The Eleventh Plague

Stephen rearranges his pack in the morning, struggling with the instinctive fear of his grandfather hitting him for doing it wrong. He puts his only book—a copy of The Lord of the Rings—at the top since he no longer must hide it from his grandfather. He and his father and their donkey, Paolo, begin to travel again, leaving the burial mound behind them. Stephen contemplates how strange it feels to know his grandfather, who survived so much, died of an illness.

Stephen watches rows of abandoned houses and buildings go by and contemplates how unreal the idea of life before the Collapse feels. Five years before his birth, a war between America and China broke out when a few backpacking students were caught where they shouldn’t have been. Due to anxieties over global warming and other issues, this led to a devastating worldwide conflict that few survived.

Stephen’s father reassures him that everything will be all right. They are taking scraps of metal and glass back to the “Southern Gathering” in the remnants of Florida, where General Casey—the Southern Gathering’s leader—will take their goods in exchange for supplies. They stop for lunch; Stephen fixes a hole in his sweatshirt and asks if his grandfather was different before the Collapse. His father says that he was and apologizes for ever letting him hurt Stephen. As they get going, his father stares out west hungrily but snaps out of it.

They find an American B-88 bomber plane half-exposed in a clearing, covered in vines and dirt. They investigate the wreckage, but most of it has been cleared out by other people. Stephen asks why the bomber would have been flying south in the first place, and his father explains something called P-11—a Chinese virus, P11H3, that was labeled the 11th plague and released in response to nuclear bombs. It was a “souped-up strain of the flu” that destroyed millions (15). The American government decided to bomb their big cities to prevent the spread of disease, which failed. The Collapse occurred when so few people were left alive that society ceased to function.

They find a locker in the bomber and open it, finding a blanket, useless rations, and a treasure—a large can of preserved pears. Stephen’s father rushes to open it since they haven’t had canned fruit in two years, but Stephen stops him, insisting they must use it to trade for necessities. His father says that he is just like his grandfather, and Stephen, hurt and scared, immediately opens the can and eats a piece of pear. They gorge themselves on the pears and Stephen regrets it almost immediately after, overwhelmed by guilt.

As they prepare to leave, Stephen’s father suggests they travel west instead of staying on their usual loop, which Stephen harshly rejects. He thinks that having a home is a fantasy. Stephen’s father suddenly yells for the rifle and says that people are heading in their direction with a vehicle. To avoid being hurt or killed, they hide in the bomber, but it starts to rain.

The rain means that the group of people take shelter in the bomber, and Stephen and his father quickly realize that they are enslavers—ex-military or otherwise violent people who profit from kidnapping others and selling them. They have a boy and a woman in chains. Stephen and his father hide and watch the enslavers settle in.

Stephen tries to convince his father that the enslaved people aren’t their responsibility but fails. He eventually sees the sickness on the woman’s face and the prominence of the boy’s spine and grows angry that they are in this position at all. He decides to wait and pray that his father knows what he is doing.

Stephen and his father try to free the enslaved people, but the woman points out that they won’t get far without a vehicle. She convinces Stephen’s father to steal the keys, but one of the enslavers wakes up and aims a gun at him. Stephen’s father tosses her the keys, and they end up in a standoff; the woman and child escape, abandoning Stephen and his father. Stephen runs as his father fights the two men. Eventually, his father finds him in the torrential rain, and they look for shelter. They find nothing except a huge gorge. As Stephen’s father apologizes for letting him down, the ground collapses and his father falls into the gorge, dropping 30 feet into a raging river.

Stephen slides down the wall of the gorge and desperately hunts for his father in the river. He spots him and dives in. He struggles to catch him but eventually hauls him to the riverbank, determining that he is still alive despite extensive injuries. Stephen uses his shirt to bind his father’s head wound but without medical supplies, he can’t do anything else except huddle with his father to try to keep them both from freezing.

Stephen reminisces about a time when he was seven and his father saved him from a bear. Stephen wandered off while chasing a robin and found an abandoned Mortal Kombat arcade stand in the woods. He mimed playing with it until he heard leaves crunching; when he turned, a gigantic brown bear was staring at him. The bear roared and charged, but Stephen’s father shot the bear and then ran to him and hugged him, reassuring Stephen that he was safe. In the present, Stephen realizes that he is all alone and that there is nobody who can save him.

Knowing he needs to fight for their survival, Stephen gathers his sodden belongings and climbs up the gorge wall. He unsuccessfully looks for Paolo and finds a few remaining belongings near the wreckage of the bomber, including the only picture he has of his parents and him together, which was taken by a wandering man with a Polaroid. Stephen repeatedly stabs his palms with his fingernails to distract himself from his emotions. He returns to his father and tries to make camp, contemplating his father’s broken promise that nothing would change. He then hears footsteps and sees several men walking silently along the ridge above him—enslavers.

Stephen prepares the rifle and hides as the larger group approaches his father. He watches as the men go to check on his father and then shoots. He misses, scattering the men. He shoots again and catches one on the leg, causing him to stumble. Stephen emerges to confront them directly but realizes that the man on the ground is a boy younger than he is. Someone hits him on the side of the head with a rifle butt.

Stephen wakes up with his hands and feet tied together; he hears people arguing about whether he is a spy. He is quickly introduced to the four people who captured him: Will is a headstrong, self-important teenager who hates Stephen for shooting his leg; Sam is a kind but wary Black man; Marcus is a kind, fatherly, balding man and the leader of the group; and Jackson is Marcus’s teenage son, who is intelligent but scared. Stephen is wary of them and nearly defends himself with a rock. They debate what to do with him but eventually free him and offer medical care for his father if he comes with them to their town. Marcus insists that his wife, Violet, is an actual doctor—a rarity. Stephen refuses at first, but when they give him five new bullets to defend himself with, he decides to go with them since he has no better option and his father is dying.