Virgil couldn't believe how disconnected and out-of-place he felt here living amongst the Amish. It had been two months since he arrived and he'd yet to find a role that properly suited him. At least when he worked here years ago he had a narrowly defined mission, which was to study the genetic makeup of the Amish. Back then he felt completely at ease amongst these gentle people. But now he was an academic in a world where words and ideas had little currency and only hard work meant the difference between staying alive or perishing.
He'd been assigned to live with Amos Yoder and his wife Mary and their three young children. Living with the Amish meant learning the Amish ways. But as much as he respected these people and their long-standing traditions, he had no intention of becoming one of them. No matter what happened, he understood that he would eventually leave this place and head west with Dar. Whether a utopia existed in Washington State did not matter at this point. His primary goal was to find his way to Gentel Labs and see if he couldn't discover the cause of this plague.
He worked hard at whatever tasks they gave him. The one place he excelled was at the schoolhouse where he worked alongside the teacher, Nadine Miller, assisting the younger children with their assignments. Although the Amish children stopped attending school after the eighth grade, he found them highly intelligent, disciplined and eager to learn about the ways of the world. A couple of the children he found extremely bright and so he taught them different methods of math and science that they never would have learned from Nadine. But to what end? Would they ever need to know such advanced methods in the plague-infested world they now inhabited? He'd always believed in knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and laboring under this belief made it easier for him to continue on in this vein.
Every day he thought about the dead and the cause of their condition. The Amish, however, went about their business as if nothing had ever happened. And in a way nothing really had changed for them. Their isolation from the world had been so complete that not even a global apocalypse could alter their everyday routine. Virgil knew that he could never acclimate himself to these new surroundings. His life now had a different arc, which was intricately connected to his work. He considered it his holy grail to find a way to protect the remaining survivors from this lethal virus and thus allow the human population to repopulate and rebuild. Having a keen understanding about the role viruses played in the advancement of the species, he wondered whether this regenerative virus had randomly mutated or if it served a specific evolutionary purpose.
Everything in camp ran smoothly. Apart from the strange ditch separating the two camps, the Amish went about their business as usual. Even most of the survivors seemed to fit in, accepting the Amish ways and adopting the traditional dress. Only Dar, the two black men, Gritz and the young Italian soldier did not easily fit in with the larger group. Jamaal and Brownie would never fit in because of their skin color. Out of respect for President Roberts, the Amish elders provided her with separate living arrangements, clearing out a small house and forcing the young couple residing there to live with their parents until spring came and the community could build them a new home. But even the president was expected to work and Felicia helped out with the harvest just like everyone else. Gritz seemed a loner and kept mostly to himself when not working.
Virgil had been teaching little Samuel algebra one morning when one of the older children rushed in with news that there had been an attack. The thought of the horde breaking through the fence brought back all his old fears. Never again would he be able to rest easy. The days of being able to able to sit back and relax with not a worry in the world were a thing of the past.
He rushed outside, ran a short distance, and found himself out of breath. Exercise and conditioning had never been his strong suit. He grew up with flat feet and a complete lack of coordination and his diminished eyesight made it difficult to see a ball. For that reason he was always the last one picked in the schoolyard games.
By the time he'd made it out to the field a crowd had gathered. He pushed his way to the front and saw Silas Eastman sitting on the grass with tears in his eyes. Silas had been one of the few people from across the ditch that had chosen to live on this side. He'd married one of the elder's daughter's, and faced with the choice, chose his wife's family over his own. He looked at the others and saw Brownie and Jamaal trying to suppress their laughter. Something appeared odd about Silas's appearance. Then he realized what it was; someone had hacked away at his beard. Cephas broke through the crowd and towered over the sobbing Amish man.
“Who did this to you, Silas?”
“It was no one from this side.”
“Did you get a good look at them?”
“No, but they were youth, I'm sure of that. They surprised me from behind, Cephas, and took me down. They covered my head with a canvas bag before committing this crime against God.”
“Chill out, cuz. Ain't like you got bit or nothing,” the black soldier named Brownie said. “It's facial hair. It'll grow back.”
“You don't understand,” Silas said. “Cutting an Amish man's beard is one of the worst crimes a person can do in our community. The beard signifies our manhood and the sacred vows we have taken to our wives.”
Virgil heard a voice calling out in the field behind him. He turned and saw a young boy running through the grass and crying.
“They cut my father's beard. I found him inside the tool shed. Please come and help him. He is bleeding and not waking up.”
“Take Silas back to the house, Mary. The rest of you come with me.”
The skies began to darken and the winds picked up, blowing the women's dresses and forcing the men to hold onto their straw hats. As the others jogged toward the tool shed, Virgil glanced over at the wire fence and saw the dead beginning to gather. The horde seemed perturbed and more aroused than usual. It occurred to him that the brain waves of the dead might be affecting not only the weather patterns but also the tectonic plates underneath the earth's crust. Off to the west he noticed some purplish cumulonimbus clouds rotating in the sky. A direct hit on the camp would be disastrous. Any breach caused by such a windstorm would allow the horde to run rampant, and he knew they had no weapons to protect themselves.
He turned and began to jog toward the tool shed, sweat pouring down his pale forehead. Would the disparate Amish groups go to war with each other? It went against every belief they held near and dear. But what other recourse did they have now that all forms of legal authority had been disbanded? In such desperate times, might made right. The apocalypse, he knew, would severely test the Amish's faith and their ability to live by the principles set down by their ancestors.
His feet hurt and his lungs seared with pain. The swirling clouds worried him. He looked up and saw Brownie sprinting ahead of the others. The kid appeared to be a natural athlete and could run faster than anyone in this place. By the time Virgil arrived at the tool shed he was completely spent and had to bend over to catch his breath. A crowd gathered outside the door to the small tool shed. Dar, hefting Styx in one arm and her ax in the other, approached from the barn. President Roberts pulled up next to him and inquired as to what all the fuss was about.
“They assaulted Joseph in the tool shed and cut off Silas's beard.”
“Who did?” Dar asked.
“Some unruly kids from the other side, I'm assuming. They must have snuck over from across the ditch,” he replied.
“But how did they get over the ditch?” Felicia asked, a light rain beginning to fall.
“They keep planks on either side in case they need to cross over. The kids could have easily done it when no one was looking.”
“I smell trouble,” Dar said, looking out at the sepia colored fields. “There's no leadership here and blood will spill without strong rule.”
“Have you guys noticed the connection between the weather and the horde's behavior? I think their brain signals are altering the weather,” Virgil remarked.
“That's the craziest thing I've ever heard,” Felicia said, “but then again I'm starting to believe that anything is possible in these crazy times.”
“I think Virgil's onto something,” Dar said, placing Styx down on the wet grass. Who would have ever thought these fuckers would come back to life in the first place?”
“You make a good point, Dar. Still, I can't wrap my mind around the fact that these things can change the weather.”
“Nothing in this world surprises me anymore.”
Cephas carried Joseph out of the tool shed, staring grimly down at the young father. Although Joseph was in his early twenties and had four children, he looked like a typical college student. Blood trickled down his forehead and a large blue knot appeared near his temple. Cephas carried him past the crowd and toward the cluster of homes. The people gathered, sensing that something terrible had happened, followed behind, their repressed sobs like a funeral dirge. Virgil fell in behind the procession, rain falling down over them. The swirling mass of turbulent weather felt like a portent of doom.
“You think he's dead?” Felicia whispered.
“Either that or seriously injured,” Gritz said, joining them. “That's a bad looking wound.”
“It had to have been a prank gone wrong,” Virgil said. “The Amish kids are not prone to violence.”
“These aren't normal times,” Dar said, holding Styx's hand as they walked up to the common area. “Something weird is happening on this farm and we need to find out what the hell's going on.”
“What in God's name are you talking about?” Felicia asked.
“What do you think I'm talking about, Prez? War. The willful destruction of life and property. The human will to survive at all cost. Those fuckers have altered these people's behavior and caused them to turn against each other.”
“Don't you think you're being a bit paranoid, Dar?”
“Don't patronize me, lady. You're just a typical politician with your head up your ass. Time to wake the hell up!”
“Take it easy, people. We all need to get along if we're going to survive this ordeal,” Virgil said. “Dar, you know we're all committed to you and will do what we can to see that you make it out west.”
“I don't remember inviting you, Snow.”
“I guess I assumed you wanted me to go.”
“Don't assume anything. If it's meant to be then it's meant to be.”
“But there's nothing for me here, Dar,” Virgil implored. “And I thought we agreed that we'd stop in Minnesota on the way.”
“I'll do what's best for me and my son, so I make no promises to anyone, including you,” Dar said. “Maybe your best bet is to stay here with the Amish, Snow.”
“No!”
“I'm not saying I want to stay here forever, but this Amish lifestyle is sort of growing on me,” Felicia said.
“Don't get used to it, Prez, because you're coming with me even if I have to drag your ass out of here. Your title is a helluva lot more important to our survival than you alone.”
“Sure, Dar. I understand,” Felicia said, obviously hurt by Dar's words.
“We'll be leaving here very soon and getting back on the road. So be ready.”
“I really need to go along with you guys, Dar. I just have to stop at Gentel Labs and see if I can't determine the cause of this plague.”
“You really expect to learn something about this disease once you get there?”
“If there's one place we might find out more about this epidemic, Gentel Labs would be the first place I'd look.”
“Why should I take you anyway, Snow? Look at you. You're a total liability to me. You're worthless with your hands, fat as a cow, and without your horn-rimmed coke bottles you can't see a thing. Personally, I think you'd be holding me and my son back.”
“I got us here didn't I?” he pleaded. “Please take me with you, Dar, and I promise you won't regret it.”
Dar turned and walked back to the barn, ignoring his desperate plea.
* * *
Virgil sat quietly at the dinner table with his host family. The Amish were not big into conversation or small talk and so after saying grace they passed the food around in silence and began to eat. But tonight he felt tension in the air. He could sense it because of the recent assaults, especially the attack on Joseph, which had no doubt been a tragic consequence of a youthful prank. It lent a sobriety to the dinner, making him glad that they were a reticent people because the last thing he wanted to do tonight was talk.
More than anything, he feared being left behind and not finding a solution to this global problem. He couldn't get his mind off the plague and the organism responsible for such human suffering. Something had caused people to come back from the dead and turn into cannibals. He remembered the early days, before everyone had fled the university, when one of his colleagues from another university began theorizing about the cause of the world's increasingly downward spiral. Dr. Douglass Trowbridge theorized that the event was caused by atmospheric spores resulting from a genetic experiment gone wrong on one of the Pacific islands. Virgil listened politely, trying not to laugh, before hanging up on the eccentric old scientist, wondering how such quacks ever rose to positions of tenure. He'd always believed that after receiving tenure, many of the more eccentric scientists ventured off the deep end. But now he didn't believe him to be all that crazy.
A good deal of food sat on the kitchen table: bowls of cabbage, sauerkraut, friendship bread with creamy butter alongside boiled potatoes. Although most families had a few chickens and cows, and the community shared some pigs, valuable protein gave way to a starch-laden diet fit for hardworking farmers burning calories. But for him it had been a detriment. He loved to eat, and despite the strenuous lifestyle and the dire conditions, he found his waistline growing larger the more time he spent here. Their food, while simply prepared, tasted delicious and was incredibly filling. The reason it was so delicious, he came to realize, was that the Amish used lots of lard in the preparation of just about every meal.
Most, if not all, of the families retired to bed early and woke before the break of dawn. Having been a night owl for most of his life, he found it difficult to sleep when going to bed so early. Some nights he lay there thinking about viruses until the early morning hours, in which case he was exhausted and ineffective at the tasks assigned to him. He asked Amos one night if he and his wife would mind if he went for a walk, his inability to sleep driving him mad. Without lights, and without books or a computer to do research, there was not much else for him to do at night but lie in bed and think.
He decided to walk around this evening and do some thinking. Because the other matter that occupied his mind at all hours of the day was Annabelle, and to lay in bed thinking about her led to embarrassing results. She began to completely fill his thoughts. Whenever he saw her working out in the field he couldn't take his eyes off her. The simple life had transformed her for the better, even more so than back at the Boston Common. The hard work and pristine environment put a glow in her face that never ceased to amaze him. Like Dar, her hair had grown long and lustrous, although most of the time she'd kept it stowed under her Amish cap. The dense, high calorie food had caused to her to put on weight, rounding her figure out nicely.
He left the house and closed the door gently behind him. The chilled air caused goose bumps to sprout over his pale skin. A gentle breeze blew in from the north, causing the tree branches to sway in the dancing shadows. He headed toward the ditch, hoping to get a glimpse of the horde and maybe spark his creative thought process. The clouds raced past the gibbous moon, bending light in mysterious ways. The closer he got to the ditch the louder the cries of the horde became.
He had to leave this place no matter what decision Dar made. Gentel Labs held the key to understanding this plague, he was sure of it. He knew if that they could somehow get inside the complex he'd be able to study the virus's genetic roadmap and possibly interpret what its software was designed to do. He'd already theorized that it had been a hybrid virus, possibly a lethal cross between rabies and mad cow disease that had melded into the nucleus. But what other genetic material had wormed its way into the mix?
Then again, Fisk Calloway might have already beaten him to the punch.
The suffering that the Ebola virus had caused many people in Africa had been difficult to relay back to the Western world, especially what the surviving families had to endure in the aftermath of such horrendous suffering. The Ebola virus had been passed from infected blood via the butchering of bush meat and eventually caused the victim to hemorrhage out of every orifice. But for many families it was either eat bush meat or die of starvation. A difficult choice indeed. So many took their chances, despite all the warnings he and his team provided, and they slaughtered whatever infected primate they found lying about in the forest. Their hands mingled in the animal's warm blood as they butchered the carcass, risking infection and whatever parasite the diseased animal may have been carrying.
But by far one of the saddest cases he'd ever seen came from Uganda, where many of the children had become infected with the dreaded zombie disease. Many thought the children contracted it from the Tse Tse fly, but the results were not definitive. The afflicted children slowly degenerated, their mental capacity diminishing to the point where they became violent and beyond control. They literally took on the appearance of zombies, shuffling from place to place without purpose. To keep them from running away, some parents tied their children to the furniture or a post stuck in the ground outside their shack. The sight of a young infected child chained to a pole only heightened the inhumanity of the disease, making the ghoulish specter all too real.
He'd been walking and thinking about these matters for so long that he'd forgotten his whereabouts, and when he looked up noticed that he'd nearly walked into the ditch. He stopped a few feet from the edge, stunned by his carelessness, and stared down into the murky depths, making out the silhouettes of the angry faces staring up at him. He moved closer, kneeling down on one knee to get a better look.
The ditch spanned a half-mile from one side to the other. It had been dug, he recalled, by some of the younger kids who'd stolen a local farmer's tractor. Such use of mechanical equipment had been strictly forbidden and yet because of the deep schism within the community, as well as the tradition of Rumspringa, the adults looked the other way. He thought it a very convenient oversight on the part of the elders.
But how had the dead wandered in here in the first place? He'd asked many of the Amish upon his arrival here, but they hemmed and hawed, never giving him a straight answer. Some of the children told him what their parents had told them, that the dead sometimes wandered inside the compound and inadvertently fell into the ditch. Staring down, Virgil found that explanation hard to believe. His eyes started to adjust to the darkness and depth, and he could better see their scarred hands reaching up to grab hold of him.
He balked at the rank odor and covered his nose, not able to wrap his mind around the conundrum of this epidemic. Viral families had many cousins and branches on the family tree. It reasoned then that he most likely was familiar with the virus responsible for this plague. It was a matter of breaking down the various components and identifying the culprit responsible for such mutations. No supernatural elements or no deity looking down upon them with righteous indignation. No demonic forces at work. Merely a result of generations of genetic reproduction.
The only thing he couldn't understand was what Dar called the ‘reawakening’, that short time period between death and reanimation where the person drifted between life and death. He believed the viral host acted on a specific part of the brain that was associated with spiritual reception, theorizing that this was the reason why every person who reawakened spoke of life after death. In the abstract, it made perfect sense to him. The Buddhist monks trained their minds to completely shut down their bodies' vital functions, making it appear as if they had died. For that reason, he ruled out the possibility of any supernatural entity.
What intrigued him most was the biological underpinning of the dead's' existence. They didn't require oxygen or exhale carbon dioxide, which meant that some other life-providing mechanism was at work. The fact that their brains gave off such strong waves indicated to him a unique and exciting branch of physics that had yet to be discovered, and if harnessed could revolutionize the world. He laughed at that notion, as if the world needed any more changing. Rather than being changed, the survivors would need to rebuild from the ground up and do things differently than previous generations.
Below him the horde's attention began to shift. He peered down into the ditch and wondered what had caused them to stir. Except for those closest to him, all the others turned and began to push in the opposite direction. But they'd been packed so tight that there was nowhere for them to go. He noticed that many of the dead had once been members of the Amish community. Crouching low for fear of being detected, he looked to his left and saw a girl standing at the edge of the ditch as if she were about to jump. Was this how the dead ended up down there? Suicide?
He was about to get up and try and talk her out of jumping when he heard her shouting out over the roar of the horde. But who was she shouting to? He looked over the ravine and saw a young man standing across from her. She waved when she saw him, her excitement palpable. The man squatted and then stood, holding a large board that rose twenty feet in the air. The young man instructed her to watch out as he lowered the plank over the ravine. Once he bridged the gap, the two of them walked across it until they met halfway.
The zombies gathered underneath, arms raised and screeching like wild animals. The couple paid them no notice. He watched in fascination as the two lovers kissed in the tranquility of solitude. The plank bowed and the lovers bounced up and down on the board, their lips locked in a warm embrace. They had no fear of the dead roiling beneath them. Just as quickly they broke apart, holding hands for as long as they could before heading back to land. Virgil couldn't tell who the girl was but she was young, possibly a teenager. Their forbidden love could not be made public, especially after the violent assaults that had taken place and the threat of retaliation. He could see the silhouette of the young man in the moonlight, jogging back toward the cluster of houses and holding onto his straw hat lest it get blown away.
He had a feeling that this ditch held many secrets, secrets the Amish community would prefer to keep under wraps. Virgil stood, suddenly feeling exhausted, and saw the horde shifting their attention back to him. Having no more stomach for the sight and smell of the horde, he walked briskly back to the Yoder household. A strong gust blew down from the north and he clasped onto his own hat for good measure. Frankly, he hated wearing the Amish clothes. Of the professors back at MIT he'd been the least stylish of them all, which was saying something. The Amish clothes fit too tight and made him look like a chubby schoolboy but he wore them out of respect, grateful for their hospitality and generous nature.
He opened the door and let himself in, tiptoeing to his room. His body felt sore from all the hard work he'd been doing and he knew he would sleep well tonight. Tomorrow would be an interesting day. After the calamitous events of the last twenty-four hours, he pondered what action Cephas would take and whether the culprits would be harshly punished for their actions. He wondered about the health status of the victim, whether he was badly injured or had in fact died. Collapsing on his hard mattress, he fell fast asleep, the gears of his mind spinning in concentric circles.