The Alliance Page 3

  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.

  “There will be a whole drove of them, and they’ll probably start by walking down the interstates. The roads will be pretty much deserted, except for the cars that were stranded after the EMP. Eventually gangs and criminals will start patrolling these interstates and stealing from the people, the refugees, trying to escape. Conditions will get worse and worse and continue to deteriorate. It will look like what you’ve seen about civil war in third-world countries.”

  I pause and stare out at the community, picturing the honest faces hollowed by relentless hunger, coal-dust shadows ringing their weary eyes; the babies’ smiles wiped from their rosebud mouths and replaced with cracked lips and wailing. Time and time again, I’ve witnessed a society’s infrastructure crumble on foreign soil, even as we tried to rebuild it our way without really knowing what we were doing or, sometimes, why we were there. But I never believed it could—or would—happen here, the land of the free and the home of the brave. And it’s obvious our government also believed we were invincible, or they would’ve taken the measures to ensure we were protected against an EMP attack.

  For the first time, I think that maybe it’s a good thing this community’s remained so isolated. Maybe, in this draining hourglass of disruption, this silted earth can provide the last measure of peace. For they are some of the only ones left in this country who know how to survive when our corner of the world’s been reverted back to the Stone Age.

  I exhale. My eyes twitch with nerves. “Clean water will become more valuable than gold,” I continue. “Starving refugees will begin looting homes along the interstates, trying to find food for their families. They’ll become a frantic swarm of locusts, devouring everything in their path. Violence will increase. And then, because everyone’s too weak to bury the dead, disease will increase. If studies are correct, in six months’ time we could lose 60 to 90 percent of the population affected by the EMP.”

  For a second, nobody moves or breathes. And then one of the chubby toddlers—with this mound of blond curls—erupts into a stream of meaningless chatter, drawing us back to the present with a heartrending contradiction of cheer as we consider such sobering words.

  “So . . . what do we do to protect ourselves from ‘the locusts’?” The blonde-haired woman asking me the question actually puts air quotes around the locusts. But at least she’s given up on resuscitating her phone.

  “I’d say we have a few days, a week tops, before people start realizing the power’s not kicking back on and their food’s running out. A week, maybe two, until the real panic sets in. That’s when they’ll begin their exodus and branching off the exits to find food and shelter with country people like you all—which is really to say, when they’ll start rampaging.

  “In the meantime, I think we should set up a perimeter. Think of it like the boundary wall around a compound that would secure the location and keep track of who’s coming in and out—scouts, hunters, et cetera. We should place armed guards at strategic locations around this perimeter. It’s going to be difficult to protect your bulk food store, since it’s right along the main thoroughfare that will eventually be traveled by the refugees. We can either ration the food throughout the community, so it’s not all sitting in one place, or make sure it’s guarded at all times. Either way, it’s crucial that the assets at Farm to Table—or whatever it’s called—are protected. This food could be what keeps you and your families alive.

  “I know this all sounds hard to believe, and maybe even downright crazy. But I said that I’d give you my opinion of what to expect, if we have been hit with an EMP. And so, there you have it . . . my honest opinion.”

  I take my seat. White Beard strides to the front of the schoolhouse on short, bandy legs that appear undersized for the heft of his torso. Dark-Haired Guy follows on his heels, like a dog that has outgrown his master. Both men turn to look at the congregation. Then they put their thumbs in their suspenders, turn, and stare at me, their identical gestures emphasizing their matching expressions of fear, skepticism, and outrage.

  “We will not fight these—these locusts, as you call them,” White Beard declares, holding his hands up. And I realize, absently, that he’s missing all but his pinkie and his thumb on his right hand. “Fighting back is not our way and is certainly not Gott’s way. Our people have been practicing nonresistance since the 1600s when we were persecuted for our Anabaptist beliefs. If these strangers come—as you say they will—and they need food, we will feed them; if they need clothes, we will clothe them; if they need a place to stay, we will house them, just as the Ausbund declares:

  “To be like Christ we love one another, through everything, here on this earth. We love one another, not just with words but in deeds. . . . If we have of this world’s goods (no matter how much or how little) and see that our brother has a need, but do not share with him what we have freely received—how can we say that we would be ready to give our lives for him if necessary?”

  White Beard turns after reciting this from memory and addresses his congregation. “Perhaps our Gott has allowed for this to happen, so we can share with our brothers and sisters the peace that passes all understanding . . . even in this time of unrest.”

  The lumberjack, the one who asked how I knew about the EMP, rises to his feet. “And what about us? I can’t just sit back and twiddle my thumbs while bands of looters are trying to steal. I don’t got a family, but I still think it ain’t right for a man not to fight to protect his own.”

  White Beard looks at the Englischer. “You and others like you are more than welcome to live within the community until you can make your way home. But if you are living here—” and I can see that, though he is old, this man’s not someone you want to mess with—“you must abide by our rules. If that is a problem, anyone is free to leave at any time.”

  Lumberjack snorts. “I read about this EMP quite a bit myself, and I thought the same thing when my truck wouldn’t start, my cell wouldn’t work, and I went inside to use you all’s phone and everything was down.” He points at me. “And then yo
u have the fact this here guy’s plane fell clean outta the sky.” Putting skillet-size paws on his waist, he says, “I’ve been expecting a crash like this for years. Now that it’s happened, I’m telling you, all your peace and love ideas sound real fine. But when those locusts come in here, steal your food, and violate your women and children, I hope you remember we talked about a different way.”

  So Lumberjack’s a prepper—one who’s been preparing for the apocalypse since long before Y2K—which probably explains why he was at Field to Table, buying bulk food, in the first place. Already I can tell his survival knowledge might be handy to have around. As for what he said about standing up and fighting, I agree with him there. These people have no clue what they’re about to face.

  Not able to take the pain any longer, I put my throbbing foot on a six-inch space on the bench in front of me. I’m sure this is as taboo a move as playing AC/DC in the sanctuary, but these Mennonites are going to quickly learn that in the wake of an EMP, they’re going to have to compromise some of their religious ideologies. And this is when it strikes me.

  Taking my foot down off the bench, since I don’t want to draw any more negative attention from White Beard, I call out, “What about a compromise?” Everyone from the riled lumberjack to Leora Ebersole looks at me. White Beard frowns, so I talk fast. “What if, over the next few days, we work together on securing the perimeter and prepping the community? We can kind of split up into two teams. The men of the community can take care of the community itself—like food, water, sanitation. The Englischers, like—” I point to the lumberjack, and he shrugs, looking down at the floor, apparently self-conscious getting singled out in a crowd that, a few minutes ago, he’d been addressing like he was at a town hall meeting.

  “Some call me Charlie,” he says.

  I smile. “All right. Thanks for introducing yourself, Charlie.” I turn back to the group. “The Englischers like Charlie here can help protect the perimeter of the community from infiltration. If somebody can spare me a good set of crutches, I should be able to help out too.”