The Eleventh Plague (23 page)

“I’m going too.”

I didn’t even know I’d said it out loud until the talk at the table went silent. When I looked up, everyone was staring at me.

“Stephen …” Violet began.

“I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’s what I want to do.”

Violet glanced at Jenny, who dropped her hand onto mine, squeezing my palm under the table.

“Well …” Violet said after a long pause. “I guess we better get both of you packed up, then.”

Violet pushed away from the table to gather things for Jenny, and I went up to my room, Jenny’s old one, and packed my things. Soon
Jackson drifted into the doorway. I folded a shirt and a sweater that Violet had knitted for me and placed them down in the bottom of my bag.

“You’re really going?” Jackson asked.

I picked up the rest of my clothes and tucked them in the bag. “I’ll be back,” I said. “We’ll be back.”

“What books do you want to take with you?”

“Those are yours.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s just …”

I pulled my tent out of the closet and started folding it up. “What?”

Jackson leaned against the edge of the door and crossed his arms, his eyes on the messy carpet at my feet. “Nothing,” he said, and disappeared back into his room.

I got the tent into its pack and lashed it to the outside of my backpack, then went back through the closet, looking for anything I’d missed. The bat and glove that Jackson and Derrick had given me as a present at the start of the season sat in the corner. I ran my fingertip down the face of the bat, dipping in and out of its dents. The well-seasoned leather of the glove smelled spicy and sharp. I left them there at the back of the closet.

I was about to close my pack when Jackson reappeared with a stack of paperbacks in his hand.

“Take them,” Jackson said. “If you don’t, you’ll have to spend all your time talking to Jenny. I’ve read them all. That Piers Anthony is really good. And the Peter Straub.”

“Thanks,” I said, stuffing my bag with the books. “You guys have a good game today.”

Jackson studied me with that penetrating look of his, the same one I had seen for the first time as he’d struggled along behind the wagon that
brought me here. He’d changed so much since then, and I was sure he would change more. I wondered how long it would be until Jenny and I would be back this way and who he would be then. I wondered if I’d even recognize him. If I’d recognize any of them. Or if they’d recognize me.

Jackson ran his fingers down the door frame. “Yeah. We’ll try,” he said quietly. Then his shoes whispered down the carpeted hallway and he descended the stairs, leaving me there alone.

I took my bag’s straps in my hands, but it felt like it was full of bricks. I couldn’t move. I stood listening to the hollow silence of the house until Violet’s voice drifted up the stairs.

“Stephen?”

“Coming,” I called weakly, but it was a struggle to lift the pack up off the ground and place it on my shoulders, a struggle just to reach the door. I stopped in the doorway and ran my hand down the smooth wood alongside it. Marcus had covered over the spot where Jenny had caved in the wall months ago. All that was left now was a small depression in the plaster.

The house was empty by the time I got downstairs. I moved through the silent place like it was a museum, remembering the strangeness of it all when I’d first come there: the smell of the food, the sounds of people talking.

I made it through the kitchen and the front room to find everyone waiting outside, gathered around Wind and finishing their good-byes. I threw my pack down at the horse’s feet and hugged Violet and Marcus. Sam appeared from his house and shook my hand. I didn’t know what to say. Violet squeezed my arm, then hugged me tight again. Her eyes began to glitter with tears that she sniffed back. Marcus gave me a firm handshake before laying his arm over Violet’s shoulder and walking her across the park along with Sam.

Jackson hugged Jenny again. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

“Come back, okay?”

“I will,” Jenny said. “I promise.”

Jackson didn’t move away or take his hands from her shoulders.

“Yo! Jackson! Quinn! Time’s wasting! Let’s go!”

Derrick and Martin and Carrie were crossing the park, heading toward the road that led to school and the baseball field. Martin was throwing the ball up high into the air and racing to get under it. There was a snap as it fell into his glove.

Jackson’s hand slipped off Jenny’s arm and he glanced at me one last time.

“See ya,” he said, then ran off and joined his friends, disappearing down the road with them and a wave of others who followed.

“You ready?”

Jenny was standing with Wind’s reins in her gloved hand. I nodded and lifted my pack up off the ground to load it onto Wind with Jenny’s equipment, her tent and rifle and provisions. I stopped when Jenny’s hand fell on my arm, holding it down.

“What?”

Jenny looked at me evenly. “Go,” she said.

“What are you talking —?”

Jenny nodded over my shoulder. A stream of kids stormed out of their houses and surged down the road toward the school to join Jackson and the others. Claudia trailed the group, tossing
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
into the air and catching it over and over. I couldn’t lie — I felt a pull toward them. But then, behind them, came Sam and Tuttle and Mr. Allison, who still looked fearsome with his scraggly hair and eye patch.

“They’re talking about building a church,” I said, watching them go. “Forming a government. Mr. Allison even thinks he can get some of the electricity back up. It’s just like you said. They’re going to start the whole thing all over again. Take us right back where we started.”

“Then maybe they need someone to keep an eye on them.”

“Jenny —”

She pulled me close. “Look,” she said. “Forget the future. Forget them. Forget me. You spent your whole life following somebody else. This is your world now. What do
you
want?”

My heart thumped. Jenny placed her palm in the center of my chest, covering it. Everything that had happened to us spun through my head.

After the storm and the deaths and the fires and the guns: What did I want? I closed my eyes, desperate to hear Grandpa’s voice, or Dad’s, or Mom’s, but there was nothing.

There was just me.

“I want a home,” I said.

I don’t think I knew it was true until right then, but it was. Jenny leaned in and set her lips lightly on mine. The sweet, spicy smell of her mixed with the clean wood of the town surrounded me.

“This is your home,” Jenny murmured into the small space between us. “You fought for it. Don’t be afraid to take it.”

My breath caught in my throat. I thought I could stay right there with her forever, but I knew that she had a path and so did I. After so long, mine had led me here and hers led … out there.

I kissed her and stepped away. Wind jerked and snorted as Jenny glided up onto his back, and the muscles in her arms stood out as she tried to hold him still. He was as ready as she was.

“Hold the fort down while I’m gone. Okay, Stephen? Don’t let them do anything too stupid.”

I nodded. A stone, thick as a fist, was resting in my throat.

Jenny twisted around in her saddle and took a last look around the town, the houses, the park, the road.

“My God,” she breathed, then gave the reins a quick shake. Wind exploded out across the park and up the road. Jenny paused at the top of the hill and raised her hand high in the air and then there was a great joyous
whoop
and that was it.

She was gone, but she’d be back. I believed. I hoped.

I turned to face the park. The neighborhood had gone soundless and empty, like a ball suspended, weightless, in midair. I could have believed that there was no one else around me for miles until a voice snapped through it all.

“Yo! Stephen! Let’s go! We’ve got work to do!”

Derrick had come back to the head of the road to school and was standing there with his arms out, a ball cap arranged messily on his head.

I started walking, slow at first, then faster, following what felt like a string fastened to my chest, yanking me forward.

Derrick broke into a run, so I was alone when I reached the field. An excited chatter overflowed the small wooden risers that had been built earlier that month. I let my hand slide across the wood of the stand as I passed. It had been planed smooth and smelled powdery and clean. Everyone was there: the Greens, Sam, Claudia with the book balanced on her knees, Tuttle with a stack of papers to grade.

I dropped my bag near the stands. Violet nudged Marcus and shot me a wink. Jackson was off in the outfield having a catch with Martin. They stopped when they saw me. Jackson was still for a moment,
unsure, then he raised his arm and waved, a broad smile on his face. I waved back and trotted out onto the field.

“Let’s do this, people!” Derrick shouted as we all converged on home plate, pushed forward by the cheers from the seats behind us. We formed into a tight knot together, Jackson on one side of me and Martin on the other. Carrie and Wendy and John Carter stood opposite. “Now, I need everybody to keep in mind that Stephen has decided to join us today, so we’ll all have to up our game to compensate for how much he sucks.”

Martin popped Derrick on the back of the head. “Jeez, Derrick, shut up already and let’s get going!”

As the group broke up and everyone moved to their places, I looked past them, out toward where the forest shrouded the Henry house in green and shadow.

After the fight with the slavers, a trial was organized with a judgment of banishment seeming all but sure for the Henry family. Sure, that is, until Marcus stood up and, to everyone’s amazement, spoke on their behalf. He said it would be too easy to send them out into the world like some gang of unruly children, only to become someone else’s problem. It was Settler’s Landing’s responsibility, Marcus said, to make sure nothing like this ever happened again.

And so they were stripped of any power they had and were made to work and contribute like anyone else. So far it had worked, but like many of the wounded from that night, I wondered what would happen when Caleb finally recovered. Would Settler’s Landing’s mercy and Will’s death really make him a different person, or would he still hear dark voices as I had once heard Grandpa’s?

“Hey, man, you ready?”

Jackson was at the end of our team’s line, holding a bat out to me.

“You’re up,” he said.

Maybe Jenny was right, I thought. Maybe they really did need someone to keep an eye on them.

But there would be time for that.

The bat seemed to vibrate in my hands as I took it and stepped up to the plate. John Carter checked the bases, then wound up and set the ball tumbling through the air. When it was time, I unfolded my arms in a smooth arc. There was a
crack
as the ball sailed out into the air over everyone’s heads, streaking past the houses and across the wide emerald field. A roar went up from the stands and from my friends massed behind me.

The outfielders scrambled for the ball as I dropped the bat and ran, tagging first and second easily. As I strained past third, Jackson yelled for me to stop, but I just threw my arms into the air, laughed, and dove toward home.

So many folks to thank. Up first, thanks to my wonderful family, Lara, Wyatt, and especially Mom and Dad, for insisting I read as a kid (even if it was just Batman comics) and for supporting me through all the twists and turns of my life. Also, to Mom and Dad for acting as, respectively, Official Medical Adviser and Official Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Adviser on this book. Thanks also to Patty, David, Bryan, and Amanda Sauer for all their support.

Thanks to my agent, the delightful Sara Crowe, who made me see I was thinking too small. To David Levithan, Cassandra Pelham, and everyone at Scholastic for their belief in the book, their enthusiasm, and most of all for making this thing so much better. For early encouragement and much needed criticism a big thank-you to Deborah Halverson, Ken Weitzman, and Ryan Palmer. For constant support, inspired silliness, and being a living link to my own days as a teen, thanks to Dave Denson, Ken Fortino, and Chris Ham. And to all the fine folks at the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators who supported the writing of this book early on with a Work-in-Progress grant.

Lastly, thanks to Gretchen because, for me, it’s turtles all the way down.

JEFF HIRSCH
graduated from the University of California, San Diego, with an MFA in Dramatic Writing, and
The Eleventh Plague
is his debut novel. He lives in Astoria, New York, with his wife. Visit him online at www.jeff-hirsch.com.

Cover art & design © 2011 by Phil Falco
Copyright © 2011 by Jeff Hirsch

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2010048966

First edition, September 2011

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eISBN: 978-0-545-38809-2