by Lou Cadle
Curt’s whistled signal for danger startled them all to silence. “There’s someone coming.” His voice was tense.
They all turned to look downhill, but Sierra couldn’t see anything.
“I saw the sun glint off metal, chrome or a mirror,” Curt said. “There’s a car down there, I’m pretty sure.”
“Damn,” Arch said. “Into the woods, everybody.” He reached down to the ankle holster Sierra had forgotten he usually wore, took out a handgun, and gave it to Pilar. “No safety. Chamber a round when you’re ready.”
Joan headed for the woods near their road. Arch and Pilar melted into the woods across the highway. Sierra ran toward the danger past Curt, who hissed at her. She turned and said, “We’re the best shots, the only two experienced and not hurt. We need to take point.”
“Point,” she heard him mutter. But he trotted up by her. “I’ll climb this hill before it gets too steep. You go left. Stay hidden behind the trees until we see what’s coming, okay? We might need to withdraw and hold the road with all of us together.”
Sierra ran at an angle, forward and into the woods, Paysonward, technically downhill of where she’d been standing when she shot the last of the invaders, but in reality at about the same elevation. She kept moving, weaving through the trees, not stopping but once to listen. No sound of a car engine or tires on asphalt.
She saw them before she heard them: a man and a woman, walking toward her, looking from side to side. One of them carried a white flag—a pillowcase, she saw, tied onto a hockey stick. The hominess of the white flag reassured her at a gut level, but her brain told her to be cautious. She waited until they had passed her. She wanted them to get far enough forward that both she and Curt had a shot at them.
When they’d passed her by twenty paces, she called out. “Stop right there.”
They stopped, glanced at one another, and the woman, who wasn’t carrying the flag, raised her arms overhead. “We mean you no harm,” she said.
“That’d make you the first,” Sierra said.
“We’re from down the hill.”
“Payson is occupied.”
“We know. We also know you probably were attacked yesterday.”
“How do you know that?”
“They started with us.”
The man said, “But they didn’t get very far. There are more of us than there were of them.”
The woman said, “We were concerned about you. When we saw the next place up the hill, with the burned houses, we grew even more worried. And then we saw the smoke ahead and thought it might be your place burning still. I’m glad to see you’re alive.”
Sierra glanced down the hill. “Shut up for a second, would you?” She wanted to hear if there were more coming up behind them. But a few interminable minutes later, she was certain that if anyone was coming, it was not up the road. “Is it just you two?”
“It’s just us,” the man said.
“Why didn’t you come up yesterday? We could have used the help, assuming you have guns.”
“We have guns at home. But not on us,” the woman said. She sounded nervous to make the admission that she wasn’t armed.
That more than anything decided Sierra. “Turn around, slowly. Look at me.”
They did. They looked like any regular people. Worried people.
The man said, “We didn’t come yesterday because we were afraid they’d come back to us. Even after it seemed they wouldn’t, we were debating what to do. Some wanted to come up. Some didn’t.”
“Democracy,” said the woman. “It’s a pain in the ass sometimes.”
“You live in that neighborhood off the national forest road? On the opposite side of the highway?”
“Right.”
“You shot at my friend.”
“Are you the one that left us food?”
“I am,” Sierra said.
“You said you wanted to be friends. Or something of that nature.”
“The rifle pointing at us is less than friendly,” the man pointed out.
Sierra knew she should march them back to the group. “Curt?” she shouted.
A whistle from across the road. He had her back—or her front, in this case. She lowered the rifle but did not put the strap over her shoulder. “I’m Sierra Ash.”
“Sierra. Crocker? Are you Pilar Crocker’s kid?” the woman asked.
“I am.”
“I dated your dad for a little while. You were like—gosh, seven years old?”
Was that supposed to make this woman more trustworthy? So, in another lifetime, they’d met. Big deal. “Why are you here?”
“We decided your offer of friendship was worth pursuing. That we need to work together if we can.”
“We can’t afford to give away food. Or ammunition.”
“We wouldn’t ask you to, and we won’t either. Though some seed exchanges or something like that would be smart,” the woman said. “Can I put down my arms for a minute? They’re getting tired.” She said to the man, “I had no idea it’d hurt to keep them up like this.”
Sierra said, “Go on. But move slowly. And don’t go for your pockets or waistband or anything that suggests you’re grabbing a gun. You’re being watched from the woods, and I’m quick with this rifle.”
“Couldn’t be many in the woods watching us,” the man said, but not in a threatening way. “What are there, five houses on your block? Ten adults maximum. If we wanted to invade you, we could. But we don’t want to. We want to talk.”
The woman said, “Mostly about the Payson situation, for now. Though if you fought that group off, you did well. Maybe there’s more than ten of you?”
“I’m not talking troop strength with you,” Sierra said. “I’m young. Not stupid.”
“We’re really not here to do any harm,” the woman said. “I’m Francie. This is Tad.”
“You know my name,” Sierra said. “Okay, we’re going to keep walking, and I won’t shoot you, as long as you don’t do anything threatening.”
“Speaking of aching arms,” said Tad, “can I put this flag down?”
“I’d hang onto it if I were you, so everyone can see it as you approach.”
“They won’t shoot us?”
“Not if I’m here.” And she’d signal as she approached, the whistle that meant “hold.” Be alert, but don’t act. Not yet.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, they were all standing by the log. No one was pointing a firearm at Tad and Francie any more, but only Pilar had put his away—or rather, given it back to Arch, who held the gun loosely by his side, barrel down, his rifle now hanging over his good shoulder.
The more minutes that passed and nothing bad happened, the less Sierra worried that this was some sort of trick that meant an attack was imminent. But then a suspicious voice in the back of her mind said that it would therefore be a perfect time to attack, just when their level of vigilance had eased off like this. She faced so she could see any movement from downhill in her peripheral vision and took part in the conversation with only the occasional direct glance at the visitors. Curt was up the hill several yards, doing the same thing, facing up the highway, though in his case it might be discomfort with strangers as much as security concerns that put him up there. Nobody had instructed the two of them to do this. They just did it, all of them working as a team without much discussion.
Tad knew Joan from community charity work. He was surprised to see her here.
Joan explained, “Sierra got us out of town.”
Sierra glanced at Tad, who raised his eyebrows at her. “Courageous little thing, aren’t you?”
She gave him a disgusted look, but kept herself from saying what she was thinking: Don’t condescend to me, old man.
“I meant it as a compliment.”
Pilar said, “She’s tough and brave.”
Sierra didn’t see herself as either. She was simply doing what had to be done. Seems like bravery would require a choice. She didn’t have one.<
br />
Kelly said, “You’re pretty brave yourself, walking up here unarmed.”
The man shrugged. “Someone had to.”
“I volunteered,” Francie said.
“I was drafted,” the man said. “But I’m alive so far, so I can’t complain.”
Kelly was keeping an eye on the pyre, blanket at the ready. The visitors had no questions about it. The bodies hadn’t burned much yet, so it was obvious what the fire was.
“They had children with them,” Francie said. “Right?”
Kelly said, “As far as we know, all of them survived. We have one really traumatized little girl, eight others doing okay, considering what they went through, and one missing. Most of us went out looking again at dawn for him, but we couldn’t find him even though we had a name this time to call.” They had gotten that from another of the children.
“Good job,” Tad said. “I mean, shooting the men without hitting the kids.”
Arch said, “We know what we’re doing. And we train a lot.”
Tad said, “So this is all of you?”
Arch snorted at the same time Francie said, “Tad, you know better than to ask that.”
“It’s not all of us,” Arch said. “Rest assured. We have enough defenders. So, what is it you wanted to talk about?”
Francie said, “We want to see if we can be friends. Allies. Possibly trade with each other in the future.”
Arch said, “You shot at my son.”
“Did we?” said Tad.
Sierra said, “Arch, think of it from their perspective. We were sneaking through the woods with rifles.”
“They could have asked who you were.”
“Do we ever ask first?” she said.
He gave her a disgusted look. “At first we did.”
“For a split second,” Kelly said, surprising Sierra by taking her side. “No harm came to him. That’s the important thing. Maybe they didn’t even want any harm to come to him.”
Sierra thought, from the look on Tad’s face, that was unlikely. They’d shot to kill, not to frighten. But she would have too.
Francie said, “For what it’s worth, which I know isn’t much, I apologize. And I’d like to put it behind us if we can. It won’t happen again. I don’t want it to happen again on either side. We’ll work out passwords or something, so if we visit you or you visit us, no one will get shot. Okay? Will you accept the apology?”
Grudgingly, Arch nodded.
Francie said, “Okay. So right now, we need to talk about Payson.”
“I’m glad you’re up here,” Tad said to Joan. “You can tell us what went on there. We know a little, and we’ve guessed at more, but I’d like to hear it all from an eyewitness.”
For twenty minutes, Joan told the story of Payson. First, the assumption things would go back to normal. Then the realization that food was a serious problem. That changed the way everything worked, that changed people. Social decay expanded daily. Looting, theft, and panic over food. “I didn’t think it’d get any lower than that, to see neighbors turn into thieves and worse, people turning on friends and neighbors. And the scams? Early on, we had several older people from the church approached about donating cans of food, and a few of them did, thinking it was for hungry children. It wasn’t.” She made a face. “But then we thought—by ‘we,’ I meant the better people, the civic leaders and clergy and school principals and so on—we thought we were getting a handle on it. Punishment for theft of food became very harsh—first exile, and then execution—and I know that bothered some of us at first. It bothered me. But there was a public hearing before it came. Some rule of law. I do have to give them that.
“And then the Phoenix invaders came. I mean, this group that is there now. There were other gangs that came through first, but they were driven off with minimal damage to us.”
Up here, in at least one case. Sierra couldn’t hold on to that resentment of Paysonites if they were to move forward, no more than Arch could hold on to his about Dev getting fired at by these people. The people in Payson were only doing what she and her neighbors had done here. Get rid of the bad guys, kill them or drive them on. That they became someone else’s problem a short while later hadn’t even crossed her mind once, so she could hardly fault the people of town for doing the same thing.
Joan continued her story. The invaders came, organized, well armed, though she couldn’t say how many. The Payson folks were low on ammunition by that point. The invaders zeroed in on men at first, killing, capturing, using them as hostages so that families would quit fighting. And then they’d killed any belligerent women. They’d raped. Most young single women had fled town, like Sierra’s friend Mia. And then at least two of the invaders had started in on raping Emily. By that point, everyone was cut off from news, so she couldn’t swear if that was widespread or an isolated incident.
“We have a suspicion that some of them might be Phoenix police,” Arch said to Francie and Tad. “Maybe only one. And could be he’s over there.” He pointed an elbow toward the burning bodies.
Tad’s head snapped to Arch. “Why do you say that?”
“We found some evidence.”
Sierra noticed he wasn’t sharing any information about the grenades.
“That’s funny,” said Tad. “We have someone in the neighborhood, an older fellow, a retired statie from Maine, who said the same thing. Just a hunch on his part though.”
Francie said, “This is the kind of thing we can share. Information costs us nothing. Right?”
“You know,” Tad said, “this alliance will benefit you more than us, really. There’s more of us. More gardens, and probably more experts. We have someone who knows how to graft fruit trees. We have a master carpenter. A welder.”
They all looked up, exchanging glances, at that. The Morrow turbine would take an expert welder to repair.
Kelly said, “Do you have a doctor?”
“Not a one,” Francie said. “Any of you?”
“No. I did EMT training years ago,” said Kelly. “Almost twenty years, and I didn’t do the job long. Nine months is all.”
Sierra hadn’t known that.
“And I have some reference books, but that’s it.”
“We have a vet’s assistant who can stitch,” Francie said. “And a dental assistant who knows some physiology. A handful of first-aid manuals.” She half-smiled. “So I guess our teeth will get cleaned if we want.”
Tad said, “I was looking forward to not having to go to the dentist. One of the few positives of all this.” He chuckled, but no one else laughed with him.
Kelly said, “You get an abscess, you won’t feel like that. It could kill you if left untreated.”
Francie said, “I guess he’ll have to learn to pull teeth. The dental assistant, I mean.”
“But what will we do about Payson?” Arch said. “We’ve been talking that over this morning among ourselves. I don’t like the idea of them down there, however many there are, and ready and willing to send out groups of attackers our way.”
Tad said, “That’s part of what we’re here to discuss.”
Arch glanced at Sierra. “We had a thought.”
“Which was?” Tad said.
“We were going to do guerilla-style raids. Or more raids, as we already got a couple of them that way.” And he gave Sierra a nod. “Sniper work. Take a few more of them out without much of a risk to us. Hit, then retreat fast.”
“Surely at some point there will be few enough of them left that the town will rebel,” Joan said. “Not that we’ll be in great shape after the rebellion in town. Food will still be a major concern.” She made a face. “Though maybe less so after considering all who have died.”
“At least Payson is a lot warmer now than it was when I was young,” Francie said. “There’s still time enough for a second planting and harvest this year. Maybe not of tomatoes and corn and peppers, but everything else. Radishes, carrots, beets, and all kinds of greens can be grown right up until fi
rst frost. We’re planning on digging up and starting all over in mid-August.”
Kelly nodded. “Us too.”
“Also there’s that neighborhood we passed. The burned-out one?” Tad said. “They have gardens.”
“A handful of Paysonites could move up there,” said Joan.
“We’d have to liberate them first,” Arch said.
Joan said, “It’d be nice to let some people in Payson who live in apartments have them. Apartment living gives you nothing but public gardening space, and even though we had things getting better there before this group of invaders arrived, filching from public gardens was still a problem. Before the invaders, we were talking about giving empty homes to people, but some were opposed to it—said it was illegal.”
“Is this really what we want to do?” Curt called from his lookout spot. “Again, I’ll remind you that while they might be grateful when we free them, when they run out of food, we’re still up here, with gardens and other food sources.”
Joan said, “We’ll have to negotiate something.”
“And enforce it how?” Curt said.
“We could make sure they aren’t left many guns,” Tad said. “That way, even if they want to come up to our place, which is closer, or yours, they’ll have to do it with sticks and stones.”
Arch nodded. “Maybe that is the way to do it. They won’t like it though. Whatever we decide, the guerilla action does seem like the best way to start. We can cull the numbers. Then either we take them out, or the town itself rebels and does it. And when we go down we’ll see what has changed, if anything, down there.”
Francie said, “So you all were going to do that on your own?”
“Me,” said Sierra. “And Curt, if we go tomorrow.”
“We can at least add to that number,” Tad said to Francie.
“We’ll have to discuss it first.”
“The problem with that arrangement,” Arch said, “is that if you know we’re down to fewer fighters when it happens, and you know when, that’s when you could invade us.”
Francie said, “We aren’t going to do that, I can promise you. Look, we have all we need to survive. Barely enough, but enough. We discuss all the time how rare that probably is in the whole country. We aren’t feeling greedy. We’re feeling grateful. We’ll be perfectly okay on our own, and we don’t need to steal what you have.”
