“Can we talk?” he asked. “About what’s going on here? Why is this camp so empty? Where did everyone go?”
“One of the ladies told me there were many more people here after the first quake. But the government evacuated most of them.”
“Leaving only Frankland’s hard core?”
“I suppose so.” Manon looked uncertain. “But more people came in after the second big quake, including my family. So now it’s about fifty-fifty.”
“Can we talk about what we’re going to do?”
Her eyes were serious. “Not yet,” she said. “Wait till you’ve been here a day or two.”
“Okay.”
“Sleep well, Nick.” She reached out, touched his hand for a moment, then withdrew, walking into the married women’s camp.
Nick stood for a moment and savored the touch on his hand, the memory of Arlette’s kiss. The choir’s distant chant quivered in his soul.
And then he made his way to the plastic sheet that served as his bed.
The aftershock jolted Jason awake. He woke with his heart in his throat, eyes staring wide into the darkness. Then someone screamed, screamed right in his ear.
He sat up, felt the earth shudder under him. It wasn’t a bad shock—he knew, he was from California, and besides he’d become an expert on aftershocks by now—but why was someone screaming?
The screamer was Haynes, the buddy Mr. Magnusson had assigned him. The boy was sitting up and uttering one terrified shriek after another, full-blown animal screams vented into the night. They rang in Jason’s ears.
“Hey,” Jason said. “Hey, it’s all right. It’s not bad.”
Boys ran past, sprinting for the big wooden crosses that had been stretched at intervals on the ground. Jason wanted to tell them not to bother, that the aftershock was fairly mild. But Jason couldn’t be heard because Haynes kept screaming, one wail after another, pausing only to fill his lungs. Jason could see tears on his face. He patted Haynes’ back. “Hey. You’re dreaming. It’s okay.” Other boys were screaming, Jason now heard. Boys all through the camp, and through the little kids’
camp next door. The shock had jerked them into the world of nightmare, into memories of the loss of their homes, their property, and sometimes their families. The eerie sounds bubbling up in the darkness around him made Jason’s hair stand on end.
“It’s okay!” Jason shouted, patting Haynes on the back.
Haynes stopped for breath, gulped in air. Then he turned away from Jason, dropped to the ground, and began to cry.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jason repeated. He couldn’t tell if Haynes was awake or not. He might still be stuck in some nightmare.
Jason was awake now, that was for sure. The wails and sobs echoing through the dark scared him more than the aftershock.
Haynes seemed to calm down a bit, and Jason tried to get back to sleep. That didn’t seem likely. Seemingly at random a boy would wake up shrieking, and someone else would answer from across the camp, and soon there would be a chorus of cries and sobbing and wailing. Jason began to feel a kind of pressure on his mind, the pressure of dread, slowly increasing. He didn’t want to be like these other kids, wailing in the night, desperate for the touch of comfort, desperate to live in a world where the earth did not move.
Jason yearned for dawn.
The wails and cries didn’t stop. Jason took his plastic sack and his blanket to another part of the camp, away from the awning and out under the stars, and there he stretched out on his back, his head pillowed on his hands.
The stars wheeled overhead, beautiful and implacable like all nature. He gazed up and tried to remember their names.
He must have closed his eyes, because next thing he knew it was dawn, and the PA system was booming out instructions for all groups to report to the church for services.
“I was a pornographer! I made a profit out of poisoning the minds of children!” Mr. Magnusson’s voice boomed through the still morning air. The man walked back and forward, holding the microphone to his lips. The dawn glinted on his thin red hair. There was a strange, strained smile on his face, as if he knew he was supposed to be happy but couldn’t recollect why.
“I did my best to destroy my community!” he said. “All I cared about was the money!” There was a regular section of people who cheered and applauded. “Tell it!” they yelled, and “Praise God!” Among those cheering was Frankland.
Jason sat crosslegged on the beaten grass and watched in amazement. He had just dragged himself from the young men’s compound, and hoped that breakfast wouldn’t be too far away. Frankland had started off with some announcements. Jason, still trying to crank his eyes open, hadn’t paid much attention to these, and the next thing he knew the repentant pornographer was strutting out before his cheering section.
Magnusson couldn’t have been in the pornography, Jason decided. He couldn’t feature anyone paying money to see Magnusson naked.
“But then the earthquake happened, and my business was destroyed!” Magnusson said. “And soon I learned that God was sending me a message!”
The burden of the message, it appeared, was that the man had to stay clear of pornography. As this message was elaborated at length, Jason believed he could see tears on the former pornographer’s face.
This guy is in charge of me, Jason thought. He is my guide.
Everyone applauded when the message ended. Some of the applause seemed more enthusiastic than others. Frankland stepped forward and thanked the pornographer for his contribution. Then he looked into the audience and called on someone named Jonathan.
Jonathan was a boy about Jason’s age, one he’d seen around the young men’s compound but not spoken to. The boy said that he used to worship Satan, and listen to Satanic music and do Satanic things like animal sacrifices, but now he knew that Jesus was Lord and not Satan, and he trusted Jesus to get him through the Last Days. Frankland hugged Jonathan when he was done, and almost everyone applauded. After Jonathan came a volunteer, a weathered-looking woman named Cora, who said she used to run around and do drugs, and hang around with people who ran around and did drugs, and she had the tattoos to prove it!—there was laughter at this—but now she was clean for Jesus, and if there was a single man out there who believed in the Lord, monogamy, and the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, she would like to meet him. There was more laughter, but Frankland seemed a little embarrassed by this solicitation, and he announced that they were out of time, and sent everyone to breakfast. Omar had the camp surrounded at dawn, deputies and special deputies and Knox’s Crusaders. All were conspicuously armed, shotguns or rifles displayed. Merle carried his little submachine gun slung under his arm. Once everyone was in place around the silent camp, the fence-builders moved in and started putting up chain link in a long shimmering curtain around the camp, starting with the north and east perimeter, where the camp backed onto an area of hardwood forest.
“It’s a good thing, the fence,” Knox said with his feverish grin. “It’s psychological. It divides us from them. The mud people from the real people.” He nodded. “The fence is a good thing,” he said, as if trying on the concept one more time. “A good thing.”
Omar didn’t answer. A dull ache throbbed in his head, and a sharper pain griped in his stomach. It felt like the worst hangover he’d had in his life, even though he hadn’t been drinking. It was the heat, he figured. He’d just got too used to air-conditioning.
When the fence builders started work there was a lot of movement in the camp, people rushing about in and out of the outlandish shelters they’d made of cotton wagons. People stared and pointed at the circle of deputies with their guns. There was a lot of noise, a few angry voices raised above the others. It was time for the inmates’ morning meal, but the volunteers from the A.M.E. church, who usually prepared the meals, had been stopped outside town at a sheriff’s department roadblock. Omar would just as soon have given the refugees their meal—if that would have kept them quiet—but he didn’t want anyone in the camp telling the A.M.E. people about David and the shooting, because once any version that wasn’t Omar’s version got out, there would be all manner of hell to pay.