by Mike Mullin
Darla was leaning against the car wall beside me. I turned and muttered to her.
“What if he doesn’t come back?”
“He’ll come back.”
“They might not let him.”
“If you don’t quit obsessing about it, I’m going to slap you.”
“But—”
Darla flattened her hand and wound up in an exaggerated gesture. I put an arm up to block. She changed direction and swatted me on the butt, far harder than necessary to make her point.
“What’s with the extra English?” I said.
“That? That was a love pat. Wait until I’m feeling better.” Her grin was wide and wicked. It faded suddenly, and she leaned in to kiss me. “Alex, you’re doing great. Ed’s going to come back. Try not to worry so much.”
I smiled despite my churning thoughts. The arguments we’d had with Uncle Paul about my age when we first reached the farm seemed like scenes from a previous lifetime now. Whether Darla and I could share a bed seemed utterly trivial in comparison to the life-and-death decisions we were making now.
When I turned back to the wall, nothing was moving. A few dozen guys pointed their rifles down the road at us. We pointed our rifles back. No one shot. The wait stretched out forever.
Darla leaned close. “I brought our food stash with me. The stuff we brought back from Iowa. It’s in the truck.” Good thinking,” I said.
We passed the time by sharing the food with all our fighters. Those trucks contained Warren’s whole supply of frozen pork—I’d be willing to bet anything on it. Soon we’d either have plenty of food or we’d be dead—it didn’t make sense to save anything.
Finally Ed emerged from behind the panel van, walking slowly, flanked by two guys. They dropped back, and he hoisted the white flag over his head again, trudging across the no-man’s land between us.
“What’s the word?” I asked Ed a few minutes later as he clambered over the log gate.
“They want proof. That we’re holding Red.”
“Guess we can go get him.”
“Alex,” Ed caught my arm, leaning close and speaking softly, “they’re terrified of him. Even though we’ve got him and he’s tied up. I don’t know what kind of hold he’s got over them, but—”
“He’s certainly vicious enough,” I said.
“Maybe that’s it,” Ed said.
“It doesn’t matter right now. Take the truck. Get Red and his lieutenant.”
“Yessir.”
“Don’t yes—”
“Nosir.”
I started to protest again, but Ed and Darla were already on their way to the truck. Instead, I went to explain what was going on to Nylce and the rest of our people manning the wall and gate.
Half an hour later, Ed and Darla were back. Red and Johnson were in the bed of the pickup, huddled under a blanket. I lowered the tailgate, climbed up beside Johnson, and drew my knife. Johnson flinched. Red smiled, looking at the knife the way I might look at Darla after we’d been apart for a few hours.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “I’m going to cut you free, and you’re going to march out to those trucks and tell your buddies that I’ve got Red, alive and unhurt. He’ll stay that way if you play along. Got it?”
“Yeah,” Johnson said, eyeing me warily.
“Then you and whoever’s in charge over there are going to walk halfway back to us—unarmed. Darla, Ed, Red, and I will come out to meet you. Three of us, three of you. No weapons. Anything goes wrong, either side can kill everyone out there. Got it?”
Johnson turned to look at Red, waiting.
“Do it, Johnson. Like he says.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
I sawed the rope off his ankles and wrists, handed him the white flag, and helped him out of the pickup and over the log gate. He moved stiffly, his feet dragging in the thin layer of snow that had blown over the icy road.
About fifteen minutes after Johnson disappeared around the van, he came back, walking alongside another guy. Neither of them was carrying any obvious weapon, but they could have hidden an arsenal under their coats.
I cut free Red’s ankles, leaving his hands bound, and Red, Ed, Darla, and I headed for no-man’s land. Ed and I had to lift Red over the gate, but it was easy—he didn’t weigh much.
When we’d finally gathered in the approximate center of the kill zone, I gestured at Johnson and the new guy, telling Ed, “Check those two for weapons.”
“Yessir.” Ed stepped toward them, but they each took a step back.
“Why don’t we check you?” the new guy growled.
“Go right ahead,” I replied. I still had two knives on my belt—I hadn’t thought to leave them with my rifle— but I didn’t mind giving them up. I’d taken them from Red, after all. I put my hand on the gladius’s hilt.
The two guys took another step back, fumbling under their jackets for something. Ed and Darla moved toward them. Johnson pulled a pistol from under his coat, but Ed was on him before he could bring it to bear, twisting his arm so hard that the elbow audibly popped.
I was three steps away, Darla two. The other guy got his pistol from his back. I slipped behind Red, wrapping one arm around him in a confining embrace and raising my knife so the tip rested just under his chin. My hands shook with adrenaline, and the knife made a tiny cut in his skin, adding fresh blood to the scabs I’d left there earlier.
The new guy leveled his pistol at me. “Drop the knife. Now,” he said. “Or I’ll shoot.”
“Go ahead and shoot,” I replied, glad that the quaver in my hands wasn’t evident in my voice. “Maybe I’ll have enough strength left to jam this knife into his throat, maybe not. Either way, both sides will open fire, and we’ll all die. That what you want?” I was surprised nobody had started shooting yet. Looking past the handgun leveled at me, I saw the stopped trucks—men peered past their edges, gripping their rifles, wide-eyed and tense.
Red tried to say something, but when his throat tensed, my knife pushed deeper into his skin, and he abruptly shut up.
“Put your gun down!” I yelled. “Now, goddamn it!”
The new guy just stared at me. Then I realized: he was staring at Red.
Red’s head twitched—a barely perceptible shake.
“Can’t do that,” the new guy said.
There was no reasoning with them. Whatever hold Red had on them was insanely scary. I had to negotiate directly with Red. “Lower the gun to your side. I’ll ease off on the knife enough so he can talk.” I slid the knife downward about half an inch. My fist was against his chest, the knife thrust upward, its point toward his throat.
“Let me go now,” Red said, “and you can all leave here alive.”
“We’re not going anywhere without our food,” I replied.
“My food,” Red said emphatically. “Possession’s nine-tenths of the law, as they say, and I am the law. So I own ten-tenths of that food.”
“If that’s the case, then I own you. And your town.” I briefly pushed the knife tighter against his throat to emphasize the point.
“Temporarily, maybe.”
I could hardly believe his sangfroid. My hands were shaking—the adrenaline was starting to wear off, and I was fighting an internal battle with my stomach. “You
need a solution worse than I do. This goes south, my people at the gate will start shooting. We’ll all die out here. And my people will still have your town. They’ll—” “My people will have the food,” Red said.
“Their families are in Stockton. They’ll be more willing to work out a deal than you seem to be.”
“You haven’t proposed anything.”
“Your people at the trucks lay down their weapons and move a few hundred yards off. We’ll leave Stockton, take the trucks, and go home.”
“And we’ll starve for certain. I’d rather take my chances on a firefight.”
“Without our food, we’ll starve.”
“Not my concern,” Red said. “Bu
t I’ll allow you to take one truck. My choice of which one you keep.”
“I’ve got the upper hand here,” I said. “I’ll allow you to keep one truckload of our food. And I’ll choose which truck you get.”
“We split them, six and five. I choose which five you get.” We haggled for half an hour more. Finally we settled on an eight/three split. Red would choose which three of the semis or panel vans he’d keep. Neither side would disarm, but we’d keep Red captive until the last minute, as insurance for his side’s good behavior. In addition, we’d keep both the remaining pickups. Red also insisted that I return his knives, Julia and Claudia.
It took most of the day to make the trade. Red’s people sorted the trucks out, getting eight of them in a line facing back toward Warren, and the other three facing Stockton. I thought Red would choose three semis to maximize the amount of food he could keep, but he picked two semis and a panel van. Later I found out that the van held all the weapons, ammo, alcohol, and seeds his people had looted from Warren.
It was a miracle nobody got shot. Ed collected all our people from Stockton, and we moved past Red’s men— both groups eyeing each other warily across the sights of their rifles. Finally by late afternoon, we were all loaded in our idling trucks.
I turned Red loose and gave him his knives. “Be seeing you,” he said with a smile that held more threat than mirth.
“Jesus, I hope not.” I slammed the pickup’s door, and we pulled out—a motley column of seven semis and one panel van led by our captured pickup truck.
As we turned from Highway 20 onto Highway 78, toward home, the tension and stress finally overwhelmed me. I’d been awake for nearly two days. My whole body shook. I rolled down the passenger window of the pickup and barely got my head out in time to spew stomach acid all over the side of the truck.
Chapter 11
I returned to my uncle’s farm a hero. Not that there was a ticker-tape parade or anything. Nobody knew when we’d be back or whether we’d even make it back at all. But they knew what the line of trucks trailing behind us meant.
Folks dashed out to meet us even as I climbed out wearily from the pickup. My door was still smeared with streaks of vomit. I trudged to the rear door of the panel van now parked in the road. By the time I reached it, I was surrounded by a crowd. I twisted the handle and opened the door.
The crowd gasped as the contents came into view: a precarious jumble of frozen hog carcasses filled the truck from floor to ceiling.
Alyssa laughed and flung her arms around me. “That’s bringing home the bacon,” she said as she kissed my cheek.
Darla cleared her throat, glaring at me. What was up with that? I hadn’t done anything.
“We need to debrief, Lieutenant,” Ben said.
“Not now,” I said. “I’m dead on my feet.”
“Your recall will be clearer while the events are still—” Ben kept talking, but I quit listening. “Tomorrow,” I said firmly.
Uncle Paul clasped my arm. The skin around his eyes was nearly black: Emperor Palpatine in a younger body. “Alex . . . you did good. I’m sorry. I should have been there—”
“You were right where you needed to be. With Max and Anna. If things had gone bad in Stockton—”
“We should have a feast,” Uncle Paul said, “to mourn and celebrate. Roast some of this pork.”
“I’m dead on my feet. Would you take care of it?” “Sure thing.” He started talking about the details, and my attention wandered.
I looked around for Mom but didn’t see her anywhere. Maybe she was still in the bedroom, sorting pictures. Instead, I saw Lynn’s wife at the edge of the crowd. She craned her neck, looking back and forth, bewilderment and fear writ plainly on her face.
“I’ve got to go.”
I pushed through the crowd until I reached her, Darla on my heels. “Mrs. Manck?” I started, dreading what I had to say.
“Where’s Lynn?” she asked, her face twitching, lips curling down as if she already suspected the answer. “Is he okay?”
“He didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”
Her face was porcelain white. She stood rigid except for the tremors chasing across her cheeks. “No. No. You could be wrong. Maybe he’s only hurt.”
“We brought his body back.”
“He’s not . . . it could be someone else’s body.”
“I wish. I wish it were anyone else. Me. Or nobody.”
Mrs. Manck sagged. She looked as if she might faint. I stepped toward her, opening my arms to catch her, give her a hug, offer whatever insufficient comfort I could. Instead of embracing me, she lashed out.
I was totally unprepared for the violence of her blow. Her fist caught my jaw, rocking my head sideways with a snap I felt all the way down to the base of my spine. I raised my arms to block—too late, of course—and stepped back.
She didn’t move forward. Her hands fell to her sides, and her trembling grew more violent as if her fury had migrated inward from her fists.
Darla hadn’t moved. Now she opened her arms, just standing there. Tears streamed down Mrs. Manck’s face, and she fell forward into Darla’s arms.
I lowered my fists and stepped around their hug so I could see Darla’s face. She mouthed, “Go on, I’ve got this. I’ll find you later.”
I was relieved, but I also felt a little guilty. I’d led the attack on Stockton; its consequences, including Lynn’s death, were my responsibility. I should be the one dealing with the aftermath, not Darla. I walked on toward the house anyway.
Dr. McCarthy was working in the living room/makeshift hospital. Mom and Belinda were in there, helping him. All three of them looked utterly exhausted. I managed a tired wave in their direction and turned toward the stairs. “Alex, wait,” Dr. McCarthy called.
I took a couple more steps and sagged onto the staircase to wait.
It took Dr. McCarthy a moment to get to the foyer; the living room was packed so tightly with makeshift pallets that it was difficult to move around without kicking a patient. “Good. You heard me.”
“Yeah. I’m so tired I may fall asleep right here. What did you need?”
“I . . . I wanted to apologize. For what I said before you left. You were right. We needed that food. And you got it.” I turned my head away. “Tell that to Mrs. Manck.” “Lynn didn’t make it?”
I shook my head.
I felt Dr. McCarthy’s hand on my upper arm. “Maybe it’s kind of like medicine,” he said. “You fight to save everyone, do everything you can, but people die anyway.” I didn’t respond, and after a short silence, Dr. McCarthy went on. “I became a family practitioner in part so I could avoid that—the constant death—I never understood how ER docs or thoracic surgeons handled it. How they could live with all that death. But it found me anyway. And now I think I know. How surgeons deal with it. It becomes motivation. To keep struggling, to keep learning, to save whoever you can.”
“Maybe I’ll feel more like struggling after I’ve slept.” I stood, but Dr. McCarthy didn’t let go of my arm.
“You did the right thing. Even though I told you not to. I’m proud of you, Alex. I got to know your dad a bit after the eruption, before he went looking for you. I think he’d be proud too.” Dr. McCarthy dropped my arm and turned back toward the living room.
I trudged up the stairs, the tears I hadn’t been able to cry before flowing freely down my face. It was all I could do not to sob out loud.
I reached the empty bedroom still crying, pulled my frozen boots off my nearly frostbitten feet, and crawled into bed without even taking off my coat.
Eventually the tears subsided, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind ground over the events in Stockton: the guns aimed at me, Standish and Cliff as they died in Doctore s mansion, Lynn’s corpse laid out in dirty snow. My whole body was sore, and my eyes were swollen from crying. I was desperately tired, but my mind wouldn’t allow me to sleep. I laid there for an hour or more before Darla came into the room and slid into the bed alongside me. Then fi
nally, nestled in her arms, I slept.
Chapter 12
The pork in the trucks was originally from Warren, but Mayor Petty was still mostly unconscious and in no shape to divide it up. I talked to Uncle Paul and Dr. McCarthy about it, and we agreed to send the seven semis of pork back to Warren with the refugees but to keep the panel van. It contained enough meat to feed Uncle Paul’s family—my family now— for years. I sent one of our remaining pickups to Warren and kept one—it’d be useful around the farm, at least until we ran out of gas.
It took three days to get people moved from the farm back to Warren. Most of them volunteered to
stay behind and help dismantle the ramshackle structures they’d been living in, but I could tell they were anxious to get home, so I told them not to bother.
We scavenged the useful bits of the lean-tos but broke most of them up for firewood. For a while that saved us from the increasingly long trek to find uncut timber. We needed a lot of it—Darla said more than a cord per week—to keep the fires burning in the living room and in the hypocausts, the system of small underground tunnels that kept our greenhouses warm.
Fortunately the greenhouses were in decent shape. Since people had been sleeping in them and all the kale had been harvested and eaten, we had to turn the dirt and replant. I hoped our new crop of kale would come in soon enough to stave off scurvy. I didn’t particularly look forward to pulling a bloody toothbrush out of my mouth every morning. All our ducks were gone, slaughtered over the past few weeks to feed the horde from Warren, but we still had a breeding pair of goats.
Dr. McCarthy didn’t move back to Warren right away. Several of his patients, Mayor Petty included, were too sick to move. So Belinda returned to Warren to staff the clinic, and our living room continued to serve as a rude hospital.
Uncle Paul moved into Max’s room with the rest of the guys, because he said he couldn’t sleep in the master bedroom. So Mom theoretically had the master bedroom to herself. She hardly ever slept there, though—or slept at all. She spent most of her time in the living room, helping
