The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman Page B

term
quarantine.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd.
    “— but I assure you that all measures taken have been for your own safety. We’ve had a bit of an… incident at a facility several miles from your borders, but I assure you
no
harm
will
come
to
you.
I repeat, as long as you remain
within
the
town
borders,
you will be
perfectly
safe.
As soon as the situation has been contained, we’ll restore full freedom of movement. In the meantime, our top priority is
your
safety.
On that you have my word, and the word of the United States government.”
    The screen went black. The murmurs rose to a dull roar.
    “If it’s so safe, why ain’t he settin’ foot in it?” someone shouted from the back. Someone else cursed the tornado, and several more cursed the government. The surging anger was palpable, and bubbling beneath it was a dangerous current of fear.
    “People, people, stay calm,” Mayor Mouse pleaded with the crowd. “You heard the man. Something spilled out there, or exploded, or what have you – nothing those men can’t handle.” He was off his written notes, and out of his depth. “Let them worry about fixing whatever mess they made out there, and what say we worry about fixing our town?”
    “How ’bout you fix the damn phone lines!”
    “And how much longer am I supposed to go without my TV?”
    “My kids are out there – they don’t even know if I’m dead or alive!”
    “They’re liars,” said a deep voice on the far right of the room. Scott Prevette rose to his feet, fist in the air. “You don’t clue into that soon, they’ll see us all dead.”
    The audience fell silent, hesitant to give its fury full release if it meant siding with a Prevette. But Scott saved them the trouble, striding out of the room, the rest of the family falling in behind him, single file. Jule wasn’t with them, Ellie noticed. She hoped the girl had made it safely through the storm.
    The mayor was losing his audience. That might have been the end of it, right there, the death of law and order and the trappings of civility that keep the many subordinated to the will of the few, had the deacon not seized the moment – and the stage. Ellie sat up straighter. She hadn’t spoken to him since the night of the storm. In his presence, there’d been a peace, a sureness, that she had not found since. The town felt it, too; she could tell by the way they shifted in their chairs, stilling their restless mutterings, waiting for him to speak.
    “The wages of sin is death,” he boomed, joining the mayor at the microphone. “But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Then, astoundingly – especially for a man who believed humor to be the devil’s favorite trick – he laughed. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite ready to meet my Maker.”
    More astoundingly, the audience laughed with him.
    “The government has forsaken us. Nature has forsaken us. I’ll admit, I’ve asked myself: Has the Lord forsaken us?” He hesitated, giving the question time to settle over the crowd. Or maybe giving himself time to worry the answer. That wasn’t like him. “I’ll admit, I was angry at Him. I’ll admit, I doubted.” From him, it was the ultimate admission of weakness. That wasn’t like him, either. “But then I thought: What if the storm wasn’t a punishment? What if it was a warning? What if this quarantine is a gift? The wolves are at the door, friends. We know this. But maybe the Lord just installed a dead bolt. Oleander belongs to us now. Imagine it: no meddling outsiders, no East Coast politicians telling us how to teach our children, how to love our wives, how to live. Imagine if we could remake this town into what the Lord knows it can be, a shining city on the hill.”
    There were a few scattered
amen
s from the crowd, and more than a few hushed dismissals.
    “Never forget, our Lord is a just Lord. And He listens to His people. When God called Abraham in the desert, and warned him that