Antioch

  Drake couldn’t stand the guilt so he tried to put it on her. “Are you just going to shoot me when I’m mopping, or wait until after?” His sniffling softened the question’s aggression but the blame was still there.

  She did not respond. Before becoming a plague-ship’s executioner, Andalynn had been a lawyer and a politician. She had a modified notion of guilt. It suddenly occurred to her that she tended to assume rather reviled responsibilities in society. A tiny laugh died in her chest before it could get out.

  Drake waited through her silence and then said, “Why don’t you ever let anybody say goodbye?”

  Grieving lovers and friends of the dead always attacked her with that question. She had once replied that unless someone else was willing to pull the trigger they should all be silent and stand aside. But, this time was different. She wanted to talk for a little while.

  She said, “There is not a good way to do it, other than quickly. We do not know how long it takes for the infection to begin producing smoke. That must be avoided at all costs. Immediate disposal must be our only consideration within the time we are allowed. Of course, I am saying this while deviating from the System myself.” At least he is not coughing.

  The rail dug into her arm. Andalynn shifted for comfort and Drake tensed. He thought she had talked herself out of allowing him to clean the deck and that she was reaching for her pistol. He didn’t know she was procrastinating, that she needed a few more minutes as well.

  He trembled, expecting her to draw and fire at any moment. “I… I don’t think I have the rot. I got better.”

  “I saw you rubbing your eyes in the smoke. No one gets better. I do not blame you. Most of us would say anything for a little more time.”

  “My eyes aren’t burning…” Drake’s eyes were swollen and red and filled with tears, but he hadn’t been rubbing them. Andalynn studied him. It should have been difficult for him to keep his hands away from his eyes. She had ground her palms into her sockets when it had happened to her. It was curious.

  She pushed away from the rail. Drake cringed. His only hope then was that the bullet wouldn’t hurt. She said, “I will return momentarily to assist you with the disinfection,” and started walking away to the deckhouse. “Put your goggles on.”

  Drake almost asked why. They wouldn’t help if he already had the rot. Then he shoved his hand into his pocket for those uncomfortable goggles like his life suddenly depended on them.

  The deckhouse was a low rectangular room, fifty feet deep and thirty feet wide, contoured by small, porthole windows and built around the center mast like a tree house on the ground. Every one of the seventy five sailors inside was wearing a mask. They watched through the windows as Andalynn talked to Drake. They surrounded her when she entered.

  Biggs was worried. “What’s go’n on with the kid?” He’d sent Drake to do the milking.

  Andalynn said, “He may be infected. It is strange, though…”

  Bo pushed toward her in an intimidating respirator, a modified goalie’s mask. “What do you mean he may be infected? I thought you knew if someone was infected or not! How can you wait for that jerk kid when you didn’t wait for my Sue!?”

  Andalynn backed away from him. She touched her pistol but then took her hand away, not wanting draw it in the crowded deckhouse. With her back against the wall, she braced herself. Bo was about to give her a beating. She was not going to ask for mercy, partially desiring the freedom that came from punishment.

  Ditch darted in between them before that happened. He put a stiff palm in Bo’s chest and said, “Hey! Cool off, man. I’m a’ mess you up!”

  Bo, a foot and a half taller and much thicker, said, “You bald little bastard! Get out of my way!” He grabbed Ditch by the jacket to throw him aside. It was as though he’d pushed the button on a machine. Ditch’s hips twisted and he fired a hard knee from the torque into the larger man’s groin. That would have been enough to put Bo on the floor. Ditch held him up and hit him with two more, just to make sure.

  Bo dropped into groaning spasms. “Aaarrgh, you little… Aaah! I hate! Yeuuh!” He tried to fight his body’s response to the strikes, tried to get to his feet. Then he threw up in his mask.

  Ditch stood over him, ready to hit him again. “Man, every day with you! I’m sick a’ this! We all lost people! This is what we got now! I don’t wanna say, like, get over it, or whatever, you know, but, come on! Get over it!”

  Everyone stood back and kept their opinions to themselves. Ditch made it clear early on that anyone who started a fight on the boat was starting a fight with him. He’d kicked more than one groin, had broken a man’s fingers and once poked a guy in the eye during a nasty scuffle in a cabin. They’d all become wary of his dirty justice.

  When it was clear Bo couldn’t get up, his friends came over to help. They would take him back to one of their rooms, where they could uncover their faces and breathe, where they could curse Andalynn, Ditch and all of the other monsters and draw comfort from one another’s company. Vomit leaked out of Bo’s mask as they carried him away.

  Andalynn composed herself and walked past Ditch to where Captain sat.

  Ditch straightened his jacket. “You’re welcome!”

  She heard him but didn’t turn around.

  ***

  Outside, Drake was hard at work with a mop and a bucket of bleach. Andalynn had never given anyone a second chance before. Since he still wasn’t feeling the smoke, he was starting to hope.

  He found Fritz’ mask and picked it up, wondering what to do with it. It was a valuable piece of equipment, probably the best respirator on the ship, but it could’ve been contaminated. He looked around to see if anyone was watching. The grumbling huddle of Bo and friends emerged from the deckhouse, stared at Drake for a moment and then went out of sight around the corner.

  Drake, when uncertain if something had been exposed to the smoke, often relied on the two second rule. He understood the rule didn’t work but, unless staring into the chute, he rarely considered the consequences of a risk. Also, if more than two seconds had gone by, he would sometimes use the rule’s general invalidity as an argument against it. Since the two second rule didn’t work, it didn’t matter if he broke it. He brushed Fritz’ mask off with his fingers and then exchanged it for his scarf and goggles.

  Andalynn did not return to help. At first, she had been too busy, defending herself against the crew’s criticism. Bo’s outburst encouraged others to scrutinize her judgment. If she’d been ready to fire on Drake, but he’d convinced her to let him live, how many others might still be alive if only they’d been more persuasive? She told and retold the facts but had no explanation for why Drake wasn’t showing signs of the rot. Then, after realizing how long she had been inside, she simply watched Drake through a porthole along with everyone else, like he was a firecracker with a lit fuse.

  “Goober’s got Fritz’ mask…”

  “I told you. He’s a jackass!”

  “Unprecedented.”

  The sun set five hours after the incident. Drake was fine, other than being cold, alone and nervous in the dark. He complained at the deckhouse door. “Hey, I don’t have it. Can you guys hear me? I’m clean. Let me in!” The mask muffled his speech into honking gibberish. “Wung, mugunga mug. Gunna gung wumma? Wum gum. Wug munnung!”

  They finally opened the door. Everyone backed away as he entered. Andalynn pointed at the mask and said, “Take it off.” He did as he was told - foomp. She prodded and opened his face with her fingers like she was judging a dog in a contest. Confounded, she said, “I do not understand this. How are you not infected?”

  Drake said, “I got milk in my eyes.”

  She clipped out a, “What?”

  “I think, I was thinking about it, and I got milk in my eyes.”

  “Preposterous. Speak clearly.”

  “No, I mean I was thinking about it while I was out there cleaning. I was milking the goat when it happened. When the smoke got in my eyes, I rubbed milk
into them by accident.” Gasps and murmurs ran the depth of the deckhouse.

  Andalynn drew back and turned to Captain. He was smoking his pipe again. It irritated her, but even when inebriated, which was often, Captain’s education was impossibly deep. She said, “What do you think of that?”

  Captain said, “It’s interesting…” Everyone quieted to listen. He nodded thoughtfully and nursed his pipe. “It is. It reminds me, I’d an acquaintance once, long ago, an oenologist.” He smiled inside of his wispy, egg-like cocoon, savoring the memory of a woman and her wine. Then he smacked his lips and continued. “She used milk as a fungicide. Mixed it with water and brushed it on the vines to treat them for powdery mildew.” Captain tapped himself on the gauze over his nose. “The smoke might be a species of mold, or its spore, to be true.”

  Ditch said, “Holy crap! That’s big, right? That’s like, really important! Isn’t it?” The possibility of having discovered a cure for the rot staggered everyone, even more so because the cure was so simple. Some sailors patted Drake on the back while others stood staring, vacantly declaring how much milk they were going to use.

  “The whole rest of the way, I’m sittin’ butt-naked in a bowl of it.”

  Biggs, however, rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. He was more familiar with what little livestock they had aboard. “Problem is, only got us the one milker. Right now she’s good for six, seven pounds a day. No tellin’ how long that’ll last.” His statement sobered the burgeoning enthusiasm. Still, one milker was better than nothing.

  Drake said, “Biggs… um, Eustace jumped off the boat.”

  Biggs was slow to respond. “Aw, no, Eustace?” Then his frustration and resignation came out with a shake of his head and a gentle sigh. “Goober…” Drake put the gas mask back on to hide while everyone else deduced the identity of Eustace.

  Captain said, “Have I gathered that our one milker had a man’s name and that she’s no longer with us?”

  Biggs said, “Yup.” The room deflated.

  Ditch said, “Man, should a’ got us some more goats. It’s too bad we didn’t know, you know. It’s like, too bad everybody didn’t know.” It was a cold, emptying idea, that the cure had been there all along and that the world could have survived.

  Andalynn gritted her teeth. “We need more goats.” She turned to Captain. “Take us to land.” Drake’s discovery was forgotten in a surge of protests. Closer to shore meant closer to the smoke and that was unacceptable. Andalynn became frustrated with them, threw her arms out and shouted, “We shall find no goats at sea!”

  Interested, Captain began ruminating aloud. “Mmm, we’d lose weeks to do it, and expose ourselves even more along the way. All without knowing whether it’s worth it or not, whether it really works.” The room stopped bickering to listen. Noticing their attention, Captain said, “At least, I can’t think of an acceptable test, that is. Unless we’ve a volunteer to lick the chute...” He looked around. There was not a volunteer for that. “No? Well, I doubt we’ve any milk left anyway.”

  Andalynn announced her argument like she was in a courtroom. “We are presented with risk in either scenario. Since we are dying, we must consider the amount of time involved in each of our options. How long before we can expect to reach this Meroe?”

  Captain said, “Months, most of a year, if Zeke’s points are right, not knowing what other troubles we’ll have. We’re bound for uncharted waters. We’ve only just begun.”

  She then charged through the more peculiar particulars. “How long before we could reach a place that might have goats or sheep or some other sort of lactating beast?”

  Captain snickered and drifted off on the effect of his pipe. His first mate was a cold-blooded killer but she was also an invaluable member of their improvised crew. There were a hundred of them left and there’d have been less or none without her. Thanks for that at least, Ezekiel.

  When he remembered he was in conversation, Captain came back in good humor. He smiled, imagining the impatient frown waiting for him under the face of death. “We’ve been following the continent, roughly. My guess on that, as I’ve said already, would be weeks. Aye, indeed, not a bad gamble, maybe,” and he winked at her, though she couldn’t have seen it.

  Andalynn used his faint approval to challenge the room. “Who here is willing to come ashore with me?”

  There was mumbling and grumbling and some mentions of, “Nobody,” under their breath. Not one of them considered going ashore with Andalynn to be any better than licking the chute.

  Ditch said, “That’s nuts.”

  Andalynn was about to say that if she had survived on open land for twelve days, they could do so long enough to raid an abandoned ranch for livestock. She needed to convince them it could be done. But, before she’d begun, Biggs came forward and said, “Yeah, me.”

  It surprised her. Biggs brooded lonesome days away with the ship’s animals and was not one to speak out often. She did not expect much out of him but welcomed the support. If nothing else, he could hold the bag. She said, “Are you able to use a rifle?”

  He shrugged. “Some.”

  19 Michael’s Wall

  Michael was asleep and dreaming of a memory. It was from twenty years into his past, a day in the forest with Gabriel and John. The two younger men, slim and unscarred, wore blank acolyte’s tabards. Michael’s covered the plain brown and white of the fellowship. Gabriel had a brilliant, cerulean blue shirt, the fashion of Meroe, under his.

  John’s hair was a bit thicker on the top and there was black in its iron gray but he would otherwise change little over time. He’d worn a paladin’s habit for fifteen years by then and was well known in Antioch.

  John said, “You’re going to be strong, boys. That’s dangerous without discipline. Look here.” He patted a tall pine, ten inches thick through the trunk. “What do you think would happen if I struck this tree with my fist? As hard as I could.”

  Michael said, “You would knock it down.” He thought John could do anything.

  Gabriel scoffed under his breath, “I’d like to see him try.”

  John laughed. “No! I’d break every bone in my hand, that’s what would happen. Not to mention the hand would glue itself back together in a mess. Oh, no, this tree is much tougher than I am.” John drew his caligan. “I could hurt myself in striking such a formidable thing, even with this. A bad swing could shatter my wrists. The strength you’ll have is a danger to you. It’s difficult to control. It takes discipline, practice and technique to use it on your enemies instead of yourself.”

  John winked, turned and swung through the pine. Michael would never forget the sound of it - whock - a deep, rich expression of destruction, compressed into an instant. The heavy tree slipped from its diagonal stump, punched the earth with a tremor and then leaned into its neighbors’ branches, raining needles.

  Gabriel shrugged. “Not bad.”

  Michael said, “Not bad? That was more impressive than Abraham’s sleeping beetle.”

  “Shame about the tree.”

  “Pines are a nuisance.”

  John said, “Watch your heads, boys!” and tossed some burlap sacks at them. “Look at all the pine cones! The discipline it takes to fell a tree like that in one stroke starts with smaller tasks, like, oh, say, collecting and shelling pine nuts for our dinner! Hop to it.” John lectured them while they gathered and the two students carried on a private conversation in whispers.

  Gabriel said, “The beetle was only a demonstration. You don’t need to be a sword master if your enemy is unconscious.”

  Michael’s chin pulled into his throat. “God’s mercy, how dishonorable.”

  “Really? Do devils deserve such regard?”

  “Well, perhaps not, but honor isn’t for others. It’s for the self.”

  Gabriel said, “And you question Abraham’s?”

  Michael drew back. “No! No, of course not. That’s not what I meant. You’re always putting words into my mouth and trying to get at me. St
op it.”

  Gabriel smirked. “Well, at the risk of being honorable, I have to tell you something else you might not have considered. There’s little hope of becoming templar as John’s acolyte. You might want to reconsider your opinion of Abraham while you still can. Ordination isn’t so far away for us now. I’d hate to take unfair advantage of a humble coffee beaner like yourself.”

  Michael frowned. “I don’t care about that. And don’t call me a beaner.”

  Gabriel smiled broadly. “You don’t care about that right now.” Then he vanished.

  John’s lecture was coming from farther away. “…because you don’t want to make the same mistake I did. Remember my finger! Assume you’ll only have the time for one strike. Make it your best...” Michael looked around but couldn’t find John. “…and put it through the middle.” Then John’s voice was gone as well. The chill forest was empty. It didn’t seem right. Michael wasn’t supposed to be alone…

  …and he wasn’t. He was lying on his mat on the cold, stone floor of the church. There had been a small noise or a brush of air or a smell, nothing identifiable, only enough to tell his body that something was in the room with him and to wake him with a pinch of fear.

  Then, anger. Michael opened the way and sat up, ready to destroy whatever had dared to molest him in his sleep. He didn’t need his sword - he didn’t want it! He could snap a bauran’s spine with his bare hands.

  Sunlight and cold air were rushing in from outside. The door was open. Edward sat on the next mat, beaming.

  Michael ceased channeling and frowned at him. “Edward! Be careful! You startled me. I might have harmed you.”

  “But, you told me to meet you here this morning.”

  “I didn’t tell you to hang over me in my sleep like a devil, though! Did I?”

  Edward flinched. The sight of him made Michael even angrier. Michael rose to one knee and put his hand over his face, trying to understand why his urge to beat something to death wasn’t going away. He needed to clear his mind.

  Edward’s smile crept back as he watched Michael meditate. That was going to be him. He was going to be a knight of the church too! Just like Michael. Unable to contain his enthusiasm, he said, “When do we start?”