The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch Page A

and squeezed, praying that if some part of him was still awake he’d feel it and know I was there.
    Jackson had abandoned his position as rear guard and was trailing along behind the wagon, his rifle too big for him and cradled awkwardly in his hands.
    “You know, my mom’s real good,” he said. “Last year she fixed my friend Derrick’s broken arm.”
    He waited for a response, but I ignored him, turning my attention back to Dad. I was relieved when Jackson finally let the wagon pull away. I couldn’t seem to look at him without seeing his face framed in my scope the night before. The memory of my finger tensing on the trigger felt cold and dark inside me, like a stone at the bottom of a well.
    “Hey, look at that!” Will called out, his golden hair fluttering in the wind. We were rolling past an island of gas stations and fast-food restaurants off the highway north of us. An Applebee’s sat in the center of it all like a faded king, its red, white, and green striped awning in tatters. A pack of dogs, razor thin and rabid, was in the parking lot, snarling as they fought over bits of trash. “Looks like some friends of yours!”
    “Will,” Sam warned.
    “No, seriously. Bet they even smell the same, like a mix of dead horse and an outhouse.”
    Will had raised holy hell when Marcus and Sam had told him I was coming, yelling about outsiders and spies and how I’d tell everyone where their town was.
    “Guess they don’t have bathtubs in Fort Leonard, huh, spy?”
    I gritted my teeth. I didn’t know what Fort Leonard was, or why he thought I was some sort of spy for them. I knew I should ignore him likeI’d ignored Jackson, but I found my fingers curling around the handle of Dad’s knife instead.
    Will was about to start up again when the wagon slammed to a halt, tossing him back into his place at the front. “Ow! Sam!”
    “Oh gee, sorry, Will.”
    Sam turned and gave me a mischievous little grin as Will righted himself, cussing and spitting.
    Marcus came striding back from his place at the head of the group, wiping sweat off his bald head with his sleeve. I hid the knife under my coat before he could see.
    “It’s time,” Marcus said, and dropped a red bandanna on the wood rail at my shoulder — we must have been getting close. The whole thing seemed pretty ridiculous, but Marcus was nice enough about it, so I went along.
    As I was about to tie on the bandanna again, I caught Jackson staring at me. He held his rifle tight to his chest, his arms straining, his finger along the trigger guard. His face had gone stony. Confused, I followed his eyes down to my lap and saw that my coat had brushed open, exposing the weapon in my hand. Our eyes met before his darted away, but in that second I saw that he was afraid. I eased the knife back into its sheath before tying the blindfold around my eyes, feeling strangely satisfied to be the one causing fear instead of the one feeling it.
    The air grew steadily cooler and twilight settled around us. After a while, we came to a halt, and Sam and Will piled out of the wagon. There were shuffling footsteps and low voices up ahead, then the sound of something large brushing against the ground. I slipped the bandanna up over my eyes while their backs were turned and caught the four ofthem moving aside a group of small trees and brush to expose a rough path cutting into the woods ahead of us. Clever. I raced to pull the bandanna back down before they returned.
    It was colder and darker in the woods. We were surrounded on all sides by creaking branches and animal calls. It was another hour or more of bouncing travel before we moved out onto open ground, where we flew downhill before coming to a stop.
    There was a pause, then Sam loosened the knot of my blindfold so it fell to my shoulders.
    We were at the bottom of a grass-covered valley, surrounded on all sides by deep forest. Ahead of us was a white stone wall that cut across the entire valley like a bright line of snow,