Thomas Mullen - The Last Town on Earth

THOMAS MULLEN

The Last Town on Earth

A NOVEL

HARPER PERENNIALLondon, New York, Toronto and Sydney

Cover

Title Page THOMAS MULLEN The Last Town on Earth A NOVEL HARPER PERENNIAL London, New York, Toronto and Sydney

Prologue

Part One COMMONWEALTH

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IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

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XI

XII

XIII

Part Two PRISONERS

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VII

VIII

IX

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XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

Part Three SACRIFICE

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VII

VIII

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XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

Part Four SPECTERS

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VII

AUTHOR’S NOTE

NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

From the reviews of The Last Town on Earth:

A subtle, robustly written novel of compelling contemporary resonance’

HEPHZIBAH ANDERSON, Observer

‘Thomas Mullen is an old-fashioned storyteller, and his epic novel dramatises the complex tensions between individual rights and group responsibilities … Mullen is both merciless and measured in his depiction of the natural forces that can drag idealism down to earth’

Daily Telegraph

‘In these days of anxiety over pandemics and terrorist “others” possibly in our midst, Thomas Mullen’s novel of the Spanish influenza epidemic during World War I and its particular effect on a Pacific Northwest town could not be more timely or relevant, and eerily so. I promise you, while you’re reading The Last Town on Earth , the mere sound of a cough will be enough to raise the hair at the back of your neck’

LARRY WATSON, bestselling author of Montana 1948

‘The Last Town on Earth wraps its reader in its quiet power. As the characters become trapped by their town, we become increasingly trapped by our own fears and hopes. Thomas Mullen’s debut is stirring, classic storytelling, with a deep resonance between the book’s moment in history and our own times’

MATTHEW PEARL, author of The Dante Club

‘In his remarkable first novel a brilliant series of plot twists is set in motion … Chilling parallels are overshadowed by the steady, nerve-shredding movement toward the story’s climax … Time and again, Mullen’s suspenseful storytelling pulls us forward. Time and again, his imagery … is devastatingly right’

New York Times

‘Thomas Mullen’s page-turner of a debut historical novel … [is] part morality tale, part coming-of-age yarn … Gripping … Psychological suspense, villains, victims, a conflicted hero or two, secrets and a mystery. In short, it’s a grabber’

Washington Post

‘Mullen provides a rich historical background and a well-drawn cast of characters … A fascinating account of a time and a place that most of us have never heard about’

Los Angeles Times

‘An engaging look at political and social isolation, and a vivid … study of human nature … The drama of the situation carries the book as inexorably forward as does the march of influenza through the area … If this novel teaches us something, it is that our history books can rarely portray the personal nature of political discourse in the past, or the sacrifices people make for their ideals’

The Lancet

‘Wonderful … Mullen has done a fine job with this, his debut novel, presenting an array of characters and showing with a deft hand their differing responses to the situation in which the town finds itself … [He] has created a fascinating microcosm and it’s enthralling to watch … What makes this novel compelling is not only its hint of allegory … but the broader questions it forces us to ask … What he manages to do is leave the reader interrogating themselves as to what their own response would be and should be if faced with these same ethical dilemmas. And that’s something to be valued in any novel’

Canberra Times (Australia)

Perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die.

—ALBERT CAMUS,

The Plague

An injury to one is an injury to all.

—Industrial Workers of the World slogan

The sun poked out briefly, evidence of a universe above them, of watchful things—planets and stars and vast galaxies of infinite knowledge—and just as suddenly it retreated behind the clouds.

The doctor passed only two other autos during the fifteen-minute drive, saw but a lone pedestrian even though it was noon on Sunday, a time when people normally would be returning home from church, visiting with friends and family. The flu had been in Timber Falls for three weeks now, by the doctor’s best estimation, and nearly all traffic on the streets had vanished. The sick were condemned to their homes, and the healthy weren’t venturing outside.

“No one’s been down this street yet?” he asked the two nurses he was traveling with, both of whom had husbands fighting in France. He was a thin, older man with spectacles that had been dirtied by the wet coughs of countless patients.

“No,” one of the nurses said, shaking her head. Amid the swelling volume of the sick and dying, they hadn’t yet reached those this far outside of town, a lonely street where the poorest derelicts and most recent immigrants lived.

Neighbors had reported unnerving sounds coming from within one of the houses, but no one had been willing to go inside and check on the family.

The doctor parked beside the house, a two-story structure at the base of a slowly rolling hill. The ground was all mud, the wheels sinking a few inches. It even looked as if the house were sinking into the earth, its roof sloping to the right. The house was the last of five narrow buildings that seemed to lean against each other in their grief.

Before leaving the car, the visitors fastened gauze masks to their faces, covering their noses and mouths, and pulled on thin rubber gloves.

The doctor knocked on the door. There was no reply so he knocked again, harder this time, and identified himself.

“Look,” one of the nurses said. In the window to the left of the door they saw a face peering through the sheer curtain, a child no more than four years old. Her eyes were large and she appeared ghostlike, neither frightened of the masked strangers nor particularly interested in them. The nurse lifted a hand to wave but the child made no reply. The doctor knocked again, motioning to the door, but the child just stood there.

Finally the doctor turned the knob and walked inside. All the windows were shut, and the door clearly had not been opened in days. He noticed the smell immediately.

The little girl at the window turned to watch them. She was wearing an adult’s flannel shirt over her dirty nightgown, and her thick blond hair was uncombed. She was frighteningly thin.

The parlor was a disaster, clothes and toys and books strewn everywhere. A rocking chair was lying on its side, and a lamp had shattered on the floor. As the visitors stepped into the room two other girls emerged from the chaos, one younger and one slightly older than the girl in the window. They, too, were oddly dressed, dirty, wraithlike.

The doctor was about to ask where their parents were when he heard coughing, dry and hoarse. He and one of the nurses followed the sound down a short hallway and into a bedroom.