The Alliance

by Jolina Petersheim

  Charlie yells, “Snap out of it, Moses!” Definitely a frontline guy.

  I stop remembering then and start thinking. I think of Leora somewhere in the community, the wind pulling a few strands of her dark hair loose from her kapp as she runs. For her, a pacifist, I raise my gun and steady it on the log in front of me, but the man in the ditch is already gone. The refugees who’ve come from Liberty are dispersing in every direction, being driven back by the volley of gunshots hailing from the gang across the road. Most of the gang are taking cover behind their five windowless vehicles. Sean and Old Man Henri are on the scaffolding across from Charlie and me. Sean opens fire on the conversion van and swears, ducks low to wait for the return fire, and then rises to his feet, blinking back sweat.

  Some of the Mennonite boys—too young to join the church, but old enough to know better than to fight—climb up the scaffolding to bring us more ammo and even a drink of cool water from the well. I take a cup Leora’s brother, Seth, has handed to me from below.

  “Need some help?” he asks, jerking his smooth chin toward the perimeter.

  Not about to get him mixed up in this, I lie, “No, son. We got all the help we need.”

  I turn my attention to a heavyset man darting from behind one of the vehicles toward the cover of the ditch. I assume he’s trying to get around to our side so he can make his way closer to our flank. But my reaction and speed on the trigger is faster than the speed he uses to cover the short distance. I let two shots loose: the first right on him and the second just in front. The second shot takes him down just short of his destination. I watch as he crawls—still trying to get to cover—but his effort is short-lived.

  “Good shooting!” Charlie hollers. “We’re holding ’em back, boys!”

  Right now, it seems we’re not only holding them back, but we’re also winning. I do not fool myself. We’re outnumbered and only have so much ammo. At this pace, it’s only a matter of time before our luck changes and we are taken out and the community is overrun. Old Man Henri jerks back from his position. He cusses and growls, “I’m hit.” I can see the wound on his shoulder, and his shirt turning red as the flannel soaks the blood up like a sponge. Sean helps Henri lie back on the plank of the scaffolding. I turn to climb down to help as well, but the Mennonite boys who’ve been assisting us take hold of Henri and gently lower him from the scaffolding to the ground. They lead him away to what was supposed to be the makeshift hospital, though I doubt any adults are around anymore to assist.

  One boy remains with us: Seth.

  “I know how to shoot,” he calls, but his voice sounds too young to support his claim.

  Sean waves a hand, inviting the boy up, even though—behind Seth—I am frantically waving my hands and shaking my head. If anything were to happen to him, Leora would never forgive me. And I would never forgive myself. Seth clambers up the scaffolding’s rungs. His suspenders are crisp lines against the blue shirt. He takes Henri’s rifle and wipes the stock against his side, cleaning the sticky red with his pants. The image of that boy holding the rifle, his hands stained with someone else’s blood—even if it’s just Henri’s—makes me feel sick. Swallowing the burn in my throat, I call over to him, “You don’t need to be up here, Seth. Not if it’s against your beliefs. You could get killed.”

  Seth straightens his shoulders and casts his hat to the side. Tucking down in the hole that Henri was shooting from, he snaps the safety off and looks over at me. “Who says I believe the same as everyone else?”

  I nod at him, relinquishing my big brother stance, as I recall how important it was to be taken seriously at his age. “Okay, then. Make your shots count.” I point to the spot behind the van where our enemies are gathered. I haven’t talked to God in a long time—not since I walked away from every relationship I had before I left for the desert, including the one I had with him. But as this sheltered young man readies to shoot at the enemy through the very hole that Henri took a bullet from, I find myself praying. I pray for the boy’s safety; I pray that the shedding of blood won’t scar him the way it’s scarred me. And then I pray that this community—composed of families I once perceived as eccentric oddities but now perceive as neighbors and friends—can survive against all odds. For I know that, in order to endure this assault, we’re going to need a miracle of drastic proportions.

  Then, over the chaos and noise, I hear someone call Seth’s name from behind the scaffolding. But Seth doesn’t hear it. I turn and see Luke—Leora’s father, Seth’s father—shambling toward us. When he sees me, his bearded face cracks into a grin. Sean and Charlie both glance at me and use the moment of stillness to reload, wondering if this rough-looking character—despite his smile—is friend or foe. I am not sure myself. Why on earth did he come wandering in during the fight of our lives? And how did he get in here in the first place?

  Charlie must decide that Luke Ebersole’s not too threatening, because he sets his rifle on the plank and climbs down. “Hold ’em back for a second without me, boys,” he says. “Gotta get something from my truck.”

  From the base of our perch, Luke calls to Seth, “Jabil sent me to tell you he needs help loading the wagon.” Seth lowers his rifle and stares back at Luke—a wasted, gray figure of a man—but his face remains impassive. “You should go, Seth,” Luke prods. “He needs you right away.” The boy appears reluctant to abandon his post, but sweat glistens around the rim of his patchy bowl cut and his face is blanched with fear.

  Another barrage of bullets thwacks the wall of the perimeter, making us all duck down below our shooting ports. Seth quickly hands Henri’s rifle back to Sean, grabs his hat, and scrambles down the scaffolding. At the base, Luke pats his son awkwardly on the back. “You made the right decision,” he says. But Seth, ashamed, doesn’t even raise his head to look at his father, and I can tell that he either hasn’t made the connection or else he’s acting like he hasn’t. All four of us watch Seth put his hat on and walk down the lane toward the schoolhouse—not wanting to be part of that world, but also not wanting to be part of ours.

  Luke motions to the scaffolding and looks at Sean. Sean looks at me.

  “He’s all right,” I say, unsure of my judgment.

  Sean waves him up just like he waved up Seth. Luke climbs the scaffolding and sits with his legs hanging over the side.

  “So, you’re not a pacifist?” I ask him as he checks out Henri’s gun.

  “Think I’m a little too far gone for all that,” he says.

  Charlie, now back from his truck, ignores us while trying to climb up the scaffolding with a large metal ammo box and the four-foot-long metal pipe that he’s been lugging around since the EMP. He says to me, “Here, grab this box and give me a hand, will ya?”

  I reach down and take the ammo box by the handle and heave it onto the walk plank. “What else you gonna bust out today?” I ask. “A tommy gun?”

  Charlie, still grinning, opens the box and takes something out. I’m not sure whether it should be called a grenade, a mortar, or just an accident waiting to happen. Sliding the homemade ordnance into the back of the improvised weapon, he then uses a lighter to ignite the fuse protruding out the side. “This should give ’em something to think about,” he says, winking at me before steadying the beast on the wall. I am seriously thinking of diving for cover, because anything you have to light a fuse on, and then hold, is no better than suicide.

  There is a low wallop as the first charge goes off, sending the object flying in slow motion, like a softball through the air. It lands just short of the vehicles, and then skips and bounces on the ground and goes right underneath the closest one. There is a second or two of silence. I turn to look at Charlie—who raises his eyebrow and shrugs, thinking it’s a dud—but then the mortar explodes under the car, sending a shock wave throughout the area.

  “Meet Bessie, my pipe-bomb launcher,” he quips, setting it down beside him and picking his rifle back up. “That thing had over three hundred ball bearings.”

  “T
hat it?” I dryly reply.

  Peering over the wall, I can see that the pipe bomb has lived up to the devastation it was created to inflict. The men who are left are dragging one of their wounded as they retreat from the front to cover farther back. I doubt they were expecting this kind of defense when they tried penetrating our compound, for we have dropped them like flies. There are now about ten of them. We’ve killed twenty. Maybe more. The smoke pouring out of the burning vehicle makes it almost impossible to tell. I try but can’t desensitize myself like I did during that savage fifteen-minute span, seeing these men as fragments of people—skullcaps, tattered T-shirts, and jailhouse tattoos—rather than souls that will one day have to pay the price for the blood they’ve shed. The same as I will have to pay the price for the blood that’s on my hands.

  All at once, the bile that has been building in my throat since I watched young Seth preparing to take part in the violence, is more than I can hold back. I lean over the scaffolding. Whatever meager portion of food I consumed during the feast splatters on the ground.

  Rising to my knees, I wipe my mouth on the sleeve of my shirt and take a drink from the canteen Charlie tosses to me, swishing the liquid around before spitting it back out.

  I rasp, “Ever heard the quote, ‘An eye for an eye will make the world blind’?”

  “Sure have,” Charlie says, even as he turns around to peer over the perimeter, trying to see who’s left in the open to kill. “I also heard something like, ‘A man’s heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it?’ That don’t make me want to sit around singing ‘Kumbaya’ and holding hands. Does it you?”

  “Of course not. But sometimes I wonder if we’re becoming the same kind of evil we’re trying to fight against, so we’re going to end up also fighting ourselves. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to turn the other cheek, even if it means dying?”

  Charlie hocks over the scaffolding before looking at the scope again. “I ain’t about to turn no cheek. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep myself alive, even if that means picking off a cat.”

  “A cat?” I look over at him, thinking he’s joking.

  “Yes. A cat. I shot a cat that I found eating a can of tuna.”

  “Whose cat?”

  “Never you mind whose cat,” he says, lifting his jaw at me in defiance. “The point is, we can’t be feeding strays. Feline or human.”

  Charlie’s making a point, all right. A point not to look at me, despite the fact that I’m staring a hole through his head. “You know exactly whose cat that was, don’t you?”

  “Don’t matter. I didn’t eat it, did I? Just tossed it up in the woods, humane-like.”

  “You shot somebody’s pet and you think that’s humane? When did you shoot it?”

  He shrugs.

  “Was it the night we were guarding the gate and everybody else was out searching?”

  “My word, Moses. It’s like you work for PETA.”

  “I could care less about the stupid cat. Who I care about is Leora. She thinks her sister was raped that night they went out searching for that woman, ’cause later she found her wandering around in the field with blood all over her pajamas.” Now Charlie meets my eyes. I nod at him as his comprehension dawns. “That’s right. Leora thinks you did it.”

  “Don’t look at me like that, all high and mighty. You woulda done the same. I saw it there beside their greenhouse when I was out making my rounds, eating tuna as happy as you please, tail twitching and all. It had the nerve to growl when I stopped, so I shot it. Never felt a thing. I didn’t know your Four-Eyes’ kid sister was watching me, or I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “Yes, you would’ve.”

  He shrugs again. “Okay, I probably would’ve. But then that girl came out of the house and started cuddling the cat like it was still . . . alive or something, so I had to pry it from her hands and carry it up in the woods. I felt bad, swear I did. I would’ve taken the time to bury it and put a little cross and flowers marking its grave if I wasn’t supposed to be helping you guard the gate from a band of bloodthirsty thieves. So if she hiked up there in the woods after I left and cuddled the corpse some more, that’s her own stinkin’ fault. We can’t be having some worm-infested cat eating our food when we barely got nothing to eat! We’re talking albacore tuna, not even chunk light! My word, Moses, what was she thinking?”

  “She’s special-needs, Charlie. She doesn’t think like the rest of us.”

  His chin quivers. This mercurial man who’s killed more men than he’s got fingers on his hands is about to cry over a cat. “I swear. I didn’t know she saw me do it. I’ll make it up to her. Taxidermy the fleabag or something. Then she can keep it for a pet.”

  “Probably skip the taxidermy part, but I have to say I’m relieved.”

  Leora

  I pass the stack of community possessions, so jumbled that it’s impossible to tell what belongs to whom: cast-iron skillets, old quilts, a box filled with children’s wear, a tray crowded with canning jars, the waning light flashing off the dull gold metal rims and lids. The extent of these provisions makes it obvious the people do not believe the bishop’s unflappable optimism that this might be a temporary exodus and, once the danger’s past, we can return to Mt. Hebron. Then again, it will be a wonder if—by the end—the EMP doesn’t make pessimists of us all.

  In three weeks, I have not only become a pessimist; I have discarded my pacifist ideals in pursuit of revenge. The further I drift from this moral mainstay, the easier it is to be pulled by the current of my own self-preservation. Before the feast, when Bishop Lowell said we would continue sharing our supplies with those in need, I knew what I had to do. I overcame any qualms regarding my decision by telling myself that I was just going to reclaim the supplies stolen from us, and I would share them when—or if—the time came. But I also know my heart would not be drumming in my chest if I truly believed my own reassurances.

  My eyes dart across the ground, searching for any inconsistency in the leaves’ pattern, which might notify me of the place where, a few hours ago, Moses and I discovered the trapdoor concealing the dugout cellar. I only have minutes to load some of the canned vegetables, cornmeal, and flour into the empty banana box I brought home from Field to Table and store it with the rest of the community’s things, hoping no one will notice that these rations are in addition to what was allocated to my family.

  Maneuvering around the aspen tree, I see the trapdoor is already open. My pulse quickens. Someone is rustling inside. I draw closer, comprehending—with every step—just how foolish I’ve been to come out here on my own. I edge around the trapdoor and peer into the cellar. I see a woman’s back, her narrow shoulders and waist, her long black braid dangling past a sleeping infant strapped to her spine with a length of floral sheet. Sal. It’s Sal. I retreat two paces and trip over the backpack she brought with her the afternoon she showed up outside the community’s gates and we let her in.

  Sal turns. Her eyes appear as feral as the night I found her in Liberty, wearing an enormous blue parka and her face petrified. My mind struggles to understand what to say or do. Should I act as if I have just stumbled across this place myself, like I did with Moses, and it’s merely a coincidence she’s here as well? Sal climbs out of the cellar and slaps at the dirt clotted to the knees of her jeans. But she doesn’t bother shutting the trapdoor. She looks at me, and I look at her—both of us trying to guess what the other person is thinking.

  The words are readied on my lips: “So, you’ve been stealing from us, even after we offered you a place to stay? After we offered you food from our own table?” But then I pause and look at baby Colton’s soft hair and smooth cheeks. Sal glances up at me again, her eyes shining, and then looks away, as if ashamed of what she’s done when I was preparing to do it myself. I picture Anna and the rest of Mt. Hebron’s children in Jabil’s wagon, fleeing for their lives.

  Since Anna’s attack, I’ve known that I would lie, cheat, and steal to ensure her survival. I have a
lready attempted all three and succeeded at one, the first, by avoiding the truth. Both Sal and I are inadvertently tethered to motherhood, though we are too young to handle the responsibilities trailing along with it. The past two years, I have volunteered to be a mother and a father to Anna, but Sal . . . she is forced to be both mother and father to her fatherless child.

  “You and I aren’t too different,” I say instead of accusing, reaching across the cellar to touch her back. “We’d both do anything to make sure our families survive.”

  She pivots to face me. “How’s my family supposed to survive, Leora? I am by myself. Even here, in your community, I feel like I’m always by myself. That’s why I’m going back.”

  “To where? Your apartment? You saw what Liberty’s like!”

  She drops her eyes to the cellar’s plywood door. “I’ve been offered protection.”

  “By whom? The gang?”

  “Yes. The gang,” she snaps. “You think you got it so rough ’cause your mom’s dead and your dad’s disappeared. You’ve no idea what rough really is. My dad’s dead, and I never had a mom—or at least no mom that wanted me. I do have a Kutenai grandmother, but she cares more about drinking than teaching me about her herbs. I made up that part about being a healer so you’d let me stay. I was raised by my uncle, my dead dad’s brother, who was just as much of a deadbeat as my real dad was. He’s the leader of the gang. He’s the one offering me protection.”

  Startled awake by the rage in his mother’s voice, Colton begins to cry. Sal loosens the homemade sling, takes him in her arms, and prepares to let him suckle. I look away from her, to give her privacy and because I’m trying to put the puzzle pieces of her life into place. The night we met her on our way to the museum, we were stopped by a gang on our way back through town. The loudmouthed ringleader of the gang—whom Henri forced to hand over his cigarettes at gunpoint—is he the drug-dealing uncle she’s talking about?