Late that evening, after each had taken time to sit alone and think, they bundled up in whatever clothes they could find and went out to the meadow to watch the stars. Delbert brought along a Thermos full of piping hot cocoa, and he poured a little into each of their cups. The moon had set hours before, and the night sky glittered with dizzying abundance. Peter had never seen anything like it.

Delbert adjusted his red hunting cap and gazed up at the Milky Way. With shocking clarity, it climbed the western sky, tilting gently rightward. A meteorite slashed across it, splitting the stars of the Northern Cross.

Davila joined him, her head tilted back with his, their profiles aligned. "It's always looked like smoke to me, like a fire burning in the distance." She wore an old ski suit from Delbert's cellar, a one-piece affair from the '70s, forest green with a red stripe across the chest. "The ancient Sumerians and Babylonians believed it was smoke from Ara, the Great Altar."

Delbert set his Thermos down in the snow and received his cup of cocoa from Peter.

Davila said, "On summer nights, you can see the constellation Ara low in the Milky Way, just above the horizon." Her profile shifted a notch, a smile perhaps. "My mother used to tell me a story about it. Actually, it's from the oldest story ever written, the Epic of Gilgamesh."

They all listened as she spoke to the night sky.

Long ago, she told them, in Mesopotamia, the gods conspired to make a great flood that would wipe humanity and all its wickedness from the earth. But one of the gods, Enki, took pity and warned the righteous King Utnapishtim of the coming flood. Enki counseled the king to make a great ship and load it with all his kin and young animals of every kind. The flood raged for twelve days, stranding the ship on the peak of Mount Nimush. Opening a hatch, King Utnapishtim released a dove, then a swallow, but both birds soon returned. Then he released a raven, and when it did not return, the king knew there was land beyond the mountain—that the flood had receded. From that day forward, people honored the salvation of humanity by burning sacrifices at the Great Altar, Ara, whose smoke is seen in the Milky Way.

Davila warmed her lips with a sip of cocoa. "The story of Noah and the Ark is just an echo of this ancient myth."

Another meteorite streaked across the sky behind them, and they all gasped. It was so bright that for a moment the entire mountain stood painted in white light and jagged shadows.

Delbert turned slowly to face the summit, muttering to himself, chanting maybe.

Demi wrapped herself tight in the thick Pendleton blanket she had brought.

Delbert raised his cup to the Milky Way. "We call it the Dusty Trail. It's a path to the Spirit World. Wovoka said that if we did the Ghost Dance and lived righteously, God would cleanse the land, give it back to us, and bring back all our dead relations. That's why we dance beneath the Milky Way, so the ghosts can find their way back from the Spirit World."

Peter warmed his hands with his cup, but he had lost his appetite for anything sweet. "I don't know about the dead coming back to life, but if Dr. Brisling's right, the land is about to be cleansed just like Wovoka said."

"Maybe Wovoka saw the future," said Delbert. "People said he had buhah like that. But maybe he was just going off the Bible. He was raised a Christian, you know." He removed his hunting cap and ran his knobby hand through the gray stubble of his scalp. "Back in boarding school, those priests used to whip us if we didn't recite the Bible to their liking. I remember every damn word they made us say, all those warnings to the wicked. All those prophesies about a Kingdom Come. All that talk about the meek inheriting the earth. And I remember thinking to myself, they're the wicked ones, not us. We're the meek ones. So maybe we'll inherit the earth someday." He put his hat back on and pulled the earflaps down one at a time. "But God damn, I never thought it would actually happen."

"It wasn't supposed to. Not like this," said Peter.

From the smallest of seeds, the Kingdom of God. That was the promise of the Mustard Seeds, carried through centuries in the blood of the Sons of Simon, in their DNA: a future world transformed by technology, free of want and strife, a promise from the Father, the Son, and the Rab Mag, sealed by the hexagrammaton. A promise to everyone on earth, not just one chosen people.

He put his arm around Davila, and she rested her head against his shoulder.

Delbert blew on his cocoa then took a little sip. "It seems like all people tell the same story. Over and over, the gods destroy the world so better seeds can take root. That's what Jason Numec told me, and I think maybe he was right about that." He shook his head. "I always thought those stories were made up, you know, myths people tell themselves to feel special, better than everybody else."

Peter pulled Davila close. The stars glimmered faintly in the sheen of her hair. He kissed the top of her head. It was warm with her peculiar scent, rough and clean, like sun-bleached stone.

Delbert clutched his cup in both hands. "They're not myths. They're not stories at all. They're memories."

Twelve days later, in the waning afternoon, the four of them walked the summit road, climbing the barren ridge above Delbert's meadow and taking in the whole of the mountain's western slope. But a gentle snow had begun to fall. The heavy flakes drifted down, muffling the air, blurring the lines between near and far, earth and sky.

Delbert wore his wool trousers, plaid coat, and red hunting cap, earflaps deployed. Davila, dismayed by the constant cold, had taken to layering work coveralls over her green ski suit, topping it all off with a bushel of scarves. Somewhere beneath it all, she kept her pistol. Demi wore the drab wool of German Army surplus, her high-powered rifle slung over her shoulder, eyes sharp beneath the bill of a modern hunting cap. Peter had grown fond of a full-length camel hair coat and fur-lined boots that might have belonged to Demi's mother. The Mackais did not talk about her.

Delbert scanned the bleak landscape. At length, he looked up through the indefinite sky, squinting through the snowflakes. "I don't think the doctor's coming back."

With each passing day, they had grown increasingly pessimistic about seeing Dr. Brisling again, or any chance of receiving a cure. Twice, a helicopter had gotten close to the meadow, but each time it had hovered briefly before banking away. The radio offered little solace. President Almerson had closed the US-Mexico border and was planning to cut off all international travel and trade. Martial law had been declared in seventeen major cities, including Seattle.

As they stood on the ridge, a raven came sailing in low to the ground, near enough to hear its wings slice through the air. It alighted on a big boulder, cocked its head, and eyed them warily.

Delbert regarded the bird for a moment then toed the snow with his boot. "What do you two want us to do?"

"What do you mean?" said Peter.

Demi took out a pair of binoculars and scanned something in the distance. "He means if you two get sick. You might become dangerous."

"I hadn't thought about that." Actually, he and Davila had avoided the topic completely. Neither of them wanted to spoil what they had in their little shed by the meadow, however ephemeral it might be.

Delbert faced Peter. "So what do you want me and Demi to do?"

"Well, if I get sick, and I don't know where I am or who I am, I suppose I don't really care what you do."

"We might have to put you down." Delbert had certainly put down horses in his day. It would be no different.

Davila pulled down the scarves covering her mouth, her lips flushed. Then she patted the front of her coveralls where she kept her gun. "I'll take care of myself."

Before Peter could object, the raven cawed, two times. Then it hopped along the boulder and took flight, flapping a short distance before rolling over and plunging down toward the meadow below.

A split second later, they heard it, the rumble of an approaching airplane.

Demi swiveled her binoculars right. "I see it. It's military."

A huge gray airplane with four under-wing propellers approached from the north, lumbering above the treetops. Mounted guns bristled from its side. The four of them scrambled to the boulder and crouched behind it. As the plane roared by, it banked slightly toward them. But its guns remained silent. Instead, a drogue chute fluttered out from the rear cargo hatch and broke loose. The plane flew on, leaving behind the blossom of a second parachute, big and white. Beneath it dangled a container, swaying gently as it drifted down to the meadow below.

"Maybe I was wrong about the doctor," said Delbert.

Then they all ran down the road as fast as they could.

______________

Image: Milky Way over Steens Mountain, courtesy of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management