Page 25 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

Boiling Over

T he affliction started as an angry red rash crawling up arms. Within hours it spread into multitudes of weeping sores and the thick stench of illness clung to Ender’s Ridge.

McKinney was the first. Willa was the second. Most of the town was the third.

Nails pierced through the fresh coat of white paint as Laurie and Cricket boarded up the windows of the chapel and scrawled quarantine in thick letters.

“Crick, grab that side.” The pew groaned as they dragged it over, making room for the people flocking to the only place they might find hope.

Blankets huddled across the rotten floor and shrouded the pews, warming under the fevered foreheads of parents and children as Sister Inez ushered them in, murmuring comfort and giving sips of cold water.

She sponged down faces glistening with sweat, her black and white habit fluttering behind her like angel-wings as she hurried from one patient to another, stern face pinched with worry.

Decker wove between them to reach his old friend stretched upon a blanketed pew. Her face was grey under her light freckles, her eyes heavy .

“I brought you some water.”

Willa’s cracked lips parted as he lifted a clean cup to her mouth. She winced when the yellow-edged sore on her cheek split open and blood trickled down her jaw.

“You survived on spite this long. Don’t give up yet,” Decker said softly.

Willa’s eyes fluttered closed. “Been talkin’ to that preacher too much.”

“Only since you’re keeping my wife occupied.” Decker slipped his gloved hand into hers, squeezing lightly.

We crossed an ocean together. Don’t go like this.

Decker kept moving like a rusty, oiled machine.

Pus dripped from a washerwoman’s hand, her fair skin blistered with weeping red sores. A keening wail left her throat—a herald of death, her cry now foretold her own. Decker moved on when her mouth fell open in a soundless, black howl and her dead eyes spiderwebbed in red.

McKinney lay in the corner, the sores on his face weeping through the sheet over him. Lee knelt next to him, holding his cold hand. The elegant points of their ears drooped when they let him go.

Decker’s cup dropped back into the empty bucket with a clatter, and he stepped around a motionless child cradled in her mother’s arms to reach Sister Inez’s side. Straightening, she cast a look at Willa, the lines in her dark brows deepening.

“How is she?”

“Being Willa,” Decker made a tired attempt at a smile. “She would try and shoot the blisters if she thought it would help.”

Sister Inez did not smile. Only moved to the next feverish soul .

Decker needed fresh air.

The water pump behind the Loose Goose would’ve been lonely aside from Cricket taking a long drink. He hooked the cup back on the rusty nail and Marshal lipped at the dented metal.

“I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“No one’s making you, kid.” The pump grated under Decker’s hands and water splashed into his bucket.

Cricket scuffled his boots and tugged at the shirt buttoned up to his throat. He dug a crumpled cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, dropping the dead match at his feet with the others.

“Last time I saw my girl was in a pine box in Amaretto.” He dragged on the cigarette like it was his lifeline. “I never got to tell her, Decker. I need to tell my momma before my luck runs out.”

Decker gave him a faint smile. With the way things were going around here, he didn’t blame him.

But Cricket couldn’t know about those things because he was Cricket.

“That’s a fine thing, kid. She’ll be happy to see you,” he murmured. Cricket could do what he never could, but he knew Cricket would be welcomed back with open arms, no matter how long he’d been the prodigal son.

“You think?” It was the first time he’d seen a glimmer of worry in his eyes. “I sent her a telegram. She’ll be expecting me.”

“I’ll always leave your room open for you. Just lose the law if you need to come back and hide out,” he said.

Cricket finally grinned. “You got it.” He slung his saddlebags over his shoulder, the necklace of hammered metal ticking against the faded pearl buttons of his shirt when he leaned over to slap him on the back.

“Tell the girls I said goodbye. And take care of that preacher ‘til I get back. He’s too good for Ender’s Ridge. ”

So are you, my friend.

If Decker could lend him speed to get home to his family more quickly, he would have done so. Instead, he just waved goodbye.

The stench of death hit him as soon as Laurie gave him permission to cross the threshold of the chapel, and it dulled his senses as he joined them, passing out more blankets and offering a few words of encouragement where they could.

Even Laurie was weary.

Standing in the middle of his chapel, surrounded by the dying people of the town he’d tried to save, his shoulders bowed. Laurie grasped at his Bible like it was his last hope.

Decker’s touch grazed across his wrist. “You should rest.” Laurie been up all night like the rest of them, but it was taking a toll on him. He held the souls too close, the weight of salvation a heavy load to bear even if few believed.

“They need hope. I need to do more for them,” he whispered. “And Willa—she’s getting worse.”

Sister Inez sat by her, holding her pale hand as she brushed away strands of hair from her damp forehead.

“There’s nothing more we can do,” Decker murmured, his thumb running across the thrumming veins of Laurie’s wrist. “You need to keep faith. For all of us.”

The door slammed, and Safine joined them, mopping sweat off her brow and carrying a steaming kettle. “No change from the last hour?” she asked as if she already knew the answer.

Decker shook his head .

Safine jammed her knuckles in her eye, a ragged sigh leaving her. “Can’t meet with Three Hawks and put his people at risk. I’m out of medicine for fevers; I used the last on Lee’s damn horses last week.” Exhaustion made her voice thin.

Decker wished he could tell her everyone would recover. But when Laurie knelt next to a spindly-fingered woman clutching a flushed young boy to her chest, Decker feared this might be the end of them.

The people of Ender’s Ridge didn’t become ill from human ailments—not like this. Never like this.

The one person who had known what was happening and had known they were going to die, Decker had killed to satiate his own selfish hunger.

“I could get supplies from Silver Creek. Sitara and I could make it there in an hour,” Decker said.

Safine lightly scoffed. “They closed the bridge for quarantine. By the time you rode through the hills, even if you could find what I need, it’d be too late.” She balled up her sweat-soaked handkerchief in the pocket of her apron, looking anywhere but at Willa lying on the bench.

A rotten feeling twisted Decker’s guts. “When did they close the bridge?”

“An hour ago.” She frowned at him. “Why?”

“Cricket told me he was going home. Must have been trying to get across before they closed it.” As soon as he said it he realized why the boy wore long sleeves and buttoned his shirt up to his throat .

“Stupid kid, he’s gonna spread it.” Decker was already yanking on his gloves and ducking through the back parsonage door to the barn. He flung open the doors.

The horses startled before they recognized him. Marshal was gone with his idiot rider, spreading the boils like a plague through Ridgewater and further. Decker swore and fell silent, trying to pick up familiarity in the sea of heartbeats. Safine, Laurie, Willa.

Decker hadn’t memorized Cricket’s heartbeat. He’d known him for years, and he never memorized his heartbeat.

The barn door slammed behind him and Decker darted into the empty road.

The unusually warm day fueled the stench of decay. A few people hadn’t trusted the chapel, and they slumped on the dance hall stoop, open wounds buzzing with fat, slow flies, dying like those they were feeding on.

Decker yanked the brim of his hat further over his eyes, squinting down the road. The young outlaw on a red roan trotted towards the crumbling bridge connecting the two towns.

Calling his name did nothing to stop him. Decker tried again, breaking into a run, sweat beading along his neck, steps thumping in a painfully human gait.

His pace slowed when a figure from Ridgewater appeared like a wraith at the other end of the bridge, horse shuddering as he raked spurs in a bloody groove along her side. A black veil swung from the brim of his hat like a burial shroud, muffling his graveled voice. “No one crosses.”

Apprehension pried at the back of Decker’s mind and he slowed to a walk .

“I gotta get home.” Marshal danced under him as Cricket held him back. “River’s too high to take the other way.”

The stranger’s horse paced across the bridge, crowding him. “Go back.”

Decker reached Cricket and caught a flash of a grin accompanied with glazed eyes, and he knew under the cuffs of his shirt he’d have the same wretched blisters as everyone.

A crowd gathered at the other end of the bridge, pushing to get the best look, curiosity brimming at the two men facing off.

“If I get past you, what you gonna do? Doubt you’ll shoot me. Not in that town,” Cricket goaded.

“I enforce the quarantine. No one crosses,” the stranger said.

Silver glinted under the long black duster and a chill ran down Decker’s spine. He was thankful his bandana covered his face. “You aim to shoot a boy to enforce a quarantine? Offering no aid? No doctor?”

“I am a doctor.”

There it was again. The grating, shriveled voice, muffled through the concealing veil. His voice stirred memories in Decker—gunsmoke and a man left at the altar by the woman Willa loved.

No.

This couldn’t be him. Not after Safine and Willa spent a week searching for him and came up empty-handed.

Could it?

“Then help us,” Decker said, searching for any sign.

Are you the root of evil for this town? Are you the one bringing sicknesses upon us like plagues ?

Spurs raked across the mare’s belly again and she pinned her ears and paced closer. “I said go back.”

A flicker of a smile pulled at Cricket’s lips even as he hunched forward in the saddle. “Hope she’s fast, you old buzzard.”

Cricket dug in his heels and Marshal jumped into a gallop. Decker shouted, throwing himself out of his path as he thundered towards the bridge.

The man slid off bulky leather gloves with surgical precision and reached for his gun.

Metal hissed as he spun the cylinder with a smooth, bone-white finger. It clicked shut with a brown thumb. His wrinkled, sun-aged trigger finger slipped into place.

Stitched together like a damn patchwork quilt.

If Ender’s Ridge was the Devil’s Town, the Devil had come home.

Dr. Jacob Whitton, prized surgeon of the 5th Regiment in the British army, now frontier doctor bent on creation, squeezed the trigger.

The shot flew high and Cricket’s hat tumbled into the river below as he galloped across the bridge.

Whitton snarled under the heavy veil and cocked the hammer for another shot.

The heartbeats from across the river crowded Decker’s mind like a frantic flock of sparrows, fear of discovery rooting him in place.

Whitton spun to Decker. Foam splattered the ground as the bit sawed at his mare’s mouth. The yawning barrel aimed between Decker’s eyes mocked him.

“I remember you.” Whitton said softly. “You look the same.”

“Thank you,” Decker said .

Cricket made it across the river, scattering the gathered people like leaves. Decker would call him a foolish son of a bitch later.

Whitton’s voice dripped with disgust. “You’re one of them. The nightwalkers that never change.” The mare paced closer, nostrils flaring. “You’ll all die like flies once Ridgewater remembers.”

Like flies.

Whitton knew something.

Decker gauged his odds. There was a chance he could reach him before he could shoot, but it would be risky. Diplomacy was the better choice, so they could nurse the town back to health before finding him again. Willa would never forgive him if he let him go but now was not the time for this.

Distraction, then diplomacy.

The world slowed. White rolled in the mare’s eyes like billowing smoke and Whitton’s finger flexed against the trigger.

Metal slammed into the dirt behind him, but Decker was already moving.

Not to Whitton, taking him down like a creature of the night, but to the safety of the livery where he could dispatch him without the view of the people.

The doctor’s hand, cobbled together like a long-worn shoe, flashed in his mind.

Is this what you wanted with Nathan? With Laurie? Take from them to remake yourself? Or were you remaking Nathan into something worse?

Decker’s stomach lurched and he shook himself from disgusted awe, ducking as Whitton’s third shot buried in the corner of the building. He edged around the corner of the livery, blinking away the haze threatening his eyes as the sun beat down on them .

In the distance, a door creaked open.

Hoofbeats scattered, thundering towards the chapel.

A single bullet snapped back, grazing Decker’s cheek. The shallow wound blistered and burned.