by Lou Cadle
“After tomorrow, some of them might be able to go home to their families.”
“All of them?”
“We don’t know for sure.”
“I kind of would miss them. It’s like being in school again.”
“I hadn’t thought of you being lonely like that,” Sierra said, but she probably had been feeling isolated, especially with her sister locking herself in a closet. “Ready to check the hens? I want to start with the nesting bird.”
Jasper loped along at Misha’s side while the girl asked questions. “Isn’t the hen going to be mean?”
“Maybe a little, but only to me. I won’t make you do anything. I want to check her eggs.”
“Why?”
“To make sure the chicks are all still healthy in there.”
“How do you do that?”
“I’ll show you. But you have to promise not to try it on your own. I don’t want you pecked.” She also didn’t want her driving the hen off the nest or harming the eggs. Fertile eggs had never seemed so precious before. When the Payson raid was done—if she survived it—she’d have to get a couple of her own hens on a nest so the chicks could be used in trade with the other neighborhood.
Inside the musty coop, she found Mitch’s egg candler. At home, they used an LED flashlight, but Mitch had gone top-drawer with everything he bought. “This will be the last time we need to check them,” she said to Misha.
“Why are you checking?”
“To see if there are any quitters.”
“Quitters?”
“Chicks that quit developing. If you leave those eggs, they’ll go bad. You don’t want them smelling bad or contaminating the nest.”
“You mean they die? Inside the egg?”
“They can.” Sierra had seen one egg the last time she candled that she thought was not going to make it, but she’d check every one today. You never knew. “We need to make sure none are cracked and that we can see the little guys in there.”
“Will they look like chicks? Are they cute?”
“Not very.” She approached the brooding hen and made soothing noises even before she opened the brood box. The hen made a curious sound. Sierra snuck her hand under the hen and pulled out the first egg before the hen knew what was going to happen. There was a slot in the candler. She flipped the device on and put the egg into the slot, then held it out for Misha to look at. “See? This is a good egg. That dark part is the chick, and those lines are blood vessels. We’ll put it back and work around the nest.”
“Wow,” she said.
One by one, she checked out the eggs. One hadn’t developed, and she put it aside. Another had the telltale blood ring of a quitter. She showed it to Misha and explained.
“It died?” Misha said. She sounded upset.
Sierra thought it was odd that she could be upset at the death of a chick hen so many had died this summer, so many people and dogs and cats and horses. Of course, Misha didn’t know that, did she? She hadn’t seen much violence firsthand. She hadn’t had to shoot anyone. Her mother and sister had experienced violence firsthand, but not Misha.
Sierra found herself mildly irritated at that. How could anyone have been so protected? But then a part of her was relieved, relieved that Misha had been spared what had happened to Emily, or what had happened to the kids Rudy was babysitting. Maybe that part of what she felt was what her father felt about her. On the other hand, Misha was ten years old. Sierra was grown. You couldn’t keep a person ten years old forever.
These days, trying to protect a kid from all knowledge would be a dangerous choice, so Sierra didn’t hesitate to tell Misha the chick had died. “These bad ones go into your compost bin. Here, you take them out there. Don’t forget to close the gate.” She put the last good egg back under the hen and told her she was a good girl. She always did, though hens weren’t probably smart enough to understand praise or insult. She found the wire basket, and when Misha came back, she made her do all the egg collecting herself, pushing her to do the work despite her nervousness around the hens.
“It’s the only way to get used to doing it,” she said at the end. “You have to keep doing it. Ignore your fear. The worst thing that could happen to you is getting pecked, and usually they won’t draw blood.”
“It hurts.”
“There are a lot of things that hurt worse. Going hungry, for one. Do you keep the eggs inside?”
“When we had extra, they were in the shed. But now we don’t have extra.”
“Are you going hungry?” Sierra and Pilar could spare some eggs. Soon she’d have cockerels old enough to slaughter, but not quite yet.
She left the girls to do their gardening alone and went to find Joan.
When she found her, she got right to it. “I agree with you about Misha’s not being ready to learn how to shoot, but I’d like to have a chance to teach Emily, if she’d be willing to be around me.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Sierra,” Joan said.
“Maybe it would help her.”
“Would it?”
“Well, think about it. I or Kelly would be best as teachers. At least offer her the choice, would you?”
“All right. I’ll do that.”
Sierra started to walk away, but then turned and said one last thing. “Every girl deserves to know how dangerous she can be.”
She returned home to clean her rifle, her father’s rifle, the shotgun, and his handgun. She counted rounds of ammunition and grew worried when she realized how many they had already used. In the future, she’d have to pick her shots more carefully.
If they kept using rounds at this rate, before the year was out they’d be down to throwing rocks at enemies. Looking at the empty space where boxes of ammunition once sat, it seemed more important than ever to Sierra to deal with Payson so that they could stop threats coming up from the valley and so that Payson itself wouldn’t remain a threat to them.
At supper that night, Pilar said, “Before we eat, I want to apologize to you. What I said to you the other evening.”
“About me becoming hard and unfeeling.”
“Not unfeeling. Just the other. Becoming a warrior.”
“And not your little girl any more.”
“You’ll always be my little girl. Even when you’re fifty.”
“I was thinking today about how Misha has been so protected through all this. And wondering if that was a good thing or a bad thing.”
“She wouldn’t be able to survive on her own. If Joan died, both of those children would be in trouble.”
“They would.”
“But we’d take them in, right? If Joan dies tomorrow.”
Sierra hadn’t stopped to think of it. “Goddess, all of them? All eleven?” She looked around the kitchen and tried to imagine crowding that horde in here. “I don’t think my cooking is up to it.”
“I was thinking only Misha and Emily.”
“Those two? Sure, I’d take them in. I have a lot I could teach them.”
“Good. Because, uh, I guess I need to apologize for this too, for saying yes before I consulted with you, but Joan asked me today.”
“To take them if she dies?”
“Yes. If she doesn’t come back from Payson.”
“Okay.” Sierra couldn’t be irritated at him for saying yes without asking her. She would have said yes too. “But I don’t know about taking eleven of them.”
“If everything goes well tomorrow, I’m hoping the extra nine get back to their relatives. You have pictures of them all on your phone still?”
“Yes.”
“You should take your phone. In case this plan works, you can start hunting for their parents the instant the city is secured. Joan has them on Mitch’s phone too. She didn’t bring hers along from her house, thinking there was no reason to have it.”
“Okay, I’ll take mine. Food’s getting cold. Can I eat?”
“Sure, go on.” He toyed with his plate, a hamburger and oven fries. “So am I forgiven?”
“I forgive you. And you aren’t wrong. I’ve changed. I guess I was like Misha once. I’m not today. But that change makes me more likely to live through the next couple of days. That part’s good, isn’t it?”
“Very good.”
“I’m sorry too, for yelling at you.” There was no reason to hold a grudge, and every reason not to. She might be the source of his worry over her soul or whatever, and she didn’t see any way around that. But she didn’t want to die and leave him regretting how they’d left things between them. “You’re the best father I’ve ever known, and not just because you’re my father. You’re objectively the best of all I’ve ever seen.”
He shook his head at that. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing. Ever.”
“Then you fake it pretty well. Now eat.”
Chapter 9
“Jailbreak,” Arch said. Sierra was in the car with him, Kelly, and Dev. Curt and Joan were in a second car, an attacker’s car that had four-wheel drive. Pilar was at home, defending the neighborhood. Rudy was babysitting the kids, who had no idea they might be going back home to Payson by tomorrow. Joan had not wanted to get their hopes up in case the liberation of Payson was a failure.
Kelly said, “I think a jailbreak is from the inside breaking out, hon. This will be breaking into jail.”
Arch nodded. “The trunk has some confiscated weapons—except ones that I really liked and wanted to keep for us. You understand you’re all going to carry two weapons and give one to one of the men you break out of jail.”
“We remember,” Sierra said.
“I won’t be with you, of course,” Arch said. “I’ll be outside of town with the walkie-talkie plug-in to the cell phone. Wes will be leading the big party, heading into Payson from the north.”
Sierra had heard it all before, at least twice. She changed the topic. “You’re both feeling okay, Kelly? You and Dev?”
Kelly said, “I suspect Devlin has a headache he’s not admitting to, and I’m still sore all over, like I wrestled a bear. But I can run and shoot, and that’s all that matters.”
“I’d rather we were all healed up, me included, and Pilar too,” Arch said, “but I don’t want to wait that long. I think this is the best time. They’ll be confused about their missing men, hoping they’ll return. They’ll be talking about that and about our supposed dawn attack in four days. If we’re lucky, they’ll be arguing among themselves over what to do and disorganized because of it.”
“That’s a lot of hoping,” Sierra said. “Pretty optimistic for you.”
“It is the best-case scenario,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s impossible, or entirely wishful thinking, that there might be some disorganization, maybe even dissent in their ranks. That’s to our advantage.”
“Sounds right to me,” Dev said. “And there’s no way they’d anticipate that we’d be going straight for the jail. That’s a bold move.”
“If I knew which women were good shots in town, I wouldn’t have suggested it,” said Arch. “But we can’t start knocking on doors and asking. On the other hand, I suspect the men they jailed were exactly the ones able to use guns. The good fighters may have mostly been killed, but surely some of them ended up in jail.”
“There’s one problem,” Dev said.
Sierra turned to face him. He was frowning. “What?”
“Maybe they never jailed the men. Maybe that was a lie to keep the women in line and growing food.”
It took Sierra a second to see where he was headed. “You mean they might all have been executed.”
“I wouldn’t have, in their position,” Arch said. “I’d keep them alive in case an unpleasant job needed doing.”
“As slaves, you mean?” Kelly said.
“Or as cannon fodder, like they used the children,” Arch added. “Put them out in a line in front in order to get to somewhere else, like up at Flagstaff’s roadblock. Shoot one in the back when he makes a run for it, and the rest might cooperate. But yeah, we’re basing the jail raid on a hope rather than a fact. We don’t know for sure that any Paysonites are still alive in there.”
Kelly said, “Which is why we’re only committing four to the raid.”
“Who except us?” Sierra said.
“Us three,” Dev said. “You, Mom, and me. Plus one volunteer from the other group.”
“Don’t take Tad,” she said.
“Why not?” said Kelly.
At the same time, Arch said, “I wouldn’t. I don’t get a good feeling about him.”
“That’s accurate in my opinion,” Sierra said. “Wes would be great if he’d go. But anyone he picked would be fine, I imagine. Who’s our team leader?”
“Me,” Kelly said. “If whoever joins us from the other neighborhood has military experience, I’ll take his advice on the raid itself. Otherwise, it’s me because of my having been to the county complex several times.”
“You were never in jail, right?” Sierra said. She was teasing, and everyone knew it.
“Ha,” Dev said. “Her?”
“Complained about a property tax bill, dealt with some other minor government hassles, that kind of thing. But the jail is right there by those offices.”
“What’s it like there?”
“I looked around to see if we had any brochures or anything with a picture of the buildings, but we didn’t. So, without the internet, all I have to show you is a map I drew, which might not be entirely accurate.” She handed it over the seat back. “It’s pretty open. Lots of parking space, wide streets.”
Sierra took it and said, “So finding cover is an issue.” She studied the map.
“We don’t approach on the street,” Dev said. He put a finger on the map and traced a short line. “We come in this back way if we can.” His finger moved. “If it’s blocked, that way for plan B.”
“How close are we going to risk parking to town?” Sierra said.
“Something to discuss with the others,” Arch said.
Three minutes later, they pulled into the forest road that led to the other neighborhood. Sierra noticed Dev looking unusually tense and then remembered he’d been shot at near here. Remembering he hadn’t had a chance to talk to any of the others yet, as she had, she said to him, “They’re okay. A lot like us.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, as if it was yet to be seen.
The car pulled in a couple hundred yards and parked. A minute later, Joan and Curt pulled in behind.
Sierra said, “I’ll get out first.”
“No,” said Arch. “Let’s wait until we see a car. I’d hate to make their guards nervous.”
So they waited. It wasn’t long before the first car came up the road.
“Just one?” Sierra said.
“Surely not,” Kelly murmured.
Wes emerged from the car and raised his hand. Sierra opened her door. “Hey, Wes,” she called.
Another car appeared, and then a line of them. Five more cars drove up as she approached Wes and offered her hand. “Good to be working with you again.”
“Not with me personally. This is Jackson. Jackson, Sierra Crocker.”
She didn’t correct him. It might be time to give up on having her own name and just accept her father’s. Easier for everyone, herself included. She shook hands with Jackson.
“I hear you’re quite the soldier,” he said.
“That’s nice of someone to say. But like all of us, I’m only doing what has to be done. Surviving, you know?”
“Couldn’t agree more. Are you leading tonight?”
“No, Kelly is.” She waved Kelly and Dev over. “She has a map.”
“Good. Let’s talk about this.”
The four of them put the map on the hood of Wes’s car and went over the approaches. Kelly described the place in three dimensions the best she could.
“We have one guy who’s been inside the jail,” said Jackson. “Drunk and disorderly, he says.” Then he shook his head. “Kills me not to be able to look that up a
nd verify it these days. But anyway, he drew this.” And he pulled out a folded piece of paper, an official blueprint.
“Wow, looks good,” Sierra said. “Did he really do that?”
“No. We have a drafter. Mostly used computer stuff at work, but still knew how to do this from his training. Anyway, you’re right: it looks good, but I can’t swear to its accuracy. There were locked doors here, and here, as the drunk guy remembers. But he also said it was all electric locks. So unless they’re generating electricity now, they must keep guards on the doors.”
“Or they’ve managed to put in regular lock sets,” Kelly said.
“Probably not, we decided. They aren’t in any way normal doors. They might have been able to do something—put in a hook and chain on the door, something like that. Or they might all yield to keys, designed that way in case of a power outage.”
“Hope they aren’t using big chains,” Dev said.
“I brought heavy-duty bolt cutters. They’re still in the car.”
“Do they weigh a lot?” Sierra said.
“Oh yeah.”
“We’re giving him another rifle to carry too?” she asked Kelly.
“What’s that?” Jackson said.
Kelly explained about the confiscated weapons.
Jackson said, “I can manage that much more weight. Also, if we can kill a guard or two, we’ll have yet more weapons to give out.” He had a doubtful look on his face. “I hope we don’t get shot for our trouble by the men we free.”
Kelly said, “I would imagine they’d be grateful.”
“If they exist,” said Dev.
Sierra explained Dev’s concern.
Jackson nodded. “I guess it could be an empty jail. In which case, it should be damned easy to get into, right? And then we can clear the town, from the jail to the south end.”
Kelly said, “If all the men are dead, we can find women in town to use the rifles. It’ll take time, but better to have four more weapons on our side when we hit the street.”
“I’m guessing a third of the women in Payson shoot. That’s about what it is in our neighborhood,” Jackson said. “Or was, before this happened.”