by Lou Cadle
He checked Mr. Morrow, trying to open his eyes, then feeling around his neck for a heartbeat. He was gone.
So was she. Dev kneeled by their bed and said a prayer, begging God to forgive the sin and remember what a good man Mr. Morrow was. When he stood, he felt a tear fall off his chin and realized he’d been crying the whole time. Poor, poor man.
He went back into the kitchen and looked out the window. The broken turbine, the garden, beyond them the crab apple stand, no longer in bloom but in full rich green leaf. It was such a beautiful day. It seemed wrong to die on such a day.
With a heavy heart, he sat at the table and read the letter to the end. The first bit was all about how he couldn’t bear to live in the world as it was. He said nice things about his neighbors, including Dev, and then the last half of the letter was about Sybil and how much he loved her and couldn’t bear to let her go.
It made no sense to Dev. He’d killed her, right? If he couldn’t bear to let her drift away, how could he manage to push her out of life?
He re-read it, and as he went through the early part, he grew angry. Not at Mr. Morrow, but at the marauders, who had driven him to this. Any bit of guilt he had over shooting those people or leaving their orphaned children evaporated. Not one of them was worth Mr. Morrow. Hell, not one of them was worth Mrs. Morrow, and she hadn’t spoken in years. Stupid thieves. Deserved whatever they got.
At the sentences about him he tried to feel warmth, or comfort, or pride, or something good, but he couldn’t. Damn. He was crying again. He was glad his father wasn’t here to see it.
The end of the letter was sweet and bitter. “She wanted the crab apples. I told her they weren’t even edible—not without a barrel of sugar—but she loved the flowers so. She was like those flowers, beautiful. I’m the old crab in comparison. But she loved me anyway. I don’t even know why I deserved such a love. We were together in life. Keep us together in death. No coffins or anything like that. Leave us touching, Dev, deep under those trees.”
“Damn it,” he said, and he wiped his face again. Okay, get it together. He had read a last request. It was up to Dev to honor it.
He went into the barn and found the spades and a honing stone. He grabbed a pickax too in case he found rocks or roots fighting against him. He carried it all back to the trees and starting digging.
An hour later, Curt Henry came up to him. “What are you doing?” he said.
“Digging graves,” Dev said, and then he burst into tears.
Mr. Henry let him cry without touching him. There was something comforting about the way he stood there, not trying to hug him or anything, just watching him quietly.
Dev got control of himself. “Sorry.”
“Sybil Morrow?”
“Both of them.” He told the story in a few choppy sentences.
“I see.” Mr. Henry was silent for a moment, then took a deep breath and let it out audibly. “Here. Let me take the pickax and break up the ground for you.”
They worked in silence together for another hour. “My mom is going to start wondering where I am, I guess,” he said.
“She knows where to find you if she needs you.”
“I guess I should tell her about them.”
“Tell you what. Let’s get this dug, and bring them out here. And then we can get everybody here before nightfall for a service. I’m sure everyone will want to say goodbye.”
“Right,” Dev said. He looked at his hands. “Should have grabbed gloves.”
“Blisters?”
“Yeah, but they’ll heal.”
“Outsides generally do heal quicker than insides.”
Carrying the bodies out was something Dev really hoped to forget one day, but he feared he’d be having nightmares about it for a while. They lay them side by side, just as Mr. Morrow had wanted. “Should we bury them?”
“Just cover them. I guess it’s time to tell everyone else.”
“Can you tell the Crockers? I think Sierra is out on the road by now, keeping watch.”
“Okay. Meet you back here in a little while.”
Soon, everyone but Dev’s dad, who his mother wouldn’t let move, had gathered for the service. They all said a few words, and then they all took turns filling in the graves. Sierra plucked some crab apples from the nearest tree and buried them in the loose dirt. “Maybe another tree will grow up from them.”
His mom said, “They’d like that, I’m sure.” They’d all read the letter by then. She put an arm around Dev as Sierra took her turn filling in the grave.
One by one, they all turned away and walked slowly up toward the house.
* * *
The next day, the pyre on the road had burned itself out. There were shards of bone among the ashes when Dev relieved Crocker for his daytime watch period. With only four of them now, they were back on three-hour watches, one at night, one in the day. He was a few minutes early for his day watch.
Crocker said, “I hate to be insensitive. Selfish. Pragmatic to a fault at a time like this, but this ash would be good for our compost piles.”
“You’re right. I’ll get a wheelbarrow,” Dev said.
“And a shovel,” Crocker called after him. “Not spades, the square ones. I’ll deliver it around to the houses while you’re on watch.”
Dev turned. “What about the Morrows’? You going to skip it?”
“No. There too. We can use the food from their garden.”
“He’d want us to have it, I guess.”
“And he already put a lot of time into it. Seems a way to honor him, to not let his effort go to waste.”
“I wish he wouldn’t have done that.” He didn’t mean plant a garden.
Crocker understood him right. “I know, Dev.”
“Would you? If Sierra got sick, would you kill her and yourself?”
“I honestly don’t know. I hope I never have to find out. I know I wouldn’t want to live on if she was gone.”
“Nobody would want to. But don’t we have an obligation to go on?”
“You angry at Mitch?”
Dev hadn’t thought of it that way. “I guess I am, a little.”
“That’s okay. Normal. Normal to feel sad, and guilty for not seeing it coming, and angry and—hell, a lot of things. Anything you feel is okay.”
Dev did feel a lot of things, and some of it didn’t make much sense to him. It was small comfort knowing it was normal. It didn’t relieve any of the feelings one bit.
Chapter 28
Three nights later, Sierra was on guard duty, wearing the night vision goggles, trying to get more familiar with switching from one eye to the other, when they were invaded yet again. There were crashing sounds, and she ran into the woods toward them, needing to see if it was man or beast. Voices came through the woods, anxious, one shushing the rest.
Running back to the private road, she blew the whistle as she ran, knowing the Quinns and her father would hear it. Curt might be too far away.
Sierra stopped before emerging from the woods and scanned the road. No one was there. So they weren’t coming in this way, but from the main road, probably the direction that Payson and Phoenix were in. If it was another fifty people, they were in deep shit.
But she’d do whatever she could. Go out fighting, if it came to that.
She crossed the road and checked the woods on that side. They were harder to get through, more scrubby. She scanned and held her breath, listening. A distant owl’s hoot from the far side of the main highway was all she heard.
Back up the road, she heard a friendly whistle. Pilar. “All clear down this way,” she said as she emerged from the woods to find him standing in the middle of the gravel road.
He came close to speak softly. “Where are they then? You’re sure it’s people?”
“Definitely people. They were up that way. Might be headed for the Quinns’ rabbit hutches, if they didn’t turn around by now.”
“You want to stay here, or go? One of us should keep the road se
cure.”
“I’ll go,” she said. “You stand guard here.”
“You sure?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and she was surprised to realize she was fine—buzzed, but not terrified. She ran up the driveway to the Quinns’ and used their truck as cover as she scanned the yard. She saw motion. A person.
She whistled as she raised her rifle, getting ready to fire if need be. The figure stopped and she heard a whistle in return. Dev, she thought. His mom was a lot slighter, and his dad was still in bed, not feeling well.
He slipped from cover to cover, hunting under the shadows of the woods, moving away from her.
Checking all around her first, she slipped up to the porch.
“Sierra? What’s the trouble?” Kelly’s voice startled her.
“People over that way.”
“How many?”
“Not sure. I heard them walking, and then voices—maybe two or three voices, but there could be more people. Pilar has the road covered.”
“Okay. I’ll keep watch from the porch.”
“I’ll back up Dev,” Sierra said.
“Thank you.”
Sierra scampered from the porch and headed to the small orchard of fruit trees. She saw the figure move again—damn, but Dev was good at this, hardly visible at all—near the rabbit hutches. He made a clicking sound, a signal. It took her a second to remember what he was saying to her. Left. Of him, it meant. Stay left, guard the left, shoot to the left. He’d take the right side.
Okay. She shifted around until she had a good look at the woods that stretched ahead, from just left of the rabbit hutches to the clearing in front of their house. She couldn’t see any strangers coming. Couldn’t hear anything either, not voices, and not the fall of feet in the woods.
She scanned the woods ahead. Nothing. Only Dev, a green figure, far to the right, entering the trees, his shoulders hunched and elbows cocked up. Because he was looking through the night vision scope, she realized. He moved forward, slowly, carefully.
She did the same, taking her side, focusing on her responsibility, trying to stay as quiet as he was. Realizing she was holding her breath, she let it out—softly—and tried to breathe normally. Her heart was beating fast, but it wasn’t the pounding of terror. She was afraid, sure, but not frozen with it.
Easing past trees, she moved deeper into the woods. This was good in here. Safer. No one could see her—not even from behind—but with the goggles she could see everyone.
But no one was there. Not a single glow of a warm body showed in her goggles. Except for Dev, who appeared for a flash. He was getting ahead of her. She clicked the signal for “take the right,” mostly to let him know where she was, behind her.
His voice surprised her. “I have nothing.”
“Nothing here either. But there was. I heard them talking.”
“Okay, maybe you should go back to our road then, make sure they didn’t come around that way. I’ll go out to the main road.”
“Okay,” she said, and she turned her back on him and quickly retraced her steps. As she approached their house, she signaled Kelly so she didn’t get shot.
“Anything?” her voice came.
“Nothing,” she said. Then she said, “Dev’s fine,” knowing Kelly would appreciate hearing it. “Going back to the road now.”
She trotted down the driveway and heard Pilar’s whistled signal and returned it. The identifying sound and an all-clear. “Nothing up there now,” she said.
“I have something,” he said.
Her tension ratcheted way up in no time. “What? Where?”
“Heard a car go by.”
“I didn’t.”
“I think it was electric or hybrid. I only heard the tires on pavement, not a gas engine.”
“Maybe whoever it was left?”
“Maybe.”
“Just a car full of people then.” Her tension swooped back down. It was like being drunk or something, how fear and relief made her feel.
“Stay alert,” he said. “We can’t be sure what’s going to happen. Maybe that was a scout, and there’s more to come.”
While all three kept watch for the rest of Sierra’s shift and on into the next shift, the people didn’t come back.
“Maybe they were checking us out,” her father said, as she made ready to go home.
“Maybe they were just relieving themselves,” she said, “and doing it here was a strange coincidence. But blow that whistle if anything at all happens. I’ll wake up.”
Chapter 29
Two days later, Dev had something new to worry about when his father started talking strangely to him when he went to take breakfast to him.
“Have you fixed the roof?” his father said.
“What’s wrong with the roof?”
“You have to get up there and fix it. No, I will.” He struggled to get up, looking angrily at his bad arm when it didn’t support his weight.
“Mom!” Dev called, trying to hold his father down on the bed without hurting him.
“What?” his mother said, coming in wiping her hands on a dish cloth.
“I think he wants to climb up on the roof.”
“Arch?” she said, moving around to the other side of the bed.
Dev let go. His father was still struggling, but somehow he had gotten tangled up in the sheet, so he was fighting it. And losing.
His mother felt his father’s head. “Get me the thermometer, would you?”
“Where is it?”
“Over there, in my medical kit on the dresser.”
Dev found it and brought it over.
“Stick it under his armpit on his bad side.” She made shushing sounds to his father.
A minute later, they had a reading. “One-oh-three,” Dev said.
“Okay. I need aspirin and antibiotics.”
“Which kind?”
“Amoxicillin. The heavy dose too. He must have an infection. My own fault,” she muttered. “Should have had him on them the whole time.”
Dev pawed through the bottles until he had the right ones. The label was in Spanish. She must have gotten them in Mexico last time she went, a few years back. “Four hundreds or two hundreds?”
“Fours. Let’s see if we can get him to swallow these on his own.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. The roof,” he said, and then he stared at her in confusion. “What’s wrong with the roof?”
“Nothing, hon. It’s fine. You fixed it. Time to rest. Can you swallow this for me?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m your son.”
“My son has more sense than you. Here’s your water. And the pill. Put it in your mouth, Arch. This one. Then these two. There you go.”
Dev was watching this with mounting concern. Or delayed concern.
“Cold cloth, Dev. Use a dishtowel and soak it.”
He got the cloth and helped his mother take off his father’s pajama top and then watched as she bathed him, face and neck and chest. “There’s an ice pack in the freezer, one of those soft ones. Get that for me too, please.”
She stuck that under his dad’s armpit where the thermometer had been. Then she gave Devlin another series of commands as she cut off the bandage and checked the wound.
“Looks good,” she said. “What do you think, Devlin?”
He leaned forward and examined the bullet wound. It wasn’t as swollen as it had been. There was no green, no red streaks running from it, the things she had taught him to look for that meant trouble. “It looks okay to me too.”
His mother said, “So what is this, Arch?”
“What’s what?” he asked. Suddenly, he sounded quite reasonable.
“You have a fever.”
“I probably caught a head cold.”
His mother looked doubtful. “From who?” she said.
“I don’t know. Maybe those bodies we buried yesterday. Or was it the day before?”
The three bodies had been buried weeks ago. �
��Longer than that,” Dev said.
“Are you okay, son?” his mother asked.
“Feeling fine,” he said, though he wasn’t. He was worried for his father. Not just because this was his father, and he loved his father, and his mother loved his father and he didn’t want to see her hurt. But with ruthless practicality, he was worried because they really couldn’t take the loss of one more person. Five people couldn’t hold the neighborhood against another group of fifty invaders. They were lucky they only had the one casualty from the last battle. “You hang in there, Dad. We need you.”
“Dev, why don’t you go feed the animals,” his mother said. “I have your father.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Just go on now and do your chores.”
“Do what your mother tells you,” his father said.
“Yes, sir.”
He did his chores, but his mind wasn’t on them. He accidentally let the rooster out of the enclosure and then had to waste almost fifteen minutes chasing him around. He was pecked hard for his effort.
“I wish we didn’t need you,” he said to the rooster, who had never been a particularly pleasant creature. But if they wanted new hens every year, a rooster was a necessity.
Everything came down to the same equations. If they wanted to survive, then all these bits had to fall into place and keep falling into place. The animals. The crops. Defense. Some of it, he could make happen on his own.
But other pieces, like no large group coming up the hill and attacking again, he couldn’t control at all. Like only five healthy defenders left? He couldn’t fix that right now.
So what was there he could do now? What hadn’t they done they might do? What might he set into motion to prepare for the next attack, especially if it came before his father was well?
By the time he was done with his chores, he had a few ideas of how to improve their chances of surviving.
Fifteen minutes later, he had the other three—Curt Henry, Pilar Crocker, and Sierra—at a meeting on the road. “We have some lights. Motion-sensor, like the alarms on the doors. Should we put some up?”
Crocker said, “Wouldn’t that do the other people more good than us? They’d be able to see where everything is.”
