human infection there has been—contained. It’s the safest place in the world for your stragglers. Birds still fly there, Captain.”

  Danny stiffened.

  “You’re right that we’re all on our own in this world,” she continued. “But God has given us a gift, and it was no mistake that we met in Gila. In your heart, I think you know that already. That’s why you left me a way to contact you.”

  She took her finger off the button, feeling suspended over some great abyss.

  “Over,” Danny reminded her.

  “Over.”

  In the long silence, Benny shook out his rumpled fur, bestirring himself to stand. With a whisper of fabric, he disappeared from the tent into the night.

  “This place. Is it Red Creek? Are you certain there’s room for three hundred newcomers?”

  She closed her eyes, praying. “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “What’s the time frame?” he shot back. “When do you need us? Over.”

  The tears that brimmed moments ago now traveled down her face. With his thumbs, Danny sweetly brushed them away.

  “You did it,” he whispered in shocked delight, his face close. “You’ve saved Ezekiel.”

  She fought to keep her voice steady over the radio. “Wake your people and come right now with insulin, or it will be too late for Zeke. Over.”

  “And if he dies in the interim, will you uphold your end of the bargain? Over.”

  Agnes opened her mouth to answer, and all her strength fled. She realized she hadn’t slept in ages, realized that her eyes had dried out in their sockets. She had nothing left.

  Gently, Danny extracted the radio from her grip.

  “Captain, this is Danny. We still have a deal even if Zeke dies. How far are you from Mercy? Over.”

  “We might reach you by morning. But understand I won’t be pleased if this is some kind of trick. I’ve got three hundred people depending on me. Put Agnes back on to confirm. Over.”

  “I can save your people, Captain.” Tired as she was, blessed relief expanded inside her, saying the words aloud. “Bring them to me and I’ll save them all.”

  “Over and out,” Danny said, his eyes glinting with growing excitement.

  “Over and out.”

  She collapsed beside Zeke. She pressed her forehead to her brother’s, willing her thoughts to leap into him. She wanted him to know that he hadn’t slipped through the cracks at the end of the world.

  “Help is coming, brother,” she said. “You don’t have to be afraid of the dark.”

  54

  BETH

  It’s easy to go through life avoiding the questions that matter most. Chaos forces us to ask: Who am I? What shape is my soul?

  —AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS

  The decision to leave the Prophet to die on Holden’s road was easy.

  He’d sent three hundred gullible faithful and innocent children to their deaths, and Beth had read his diaries. She knew how flagrantly he’d abused his power.

  It’s hereby forbidden for anyone to wear the color red, he’d said, and what a thrill it had been when three hundred people obeyed his command, bowing down like he was God Himself.

  No music, he’d said, and they’d obeyed.

  No medicine, he’d said, and they’d obeyed.

  Go into the Underground Temple. Finally, he slavered after the biggest high of all. Even if it kills you, go.

  And lo, it had killed them.

  “You despicable man!” She struggled to her feet.

  His mouth hung open like a fish’s, his face whitening fast. She thought he’d die right then, immediately. But he gasped a lungful of air and reached for the hem of her dress. Disgusted, she swished it away from him.

  “Save me, child. Get your parents. Tell them—”

  He doesn’t recognize me, she realized. He officiated my wedding, but I fell beneath his notice. He sent me to my death, and still—

  The thought struck her as repulsive. Intolerable.

  “Look at me!” Her voice rang out. “Who am I?”

  He blinked foggily. She glanced down at his legs and saw that they’d been crushed, like a mouse body in a spring trap.

  “You’re one of the faithful, praise God! Your name is—”

  He paused a lo
ng time before his eyes lit with recognition.

  “Agnes!” He looked at her with frantic hope. “Aren’t you Agnes?”

  Beth screamed, drawing breath after breath while the Prophet’s eyes glazed with terror. She felt like a wild thing. How dare he forget her? Had he ever even bothered to learn her name?

  The Prophet’s chest expanded and collapsed rapidly, the muscles of his neck straining after every breath.

  “You should’ve prayed Agnes would be the one to find you,” Beth spat. “She’d have saved your worthless life. But I won’t.”

  She expected Red Creek’s Prophet to argue. To shout or accuse. But he only closed his eyes and began, in rhythmic, watery gulps, to cry.

  Beth was determined not to let the sound of this grown man weeping move her. Yet once again she remembered his diary—how intimate it felt to read his private thoughts. Though the Prophet didn’t know it, they’d shared something in that church, and with every pitiful gulp of his she felt herself weakening.

  I don’t understand, he’d written after his miracles dried up. Why doesn’t my God smile on me? What have I done to earn His indifference?

  Vile creature that he was, he’d felt abandoned, heartbroken.

  And that was a feeling Beth could understand.

  Why doesn’t Agnes care? she’d once written. Why doesn’t she love me anymore?

  Loneliness gaped inside her chest like a mortal wound. She’d thought she wanted, more than anything, to see the Outside, but it wasn’t true. She wanted her family back more.

  The Prophet mumbled something inaudible. She shuffled nearer.

  Up close his breath smelled sour. Without his cloak his potbelly was visible, vulnerable.

  “You’re right.” He struggled to speak. “I am worthless. I thought, after the apocalypse, God might smile on me again.” He reached for her hand, gripped it. “But God frowned. God smirked. He killed them, Agnes. He turned them to reddest stone.”

  Beth’s heart hardened. “But not you, because you ran.”

  “It was hopeless!” Wild eyes rolled. “They were so sick—nothing I could do—” His fingers tightened around her wrist. “Why not just—”

  Beth scraped his hand off like slime. The Prophet Rollins, Matthew Jameson, Mr. Hearn… all of them had abandoned their people when they needed them most. She could think of nothing more despicable.

  Rollins moaned in dismay, groping blindly for her. Out of his reach, she drew her knees up to her chest and rocked back and forth.

  Looking into the Prophet’s darkness—his middle-aged, depressingly masculine darkness—Agnes’s light shone ever brighter in Beth’s memory. Bright as the sun.

  She knew with sudden certainty that her sister would come back, if she knew how badly she was needed. To return to Red Creek, she’d move mountains.

  But even if she never made it home, Cory would wait forever, nobly hoping. That was how his light shone.

  And what about mine?

  She stared at the Prophet’s stark white hand. It was still groping for her but jerkily, its movements slowing.

  “You should’ve stayed in the bunker, Rollins. Maybe it was hopeless, but you should’ve stayed.”

  It seemed impossible she’d ever reach her sister. But in the darkness Beth saw that her life was a string of decisions, of actions and inactions. She’d told Cory truthfully that she’d married his father out of fear. For fear, she’d done a lot of stupid things. None had ended well. In fact, when she considered this last hellish summer of her existence, she felt proud only of the moments when she’d spited fear—when she’d cursed it and spit in its eye.

  So Beth knew she’d better drag her sorry self back to Red Creek, pick up the phone, and try. Otherwise, what separated her from the patriarchs?

  She glanced down the dark road one more time, thinking she’d have to keep dreaming of the wonders that waited Outside—fine clothes, friends, the freedom to make her own choices.

  She sighed.

  She’d know those marvels eventually, she hoped. But not tonight. Or tomorrow, either.

  Grudgingly, she gripped the Prophet’s spasming hand, letting him know she wasn’t the sort of person who would leave a man—any man—to die on the road alone.

  55

  AGNES

  God bestows no greater gift than the chance to learn from those utterly different.

  —AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS

  Agnes woke to a great rumbling, a mechanized cacophony: the sound of dozens of trucks rolling over the upturned face of the desert.

  The Captain was coming.

  Danny’s face rested inches from her own. They’d fallen asleep together, their bodies pressed as closely as facing pages in a book.

  Carefully, she extricated herself from beneath Danny’s arm. They hadn’t kissed since the night Zeke missed his first insulin dose. But their bodies remembered. Even in sleep, they gravitated towards each other.

  The ground beneath her quaked, quailing at the approach of so many crunching wheels and snarling engines. Agnes had never heard anything like it.

  She shook Danny awake. “They’re coming. Get your coat.”

  She thrust her feet into her boots and kissed Zeke’s cheek—his skin felt dry as newsprint.

  She flexed her stiff, bandaged hand, then left to greet the dawn.

  Outside, daylight blossomed over Mercy’s ruined field. It smelled like a desert morning, like endless miles of sweeping wind. She and Danny stood at the top of the hill, listening as the rumble became a roar. Trucks chewed ground and engines huffed air. A breeze blew the powerful stench of exhaust their way, and Agnes covered her nose with her arm.

  In a moment, the refugee caravan would crest the hill.

  “Three hundred Outsiders, and I promised all of them a home,” she murmured.

  Danny turned to her. “Are you sure you want to go back to Red Creek?”

  I can save your people, she’d told the Captain. I can save them all.

  “Beth’s there,” she said. “And it’s the safest place for the Outsiders. I truly believe that.”

  Danny’s mouth twitched. “You don’t have to call us Outsiders anymore. You’re one of us.”

  “You think so?”

  “There’s no official ceremony, no paperwork to join. You only have to love a few of us.”

  Something in his voice made Agnes glance up.

  Danny peered at her with troubled, rainstorm eyes. Her lower belly tightened, her nerves rising a pitch.

  He swallowed. “Agnes, don’t you know that I—”

  But then the caravan appeared.

  The sight took Agnes’s breath away. Dozens upon dozens of cars and vans and mobile homes, as well as dark military-style trucks, clambered over the red-and-yellow earth like giant black beetles. They drove in tight formation, and somehow solemnly, like a funeral procession. Agnes couldn’t imagine how the Captain had coordinated it. Her insides slackened, thinking what a massive undertaking it would be to get all these people home.

  “Survivors,” Danny said under his breath. “They’re all survivors, like us.”

  Yes. All of them with stories and memories and grief rolling in on Petra’s red crystal tide. And these survivors, she hoped, would one day become the seedlings of a new Red Creek.

  The vehicles slowed, fanning out to park in the lot, the fields. Engines shut off. Windows rolled down.

  Then people emerged.

  Agnes’s eyes hungered for other human beings, and she couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to. Camping chairs materialized, and tents, and yurts. People hailed one another. Shook hands or embraced. Someone fired up a portable grill.

  Beth would’ve loved to see this.

  After all this time, Agnes had finally conjured the world she’d dreamed of. A new and better world, bursting with human beings who’d never known Red Creek’s shackles. Souls who, like Max and Danny and Jazz, could show her what it meant to be free.

  She heard the bright yap of a little dog and saw
small children teasing it. An odd tightness spread through her chest, wondering what Outsider kids played instead of the Apocalypse Game.

  Ezekiel.

  She scanned urgently for the Captain.

  “The radio,” Danny reminded her.

  “Captain, this is Agnes. Do you see our tents? Over.”

  The calm, smooth way she spoke pleased her, no matter that she felt like vomiting from nerves alone.

  A jolt of static. “We see you. We’ll be right up with medicine. Over and out.”

  The words didn’t penetrate right away. Then it was like a hundred pounds of stone lifted from her shoulders. She sagged into Danny, inhaling the good, green scent of him. He whooped and picked her up, spinning her around and around.

  “Didn’t I tell you everything would be all right?” Danny crowed. “Didn’t I?”

  She loved the sound of his laugh, the feel of his chest. And her heart sang like stars in the prayer space because the youngest wouldn’t die before the oldest, thank God.

  The Captain had brought medicine.

  Zeke would live.

  Hovering over Zeke, Agnes and Matilda locked eyes.

  “Thank you for this.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, don’t thank me.” Matilda reached across Zeke’s torso to touch her cheek. “It was all you.”

  Agnes braced herself, watching insulin flow into his IV line. He wouldn’t wake right away, but Agnes had nowhere else she’d rather be. She settled at his bedside, her chin in her hand, thinking of all the people who’d worked so hard to give him a chance at life. Eventually, as the afternoon shadows lengthened, she fell asleep.

  “Agnes?”

  Ezekiel.

  His eyes open, his hand in hers. She loved every impulse that animated his fingers, the renewed warmth of his palm.

  “Agnes, am I alive?”

  She wouldn’t cry. Not now. A shaft of light illuminated the tent as Matilda glided quietly back in her nurse’s way, to fix more medicine to his IV stand.

  “You’re alive, and you’re going to live a long time,” Agnes said. “And Zeke. I have good news.”

  He raised his eyebrows. In his coma, bones had emerged that she’d never seen before.