After the Fall Read online

  Just a little farther. Just a few more miles.

  Rule Number Two: Keep to Yourself.

  Just the short truth. No need for the long. Nothing there but pain.

  Don’t Get Involved makes the trifecta, and together these three rules are my guide, my conscience, and the only God I have use for anymore. Besides Mugsy, my rules are the only things I can count on as the flatbed comes to a stop in front of a large white farmhouse at the top of a hill half a mile inside the gates of Burninghead Farm.

  The old farmhouse looks like something out of Anne of Green Gables. The television version of my childhood, anyway. Two stories high, wrap-around porch with antique-looking wicker chairs, green paint clinging to worn storm shutters. Although it has seen better days, in its own way, the house is majestic.

  The truck doors protest on their hinges, and three sets of boots drop to the gravel. The flatbed lurches slightly as my traveling companions from the back follow suit. I sigh. I would rather pass the time looking at that old house than face what I am sure will be something akin to a suspicious, though hopefully not too angry, mob gathering in the town square.

  Sure enough, a crowd is already gathering around the flatbed. No torches or pitchforks, though there are a large number of shovels accompanying the men jumping out of the back of the brown Chevy pickup that has just pulled up. I count about twenty in the crowd, including those I arrive with, but more are coming. Old ones, young ones, men, a few women…I wonder how many people are on this farm.

  Most of the newcomers eye me with the aforementioned suspicion and maybe a little interest, but not with open hostility. The murmuring begins, whispered questions and too few answers. Everyone’s looking at me. I feel like I should tap dance or juggle or something. Maybe I can sprout a second head for the crowd. Maybe I already have. I don’t like being the star of the freak show, but I understand it. Anyone who doesn’t meet a stranger with some degree of interest or apprehension is either short a few brain cells or a good actor.

  No, what has my skin tingling and my right hand twitching at my side, itching to reach over my shoulder and withdraw Mugsy from her cocoon, are the three sets of eyes watching me from the back of the crowd, narrow and dangerous. More than watch me, they study me, sizing me up like prey in a springtime meadow. I am exposed, too out in the open. I want to bolt.

  “Now quiet down, quiet down,” Buck says. He waves his hands down, and the crowd falls silent.

  “This here’s Taylor,” he says, laying a beefy hand on my shoulder. Funny how it doesn’t spook me. “She’s gonna be staying with us for a time, and I expect y’all to make her feel welcome.”

  I want to point out that “a time” is likely to be just one night, maybe two, but I keep my mouth shut.

  The world grows silent for a moment. Then the questions come.

  “How long?”

  “Where’s she from?”

  “What’s she doin’ here?”

  Buck smiles reassuringly and raises his voice above the din.

  “You can get those answers yourselves later, if she feels like giving ’em. You know the rules here. Anyone is welcome, as long as they don’t mean us any harm. Everyone’s entitled to their privacy. Everyone pitches in.”

  Heads bob up and down. They have been through this before.

  “For now, just know that I believe Taylor here means us no harm, all right? I give you the same guarantee that I’ve given you every time I’ve brought someone new to this place, and that is there are no guarantees. But I trust my gut, and I ask you to do the same.”

  The crowd seems to come to a kind of universal agreement, maybe not about me, but certainly about Buck. They’ve trusted Buck before. They will trust him again.

  If I could still be moved by such displays, I might grow teary. Weepy, even. You don’t often find this kind of faith in anything anymore, let alone in one man’s intuition. But blind faith, I have learned, is easily corrupted, and therefore cannot be trusted. All I can trust is what I can see right in front of me, which right now is a siren blaring out a warning about the eyes in the back of the crowd still stalking me, and the set of the jaws of the men those eyes belong to.

  Chapter Four

  Duncan listened to the chatter die down around him as Buck started to speak. He had been pretty quiet since he and his crew had arrived up at the house. Everyone was focused on the new girl, though Duncan supposed she was not really a girl. She looked to be around thirty, though he knew she could be late- or even mid-twenties. Everyone looked older than they really were these days, and this girl—woman—gave off a sense that she had been through enough to make her appear twice her age.

  Although he heard the chatter around him, Duncan tuned it out, as he usually did. He learned early on that whenever Buck would bring someone new to the farm, people would whisper and wonder and worry, indulging in idle speculation and pure fantasy until Buck gave his speech, the same one he was giving now. Besides, Duncan liked to make up his own mind about things, especially about people.

  Taylor. That was what Buck had called her.

  She was kind of pretty, Duncan thought, though in a hard, almost impenetrable way. The first thing he noticed were her eyes. They were the same silty brown as a river after a rainstorm. They were also small, though not narrow, and yet they seemed big and bold when they made contact with Duncan’s briefly but forcefully, and he held his breath as her X-ray eyes scanned him, assessing what lay beneath his skin before moving on to the next person.

  Her eyes were commanding. Yet despite their power, there was an emptiness there, a haunted hollowness born of pain and sorrow. Duncan had seen the look before. They all carried a little of it now, like the sheer weight of their grief had sunk a hole in their souls, and Duncan wondered sometimes if those sinkholes would ever be able to be filled. But Taylor’s hollow seemed far deeper than that of any of the others on the farm, like she was not just grieving for the people she had lost. Duncan wondered what horrors she had experienced out there on the road to make her seem so broken.

  Duncan continued to make mental notes about her. Her hair was light brown, tucked back behind her ears in such a way that Duncan knew it would fall just a bit below her earlobes if it was let loose. It was also streaked with gray, which made him revise his earlier age estimate a little farther north. She wore a faded red Henley shirt and blue jeans that seemed to be falling off her. At what Duncan guessed to be five foot seven or eight, she was not a tiny girl, but she seemed fit and, well, shapely. He could not help but notice Taylor’s breasts. Duncan felt the blood rising in his cheeks and shifted his gaze back up to her face.

  For some reason Duncan kept being drawn back to her eyes, maybe because they told him about where she had been and where she was heading. Duncan wondered if Taylor knew her eyes told so much to someone who really looked. He somehow thought she would be surprised to find out, and maybe even angry.

  That was when he finally noticed the scar beneath her left eye—a couple of inches long, shaped like a crescent moon, about an inch beneath her eye. It did not look like a surgical scar, it was not clean enough for that, though it was not exactly ragged, either. Knife scar? Duncan wondered. No, that was not right.

  Duncan shrugged off the questions in his mind, dismissing them for a later time. He did not know why, but he thought he was going to like Taylor.

  Chapter Five

  “Okay now. Go on and get back to whatever it was y’all were doing,” Buck says. “I’ll see y’all later tonight for chow.”

  The people of Burninghead Farm cheer and clap enthusiastically. I flash back to some old black-and-white movie I’d seen, where the unsuspecting adventurers smile gratefully as they’re happily welcomed to dinner by the primitive tribesmen, only to find out they are meant to be the main course.

  My brain really does go to some extreme places on occasion. When I was a kid, my dad took me to see E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. For weeks afterward, I was convinced E.T. was hiding out at the neighbor boy’s house,
all because the kid had a bag of Reese’s Pieces on the playground at recess. I was also convinced that my uncle was one of the Bee Gees. I was crushed when I found out he wasn’t. I was eighteen.

  Nowadays, I’ll be walking along and stumble across a shoe or a Twinkie wrapper or a body, and my mind will flash back to some memory about learning to tie my shoelaces or eating Twinkies on a swing set or my mom laying in a casket, and I get lost. I get so lost sometimes, I can’t tell what’s real or what’s just in my head. I often like what’s in my head better. But not always.

  When I finally shake myself back to the real world, I wonder if I have perhaps gone just a touch crazy. Then I tell myself that not going at least a little crazy after the plague would be totally insane, which makes me feel better.

  The crowd disperses, people heading off in seemingly random directions, a few moving to unload the flatbed. Except for my three hunters in the back. They wait, still watching, making me wish I had the power to turn invisible at will.

  I remember as a kid doing things I shouldn’t have just to make a point, even if by making the point I got myself into more trouble. Simple things, like taking a cookie before dinner after mom told me I couldn’t have one, or staying out past curfew after dad threatened to ground me for being late the night before, or mouthing off to a teacher when my head was screaming at me to just keep my mouth shut. I always knew not to do it but often found myself doing it anyway.

  So now, watching these three men watch me, I feel myself slipping down one of those childhood rabbit holes and unable to stop the fall. Their beady eyes and incessant stares are more than I can take.

  I raise my head, directly challenging their collective gaze with my own. My chin juts out, and my jaw becomes a vise. I stand taller. My hands clench. I am the levee against the hurricane, and I will not be breached.

  The man on the left and the man on the right both turn their heads toward their friend in the middle, awaiting his response. He is average in height but above average in build, with forearms bulging from beneath his rolled-up flannel shirt sleeves. His upper arms are like tree trunks, his hands meaty mitts. He has what I imagine could pass for a handsome face, if it wasn’t so hard and pinched. Or if I went for that sort of thing. The guy reminds me of every evil drill instructor in every bad military movie ever made, though I fear there is more to him than that.

  I wait, as his buddies do, for his reaction. When it finally comes, it is frighteningly familiar and chills me as if I am locked in a walk-in freezer in nothing but my bra and panties. The right corner of his mouth slides up into a cruel smirk. His teeth glint at me, evil diamonds refracting the sunlight. His pals each turn back toward me. I can feel the change. They sought an answer, and it was given by their leader. I worry what the question was.

  A gentle hand on my shoulder distracts me for a moment.

  “You okay?” Buck asks. I glance at him quickly. I’d forgotten he was even there.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say as smoothly as I can, my focus shifting back to my bigger concern. I let out a short rush of air as instead of those eagle eyes hunting me down, all I find is their backs staring at me as they walk away.

  Relieved, I am finally able to focus on someone else. Buck. And the woman who has just walked up next to him.

  “Hey there, Buck,” she says, wrapping her arms around him with obvious affection.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Buck answers, embracing the woman like a father would his daughter.

  For a moment I wonder if they are related, but then she turns her attention to me, and the thought dissolves as I get caught up in her eyes. They are the color of warm chocolate, with flecks of amber sparkling deep within. They are kind, open with compassion and gentle with wisdom. Yet there is a power in them, an intense strength that pierces right to the heart of things. I suck in a deep lungful of air, trying to calm my racing heart. Her openness unnerves me, yet I can’t seem to turn away.

  “Taylor, this is Kate,” Buck says, his voice yanking me out of my introspection. “Kate, meet Taylor. She’s been traveling for quite some time, heading home. She’ll be staying with us for…well, for as long as she likes.”

  That last bit he adds with a smile and a wink in my direction, like he figures I think I’ll be gone after a day or two but that he knows better.

  Not likely, old man. But thanks for playing.

  “Nice to meet you,” Kate says, giving me a warm smile. She can’t be more than twenty-six or twenty-seven, yet she holds herself with the confidence of a woman twice her age.

  She reaches out to shake my hand. Her fingers glide across my palm, smooth and soft. I wish I had washed my hands. Something so perfect should never be touched by someone so unclean. Her eyes hold mine intimately, her head tilting to the side, as if something is telling her she should recognize me from some time long since past, but she cannot quite put her finger on the where or the when. I feel it, too.

  “What do you say to the nickel tour of the place, Taylor?” he asks, smiling genuinely. “Kate, you mind?”

  “Not at all,” Kate says. I have to remind myself to breathe.

  I have to say, I am impressed. Except I don’t say it. I swallow the words and forget I had ever thought them. But the truth is I am astounded by what these people have built.

  Over the last hour we covered a lot of ground, most of it by pickup, though as I understand it from Kate, we barely skimmed the surface. From my vantage point near the south gate, Burninghead Farm sprawls north as far as the eye can see. I am glad this wasn’t a walking tour.

  Fields of crops spread out before me in various stages of growth. Horses and cows graze in a large pasture on the western end of the farm, oblivious to my scrutiny. The farmhouse which I’d first arrived in front of is little more than a doll house on the horizon, standing watch over the farm and its occupants. A picturesque barn stands near the western pasture and houses the farm’s livestock. Two other large barns, if you could call them that, lie to the north and east, aluminum-sided monstrosities painted brick-red to match the barn.

  One building serves as a makeshift cafeteria and meeting hall for the farm’s residents. The other had been converted to act as a dormitory, currently holding forty-seven souls who now call Burninghead Farm home. Kate tells me that they have come from all over, many local, some from hundreds of miles away, all in need of a new home. A new family. Children, grandparents, men, women, couples, and singles. It is Noah’s Ark come to Indiana, ensuring the human race will go on.

  We park next to a large oak that looks like it has seen more than its fair share of hard winters. The oak rests atop a large hill, a rise not unlike many others that roll across the property.

  “Pretty soon, we won’t be using this gate anymore,” Kate says, stepping out of the truck, pointing down the hill at the rusted iron gate that stands closed. I follow, landing in the soft earth with a muted thud, savoring the light breeze that kicked up not long ago. “Once the new wall is in, there will only be one entrance to the farm.”

  I don’t ask why they are building a wall around the entire property. I don’t need to.

  Kate takes a few steps then stops, scanning the sky. She closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. “Rain’ll be coming in soon.”

  I’m sure the look I give her is somewhere between Huh? and Let me just get your measurements for your new white coat with the long, funny arms. There isn’t a single cloud in the sky.

  She lets out a low laugh. It’s a wondrous sound. “No, I’m not crazy,” she says. “After a while, you just kind of know these things.”

  I’m still eyeing her a bit funny, not entirely sure she’s in her right mind. Then again, who am I to talk?

  “I grew up on a farm, not all that far from here. Trust me, we’re going to have rain. Later tonight, after dinner.”

  I decide to change the subject. “So people seemed pretty enthused about dinner. Must be some good cooking.”

  She laughs again, and I wonder how suddenly a simple laugh can make me feel li
ke I’m sitting at an outdoor café sipping a latte rather than standing on a hill in the middle of nowhere after the end of the world.

  “The food is pretty good, and we’re lucky to have it. The farm provides most everything we need. But no, I don’t think it’s the cooking.”

  “Then what?”

  She doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she walks a little farther, a little higher into the late afternoon air.

  “The plague took too much, from all of us. But we’re here. We survived, and we work hard all week, just trying to keep surviving. There are always chores to do, crops to tend, animals to care for, fences to build. Another task to complete if we want to stay alive. But the fact that we survived, that we’re still here when billions aren’t, is worth celebrating. So once a week, on Saturday night, we have a party. We gather in the north barn, we eat, we laugh, we play music, we dance, and we try and remember the joy in a world steeped in misery.”

  I wonder about the wastefulness of it, about how they can possibly think they will be able to sustain themselves if they use up their resources so indiscriminately. But then I notice how the sun is beginning to sink in the western sky, and how the first tendrils of evening creep across the landscape. Everything begins to soften as the light exchanges harsh yellow for a golden glow. My eyes flutter closed. My skin drinks in the gentle light of the setting sun, the whoosh of the breeze fills my ears. It is peaceful, this moment. It reminds me of home.

  Home.

  I curse myself for having let myself get caught up in the moment.

  Left. Right. Left. Just a little farther. Just a few more miles.

  I won’t be here long enough to care whether these people waste away their survival.

  Damn, I am tired.

  Seeming to sense the shift in my mood, Kate starts walking back toward the truck. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go get you settled in.”

  The joyous laughter of children trickles in through the truck’s windows as we approach the two barns on the northeast end of the farm. The sound surprises me. I can only remember hearing prolonged laughter once since leaving Washington, and it had been neither joyous nor childlike. It had been cruel and mocking, with a hint of rage and a thread of desperation. This, though, is none of those things. This is cotton candy melting on your tongue and sticking to your chin. This is twirling in a field, your arms spread like wings as you spin round and round with your face turned up to the crystal blue sky.