Lydia Schoch

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Paige sat the little stone table her first wife had carved as a wedding present for her decades ago. It was funny how quickly time passed. Fifty happy, painful, warm, and exhausting years flew by in a heartbeat, and now that beat might end.

Death would be returning soon. He’d spirited Nevaeh away a few hours ago. Paige doubted her only daughter had felt anything other than relief when she heard him whisper something into her right ear. At dusk he’d come back for Delphine.

Her granddaughter had grudgingly married the man her grandmother chose and learned to like the names Felix, Wilma,and Malachi after Nevaeh picked them out. Paige never would have guessed the timid girl had some fight in her after all. Her final kick cracked his clavicle and for a moment both women thought she would be victorious. If only Delphine had focused on her burning desire to remain with her surviving children as the pale one leaned forward and whispered something in her right ear.

In the end she’d gone with him more or less willingly.

Wilma was breathing more easily now. Her fever raged on, but she hadn’t coughed up fresh blood in hours. The girl slept next to the half-warm embers of the kitchen fire as Death stumbled back into the house. His limp, damp, dusty robes slid past his still-healing clavicle as he bent over to unfasten the chain from his waist.

“Your work here is finished,” Paige said with a tight-lipped smile as she straightened her spine and stood up. She was a smidgen over 5 feet tall and weighed less than 90 pounds, but she expanded her will to fill every inch of it in what could be her final battle.

“I just want to bring you home,” Death sighed. As a small child she’d snapped off the tip of his left index finger when a poisonous snake bit her ankle, and she’d almost severed his skull from his spinal column when she haemorrhaged after the birth of her first child. He had only recently regained feeling in that vertebra. “It isn’t painful, and you’ll be reunited with your wives and children again in the next lifetime.” She crossed her arms and leaned forward as Wilma coughed and scooted closer to the ashes.

“The Mingus need five things for a good death,” she said with a flat tone as she counted them off one finger at a time. “One, to be aware it’s coming. Two, to have one last chance to make amends for past wrongs. Three, to say goodbye to loved ones. Four, to choose the hour in which it happens. Five, to be buried with the acknowledgement of your good deeds so the gods reward you with an auspicious rebirth.”

People who died quickly or who were buried improperly struggled to adjust to the afterlife and could be quite restless in their next incarnation.  Paige refused to be one of them. Dusty trails, child-birthing rooms, and cold, hard kitchen benches in the middle of the night were unseemly places to die. Death should know by now that she was a stickler for the rules, and if he ever hoped to take her peacefully it would be when she was surrounded by loved ones and assured of a proper burial.

The standoff began.

*****

The old woman was slumped over the table, her thin face buried in the crook of her arm when Isaac walked in the front door. For a long, terrible moment the room overflowed with silence until he heard her grunt and choke on the slowly thinning secretions in her lungs as she shifted positions. Isaac went to check on the remaining members of her family.

The child was still alive. Nevaeh and Delphine were not. There were no ceremonial skins left to wrap them in and no time to transcribe their deeds on the dirty, wool blankets they would carry to the next world. He worked quickly and quietly, and he was so absorbed in choking back his grief and bringing the bodies out to the front yard that Isaac never noticed the soldier wedged under the bushes tapping furiously away at a small, black, glowing stone.

Melvin Watts looked up when he heard him coming and quickly wiped the front of the stone clean. For a brief moment the faint light from the screen grew brighter before it dulled to what appeared to be a rough, light brown finish.  If something happened to him now or if the tablet was lost none of these peasants would look twice at it. They couldn’t even be trusted to dispense the vaccine when they were sent enough doses to immunize twice as many people as were projected to live in this hellhole.

At least he’d finally been upgraded to a proper communication device. Mel had hated writing down every detail of that boring old woman’s life, especially when he knew he’d have to type it all out again as soon as he got back to base camp. He couldn’t understand why anyone would design such fragile handwriting scanners when they knew folks like him would be using them in an extremely dusty climate. Hopefully this tablet lasted longer than the remainder of his deployment. He would definitely not be reenlisting in August.

When Isaac dragged the bodies a safe distance from the house for burial Melvin decided to turn his equipment back on and quickly scan the empty rooms. His superiors had just increased the bonus to 100,000 credits for anyone who discovered information leading to the arrest of the Pucey brothers. Bringing back news of hidden rooms and contraband items earned less of a reward, but even a few hundred credits would make Mel a happy man when they returned to civilization.

As he skittered across the yard Paige moaned and sat up. Her temples throbbed and there was a crick in her neck. As she gingerly stretched her sore muscles she heard something rustle at the front door.

Just tuning in? Catch up with parts one, two, three, four,  five,  six,  seven, eight, nine, ten , and eleven of this story.

Daphne heard her left knee click as she gingerly stretched her legs and crawled out of bed. It was even more stiff and painful than usual, but the only strenuous activity she’d indulged in the day before was moving the drying racks from one end of the yard to the other.

She groaned and steadied herself against the wall before continuing on to the kitchen. Every step sent a flicker of pain deep into her joint. The boys would have to help Paige on their own today.

Ephraim and Isaac insisted on setting her up with a pitcher of water and assembling a cold breakfast for her first. They left her sitting in her favourite chair in front of the house with Lemon curled up sleeping beside her.

“How many bodies did you bury with Doc Porter?” Isaac asked once they’d rounded the bend. The last time a serious epidemic had hit Mingus Mountain he’d been too ill to attend the mass funerals and too young to dig graves even if he had been healthy.

“None,” Ephraim said. “There was one guy with a bad leg infection who is probably dead now, but all of the Docs patients were still alive when he sent me home.” Unlike his brother, Ephraim had seen a dead body before it was prepared for the next life once. Old Man Winterson’s nonsensical prophecies had once been the talk of the community. He claimed to speak for the gods, but once Daphne realized that the old man’s message swung from vivid predictions of mass starvation to peaceful descriptions of wolves nuzzling wild hares depending on how recently he’d  found something to eat she told her sons to ignore his ramblings. Isaac listened, Ephraim did not. It was because of his interest in Old Man Winterson’s conflicting messages that Ephraim discovered him curled up beside the courthouse, his favourite place for impromptu sermons, one afternoon while bringing a message to one of the adults inside the building. The old man was caked in dust and sweat, but in death his face has lost its fearful, angry edge. If this was peace Abraham had found it.

Isaac was a little disappointed by his brother’s response. The thought of wrapping up a dead baby and burying it creeped him out a little. Yes, it was sad that he died, but this sort of thing happened to almost every family eventually.

The Davenport’s yard smelled like stale urine and rotting vegetables. Ephraim shouted a customary hello as they approached the front door, but no one answered them. The stench grew stronger when they entered the dark, still house. Now a new scent tickled their noses: stale blood.

No one had banked the fire the night before, and the overflowing ashes were cool to the touch. Once their eyes adjusted to the dim light Isaac noticed a small bundle wrapped in a dirty blanket lying on the kitchen table.

“Hello,” said a small voice. Felix’s greasy curls hung limply over his pale face.

“Hi Felix,” Ephraim said as he slid his knapsack to the floor and kneeled down to greet the boy. “We’re here to help your grandmother with something. Can you tell us where she is?”

“Everybody’s sleeping,” he said with a shrug as he motioned to the bedroom. Ephraim felt a chill shudder down his spine as he exchanged nervous glances with his brother.

“Isaac brought you some lunch. Why don’t you two go out into the yard and eat while I wake them up?”

“Ok,” said Felix. He’d long since finished the last of the bread, and when the fire ran out of fuel he couldn’t figure out an alternative way to crack open the small, hard nuts that were all that remained of the family’s larder.

Ephraim rummaged a small lamp from the kitchen, lit it, and opened the bedroom door. He waited for his eyes to adjust before entering the small, stifling room, but immediately he heard the slow crackle of someone struggling to breathe. Nevaeh’s glassy eyes stared through him as he slowly circled the room.

“We’re here to help,” Ephraim said. She didn’t seem to notice he was there. It wasn’t until he knelt down to tuck a blanket around Lucio  that he noticed the young father’s blue lips and cool skin. He wiped away a dribble of blood on Lucio’s cheek and gently lifted the blanket over his head. Delphine and their three-year-old daughter, Wilma, were emaciated and sleeping so deeply Ephraim had trouble rousing them, but they were breathing much more easily than Nevaeh. Paige woke up startled when she heard Ephraim talking to the living in a low, steady voice. She was momentarily disoriented, but her fever was mild and her breathing steady. It was funny how this fever tended to affect the young and healthy much more severely than other groups.

Ephraim and Isaac had only intended to stay for an hour,but It took all morning to scrub down the kitchen and quickly bury Lucio and little Malachi. After breakfast and a much-needed bath Felix curled up next to his sister. Ephraim knew the sick should be quarantined, but there were no other safe places for the boy to sleep while the adults worked. If he’d survived this long without catching it he probably wouldn’t get sick anyway.

“They’re dangerous ill,” Ephraim quietly confided to his brother as they lugged the final jugs of dirty water to the edge of the yard and tipped them out. “And I don’t want to risk bringing this disease home to mom. I know this fever doesn’t seem to spread like normal diseases, but the gods could change their minds about that at any point.”

“What will we do, then?”

“We could bring the boy home with us temporarily. He’s healthy and strong for his age even if he’s two-souled.”

“And leave the rest to die?” Isaac couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Ephraim was usually the more sensitive twin.

“No, we’d visit them every morning with food and water before we went out to finish the harvesting. No herb can save them, and if we don’t breathe in too much of their poisoned air we probably won’t get sick.”

“I don’t like the sound of this plan. What if coyotes attack or there’s a fire? They’d never be strong enough to get away from it.”

“Well, what do you suggest we do then?”

Photo by Mike.

Just tuning in? Catch up with parts one, two, three, four,  five,  six,  seven, eight, nine, and ten of this story.

“The house is clean,” said the man as he walked out of Daphne’s house. “Their only weapons were a few hunting knives, and we found no evidence of extra people living here.” The woman standing outside the door nodded.

“Call off your dog and we’ll leave,” she said. When Daphne clicked her tongue Lemon looked up expectantly. He still hadn’t figured out where the strange man was hiding his cheese, but he could smell the remnants of it. Isaac wrapped his muscular arms around the dog’s neck and gently tugged him away. The motley crew slowly dribbled away from the house, but as they walked down the dusty path to the main road one of the youngest soldiers turned around to stare at the woman and boys who were watching them leave.

There was something off about this family. If only they’d found some scrap of evidence to warrant further investigation. As they walked away his commanding officer slowed down her pace until he caught up with her.

In a low, quiet voice she gave him his orders for the next few days.

*****

Paige limped up the path to Daphne’s house, her long, white hair slowly wriggling free of its braid. She wore a tunic smeared with a dry, light brown substance Daphne couldn’t quite identify, and she leaned heavily on her walking stick as the younger woman approached her. It was quite unusual for Paige to walk this far at all, much less on her own at the hottest part of the day. Nevaeh normally travelled with her mother on the rare occasions that she needed to walk more than a few miles.

“Would you like some water?” Daphne asked, a little surprised that anyone would come looking for her at her home during harvest time. If not for her tender knee, Daphne would have been digging up the harvest with her sons this afternoon, but there had been so few visitors lately that no one knew it had been bothering her again.

The woman nodded. Daphne ushered her inside for a cup of warm, stale well water. Lemon was  sleeping soundly underneath the kitchen table, but he opened one groggy eye and thumped his tail in recognition of the family’s closest neighbour.

“No one’s sick here,” Paige said with a note of surprise. She’d always held a sneaking suspicion that the gods were just. Surely they would show more mercy to a woman who worshipped them and followed even their most heartbreaking rules than to someone who did not.

“No, we’ve been lucky so far,” Daphne said as she set the cups down. “How are you?”

“We need help,” Paige said. The sickness had struck her household particularly harshly. The baby had slipped away quietly. While his father, older brother, and sister seemed to be on the mend, Paige could not say the same thing for her daughter or granddaughter. She described her long, gruelling days caring for a house full of sick relatives as her grandson-in-law staggered through the harvesting process. Only one other neighbour had been within walking distance for an old woman with a bad hip, and he had been too overwhelmed with his own sick family and overripe harvest to offer any assistance. As much as she privately disliked Daphne, Paige had no choice but to ask for help.

Daphne listened to Paige’s story quietly. Last year she and her sons had finished their harvesting and food preservation with time to spare, but now only two of them were physically able to carry those heavy baskets home. Once her sons came home this afternoon she’d be busy drying and preserving everything as quickly as possible before insects or mould snatched away months of hard work.

“We can’t help with your harvest until ours is finished,” Daphne said. Food shortages were on the way, and if she didn’t look out for her own family they’d starve over the summer. “But we can help you bury the baby.”

“How soon will you be finished?” Paige was in no position to argue.

“A few weeks,” Daphne said. “Although once the harvesting portion is completed I’ll be able to spare one of my boys while the other one helps me preserve the rest of our provisions.”

Would her crops hold? Paige could only hope so. The pitiful amount she’d managed to put away so far wouldn’t keep her family alive for more than a week.

*****

Melvin Watts inched the notebook out of his boot as the old woman walked by and dutifully jotted down a description of her. He was too far away to hear their conversation, of course, but she was the first visitor this house had seen in the past two days. Before he heard her hobbling up the path Melvin had been resting his eyes in the shade of the rocks he had wiggled in between. His dusty uniform and naturally light brown hair blended in well with his surroundings. It wasn’t quite camouflage, but it was difficult to see him if you weren’t expecting to find a tall, thin boy lying down in the dirt.

Melvin’s commanding officer had insisted this family was hiding something, but so far his surveillance had turned up nothing. Privately he doubted the two old women were in cahoots but orders were orders, and it was better to earn a sunburn through boredom than on the battlefield.