The Last Town on Earth (12 page)

Twigs snapped as they ascended the hill. Philip’s view of the soldier was dimmed by the falling dusk. The dirt and bark and grass and needles were losing their color, fading into a dull gray that would soon disappear into darkness.

Where was Mo? Now, of course, Philip was hoping that his bald accomplice would take even longer to return. If Philip could stow the soldier in the building and tell him to wait there, he could return to the post before Mo got back. Then he would tell Mo he needed to leave briefly—he’d make up some excuse—and he’d get some food for the soldier and bring it to the empty building. He’d do his best to avoid other people that night in case the air around him was polluted by disease. But if he had been infected by something, wouldn’t he pass it on to Mo, who would then pass it on to someone else, and on and on in a matter of hours? How exactly did this work? Philip would have to find Doc Banes, ask him a few innocent questions. Then again, if he was trying to avoid people, he couldn’t ask the doctor. This was already too complicated.

Soon the trees thinned out and a small clearing opened. It was a partially man-made clearing, and recent at that, as stumps littered the ground. Just ahead of them were three buildings, and Philip ushered the soldier toward the one that sat farthest from the town. As they approached the building, he had a view of the road that linked these forgotten structures with the rest of the town. The road went straight ahead, with the woods to the right and a thinner stand of trees to the left. Just beyond was one of the main streets—this road was one of the many spokes off of it, and most of the others were lined with empty new houses. Surely no one should need to come down here.

“Go inside,” Philip said to the soldier, stepping back several feet to give the man and his possible baggage of disease a wide berth.

The soldier obeyed.

“Head for the cellar. The stairs are in the back, on the right.”

Philip waited a few seconds for the bad spirits surrounding the soldier to dissipate before he followed. Inside was a large, dark, windowless room, musty with stagnation. It took his eyes a moment to adjust. Dust covered the floor and walls, mottling the dark wood. The soldier had left footprints, and Philip consciously avoided them, stepping to the side as if he could catch the flu though the soles of his boots. He closed the door behind him just as the soldier began descending the stairs. Philip figured he would walk to the top of the stairs and call down, tell the soldier that it might be as long as an hour or two before he could bring any food. He would warn the soldier again that if he poked his head out and walked around the town, the other townspeople would be far less forgiving of his trespassing than Philip had been.

But his plans dissolved when he heard the sound of the door opening behind him.

Philip turned around and saw the door slowly complete its swing back into the building, saw the light from outside seeping in, and saw Mo standing at the threshold. Mo had a handkerchief covering his nose and mouth like a train robber from a children’s book. There was also a handkerchief wrapped around the hand he had used to turn the knob and open the door. His other hand held his rifle.

“Philip? What are you doing?” Mo’s words came slowly, muffled by the handkerchief. Above it his eyes were wide.

Philip was stunned. Mo must have followed him, must have returned to the empty post and seen the two figures disappearing into the woods, must have tracked them here, careful to keep his distance. So much more careful than Philip, stupid Philip, cowardly Philip, who felt the weight of his mistakes piling upon him with terrible suddenness.

Mo was shaking his head in horror.

“I was just going to get him some food,” Philip said, or thought about saying, or tried to say, but maybe his voice gave out halfway—he wasn’t sure. Even if he had said it, it was so small and unimportant that it didn’t matter.

Mo backed up another step.

“Stay in there, Philip.” He spoke kindly, but it was clear that this was a command and not a suggestion. “Just stay in there and I’ll get Mr. Worthy and we’ll figure this out.”

Before Philip could protest or think of anything else to say, Mo moved his handkerchief-covered hand out of view and the door swung shut, casting Philip in total darkness.

I

J
. B. Merriwhether sipped his whiskey slowly. He wanted only the one drink, but he was in no rush to leave, so he was determined to make it last.

His working day had ended and here he was at the Pioneers Club, delaying his journey home. Twice he had called his wife, Violet, checking in on their daughter’s condition. It had not improved. Gwen had been bedridden for over a week now and her cough was loud and thick. And persistent—all day, throughout the night, torturing his sleep and making hers nearly impossible. That morning a worrisome new symptom had appeared: a dark bluish hue around her eyes. J.B. had been unable to reach the doctor, who was one of just a few local physicians who hadn’t been called into war duty. At seven-thirty J.B. had driven to his office at the bank, leaving his wife to try to call the doctor.

Gwen seemed worse, Violet had told him at four-thirty. Her fingertips and lips were blue, her eyes even darker than they had been that morning. And the mail had brought no new letters from James.

One child horribly ill and the other fighting in France. J.B. lifted the drink to his lips, barely wetting them, then set the glass down and licked the traces of alcohol from his lips. He should be home, but what could he do there? Nothing. He could do nothing.

But here at the Pioneers Club, he could be of use. He had received a call from Joseph Miller, the third-highest-ranking member of the club and one of the most successful bankers in the Northwest. Although J.B. had done work for the Worthy mill a few years back, he mostly handled the accounts of townspeople, whereas Miller dealt exclusively with large business clients. J.B., in his small-town bank, secretly wished to be more like Joseph Miller, a man who seemed to know all the important financiers not only in Everett and Seattle but all down the Pacific Coast. One day, perhaps.

Apparently, J.B. had not been the only man summoned by Miller, as others began trickling in. Nathan Hightower was the first, and for this J.B. was not grateful. Hightower, foreman at one of the mills, had never been an easy conversationalist in the best of times, and he was now living in the worst: J.B. had driven by his house five days ago and noticed that the blue-starred service banner hanging from the parlor window had been replaced by a gold-starred flag, meaning that one of the Hightower boys had been killed in France. The next day J.B. had heard that both the young Hightowers, age twenty and twenty-two, had been killed in action. Now, every night when J.B. returned home, he stared for a long moment at James’s blue-starred banner, but when he blinked, he saw for a split second the reverse image behind his darkened eyelids, the banner appearing yellowish gold. The vision haunted him.

He had not seen Hightower since—the two knew each other through the club, and even there they barely spoke. Most of the Pioneers with whom J.B. was friendly were financial types like himself, other bankers and a few lawyers. The mill men were another circle entirely, one that only occasionally overlapped with his.

He knew nothing to say to Hightower, a large man who looked every bit the foreman with his barrel chest and huge arms. His red hair was disheveled, shooting here and there like anxious flames, and his bushy eyebrows hung low. His flannel shirt reeked of the mill, of sweat and sawdust.

They stumbled through awkward small talk but were soon rescued by the arrival of two other men: Lionel Winslow and Skip Bartrum. Winslow was the thirty-year-old son of one of the town’s most powerful timber barons, and J.B. had always been impressed by his confidence, if not by his professionalism or maturity. Lionel was known to lash out at others, to assume too quickly that he fully understood this world in which so much had been given him. He wore his dark hair slicked back with some foreign substance (something J.B. found a bit vain), his thin mustache was neatly trimmed, and his suits were impeccable.

Skip Bartrum was the Timber Falls sheriff. He never smiled and rarely made an appearance at the Pioneers Club. His round face had a sanguine hue, as if he had just downed a few shots of whiskey, yet no one had ever seen him drink, and he was reportedly in favor of Prohibition. For a sober man, J.B. thought, he sure as hell had the face of a mean drunk.

It was quickly apparent to J.B. that these three men knew one another well, were used to meeting together. He distinctly felt that he was the odd man out as the men discussed the war and the flu and the price of lumber. The Winslow mill was producing a cut of wood that turned out to be perfect for the new fighter planes, so business was booming. Not only was the mill shipping record amounts of timber, but because it was technically performing a vital military duty, the government had agreed to send agents to patrol the mill and make sure the workers didn’t even think about organizing to request higher wages. Times at the Winslow mill had never been better.

Bartrum had a son in France as well. He and J.B. compared what they knew of their sons’ locations, wondering aloud if they were together. During this part of the conversation, no one said anything to Hightower, each man in his small cowardice pretending the sufferer was as invisible as his dead sons. Their guilt paled beside their fear that their own sons would soon meet a similar fate.

J.B. took another tiny sip from the half-empty glass. He thought about Gwen.

“Sorry to keep you boys waiting,” Miller said as he appeared at the front of the room, quickly striding over and shaking hands. He sat at the head of the table. The room was dark, its walls covered in paintings of bears and other game from the surrounding woods. Two men sat at a table at the other end of the room, but apart from that, J.B.’s table was the only one occupied.

Winslow removed a cigarette from his case, failing to offer a smoke to the others.

“Thanks for meeting with us, J.B.,” Miller said. He was of average height, maybe two or three inches taller than J.B., and average build. He had an unremarkable round face topped with neatly parted brown hair, and the dark suit he wore looked just like any other businessman’s. He was the type of person who smiled apologetically when he had to break bad news, grinned broadly when he made a joke, and guffawed loudly when he heard one. Miller was everyone’s friend, but J.B. had heard that once he put you on his other list, he was a man to be feared.

“Well, J.B., as you may know, Sheriff Bartrum, Lionel, and I are part of the American Protective League,” Miller continued. J.B. nodded—he had not known that, but it helped explain why this disparate group was sitting together. The APL was a citizens’ enforcement league, deputized by the Department of Justice to make sure their fellow Americans weren’t fomenting dissent, interfering with the draft, or disparaging the war effort. J.B. knew the APL kept watch over certain people, making sure no one was agitating against the war or hoarding food, and he’d read in the papers about raids the APL had carried out in other parts of the country, rounding up slackers who hadn’t enlisted for the draft and carting them off to prison. It was news to J.B. that there was an APL in Timber Falls, but maybe its secretiveness was key to its success. “I called you here,” Miller said, “because of what you mentioned about your trip last weekend to Commonwealth.”

J.B. had told him of the sign, the quarantine, the armed guards. He nodded, and the other men rolled their eyes at the mention of that laughingstock of a town.

Miller’s voice was smooth, calm, but it had an unmistakable tone of purpose. “This morning I got to thinking there could be more going on in Commonwealth than we realize.” He made quick eye contact with all his listeners. “I’m afraid it might have something to do with what happened at Fort Jenkins last week.”

The other men nodded, and J.B. realized again he was the only one on the outside. With his forefinger, he traced the cool edge of his sweating glass.

“What happened at Fort Jenkins?” he asked.

II

“W
hat’s going on?” Philip heard the soldier’s voice calling from the cellar. “Hey, you there?”

“I’m here,” Philip replied. Ever since Mo had closed the door, Philip had stood there, paralyzed. “We have to stay here for a while.”

Footsteps. The soldier was climbing the stairs. Philip’s eyes were still adjusting to the dark, but he could see the man’s face, see his stubbled cheeks and his thick brows. The whites of his eyes seemed to shine.

“There a problem?”

Philip realized his legs were shaking. He decided to sit down, placing the rifle before him and lowering himself carefully lest the butt of the pocketed pistol jab his thigh. The floor was filthy with dirt and old sawdust and sundry other grime, but he leaned back on his hands nonetheless.

The building stank of mildew, and the lack of any light unnerved Philip in a way he didn’t want to admit. Each footstep was loud in the building’s emptiness, a hollow sound that perfectly echoed the feeling in his gut.

“I was going to help you,” Philip said. “Now we’re both stuck here.”

The soldier thought. “You’re in trouble with your buddies now?”

“We have to wait,” Philip said angrily. “We just have to wait here awhile.”

The soldier nodded. “You live in quite a friendly town.”

“I’ve already been too friendly to you.” Philip tried to imagine the horrified or disappointed reactions of Charles, of Rebecca, of Elsie. He tried not to think about Graham.

Philip and the soldier were not far from each other at this point, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Philip was now tarred, just like the soldier. He too was an outsider, not to be trusted.

For the soldier, who, moments ago, had thought he was going to die, this new development seemed relatively minor. He sat down at the top of the stairs, clearly reveling in the new feeling of relaxation. He closed his eyes and it looked to Philip like the man would fall asleep on the spot.

It was growing dark when Graham saw them hurrying across town, rifles and kerosene lamps in hand.

He had been fetching more firewood from the shed—the nights were growing colder—and as he returned to the house, he saw Mo, Charles, Doc Banes, and Jarred Rankle, concern in their eyes. Mo was supposed to be on guard duty, Graham realized, and so was Philip.

He stepped back inside, the scent of Amelia’s stew wafting over him. It was the last of the venison. Graham had hoped to go hunting soon to replenish their supply, but ever since the events involving the first soldier, hunting no longer seemed the best use of his time. They didn’t
need
meat, at least not yet, but what they absolutely needed was to make sure the right people were standing watch. Whatever time Graham had, he committed to the guard post.

“What’s wrong?” Amelia asked, seeing the look on his face as he retrieved his jacket.

“I need to head to the post,” he told her.

“Why?”

He paused, unsure whether he should risk alarming her. “I don’t know. I think something’s happened.”

On his way out, he reached into the closet and grabbed his rifle.

They were a couple blocks away already, but he ran after them. Mo stopped to explain everything while Charles and Rankle walked on.

“Why did Philip let him in?” Graham asked.

“I don’t know,” Mo said, looking ashamed.

“Did the soldier get the drop on him? Was he leading Philip at gunpoint or something?”

“I think I only saw Philip holding a gun,” Mo said weakly, “but I might have missed something.”

Mo had found Charles at home, he explained, just finished with supper. Laura was washing dishes and Rebecca was sitting in the parlor, writing suffrage letters with Rankle. Mo knew he should try to be discreet but wasn’t sure how, and he wound up blurting his message in front of everyone. It had been difficult for Charles to convince Rebecca to stay home with Laura.

“You just wake up?” Mo asked, eying Graham peculiarly.

“Not really.” Graham had stood guard all night and had slept for an hour or two during the day, between chores. “C’mon,” he said, and hurried after the other two.

Soon they reached the street that housed the three old storage buildings. The far one was about forty yards long, a third that wide, and the height of most of the two-story houses in town. There were no windows, and in the front were two entrances—a regular-sized door and a much larger one designed for trucks or carriages.

“Just Charles and me from here,” Doc Banes said to the others. “Everyone else stay back.”

“What if the soldier tries to shoot his way out?” Graham asked. “You two aren’t armed.”

It was rare for someone to question the doctor’s judgment, but Banes had won little of Graham’s respect over the years. After Amelia’s stillbirth, Banes had insisted there was nothing he could have done for the baby boy, but Graham was unconvinced.

“We’ll be all right, Graham,” Charles said, though he sounded otherwise.

Graham thought about handing Charles his rifle but reconsidered. If something did happen, it would be best for all of them if Graham were the one holding it.

Charles watched as Doc Banes reached into his pocket and removed two gauze masks. The doctor put one on, the thin material straining against his thick mustache, and then he handed the other to Charles. Lamp in hand, Charles followed as Doc Banes walked past the first two buildings. They could see Mo’s tracks, his bootprints stamped into the soft earth. They stopped twenty yards from the door.

“We’ll need to keep them in there for forty-eight hours, Charles.” Doc’s voice was low enough that only the two could hear.

“Are you sure?” Charles’s son was in there, trapped with an outsider no one knew, a man who possibly carried the flu. Charles’s heart was beating quickly, and his hands shook. He was always so clear-minded and sober, especially in town meetings and at the mill, but he felt he had been thrust into a situation beyond his control. It reminded him of Everett, of the riots, that terrifying feeling of helplessness.

Banes looked directly into Charles’s eyes, as he always did when delivering bad news. “The incubation period for influenza—how long it can stay inside you without giving you symptoms—can be up to forty-eight hours. So after two days, we’ll be able to determine if this man has the flu. If they stay in there that long and they’re both all right, then they can come out. But until then it would put the town at risk.”

“But what if—what if they’re not all right?”

“Whoever this man is, he’s probably healthy, or Philip wouldn’t have let him in. And if he had the flu, it’s doubtful he would’ve been able to walk to Commonwealth. He’s probably no threat, but we still have to take precautions.”

Charles’s brow was deeply furrowed and his eyes wide and focused on nothing in particular, the ground, the darkness. He looked at the decrepit building, his son’s prison.

“It’s good that there are no windows in the building,” Banes said. “This is an out-of-the-way street, so they’re as well contained as we could hope for. Is there a back door?”

“No.”

“Good. We’ll keep someone positioned here by the front to keep them inside. That’s the best we can do.”

“We need to guard the building?” But of course they did, Charles realized. Still, the thought that now his son had to be guarded was difficult to take.

Banes didn’t answer, seeing that Charles was answering his own question in his mind.

“What about food? He can’t eat for two days?” Charles asked.

Banes thought. “We can bring food by. We’ll tell him to wait in the cellar and someone can leave a tray by the front door. Then we’ll knock and walk away. One minute after the knock, Philip can come to the door and open it, grab the food, and close the door as quickly as possible. He’ll keep the used trays and dishes—under no circumstances should anyone touch them or retrieve them. We can just repeat that process for every meal: no contact, and no one touches any used dishes. That’s the best we can do.”

“Are you not even going to go in and examine them?”

The lamp cast an orange hue on Doc’s face, throwing shadows beneath his brow and nose and chin and frown. “I shouldn’t. This flu is so contagious that even doctors and nurses who’ve protected themselves have become ill and spread it to others. As much as I want to help them, I fear I’d only make things worse for everyone else.”

“My son…” Again Charles shook his head. “We have to just leave him there?”

Charles’s brother Timothy had died when he was barely seventeen, never celebrating his final birthday because he’d been sick in bed. When Philip had turned sixteen, Charles had thought of Timothy’s forgotten birthday, and the link in his mind between the two boys had filled him with disquiet. He still missed his brother.

“Charles.” Banes grabbed his friend’s forearm, gripping it as tightly as a tourniquet. “You know we have to do this. And it’s only two days—he’ll be all right.”

“Trapped in a dark building with a man no one knows?”

“You can bring him more clothes, blankets, write him letters, anything. We can leave it for him just like the food. And in two days this will be over.”

Charles nodded slowly. Doc released his arm, patted him lightly on the shoulder.

“All right,” Charles said, hoping to signal that he was as clearheaded as ever. “I just wish we knew more about who that man is.”

“Philip!” Doc Banes’s voice coming from outside broke the calm in the dark building.

Philip turned his head, and the soldier opened his eyes. They’d been sitting in silence for longer than either of them knew.

“Are you in there?” Banes yelled before Philip could reply. “Don’t come out!”

“I’m here!” Philip walked toward the closed door.

“Are you all right?”

He was scared and overwhelmed with guilt, but he tried not to let it show. “It’s a little dark, but we’re fine!”

“Who’ve you got there with you?” Banes asked.

A good question, Philip realized. Before he could ask, the soldier spoke up, hollering through the thick door and into the night beyond:

“Private Frank Summers!”

There was silence for a few seconds. Then Banes’s voice returned:

“You’re a long way from your base, Private.”

“There was an accident—our ship sank off the coast. I was just hoping for some food and shelter for the night while I made my way back to Fort Jenkins.”

More silence. Philip wondered who was out there with the doctor and what they were talking about.

Finally, Banes told Philip they would soon bring food. He explained the system and mentioned that someone would be stationed outside.

“Everything make sense to you, Philip?” Charles asked.

That’s the same thing he says after explaining an accounting method to me, Philip thought. The same thing he says after running through the way we get the timber from here to the buyers or how one of those enormous machines works.
Everything make sense to you, Philip?
And no, absolutely none of this made any sense.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be back soon,” Charles hollered.

“All right.” Philip didn’t know what else to say. He felt he should apologize to his father, but he knew this wasn’t the time for such a conversation, and he didn’t want to look weak by acting scared in front of Private Frank Summers. He was grateful that Doc Banes and his father hadn’t asked how the soldier had gotten in, grateful that he didn’t have to shout out—for both the soldier and his father to hear—the details of his failure. But he knew this imprisonment was a sort of punishment, even if not deliberately so, for letting the soldier into town.

“Looks like I got you in trouble,” the soldier said.

Philip glared at him, though the darkness had shrouded his face. He walked toward the soldier’s voice. “You got what you wanted.”

“I’m sorry it’s landed you here, too,” the soldier said. By then Philip was close enough to see that he had a slight smile on his lips, a macabre appreciation for the bizarre situation. “But like I said, this is an awfully friendly town you’ve got.”

“This town is feeding you for the next two days,” Philip reminded him, sitting down on the floor with his back against the wall.

The soldier yawned.

“Why couldn’t you have just contacted your base or something?” Philip didn’t mean to sound as whiny as he did. “Couldn’t they have come to help you?”

“Now you’re giving me soldiering advice? If you know so much about how the army works, why aren’t you in uniform?”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Thought you were a little young. And what’s with that limp? You got a clubfoot or something?”

Philip glared at him. Then he reached forward and, with a tightly clenched fist, rapped twice on his right boot. The deep wooden sound filled the air between them.

The soldier shifted his eyebrows a bit and nodded. “Well, since you don’t seem to be in a very conversational mood, maybe I’ll just nod off till they come by with our supper.” He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall behind him. “Don’t forget to wake me.”

The soldier seemed to be enjoying this—after all, it beat sleeping out in the woods and starving—but for Philip, it was the worst imaginable scenario. He had been entrusted with protecting the town, yet he had done the exact opposite. He had failed miserably.

Philip folded his arms. He felt tears well up in his eyes at the sudden feeling of abandonment, but he fought them back, not wanting the soldier to see or hear. He tried to think of some solution to his new problem, but nothing was forthcoming. He retraced his steps, trying to pinpoint where he’d made his mistake.

The soldier started snoring.