by David Lucin
“I think you misunderstand. I applaud all that you’ve done here.” He gestured to the woods around him. “It’s sure to save a great number of lives. But it will all be for naught if our town descends into anarchy. Already the police are struggling to defend the supplies we currently have, and every week, more people arrive, unvetted, and are given lodging at the university. How many criminals, how many murderers and thieves, have we housed and fed? Had we acted sooner, the incident at the Go Market could have been avoided. Valeria Flores could still be alive.”
At his father’s mention of murderers and thieves, the breath in Philip’s chest hitched. As of three days ago, he was both.
“Are you implying that the attack came from refugees?” Sophie asked—rhetorically, Philip thought.
“I’ll wait for the official police report before assigning blame,” Dad answered with tact, “but we shouldn’t blind ourselves to the very strong possibility that Valeria Flores was killed by newcomers who respect neither our laws nor what we’re trying to accomplish as a community.”
Sophie loosened phlegm from her throat with a wet gag, then spat it over the banister. “I may not have been clear enough the first time, so I’ll spell it out for you: you won’t be getting any assistance from me. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch.”
“Mrs. Beaumont,” Dad said, the inflection betraying his growing frustration. “I understand that a large proportion of your workforce comprises newcomers. If you’re concerned about their well-being, the camp in New River will be more than willing to take them in. It’s where they should have gone in the first place. On the other hand, if your concern is filling those positions once the refugees have left, then—”
“My mind’s made up,” Sophie said, projecting her voice more than she had before. Was this her way of communicating with her guards in the woods? Philip hadn’t seen any yet, but he knew they were out there. He rested his free hand on the door handle, ready to pull it open and leap out to protect his father. “So at this juncture, I’d very much appreciate it if you got back in your car, turned around, and left.”
Philip’s pulse quickened as he heard the faint squawk of a radio in the distance. Scanning the woods once more, he detected movement: a girl with long black hair tied into a ponytail. On a knee, she had an AR trained squarely at the vehicle. She was young, twenty or twenty-one at most, but she carried herself with military precision. Philip recognized her, and he didn’t know why.
Then the memory materialized. Soon after he’d shot Valeria Flores and return fire erupted from the Go Market, this girl ran out the front door without fear. Philip was struck by a sudden urge to apologize to her. The last thing on his mind before he depressed the trigger was that Valeria had friends. She might even have a family. What if she had a son or daughter? Had he taken away their mother?
“Please, Mrs. Beaumont,” Dad pleaded. “I implore you to reconsider. If we sit down and discuss the issue more thoroughly, perhaps with Edward as well, we’ll realize that our goals truly do align and that it’s in our best interest to all work together.”
“You certainly can talk like a politician, Mr. Grierson, but for that reason, I unfortunately don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth.” She pulled a thin stick from her pocket and put it between her teeth. “Now, my husband insists on taking me for romantic walks around the farm every morning, and he’s patiently waiting for me to finish dealing with you, so if you’d be so kind, please get off my property.”
Philip could hear his father’s sigh, even from inside the vehicle. “Very well,” Dad said with a long step backward. “I respect your decision. I’ll be on my way.”
As Dad took his seat and shut his door, Philip checked for the girl with the black ponytail, but she was gone.
Esteban pulled a U-turn and drove away from the house. Philip’s hands were trembling, so he buried them in his lap. He was no stranger to weapons or being on the dangerous end of one, but the shakes always accompanied a burst of adrenaline.
Silence reigned in the SUV until it was off the driveway and on the road. There, Dad, red-faced, his fingers balled into fists, growled, “What a disdainful, contemptuous woman.”
“She shouldn’t have talked to you like that,” Philip said. “She was out of line.”
“How could she dismiss my proposition without so much as a moment of consideration? Is she truly that naive?”
“Screw her,” Rachel barked. “Like Philly was saying, we don’t need her. Let her spend all day gardening out here with her refugee pals. Who cares?”
“I’m with Rach,” Philip said.
Dad closed his fists around his loose-leaf papers, crumpling them into a ball. “Her moment of reckoning will come. When the dust clears, she’ll have wished that she’d listened today.”
A vein in his neck throbbed, and sweat glistened on his forehead. Philip hated seeing his father this angry; it wasn’t good for him. While Philip was in prison, Dad barely survived a heart attack, and the doctors, according to Mom, insisted that he keep his blood pressure down. Right now, it was through the roof, and episodes like these were happening more every week.
“Easy, Dad,” Philip said, careful to avoid coming across as though he was lecturing him. “This doesn’t change anything for us.”
Philip braced for his father to burst into a fit of rage, but he released his death grip on the papers. A second later, the redness in his face eased. A few long breaths after that, he said, “Rachel, when we’re within range, please radio ahead to let our associates know that they’re cleared to begin at their convenience.”
9
“He said what?” Allison cried.
After Grierson drove off, Dylan told Jenn and a few other guards to wait at the cabin while he spoke with Sophie and Ed at the house. She was at the kitchen table, her and Allison’s usual spot. The chair beneath her was uncomfortable, like she was sitting on hot coals. A few times she’d tried standing, but whenever she did, her feet wouldn’t stop taking her in circles around the room. The rush of training her weapon on that man by the SUV, the one with the shaved head and the elaborate tattoo of a Celtic knot on his neck, had yet to subside. For reasons she couldn’t explain, the sight of him alone almost compelled her to shoot, as if she would be doing the world a favor by putting him down.
“He was asking Sophie if she would support CFF and his movement,” Jenn said, “but Sophie’s answer was the firmest no I’ve ever heard.”
Concerned murmurs from several laborers on their breaks rippled through the guest cabin. Jenn recognized many of them as refugees. They had become such a regular part of her life that she didn’t see them as newcomers or strangers anymore. Like Allison, they belonged here as much as anyone else.
“I just—” Allison started, then cut herself off, put a hand to her chest, and took a long puff from her blue inhaler.
Jenn understood how Allison was feeling, especially after hearing her story about being harassed by locals. Yet Allison’s reaction seemed extreme. Why was she so worried? “Take a breath,” Jenn told her. “It’s all good. Grierson’s been yapping off about sending the refugees away for weeks, and nothing’s happened yet. The police won’t let it. I won’t let it.”
Allison sat but fidgeted and couldn’t remain still. “He’s never asked for Sophie’s support before?”
“No,” Jenn said. “Not as far as I know.”
“So why now? Why three days after the attack on the Go Market? Doesn’t that seem a little suspicious to you?”
Around Jenn’s neck, Val’s cross weighed a thousand pounds. She hadn’t considered that Grierson was involved. Since that night, she’d trusted Dylan’s assessment of the scene and believed that amateur opportunists were responsible. A few locals who’d had too much to drink and gotten a little too courageous, maybe. But CFF? The organization was more of a political party than a militia, though like the Beaumonts, Grierson had his own security staff at his ranch. But how would shooting up the Go Market benefit CFF? Grierson should have
more than enough food to pay and feed all his people.
Queasiness filled her belly. What if Grierson’s objective wasn’t food at all? Could he have staged the attack to make it appear as if refugees had carried it out? Maybe his plan was to blame desperate newcomers, then point his finger at the incident and say, See? They’re dangerous and they have to leave. But would he go that far? If he was in fact responsible and the public learned the truth, his whole movement would collapse. Would he take that kind of risk? Jenn didn’t think so, yet she couldn’t help but wonder if Val’s killer was one of the three who’d come with Grierson to the farm.
“Yeah, it’s suspicious.” She decided not to voice her thoughts to Allison; her theory would only worsen her friend’s anxiety. Besides, at this point, without any evidence, this speculation wasn’t even a theory; it was a hypothesis at best.
For a moment, Allison quietly traced a knot on the tabletop with her finger. Then, in an instant, the skin on her face went taut. With a single thrust, she pushed herself away from the table, jumped up, and darted to her cubbyhole.
“Allison? What are you doing?”
She stuffed a pair of gloves into her bag. “Going home.”
“Home? To McKay Village? You still have half your shift left.”
One strap of the bag went over Allison’s shoulder. “I don’t care. Tell Sophie I’m sick or something.”
Jenn lifted an arm to block her. “Wait a second. What are you so worried about? If Grierson was involved with the Go Market, so what? He can’t snap his fingers and send you all to New River. He’d need a hundred people to do that. You think the police would just stand by and watch him try? Not a chance.”
The entire cabin was watching them. In the corner of her eye, Jenn caught Bryce lurking near the doorway. Allison relaxed a little but remained standing. She gnawed on her lip like she was afraid or in danger. “This is like Santa Fe, before we left. The Go Market attack, Val dying. It’s all happening again.”
“What’s happening?” Jenn asked, an unpleasant tingling sensation rolling up her spine.
“At the high school,” Allison continued, then collapsed into her chair. “There were refugees there, and some crazies with guns went in and just started shooting and stealing all their food and water. I don’t know who they were because we left that night, but I heard they killed like thirty people. Some of them were kids. If people here think that refugees attacked the Go Market, like you say the police do, then . . . then . . .”
Jenn’s mouth went dry. She knew that tens of thousands from Albuquerque had flooded Santa Fe after the bombs and that law and order had deteriorated in less than a week, despite the state government’s best efforts, but Allison hadn’t told her this story before. Selfishly, she was thankful nothing that awful had happened in Flagstaff.
Yet.
Then she realized that Allison wasn’t afraid of deportation: she was afraid of locals acting on their fears and attacking helpless people at the dorms. If the police couldn’t prove that refugees hadn’t attacked the Go Market and killed Val, it wouldn’t matter if Grierson was involved or not—some residents might decide to take matters into their own hands.
“If that happens here . . .” Allison continued. “It can’t . . . I . . .” Her voice cracked as she trailed off, and her next breath came out as a wheeze. She slipped off her backpack and reached inside, presumably to fetch her inhaler.
“Listen,” Jenn said. “Dylan’s at the house right now with Sophie and Ed. I’ll go tell them what you told me. Maybe we’ll head into town, talk to the cops, and get them to post some guards at the dorms. If they don’t do it, we will, okay?”
“Really?” Allison asked after a puff. “You’d do that?”
“Of course.” Jenn peered over at Bryce, who still loomed by the door. With a flick of her eyes, she tried telling him to come sit with Allison and make sure she didn’t run off. A quick nod confirmed that he understood. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Okay.” Allison sounded a little dazed, but she touched Jenn’s hand and added, “Thank you.”
On her bike, Jenn rode to the Beaumonts’ house. With each pump of the pedals, she imagined masked thugs storming McKay Village, rifles raised, shooting at anything that moved. She might not have seen what happened at the high school in Santa Fe, but she’d watched Internet footage of what the Second Empire did to people in Venezuela, Colombia, and later Mexico. People like Val’s family. The Chinese did the same in India and Southeast Asia. An easy way to pacify a town or neighborhood, apparently, was to show how simple it was to kill a few dozen civilians in a matter of minutes. Twenty or thirty murdered in cold blood at the dorms could convince the refugees to leave on their own accord, no organized deportation necessary. Jenn shuddered at the thought.
At the front steps of the house, she dropped her bike and marched up to the door. As she prepared to go inside, it swung open, almost striking her in the nose. Dylan stepped through and asked, “Jansen? What’re you doing here?”
“Sorry,” she huffed. “But Allison . . . She’s worried about the dorms. In Santa Fe, she said that the high school—”
Sophie, a rifle over her shoulder, came outside and interrupted her: “Jansen, I distinctly remember you being told to stay at the cabin.”
“I know. But Allison’s saying that—”
Dylan tossed Jenn a set of keys. She recognized them as belonging to the Dodge. After Phoenix, when the City of Flagstaff asked Sophie to return the vehicle, she offered to buy it outright. It cost her an entire deer carcass. At the time, the deal seemed like a bargain for the Beaumonts. Now, with food supplies so low and the woods hunted clean, Jenn thought the mayor might have won that trade.
“We’ve decided to head down there,” he said. “Bring the Dodge over to the cabin. I’ll meet you with the Nissan.”
He and Sophie stormed past her, down the steps. “Wait,” she called out to them, and they spun around to face her in unison. “What’s going on? What are we doing?”
Sophie bit down on a wooden stir stick so hard a tendon along her jaw bulged. “I’m beginning to suspect that Vincent Grierson has something up his sleeve. I couldn’t begin to tell you what it is, but we are taking absolutely zero chances here. He’s got this unhealthy obsession with the refugees, and the police are spread too thin to post sentries at the dorms, so my husband and I have agreed to take on that distinguished responsibility ourselves.” She threw her stick aside with gusto, but it caught a breeze and landed only a few inches away. Once she’d stomped on it with a boot, she added, “Hope you didn’t have plans anytime soon, Jansen, because you’re going to be working double shifts for the foreseeable future.”
Jenn wanted to hug the woman. She almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing, so she asked Dylan, “Really? We’re doing this?”
He waved for her to follow him to the trucks. “Yeah,” he said as she jogged to catch up. “Charlie told me about Santa Fe. The high school and the shootings and all that. We aren’t letting it get to that point. In a perfect world, I’d like to look back on all this and say we overreacted. That’s a lot better than saying we didn’t do enough.”
Jenn agreed with that.
Sophie had begun wandering away, perhaps to check on some of the laborers in the fields, but she stopped and snapped her fingers. “Jansen, is Gary at home right now? I’ve tasked Ed with speaking to Chief Morrison in hopes of gaining official Flagstaff PD approval for what we’re doing here, and maybe even some support for once, but as much as I trust him to get the job done, Gary’s got a better in with these people. I assume he’d be willing to visit the chief with Ed and advocate on our behalf?”
“Absolutely,” Jenn said to her. “That’s a great idea. He should be at home with Maria now. It’s not like he has a car to drive anywhere.” She cringed as she remembered the Kia he sold to Carla in return for an oxygen compressor and batteries for Maria.
“Excellent. I’ll send him straight there, then.” Without another word, s
he marched off.
At the Nissan, Dylan pulled open the driver’s side door. Jenn, standing by the truck’s tailgate, said to him, “Thank you.”
He paused halfway inside the vehicle. “For what?”
“Doing this. For helping the refugees. I realize this is probably a bit outside your job description as Beaumont head of security.”
“Thank Sophie, not me. It was her idea.” Dylan’s grin showed his chipped tooth. “And I haven’t forgotten your advice. Don’t screw it up with Charlie, remember? Well, this is me not screwing it up.”
* * *
Jenn drove Bryce and Allison to McKay Village and parked in the lot behind Sam’s old building. After hearing Allison’s story about the high school in Santa Fe, she half-expected to hear gunfire or see plumes of smoke rising from the dorms. When she arrived and refugees were peacefully working in the garden in the quad, the tightness cramping her belly melted away.
The Nissan pulled up beside them. With Dylan were two more guards: Maggy and Yannick. That made a total of five for the campus. A few others should be arriving later this afternoon. Jenn wished there were twice as many, but the Beaumonts simply didn’t have enough bodies to adequately defend both their property and the college. Already, shifts would be long and days off would be rare. Five was better than zero, though, and fortunately, most of the refugees lived in a cluster of residence buildings within a single city block, an area far smaller than the farm. Hopefully Ed and Gary could convince Chief Morrison to commit a few uniforms to the cause.
Bryce lifted a gun bag out of the Dodge. Inside were two ARs and a few spare magazines. They also brought sidearms, radios, water, and rations for lunch and probably dinner.
“Where we setting up shop?” he asked.