Desolated

by Lou Cadle

  “Okay,” he said. “Have you seen Brandie?”

  “I know you’re worried about her, but she knows what to do. Trust her.”

  They’d debated who should confront the men if they came back, and who should have the weapons. Dev and Zoe were better with the bows, but Dev felt it was shirking his duty to hide. He needed to confront this new enemy with words, and to have a chance to keep his father from making things worse, so he didn’t want to be stuck in the woods, out of sight.

  Zoe ran up to him. “Ready,” she said.

  “I wish you’d go up by the new henhouse,” he said, not for the first time.

  “And leave you and Gramps alone? No.” She grabbed his upper arm and gave it a squeeze. “I love you.”

  “I love you,” he said, though the words choked him. It felt too much like saying goodbye.

  She let go of his arm and backed off a few steps.

  Five men came walking up the driveway, without horses. Dev’s throat was tight and dry. He swallowed convulsively. There was Freddie, but he was walking in back of another man who Dev knew in an instant was the leader. He had some sort of insignia on his shirt sleeves, and he carried himself like a man used to command. He was young enough he couldn’t have been in the old military for long, if he had been at all. He was white, and his head was shaved, and his back was straight.

  “Who’s in charge here?” he said.

  “I am,” Arch said.

  Yasmin and Brandie walked up just then, looking wary but brave. “We’re a democracy,” Yasmin said. “No one is in charge except in one home.”

  “Democracy is good,” the leader of the men said. He had a rifle, but it was slung over his back. He walked up to Arch and thrust out his hand.

  Arch just stared at it for a moment, but then he reached out and took it.

  “Commander Hugo Vargas, First infantry East,” he said.

  “Arch Quinn,” his father said, letting go of his hand.

  “I hear there was trouble here last time with my men. I want to apologize for it.”

  “Your man there—” Arch pointed at Freddie “—killed one of my best laying hens.”

  “We don’t do that,” the man said. “Lieutenant, come forward and apologize to this man.”

  Freddie marched smartly forward and saluted his commander.

  Dev took this all in, every detail, wondering what it was telling him about these people. All male, disciplined, with a hierarchy. Was that good news or bad news for him and his family? Discipline was better than rogue men. But discipline was harder for him to fight.

  Freddie said, “I lost my temper when we met. I’m sorry about your animal.”

  Commander Vargas nodded. “There,” he said. “I hope we can start all over now.”

  “It doesn’t pay me back a hen,” Arch said.

  Slowly, deliberately, Vargas removed his rifle from his back. Dev tensed and took a step in front of Zoe. She touched his back and moved back to his side so she could see what was going to happen.

  Dev was certain his father was about to die, his belligerence finally catching up to him. He didn’t know what to do. If he ran forward, all he’d do is get himself shot faster than if he did nothing.

  Vargas didn’t raise his rifle to aim at Arch, as Dev was expecting. He reversed it, and he took two strides to Freddie, who didn’t move. He did wince, knowing before Dev what was coming. Vargas popped him in the temple with the rifle butt, with a sound loud enough to make Dev start.

  Freddie dropped to his knees and swayed, but the lights didn’t go totally out.

  Vargas had this down, knew how hard to hit. It chilled Dev to realize that.

  “There,” he said, turning to Arch. “That settle the score?”

  “I still am short one hen,” Arch said, not giving an inch. That was his dad.

  Freddie staggered to his feet and got back into formation.

  “I admire your grit, old man,” said Vargas, “but let’s get real here. If you had ammunition, you’d have shot at my men before they came close to you last time. And unless you have our storage facilities, you don’t. And no one does beyond a few people who’ve had a few rounds. Or rather, we’ve not seen it yet. Either your primer went bad and you can’t fire the bullets, or your powder oxidized, or the stabilizer went bad and you had an explosion. I see some patches on your outbuilding there, so I’m guessing the last.”

  He was right about the explosion, but the damage to the shed was from fire. Dev felt happy that Vargas didn’t know the truth—until he realized how pitiful and powerless that made Dev himself, to think that way. Did it matter, the details, when Vargas was right about the important fact of no ammunition?

  Vargas glanced around at the other five who were standing there. “There’s a man in the woods with a bow,” he said, and he pointed straight at where Troy was hidden.

  Dev knew exactly where Troy was, and he couldn’t see him. This man was no dummy. Dev waved Troy in.

  “Unless he’s a hell of a shot, he’s only going to wound one of us. Considering, I’d say there’s an even chance he’d hit you, Mr. Quinn. And if you had bullets for that rifle you’re holding, which you don’t, your hand is shaking enough that I doubt you could hit anything either. Not that you’d have had rounds enough to keep in practice, which you also haven’t.”

  Arch looked shaken, and Dev felt sorry for his father. Yes, he was full of bluster and posturing, but no one had ever taken him down for it. This was a first in his life, and Dev watched his father deflate, feeling pity and sadness. He was worried his dad would have another episode, seizure or whatever it had been, but he didn’t. Arch lowered his rifle, though he tried one last bluster. “Maybe you don’t see our other weapons.”

  “Maybe I don’t,” said Vargas, pleasantly enough. “But I’ve been through this more than three dozen times, with various groups, from the Painted Desert down to Payson, and I know how it goes. You aren’t warriors. You’re farmers. That’s how you live, and I respect you for it.”

  Dev admired the man’s control while still hating the man. And he appreciated the technique in him throwing his father a line, offering him something to feel proud of in the midst of his humiliation. What did the books call it? It had been years since he’d read any of the military manuals. Psyops, that was it. Psychological warfare, played at the personal level. Dev swore to himself never to forget that, never to trust this man. Hell, look what he’d done to his own man, clouting him in the head.

  More than ever he wanted Zoe out of here. Out of their reach, and out of their sight.

  Vargas said, “We have our job, and you have yours. We help coordinate the government projects and expand the land that’s organized and in the government’s control. When the projects benefit you, you’re taxed in farm products. That’s the situation.”

  “That’s the deal you’re offering?” Arch said. “I’ll pass.”

  Dev had to admire his father as well. He was in a battle of words without anything to back up his threats. He’d been humiliated, but he was still trying. Dev spoke up. “We all pass. Everyone in the neighborhood. We don’t want your highway, and we don’t want any trade.”

  Everyone else made a noise of agreement, including Troy, who had joined them, the bow not in his hand. He must have left it in the woods.

  Vargas looked to Dev and considered him. “You couldn’t have been, what, twenty? When all this began?”

  “Good guess,” Dev said. He’d been sixteen, but he knew not to give any truth to this man that he could hide.

  “Did you see any action?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “They say down in Payson that you helped them back then. That was a good thing to do.”

  Against people much like you, Dev thought but didn’t say. He wished people in Payson hadn’t been so forthcoming about their history. He hoped very much they hadn’t revealed their exact location. But no, these men would have found them anyway. The turnoff to the road was clear enough. After
years of seeing no one at all moving on the highway, they’d quit disguising it.

  “Don’t worry,” Vargas said. “They didn’t give away your location. In fact, I was only guessing it was you they meant. We’ve seen four groups it might have been.”

  Was he a mind-reader too? Dev knew he wasn’t. He just understood what their position was, what Dev was thinking. But Dev couldn’t see easily what this man was thinking. He’d try to figure it out later, try to imagine the possibilities, because that difference in understanding your enemy? That might be the worst deficit of all. For now, he tried this approach. “We appreciate what you’re offering, but we don’t want it. We want you to move along now and let us be. We won’t bother you, and you won’t bother us.”

  “We won’t bother you. I know you don’t see it yet, but we’re here to help. In fact,” he said, “we even brought something for you. Scooter?”

  A man came up from the back of the line. He had a pack on, and he took it off. He saw the picnic table and said, “There?” and Vargas nodded at him. He carried the pack over to the table, opened it, and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle, about the size of a round melon.

  “Go on,” Vargas said, “open it.”

  None of them moved.

  “It’s not a weapon,” Vargas said, the first hint of impatience creeping into his tone.

  “I’ll do it,” Arch said. He walked over, laid his useless rifle on the table, and opened the package.

  Dev kept an eye on the men.

  “What is this?” his father said.

  “Goat cheese,” Vargas said. “Good and salty too. We’ll all sit down to a meal. You provide vegetables and fruit, whatever you have extra of. Or some of that grain we saw along your road would be interesting. We don’t see a lot of grain. Some hard beans, like kidney beans, those are common. But grain, no. We sit down, we put our weapons aside, and we share a meal—I explain to you in more detail what we’re proposing.”

  Arch said, “And if we don’t like it?”

  “Listen first,” Vargas said. “That’s all, just listen. And think about it. That’s all I’m asking.”

  It wasn’t lost on Dev that his father’s question hadn’t been answered. But Dev could guess the answer. If they refused to cooperate at first, they’d be forced to. Or maybe they’d be killed, or driven out, and other people would come to take over their land and houses. If this “government” was at all successful, the population near their center would be expanding again. They’d need more land to farm. And this land was good, cleared, and augmented with years of compost and ashes from their cook fires. It was worth more than gold—which his father also had some of, hidden away in the woods.

  Maybe they could be bribed with that?

  No. Gold was useless. A civilization had to be operating far advanced of this level for it to matter. You can’t eat gold. You can’t plant it. You can’t even wipe your butt with it. Hell, the obsidian they turned up when clearing land was a more useful mineral. At least you could make scrapers for animals skins out of that.

  He wasn’t worried about these men taking over the farm for themselves to work on their own. That’s clearly not what they did. They hadn’t chosen labor like this, planting and harvesting, to claw out a bare living. They had chosen something else. They wanted others to grow their food for them, to do the hard work for them.

  But it didn’t matter to them if it was Dev who farmed it or another family they’d bring up here after they’d cleared Dev and the people he loved from their land.

  Again, Dev tried to think what this Vargas was thinking. He disdained them, no doubt. He thought his work was higher somehow. Higher status. Easier—and it was that, by a long shot. Serfs. The word popped into Dev’s mind. That’s what he and his friends and family were to them. This was the lord, coming by to demand his portion.

  But back in the olden days, lords owned the land, and they gave it to serfs to work, and they took their portion of food and labor both for the favor. But this was not that situation. This was his land, damn it.

  He didn’t want to invite these men to eat. They couldn’t spare the food. But he did want to know about them. Not to join their scheme, or to give in without a fight. But so that he knew who and what he was fighting. Was one meal too much of a sacrifice to learn something that might help them defend against this new threat?

  “All right,” he said, and he could feel every head turn toward him. “We’ve eaten this morning, but we’ll sit down to eat with you. It’ll take a while to get it ready.”

  “Do you have water for our horses?”

  “I suppose.” He pointed to Zoe without saying her name. “Organize some green salads, sliced tomatoes. Don’t start a big fire, just a small one. Scramble up some eggs on it.” He turned to Vargas. “How many men do you have with you?”

  “Twelve.”

  Dev wondered if the number meant anything at all. He remembered it, in case it ever became important. He’d remember every little detail, including who stood where and what they called each other, who deferred to whom, all of it. Every nuance.

  He pointed to Yasmin. “Go get the older man next door, and my ex, and the Reverend.” He didn’t want to use names yet. To share any information at all with these men would be to give up a crumb of power.

  And there weren’t many crumbs to cling to in the first place.

  There had to be some way out of this. Had to be. He was determined to find it.

  Chapter 11

  An hour later, most of the neighborhood sat to eat with all but two of the military men who stayed out on the road with the wagon and the horses.

  And all of the rifles but one.

  Emily and Nina were hidden away and C.J. and Curt weren’t here. Dev wished he knew if they were around, watching from a distance, or out on the trap line.

  The military men had all left their rifles with the two guards out on the road, except for Vargas, who it seemed was going to eat with his. If only Dev had some way of communicating with Curt, and if Curt were around, he might be able to tell him to kill the two guards and capture the rifles and whatever else was in that wagon.

  That would leave the leader here with one weapon. And there were a dozen from the neighborhood around the table. They could jump him before he got off a shot. Bang him on the head with the fry pan. Something. Anything.

  A voice in the back of his head asked if he might be overestimating the threat these men posed. But he pushed it down. His experience, his gut, his brain all told him the same thing. These men were not their friends.

  For now, he needed to live long enough so that this situation repeated itself. Because if they came back, and their guard was down like this again, he could have that sort of ambush prepared.

  The thought came to him with the sharp mental clarity of battle readiness. Except for a few times when Zoe had been hurt so badly there was blood involved, he’d not experienced this state in a long while. All his senses were turned up, and his mind was capable of thinking on two tracks at once.

  All the while he passed the corn salad and the sliced tomatoes and schooled his expression into a pleasant one.

  His father was not seated. He stood to the side, arms folded, every line of his body showing his defensiveness, his lack of willingness to sit with these men or listen to what they had to say.

  Dev wished he had three minutes alone with his father, to tell him to pretend to be cooperative and willing to negotiate. It was the only way to get enough information to act on, and it was better to make them believe Dev’s group would think about the proposals they offered. A pretense at cooperation might buy them some time.

  From the neighborhood, there was Arch, Dev, and Zoe, seven of the orphans, Pilar, Sierra, Misha, Joan, and Rod. Ten of the strangers, fifteen of them. At one level, Dev thought it was good the numbers were close to even. At another level, he’d just as soon have thirty people in reserve that they didn’t know about.

  And why might there not be thirty more? If they’d been
down to Wes’s neighborhood, that would have been the case. Or Payson. There was a fourth place, where Rudy had originally lived, that, if it still existed, was probably a smaller community. Dev wondered if it was one of the places that Vargas had referenced.

  Futile as it was, Dev wished for some form of communication with their distant neighbors that didn’t involve a two-day hike, something like old cell phones. To Zoe and everyone younger, tales of such devices sounded as unlikely as dragons and magic from the fairytale books.

  Vargas was talking about the irrigation system they’d built. “And the fields more than doubled their yield.”

  Pilar nodded. He seemed to be of a mind with Dev, listening and pretending interest. Could be that he actually was interested. Arch stood glowering fifteen yards away, like some dour background figure in the Renaissance paintings in that art appreciation book Dev still flipped through from time to time. Probably representing Fate or something like that.

  Pilar said, “Have you replicated that in other places? And was that in the valley or in the mountains?”

  “Near a river in a high valley,” Vargas said.

  “So Cottonwood, maybe?” Pilar said.

  Vargas wasn’t going to be manipulated into giving away much. “Somewhere like that. As you can imagine, we don’t like to be too specific at this point. We don’t want anyone attacking a stable group of farmers. We protect them, as we’d protect you from outside attack. But why invite that attack?”

  Joan said, “Do you get a lot of that? Roving bands, or stable communities trying to expand by taking over neighboring communities? We don’t see that here.” She smiled.

  Dev thought she was also of a mind with him—pump them for information. For Joan, she might wish to gently challenge their view of the world. Or maybe the world outside their road was like that, still violent, with every farm having to be defended many times over the years.

  Vargas returned Joan’s smile. “We don’t see a lot of that, no. But you can understand us wanting to protect our investment.”