Webster Daily's Arc

Chapter 12 of 13

By morning the Gazette was in every hand on the road into Rust Creek. Webster watched the survivors come in slow, dusty lines past a scrap-metal lamp post that still burned from the night. They carried bundles, children, kettles. They came because the story said the town was real, that a name had been spoken again. Webster stood under the light and counted them and felt the weight of what he had pulled toward this place. Barry had set a patched sign-up booth at the old fairground arch. A list, he said. Names, trades, what each person brought. Webster offered to help and Barry waved him in without looking up. The line moved. Webster wrote down hammers, blankets, seed, a goat. Then a ragged woman stepped to the plank, eyes too wide, hands clutched at her chest. She set down a small cloth bundle. Inside lay three sealed canisters, oily and cold, and a worker ID badge with a red stamp across the front. Plant stock, she whispered. Her brother had worked the hill years back and hid these before he ran. She thought the town would want them returned. Webster's mouth went dry. The canisters were fuel cells. Bring them inside the walls and Sherrie would have a thread straight back to every soul in this line. He closed the cloth over them. He took the woman by the elbow and walked her past the booth, past the lamp post, back through the arch to the cracked road. He told her plain: not here, not today. He took the bundle from her hands and promised it would be buried where no one could trade it. She cried without sound. He gave her Barry's name and told her to go back and sign in clean, only her hands, only her work. He drove the canisters out past the last fence and dug under a leaning post until the cloth was gone under dirt. He kept the badge. He slid it into his coat beside his pen. One more name the town did not need spoken, one more thing kept out of Sherrie's ledger. The story had brought the people. He would not let it bring her a reason to thin them. When he came back the line was longer. Barry was still writing names. The ragged woman stood near the front, her hands empty, her face set. Webster took his place beside the booth and lifted the next page. The Gazette had opened a door. He had just closed a smaller one behind it. Somewhere on the hill, he knew, Sherrie was already counting who had arrived.