The Alliance Read Online Free

to restrain a grown man. I step closer to the table and wait as the pilot puts an arm around my shoulders so that he can use my body like a crutch.
    He must be around five-ten or -eleven, since he’s only a few inches taller than I am. But I can feel his sinewy power through his arm alone. The pilot winces at the pressure on his hurt ankle and curls the foot up again, balancing on meand on the table in front of him. He seems to think nothing of our proximity; I can think of nothing else.
    “Can you tell me where I am?” he asks.
    “An Old Order Mennonite community called Mt. Hebron.”
    “But what state?”
    “Northern Montana, near Glacier Falls. Not far from the Canadian border.”
    “That close.”
    “You were going to Canada?”
    He doesn’t say yes or no or offer any more explanation, so I gesture toward the open door and the pilot nods. We hobble together for a few labored steps. Then he leans against the jamb to catch his breath, eyes glimmering. “What’s your name?”
    “Leora Ebersole.” I pause. “And yours?”
    He looks at me with those odd, concussed eyes. “Moses. Moses Hughes.”
    “Moses,” I repeat. “Don’t know many Englischers with that name.”
    The pilot stumbles and his injured foot touches down, a knee-jerk reaction for stability. He curses, and my eyes grow wide. “I’ve never known anyone with your name,” he says. Removing his arm from around my shoulders, he touches the railing and hops over to the edge of the porch. He stares out over the meadow—at his plane that lookslike the smoking carcass of an enormous yellow bird—and sighs.
    “Where are you from?” I ask.
    “What’s that?”
    “Where are you from?”
    “Kentucky,” he says, looking ahead, “but I’ve moved around so much these past few years, I can barely remember where all I’ve been.”
    I gesture to his plane. “Looks like you’re going to be here awhile. The community’s having a meeting at the schoolhouse because the electricity shut down at Field to Table, the community’s bulk food store. My brother also said that the Englischers’ cars won’t start. Nobody can go home or even call out on their cell phones. It’s like someone—” I snap my fingers—“flipped a switch.”
    The pilot turns from the porch post and looks at me. I had tried to keep my manner light, but his expression is now so grave that a wave of panic courses throughout my body, raising the fine hair on my arms. “The deacons and bishop are trying to figure out what to do because the Englischers want to go home but have no way to get there.”
    Moses faces the woods again, holding the porch railing. “When did this happen?”
    “About two hours ago, I guess. Seth, my brother, wanted to get up here to help right after your accident, but there was such chaos at the store, he couldn’t get away.”
    “And when did my plane crash?”
    “Around the same time.” I stare at Moses’s bare back. Freckles, the color of those on his face, dot his shoulders like paint chips. “Why? Do you think they’re connected somehow?”
    The pilot sinks one fist into the pocket of his jeans and turns to face me while being careful not to put more weight on his injured foot. My eyes are drawn like lodestones to the cross tattoo on his chest. My face grows hot. I look away from him, but I feel his gaze on me until I am forced to look back. “There’s no way to know for sure just yet,” he says. “but I think it could’ve been an EMP.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “An electromagnetic pulse. A special warhead, probably set off hundreds of miles above the earth, gives off this huge electromagnetic pulse that wipes out technology because of how the pulse reacts with the earth’s magnetic field. It’s harmless to humans and animals, but it can take out the power grid and everything that relies on a computer, throwing civilization back a couple hundred years. I’ve heard it can be over a few states, or—” he glances out at the