I ran the rest of the way to school, anxious at being late. Soldiers covered the playgrounds, their shouts the only sound in a place once filled by games and laughter. They were sealing off the building, chaining the doors closed. I hid in the trees and watched as students tried to escape from the upper windows. The soldiers climbed their ladders and hit the kids with hammers. I went home, my stomach aching, my hands trembling.
The next day, Mother came home, her face in her hands. She was a doctor, and we thought she was crying over the misery she witnessed as the Penance devastated her patients. Prayers hadn't helped them. Neither had medicine.
Father pulled her hands apart. She had sores on her face. Father slapped her. 'Wicked whore,' he said. 'You have brought the pestilence among us.'
She was packing her clothes when soldiers rolled their trucks into our yard. Father had called them, hoping they would take her away and spare the rest of the family. After all, why should we suffer for her sins?
The soldiers grunted from behind their masks. Father held his arms wide in welcome. He was a big disciple of the Commander-in-Chief by that time. The army was doing God's holy work, only following orders, he said.
They drove their nails even as Father cursed them. He pounded on the door that had been slammed in his face. He kicked at the wood that surrounded and bound us. He picked up his Bible and slammed it against Mother's head. He fell to his knees and wept prayers.
The soldiers drove away. Gran and my younger brother Bobby hid in the bathroom until Father's rage subsided. I helped Mother to her room. She collapsed on the bed.
'I'm going to hell,' she said.
'No, you're not.'
'I have sinned.' She shivered and grabbed my hands.
'We have all sinned,' I said. 'But God is merciful.'
'I helped them,' she said. 'I worked with the scientists and I prayed for the saints.'
'Just try to get some rest. I'll bring you a cold drink.'
Her face was raw and red, her eyes wide. 'What have I done?' she gasped to the ceiling. 'What have I done to deserve this, O Lord?'
God may have forgiven her, but she never forgave herself. She died two weeks later. Then Bobby got the sores.
'What did I do wrong?' Bobby asked. He was ten years old. He was Father's favorite, everybody's favorite. Even mine. But then, he was the son, and I was only the daughter.
'Nothing,' I said. 'Sometimes even God makes mistakes.' God would forgive me this blasphemy, because my intent was pure.
I kept him hidden from Father. By then, Father was so obsessed with the Web reports that he didn't even notice Bobby was sick. When Bobby died, I put him in the spare bedroom with Mother.
Gran stayed in the kitchen most of the time. The saints had chopped out a small hole in the kitchen window, just large enough for Gran and me to send out whispered confessions. Sometimes at night, cheese or canned foods or bottles of water would be shoved back through the opening. Some nights, the streets were filled with the noises of trucks and gunfire. On those nights, no food arrived.
One time, just as the sun was sinking and throwing its red light through the opening, I heard a scratching sound outside the wall. I thought it was a saint. I whispered, 'All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.'
No one answered. Confessions were usually rewarded with material goods, sustenance, the manna of the damned. I called again. Gran, who was asleep at the table, twitched once and fell still.
'Ruth,' came a guarded voice. Saints weren't supposed to use mortal names.
'Who is it?'
'John. From school.'
John. I recognized the voice. He sat behind me in Social Studies, quiet and smart, his hair always a little unkempt.
'You can get in trouble,' I whispered through the hole, wondering how he had escaped the school. Unless, like me, God had chosen him to be tardy that day.
'I'm a soldier now.'
My pulse raced. I pictured him outside the house, in his crisp uniform, a hammer on his belt, a rifle strapped over his shoulder. I wondered which of the nails he'd driven into our doors and windows.
'Has it caught you yet?' he asked. The dying day had made the sky more deeply red. A little of that blood- colored light leaked through the wall.
'No,' I whispered. 'My brother Bobby died. Mother, too.'
'I'm scared.'
Soldiers weren't supposed to be scared. They were doing God's work.
'Why are you here?' I asked.
'The Penance is catching some of the soldiers. I heard a rumor today that even the Commander-in-Chief has it. I just wanted to tell somebody I was sorry.'
My stomach ached, my face flushed. I wondered whether it was the first rush of fever or just hatred of this unwanted confession. 'Don't say these things,' I said. 'God will strike you.'
'Let Him strike,' John said breathlessly. Night had fallen, leaking through the hole in the wall like a black oil. A truck sounded on the street, men shouted, and a siren wailed several streets away. I lit another candle and waited near the hole, but I heard no more of John.
Father bathed himself in the light of the Web screen. In the beginning, the videos had been of bodies piled high in the streets as solemn news anchors reported the latest death tolls. Health officials spoke of concentrated efforts to find a cure. Eventually these gave way to army television. Most of the time the Commander-in-Chief occupied the screen, his fist lifted in righteous indignation, his eyes bright with hate, his mouth contorted by his sermons. Father raised his fist in unison with the image.
'Kill them all, and let God sort them out,' was one of Father's favorite slogans. I avoided him after he began wearing the mask. Most of the time, I stayed in the kitchen with Gran, the farthest room from the bathroom, where our wastes had fouled the air. We slept in the room that I had shared with Bobby.
One night I heard a tapping, a squeaking of metal and the slight crack of dry wood. I was afraid, because the sound meant change, and all change was for the worse. I prayed the night away, and somehow God spared us. The next morning, as I pressed at the wood that covered the window, anxious for a glimpse of the new sun, one of the boards fell away. Others were loose, too, enough for a person to wriggle through. I could hardly keep myself from bursting through and falling onto the green grass outside, but I was afraid soldiers might be watching.
I waited until evening to tell Gran. Her eyes misted over. When I was through describing my plan, she lowered her head.
'It's our only chance,' I whispered.
'It's the Lord's will that we be punished,' she said.
'Maybe it's the Lord's will that the boards are loose.'
'The wicked can't flee their own wretched hearts.'
'Gran, Gran,' I said. 'Not you, too. Why would God want to punish you?'
'No one is clean. All have come short of the glory of God.'
Father gave a shout from the living room, joining in a televised cheer for the Commander-in-Chief.
'We only have enough food left for a week or so,' I said. 'We'll die in here.'
'I'll die anyway. Here, there, what's the difference?'
Her words hung in the air like smoke from a fatal gun. She would die, sweating and shivering, writhing in the sheets, chewing her tongue as the blood poured from her ears and eyes.
God is blind to suffering. We make our prayers anyway.
'In the autumn, the mountains look like a rumpled patchwork quilt,' Gran said. 'Your grandfather would sit on the porch with his easel and paints. He used oils because he believed that the long drying time made him more patient, more careful.'
One of his paintings hung in the living room. It was of a neglected flower garden, bright marigolds and morning glories and tulips fighting the weeds for sunshine. Grandfather had been Jewish. The Commander-in-Chief said the Jews may have brought the pestilence among the faithful. God delivered it, but the Jews spread it. Either
