The Alliance (2 page)

She shifts her whole body to glower at me, though her milky eyes are missing their mark, scorching the wall over my shoulder. She takes the tray from my hands and backs into the living room. Setting it on the coffee table, she pulls the door closed between us with something akin to a slam. My whole body deflates with relief. All in all, I got off easy.

Carrying the bucket back to the table, I prepare to clean the pilot’s head wound, like I’d planned before my grandmother’s interruption. My hands shake as I dab the hair matted with so much blood, it appears ruddy. But once the water’s tinted copper, the hair reveals its hue: pale blond, like Silver Queen corn in summer. The strands are also just as fine as corn silk. I watch the pilot’s eyes skitter back and forth beneath the pale lids. His jaw is coated with beard, but his upper cheeks and nose are speckled with freckles that make him appear boyish, despite the tattoo on his chest and another on his bicep, though I cannot decipher the latter’s design.

In our community—which adheres to a strict set of rules resembling a hybrid between Mennonite and the more conservative Amish—the pilot’s beard would be a symbol that he’s married. But he would have to remove the mustache, which Amish leaders deemed too militaristic back during the Civil War, when full facial hair became a symbol of combat and control. Therefore, Amish men were forced to shave their mustaches in order to set themselves apart as pacifists who would never raise arms against another man.

I’m continuing to inspect the pilot when the sheet covering him flutters at the movements of his bare chest. I scrape my chair back across the floor, my own breath short. I look toward the living room door and wait. I hear only the tinkling of china as my grandmother enjoys her tea. Before the loggers and Seth left, we debated moving the pilot to the couch in the living room, where he would be more comfortable. But we did not know if that was wise. We have no way to gauge whether his neck and spinal cord have suffered injuries as well, which could have been exacerbated by the force the loggers used to free him from the cockpit. Plus, I imagined that if
Grossmammi
Eunice awoke to the presence of a half-naked man asleep in our living room, she might have a heart attack and fall into her cross-stitch pattern. I never anticipated the fact that
she’d
wake up before he did.

My stomach taut with anxiety, I place two fingers against the side of the pilot’s jaw to check his heart rate. The hairs of his beard are rough against my fingertips, and the throb of his blood beneath the pad of my index finger makes my own pulse speed up. I have almost counted to a minute when the pilot comes to and bolts upright, clenching my hand. Choking on a scream, I struggle to free myself, but the pilot won’t let go. He draws me in closer, his strong hand still clamping mine. I can smell the tang of his sweat mixed with the residual blood from his head wound as he rasps in my face, his blue eyes blazing with terror, “Where am I?”

My throat goes dry; my head swims. Swallowing, I command with far more authority than I possess, “Release me first.”

The pilot looks down at my hand, as if surprised to see he’s holding it. He lets go and reclines on the table. His face whitens, and I can almost see the wave of adrenaline receding.

“Your plane crashed in our field.” I point to the door, which Jabil left open, as if that would encourage propriety between me and an unknown
Englischer
pilot who sports tattoos and a gun. “The logging crew got you out and brought you here.”

The pilot tries to get up again.

“Don’t!” I force his shoulders down to the table. I step
back, mortified by my impulsive behavior, but the pilot obeys. He keeps lying there with his hands shuttered over his eyes. “You want some water?”

“Please.”

I go over to the sideboard and pour water from the metal pitcher. I carry the glass over to the pilot, but he makes no effort to sit up. “Are you going to be sick?”

He shakes his head. “I’ll try drinking in a little while.”

“No. Here. I’ll help you.” Skirting around the kitchen chair, I place one hand on the pilot’s upper back and bring the glass to his lips. He drinks greedily, the water trickling down his chin, catching in the strands of his beard. My hand burns where it touches his skin.

The pilot pushes the half-emptied glass away. “Thanks. Can you help me off the table?”

His left pupil looks more dilated than the right—the blue iris a thin Saturn ring orbiting the black—and his breathing is heavy. Possible signs of a concussion? But I don’t have the right or the power to restrain a grown man. I step closer to the table and wait as the pilot puts an arm around my shoulders so that he can use my body like a crutch.

He must be around five-ten or -eleven, since he’s only a few inches taller than I am. But I can feel his sinewy power through his arm alone. The pilot winces at the pressure on his hurt ankle and curls the foot up again, balancing on me
and on the table in front of him. He seems to think nothing of our proximity; I can think of nothing else.

“Can you tell me where I am?” he asks.

“An Old Order Mennonite community called Mt. Hebron.”

“But what state?”

“Northern Montana, near Glacier Falls. Not far from the Canadian border.”

“That close.”

“You were going to Canada?”

He doesn’t say yes or no or offer any more explanation, so I gesture toward the open door and the pilot nods. We hobble together for a few labored steps. Then he leans against the jamb to catch his breath, eyes glimmering. “What’s your name?”

“Leora Ebersole.” I pause. “And yours?”

He looks at me with those odd, concussed eyes. “Moses. Moses Hughes.”

“Moses,” I repeat. “Don’t know many
Englischers
with that name.”

The pilot stumbles and his injured foot touches down, a knee-jerk reaction for stability. He curses, and my eyes grow wide. “I’ve never known
anyone
with your name,” he says. Removing his arm from around my shoulders, he touches the railing and hops over to the edge of the porch. He stares out over the meadow—at his plane that looks
like the smoking carcass of an enormous yellow bird—and sighs.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“What’s that?”

“Where are you from?”

“Kentucky,” he says, looking ahead, “but I’ve moved around so much these past few years, I can barely remember where all I’ve been.”

I gesture to his plane. “Looks like you’re going to be here awhile. The community’s having a meeting at the schoolhouse because the electricity shut down at Field to Table, the community’s bulk food store. My brother also said that the
Englischers’
cars won’t start. Nobody can go home or even call out on their cell phones. It’s like someone—” I snap my fingers—“flipped a switch.”

The pilot turns from the porch post and looks at me. I had tried to keep my manner light, but his expression is now so grave that a wave of panic courses throughout my body, raising the fine hair on my arms. “The deacons and bishop are trying to figure out what to do because the
Englischers
want to go home but have no way to get there.”

Moses faces the woods again, holding the porch railing. “When did this happen?”

“About two hours ago, I guess. Seth, my brother, wanted to get up here to help right after your accident, but there was such chaos at the store, he couldn’t get away.”

“And when did my plane crash?”

“Around the same time.” I stare at Moses’s bare back. Freckles, the color of those on his face, dot his shoulders like paint chips. “Why? Do you think they’re connected somehow?”

The pilot sinks one fist into the pocket of his jeans and turns to face me while being careful not to put more weight on his injured foot. My eyes are drawn like lodestones to the cross tattoo on his chest. My face grows hot. I look away from him, but I feel his gaze on me until I am forced to look back. “There’s no way to know for sure just yet,” he says. “but I think it could’ve been an EMP.”

“What does that mean?”

“An electromagnetic pulse. A special warhead, probably set off hundreds of miles above the earth, gives off this huge electromagnetic pulse that wipes out technology because of how the pulse reacts with the earth’s magnetic field. It’s harmless to humans and animals, but it can take out the power grid and everything that relies on a computer, throwing civilization back a couple hundred years. I’ve heard it can be over a few states, or—” he glances out at the land—“it could knock out half of our hemisphere.”

“How . . . how do you know about this?”

He shrugs. “I probably read more than I should.”

I glance away from him and stare at the field, where his ruined plane is backdropped by the chiseled mountain peaks,
piercing through the sea of softwoods as if from a volcanic eruption. “You think this—this bomb is why you crashed?”

“We can’t really call it a bomb, because there’s no obvious detonation. But, yeah—that’s a pretty likely explanation, if everything else is off the grid too.”

“How do we fix it?” I ask. “How do we get it all back?”

He turns and I glimpse his eyes again—a brilliant hue that seems to mirror the entire spectrum of the wide Montana sky. “That’s the thing. If I’m right, then . . . we don’t.”

Moses

W
E CREST THE BEND
and the log schoolhouse comes into view. Buggies identical to Leora’s are tied to posts in the front yard, but the horses are all different shades of brown, white, and black, which seems about the only way to tell the buggies apart. An unpainted wooden swing set and teeter-totter are the only recreational items on the playground. There is no flagpole with stars and stripes snapping in the wind. From what I’ve read (or absorbed through reality TV), this is an intentional omission. Mennonites, Amish, and Quakers aren’t very patriotic, since they don’t believe in war. Kind of funny that I landed here, considering I’m a third-generation son of war.

I look over at Leora. “Will you have to introduce me?”

“Think you introduced yourself just fine when your plane crashed in our field.”

“I guess I made quite the entrance.”

“You could say that.” She meets my eyes but doesn’t return my smile.

“How old are you?”

She grips the reins. “Nineteen.”

“Most Mennonite girls married by your age?”

“No. Least not the smart ones.”

Her voice is flat and hard. If I was hoping to see her stammer and blush again, like she did when I cussed, that won’t happen. I admit I’m flirting, but I’m not trying to come on to her. I haven’t had time for such things in a year. Or even the desire to pursue. All that I left behind before Aaron and I deployed.

Leora suddenly leans forward, her profile blocking the sun like an eclipse. Her eyes are squinted, as if her glasses aren’t thick enough or maybe there’s just too much light to take it all in. I don’t want her to see my face until I’ve distanced myself from that day in the desert, so I take careful breaths and look out the buggy’s window at the long lane fenced in with this slew of cookie-cutter log cabins, except that some are two-story and others—like Leora’s—only one.

There are no attached garages, of course, because nobody has cars around here. But each cabin has a barn and chicken coop made from wood treated to match the houses. An immaculate garden also seems part of the communal package—acorn and butternut squash vines spreading across the ground, the fruit’s thick rinds ripening to orange; cornstalks decorated with thick, tasseled ears—along with an adobe-style greenhouse that must be used to preserve some of the more sensitive vegetables from the impending frost that my Idahoan grandfather complains can assault this region well before fall begins.

Just before the schoolhouse, on the other side of the lane,
a pavilion with a cement base looks big enough to hold a small concert or a roller-skating party. Inside the pavilion, stacked like a giant’s Lincoln Logs set, are timbers so massive, a forklift would have to be used to move them. A tangle of power tools—their neon extension cords snaking back to a large generator—are laid out, along with some hard hats and goggles. Beside this, there’s what looks like a warehouse. I sit up higher on the bench seat, trying to get a better view of this bulk food store Leora mentioned earlier, which could be so crucial for the community’s survival. But I can only catch a glimpse of a tin roof and an assortment of cars and trucks that look out of place, compared to all this treated wood and black canvas.

Leora maneuvers the horse and buggy up to the schoolhouse and around the other contraptions like she’s been doing it her entire life. She gets out of the buggy, loops the reins around the hitching post, and knots them with a downward jerk. Coming back, Leora opens the door on my side of the buggy before I’ve had time to remember about my leg. She stands there, not offering a hand or even a glance, but just waiting for me to clatter down and lean on her—this person who looks like she’d get bowled over in a stiff breeze. My pride would love just to stride right past, leaving her in my dust. The truth is, though, without her help, I’d fall flat on my face within a few feet. So I put my arm around her shoulders.

Leora looks at my arm without enthusiasm and begins leading me toward the schoolhouse’s open doors. I try to keep from putting my full weight on her, but the strained tendons in my ankle make it impossible to put any pressure on that foot. The ground is also rutted with a multitude of hoof- and bootprints, making it difficult to maintain balance with my good leg.

She takes a breather before we reach the schoolhouse porch and inspects me like she’s going to spit-shine my face. She seems to think my hair and beard are a lost cause, ’cause she just sighs and pulls down the sleeve of the shirt that she let me borrow from someone who I guess is her younger brother or else a very small man. “Keep that tattoo covered,” she instructs in this prissy voice, “or they’ll not listen to a word you say.”

Feeling a fool, I nod and hop over to the edge of the porch with my arms flailing in double time to make up for one bad foot. I glance up. On the front of the schoolhouse, there are two doors—trimmed in green, almost side by side—and a handrail that divides the middle. Leora tucks some stray pieces of hair beneath this white netted thing on her head that reminds me of a miniature Spanish mantilla. She starts climbing the four steps toward the left door, and I go around the dividing rail and begin walking up behind her.

She turns and says, “This is the women’s side,” like I’ve committed some cardinal sin.

I think,
For crying out loud, woman, I’ve got a busted ankle!
But I mind her by hauling myself over to the other side and clomping up the steps. This tall, dark-haired guy about my age is speaking at the front of the room. But he stops when he sees Leora and me coming in through the segregated doors. He looks at her again, and then at me . . . then back at her. His narrowed eyes keep ping-ponging between the two of us in a way that would be comical if he didn’t look so disturbed. I nod at him in a friendly way. He nods back but doesn’t seem impressed.

The guy keeps speaking in a low monotone, and my shell-shocked ears have a hard time hearing this far in the back. I hop down the center aisle and note that the men are seated on the right side and the women on the left. Most of the women are wearing plain dresses like Leora’s, and their head coverings are made from the same white netted material with untied ribbons trailing down onto their shoulders. The men are wearing collared shirts like the one I’m borrowing. But they are all made in different pastel colors that would look effeminate except for the fact that the men wearing them have these enormous forearms and beards that make mine look like pubescent fuzz. Their massive backs are x-ed with suspenders, and their bowl-cut hair is imprinted with ironed rings from the hats they must’ve been wearing in the field.

I take a seat at the end of the second row and glance
down at the backless pew that is so crude and unsanded, it must be an incentive not to move during the service or risk getting splinters. I spot a few men who are dressed normal like me—or, I guess, like I was—but here they don’t look “normal” at all, just as out of place as I feel. I guess they are the
Englischers
who were stranded at Field to Table when the electricity shut off and their vehicles wouldn’t start. One woman on the opposite side has short hair and big hoop earrings. I watch her not even attempt to pay attention to the speaker and instead punch away at her smartphone—her fake nails flashing like sabers—but of course, it’s not working. I’m glad I came, although my plane crash really left me with no choice. Somebody’s got to break the news that technology as we know it might be extinct. For that matter,
life
as we know it might be extinct.

Dark-Haired Guy clears his throat. I raise my head and see he’s looking at me. “I assume you’re the man who crashed in the Ebersoles’ field?”

I smile and wave at the hodgepodge group. “Yeah . . . hey . . . my name’s Moses.” They don’t smile back, but stare at me goggle-eyed, the person who survived the plane crash. They should know that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t die. That was obvious a year ago and confirmed again today. The blessing of existence has been transformed into a curse, a reminder of all those who died in my stead because I couldn’t do what was required of me.

Dark-Haired Guy continues speaking, arms crossed. “And do you think that your plane crash might have something to do with our power failure?”

Is he trying to imply that I might be the cause of this mess? How could I have brought something like this to a little backwoods community? I didn’t even know it was on the map. I doubt many know it’s on the map, which makes it a perfect place for me to hide until I can escape. I push off the bench and try rising to my feet. Then I remember about my ankle. I wince, being forced to put pressure on it because I don’t have anything to prop myself up.

“This is far beyond me,” I say, and then point to the speaker. “And this is far beyond
you
.” I turn and look at the crowd. They are fixated on me, but then I guess my wild hair does make me look like a cross between a hobo and an Old Testament prophet. If I hadn’t crashed in Leora’s yard, they’d probably think I fell from the sky. “This is, honestly, beyond all of us.”

Dark-Haired Guy doesn’t say anything for a second. Instead, he’s looking at the crowd and I crane my kinked neck, trying to follow the direction of his gaze. A white-haired guy with this long, pointed beard like a wizard’s is sitting in the same row as me. He’s got these chapped red hands—as square and solid as bricks—that he rests on his black pant legs. I notice that the toes of his boots barely brush the floor.

White Beard nods once, and Dark-Haired Guy says, “Moses, would you like to come up here to address the congregation?” But there’s not a lick of invitation in his voice.

I shake my head and smile, repelling whatever hostility’s bouncing off this guy. “I’m not getting around too great at the moment. All right if I talk from here?”

“Of course.” He walks over to the first bench and takes a seat.

I hobble around to face the group, since more are behind me than in front. “I believe that what we’re experiencing right now may be the result of an electromagnetic pulse. . . .” I go on to explain everything, like I explained it to Leora less than an hour ago. The four
Englischers
—three men, one woman—appear concerned; the Mennonite men and women in the congregation appear skeptical. But Dark-Haired Guy’s and White Beard’s endorsements at least keep them from looking at me like I’m crazy. Or at least not
as
crazy as I am.

Then (isn’t there
always
a “then”?) this gigantic lumberjack, with a brow line like a hammerhead shark, asks how I know about the EMP. My eagerness to provide validity weakens my resolve not to tell anyone about my past, and I find myself giving the congregation a grain of sand on this shifting coastline called truth. “I come from a distinguished military family. I was drilled and educated in such scenarios from birth. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”

White Beard turns on the bench to inspect me. Since he’s the one who granted me and Dark-Haired Guy permission to speak, I assume he is the leader of the community or something close to it. I am being watched by countless eyes, but his are the ones I feel boring into my skull like drill bits. “So you think this EMP may affect our daily lives for a while?” His voice is an aging growl that would be intimidating if I hadn’t grown up with someone like my father.

“Yeah,” I say. “Possibly more than you or I can wrap our minds around right now.”

Dark-Haired Guy pipes up, like he doesn’t want me to forget he’s second in command. “Can you tell us, then, what you see ahead for our community?”

I take a quick inventory of the room, noting the few children who are in attendance. The younger ones are sitting in their mothers’ laps, gumming stretchy necklaces made from bright blue or green beads twined around their dimpled, drool-covered fists. The older children are sitting as quietly as the adults: boys on the right and girls on the left, just like their parents. I bet if they move a muscle, they’ll get pinched. That’s what my mom used to do if Aaron and I acted up during Mass.

When he sees me looking at the children, White Beard says, “Do not worry about talking in front of the
kinner
. The little ones do not learn English until they go to school. They won’t be able to understand much.”

I nod, wary. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I see happening if there’s really been a widespread EMP attack. It sure isn’t good or pretty, and I don’t wish to put fear on everyone, but . . .” I clear my throat and have to fight against the urge to sit down and rest my ankle, which is throbbing with every pump of my heart. “What I see happening is this: the cities will get hit hardest first. Food will run out in the grocery stores in a day or two, and there’ll be looting and crime almost instantly. Most Americans are so reliant on fast food or stopping at the supermarket after work, they don’t have enough stored in their pantries to last even a week, to say nothing about months.

“People in the city don’t have room for gardens like you all do—and most wouldn’t even know how to keep a garden if they did. So when things go haywire, they’re going to want out of the city, and there’s going to be this immense, chaotic exodus. I imagine they’ll try packing their belongings on bikes or even in grocery carts, trying to move as much as possible as quickly as they can. If this is really what I think it is, it’s going to be a very hard and dangerous time, starting whenever people realize the power’s not coming back on and the grocery stores aren’t going to be restocked.