The Seventh Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

there I heard Pa’s cursing, from there I saw Lenny with his battery light and dart gun.
    Then I heard the flying machine.
    For a time there was noise enough to herald the end of the new world. The dogs did not know which way to run so they ran in circles. I waited, waited until there was silence, then waited longer for the grey men to come up the stairs.
    Such a feeling of blame and sadness is locked deep within me. It gnaws at my heart day and night, like a rat in the barn gnawing its way into the heart of a pumpkin. There was blood in the barn the following morning when I went to see if the beetle machine had gone. It had not gone, and though I tell myself the blood I saw was only the blood of a pig Lenny had slaughtered, in my heart I know it was the blood of Jonjan. I do not know if he died by Lenny’s hands or the city men’s. I do not know where Lenny buried him. Perhaps he sleeps in the woods beside the harmless stranger who came to trade for books but gained only death.
    I weep now as I look at the cordial. I weep for Jonjan and the stranger, and I weep for this illness of my belly. Before the coming of Jonjan I did not have this flip-flopping in my belly. I swallowed city pills, drank well of city cordial and swam in the printed words of that old world. And it was better, far better than this thinking, thinking, thinking, this weeping for what is lost.
    Defiantly I sip a little cordial from the bottle, hold it beneath my tongue, allowing saliva to dilute it, and when I think it pink, I allow the sip to slide down. The bottle in my hand, I walk then to the small room which gives entrance to the cellar. I do not walk down the steps, but around the gaping hole to the books that wait on strong wooden shelves.
    It is a room of dust, and many oddities, of an old hide-covered chair, of a glass-faced box, of a wooden wheel that one time turned. It is on the box that I find Granny’s Bible and her doctoring book. I take both, take them to the kitchen.
    The Bible print is small. I have read a little but its pages are dry as dead leaves, brittle and grey. The handwritten words steal my eye for a moment.
    Tom Martin contracted to Emma Morgan.
    Aaron Morgan contracted to Dallas Logan.
    Jana Morgan 2028.
    Anna Martin contracted to Brian Logan.
    Peta Logan 2030.
    Only names. Too many names, they crush together. Some are written small in black, others in grey pencil. Some have been made by a strong hand, others by the weak. Some have numbers beside them, 2023, and 2096. Some have Nov or Oct. It is a confusion of names and figures. The two non-printed pages are filled with names, and even on the printed pages, where there is space, there are more. Who were these people?
    I do not know the answer. I do not know many answers.
    The Bible closed, I untie the cord of the doctoring book and carefully turn these worn, but colourful, pages, which as a child I liked well. There are pictures of the body’s bones, of a heart with its piping cut off, pictures of the head and the great nest of worms that live inside the head, and then, there, I see a picture of female breasts and a fat belly. And a foetus inside the belly.
    And I think that I have such a thing in my belly, and I think it makes the flip-flopping for it wishes to get out of me, for it should not be in me.
    I close that book fast, push it from me. I will not look at it again. I will not think of it. This book will not raise Jonjan from the dead, nor will it tell me how to remove the foetus from within me before the grey men find it with their machines.
    â€˜Lord.’ They will not be pleased with me. ‘Lord.’
    I reach for the cordial and quickly sip on the thick stuff. Once. Twice. Thrice.

    (Excerpt from the New World Bible)
    And in the city streets above the locked building of the Chosen, the storesheds were emptied. And the few who had survived the splitting of the earth and the aftermath and the fires that came from beneath the earth, and those