Mennonite Settlement is a small, quarantined community south of Hig and Bangley’s airport, inhabited by people weakened by a blood disease that followed the flu. Its boundary has helped shield residents from attackers, but it also keeps them socially isolated. When Cima crosses that line to provide medical care, the settlement becomes a place where practical help and renewed human contact test the assumptions that have governed life after the pandemic.

Setting and Community

The settlement lies roughly ten miles south of the airport. Hig estimates that about thirty Mennonites live there, including children born with the disease. Residents are sick and weak, and some die each year. The illness is therefore not a single past crisis but a continuing presence that shapes the community’s everyday circumstances and its prospects across generations.

The people live among fields, houses, sheds, and a garden. Those ordinary features of a working settlement become visible to Hig from the air: when he flies over with Pops, residents run out from the garden, houses, and sheds to wave. The children jump, and Hig counts seven. He thinks the number is one lower than before, but cannot identify who is missing. The moment registers a change in the settlement’s population without explaining its cause; the uncertain count leaves the loss unresolved rather than turning it into a confirmed death.

Disease and Quarantine

The residents’ blood disease is described as having emerged after the flu. Hig compares it uncertainly to AIDS and understands that it leaves people ill and weak, but the evidence does not establish a definitive cause or a complete medical explanation. The community’s visible exhaustion and recurring deaths make the danger tangible, while uncertainty about how the illness spreads contributes to its isolation.

Large signs along the fields’ fences display the warning THE BLOOD. The boundary and its message have preserved the community by frightening away attackers, even as the illness continues to kill residents. This protection has a double effect: outsiders are kept at a distance, and the sick are treated as untouchable. Cima later tells Hig that the fear of ordinary contact is mistaken, describing the relevant risk in terms of blood and fluid transfer. The signs thus express both a real history of vulnerability and a misunderstanding that has become part of the settlement’s defensive perimeter.

Cima’s Visit and Medical Work

After arriving with Pops, Hig takes Cima to the settlement at her request. They land on the drive, where residents gather along their quarantine line. As Cima approaches, their expressions shift from surprise to heightened attention; they make room for her, while she steps across the boundary with her medical bag. Her crossing is consequential because it meets a barrier sustained by fear without treating the residents as a threat.

Cima sets up in a room in the old farmhouse and examines the people one at a time. Wearing latex gloves, she calls patients in gently, sews serious cuts, dresses wounds, and asks for buckets of warm water. She also counsels a young woman who is six or seven months pregnant and comforts an older man whose weeping can be heard from outside the kitchen door. The visit addresses immediate needs across several generations, from injuries to pregnancy and grief; it does not establish a cure for the blood disease.

Cima tells Hig that he can cross and mingle with the residents, correcting his belief that proximity alone is unsafe. The encounter changes the meaning of the quarantine line in practice: it remains a boundary associated with a real illness, but no longer has to function as an absolute bar to contact. The residents’ wonder at being touched by a stranger marks the emotional consequence of that shift, while Hig’s concern about what might follow makes clear that crossing carries perceived risk even as he sees the value of the scene.

Medical Uncertainty and Narrative Significance

Cima’s public-health background informs the way she speaks about the disease, but her account retains uncertainty. She recalls studies suggesting that the autoimmune illness may be accelerated by the body’s diminished ability to produce vitamin D, and compares the proposed mechanism to AIDS’s effects on T cells. This is presented as a hypothesis from reports, not a settled explanation of the disease’s origin or course. The distinction matters in a community where the visible illness is certain but its mechanisms remain only partly understood.

Hig later flies over the settlement with Pops and points out the surrounding landmarks, including the families. The residents’ welcome from below contrasts with the earlier image of a population held apart by warning signs and fear. Together, these visits make Mennonite Settlement more than a point on the map: it is a community whose protective isolation has both preserved and burdened it, and whose need for care exposes the cost of mistaking quarantine for total separation.