365 Days At War

by Nancy Isaak

  It was Jude and Peyton, however, who seemed to be getting the most out of the self-defense classes. They’d become sparring partners, almost equal in their abilities. It was amazing to watch them fight each other. Neither one held back; in fact, they seemed to take a lot of pleasure in landing a punch or sweeping the feet out from under the other.

  When Jude and Peyton fought, the rest of us would always stop what we were doing and watch.

  Two dueling Amazons.

  As beautiful as they both were—Jude and Peyton were also becoming very deadly.

  * * * *

  When it became obvious that Jacob had no intention of taking back the leadership of the tribe, I approached Kieran and Porter one day, hoping to convince one of them to stand in his place. Both of them had laughed, then clapped me on the back as if I’d made a funny joke.

  “Not a chance!” said Porter. “I’ve got enough on my plate with the Clinic.”

  “Sorry, Kaylee,” Kieran grinned. “But there is no way in hell that I’m taking over the tribe from you.”

  “That’s not it,” I insisted. “You’d just be taking care of the tribe until Jacob wants the job back.”

  “You’re doing a great job. Why would I want to stop that?”

  “Well, it’s just that…well, I’d kind of like some free time, you know. Like I could spend it with Jacob, help him get better, right.”

  Kieran shook his head. “Yeah—no! You want me to sneak into the Valley, that’s one thing. But I’m not the person this tribe needs as a leader right now.”

  “I know!” I said, frustrated. “They need Jacob!”

  A subtle look passed between Kieran and Porter; if I had been more aware, I would have picked up on it. Instead, I continued raging, angry that I couldn’t step down.

  “It was just supposed to be while Jacob was gone! And now he’s back—so he’s supposed to be leading again. This isn’t fair, you guys. It should be Jacob—he’s the one who should be in charge of the tribe!”

  This time, I caught the glance Porter gave Kieran.

  “What?!” I barked.

  Porter shrugged. “It’s just…you’re who we have, Kaylee. Like is there really another alternative?”

  I narrowed my eyes, glaring at him. “I should just walk away,” I muttered. “Let all you guys just figure it out all by yourself.”

  “Except you wouldn’t do that,” said Kieran. “You would never abandon the tribe.”

  “Which is just one of the reasons why you make such a good leader,” added Porter.

  * * * *

  Good leader or not—I was pissed.

  I had assumed that I could return to being simply another member of the Council. Instead, I felt forced to be the tribe’s leader and—if anything—my job became even harder. Since the battle with the Crazies, everyone was looking to me for answers.

  If a decision had to be made—apparently—I was the one who needed to make it.

  So, while Jacob spent hours wandering around the Point—thinking—I was stuck in Council meetings or riding the irrigation lines or supervising the distribution of workers or—add in any of a dozen different responsibilities here.

  And, as much as I loved Jacob and was trying to be patient, I was also getting irritated with him. Even as I tried to understand the trauma that he’d been through, I was slightly offended that it never seemed to cross his mind that I, also, had been through a traumatic ordeal.

  In reality—we should have been comforting each other.

  Instead, we were living increasingly separate lives.

  * * * *

  Our Council had two important items to work out in August—the first was the rebuilding of our tribe’s defenses. If the Crazies attacked again, we needed to be ready. The second was how to bring back the supplies that Jacob’s team had left behind at the safehouses.

  We started on the first—with rebuilding our early warning system. Cammie and Florenza were put in charge, their first step being to take a work detail and set up the bonfires again. They would start at the farthest sentry position—Point Mugu—and work their way back south.

  I also assigned them one extra task.

  They were to climb to the top of Mugu Peak and place crosses at the graves of Larry and his guys—after which, they would rebuild the mountaintop’s bonfire.

  And, because I never wanted our guys to get trapped on the peak again, Florenza and Cammie would install booby-traps along the trail. That way, if the new group of sentries were being chased by the Crazies up Mugu Peak, they would be able to trigger a rock slide behind them—taking out their pursuers and blocking the trail to the top of the mountain.

  Ethan and Wester immediately volunteered for Cammie and Florenza’s team. They both loved being outside of the compound, and acting as guards made them feel grown-up. Kieran and Pauly also wanted to go—to protect their girls, not to do any work—but I needed them elsewhere—which did not make them happy at all.

  In fact, when Kieran dared to approach me and complain, I snapped at him. “If you want anything different, put on your big boy panties and become the leader. Then, you can go wherever the heck you want! Until then, you’re stuck doing what this leader wants—so suck it up!”

  He simply chuckled, put up his hands in defeat, and backed away.

  Dang it…I was kind of hoping for the opposite.

  * * * *

  Meanwhile, Nate and Xavier were assigned the job of holding ‘evacuation drills’. When we least expected it, the trumpet would sound—three short, three long, three short—and everyone would have to make their way down the cliffs to the boats. A chart was drawn up, with the brothers having assigned everyone a seat and a job—what to bring, who to help, etc.

  There was also a list of safe havens being created—places where Nate and Xavier felt we could safely evacuate to, with directions on how to get to each point, and how to protect each boatload of survivors once they’d arrived.

  Sandeep, of course, worked alongside of Nate and Xavier. There seemed to be a strong brotherly bond developing between the three of them. They worked well together and—on their free days—we would often see them surfing together off Zuma Beach or Little Dume.

  * * * *

  One of our Council’s most heated ‘discussions’ was over whether we should create a cavalry now that we had more horses. If the Crazies came back—and we were certain they would—some of us felt that using horses might give us an edge.

  “Think of how fast we could take the battle to them!” argued Pauly. “Dude, if the Crazies had used their horses on Dume Drive, we would never have reached our second positions. They could have cut us down on Heathercliff. Heck, we probably wouldn’t have even made it out of the parking lot!”

  “That’s true,” I agreed. “Except that once they reached our machine guns, we would have taken them out—in seconds. The horses wouldn’t have been able to outrun those guns, so their speed wouldn’t have mattered.”

  After an hour of arguing, the Council finally decided that the horses were more valuable to us during battle as a way of passing information—to contact our sentries, to go up to the water tower, to move quickly throughout the Point.

  “Well, if we can’t have a cavalry, can we at least have some bombs?” muttered Pauly. He was twirling around in an office chair, irritating the rest of us with his—like my mom liked to say—‘ants-in-the-pants’ behavior.

  “That’s stupid,” said Porter. “I mean, like does anybody here even know how to make a bomb?”

  “You use fertilizer. That’s what you said Connor told you, right Jacob?” Pauly rolled his chair over to Jacob who—having actually deigned to attend a meeting for once—was sitting next to a window, looking out at the ocean.

  Jacob slowly turned to blink at Pauly. “Connor’s gone.”

  With a frown, Pauly pushed at the wall, using it to propel his chair back to his spot at the table. “But Connor still said that fertilizer can be used to make bombs,” he insisted.

 
; “If you know how to do it!” said Porter. “Which you don’t. And it’s not like we can figure it out by watching some YouTube videos or surfing the dark net for bomb recipes.”

  “Yeah, but you brainiacs have some idea of how to make them, I’ll bet. So, we can like experiment—figure it out like that.”

  “And blow ourselves up while we’re doing it?!” groaned Porter. “Or maybe just poison ourselves by using the wrong chemicals!”

  “I still think we should take the chance.”

  “And I think we shouldn’t!”

  Frustrated, Pauly and Porter both turned to me—wanting a decision.

  “Jacob?” I asked. “Do you have an opinion?”

  He shook his head, not even looking at me. “You’ve got it under control.”

  Suddenly, I felt the urge to go and whack Jacob over the top of his head. With a deep breath, however, I managed to get it together and turned back to Porter and Pauly. “We’ll compromise. If there’s anybody in the tribe who can prove to me that they have experience building pipe bombs, then we’ll take it from there. Otherwise, bombs are off the table.”

  Neither Pauly nor Porter seemed happy by my decision.

  I didn’t care.

  Trying to please everyone was, frankly, wearing me out.

  * * * *

  The supplies Jacob’s team left back in the safehouses brought on even more discussion. There were Recovery teams to be created, expeditions planned, and security assigned—certainly a whole lot different from the old world, when all we’d have to do would be to get in the car and drive to Costco or Home Depot.

  Luckily, Laura had brought back a lot of the more immediate supplies that had been on our lists. Her little bike trailer had been packed to the brim with medical supplies, Frank’s seeds, and some medical reference books; she also carried the microscope, slides, and blood disease poster that Connor had found.

  That meant we could, at least, take our time bringing back the rest.

  * * * *

  Jay, of course, had burst into tears upon receiving the microscope—carrying it carefully back to the Medical Clinic like it was a fragile piece of art.

  “It’s not fair!” she sobbed to me as she placed the microscope gently on her desk. “Connor found exactly what we needed and he’s not even here to take the credit.”

  Her tears soon turned to giggles, though, as Pauly brought in some brightly colored boxes and dumped them nearby.

  “These were in with the rest of the supplies,” he said, looking confused. “I mean, I know they’re important but…well…I kind of thought the first stuff they brought back would just be antibiotics and stuff.”

  I had to admit, I was confused, too. “Who put these on the immediate list?”

  Jay picked up a box of condoms in one hand, a pregnancy kit in the other. “I did. Are we just supposed to pretend that ‘accidents’ don’t happen or should we be more mature about it and give kids a chance to protect themselves?”

  “You’re the one who giggled,” I grumbled.

  “So, what are you going to do?” asked Pauly, examining a box of condoms. “You gonna’ pass these babies out with the booze? Get it…babies!”

  With a frustrated sigh, Jay plucked the box from Pauly’s hand. “So mature! We’ll put them in a bowl on that cabinet in the hallway, just outside the Medical Clinic. That way nobody will be embarrassed to use them. It will be anonymous. And the pregnancy kits will go on the shelf underneath.”

  “Babies,” I said, marveling. “Just think of it!”

  “Think of it?” Pauly wiggled his eyebrows at us. “I’d rather just do it!”

  * * * *

  Doing it…

  The truth was, the lack of girls in our tribe was a continued concern—both in Council meetings and with the tribe in general. More and more guys, fearing they’d never get a girlfriend, seemed open to the idea of allowing us girls to have more than one boyfriend—or husband. I knew of at least one petition that was being passed along that supposedly asked the Council to make a proclamation saying just that.

  Personally, I was hoping that it would never reach the Council room.

  Still—in the desire to be fair to everyone—I took the matter up with the girls one day. We had a private meeting at my dad’s house, one that every girl in the tribe was required to attend.

  Sophia, of course, was completely against the idea of multiple boyfriends, let alone husbands. “It’s wrong!” she declared. “Sinful. We are not things to be traded or collected.”

  “I want two boyfriends,” Hannah piped up.

  “Me, too!” Lily agreed. “I’ll take Wester and Lance.”

  “Mia has Lance,” Hannah told Lily, very seriously. “But you can have Xavier. Then, I’ll take Nate.”

  “Do you want Ethan?” asked Lily. “Because if you marry him, we’ll really be sisters?”

  Hannah immediately nodded. “Okay. But I also want Jackson.”

  “Who’s Jackson?”

  “You know, Jackson,” Hannah told her. “He was in the cage.”

  “Oh—the Crazy!”

  Irritated, Hannah shook her finger at Lily. “We’re not supposed to call them Crazies anymore! If you keep doing that…then, I’m going to take Wester, too!”

  “But that’s like four!” Lily turned to me, incensed. “If Hannah has four boyfriends, then I want four, too!”

  Florenza burst into laughter. “Me, too!”

  “Wait until Pauly hears that,” warned Sophia. “He’s not gonna’ like it one bit, I’ll bet.”

  Still laughing, Florenza leaped across the room, landing in Sophia’s lap and putting her arms around her. “Mi corazon—two boyfriends for me, two girlfriends for him. What do you say, Sophia? You wanna’ get jumped into my family?”

  Horrified, Sophia pushed Florenza off her lap. “That’s disgusting!”

  As a chuckling Florenza returned to her seat, Cammie held up her hand. “I’m sorry, but I think this is a stupid conversation. This is like a new world and I don’t think that there should be any rules for something like this. I think that everybody should be able to love whoever they want…period.”

  Hannah and Lily immediately began to cheer.

  “As long as you’re over sixteen,” Cammie quickly amended.

  The cheering stopped.

  “And you have to be at least eighteen to marry,” Cammie added.

  Florenza waggled a finger at Cammie. “You got a lot of rules for this new world, chica.”

  Over on a sofa by the fireplace, Jude and Peyton sat next to Mia and Laura. None of them had said a single word during this conversation.

  I turned and looked at them. “Any opinion?”

  Jude shrugged, while Peyton said that she couldn’t care less what anybody else did. And Mia and Laura felt they were too new to the tribe to have an opinion—as long as nobody tried to marry them off.

  On the other side of the room, meanwhile, Jay and Shawnee had been whispering to each other throughout the conversation—grinning and giggling.

  “Well, you guys definitely have an opinion,” I said, turning to them. “So, what is it?”

  Jay and Shawnee shared an amused look, before Jay finally spoke up. “Well…we’ve been talking about how there’s more than one guy who wants us and, well…”

  Shawnee piped up, giggling. “Like we think this is the best meeting ever!”

  We never did come to a decision. Instead, we decided to make up a list of all the boys and rate them.

  Sheesh…we were being such girls!

  Like Shawnee said—best meeting ever!

  * * * *

  Rather than send one large team out to bring back the supplies from the safehouses, we sent a number of smaller groups over the next two weeks. Because we were still worried about Crazies being in the Oxnard/Ventura area, it had been decided that a smaller team was less likely to be discovered. Even though it would take longer to bring everything back, we believed that it would be safer. Also, if worse came to
worst and one of our teams was attacked—we would lose only part of our supplies.

  Luckily, Connor had kept a very detailed list of what was in every box in the safehouses—at least up until he had disappeared. It made it a whole lot easier to figure out most-to-least important—as in what should be brought back on which expedition first.

  Our main priority, of course—along with the medicines—was to bring back the weapons and ammunition that had been hidden near the armory. Rhys and Jude immediately volunteered to lead the first team that was heading up into Ventura.

  I was absolutely terrified that they wouldn’t come back; over the four days they were gone I think I must have slept maybe three hours in total. Seeing green smoke on the fifth afternoon—knowing it had to be Rhys and Jude’s team returning—was one of the happiest days of my life.

  And that night, just before I went to sleep, I locked myself in my bathroom and just—sobbed.

  * * * *

  There was no denying that it was bittersweet when we went through the supplies—thinking of what it had cost Jacob’s team to get them in the first place.

  Besides the medicines and weapons, there was a small amount of tattooing supplies that Wyatt needed desperately if we were to send new spies up into the Valley. And a few books had actually made it into the bike trailers—two Amish cookbooks for Sophia, a Boy Scouts manual on tying knots, and a whole encyclopedia collection, from A to Z.

  It was the last book that broke my heart, though—another one of Cherry’s sketchbooks. Only one page had been drawn on—a detailed map of where they’d traveled, including her terrifying ride down the river.