However, a child who has been burned in the past will not reach for a flame. A minor injury prevents major ones.
In other words, pain is a teaching tool.
Pity undercuts that education. Short-sighted and destructive, pity trades a brief benefit for long-term damage. When we see a child reaching for a flame, pity tells us to stop him. To protect him.
Instead, we must stoke the fire. We must encourage the child to burn himself. If need be, we must manipulate him into doing so.
How else will he learn that fire is not for him?
For the good of the academy, for the good of the world, and for the good of the children themselves, it is your duty to purge yourself of pity.
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CHAPTER 19
The sun was setting, and it made no difference at all.
Heavy clouds quilted the world as Ethan turned off the Honda. For a moment they sat in silence, just the ticking of the engine and the quiet rasp of Violet’s breathing in the backseat. The parking lot was half full; he wouldn’t have guessed that Thanksgiving was a big day for church, but it seemed the good people of Independence felt differently. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the holiday; maybe it had more to do with what was happening to the world.
He looked over at Amy. “Zombie apocalypse?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” he said, and opened the car door.
Independence Presbyterian was a funky A-frame shingled in brown, with an old-fashioned spire rising from one side. Located just off the square of the quiet suburb—Independence called itself a town, but seriously, come on—it seemed a good place to leave the CRV. Who messed with cars in a church parking lot?
Ethan’s best guess was that if the government wanted to quarantine Cleveland, they would use the highways as rough boundaries. I-80 was ten miles south, but since he didn’t know exactly where the cordon would start, it was boots and backpacks from here. Twenty-two miles, much of it through national park land, with Cuyahoga Falls as the promised land.
Now there’s a phrase that may never have been uttered.
Ethan shouldered the backpack and cinched the waistband tight to distribute the weight. Muscle memory gave him a flash of strolling through Amsterdam, bicycles and cobblestones, the sun glinting off canals four thousand miles and a million years away. He tucked the pistol into his belt.
Violet was awake, the straps of her car seat tight across her little round chest. “Hello, my love. Want to go on an adventure?” If she had any feelings about the idea, she kept them to herself. Ethan hoisted her out. For a moment he held her to his chest, the sweet weight of her, the steady breathing and milk smell, and when he slipped her into the carrier Amy wore, her absence made him colder.
He and his wife looked at one another. Her smile was taut, as if she were trying to convince herself. Ethan stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, around both his girls, Violet the center of their sandwich, and for a moment they stood and breathed.
It would be dark soon.
“Let’s go.”
Hand in hand, they started walking.
Twenty minutes later, they left the road.
A dense forest of pine trees backed up to a row of two-story houses, their neatly mown lawns tapering into dirt and soft needles. He led his family along that terminator, skirting the edge of backyards. The sky’s bruised glow made silhouettes of the houses. He saw candles inside some of them, could imagine families huddling around fireplaces. The temperature was falling, but the effort of humping the pack kept him warm.
“Twenty-two miles,” he said.
“Nothing,” she replied.
“A little stroll.”
“Not even a marathon.”
A high privacy fence on one of the properties forced them farther into the forest. He walked ahead. The trees were dark geometries against the fading light. The needles stuck to his down jacket, and a sap smell rose. They walked in silence, just the sounds of their footfalls and the susurrus of branches swaying in the wind.
When it grew too dark to see, he took out the flashlight. The stark light blanched the trees. He cupped his hand around the head of it to muffle the beam, fingers glowing Halloween red.
A shift in the wind brought a distant siren’s wail. Nightfall would have made the riots worse. He could imagine cars burning on Lakeside Avenue, the smell of scorched rubber and the crash of shattering windows and the screams of the wounded.
The forest grew denser. Ethan bushwhacked through pine boughs, holding them for Amy and Violet to walk past before he let them snap back. He relied on the compass to keep them heading south. It would have been easier to follow the line of houses, but with tensions running so high, he was afraid someone might take a shot at people creeping their backyard.
Violet woke with a cry, not loud, but startling. Amy rubbed her back through the carrier, whispered, “Shh, it’s okay, go back to sleep,” but instead his daughter sucked in a breath and released it as a howl.
“She needs a change,” Amy said.
Ethan unslung his pack, then spread out his jacket as a changing table. “Come here, little one.”
Amy held the flashlight while he swapped the diapers. Violet’s poop was the color and texture of mustard, and smellier than usual from the condensed milk. She gurgled as he worked.
When he finished, he straightened, let his daughter lie on her back and kick. Funny, all he knew about evolution and the life cycle, and he had still been caught unprepared by the reality. It was one thing to know academically that it took years for the brain and body to develop, and another to witness the slow progress of her eyes focusing, her muscles gaining control. He felt sometimes like a gym teacher substitute-teaching a biology class; he was reading the same book as his pupil, and only about a week ahead.
Amy had a hand planted against her lower back to stretch. The flashlight beam wobbled as she moved, a tiny circle of light surrounded by crushing darkness. “How far do you think we’ve come?”
“A mile and a half, two, maybe. Are you getting tired?”
“No. It’s just we’re going so slow.”
“Better to be safe.”
“I suppose.” She shrugged, then smiled at him. “Hey, something I meant to say earlier.”
“What’s that?”
“Happy Thanksgiving.”
An hour later, as he looked over his shoulder to check on his girls, something grabbed Ethan’s foot. He stumbled, yanked, tried to bring his other leg forward in time, but the weight of the pack threw him off. He fell, and his knee slammed into a rock. The flashlight skittered off into the woods.
“Ethan!”
“I’m okay,” he said between gritted teeth. He cursed, sucked in a breath, cursed again. His fingers explored his knee, every touch sending a zing, though the bulk of the pain was already receding to a hard ache. It didn’t feel like his jeans had been torn, but he couldn’t be sure in the dark—oh shit.
“The flashlight. Where did it go?”
“Oh shit.” Amy was just a dark shape amidst darkness as she shuffled around, kicking at the needles with her feet. After a moment he heard the sound of the metal body off her shoe, and she bent down, then sighed.
“Broken?”
“Looks like. How about you?”
“Just banged up.” He planted a hand and rose slowly.
“Can you walk?”
He nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him. “Yes.” Ethan looked around, saw nothing but shades of black. The sky was only slightly brighter, the thick clouds hiding the moon and stars. “But I don’t think we can keep going this way.”