Chapter Thirty-two

Winter had officially come to Burninghead Farm. Snow had not yet fallen, but Mother Nature had delivered the first hard freeze of the season, leaving no doubt as to her intentions. Duncan sat huddled on the porch of the farmhouse, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee. He had grown accustomed to coffee of late, no longer minding its bitter flavor. It seemed to fit his mood these days.

Duncan stood and stretched, shaking out his legs, trying to restart the flow of blood. He grabbed his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and began to pace the porch, still gripping his mug. Sentry duty could be mind numbing if you did not keep moving, and the last thing Duncan wanted to do was let his guard down.

Buck had set up the sentry system the day after Duncan and Taylor had returned to the farm. Three guards per night, with a system of repurposed church bells to warn if and when something happened. Buck’s news about Zeke’s return had sent shockwaves through the farm, or at least most of it. It was clear to Duncan that a few people had already known what had happened, including Taylor and Kate. For a while Duncan had been mad they had not told him. That they had not trusted him. But eventually he had let it go, deciding he was being childish. What he needed to do was focus on the problem at hand, namely, the threat to the farm. And so Duncan had been the first to volunteer to serve as a sentry.

It was a man’s job, and Duncan did not take the responsibility lightly. He was well-acquainted with a rifle, having been taught by his daddy to hunt when he was only twelve, as his father had been taught by Duncan’s grandfather. He was a good shot, but he knew there was much more to pulling a trigger than the accuracy of your aim. You never picked up a gun you did not intend to fire, and you never pointed it at anything you did not intend to kill.

Duncan had volunteered for extra shifts, although Buck would not let him take as many as he had asked for. Duncan was frustrated by that, although he understood it. Too many shifts keeping watch could drive a man crazy, make him hear noises that meant nothing and see things that were not really there. That was how accidents happened. Or worse yet, a man could go the opposite way, grow complacent from too many nights of nothing happening. Neither possibility was good.

Still, Duncan stayed frustrated. The need to do something gnawed at him. It was building up inside him, this nervous energy born of waiting for something to happen and feeling impotent against it. With work halted on the wall on account of the weather, the only outlet Duncan had for his growing anxiety was guard duty, which sometimes felt more like doing nothing than something. All he could do was wait, wait for Zeke to come back, wait for something—anything—to happen. And Duncan was tired of waiting.

It was not that he wanted Zeke to come back, or that he wanted a confrontation over the farm’s future, but he knew it was coming. They all did. Zeke said he would be back, and Buck had ordered armed sentries posted for a reason. It was not a question of if a fight was coming so much as when. The inevitability of it hung in the air, in the stillness of the trees and the way the moon rose ominously overhead. And if it was coming, Duncan just wanted it to get here already and be done with it, one way or another. It was time for a reckoning.

But night after night, nothing happened. Duncan paced the porch of the farmhouse, watching and waiting and finding nothing changed. Even when he was not on duty, he found himself pacing over near the barn or outside the dorm. Still watching. Still waiting. And it was making him crazy.

It was an itch deep beneath his skin that he could never reach, that prickled and burned so far down it made his whole body twitch and ache. The only thing that helped was to keep moving, to walk the farm and scan the horizon and know, when the time came, he would be ready. He would see them coming. He would warn the farm. And he would stop Zeke and his men from destroying all that he loved.

He would stop them.

Duncan stepped down from the porch, extending his pacing into the less confining ground around the farmhouse. The grass, which had been alive and spongy beneath his boots only a few days ago, now crunched and shattered with every step. Duncan was once again reminded of how quickly things could change. Just when you thought you had everything figured out, that you understood the world and you knew your place in it, something came along to blow apart all you had carefully constructed. Control was an illusion, a trick of the mind and sleight of hand wielded by a faceless master magician. Duncan was just the lowly magician’s apprentice, one without any real chance of mastering the magician’s secrets or taking over the act.

It was hard to accept that tomorrow was Thanksgiving. Duncan knew that Franny and Mrs. Sapple and a few extra helpers had been working for days in preparation, baking pies and shucking corn. A few of the men had even managed to shoot some wild turkeys on the farm’s western edge, and while it would not be enough to truly feed the entire farm, everyone would get a taste of the traditional turkey dinner. Still, it did not feel like any Thanksgiving Duncan could remember. Maybe this was the way Thanksgiving would feel now, after the plague, though Duncan did not think so. It seemed to Duncan it should be better somehow, like they had more to be grateful for here in the after. And maybe some folks felt it was better, but not Duncan. Instead, Duncan was consumed by the irony that as they prepared to celebrate all that they were grateful for, Zeke and his men were preparing to try and take it all away from them.

Up until now, Duncan had managed to retain his sense of self and his optimism. While the plague had stolen away his family and his childhood, he had rebuilt his life on Burninghead Farm and found a new family here among the ruins of the world. Life was vastly different than it had been before the plague, but in some ways, it was also entirely the same. You still worked hard, treated others as you would want to be treated, paid respect to those to whom it was due, and tried to help wherever and whenever you could. Those were the lessons he had grown up with, the lessons of before, and they carried over into the new world.

There were dangers to be sure, people who had allowed their desperation to push them into doing things which would have once been unthinkable to them, and other people—bad people—who no longer felt bound by society’s rules once civilized society had vanished. Duncan had known those truths when he first arrived on the farm, before Zeke had begun demanding the world be remade in his own image, before they had begun building the wall, and even before that day sitting out on those rocks with Taylor, when she had told him the story of Pennsylvania. But Duncan had convinced himself that was the exception and not the rule, that most people were inherently good and would not go out of their way to hurt anyone, and that somehow Burninghead Farm would be immune from the dangers that lurked beyond the farm’s boundaries. Despite some doubts along the way, Duncan had believed the life he had built would last forever.

And now Zeke and his ilk were threatening everything.

Duncan felt his anger rising. He had never known such bile, had never thought himself capable of this thing that had begun welling up inside of him the day Buck had told the farm to start preparing to face Zeke’s threat. But Duncan’s outlook, as well as his illusions about the world, had begun to unravel. In their wake came a churning storm that fired his blood and left him unable to think of anything but stopping anyone who dared threaten what he had built. No matter the cost.

Duncan climbed back up onto the porch and leaned his gun against the house’s exterior wall. He glanced down at his watch. It was nearly three a.m., time for the next shift to come and replace him and the two others keeping watch. Not that it mattered. Duncan knew he would not be sleeping that night. No, like every night, he would stay awake until dawn broke over the eastern horizon, as he watched and waited for the beginning of the end. Only when light had cast its first full shadows across the farm, chasing away the stealth of night and, with it, Zeke’s ability to take the farm by surprise, would Duncan finally fall into a restless sleep plagued with demon-filled dreams.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31