WELCOME TO COLUMBIA COUNTY.
I was close to my goal, the rail yard at Chatham, New York. On a normal day, I could drive from Chatham to New Lebanon in less than twenty minutes. Now, once I got there, if I got there, I had no idea what I’d do.
I’ll figure it out as I go along.
Gazing out now, another world. I knew there were pockets unaffected by the disease, and we might have reached one. Cars moved smoothly along well-plowed rural roads flanked by two-foot-high snow piles. A truck salted the highway. We picked up a few passengers and rolled through the town of Hudson, where pedestrians strolled on sidewalks, shops were open, traffic lights worked, no troops or roadblocks to be seen. That’s how it is during emergencies. On one block, disaster. On the next, chocolate ice cream for sale.
The normalcy out there provided a false security sense, and for a few minutes, relief permeated the car. It was as if we were refugees reaching Switzerland. There were only seventeen of us left, some new. Most others had dropped off. With crowding eased, so did the mood. Conversation took on a more normal tone.
“I’m Anthony Coates… I’m a software engineer.”
“Frederick Kohn, Aidan and Bill… We have a drugstore.”
“We’re the Kruthammer family, from Canada…”
A bearded young man named Dave announced, “I’m trying to get to New Lebanon and this train gets close!”
My head turned toward the speaker, a librarian from Putnam County, he said… ruddy boyish face, chestnut eyebrows beneath the Poetry Slam stocking cap, in his mid-twenties. A cheery presence in faded blue jeans, and an old moss-colored parka, who had climbed in during the switchover at Hudson. Everyone liked him. From a rucksack he’d removed granola bars, almonds, and dried fruit, to share. He’d done tricks to amuse the kids, pretending to take off his thumb. He’d told us that two men in his town had been among the first to fall ill, after they drove down to Washington to attend a Redskins game.
“The Bible Virus is a sign,” he told us.
“Of what?”
“Mankind must change our ways.”
“Great. More New Age crap,” the Canadian father growled. “Just what we need.”
Dave didn’t mind doubters. He shrugged, a dreamer or a perpetual optimist. I asked him why he was heading for New Lebanon.
“There’s a group there that has a cure.”
“Bullshit,” the man heading for Canada snorted. “There’s more phony cures out there than patients.”
“This is different,” Dave insisted, shaking his head. “I heard it from an old girlfriend. I’ve known her since I was eight. She was studying at SUNY and got disillusioned and quit and joined up with these great people who live on a farm.”
The Canadian rolled his eyes. “A commune?”
“Why do you have to label it? These are educated people who decided there’s more to life than their labs. And the man who heads the farm is really a scientist! He’s studied leprosy for years, I heard. His name is Harlan Maas.”
I sat riveted.
A woman from Montclair, New Jersey, asked, “How much money is this charlatan asking, for the, uh, cure?”
“Nothing! They will give it away! Friends first, and loved ones. They’re announcing the cure on the Net! But it’s not just medical, see? It’s spiritual, too. God wants people to turn away from false science, my friend said. She said come and listen, and if I don’t like it, go home.”
The man from Canada snorted. “You believe this?”
“I believe my friend. She was valedictorian of our high school. She said science is God’s way of teaching. And science without God is empty. She said leprosy is a punishment, like in the Old Testament. The meeting will be at a truck stop off the interstate. Why don’t you come?”
It seemed colder, deep down, but I was sweating at the same time. I felt a lone bead run down the side of my face. The Canadian stood up, agitated. “For God’s sake, listen to yourself! A truck stop? A fucking truck stop in Upstate New York? The world is saved by ten people? With what? Little Debbie Snack Cakes from the store?”
“You don’t have to be nasty about it,” Dave said.
“You seem like a nice guy, Dave. You must be educated if you work in a library. Are you really that gullible? You ask me, the President should blanket the Mideast with atomics and wipe out anyone who might remotely have anything to do with this disease. Blow those godless raghead bastards up until the guilty ones confess and hand over the formula, or whatever they have.”
“Now who’s gullible,” Dave said. “You believe the President! And by the way, the meeting will be at a truck stop so people can get there! Word will spread. Reporters are invited. The goal is a new era of peace and love.”
The blood roared in my head as I asked, “Who will head up the new era?”
“My friend said that a man on that farm is amazing! He has this aura of goodness and wisdom! He’s a prophet, she said.”
I took a deep breath. “The Sixth Prophet?”
Dave smiled. “You know about him! You’re invited, too?”
I nodded, smiled, jaw hurting, tried to look as eager as Dave. “Worst case, it can’t hurt to see if the cure works. Right, Dave? If the preaching is ridiculous, who cares, just leave!”
“That’s how I feel!” Dave stood up. I had a feeling he’d been chasing answers his whole life. He emitted the rapt passion of the regularly converted. How many other causes had he espoused before trying this? At that moment the light hit his face in a different way. Beneath the affable surface I saw something lost, that had lived in him a long time. He was no less genuine, but now I saw him as a potential foot soldier in an army of fanatics. Were other Daves making their way to the truck stop, too?
Of course they will, thousands will, if the cure works.
I wondered, Is this what it has been about?
Big things start small. The doubter from Canada had probably never sat in a classroom at Quantico and heard lectures about cults. Aum Shinryko, which had released poisonous sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system, to start a world war, they believed. Jeffrey Lundgren, whose followers cut up a family in Ohio. Jim Jones, whose 918 followers killed themselves.
Dave was arguing, shiny eyed, “Look at the Wright brothers. They invented flight in a garage! Nobody figured that two mechanics could do it! Well, why can’t average people invent a cure, too? Everyone thinks average people can’t do anything.”
I said, “I agree with Dave.”
Dave sat back, happy to have an ally. The Canadian looked from Dave to me, as if we’d turned into aliens. “Some people believe anything,” he said.
Dave offered me granola from his bag. He was more confident with an ally close by. He asked the Canadian, still trying to convert him, “Do you trust Jesus?”
“I sure do, mister. Especially now.”
“Then you believe prophets exist. You just don’t believe in this one. You believe in miracles. Just not this one.” Dave suddenly seemed to tire of being nice. He had another side. “You don’t know anything about Harlan Maas,” he snapped.
“Salvation at a truck stop?”
“Jesus preached in the slums. Why not a truck stop?”
The doubter threw up his arms. “Fine! He’s a prophet!”
“You say that as a joke now. You’ll change your mind.”
Dave turned his back on the guy and smiled at me and reached into his knapsack and came up with a folded-up paper. It was a roadmap of the New York — Massachusetts border area. My home lay only an hour away. It would be funny, I thought, to be plucked from home and sent to Africa and learn, in the end, that the problem had originated less than fifty miles from where I started out.