Page 186 of The End of the World As We Know It

“If you’re so devout, why did you run away?” Zeke asked, his voice hoarse. “If your faith in that grinning freak is so deeply rooted, why did you abandon his great city and his great plan there in the desert?”

Mal let go of Amy’s chin so that he could glare better at Zeke.

“It’s because you’re a coward,” Zeke continued. “Glorious purpose or not, you’re too chickenshit to ever carry something out to completion. You ran away. What makes you think you’d ever be chosen for a purpose?”

Mal smiled and made a gesture, inviting Zeke to continue.

“We’re alone out here. There is no higher power with a plan to guide us,” Zeke said, trying to rise to a standing position. “And thisone’s not gonna dream up your new orders because there’sno oneto make us dream! There’s no magic this time. It’s just us.”

Mal kicked a booted foot into Zeke’s crotch, sending him backward. Amy screamed and tried to run to keep him from rolling into the water, but hands grabbed her from behind and kept her in place. Mal turned back to her.

“Don’t you listen to him, now,” he said. “You’ve got important experiences to survive.” He glared at Zeke. “You’re lucky you’re needed here, sicko. We ain’t crucified anyone here. Yet.”

The rough hands that were gripping Amy now dragged her down to the creek. Someone kicked the back of her leg and she fell to her knees at the water’s shallow edge. She screamed, but was silenced when her face was slammed into the rocks and water. The pain stunned her enough that she gasped, aspirating the brown water. They pulled her out of the muck and she coughed until she vomited her meager breakfast.

“Trial by water,” Mal said and winked. “I bet you dream tonight.”

She was confused. What had just happened to her was more in line with what bullies would do to someone after school, not a grand ritual to bring about prophetic dreams. She’d spent so much time avoiding Mal that it hadn’t been clear to her before then that he was galactically stupid.

They left her there on the creek bank, staring at their backs and weeping. She helped Zeke through the woods and back to the house they once shared, a place she hadn’t visited since her effective banishment from their small society. She didn’t dare stay any longer than necessary.

Later, Amy sat on her big rock by the shack and watched the sunlight wink at her through the leaf canopy. Animal sounds were all around her. Farther away were the sounds of the people talking, shouting, and slamming. Ruining the sleepy peace of nature. She walked around again for a bit, avoiding the creek and the burn pit. Soon, she was again perspiring and picking sweat bees off the back of her neck.

When the sun started its slow summer descent to the horizon and took on a copper hue, she heard footsteps approaching and tried to hide her disappointment when she saw that it was a woman who slept in the church with Mal. She was a severe-looking, greasy person who thrust a pack of peanut butter crackers and a can of Sprite at Amy. In a ravenous craze, she ate the food quickly and handed the garbage back to the woman, who then jerked her head toward the shack, directing Amy.

“It’s not dark yet,” Amy said. “I’m usually allowed to stay out until dark.”

“Get your ass in there,” the woman said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

Knowing how this could play out, Amy obeyed, bowing into the low structure. She sat in her usual corner and pulled her knees to her chest. The woman leaned into the entry and stared hard at her.

“You better hope you dream tonight,” the woman said. “If you don’t, Mal has plans for you.”

They looked at each other in silence before the woman finally stood up, giving Amy the relief of being free of her greasy face. She was locked in once again, left alone with the heat and tight quarters.

Mal has plans for youreigned in her thoughts and she was certain she wasn’t going to be able to sleep, let alone dream. The what-ifs had their time, so, too, did the fantasies of overcoming her situation and running away with Zeke to find another, saner group to live with. She thought of how her parents and sister would have dealt with her predicament, how they would advise her to thoroughly think through the problem before reacting. But that wasn’t helpful. Logic was a useless weapon when belief was held in higher regard than fact. What was a well-thought argument, based in fact, when put up against stubbornly held beliefs that people used as the basis for their entire existence? Nothing but hot air and frustration.

Sleep did eventually take her, and because of the excitement of the day, she slept deep. She dreamed of being in school again, unpreparedfor the test put before her, and her long-dead dog, Filbert, was sitting in the hallway waiting for her. There was no grinning man with buttons on his jean jacket, no old woman on a porch, as Zeke and a few others had told her about. Whatever magic had touched all of Amy’s fellow survivors passed her over once more.

When various pains woke her up, and the soft gray light of morning once again touched the cracks of the shed, Amy started to cry. She knew that with the dawn, and yet another night without a prophetic dream, some bad punishment awaited her.

She wasn’t left alone with her fear for long. The noise of many people walking toward the shed put Amy in a panic and she pressed herself against the back panel of still-warm metal.

“Little girl,” Mal sang from the outside. “Little girl, tell me your secrets, tell me your dreams!”

The door opened and one of Mal’s men leaned in and looked at her.

“Get out or be dragged out,” he said simply.

An effective threat. Outside, she was greeted by at least a dozen people. Mal moved past them all and stood before her with a strange humor in his eyes.

“Well, little girl,” he began loudly, speaking to all gathered. “Did you dream of him last night?”

It occurred to her instantly that she could just lie. Amy could say that she dreamed of a man who told her that Mal needed to shut up about Las Vegas and instead focus on getting the former Hepzibah up and running like before. But she knew that, because of the secretive and hushed ways the dark man was always talked about, she didn’t know enough about him to craft a decent story. Such a lie would earn a harsher punishment than the truth, a rule of the world that every kid knew.

She looked at her feet and shook her head. Frustrated noises came from those gathered.

“Another trial it is, then,” Mal said, sounding full of good will. “Come on, little girl.”