by Noah Mann
“Shrinking,” Martin said. “Patrols have only gathered so many, and a lot of those are nearing expiration if they haven’t already failed.”
Mayor Allen thought for a moment, this subject very clearly energizing his mind as little had in recent months.
“Batteries,” he said again, as if marveling at the possibilities. “We have medical equipment that needs standby power if we lose the grid.”
The grid he spoke of was our electrical supply generated by a mix of wind, solar, hydro, and, as a last resort, generator. Continual maintenance had kept the juice flowing almost nonstop, but distribution was another matter.
“The hospital lost power for a brief time during the storm,” he said. “Commander Genesee said the generator kicked in, but what if it hadn’t? There are monitors and pumps and respirators that could mean the difference between life and death. Not to mention the simple things like flashlights.”
Heavy snow and strong winds had snapped a limb from a dead pine and sent it across a field to strike a pair of power lines, plunging the town’s only medical facility and surrounding buildings into darkness. The damage was repaired once the weather cleared, but there would be other storms.
“Our portable radios can only recharge so many times,” Schiavo said. “The battery packs will have to be replaced eventually. And by eventually I mean soon.”
“Those are lithium ion batteries,” Elaine said. “Can they manufacture those?”
Schiavo nodded with a hint of lingering surprise.
“Dalton said they can. Lithium ion, nickel cadmium, lead acid, alkaline. It was out of necessity, he said. Their grid isn’t as robust as ours.”
“We saw that when we were there,” I told the Council, recalling the flickering lights that Ansel was sent to deal with.
Ansel...
I had to put him out of my mind for the moment. There would be time to bring him up, but now was not that time, and this was not the place.
“Dalton said they have power issues,” Schiavo added. “Plus, they have a repeater we can access to extend our radio range.”
That offer, made informally and not part of any trade agreement, would have a positive impact on communications, particularly with distant patrols.
“You believe them,” Mayor Allen said, mostly acceptance in the statement. “About the batteries?”
“I do,” Schiavo said. “He has no reason to lie. If this is some con, he knows we have the numbers to deal with him.”
Mayor Allen mulled that for a moment, then looked to me.
“And you, Fletch...what do you think?”
“I don’t believe he’s lying,” I answered. “We don’t know a lot about those around him, though.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Schiavo’s head angle toward me. I’d expected that reaction. I had no idea how she would respond later when I told her what I knew I had to.
“You have doubts?” Mayor Allen pressed me.
I shook my head, complete truth in the gesture.
“Dalton can be trusted,” I said. “And he’s the one who matters in Camas Valley. That’s very apparent when you see how his people defer to him.”
Once more, Mayor Allen thought on what I’d said. On all that had been said.
“We can handle a trade of livestock?” the mayor asked.
“I believe so,” Martin answered. “I’ll have to check with the farm and ranch crew, but there are a number of pregnant females among the herds. Cows, pigs, goats.”
“Chickens aren’t an issue,” Schiavo added.
“I wouldn’t think so,” Mayor Allen agreed.
The discussion ended there, and a vote was taken. All were in favor of formalizing the alliance. All that was left to do was work out the details of transfers and improving communications between our communities.
Bandon now had a bona fide ally in the continuing struggle to survive. And to stay free. That was the prevailing wisdom, and I wanted to believe it wholeheartedly. But I couldn’t. Not yet.
* * *
Elaine sat on the floor in the office with Krista, both ogling over Hope as she woke from a short nap after the end of our meeting. Schiavo leaned on the wall near the open door and savored the silly, wonderful sight.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked Schiavo.
She seemed puzzled toward my request. At first. Then, without a word said, she gestured toward the side door just outside the conference room, annoyance flourishing where joy had lived just a moment before. When we stood together in the outdoors, with the day’s persistent chill wrapping us, Schiavo faced me with a fire in her eyes.
“What is it?”
“It’s about Ansel,” I said.
She drew a mildly exasperated breath, some tiredness about her.
“Is he the reason you wanted to torpedo this alliance in there?”
“I didn’t try to torpedo anything. I was just being honest. I don’t think he can be trusted. Or Moira.”
“Fletch, we’re past this.”
“No,” I told her. “We’re not. He and Moira were the ones who broke into my house.”
There was no expression of surprise, or of outrage. She showed no reaction at all to the revelation.
“There was blood on the broken fence picket she and Ansel knocked over getting away,” I explained. “And when he looked at me as we drove away, I knew. I recognized his eyes. It was the same as the night he had his weapon in my face, the snow was falling, and we were staring at each other. It was them, Angela. It was. I’m certain of it.”
She let that certitude of mine hang there for a moment.
“It doesn’t matter, Fletch,” she said after the brief silence. “It can’t.”
“Dalton said they don’t steal,” I reminded her. “If his top lieutenants are breaking into houses, either he knows or he should.”
But to that, she simply glared at me. Disappointed and perturbed all at once.
“Do you know what we might achieve here?” Schiavo challenged me. “Do you?”
I understood much of what was intended with the alliance, but what the captain was asking went beyond the particulars. Whatever answer she wanted me to offer would speak to some motivation. To her motivation.
“Our eastern flank, Fletch. Our entire eastern flank. If we have Camas Valley on board with us, we have more than a tripwire at Remote to warn of any attack. We’ll have an honest to goodness fighting force that can repel an aggressor.”
She shook her head, seemingly shocked that I didn’t recognize the totality of what might come to be.
“I have four shooters, Fletch. Four. If the Unified Government decides to have another go at us, or some wannabe nation state group of survivors picks a fight for the first time, I don’t think we can mount a credible defense, even with the citizen volunteers we have. People are tired of fighting.”
“But they will fight,” I said. “If it comes to that.”
“I don’t want them to have to,” Schiavo countered. “With a solid alliance, we might just be formidable enough to make an adversary think twice before starting something.”
She was afraid. I realized that now. Not of a fight, or of putting her life on the line. I’d seen her do so on several occasions. Enough that I knew that lack of bravery was not a fault she harbored. Instead, she was afraid that she would fail in her mission to keep Bandon safe. To keep its people alive. To give the recovery, which had begun here, a chance to flourish.
“We don’t need Dalton doubting his own people,” she said. “Because if he can’t trust them, why should he trust us?”
Her points were valid. I believed mine were as well. But I also knew that the stakes were bigger than my own discomfort with the situation. If this did work, then the alliance Schiavo had crafted almost on the fly would be invaluable to all who had made Bandon their home. And even to those who were soon to leave it.
“You’re right,” I said, nothing but honesty driving my acquiescence. “This is important.”
At that
moment, when I’d surrendered to the logic and the plea she’d delivered, her stance toward me softened.
“There are other reasons, Fletch,” she said, but expanded on that statement not at all as I waited for her to.
“Reasons you’d rather keep close,” I said.
She smiled and nodded.
“Take your wife and baby home, Fletch,” Schiavo told me. “Go be a family.”
She made her way back into the Town Hall and found her husband. I followed and joined Elaine and Krista, still hovering almost giddily over Hope.
“You ready?” I asked.
Elaine nodded and looked to Krista.
“You want to come home with us or go to the hospital until your mom’s done with work?”
“Can I play with Hope?”
“Of course,” Elaine said.
Krista did a little shimmy of joy and stood. I crouched and picked up our daughter as Elaine rose from the floor.
“We could pick up Brandon from the sitter and save Grace a trip,” my wife suggested.
“He is the destroyer of worlds,” Krista said, frowning seriously.
“Sounds fun,” Elaine said, looking to me. “How about it? You up for a couple hours of noisy family life?”
“Nothing sounds better,” I answered.
“Good,” Elaine said. “It will give us a chance to see what having three kids will be like.”
She grinned and took Hope from my arms and led Krista out of the office, heading for the side door as I stood there, suddenly slack-jawed, fixing on what my wife had just slyly suggested with one word—will.
Twenty Five
His name was Carter. Carter Laws. He was seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty nine days old when he came to Schiavo while she and I were standing outside the garrison’s office and told her he wanted to volunteer.
“For what?”
The young man was only briefly taken aback by her question.
“The Army,” he said.
Schiavo regarded him first with some surprise, though that reaction very quickly turned on itself as she realized how very normal the young man’s statement would have been in the old world.
“We’re expanding,” Carter said. “Starting a new settlement.”
“Yes,” Schiavo confirmed.
“There will probably be more,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Well, if we’re growing, don’t you think you should, too? The garrison?”
Schiavo smiled at the young man for a moment, then looked to me.
“Does that sound like solid logic to you, Fletch?”
It did. I nodded and gave the young man a quick wink.
“You were saying you only had four shooters the other day,” I told Schiavo. “You could make that five.”
I could tell by her quiet consideration of the issue that the wheels were already turning in her head as to how she could, and should, make this happen. Not just for Carter, but for any others who wanted to formally serve in the military. The military which she, at the moment, was supreme commander.
Those first thoughts were all logistical and legal. There were more personal issues that would have to be dealt with first.
“You’re on your own, Carter, aren’t you?”
“I am,” he told the captain.
The young man had come to Bandon as a boy just prior to my own arrival, his single mother going missing while out searching for food one night near their Portland neighborhood. After his own dangerous search for her, when it became clear that she wasn’t going to return, he set out for Eagle One, following rumors that led him to its location in Bandon. He’d been cared for by locals until, at seventeen, he requested, and was granted, his own place to live, a small apartment near downtown.
“But the town let me live on my own,” Carter reminded us, fearing that some reluctance might be creeping into our consideration. “The mayor signed off on it. And, if I can live my own life, shouldn’t I be able to serve my country?”
My country...
He was talking, and thinking, like an American. Not just like a resident of a small town on the Oregon coast.
“Easy there, Mr. Laws,” Schiavo said. “No one is suggesting you can’t do that. I just want to make sure you’ve, maybe, talked it through with people you know and trust.”
“The Langfords, the people who fostered me when I got here, I had a long discussion with them about it. Especially Mr. Langford, since he was a Marine.”
“Well, we won’t hold that against him,” Schiavo commented, grinning as she let the morsel of interservice rivalry fly.
“Pat, Mr. Langford, he kinda said the same thing about you,” Carter told her.
It was one of the few times in recent weeks that I’d seen Schiavo relax as she took in the simple banter, which must have reminded her of old times. Of simple times. When finding creative ways to badmouth your fellow service member was elevated to an art form.
“You know, I’m going to talk to Sergeant Lorenzen about this,” Schiavo said. “I think he’d be the best person to figure out how to go about making this happen.”
Carter beamed at the positive words.
“You mean I’m in?”
“Barring any complications, health issues...”
“Nothing,” Carter said emphatically. “I’m totally healthy. I don’t even get colds.”
“That’s good to know,” Schiavo said, smiling as she offered the young man her hand. “We’ll be in touch.”
He accepted the gesture, shaking the captain’s hand before turning and running, leaping into the air with joy when he was halfway down the block.
“You’re going to need a recruiting office,” I said.
“We should be so lucky,” Schiavo replied, looking to me once the soldier-in-waiting was gone from sight. “Thanks for stopping by.”
Westin had called the house on Schiavo’s behalf, asking if I could stop by. With all the preparations for the settler’s move to Remote, there was much to be done. I’d been helping with gathering tools, drafting plans, and listing where items required to make the necessary repairs in Remote could be scavenged.
“What is it?”
“Corporal Enderson is going to be joining Hart to staff the Remote outpost,” she said. “He volunteered as soon as he heard the plan.”
“He’s a good man,” I said. “They all are.”
“I need Westin here for com, and the sergeant, well, he’s going to be busier than he has been,” she said, referencing the obvious training regimen Lorenzen would have to come up with for Carter Laws. “But...”
I waited through her hesitation, though I probably should have expected what she finally asked when she spoke.
“Would you consider going to Remote to get the repairs on track?”
The reason for her hesitation was clear now. Others she could order to do what needed to be done, even though they would offer themselves up as volunteers before the issue was forced. I was a civilian. My life was my own. And my life was here. With my family.
“Angela...”
“I know, I know,” she said, true apology and reluctance in her words. “But they’re not ready and the move starts in two days. I’ve been talking almost non-stop with Mike and Rebecca, and they just don’t have the skillset among the people going with them to handle what needs to be done.”
Schiavo wasn’t asking me to take a short trip with her to inspect the town. That had already been done. The request she’d just made would require a week’s stay or more.
More...
All that needed to be done in the tiny hamlet ticked off in my head. The list was almost daunting. Roofs, walls, plumbing. A septic system would have to be redone, with excavation of a new leach field to handle waste water from the newly inhabited dwellings. Solar arrays and generators would have to be installed and connected to a very localized power grid. Until all these things happened, the settlers who were going to call Remote home would be living in less than satisfactory condition
s.
In all those items I’d just listed, the reason why Schiavo had asked me what she had became clear. As did the many reasons why I had to say yes.
Except, I couldn’t. Not yet.
“I can’t give you an answer,” I said.
Schiavo nodded, both understanding and hope in her reaction.
“I have to talk to Elaine,” I said.
“Yes,” Schiavo said. “You do.”
Twenty Six
Elaine was not as receptive this time to the idea of me being away. Particularly for the amount of time that would be required.
Other considerations, though, informed her resistance to the extended assignment.
“And what about the people you told me about? The ones who broke in here? Being in Remote would put you in direct contact with them.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“Can you promise that?”
I couldn’t.
“I don’t know why they did what they did,” I said. “There’s no reason for them to target us.”
“What about just you?”
I’d told her what Martin had thought about the other break-ins being diversionary. And I’d shared with her what I’d found in Remote, incontrovertible evidence of Olin’s presence at some point. She had all the pieces to speculate just as I had as to the reason for any special focus on me.
“If Olin is there...” she said.
“These are two separate things,” I reminded her, recalling Schiavo’s words when I’d shown her the rocks left by the man who murdered my friend. “He probably passed through there on his way east, heading back to where he came from.”
“So Martin is wrong? And what you saw doesn’t matter?”
“No,” I told her, pacing across the living room floor, away from where she stood near the front door, dusk tipping toward night just beyond. “This is all just bigger than fears, all right? We’re trying to accomplish something here.”
“That’s Angela talking,” Elaine said.
