Jeff Hirsch - The Eleventh Plague

“What happened to…”

And then I saw him. Just behind the jeep lay the man with the scar. He was facedown in the mud, his arms thrown over his head. The snow around him was stained a deep red.

I turned to Jackson. His rifle lay on the ground next to him. He stared across the field at the man, looking hundreds of miles away.

Jackson shuddered, then dropped his head into his hands, his chest heaving as he sobbed.

I dragged myself closer and put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted to say thank you. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to say a lot of things, but right then it seemed best to say nothing at all, so I sat there with him until his breathing slowed, thinking how the end of the world had made so many of us unrecognizable, even to ourselves.

Soon, Jenny came running across the field and dropped down beside us. Her clothes were torn and dirty and there was a smear of blood on her forehead, but I couldn’t tell if it was hers or someone else’s.

“Are you—”

She lunged across me and grabbed Jackson into a hug. He seemed surprised at first, but then his hands tightened around her back, grasping her to him.

“Mom and Dad are all right,” Jenny told him breathlessly after they parted. “After the man with the dreadlocks ran, the rest started to fold. There are a few stragglers, but we’re pushing them back.”

“How many of our people—”

“Don’t worry about that now. We can—”

“How many?” I insisted.

Jenny looked at her brother, then at me. A tattoo of rifle shots crackled through the air, followed by the boom of explosions like a waning thunderstorm.

“Twenty,” she said. “Maybe more.”

“Will?”

Jenny turned to track a low rumble that rose in the east.

“He’s dead.”

It was like the deep toll of a bell, leaving us silent, kneeling together under that stand of trees.

We all turned as some kind of commotion broke out down the hill on the way to town. The few adults who remained were racing up the road past the school, shouting back and forth to one another.

“What’s going on?”

Jenny helped me and Jackson up, and together we trotted across the field and down the road. We reached town just behind the gathering group of people. They were all hurrying into the park, but the three of us froze where we were.

Sam’s house was a wall of fire. Three houses down the road from it were smoking, their windows lit a livid orange from inside. Trees were burning like torches and spreading the fire from house to house. The slavers may have gone but we had a new problem now.

Settler’s Landing was in flames.

Jenny pulled at my hand and we all raced into the crowd that was gathering in the park between Sam’s house and the Greens’. Others flooded in behind us, returning from the fight only to find their homes close to destruction.

Tuttle stood at the center of the crowd shouting instructions I couldn’t make out over the roar of the fires and panicked voices. Buckets were passed out and people began filling them with snow and rushing off to the houses that hadn’t caught yet. Another group took axes and ran to the stands of trees between houses, hoping to fell them and create firebreaks.

It seemed hopeless. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of burning. There was screaming as the crowd surged and pushed. Tuttle tried to keep people organized, but his voice was getting more and more drowned out.

Someone forced a bucket into my hand and I was pushed on by the crowd, Jenny beside me.

“We’re going to the school,” she shouted into my ear. To her right were Jackson and Derrick and some others.

“They sent the little ones there,” Derrick said. “Thought they’d be safe there during the fight. We think some of them are still there now!”

I remembered the plume of smoke I’d seen rising from the school roof and broke into a run. There were about twenty of us, some with axes and some with buckets. We tore down the hill and across the parking lot to the school.

It was better off than many of the houses, but smoke was seeping out of the cracks of doorways and some of the windows were lit up with flames. Derrick led a group to a snowbank nearby where they began to fill their buckets.

“Where are they?” I asked Derrick. “The kids?”

“Toward the back, I think.”

I dropped the bucket and once Jenny, Jackson, and I made it to the school’s front doors, I slammed my shoulder into them. The doors gave with a screech and a wave of heat. It was worse inside than it looked. Jenny motioned some of Derrick’s team into the doorway and they began tossing loads of snow onto the walls to try to keep the fire from growing. There was a hiss and gasps of steam as some of the flames were squelched.

“Stay low,” Jenny called.

The three of us covered our mouths and noses and ducked down, crawling along the floor where the air was clearer. We checked all of the small classrooms we passed, but each was empty except for overturned desks and chairs. The smoke was already massing in my throat and burning my eyes. We had to find them fast.

The three of us finally reached the main classroom at the end of the hall and tumbled through the doors, coughing. The air inside was clearer, but still just as hot. I doubled over and sucked in a painful breath. At first the room seemed empty, but then I saw a leg poking out from behind Tuttle’s big desk. “There!”

We found ten of the little ones cowering behind the desk, all of them stained with soot and looking terrified. Jenny dropped to her knees by their side.

“It’s going to be okay, guys,” she said calmly. “Just come with us and we’ll get you out of here.”

The kids shied away at first, like scared animals, but she was finally able to pull them to their feet and lead them back to the doors. I paused by the desk as she went. Jenny turned back.

“Take them out of here,” I shouted.

“What are you going to do?” Jenny asked.

I turned toward the far wall of wooden shelves. Each level was stacked with row after row of books. Science. Government. The arts. Everything.

“Are you crazy? We don’t have time, this place is coming down!”

Over her shoulder I could just see Jackson leading the kids into the smoky hallway.

“Then go! Help Jackson with the kids!”

I knew Jenny would keep protesting, so I turned from her and ran for the bookshelf, weaving through the lines of desks and pulling books off as fast as I could, filling my arms with them. I reached for a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, but Jenny got it first.

“One more stupid thing I have to do because of you,” she said with a sooty smile as she yanked down a score of books.

Our arms were full when there was another moan from behind us. The far wall of the classroom was blackening and about to go. Soon the whole place would be on fire.

“Think we’re out of time, pal. Let’s get out of here!”

Just as we turned to the doors, a curtain of flame appeared, blocking our way. The wall alongside it had begun to smolder too. Smoke was now seeping into the room.

We both stood there, our arms weighed down with books, looking for some way out. The walls around us groaned. Tinder deep inside them crackled and popped. We were trapped.

“Well, Stephen? Any more bright ideas?”

I looked all around the room. I had nothing. The only doors out were blocked and the fire was only growing stronger and hotter. The books felt like lead in my arms. How could I have been so stupid? We were going to die for these? As the smoke grew thicker all I could think of was the whole town wiped away, little more than a smudge of ash in the woods. All they had done, all they had built, would be lost, forgotten.