DMZ

The DMZ is the carefully maintained gap between Hig and the Mennonite community when they meet. Fifteen feet of beaten ground separates them: an improvised buffer against Blood sickness, sustained less by medical certainty than by the reassurance of distance. The term gives a name to both a practical precaution and a fragile arrangement in which people can approach one another without abandoning caution.

Definition and Setting

The DMZ takes shape in the yard of the Mennonite community, where Hig and the families stop opposite each other across the mud. The distance is approximately fifteen feet. Hig describes it as an irrevocable interval, like the space between opposing parties in an old Western, where words might be exchanged but violence remains imaginable. The comparison carries the strain of the encounter, while the name DMZ makes the gap a shared rule rather than a simple separation.

The surrounding geography has its own perimeter logic. Hig and Bangley define their safety zone by the eight miles of open ground between their position and the mountain front, a landscape Hig believes he knows closely enough to notice anything out of place. The DMZ is smaller and interpersonal: not a defended boundary across open country, but a measured space maintained when the sick community and Hig stand within speaking distance.

Why the Distance Matters

The community lives with Blood sickness that appeared after the flu. Hig estimates that roughly thirty Mennonites are affected; the illness leaves adults and children weak, and some members die each year. He also understands that children were born with the disease. The risk gives the distance its immediate purpose, even though the characters do not possess a settled medical account of transmission.

At the encounter, the fifteen-foot separation is not based on a medical finding. Hig says that they have decided, without discussion or medical evidence, that infection cannot pass across that distance; they suspect it might not pass even at five feet or through casual touch. The qualification matters: the DMZ expresses a practical judgment under uncertainty, not a verified safe threshold. Its usefulness lies partly in helping those present feel more secure while they speak.

How the Protocol Works

The DMZ is reciprocal and informal. Hig and the families approach, stop at the agreed distance, and conduct their exchange across the open space. When an object needs to pass between them, it can be placed in the middle and retrieved, allowing practical contact without requiring either side to cross the gap. The rule therefore does not end communication or aid; it regulates how they take place.

The arrangement also reflects a difference between recognized boundaries and experienced ones. Nobody in the scene invokes an official medical protocol or demonstrates that fifteen feet is necessary. Instead, the participants preserve a distance that they have come to trust. Its force comes from mutual observance: the gap works because both sides stop there and accept the object-placement practice when needed.

Uncertainty and Significance

The DMZ belongs to a world in which disease knowledge is incomplete. In a later discussion, Cima identifies herself as an internist in public health, and conversation turns to explanations for the pandemic and for the autoimmune disease affecting survivors. A proposed vitamin D mechanism is presented as a suggestion, not a conclusive explanation. These exchanges do not establish the transmission route for the Mennonite community’s illness or validate the fifteen-foot rule; they reinforce how much remains uncertain even when medical language is available.

That uncertainty makes the DMZ more than a measurement. It is a negotiated way to remain in contact without pretending the danger has been resolved. Its boundary is firm in practice but provisional in knowledge: people can speak across it, and objects can cross it, while the illness and the possibility of transmission remain unresolved.