“Keep going.” Decker leaned over his shoulder and tapped his hand when he reached the right page. “There. The plagues of Egypt.”
The rusty wheel lurched and groaned, shaking off months of apathy and dismissal. He’d become so blinded by what he thought his life was, he’d ignored what it was becoming.
Mind racing, he read over the passages as dread coiled in his stomach like a rattlesnake. “And all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood…the frogs came up and covered the land…all the dust of the land became lice—” Decker blindly stumbled through words until they became a blur. “Swarm of flies…a very grievous murrain…a boil breaking forth—”
They’ll ship me to the asylum before they’ll believe this.
His chair flew and he began pacing. “Blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock dying, boils. The plagues, it’s all here.”
“Decker,” Laurie said gently, worry lingering in his eyes. “That happened under very specific circumstances. The ancient plagues of Egypt,here? In Ender’s Ridge?”
“It’s too much to be a coincidence,” Decker said. “I know it doesn’t make sense, makes me sound like I hit the bottle, but I can’t ignore the similarities.”
Willa frowned as she rolled her coffee cup between her hands. Her eyes sharpened under the blanket Sister Inez had tucked around her. “Say you were right about it, how does that explain the strange way the kid’s necklace didn’t protect him?”
“The last plague.” Sister Inez moved to his table, and Safine propped her elbows up as she stayed put.
Flipping a page, she pointed out the verse. “And it came to pass that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn. All the plagues lead to the death of the firstborn.”
“Cricket wasn’t the firstborn. He mentioned an older sister teaching him how to braid his hair once,” Decker said. “And the rest of us haven’t died.”
“Yet,” Safine added.
Sister Inez shrugged and sat back, as if she’d done her part.
“Firstborn,” Decker said under his breath, mulling over the verse. The last plague of Egypt was a desperate attempt at forcing freedom. Cruelty in exchange for souls.
If these truly were plagues, they’d all been focused on the destruction of Ender’s Ridge, and every creature still here had survived. Some of them could avoid death, immortality etched on their bones. There was another way to kill the unkillable. Maybedeath of the firstborncouldn’t be taken so literally with twisted plagues from an unknown source.
“We’re all the firstborn,” Decker said grimly. “Cricket died because he was just a human without the amulet. It’s been happening to me, and I didn’t even realize it. If the plague is leading towards the death of what makes us different and making us human again, it would explain why I haven’t been getting burned and why I got ill after Nathan.”
Willa lightly scoffed. “Don’t you think I’d crumble into a little pile of dust by now?”
“It’s been gradual.” The thought of them all becoming human again was worse than anything even Cricket came up with in his liquor-addled brain. But they didn’t have any other leads.
Laurie sank permanent wrinkles into his brows. “This isn’t of God. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Many parts of the Bible don’t make sense,” Decker said.
The Bible gaped at them like the empty mouth of hell. If there was a god,theGod, and Laurie was wrong and this was a punishment for their mere existence, how was he meant to fix this? Shout at the stars and demand redemption from a being that hadn’t given half a shit for his whole life? Bargain with the Devil himself since he knew the coldness of God intimately?
Decker scrubbed a hand over his beard and left his half-full cup of coffee on the table. “I’m gonna go feed the horses.”
He grabbed his hat from the nail behind the counter and slipped on his gloves. The brisk autumn air nipped at him before he pulled his bandana over his face and ducked into the barn.
Sitara and the others whickered happily when they saw him, stomping in their stalls as he scooped grain for them and scratched Sitara’s forehead. Marshal stood listlessly in his stall, nibbling on the edge of the wood.
“I know,” Decker said softly, running a hand over the whorls of white and sorrel across his neck. “I’m sorry your days of chasing down stagecoaches are over.”
His own days of pouring drinks and pretending to be human would be over soon, if they couldn’t find the cause of the plagues.
Human.
The idea shook him, even though the thoughts slipped through the cracks of his mind over the years. He’d gotten a taste on the train. A glimpse of humanity, and he held it close.
The barn door cracked open and Sister Inez slipped inside.
A frown pulled at Decker’s brow.
