- - End of All Things, The (49 page)

Carly tilted her chin up. “No, I’m not.”

Mike softened his tone a bit, possibly aware he had struck a nerve. “Never had no training in how to care for a wolf or how to recognize the danger signs in their behavior?”

“No, but—” The tears were threatening again. She tried to remind herself Mike wasn’t trying to upset her with his questions, and they were questions that, truthfully, represented valid concerns for someone who didn’t know what Sam was like.

“Miss Carly, I know you mean well and you believe the wolf would never hurt anyone, but you’re askin’ me to bet my child’s life on it. And I just can’t do that.” Having said his piece, Mike sat back down.

Carly stood. She could do it for Sam, though her voice trembled a little from anxiety of speaking before so many people. “You don’t know me. You don’t have any reason to trust me, and I understand that, but Sam is very special. He’s incredibly intelligent and well-behaved. He’s never once been aggressive toward peaceful people.”

“But he
has
been aggressive?” someone else called out.

“He saved my life,” Carly said. “He saved me after the Crisis because without him to take care of, I might have just laid down and given up. After we started out on our journey, he protected us and defended us when necessary. He brought me food when Justin was injured. In short, I owe this animal my life many times over, and I’ll understand if you say you don’t want him in your community, but I’ll go with him if you say he has to leave.”

Another voice began, “But you can’t guarantee—”

“
Life
has no guarantees,” Justin said sharply. He stood and scanned the room. “You can’t
guarantee
the person sitting next to you won’t go crazy tomorrow and kill people.” He took a deep breath and gave Carly a small smile. “Just as my wife said, you don’t know us, and you don’t know if you can trust us, but I have this to offer you.” He pushed up the sleeve of his shirt. “Do you see this symbol? At one time, it meant something—a set of principles and a code of honor—for which I would have gladly laid down my life. Know that I swear on my honor I would not bring that animal amongst you if I had any doubts about your safety.”

“Shall I call a vote?” Tom asked the room.

“No,” Mike Yoder said. “I retract my objection.”

Tom smiled. “So noted. The motion is so carried. Justin, Carly, I’ll not ask you to decide right now, since you’ll need to share this with Stan and Mindy, but we’re formally inviting you to join us.”

Carly and Justin rose to their feet. The crowd became a blur as tears welled in her eyes, but she was smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. “Thank you,” she said to Tom and then to the townspeople. Justin repeated it and gave Carly a quick kiss on the cheek as they sat back down.

“Here.” He fished in his pocket and handed her a tissue he must have brought from the house. Carly chuckled even as she dabbed at her eyes. That was Justin, always thinking ahead.

The meeting continued for about an hour afterward, discussing issues with crop planting and the schedule for the gate watchers. As Cynthia had suggested, the number of watchers would be increased, and regular foot patrols would circle the fence around the swamp. The townspeople’s level of cooperation was admirable. There were those who disagreed, but logic and reason won out in the end, and issues were resolved by a vote.

After it adjourned, Carly and Justin walked home with Cynthia and Tom, who held hands as they strolled. As soon as they entered the house, they knew something was wrong. Carly smelled burning meat. Cynthia’s forehead wrinkled in concern, and she called for Andrea, but her daughter didn’t answer.

Cynthia dashed up the stairs and a few moments later, she called down the stairs, her voice sharp with panic, “Tom! Get Doc Cotton!”

Tom didn’t wait around to ask questions. He bolted out the door. Justin charged up the staircase, following the sound of Cynthia’s voice. He would have been able to run through the town faster than Tom, but he had no idea where Doc Cotton lived, and it would have taken too much time to explain.

Carly went into the kitchen and turned off the gas-powered oven, lest the house catch fire. She met Justin at the top of the stairs, right outside of the door to Andrea’s bedroom. Carly could see the young woman was sprawled across her bed as though she had collapsed there, unable to even drag herself up to lay her head on the pillow.

“She has it,” he said. “She has the Infection.”

Carly’s hand flew to her mouth. “She
can’t
, Justin, it’s
over
.”

“Apparently not.”

Andrea tossed and muttered while her mother tried to hold a thermometer in her mouth.

“But this isn’t right.” Carly shook her head, bewildered. “Even if she did have it, she should only have mild symptoms right now.” Even as the words left her mouth, she remembered her father had seemed to skip over the lightly symptomatic stage into full-blown sickness.

“Viruses mutate. Remember, in some of the cases, stages were skipped. Not everyone followed the same pattern.”

“I just don’t understand how this could happen. Who did she catch it from?”

“I don’t know.”

There was the sound of feet pounding across the porch and then the bang of the door as it hit the wall. Doc Cotton—whom Carly had correctly identified at the meeting as the middle-aged man at the table—rushed by Justin and Carly into Andrea’s room. After only a few moments, he looked up at Tom and Cynthia, sadness making him appear older than he had before. “I’m sorry, Tom, Cynthia, but she’s Infected.”

Cynthia stared at him. Blinked. “What?” It didn’t sound like her voice.

“She has the Infection.”

Cynthia still didn’t seem to be processing the news, but Tom sat down heavily on the chair at the vanity table. His face was pale and waxy.

Doc Cotton turned to Justin. “Do you have antivirals in your supplies?”

Justin nodded. Doc Cotton rattled off a list of what he needed.

“Come with me,” Justin said to Carly. “I’ll need you to read the boxes.”

They ran at full speed across the darkened streets. In some of the homes, yellow oil lamp light flickered and human shadows passed by the windows. Besides the chirping crickets, the only sounds were of their feet pounding on the pavement, the harsh rasp of their breath. They reached the barn and threw open the door with a sudden violence that made Shadowfax lurch in her stall and scream. 

“It’s just us,” Carly called to her between pants for air as she crawled up into the wagon and threw back the tarp. “Light. I can’t see anything.”

Justin grabbed a flashlight they had stored beside the door and shined it on the pile. He repeated the drug names to Carly as she pawed through the stack. “Torlisibol,” she said. 

“No, Torli
sival.
”

“Are you sure?”

Justin rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. I should know this! I should—”

She stopped. “Take a deep breath, Justin. Relax. Calm yourself down.” Her voice had a calmness she didn’t feel. Fear made her stomach churn, and she hoped Justin didn’t notice how badly her hands shook.

Justin closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. “Torlisibol,” he said.

Carly nodded and added it to the bag. “I’ve got them.”

He helped her to her feet, and they ran back through the darkened town to Tom and Cynthia’s house, but when they reached the staircase, they froze in their tracks. Tom sat there, tears streaming down his pallid face, and he held Cynthia in his lap as she wept against his shoulder.

Doc Cotton came slowly from Andrea’s room. He paused on his way down to lay a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Cynthia let out a soft, ragged cry, and Tom closed his eyes as he nodded. The doctor continued down to the stairs. He jerked his head toward the living room, and Justin and Carly followed him.

Doc Cotton sagged onto the sofa and dropped his head into his hands.

“It can’t be the Infection,” Carly said. Even as she said it, a small part of her mind spoke up to tell her she was in denial. “It doesn’t happen that fast.”

“Viruses mutate,” Doc replied without lifting his head, echoing Justin’s words from earlier. “It’s become faster, more virulent. Likely more communicable, as well.”

Carly’s breath caught. “Then we may no longer be immune.”

Neither the doctor nor Justin said anything. Carly waited another moment, hoping in vain one of them would deny it.

“Justin, we can’t go home to Dagny. We can’t risk . . .” She couldn’t continue. Her throat was too tight to speak.

“The whole town has been exposed,” Doc Cotton said wearily. “Andrea was having cold symptoms before Tom and Cynthia left for the meeting.”

“But how did this
happen
?” Carly blurted out. “How did she catch it in the first place? No sick people have been here!”

Justin took her hand. He seemed to struggle to find the words. “Carly, we’re carriers.”

She shook her head slightly. Her mind couldn’t seem to process what he was saying.

“It’s the only explanation. I told you this before, remember? I told you we might be asymptomatic carriers. It would explain why many of the survivors seem to be infertile. We have the virus; it just doesn’t make us sick.”

“It’s our fault
?
”
she whispered, stricken to her very soul with guilt and horror.

Doc Cotton’s head jerked up. “No, Carly, it’s
not
your fault. You didn’t know. We would have had contact with outsiders sooner or later.”

Tom and Cynthia came down the stairs slowly, their arms wrapped around one another. Carly couldn’t tell who was supporting whom.

She had brought Death to their doorstep. The guilt was so terrible she couldn’t even look them in the eye.

“We’ve got to get the word out,” Tom said in a raspy voice. “Tell everyone to quarantine themselves.”

Carly’s heart ached for him. Even in this moment of terrible grief, he was still thinking of the people of his town.

Doc Cotton shook his head. “It’s too late, Tom.” He stood. “I’m sorry to leave you in this terrible time, but I have work to do. I have to prepare.”

“We’ll help,” Carly whispered. “We have to help.”

Doc Cotton nodded. “I’ll need every pair of able hands.”

Justin kissed Carly’s cheek. “Where, Doc?”

“The church.”

Justin nodded. He kissed Carly again before he left, and she caught a glimpse of the anguish in his eyes, an anguish he was trying hard not to show.

Cynthia sobbed in Tom’s arms. 

“I’m so sorry,” Carly choked out. “God, I am so sorry.”

Neither of them replied. Carly darted out the door onto the porch. She sagged down onto the steps, clinging to the support post. There, she let out the sobs that had built to such an agonizing pressure in her chest. She wept for Andrea, for Tom and Cynthia, and for the precious bit of normalcy that was too fragile to survive after all.

There was barely room to walk between the beds. All were filled with coughing, retching, moaning people. The muttering of the mad were the only voices heard. In the beginning, the noise had filled the church and echoed from its bare walls. But at this point, it was a low murmur.

The church’s pews had all been removed. Doc Cotton had requested people bring beds from their spare bedrooms—just the frames, box springs, and mattresses. The room was lit by lanterns they’d suspended from the ceiling, a warm glow that didn’t soften the ugly reality that the whole town lay dying in the sanctuary.

Carly hadn’t slept in days. She bathed burning foreheads with cool water. She cleaned up after the sick and helped move the dead outside to the large pit Tommy Burton had dug with his backhoe. At first, the dead were washed and carefully wrapped in sheets, their families tucking small mementos, like pictures, inside with them. And then the families fell ill, and there was no one to perform those last acts of kindness and love.

“You need to take a nap, girl,” Old Miz Marson said. Carly hadn’t heard her approach. 

“Perhaps later,” Carly replied, knowing it was a lie.

“You ain’t gonna do anyone no good if you fall sick yourself.”

Maybe not, but she couldn’t leave them. She couldn’t rest while the people who had taken them in— welcomed them to their community—suffered and died.