The Last Town on Earth (11 page)

“I’ve done it before.” Philip said that slowly, each word carefully measured, each word hurting as it came out, like shrapnel removed by rusty forceps.

“Have you?”

Philip couldn’t tell if the man didn’t believe him or was just hoping to catch this tough-acting kid in a lie that would expose him as a coward and blowhard.

“Look to your left. About thirty yards in the woods. Look for the tree with the strip of moss on its trunk in a diagonal line.” The man did as he was told. “See it?”

“I see the tree, yeah.”

“Now look below it.”

The man stepped to his side to get a glimpse of the earth between the crossing branches. He was silent for a moment.

“That a grave?”

“That’s right.”

The gravediggers had put the grave where no one was likely to stumble upon it, but it was still somewhat visible from the road if one knew where to look.

“Looks fresh.”

“Just a couple days old.” While the man looked at the grave, Philip kept his eyes locked on his target. “He was a soldier, like you.”

This too caught the man unawares. He faced Philip again. “Another soldier?”

“That’s right. So don’t think I’m intimidated by the uniform or anything.”

Philip’s muscles were getting tight, aching. They pleaded for him to relax at least momentarily or switch to another position, but he refused.

“I just need a place to sleep, kid.” The soldier had wisely decided to stop goading Philip and was trying a new tack. “And some food. I don’t—”

“Stop calling me kid.”

“Some food and a place to sleep, please, sir. That’s all I ask.”

Philip had thought of this, of the option he had overlooked when the first soldier had come around.

“I maybe can bring you some food if you stay back where you are and don’t come any closer. After the other guard comes back. But you’re out of luck on the shelter. No one comes into the town.”

“It’s going to be freezing tonight. The hell with your food if you’re going to leave me out here to die.”

“That’s the best I can do. Take it or leave.”

The man thought about this. He looked back at the grave.

“You must be a deadeye with that rifle.”

“Good enough.”

The soldier looked down, and though Philip could barely see his face, he knew the man was smiling again. Why was this so entertaining to him? The bit of fear that Philip had seen in his eyes seemed to have left him already.

He’s going to take another step, Philip thought. He’s not scared anymore. Maybe he’s crazy. Maybe something worse happened to him in the war, and the last thing he’s going to do is be sent away by some “kid.” He’s going to come closer.

If the soldier takes one step farther, I’ll aim for the ground right in front of him,
Philip vowed.
Make him jump. Scare him home. He gets one warning shot. One.

The soldier looked up again. Philip saw the decision in his eyes, the imminent movement. The muscles in Philip’s trigger finger were so taut they ached.

Philip thought the man’s step would be slow and deliberate, but he was wrong. The soldier didn’t step at all. His movement was this: the right hand that had been dangling by his side disappeared for a moment, into the low tails of his untucked shirt, and as soon as it reappeared it was holding a pistol and the air around Philip exploded.

Philip instinctively fired a shot and dropped. The two shots echoed each other, the sound of Philip’s still startling to him. He was on the ground now, hiding behind the mighty trunk that had been envisioned as a post but certainly not as a shield. His breaths came fast. He took a quick moment to look himself over and determine that he had not been hit by the soldier’s bullet.

But had Philip hit the soldier? He listened for a sound. Was the intruder dead? Or was he crouching closer, just on the other side of the tree trunk?

Philip’s fingers were shaking. He had to look, had to see if the soldier was dead. He took a breath. Be quick. Take a look, no longer than a second, and hide again. He repositioned his feet under him, his legs crouched so he could spring up and collapse back down again. He frantically reloaded his rifle, took another breath. Now.

He turned and lifted himself just enough for his head and shoulders to clear the trunk. The soldier was gone. Or at least he wasn’t where he had been a moment ago. Philip glanced to his right, to the thick woods, the direction of the first soldier’s grave, and just as he saw something move he let his legs go out from under him and he fell behind the tree trunk.

“You sure you want to do this?” the soldier called out.

The enormity of the fact that someone had just shot at him was slowly sinking into Philip’s panicked mind. The soldier had shot at him and would do so again. In a way, the soldier was making this easy on Philip—now Philip
had
to shoot him or be shot himself. Everything about standing guard was supposedly in the vein of self-defense, but only now, with a tangible threat so close, did it truly feel that way.

Still, he knew he was the sole defense the town had. This man could be on the verge of becoming sick, could be carrying the flu in his blood and lungs. He could stroll into Commonwealth and soon people would be coughing, would be in bed with fever, would be hallucinating as their foreheads burned and their eyes clouded over and their insides flooded with mucus and death. Philip had to stop the soldier.

“I’m not letting you into that town! Even if you do shoot me, there’s plenty more men that’ll keep you from getting in!”

Someone must have heard the shots, Philip thought. They weren’t that far from the town. Someone would come so long as Philip could keep the stalemate. Unless the men were still working on those two buildings on the main street, hammering up a storm. Surely the sound of gunfire would be audible over the hammering.

Philip heard movement. The soldier was somewhere in the woods to the right of the stump. The woods ended about twenty feet from where Philip was crouching, so they were close to each other. The soldier could be pretty much anywhere by now, approaching Philip from any angle. Philip was alone on an island, a tiny one. If he waited much longer, the soldier would get a clear shot.

Philip rolled to his side, clear of the stump’s protection. With the rifle stretched out before him, he fired a shot into the woods, at his best guess of where the soldier had been during the split second he’d seen him before. Then he sprang to his feet and ran as fast as his lame leg could carry him. He lunged the last few feet, landing awkwardly and painfully behind another tree. The rifle bounced from his hands and landed a few feet from him, but he was able to reach out and grab it as he sat up, leaning with his back against the tree.

He was surprised the soldier hadn’t shot at him while he’d made his escape. Was the soldier so close that he didn’t need to? Was Philip hiding the wrong way, was his side actually exposed to his adversary, wherever he was? The man was a soldier, after all—he had been trained how to do this. He would know how to overtake some sixteen-year-old with a rifle and only one foot. The soldier was probably nothing but a shadow now, slinking between the trees, wrapping around tree trunks and between branches, crawling closer.

Philip tried to make his breaths quieter. Tried to be silent. Tried to listen for the soldier, but he heard nothing.

There were bushes and thickets and low-leaning branches covering most of the ground; it would not be easy to sneak around here without alerting one’s foe. Either the soldier wasn’t moving at all or he was doing so with extreme deliberation, calmly brushing aside a branch, taking a step, waiting.

Then, a sound. Something to Philip’s right. He turned just as the sound was dying away. Something moving over there, against that tree with the poison ivy beneath it. The moving object rolled toward Philip: a rock. A rock?

It had been thrown there. A distraction. Philip realized he had exposed his position, was no longer as well hidden. The moves were coming to him now, he saw the steps, but each one too late.

And as Philip turned back around, almost but not fast enough, he saw more movement, real movement, a man coming toward him with speed he could not counter. Before he had turned enough to face the man, the movement changed again, became awkward, and there was a hard dull sound, then a whimper.

The soldier had tripped and fallen. He’d been moving into position, close enough for a sure shot, when he had tripped on one of the serpentine but solid trunks that slithered beneath them. He’d fallen forward, landing on his chest but catching himself with his hands. His empty hands. Philip saw the pistol skitter on the ground and land in the nook of another tree trunk, perhaps six feet from the soldier’s head. The soldier looked up, his eyes wide with the realization that this kid was limping forward, closer to the pistol than the soldier was.

Philip also realized he had forgotten to reload his rifle. He immediately did so, his earlier mistake depriving him of a quick shot. But now the rifle was loaded and now he was standing with one foot on top of the pistol. The soldier leaned on his hands, slowly raising himself to a kneeling posture. After his earlier nonchalance, his face finally wore a look of concern, extreme concern.

Philip was aiming the rifle right at the man’s chest. They were no more than three yards from each other.

The soldier swallowed. His eyes were large, the pupils seeming to shrink as the whiteness grew around them.

Philip knew he should pull the trigger right then, pull it quickly and end it all. Don’t give the man a chance to open his mouth again and start talking. He thought of Elsie, thought of Rebecca and Charles and his sister, Laura, thought of Amelia and his unofficial niece, Millie. A baby might be the first to get sick and die if the epidemic made it to town. He thought of the baby dying and Amelia pacing the room nervously, her face blank with shock. He thought of Graham punching holes in the walls of his house, Graham being unable to suppress unmanly tears just as he had been helpless to save his only child. Philip fixated on Graham despite himself, thought of Graham and the first soldier and the two shots, one to put the man down and one to finish him off.

“So that’s it, then,” the soldier said, waking Philip from his free-flowing fears.

The rifle seemed so heavy.

“Just get up and turn around,” Philip commanded. “Get out of here. Please.”

He shouldn’t have said “please.” It made him sound weak or conflicted and he regretted it immediately.

The soldier shook his head. “I’d rather die quick than slow, freezing to death. Go ahead.” He sounded something between spiteful and at peace with his fate.

“Just go,” Philip pleaded.

“Here. I’ll make it easy for you.” The soldier opened the first two buttons of his khaki jacket and held them apart, exposing a circle of undershirt that was the only thing covering his heart. “Right there, kid. Can’t miss it.” His eyes were almost completely blank, but the skin around his eye sockets was tensed. Philip could see a vein along the side of his head twitching. The man’s teeth were clenched and his jaw was rigid and his head and neck began to shake. All the muscles in his body seemed to be flexing in defiance of death even as their master was openly courting it.

He was so close that, from Philip’s vantage point, the end of the rifle covered the center of the man’s chest, the bit of white cotton shirt a perfect target.

They were so close. They were too close. They were breathing the same air, and the longer Philip stood there, the worse he was making it. Was it already too late? Was the secret, doomed fate of the town already in Philip’s blood?

They stared at each other, motionless. They stared at each other and breathed.

Philip lowered his rifle slightly. It was such a tiny movement but it meant so much, for he had made his decision. Whether he did it because he felt backed into a corner or because he was unable to follow through was something he refused to ponder.

“If we cut through these woods,” Philip said slowly, “we’ll get to an empty building. There’s a cellar, and you can hide down there. I’ll get you some food, then you can sleep. But before the sun rises, you leave. You’re gone before anyone else is awake.” He swallowed. “Do you understand?”

The soldier nodded, eyes wide.

“You’ll stay silent and be gone by sunrise?”

“Yes. Yes. Thank you.”

Philip lowered the rifle. He bent down and picked up the man’s pistol, looking at it briefly before putting it in his pocket. He’d never held a pistol before and he hoped to hell it wouldn’t go off in his pocket, but he wasn’t giving it back to the soldier.

“You got any more guns hidden in there?”

The soldier said no, but Philip made him stand and open his jacket, lift up his shirt, and empty his pockets to prove it. Philip noticed that the soldier’s hands were shaking, and his eyes looked more reflective than before. He had truly thought he was about to die, and his recovery from this was not quick.

“Lead the way,” Philip said, pointing ahead with his rifle.

Philip followed about ten paces behind, which he hoped was enough distance to keep him protected from whatever vile germs or malevolent spirits haunted the air around his captive. Maybe being a few feet away for only a minute or two hadn’t made a difference? Maybe he hadn’t ruined everything for the entire town?

He tried not to think about this—he was already so nervous and scared that he couldn’t afford to. The forest became even thicker as the hill rose, but Philip knew that after a few hundred yards, they would reach a clearing where a few empty buildings stood. The buildings had been built by Reginald Worthy’s mill years before Charles had bought the property and created Commonwealth; they originally had been intended to store excess wood, but they were poorly located, much too far from the river and the mill. They had never been used, a strange waste of space that made Philip wonder if Charles was deliberately avoiding these buildings out of self-righteousness. The fact that they were so removed, at the end of a barely used road, made them perfect for Philip’s purposes. The soldier could sleep in one all night and never be near enough to infect anyone. Maybe it would be like he had never been there. Maybe this wasn’t a horrible mistake.