“Yeah,” Isaiah said. “Yeah, okay.”
They put the bonfire in the middle of the road. West was worried about the wooden buildings catching and insisted on keeping the pile smaller than some of the kids would have liked. If a building did catch fire, they’d have no way to contain it.
A boy that West was pretty proud to remember was named Wally came toward him struggling with a bucket that sloshed liquid all over his pants legs.
West left Isaiah and went to him. “Good idea! Let’s put some buckets of water around, just in case.”
The boy shook his head. “This isn’t water.”
West realized that was true just as Wally said it. The smell of fuel hit his nose and made him step back. “What did you do?”
“Siphoned a car,” Wally said. “You know, to get the fire going.”
“Jesus Christ.” West took the bucket and called out, “Isaiah? Get rid of this. I don’t know where, just . . . far from here.”
Isaiah took the bucket and walked away. Wally looked like someone had stuck him with a pin and deflated him.
“You,” West said. “You go down to the water pump and wash. Really wash well. And get some clean clothes. Bury those or something. I don’t want you lighting up tonight.”
The boy started to say something, but West cut him off with a look. Wally finally walked back down the hill toward the bar that had the working water pump in it. The Bucket of Blood, it was called. The Original Bucket of Blood Saloon. West shivered. Every time his mind wandered, something yanked it right back to wondering how he was going to keep all of these kids alive.
At least they had food, for now. The elk had been taken to a restaurant just a few yards up the street from the school building. If it had had electricity, it would have been perfect. Its huge freezer would have stored the leftover meat for as long as they needed.
But the freezer was nothing more than a big, warm cupboard now. And it was filled with petrified food. James had overseen preparing the kitchen to be used—taking some of the kids and organizing an effort to get rid of sixteen years’ worth of rot and animal droppings and dirt.
When West walked into it again, it sparkled. The elk was lying on tarps spread over the floor. It was far too big for the prep table in the center of the room and too heavy to lift. James had decapitated and gutted the animal where Phire had shot it, to reduce its size and weight, but it still took a massive group effort to pull all four hundred or so pounds that were left into the back of the van. They’d had to draw straws to figure out who would get the unenviable job of staying behind to bury the guts and head. James cut off the massive antlers with a saw, and as far as West knew, they were still marking the kill.
“I have an idea,” James said when he saw West. “This was a barbecue restaurant. It’s got smokers. Clover found me a recipe for jerky. I think that will work.”
West hesitated—and wondered if he’d ever get past his instinct to go over everything his father said with a fine-toothed comb. “We’ll have to work in shifts, all night. We can’t leave it until morning.”
“Let’s get him cleaned first,” James said. “We’ll figure it out. I found an old chest cooler. We can bury it and store some of the meat at least a day or two that way.”
If they left the elk meat without preserving it somehow, it would rot. The idea of allowing so much meat to go bad was more than West could stomach. Tonight, though, they’d eat the meat, roasted on the restaurant’s massive grill. It would be the first real meal some of these kids had had in a long time. His own stomach tightened with hunger thinking about it.
They’d have apples and pears, too. And Marta had some of the kids helping her make a kind of flatbread they’d be able to cook in pans heated up by the fire.
West left the kitchen and walked back out to the street. Virginia City had been here long before modern society was supplanted by post-virus society. As long as they made it through this first winter, they would be okay.
He didn’t let himself think of the alternatives. They had Frank and the train. They were an hour outside the city. They would not starve to death. They would not freeze to death. They would not.
An hour later, Christopher started the fire. It lit up faster than West thought it would. The wood was dry and coated with varnish that helped it go. The younger kids cheered and danced, getting as close as they dared.
James stayed at the restaurant, supervising the smoker and the grill that cooked the night’s dinner. The smell of the cooking meat wafted to West and competed with the scent of burning wood. He felt muscles he hadn’t even known were tense relax as he sat on a blanket to watch the flames.
“Can I sit with you?”
West looked up at Leanne. She still looked exhausted. Like she’d been used up and wrung out, and was only just barely managing to hold on. If she didn’t sit, he was afraid she’d fall, so he slid over to make room for her on his blanket.
She sat, slightly awkwardly with her prosthetic. She didn’t say anything else, but West was hyperaware of her. She’d bathed and found clean clothes. Her dark hair was again pulled into two braids that hung to her shoulders.
“Thank you,” she finally said. “I don’t—I don’t even know how to thank you.”
He felt his face flush and hoped the dim light hid it. “I didn’t do much.”
“You risked your life for me.”
“You risked yours for my sister.”
She looked up at him, her arms wrapped around her body despite the heat coming off the fire. She managed to somehow look as young as Clover and as old as Mrs. Finch in the same moment. There was something beautiful about her that made him want to touch her.
He didn’t make a conscious decision to actually do it, but in the next moment she was leaning into him and his mouth was on hers, his hands on her face, and he was kissing her. He felt her make a noise, even though he couldn’t hear her over the fire and the people around them. She dug her fingers into his hair and kissed him back, hard, with an urgency he’d never felt before—never once from Bridget, and in the space of that moment he felt everything inside him tighten in demand.
And then she pulled away and sat back, looking up at him, breathing through her open mouth. “What was that?”
“A kiss,” he said. “A damned good one.”
She exhaled, audibly, and looked around. They were surrounded by people, but no one was paying attention to them.
“Want to try again?” He leaned toward her, but she leaned back. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you know how old I am?”
He ran his hands through his hair, trying to get a handle on his hormones. “Clover told me you were sixteen when you lost your leg, so thirty-two?”
“Thirty-three. Do you know how old you are?”
He laughed. It felt good. When was the last time he laughed? Days, he guessed, but it felt like years. “I’m twenty.”
“Twenty,” she said, and he wondered if she’d been hoping he would say something else. “You’re a—”
He cut her off before she could finish that thought. “It’s been a very long time since I was a kid.”
She looked at him, tilting her head, peering into the dim, flickering firelight. “Yes, I guess it has been.”
He didn’t know what to do or say next. He wasn’t even sure where this sudden desire to kiss her, to touch her, had come from, but it was there, filling him up.
“I’m exhausted,” she said.
It might have been an excuse to get away from him, but he believed her regardless. She looked ready to drop, but by the time he was on his feet, prepared to help her up, she was already standing.
“You need to eat,” he said. “When was the last time you ate?”
“They feed prisoners. I’m okay.”
“I’ll walk in with you.” He wanted to reach for her hand. His fingers actually closed, involuntari
ly, around the imagined feel of hers inside his.
She shook her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He watched her until she was inside the school building, a hand-cranked flashlight guiding her. When he turned to sit back on his blanket, he was in a considerably better mood than he had been in a long time.
He nearly collided with his father, who stood with a platter of cooked meat in both hands. The good scent of the grilled elk hit West like a wall and his stomach cramped with hunger—how had he not smelled James coming from a mile away?
“Looks good,” he said, reaching for a piece with his fingers. James made a noise and West looked up at him for the first time. He had a look on his face that West didn’t particularly like. “What?”
James tilted his head toward the building Leanne had just disappeared into. “She’s been through a lot.”
“Feed these kids,” West said. “I’ll go take my shift in the kitchen.”
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS,
ORATION AT PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 22, 1802
“We can protect this place,” Clover said. She was right, and it irritated her that she had to keep saying it over and over.
“It just makes more sense to move farther from the city,” Marta said. “The farther from the Company the better, right?”
“We can’t just move this many people. We don’t have the resources or the—”
“I’m with Marta. We need to get the hell out of here. Go south, where it’s warmer,” Phire said.
Clover stood up. “We can protect this place. Do you really think Bennett doesn’t have the resources to look for us, if he wants to? Like what? He has a boundary he’s not going to cross? Virginia City is defensible. We’re already here, that’s half the battle.”
Leanne started to argue, but West shook his head, and she stayed quiet. “Just let her talk.”
Clover opened her notebook. “There is only one main road into and out of town. That’s manageable. We all fit in the schoolhouse, and there are resources in the town, because obviously it was never looted or even cleaned after the Bad Times.”
“We have maybe a dozen hunting rifles,” Isaiah said. “That’s not nearly enough to go up against the guard if they show up. Especially not with only two people who have ever even seen a gun. There’s not enough ammunition to waste training anyone else.”
West hadn’t wanted Isaiah here, and Clover saw her brother’s face contort when Isaiah spoke. But Isaiah was right, there were only two, or maybe three, people in Virginia City who had even the barest experience with defense. Isaiah was one. The other two, James and Leanne, sat side by side in the back, quiet.
Leanne had come back wanting everyone out of Virginia City, out of Nevada. Whatever Bennett had done to her while she was his prisoner had scared her.
“We need to block the roads,” she said. “Move rocks across them, make it look like an avalanche or something, as best we can. We don’t want someone accidentally coming up here.”
“No one comes up here,” James said. “If they do, it won’t be an accident.”
Clover started to argue, but West shook his head and she swallowed it. “Fine. Blocking the roads is a good idea, either way. And if we’re sure that no one will accidentally come up here, we don’t have to be so careful to make it look accidental. Block the road with cars. Maybe it will look like the people here tried to keep sick people or looters out.”
James lifted a shoulder and tipped his head for her to go on.
“We need to protect the city in circles.” She held up her notebook, opened to a page where she’d drawn a rough map of Virginia City with concentric circles going through it. The first was around the schoolhouse; the second encompassed the restaurant and the bar that held their water pump. “This building is the most important. We need to make it our fortress.”
She spent the next hour explaining her ideas for fortifying the schoolhouse. Drop-down bar arms for the doors, boarding up the windows on the bottom floor.
“Our best defense is to be invisible,” James said. “We want this building to look abandoned. Boarded up. When that bell rings, all of these kids need to know to hide.”
“How can we fight if we’re hiding?” Phire asked. “You want us to stay here, and then not do anything when Bennett shows up?”
“We can’t fight them,” Isaiah said. “We have to defend ourselves and this place with our brains. We’re less than thirty people. It wouldn’t matter how old we were or how much experience we had. Without serious firepower, there is nothing we can do to fight them head on.”
Clover felt sick. She must have made some noise, or started to rock, because Mango pressed his head against her hand. She automatically rubbed it. Maybe they should leave. She was going to get all of these people killed. Bennett was going to come and—
Jude said, “Let’s just get to work making this place as safe as we can. We have enough food, from the Mormon rations. If we can get through the next several weeks, chances are good Bennett won’t send the guard out here until spring anyway. The highway will be impassable unless he brings up a plow.”
“Jude’s right,” West said. “Trying to move these kids this close to winter is at least as dangerous as staying.”
That seemed to settle it, which irritated Clover because it was what she’d been saying all along.
“We’re going to have to work, every single day, to get this place ready for us to winter through,” West said. “We’ve got some water barrels we can fill from the pump; we need to get firewood in order, organize our food supplies, plant some winter greens.”
“There are some goats, up past the Opera House,” a girl named Bethany said. “Me and my brothers saw them.”
“Yes,” West said. “Yes, that’s perfect. We need to see if we can catch them. It’s a shame we’ve lost our chickens.”
“There are quail,” James said. “And rabbits and deer.”
Because Bethany wouldn’t be separated from her younger brothers, she was put in charge of the smallest children. West asked Christopher to help him gather all of the kids together.
—
“Is this everyone?” West sat on top of the teacher desk in one of the classroom museums. Clover looked around at the smaller student desks, in neat rows, filled with people. “Okay, let’s get started.”
The smaller kids fidgeted, but the older ones, for the most part, paid attention. Clover was a little surprised by how little rebellion there was among them. None of them bristled against West’s leadership, or people they didn’t know telling them what to do.
Jude said that they were overwhelmed. They had come out of a terrible situation; they only wanted some kind of stability. Once things settled down, they’d start to question. Clover thought that sounded about right.
“You’ve all heard the school bell?” West asked. He waited, but no one said they hadn’t. “Good. When you hear that bell, if you are within three minutes of this building, you come here. If you are farther away, you find the nearest building and you hide until the bell rings again.”
“What if the bell doesn’t ring again?” Tim asked. Clover thought he might be one of the early questioners.
“You hide,” West said. “And you stay hidden. The bell will ring again.”
“What if you need us to help fight?”
Tim’s question hung in the room for a minute, then kicked off a round of other questions that kind of migrated around the room until everyone was speaking.
“Listen to me,” West said. When that didn’t happen he stood up and said louder, “Listen to me!”
The room finally quieted again and West went on. “We cannot win a physical fight. Do you understand that? There aren’t enough of us. We’re mostly unarmed. Half of you are young
er than twelve. When you hear that bell, you hide.”
“We can fight,” Tim said. “We’ve been hiding our whole lives.”
West sat back down and didn’t answer right away. Clover watched him gathering his thoughts. She knew the look on his face. Stubborn, sure he was right. She’d spent her whole life countering that look by trying to figure out how he was wrong. Good thing, too, otherwise she might not have realized that Tim was the one who was right this time.
“Tim’s right,” she said. Jude sighed next to her and West looked like he wanted to strangle her. “No, I’m serious, he is. We could fight. We should know how to.”
“What are you going to do, Clover?” West asked. “Are you going to get into a fistfight with the guard? That won’t work.”
“We have an advantage over them.” Clover turned toward her father. “We know them, they don’t know us. They’re going to underestimate us.”
“Jesus.” West stood up again.
“At least listen,” Clover said.
“We’ve talked about this.” West raised his voice over the noise of too many people talking at once.
“Hiding isn’t a bad idea,” James said. “But we need to be prepared in case it doesn’t work.”
Clover watched her brother’s face, looking for the moment when his stubbornness would break. It would. It always did. He wasn’t stupid; he’d see a good idea eventually, even if it wasn’t his. West shook his head and sat down again. There it was.
“Okay,” he said. “How exactly do you think we can fight?”
“They will underestimate us,” Clover said. “They’ll expect it to be easy to take us. The first group will just be looking, trying to find us. They aren’t going to roll in here with a full army.”
“I’m not giving guns to a bunch of kids,” West said.
“There aren’t enough guns, and not enough ammunition, for that anyway. We need what we have for hunting. Our goal needs to be keeping them out of the city all together.”
The kids went quiet again, watching and listening. Clover reached a hand down and Mango pressed his head against her palm. “Frank might be able to help,” she said.
Rebel Nation Page 18
