The Last Town on Earth. Thomas Mullen

here, Philip wanted to ask, but he kept the thought to himself.

      “You can’t come up here, buddy,” Graham replied. “The sign said, we’re under a quarantine. We can’t let anyone in.”

      “I don’t care if I get sick.” The man shook his head at them. He was young, closer in age to Philip than to Graham. He had some sort of an accent, not foreign but from some other part of the country. New England, or maybe New York—Philip wasn’t sure. The man’s jaw was hard and his face bony and angular, the type of face Philip’s mother would have told him you couldn’t trust, though Philip never knew why.

      “I’m starving—I need something to eat. I’ve been out in the woods two days now. There was an accident—”

      “It’s not you getting sick we’re worried about.” Graham’s voice was still strong, almost bullying. “We’re the only town around here that isn’t sick yet, and we aim to keep it that way. Now head on back down that road.”

      The soldier looked behind him halfheartedly, then back at Graham. “How far’s the next town?”

      “‘Bout fifteen miles,” Graham replied. Commonwealth was not on the way to or from any other town—the road led to Commonwealth and ended there. So where had the soldier come from?

      “Fifteen miles? I haven’t eaten in two days. It’ll be dark in a few hours.”

      He coughed. Loudly, thickly. How far does breath travel? Philip wondered.

      Then the soldier started limping toward them again.

      Philip was rigid with a new mixture of fear, apprehension, and a sense of duty, the knowledge that he had a job to do. Although his job had seemed perfectly clear and understandable earlier in the day, he was realizing how completely unsure he was as to how it should be carried out.

      Graham exhibited no such confusion: he picked up his rifle and held it ready.

      Philip reluctantly did the same.

      “Stop!” Graham commanded. “You’ve come close enough!”

      It wouldn’t be until later that evening, when he was trying to fall asleep, that Philip would realize he could have volunteered to fetch some food from town and thrown it down the hill for the soldier. Surely there could have been some way to help the man without letting him come any closer.

      The soldier stopped again. He was about forty yards away.

      “I don’t have the flu,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m healthy, all right? I’m not going to get anybody sick. Please, just let me sleep in a barn or something.”

      “For a healthy man, you sure are sneezing and coughing a lot,” Graham said.

      The man took another step as he opened his mouth to respond, but Graham froze him in place by raising his gun slightly. “I said that’s close enough!”

      The soldier looked at Philip imploringly. “I’m coughing and sneezing because my ship capsized and I’ve been in the forest for two days.” He sounded almost angry, but not quite—he seemed to know better than to raise his voice with two armed men. It was more exasperation, fatigue. “I’m telling you, I do not have any flu. I’m not going to get anyone sick.”

      “You can’t control that. If you could, I’d trust you, but you can’t. So I don’t.”

      “I’m an American soldier, for God’s sake.” He eyed Graham accusingly. “I’m asking you to help me.”

      “And I’m telling you that I would if I could, but I can’t.”

      The soldier hung his head. Then he coughed again. It was thick and phlegmy, as if he’d swallowed something in the Sound and was having trouble dislodging it.

      “I don’t suppose there’s a sheriff in this town I could talk to?”

      “Nope.”

      “What town is this?”

      “Quit stalling, buddy. Hit the road. I’m sorry—I am—but my best advice is to head down that road fifteen miles, and when you do get to the next town, be mighty careful. Everybody’s sick over there.”

      The soldier coughed again, then turned around. Finally. Philip closed his eyes for a moment, thankful. Already he had started imagining how he would retell this story to his family and friends.

      But the soldier turned back around and faced them once again. Philip’s stomach tensed at the look of focus in the soldier’s eye, a focus that meant something had been set in motion. Philip tightened his grip on the rifle.

      “So I guess you didn’t get drafted,” the soldier said to Graham bitterly, his eyes narrow.

      “Guess not,” Graham replied.

      The soldier nodded. “Lucky break for you.”

      “Guess so.”

      The soldier started limping forward again.

      Philip, wide-eyed, looked to Graham.

      “I said you’ve come close enough!” Graham yelled, aiming the rifle dead at the soldier’s chest. “Stop, now!”

      The soldier shook his head awkwardly. His neck seemed rigid. “I’m not gonna die in the woods.”

      Philip aimed his rifle, too. He’d never aimed at a human being before, and it felt wholly unnatural, a forbidden pose. He hoped and hoped the soldier would turn around.

      “I am not bluffing!” Graham screamed. His voice was different, more panicked.

      The soldier was getting closer. Philip thought he could smell the man’s stench, water-soaked and putrid from sleeping on mossy logs, lying atop damp twigs and slugs.

      The soldier shook his head again, his eyes wet and red. He inched closer and closer to the two guards, to food, to a warm place to rest his weary bones, to salvation.

      “Don’t make me do this!” Graham cried.

      More steps. The soldier opened his mouth and barely mustered a “please.”

      Graham shot him. The sound and the force of the shot made Philip jump, almost made him pull his trigger in a redundant volley. He saw the soldier’s chest burst open, cloth and something the color of newly washed skin flying forward. The soldier staggered back a step and dropped to his left knee.

      Then two things happened simultaneously. The place where the soldier’s chest had exploded—which for a moment had looked slightly blackened—filled in with a dark red. And his right arm reached up over his shoulder and grabbed for the rifle slung on his back. Philip would remember in his haunted dreams the strangely mechanical motion of the man’s arm, as if his soulless body were simply executing one last order.

      Graham shot him again, and this time the soldier was blown onto his back. One knee crooked up a bit, but the rest of his body was flat on the ground, facing a sky so blank in its grayness that in that last moment of life he might have seen anything projected upon it: his god, his mother, a lost love, the eyes of the man who had killed him. The grayness was anything and nothing.

      Philip wasn’t sure how long he stared at the man, how long he kept his gun trained on the air that the man had once occupied. Finally, after several seconds, he managed to move his head and looked to his left, at Graham. Graham’s eyes were wide, full of electricity and life.

      They were both breathing loudly, Philip realized. But Graham especially: he was sucking in gulps of air, each one larger and louder than the last. Philip lowered his gun, wondering if he should touch his friend’s shoulder, do something.

      “Oh God,” Graham moaned. “Oh God.”

      Philip didn’t know if Graham had ever shot a man. He’d heard about what had happened to Graham in the Everett Massacre, but he wasn’t sure if Graham had been a victim only, or an aggressor, too.

      “Oh