Agnes at the End of the World

by Kelly McWilliams

  “We’re going back to Red Creek. To save your brother and sisters, if I can.”

  “Really?” he whispered. “You mean it?”

  “I do.”

  He closed his swollen eyes, exhausted.

  She didn’t want to let him go back to sleep, but he needed his rest. And the Captain had brought her a gigantic supply of insulin, the most she’d ever had. Zeke was going to be okay for a very long while.

  She listened to the far-off sound of voices rising from the valley below, smelling campfire smoke and dinners cooking. The world hadn’t ended after all.

  Matilda urged her out of the tent. “Tell them the news, Agnes.”

  She stepped into the air and found the Captain and the others, drinking from their canteens and talking quietly.

  The look on her face told them everything they needed to know. Jazz wept tears of relief, and Max stuck a toothpick in his mouth, chewing contentedly. Danny’s wink felt as intimate as a kiss.

  The Captain nodded, also pleased, then removed his sunglasses. “My stragglers are frightened, Agnes.”

  She pulled herself together. “Yes. But they needn’t be. Red Creek might be the safest place on earth.”

  The scrollwork of scars around his eyes tightened. “I need to know you’re telling the God’s-honest truth. You’ve made a lot of promises.”

  She looked into the Captain’s exposed eyes. Responsibility and anxiety had tinged them with wretchedness.

  Three hundred people. Three hundred lives.

  “Captain, I always tell the truth.”

  “You don’t know what these people have been through. They’ve lost family to the Virus. Lost homes. They’re exhausted, hungry, terrified. We have a woman who’s about to have a baby. They all need something to believe in, a reason to keep going.”

  A baby, Agnes thought wonderingly.

  “Red Creek is worth believing in.” She lowered her voice. “God’s behind it, somehow.”

  “I suppose now you’ll say He works in mysterious ways?” the Captain said dryly.

  She smiled. “Usually, He does. But this time the message was clear as crystal. Red Creek is shelter from the storm.”

  His eyes widened, his expression skeptical and afraid to hope. But the desire for hope was there, and for now, Agnes thought that might just be enough. Outsider or faithful, agnostic or believer, it was the human condition to be faith-starved, searching. The biggest lie the Prophet ever told was that perfect obedience bred perfect faith. Because faith was never perfect. Only the imperfect kind existed, and you didn’t reach it through obedience. Sometimes, faith was best discovered in rebellion.

  “It’s a new world, Captain. We can make Red Creek a kind place, a safe haven for anyone who needs it. We can build the city of our dreams.”

  He stuck his hand out, but Agnes couldn’t shake it, bruised as she was.

  Instead, she rose on tiptoes and kissed his stubbled cheek.

  “God bless you for coming.”

  He touched the spot she’d kissed, momentarily bewildered.

  From below, she heard travelers talking, laughing, their voices uplifted by wind.

  “I’d better get back,” the Captain said.

  When he’d gone, Agnes fell into Danny’s arms, and Max’s and Jazz’s, too. They huddled together, limbs entwined. A deep quiet filled her, peaceful and strong. Within her soul a long-sought puzzle piece had fallen into place, and after all this struggle, all this time, she was finally—finally—complete.

  A girl made whole in the light of her imperfect faith.

  PART FOUR

  56

  AGNES

  Eventually, each must ask: What am I willing to give to make the world a better place?

  —AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS

  Agnes wasn’t sure that the night before she returned to Red Creek would be her last on earth—but she suspected as much.

  Matilda had warned her to stay out of the prayer space. But she’d have to use it, to try to save the people in the bunker. She didn’t want to die, not when there was so much to live for: a new town to build, her love for Danny to explore, and Zeke growing bigger every day. But if she could trade her life for her family? She’d take that bargain in a heartbeat. It made a kind of elemental sense: Breath for breath. Life for life. Song for song.

  But what should she do with the book she’d written in the back pages of Beth’s diary? She’d filled every blank space with her thoughts on God, Petra, her experience in the prayer space. And not just her thoughts.

  Some, she knew by the goose bumps that peaked on her arms, were holy.

  Danny. He would keep her writing safe. And if the worst happened, he would know what to do with it—how to get it into the world.

  While Zeke slept peacefully in their tent, Agnes crossed the campground.

  All three hundred of her people had raised tents in a grassy meadow on Holden’s outskirts. The journey from Mercy had been grindingly slow, two days of dusty travel in trucks and Humvees. The Captain had worn himself out. Now he worried because food grew scarce and the pregnant Outsider neared her time.

  Agnes had warned the Captain there wouldn’t be an abundance of food in Red Creek—but there would be some, in the houses of the faithful. Scavenging bands could light out from there, to search the Walmart, gas stations, grocery stores.

  And, when they were finally settled, they could begin planting fields with seeds of hope. She dreamed of pumpkins, alfalfa, corn—even fruit trees. In a year or two, the land might flourish.

  So many tents, spread under the stars. So many sleeping Outsiders. Walking, she loved the glow of the smoldering campfires, the wisps of late-night laughter. Her eyes welled.

  Her people.

  It would be very hard to say goodbye.

  Agnes rustled Danny’s tent. When he didn’t answer, she let herself in.

  “Agnes?” He groped blindly for his glasses. “Is something wrong?”

  She sat cross-legged beside his sleeping bag, which smelled pleasantly of boy. She’d gotten to know his scent well. Whenever they tumbled from the Captain’s Humvee, eager to stretch their legs, they always made straight for a private place—a tree, a ditch, a riverbed—and then there was kissing. Snuggling and cuddling, sneaking around, though Jazz winked and giggled to let her know that she knew.

  Whatever force attracted them had only intensified as they whispered silly secrets and treasured dreams. They liked, especially, to argue over the existence of God—an almost sinful amount of fun.

  If there’s no God, who created the world?

  Well, there’s a theory called the big bang…

  You think God can’t make a bang?

  I’m not saying God can’t, just that there’s no evidence God did.

  What about right and wrong? Where does that come from?

  No matter how heated the arguments became, they always ended in more kissing. And that felt like merging, fusing, rejoicing. Sometimes it was like they shared a single, glorious skin.

  In the tent, Danny struggled upright. She handed him his glasses—he really was blind as a bat—and he wrapped his long arms around his knees.

  “What’s up, Agnes?”

  She showed him her book. “I’ve been collecting my thoughts. But tomorrow, I don’t know what will happen. I want you to keep this manuscript safe.”

  Danny’s eyes sharpened. “You think you’re going to die tomorrow.”

  The tent rippled in the night wind.

  “Matilda told me to stay out of the prayer space,” she said, quietly. “But I can’t.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “You heard Beth. She thinks I can save my family. How else am I going to do that, Danny?”

  He leveled a challenging stare. “So, your plan is to—what? Resurrect them?”

  “They aren’t dead. Only Nested.”

  He threw up his hands. “That’s as good as dead, and you know it!”

  “Maybe,” she said calmly. “We’ll have to se
e.”

  He rose and began angrily shuffling through his things.

  She held the book in her good hand. Matilda had promised that once they were settled, she’d reset the broken bones in her right, so the knuckles could heal properly. But Agnes didn’t know if she’d live that long.

  “What’re you doing, Danny?”

  Tubes, wires, pill bottles, needles, rubbery bags, those chemical-blue ice packs. He stuffed them into his pack until it looked ready to burst.

  Agnes pinched the bridge of her nose. “Danny. Tell me you’ll take care of this book. It’s important. Please.”

  He turned to her, eyes hard. “Does it matter that I don’t believe you can help your family? That you might kill yourself in vain?”

  “No,” she said honestly.

  He snorted, exasperated. “Of course I’ll look after your book. But you’re not going to die.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You won’t try to stop me, will you?”

  He laughed dryly. “Once you’ve made up your mind to do something, nobody can stop you.”

  “Then what makes you so sure—”

  “Agnes,” he said firmly. “You have your faith. Let me have mine.”

  “You still have the nightmare,” she said with realization.

  His eyes skidded away. “And it always ends the same.”

  “Badly?” she asked, more worried for him than for herself. Compassion was a funny thing that way, a powerful antidote to even mortal fear.

  He hung his head. “I’m never good enough. Never fast or smart enough.”

  She spoke softly. “Your nightmare—it might not have anything to do with me.”

  “We both know it was always about you.”

  He sounded so crushed that for half a heartbeat, she regretted the time they’d spent kissing, loving. But if she started regretting something as wondrous as that, she’d loose the thread that unraveled everything. When it came to love, there could be no regrets.

  Agnes handed him her book—once, Beth’s diary—with a shiver. It felt like handing him the empty cooler, back when she was Red Creek’s prisoner.

  He moved closer, cupped her face in his hands.

  “I love you. I’m in love with you. Please say you love me, too.”

  She pulled away. She did love him, but telling him now, on what might be her last night on earth… was that compassionate? Kind?

  His face collapsed in sadness and surprise.

  And seeing that, she crumbled. From the first, their souls had recognized something in each other. Wrong or not, she couldn’t push him away.

  She pressed herself into him, letting his chin rest lightly on her head.

  “I’m sorry,” Agnes said. “Of course I’m in love with you. You’ve been so patient with me, every step of the way. I never knew a man could be like you: considerate and selfless and kind.”

  “Not that selfless,” he murmured, and slid his arms around her waist.

  She kissed him, and it happened again: a powerful merging that shocked every nerve in her body. It was like standing in the midst of the prayer space—only this time, they themselves hummed, vibrating. Sacred creatures, the two of them, together.

  A shriek split the air.

  Agnes leapt away from Danny, thinking, Red creatures. What if one had found its way into camp, despite the barbed wire the Captain had put up?

  “It’s okay,” Danny soothed. “Mom said Amber might go into labor tonight.”

  Labor. Her whole body stiffened with a half-forgotten fear. Birth meant blood, pain, and—all too often—death. In her mind, she pictured the toothy stones of the King family graveyard.

  “Healthy women hardly ever die in childbirth anymore,” Danny said, reading her face.

  “You mean it?”

  “Yes.”

  She exhaled. “Thank God.”

  “Thank science.” He grinned ruefully. Then his face turned serious again. “Agnes. I meant what I said. I’m not letting you die.”

  “Just keep the book,” she said. “Some of it’s pretty good, I think.”

  He reached out, fingered the ribbon in her hair. “I can’t wait to discuss it with you, later.”

  Leaving his tent, Agnes felt the throes of regret for the years she could have shared with him. She swiped at her eyes, rocked by the strength of her feelings. She felt deeply grateful that God had given her a chance to experience this new kind of love, before the end. Though, of course, Danny would say God never gave them anything. He’d say they created every ounce of it themselves. In the book she’d written, Agnes had tried to explain that, paradoxically, both origin stories were equally true. It was all in the eye of the believer.

  Beneath the stars, she paused to let her spirit sing, for even now a baby was being born.

  A baby ushering in a new age.

  57

  AGNES

  Hatred of women is an infectious sickness. I’ve seen it tear families, hearts, minds apart.

  —AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS

  Agnes lit out before dawn, while the rest of their ragtag, refugee caravan slept. She’d borrowed a truck from the Captain but didn’t take it all the way up the hill. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she wanted to travel the last mile on foot, and tackle the final steep hill to Red Creek and its iron gates alone.

  Beneath the dawn sky, the air smelled of home, of pine trees and musky forest loam. After so long in the desert, the sight of so much evergreen was sweet relief.

  Yet Agnes felt jittery. More nervous about her homecoming than she’d expected. Red Creek’s memories stalked her like ghosts: Father slapping Beth smartly across the face; the Prophet firing his pistol at the infected dog; the bunker stairs, so horrendously dark.

  She’d never mattered here—women had never mattered. But now she returned as more than a woman or a man. She returned as a prophet, determined to rescue the innocent from the ravages of the Virus.

  If it were only grown people Nested in the bunker, she would leave them to their fate. Every one of them was complicit in the monstrosity Red Creek had become. But the children… They’d never even had a chance.

  Agnes would see to it that the twins and Sam lived again, and in a better world, even if it killed her.

  As it was written in Ezekiel: I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

  “Amen.” She was out of breath, nearing the hilltop. “Amen.”

  She reached the gates, iron, rusted, hateful. She put hand to metal, absorbing its cold. Through the iron bars, she saw streets eerily deserted. She gritted her teeth, preparing herself.

  A stamping broke the silence. She turned to see a stag, red-hided, shining like a living gem. In wonder, not fear, she regarded it. Could it be the stag she saw, the night she and Zeke fled?

  “Do you know me?”

  The crimson eyes hungered. The stag quickened, hurrying to infect her as its warped biology urged. Steadying herself, she called up the prayer space.

  The stag’s hooves shrieked to a halt.

  Agnes regarded its emaciated form. Petra had kept the animal alive, but it hadn’t found its Nest. It’d been wandering in circles.

  She took a step towards it, her glowing hands outstretched.

  Frightened, it stumbled back.

  “I’m sorry you never found your Nest,” she said, and meant it powerfully.

  The animal’s striated neck craned.

  “I’m the cure, you know. I learned that during God’s test.”

  But the stag didn’t want to be cured. It clung to its red life, as cold and hard as it was. It reared its head, snorted, and bolted into the forest.

  Reluctantly, Agnes shut down. She’d come to love the prayer space’s warmth and connection. She’d miss it, if she died. She didn’t know much about the afterlife, but she imagined you couldn’t take your gifts with you, just like you couldn’t take your loves.

  The nape of her neck prickled.

  “Agnes.”

  On the other s
ide of the gate stood Beth.

  She wore a baby-blue prairie dress, her hair carefully plaited. She looked lean, haunted, and more beautiful than ever.

  Agnes wanted to run to her, but her legs were leaden. She felt guilty for the secrets she’d kept, for her final abandonment. What had Beth’s life been like, after? What horrors had she survived alone?

  “Agnes?” Beth’s voice was small and uncertain, childlike.

  Agnes ran. She stumbled through the broken gate, reaching for her sister, the person who knew her best in the world. They clasped each other, both shivering, quaking, murmuring.

  She’d believed her sister was dead—she’d grieved for her—and so it felt miraculous to hold her now, miraculous as resurrection.

  But who had resurrected whom?

  If it hadn’t been for Beth’s voice mail, she’d never have known to return to Red Creek. If it hadn’t been for Beth, she might’ve lost Ezekiel.

  “I got your message,” Agnes whispered into her ear. “Thank you.”

  “You got it? You really did?” Beth sounded amazed.

  “It saved me, Beth. You saved me.”

  Beth covered her slender nose with both hands, pressed her head into Agnes’s neck, and sobbed. Agnes ached, because her sister had needed her, longed for her—but never truly expected her to return. Yet somehow, they’d both made it through the tunnel into the light. They were daughters of Red Creek, but also daughters of Sarah Shiner, the girl who’d mustered the courage to run towards freedom. And they were daughters of Eve, flinging open Eden’s gates and stepping into a strange new world.

  The lyrics of “Amazing Grace” wove dreamily through her mind.

  I once was lost, but now am found…

  “The nightmare’s almost over,” she promised Beth. “We’re nearly at the end.”

  She held her sister a long time, smelling her clean hair, feeling her warm cheek, downy as a child’s. Sun warmed her neck, and a familiar breeze rustled her clothes.

  In her sister’s arms, Agnes came home.

  58

  BETH