Discord's Apple

“That was Johnny on the phone. They’ve called up the whole Citizens’ Watch. He’s going to come pick me up.” His car was still out from when he’d collapsed on patrol.

“You can’t go out!” And how dare Johnny give him a ride in his condition.

“Why not?”

“You—you’re sick.” Did she really have to remind him that he’d spent yesterday in bed, doped up on drugs?

“Homeland Security’s instituted a lockdown and curfew. Johnny doesn’t have enough people to patrol. He needs me.”

A security curfew in Hopes Fort was ridiculous—no one ever stayed out late anyway. “Dad—nothing’s going to happen here. Those rules are for places like L.A. and—and Seattle.”

His lips thinned, like he was holding back words, or his temper. She should have said New York, or Chicago, or Atlanta. Anywhere but Seattle. The word was like saying failure.

Then he said, “It’s the principle of the matter, Evie. I have to do my part. I can’t go to L.A. or Seattle to help. So I do what I can here. Even if it isn’t much. Even if it doesn’t mean anything.”

He’d joined the Watch five years ago, right after Emma died. It was how he coped. Evie had the comic; he had this.

She couldn’t say anything to stop him. She’d cornered herself by bringing up Seattle, and gave up her right to continue arguing.

“Dad—I think you should go to the hospital. After yesterday—I could drive you, just to get checked out—”

“What’s the point? They’ll tell me it’s hopeless. That there’s nothing they can do to save me, but they can give me something for the pain, and they’ll pump me full of morphine and leave me in a bed to fade away. I can die on my own, I don’t need their help.” His hand on the doorknob, Mab sitting nearby and looking earnestly up at him, he said, “Watch over the Storeroom.”

Stifled tears tightened her voice. “I don’t care about that.”

“You will.” He scratched Mab’s ears. “Help Evie watch the Storeroom, girl.”

He closed the door behind him. Through the kitchen window, Evie watched him walk to the end of the driveway just as Johnny drove up in his police sedan. She thought her father was still limping. With his hands shoved in his coat pockets, his shoulders stiff against the chill air, it was hard to tell.

Robin Goodfellow crouched in the scrub by a fence post and watched the artist at work. The Curandera stood on the side of the highway running east out of town. The wind tangled her graying black hair; she wore a turquoise-and-silver pendant, which she gripped in her hand.

A person could go east from here, and keep going east for a thousand miles without the scenery changing much: flat winter fields covered in dry, bent stalks; a few fence posts strung with barbed wire; and sky, so much wide-open sky, a person could lose himself, wander in circles, and feel so small, he’d disappear from the universe.

The earth in this part of the world only slept. Long ago, when the mountains that made the spine of the continent were built, fires and earthquakes ravaged the land. People forgot what violence was necessary to create the beauty that decorated the postcards. That had happened so long ago, people had no need to remember. They did not care that the land was not still; it only slept.

The Curandera knelt, rubbed her hands together, then pressed them flat to the dirt. She beat the earth, making a slapping noise that carried. Again, and the slap became a thud. Then a groan that vibrated through the ground. Robin stood nervously, feeling the movement of the earth.

What Hera had said of the woman: for generations, the women of her family had been granted the power to speak to the sky, the sun, and the earth. They could feel its moods, sense waters building in the heavens, bring rain with a prayer, heal the sick, kill with a thought, speak to creatures who were not human. She could feel the veins and muscles of the earth, and the joints that moved it.

The ground lurched.

The earthquake started in earnest, and Robin clung to the fence post like it was a plywood raft put to sea. The Curandera remained on her knees, unwavering. Each time she touched the earth, another tremor racked the land, as if her slight arms were epic jackhammers.

A grumbling crack appeared across the highway. Farther along, another split broke through the asphalt. Grinding, tearing, the road came apart, one section rising while another fell, crevices growing between shattered slabs of pavement.

She raised her arms high, and the earthquake stopped.

Dust settled. Dislodged pebbles clattered and came to rest. A thick silence soon covered the world.

The Curandera knelt in a miniature canyon of her own making. For at least a mile, the road was devastated, pieces lying on top of each other, separated by gaps, like a strip of tile that some madman had taken a hammer to.

Robin leaned gasping against the fence post. “Bravo,” he said at last.

She gazed across the wasted land as calmly as she had before the earthquake. “The highway west of town is the same.”

“So the town’s cut off?”

“Mostly. Some people do still remember how to travel on foot.”