The Last Town on Earth (33 page)

XVIII

R
ankle was surprised to find Graham standing guard at the storage building. He’d thought Deacon had manned the night shift.

“Deacon looked tired,” Graham said. “I sent him home early.”

“He have the flu?”

“Naw, seemed okay. Just tired.”

“Anything happen last night?”

“Heard some wolves. First time this year.”

“Maybe you should get yourself to bed. Sleep the night off.”

“Sounds good to me.” Graham smiled.

“You cut yourself?” Rankle asked, gesturing at Graham’s right hand.

“Huh?” Graham looked down and saw that dried blood darkened the space between his thumb and forefinger, running down across his wrist. “Oh. Must have beat up my hands cutting firewood before I came over here. Getting clumsier in my old age, I guess.”

“Get to bed, old man.”

“’Night.”

“’Morning.”

Soon Rankle was joined by a short Pole named Wozniak, and half an hour later, Wozniak’s wife came by with a bowl of oatmeal and some water for the prisoner. Wozniak stayed outside, grasping his rifle, while Rankle laid his on the ground and went into the building with the prisoner’s breakfast.

He was met at the bottom of the stairs by the pile of chains. He dropped the bowl on the floor and spun around in case the soldier was hiding in a corner waiting to jump him. But the soldier wasn’t in the corner. He wasn’t anywhere in the building.

Philip knew something was wrong as soon as he walked into the office.

Still nervous about being confronted by angry millworkers, he’d taken a less traveled route to the mill and had arrived half an hour after Charles. When he walked in, he saw a doleful look in his father’s eyes, as if Charles had already had a long morning.

Philip sat down. “Are you all right, sir?”

“I just spoke with Mr. Metzger. His wife died last night.”

Philip felt hot, the blood rushing to his face. The room was very still. Even the mill beyond seemed quieter than usual, reluctant to shake off the night’s slumber. “Did he say if Elsie was sick?”

“He didn’t, so I assume she is well. As well as can be expected for someone who just lost her mother.”

“Maybe I should visit them later,” Philip said. “See if there’s anything I can do to help.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea. I know it sounds like the right thing to do, but…they aren’t in the mood for visitors just yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

Philip suspected that Charles was prevaricating and simply didn’t want Philip in their house, didn’t want him to risk getting sick. He was beginning to hate his father’s fear, and wanted to say as much, but he could see in Charles’s eyes that this wasn’t the time to talk back.

“You should go to the foremen,” Charles said. “Doc Banes will be here shortly, and he’ll want an absentee report.”

Philip hurriedly walked out of the office. He needed some air, and he needed to obey Charles, but he couldn’t endure the look in the foremen’s eyes, not yet. So he stopped, frozen on the long plankway that overlooked the mill. He realized he was shaking. The saws seemed louder than usual, accusatory, sneering. He leaned over to steady himself, his hands on his knees and his back against the wall. He breathed. He hoped no one was looking at him but he figured someone must be, and still he stood there.
Breathe.
Soon he would stop shaking, and he would do his job, and he would write down the next list of the sick and dying.

Twenty-three more men unaccounted for. Philip returned to the office and added the new names to his master list, now two pages long.

He wanted to write another letter to Elsie, but he didn’t know what he could write that wouldn’t seem trivial. All he’d written this morning were the names of more dying men, so the thought of conveying love or hope or sympathy with the same pencil seemed heretical.

“We should close the mill,” Doc Banes said to Charles after seeing the list. It was late morning and he had just walked in, hours later than the previous three days. The circles beneath his eyes seemed darker than usual, his eyes redder, his mood darker.

“Are you sure?” Charles asked.

“Charles, look at that list.” Banes’s voice was calm and sober, but extreme tension welled unmistakably beneath the surface. “At this rate, half the mill will be sick in two days. And it will be worse after that.”

There were already too many sick people to see in one day, Banes explained. Even when he did see people, there was little he could do. The reality was that the numbers were increasing steadily, and the only thing that might slow the progression of the epidemic was to insist that everyone stay home to avoid contagion.

Charles had not wanted to admit it had come to this, but he hadn’t seen what his friend had. Perhaps closing the mill was for the best—considering the near-violence at the general store, maybe the men needed a respite from the compounded stress of work and illness. After a few days of seclusion, everyone would remember why they had come to Commonwealth, why this town must succeed.

Or perhaps Charles was deluding himself.

“I was also thinking,” he said, feeling shattered, “that we should call off the quarantine. The guards haven’t been able to keep the flu out, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason to prevent people from coming and going as they choose.”

This statement was nearly impossible for Charles to make, even though he had said much the same thing to Metzger that morning. But Banes only nodded.

“Philip,” Charles said, “call in all the foremen.”

A few minutes after Philip had left, Rankle joined Charles and Doc Banes. He was breathless, and he had news—the soldier had escaped.

An hour later, Philip walked up to the Metzgers’ front door. Charles had sent him home minutes ago, after meeting with the foremen and telling them to pass on word of the mill’s closing and the quarantine’s end. Charles had stayed behind to finish some paperwork, and Philip was hoping to get a head start on the millworkers.

But he could not bring himself to pass by the Metzgers’ door, despite what Charles had said. He took off his cap, holding it as he knocked.

On the third knock, Mr. Metzger answered, still looking like he hadn’t slept.

“Philip.” He had always been a quiet man, but his voice was weaker than usual.

“Mr. Metzger, I just wanted to express my condolences for your wife.” Philip hadn’t planned out what to say. He tried to look at the man’s face but found it too difficult. “Coming by the store and hearing her tease me has always been the best part of my job, sir. I’m…really going to miss her.”

He finally dared to look back at Metzger’s face, and he didn’t like what he saw.

“Go home, Philip.”

Metzger shut the door.

Philip stood there, stunned by the abrupt dismissal. He put his cap back on and wondered if Elsie had been nearby, if she had heard Philip’s voice. He stayed by the door an extra moment, in case she might throw it open and call out to him. But the door stayed closed, and he finally headed for home.

XIX

D
uring the meeting with the foremen, Rankle had stood there with others, nodding patiently. He had told Charles and Doc Banes of the missing soldier while Philip had gathered the foremen, but that fact seemed almost trivial compared to the enormity of the mill’s closing. Whether or not the soldier was indeed a German spy who had spread disease seemed hopelessly irrelevant now that each man had before him the task of saving the sick and protecting the healthy. The people of Commonwealth could no longer concern themselves with anything other than the flu.

Which was why Charles hadn’t even thought to tell Philip of Rankle’s discovery until hours later. The thought of leaving the mill felt as horrible to Charles as if he were abandoning a child on a city sidewalk, and the guilt and the fear that this was a terrible and irreversible mistake clung to him. He reviewed his notebooks and charts and tried to calculate the impact of a day’s closure, or a week’s, or three. Now that the quarantine was broken, perhaps Charles could contact his buyers, could invite the boats to once again wind their way down the river and begin taking the huge stockpile they’d amassed since the quarantine had begun over two weeks ago. Metzger would be able to replenish his store, and even if his mourning delayed him a few days, families who were still healthy would be able to shop for necessities in Timber Falls. Perhaps the healthy could shop for the sick, arrange deliveries to make sure those most in need of sustenance would not go without. Perhaps breaking the quarantine would actually help the town when it needed it most.

Then again, with the mill closed, there would be no workers to load the boats. And what if those other towns were still so sick that their businesses were shuttered? And how could Commonwealth’s current mood give Charles any faith that people would start delivering food to one another despite the profound risks such altruism carried? Charles sat in his office for a full three hours after everyone else had abandoned it. Finally, he stood up and gazed through the window that looked out onto the main floor, all those inert machines and the stunning silence. He turned off his lamp and put the mill behind him.

The afternoon was silent as a Sunday. There were no sounds of distant saws, no echoing
thoom
s of heavy trunks landing on the wet earth, no persistent roar and clatter emanating from the mill. It was quiet and it was cold and it felt exactly the way weather should feel if it were trying to mimic death.

When Charles came home, Rebecca and Laura were playing cards in the parlor, as if it had been a normal day and not one on which Rebecca had announced that the school would close until further notice. Philip was in his room.

It was nearly time for supper when Charles remembered what Rankle had told him about the spy, remembered Philip’s strange and unfortunate attachment. He knocked on Philip’s door and found his son sitting on his bed reading some letter that he hurriedly placed beneath the folds of his bedsheet.

“He’s gone?” Philip said when Charles tried to explain.

Charles nodded, still perplexed by his son’s fealty to the man who surely was a spy—Charles believed it now more than ever—and told Philip what Rankle had discovered. No one knew how the man had escaped from his chains, but it didn’t matter. The soldier was no longer their problem, and they had no shortage of problems at the moment.

After Charles left, Philip sat in bed, thinking. Frank was gone, trekking through the woods to Vancouver. Philip didn’t understand how Frank had escaped, or how he could possibly make it to Canada now that it was growing so much colder. Philip had been planning to send him on his way with a bagful of food and some warmer clothes—how would he make it without them?

Philip suddenly had the thought that Frank might not have run yet—that he might have chosen to hide in someone’s cellar or closet for one last night, waiting to steal some food and clothes and then make his escape. Philip latched on to this idea, determined to see the empty prison with his own eyes.

Charles was in the parlor and saw Philip donning his jacket. “Where are you going?”

“I left something at the mill—I’ll be quick” was Philip’s terse reply. He grabbed a lamp and walked out the door before he could hear a response.

It was cold, and the evening winds had begun to fling themselves at the town’s closed doors and shuttered windows. The sky’s color was draining away, revealing the darkness that had been hiding behind the clouds, crouching in anticipation of the bitter black night to come.

Philip walked as quickly as he could, and when he reached the dead-end street, he marveled at how different the storage building looked without a guard or two standing before it. He opened the door and the lamplight led the way before him, as did the echoes of his footsteps. When he reached the top of the stairs to the cellar, he saw light coming from below.

Someone was down there.

Philip felt his heart beat harder than before, and though he tried to control his emotions, he couldn’t stop the pounding. For some reason, he didn’t call out a greeting, choosing to let his footsteps reveal his entrance and trusting that whoever was down there was no threat to him. He walked down the steps slowly, and when he reached the bottom, the light from his lamp joined with that of the other lamp, which sat in the center of the room as if it had been left behind.

But Jarred Rankle sat on the ground, leaning against the wall. “Philip,” he said, his voice calm. “What brings you here?”

“I just…wanted to take a look around,” Philip replied uncertainly.

Rankle had a sad look in his eyes, and he wasn’t wearing a mask. Rankle seemed to trust that Frank’s germs or spirit or contamination had fled along with him.

Philip felt uncomfortable—Rankle was a trusted family friend, but his presence here was a mystery. Still, Philip walked toward the post where Frank had been chained. The chains lay in limp coils as if they’d never had the strength to contain a man and had simply given up the ruse. Philip was taking it all in when something caught his eye.

It was the photo of Michelle. Philip picked it up and stood staring into her eyes as if hoping she would explain. Philip would have expected Frank to leave behind his boots before this picture. Could he have been a spy all along, and the photo no more than a prop to lend shading to his false character?

Rankle didn’t ask what Philip was looking at—he must have already picked it up himself, already had these thoughts, already dropped the photo back on the ground. Then Philip’s eyes were drawn to something else. He crouched back down and inspected the strange red stain on the floor by the wall, a darkness that seemed to bleed from the earth itself. He had actually stepped on it a moment ago, and his foot must have kicked away some of the dirt that had apparently been brushed over it. He reached forward and swept away more of the dirt, revealing an ever larger, reddish black stain that Philip knew could be only one thing.

Philip stood up and took several steps back. He still held the picture. He looked at Rankle, who met his eyes evenly.

“I don’t know anything more than you,” Rankle said. “He was gone this morning. We saw the break in the wall upstairs, figured that’s how he got past us. Then I came back and looked around some more.”

Philip felt a quiver in his gut that he could contain only by forcing himself to breathe slowly.

“What did you do to him?”

“I just told you. I didn’t do anything.”

Philip swallowed, steadied himself.

“Who was on guard duty last night?” Philip looked at the floor when he asked this, but when no reply came, he shifted his gaze back to Rankle, who was also staring at the blood. Philip repeated his question.

“Deacon was supposed to be,” Rankle answered with apparent reluctance. “But when I showed up this morning, Graham was here instead.”

“What do you think happened?”

The gravity of Rankle’s stare was his only reply.

Philip froze, overcome. “I need to see Graham,” he finally said, although he could feel his legs shaking. He put Michelle’s picture in his pocket.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Rankle said, standing up.

Philip was surprised at the command. “I need to see him.” His voice shook with fear and rage and the tears he was barely withholding.

“If I have to carry you back to your house right now, I will. Graham’s home protecting his family, and you’ll respect that.” Philip remembered the stories about Rankle’s own lost family. Though his words were harsh, Rankle’s voice was shaking also, evidence that this was no easier for him than it was for Philip. “You’ll tell no one about this. You’ll leave Graham alone, and you’ll go home and stay with your family until this has passed.”

As badly as Philip wanted to see Graham, he was terrified of doing so, and he felt himself withering before Rankle’s orders. He nodded, anxious to escape. He felt disoriented by the same dizzying mix of nauseated fear and confusion as when he was first trapped in the prison, and again when Charles had asked him if he had any reason to suspect that Frank was a spy, and again when he had realized that the flu had come to Commonwealth.

Rankle said he was going to stay and clean up, so Philip left alone. He could have disobeyed and visited Graham, but he no longer felt the desire to do so, at least not right away. He walked home and told his family, gathering at the table, that he was not hungry and felt unwell. Knowing that any mention of sickness was alarming, he reassured them that he was just tired.

He lay in his bed for a long while, haunted by thoughts of Graham and Frank and the C.O., haunted by the sounds of coughing. And though he thought he felt as bad as he could, he was wrong. For at least he was still healthy when he closed his eyes.