Parable of the Sower (17 page)

“When my family is back on its feet, we’ll marry,” I said. “Then we can get out of here. I just have to know that my brothers will be all right.”

“If we’re going to marry anyway, why not do it now?”

Because I have things to tell you, I thought. Because if you reject me or make me reject you with your reactions, I don’t want to have to hang around and watch you with someone else.

“Not now,” I said. “Wait for me.”

He shook his head in obvious disgust. “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing?”

T
HURSDAY
, D
ECEMBER
24, 2026

It’s Christmas Eve.

Last night someone set fire to the Payne-Parrish house. While the community tried to put out the fire, and then tried to keep it from spreading, three other houses were robbed. Ours was one of the three:

Thieves took all our store-bought food: wheat flour, sugar, canned goods, packaged goods… They took our radio—our last one. The crazy thing is, before we went to bed we had been listening to a half-hour news feature about increasing arson. People are setting more fires to cover crimes—although why they would bother these days, I don’t know. The police are no threat to criminals. People are setting fires to do what our arsonist did last night—to get the neighbors of the arson victim to leave their own homes unguarded. People are setting fires to get rid of whomever they dislike from personal enemies to anyone who looks or sounds foreign or racially different. People are setting fires because they’re frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.

Then there’s that fire drug with it’s dozen or so names: Blaze, fuego, flash, sunfire… The most popular name is pyro—short for pyromania. It’s all the same drug, and it’s been around for a while. From what Keith said, it’s becoming more popular. It makes watching the leaping, changing patterns of fire a better, more intense, longer-lasting high than sex. Like Paracetco, my biological mother’s drug of choice, pyro screws around with people’s neurochemistry. But Paracetco began as a legitimate drug intended to help victims of Alzheimer’s disease. Pyro was an accident. It was a homebrew—a basement drug invented by someone who was trying to assemble one of the other higher-priced street drugs. The inventor made a very small chemical mistake, and wound up with pyro. That happened on the east coast and caused an immediate increase in the number of senseless arson fires, large and small.

Pyro worked its way west without making nearly as much trouble as it could have. Now its popularity is growing. And in dry-as-straw Southern California, it can cause a real orgy of burning.

“My God,” Cory said when the radio report was over. And in a small, whispery voice, she quoted from the Book of Revelation: “‘Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils…’”

And the devils set fire to the Payne-Parrish house.

At about two
A.M.
I woke to the jangling of the bell: Emergency! Earthquake? Fire? Intruders?

But there was no shaking, no unfamiliar noise, no smoke. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t at our house. I got up, threw clothing on, debated for a second whether to snatch my survival pack, then left it. Our house didn’t seem to be in immediate danger. My pack was safe in the closet, mixed in among blankets and bundles of old clothes. If I had to have it, I could come back and snatch it in seconds.

I ran outside to see what was needed, and saw at once. The Payne-Parrish house was fully involved, surrounded by fire. One of the watchers on duty was still sounding the alarm. People spilled from all the houses, and must have seen as I did that the Parrish house was a total loss. Neighbors were already wetting down the houses on either side. A live oak tree—one of our huge, ancient ones—was afire. There was a light wind blowing, swirling bits of burning leaves and twigs into the air and scattering them. I joined the people who were beating and wetting the grounds.

Where were the Paynes? Where was Wardell Parrish? Had anyone called the fire department? A house full of people, after all, it wasn’t like a burning garage.

I asked several people. Kayla Talcott said she had called them. I was grateful and ashamed. I wouldn’t have asked if Dad were still with us. One of us would have just called. Now we couldn’t afford to call.

No one had seen any of the Paynes. Wardell Parrish I found in the Yannis yard where Cory and my brother Bennett were wrapping him in a blanket. He was coughing so much that he couldn’t talk, and wearing only pajama pants.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“He breathed a lot of smoke,” Cory said. “Has someone called—”

“Kayla Talcott called the fire department.”

“Good. But no one’s at the gate to let them in.”

“I’ll go.” I turned away, but she caught my arm.

“The others?” she whispered. She meant the Paynes, of course.

“I don’t know.”

She nodded and let me go.

I went to the gate, borrowing Alex Montoya’s key on the way. He always seemed to have his gate key in his pocket. It was because of him that I didn’t go back into our house and maybe interrupt a robbery and be killed for my trouble.

Firefighters arrived in no great hurry. I let them in, locked the gate after them, and watched as they put out the fire.

No one had seen the Paynes. We could only assume they had never gotten out. Cory tried to take Wardell Parrish to our house, but he refused to leave until he found out one way or the other about his twin sister and his nieces and nephews.

When the fire was almost out, the bell began to ring again. We all looked around. Caroline Baiter, Harry’s mother, was jerking and pushing at the bell and screaming.

“Intruders!” she shouted. “Thieves! They’ve broken into the houses!”

And we all rushed without thinking back to our houses. Wardell Parrish came along with my family, still coughing, and wheezing, and as useless—as weaponless—as the rest of us. We could have been killed, rushing in that way. Instead, we were lucky. We scared away our thieves.

Along with our store-bought food and the radio, the thieves got some of Dad’s tools and supplies—nails, wire, screws, bolts, that kind of thing. They didn’t get the phone, the computer, or anything in Dad’s office. In fact, they didn’t get into Dad’s office at all. I suppose we scared them away before they could search the whole house.

They stole clothing and shoes from Cory’s room, but didn’t touch my room or the boys’. They got some of our money—the kitchen money, Cory calls it. She had hidden it in the kitchen in a box of detergent. She had thought no one would steal such a thing. In fact, the thieves might have stolen it for resale without realizing that it wasn’t just detergent. It could have been worse. The kitchen money was only about a thousand dollars for minor emergencies.

The thieves did not find the rest of our money, some of it hidden out by our lemon tree, and some hidden with our two remaining guns under the floor in Cory’s closet. Dad had gone to a lot of trouble to make a kind of floor safe, not locked, but completely concealed beneath a rug and a battered chest of drawers filled with sewing things—salvaged bits of cloth, buttons, zippers, hooks, things like that. The chest of drawers could be moved with one hand. It slid from one side of the closet to the other if you pushed it right, and in seconds you could have the money and the guns in your hands. The concealment trick wouldn’t have defeated people who had time to make a thorough search, but it had defeated our thieves. They had dumped some of the drawers onto the floor, but they had not thought to look under the chest.

The thieves did take Cory’s sewing machine. It was a compact, sturdy old machine with its own carrying case. Both case and machine were gone. That was a real blow. Cory and I both use that machine to make, alter, and repair clothing for the family. I had thought I might even be able to earn some money with the machine, sewing for other people in the neighborhood. Now the machine is gone. Sewing for the family will have to be done by hand. It will take much more time, and may not look like what we’re used to. Bad. Hard. But not a fatal blow. Cory cried over the loss of her machine, but we can get along without it. She’s just being worn down by one blow after another.

We’ll adapt. We’ll have to. God is Change.

Strange how much it helps me to remember that.

Curtis Talcott just came to my window to tell me that the firemen have found charred bodies and bones in the ashes of the Payne-Parrish house. The police are here, taking reports of the robberies and the obvious arson. I told Cory. She can tell Wardell Parrish or let the cops tell him. He’s lying down on one of our living room couches. I doubt that he’s sleeping. Even though I’ve never liked him, I feel sorry for him. He’s lost his house and his family. He’s the only survivor. What must that be like?

T
UESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
29, 2026

I don’t know how long it can last, but in some way that I suspect is not quite legal, Cory has taken over part of the job Dad held for so long. She’ll give the classes Dad gave. With the computer hookups we have already in place, she’ll issue assignments, receive homework, and be available for phone and compu-conferences. The administrative part of Dad’s work will be handled by someone else who can use the extra money, and who is willing to show up at the college more often than once or twice a month. It will be as though Dad were still teaching, but had decided to give up his other responsibilities.

Cory has arranged this by pleading and begging, by crying and cajoling and calling in every favor and every friend she could think of. People at the college know her. She taught there before Bennett’s birth, before she saw the need here and began the front-room school that serves all the children of the neighborhood. Dad was all for her quitting the college because he didn’t want her going back and forth outside, exposed to all the dangers that involved. The neighbors pay a per-kid fee, but it isn’t much. No one could support a household on it.

Now Cory will have to go outside again. She’s already drafting men and older boys in the neighborhood to escort her when she has to go out. There are plenty of unemployed men here, and Cory will be paying them a small fee.

So in a few days, the new term will start and Cory will do Dad’s work—while I do her work. I’ll handle the school with help from her and from Russel Dory, Joanne and Harry’s grandfather. He used to be a high school math teacher. He’s been retired for years, but he’s still sharp. I don’t think I need his help, but Cory does, and he’s willing, so that’s that.

Alex Montoya and Kayla Talcott will take over Dad’s preaching and other church work. Neither is ordained, but both have substituted for Dad in the past. Both have authority in the community and the church. And, of course, both know their Bible.

This is how we will survive and hold together. It will work. I don’t know how long it will last, but for now, it will work.

W
EDNESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
30, 2026

Wardell Parrish has finally dragged himself back to his people—to the part of his family that he lived with before he and his sister inherited the Sims house. He’s stayed with us since his sister and all her children were killed. Cory gave him some of Dad’s clothes which were too big for him. Much too big.

He wandered around, not talking, not seeming to see anything, not eating enough… Then yesterday he said, like a little boy, “I want to go home. I can’t stay here. I hate it here; everyone’s dead! I have to go home.”

So today Wyatt Talcott, Michael, and Curtis escorted him home. Poor man. He’s years older than he was a week ago. I think he may not live much longer.

❏ ❏ ❏

W
E ARE
E
ARTHSEED
. We are flesh—self aware, questing, problem-solving flesh. We are that aspect of Earthlife best able to shape God knowingly. We are Earthlife maturing, Earthlife preparing to fall away from the parent world. We are Earthlife preparing to take root in new ground, Earthlife fulfilling its purpose, its promise, its Destiny.

❏ ❏ ❏

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

S
ATURDAY
, J
ULY
31, 2027—M
ORNING

L
AST NIGHT
,
WHEN
I escaped from the neighborhood, it was burning. The houses, the trees, the people: Burning.

Smoke awoke me, and I shouted down the hall to Cory and the boys. I grabbed my clothes and emergency pack and followed Cory as she herded the boys out.

The bell never rang. Our watchers must have been killed before they could reach it.

Everything was chaos. People running, screaming, shooting. The gate had been destroyed. Our attackers had driven an ancient truck through it. They must have stolen a truck just to crash it through our gate.

I think they must have been pyro addicts—bald people with painted heads, faces, and hands. Red faces; blue faces; green faces; screaming mouths; avid, crazy eyes, glittering in the firelight.

They shot us and shot us and shot us. I saw Natalie Moss, running, screaming, then pitching backward, her face half gone, her body still impelled forward. She fell flat on her back, and did not move again.

I fell with her, caught up in her death. I lay there, dazed, struggling to move, to get up. Cory and the boys, running ahead of me never noticed. They ran on.

I got up, felt for my pack, found it, and ran. I tried not to see what was happening around me. Hearing the gunfire and the screams didn’t stop me. A dead body—Edwin Dunn—didn’t stop me. I bent, snatched up his gun, and kept running.

Someone screamed near me, then tackled me, pulled me down. I fired the gun in reflexive terror, and took the terrible impact in my own stomach. A green face hung above mine, mouth open, eyes wide, not yet feeling all his pain. I shot him again, terrified that his pain would immobilize me when he did feel it. It seemed that he took a long time to die.