Quarantine by James Phelan

watching in the wings, the bottle of water steady in my hand. The difference between them was stark. Science versus God.
    â€œAll religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry,” Tom said, pleased with himself.
    â€œWe are all free to choose our ways,” Daniel countered.
    â€œYou can lead your friends into the unknown, I choose to stay here.”
    Paige’s father looked around the room at the people who had come to rely on them both, but who might have secretly chosen one allegiance over the other.
    â€œNothing will get better if we stay here,” Daniel said. “Don’t you get that? It’s dangerous.” I got the sense that those who wanted to go with Daniel wanted just to be around him—they’d follow him anywhere.
    â€œPerhaps. But we are comfortable here, we are sheltered—”
    â€œChange will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time, not for the better,” Daniel said. He considered the people around him, sitting and standing, listening and quietly talking among themselves. “We’ve been stuck here long enough.”
    â€œMy outlook is more optimistic.”
    Daniel shook his head.
    We were all getting uncomfortable at what was not being said and could see that Tom was seething about it: why couldn’t those who wanted to leave, go, and those who wanted to stay, stay?
    If Bob were here, he’d be taping the meeting from the far corner. I wondered what he would do with all that footage, all those little memory cards he’d pilfered from a Radio Shack. Would he edit them together one day to tell a streamlined, structured narrative? Or was this it—a raw stream-of-consciousness thing, real, hyper-real even, shaped by us all? What was it like to see life through his lens?
    â€œ We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, these people here, they have the power in them to act,” Daniel said. “ We are the change that we seek—it’s in us. You should know that.”
    â€œI agree with you, Thomas, I really do,” Daniel continued. “I would have liked consensus but I see that’s unlikely. You do what you have to do. I’m not stopping you from staying.”
    â€œYou’re stopping them!”
    â€œWe’re all free to choose,” Daniel reasoned. “All major religious traditions carry basically the same message—”
    â€œSpare us!”
    â€œThat is love, compassion and forgiveness; the important thing is that they should be part of our daily lives. You know these people arrived here, they found us, and more arrive every day—”
    â€œYou’re stopping her !”
    His voice was loud as a gunshot and suddenly, I turned to look at the object of the harsh accusation.
    Tom’s wife—Paige’s stepmother, Audrey—wanted to be wherever the preacher was. She seemed sad. She knew they were fighting but could not hear it. She watched these two men and she knew they’d spoken about her because so many in the room were looking at her, Tom and Daniel included. It must hurt Tom that she would rather be with Daniel than stay with him.
    The preacher’s words and oratory skills were impressive, but there was much more to him than that, and Audrey probably saw it better than anyone. Felt it. Maybe there was so much more, more than I could ever sense or see. I wondered what Caleb would have made of this power struggle. Maybe Rachel would be better equipped to handle it—this was animalistic, two bulls locking horns for supremacy.
    â€œTo hell with you, priest! To hell with your whole goddamn business!”
    â€œTom, I’m sorry you feel that way—”
    â€œDon’t you dare pity me!”
    â€œPlease, Tom, you will wake the children—”
    â€œDon’t sermonize me, you sonofabitch!”
    â€œTom, you’re being—”
    Screaming—a woman was screaming. The kind