by Eric Walters
“That is hilarious!” Willow exclaimed.
“And dangerous! You wanted to go outside the walls, come on!”
I raced off to the gate leading out of the community, flinging it open, and we ran out. My brother saw me coming and yelled out my name and waved, almost falling off before he grabbed the ostrich around the neck with both hands.
“None of you should be out here,” I yelled to the group of boys watching.
They all looked at me without reacting.
“All of you, get back inside the wall!” I ordered.
They all continued to stare at me but didn’t move.
“Now!” I yelled, waving my crossbow, and they suddenly jumped and ran toward the gate.
The two boys and their mounts were at the far end of the clearing, moving fast. The birds were kicking up clumps of dirt as they ran. I raced toward them, waving my arms in the air and yelling.
The boys seemed to ignore me, but the two ostriches didn’t. Justin’s ostrich twisted and turned, and Justin was tossed into the air and landed on the ground with a thud. I gasped, but he instantly bounced back to his feet, raising his hands in the air as if he were waving to the nonexistent crowd.
I turned to look for Ethan and caught sight of him and his bird racing away down the path and into the woods. That path led to the cliff. Was that bird smart enough not to run off the cliff? And if it wasn’t, was my brother smart enough to jump off the bird before it did?
I ran across the clearing, past a stunned Justin, and down the path, my feet barely touching the ground.
The ostrich reappeared but without my brother on its back. Was he hurt? Had he been smashed against a tree or tossed over the cliff as the ostrich turned away?
I slowed down but didn’t stop moving, scanning the sides of the path as I ran, and then I saw my brother. And two men. One had a rifle and the second was holding my brother by the arm, dragging him along, while Ethan struggled to get away. In one motion, the man pulling him slapped my brother across the face, which would have sent him sprawling if the man hadn’t been holding onto him.
“Let him go!” I screamed.
They stopped and turned. They looked surprised. My brother looked terrified. Then, as they saw me, their expressions changed to amusement. I saw blood running down the side of Ethan’s face.
“Leave him alone!” I ordered.
The man with the gun chuckled. “You think you’re in a position to be giving anybody orders?”
“We have lots of guards. They’re coming right now.”
His smirk faded and he tried to look past me and down the path. “I don’t see nobody.” He started walking toward me. “Don’t make me go chasing you because that will only get me mad,” he said as he continued to close in. “I got no patience, so you just come now before I have to shoot you.”
He started to swing the rifle up.
Without thinking, I dropped to one knee, swung up the crossbow, aimed, and pulled the trigger. I heard the bolt fly, and at almost the same second I saw his reaction. His eyes widened, his mouth opened, he gasped, clutched his chest, and fell over backwards.
I now looked past him to where the other man was still holding my brother by the arm. Their stunned looks of disbelief were exactly how I felt. All three of us were frozen like statues. It was like time was standing still. And then I acted.
I dropped my crossbow and jumped to my feet. I raced across the gap between me and the fallen man to where his rifle lay. I got there before the other man even had time to think about fleeing. I scooped up the rifle and brought it up, ready to fire, my finger on the trigger as I aimed it directly at his chest. From this distance there was no way I could miss.
“Let him go,” I said.
He released his grip and raised his hands above his head as Ethan ran to my side. I kept the rifle aimed right at him, my eye looking down the sight and right at his chest. My finger was still on the trigger. All I had to do was just squeeze a little bit tighter and he was dead.
I looked up from the sight to his face. He wasn’t that much older than me—maybe late teens. He was somebody who could have lived up the street from us, or three floors down in our building. He could have been the older brother of a friend. He could have been the guy fixing the elevator in our building. Or he could be the man I shot dead right here.
I heard movement on the path behind me and took a quick glance. It was Willow and Justin.
“You should go now or I’ll kill you,” I said.
He didn’t move. Willow and Justin got to my side. Willow had his crossbow up and aimed.
“Did you hear me?” I asked through clenched teeth.
He nodded. “Yes…thank you.”
“Don’t ever come back,” I snarled.
He shook his head. He slowly lowered his arms and took a couple of steps backwards, still looking at me like he didn’t believe I wasn’t going to shoot him. He turned and took a few more steps, looking over his shoulder, and then started running. He was visible for only a few seconds before he disappeared behind a curve in the path, moving into the trees.
“Are you all right?” Willow asked as he lowered his weapon. I kept mine aimed into the distance.
“Oh, my goodness, is he dead?” Justin asked.
He was staring down at the man. The bolt was sticking partway out of his chest, blood seeping out. His eyes were open but vacant, blank. I looked away.
They all stood there, looking down at the body, nobody moving.
Then I walked away, still carrying the rifle, stopping only briefly to pick up my crossbow. The three of them appeared at my side. I didn’t know what to say. I just wanted us back inside the wall.
26
“It’s beautiful,” Colonel Wayne said. “I never thought I’d think a vegetable patch was beautiful, but it is.”
We were standing—Chris, Sam, Colonel Wayne, his second-in-command, Lieutenant Wilson, and three of his men, my mother, Ethan, and me—in front of our garden on our little island. There were tomatoes and cucumbers, carrots and radishes. All were ready, or almost ready, for harvest.
“These are the seeds you gave us in the beginning,” my mother reminded Chris.
“I remember giving them to you, but I never thought to ask what you’d done with them. You did well.”
“We planted them before you invited us to join your community,” I said. I was feeling guilty that I was telling her a half-truth. But that was trivial compared to the other guilt I was feeling. It had been a week since it had happened. Since I’d killed that man.
“So this is the island where you used to live?” Chris asked.
“Yes. The ten of us. This was our home,” my mother replied.
“I noticed that you never told anybody exactly where it was,” she said.
Ethan and I exchanged a side glance, but all three of us stayed silent.
“The garden survived very well, considering that you moved away almost three months ago,” Chris said.
“It’s had some help,” my mother said. “We’ve come out occasionally to weed, and we even watered it a couple of times when there wasn’t much rain.”
“But you didn’t tell anybody about it.”
My mother shook her head.
“I understand,” Colonel Wayne said. “I understand completely.”
Everybody looked at him.
“A good Marine always has a backup plan for all situations and scenarios. This here is your backup plan.”
My mother nodded. I noted that she didn’t say that it was only part of our backup plan. She had revealed the garden but hadn’t told anybody about the tools, supplies, and weapons buried elsewhere on the island. Was she going to reveal those things as well? But really, how could she do that without admitting that we’d been taking things from Ward’s Island and spiriting them away to here?
“If you worked so hard to keep this a secret that long, why did you bring us here today?” Chris asked.
I knew the answer already because my
mother had talked to me about it at length.
“Most of it is now ready to harvest,” my mother said. “But Chris, I need your permission to do what I want with it.”
“My permission?”
“This crop is here because of your generosity, your kindness to a stranger and her two children.”
“That was only basic human courtesy.”
“There’s not a lot of that around these days. It was an act of kindness, which made it even harder to keep this from you,” my mother said.
“What is it you want to do?” Chris said.
“Give it to Colonel Wayne and his community. They have people going hungry.”
Colonel Wayne looked at my mother in surprise. “That’s incredibly generous. And believe me, I’m grateful beyond words. But why? Why aren’t you taking the crops and just trading them to us for something you need?”
“I am trading it for something we need. We need your community to stay strong. We need that almost as much as you do.”
He smiled. “Thank you.”
“Chris, do I have your permission?” she asked.
“Of course. But if a good Marine always has a backup plan, then what is your backup plan now?” Chris asked.
My mother took a few seconds before responding. This was the biggest part of why she had brought the colonel and Chris together. I knew what she was going to say because I was the one who’d originally suggested it to her, confirming what she was already thinking.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but much more over the past week,” she began.
“Since the terrible incident with your children,” Colonel Wayne said.
I didn’t know he knew about it, but again, I wasn’t really surprised because everybody seemed to know. Most people just said nothing. Other people said things like “Sorry” or “That had to be hard.” Others said stupid things like “I could never kill somebody” or “I’m glad it wasn’t me.” Even Willow didn’t seem to know what to say to me.
“Yes, since that incident.”
“And you’re both all right?” the colonel asked.
“I am, because of my sister,” Ethan said.
They all looked at me. “I’m fine. I was fine then.”
“From what I heard you were calm and brave,” Colonel Wayne said.
“I just did what I had to do.”
That was the line I’d been using since it happened. It was the line that I repeated to myself over and over on the nights when I lay in bed unable to get to sleep.
“Emma, can you tell them what you’ve been thinking, what we’ve talked about?”
I hadn’t expected to be the one to do the talking. “I can try.”
“Things like that do get you thinking,” Colonel Wayne said.
I nodded and took a deep breath. “I started to realize that we can’t stop people from coming onto our island. If I hadn’t stopped them, if they’d really wanted in, if there had been ten of them instead of two, then my brother would be dead. I’d be dead.”
“But you aren’t,” Chris said.
“Not this time,” I said. I turned to my mother, suddenly feeling tears coming on. “Could you…please?”
She nodded. “Chris, she’s right, if there had been three of them, my children would have been dead. If a hundred men had scaled that cliff then we would all have been dead. We tried to build a secure place but we failed.”
“I don’t see failure. We’re stronger, safer, better, and we’ve survived.”
“We’re nothing more than an illusion.”
“An illusion that’s provided food, water, shelter, and security to over eight hundred people,” Chris said.
“But we’re still an illusion. Nothing we’ve done can withstand a direct, powerful attack,” my mother argued.
“Then we’ll continue to make ourselves stronger.”
“We can’t fix the basic problems. We don’t have enough weapons, or people who know how to use them. There are too many places where we can be attacked and not enough ways to defend them.”
“But we do have food and water, power, shelter, and—”
“And those are the things that are going to draw people to attack us. It’s just a matter of time,” my mother said. “As other people have less, then what we have is going to act like a magnet.”
“And they’re going to keep coming until they take it from us,” I said.
“But if we had more armed guards?” Chris asked. She turned to the colonel. “What if we had twenty of your guards?”
Colonel Wayne shook his head slowly. “Chris, we don’t have twenty guards that we can afford to give you without jeopardizing our position. I’m sorry.”
“The enemy is coming. We don’t know when, or how many, but their desperation is going to draw them to us,” my mother said.
“Then you’re saying we have no future?” Chris asked.
My mother shook her head, and then turned to the colonel. “But neither do you.”
He looked surprised. “We certainly are much better defended.”
“But you’re not better supplied. They won’t need to scale your walls. Eventually you’ll be starved out. You don’t have the resources or skills necessary to feed that many people.”
“That’s why we’re trading with your community,” he said.
“And that trading works until our community is destroyed,” my mother said. “Our destruction will eventually lead to your destruction. We’ll go in the blink of an eye. Your compound’s downfall will be slower but no less fatal.”
“We’re not going to give up without a fight,” Colonel Wayne said.
“No disrespect, sir, but it won’t be a fight that will end it. It will be the lack of carrots and potatoes.”
“Then what is it that you’re suggesting?” Chris asked.
My mother looked at me to answer.
“It’s time for the two communities to become one,” I said.
“We need to move to the airport. Your geographic position is better, your defenses superior, you have the airstrip and a larger parcel of land,” my mother explained. “We need to move everything—the people, the solar panels, the resources.”
Chris shook her head. “Even if I thought it was best, this isn’t a decision that I can make. You know how we work.”
“We know, but they listen to you. What do you think?” my mother asked.
She didn’t answer right away. Was she trying to find the words to tell us we were wrong—that I was wrong? Then she looked up. “I think Colonel Wayne and I need to talk more before anything else happens,” she said.
The colonel nodded. “I agree. Perhaps we could even continue that discussion now. Captain Williams, Ellen, would you join us?”
The three of them walked away, followed at a respectful distance by Sam, Lieutenant Wilson, and the three armed guards from the compound. That left just me and Ethan.
Ethan had been using his fingers to dig into the carrot patch. He’d already pulled up one big orange carrot and now he pulled out a second.
“This is for you,” he said, offering me the bigger of the two.
“It’s a little on the dirty side.”
He rubbed it all around against his pants, dislodging most of the dirt, and then offered it again. It still wasn’t completely clean, but I took it and had a big, crunchy bite. It tasted good.
“I like where we live,” Ethan said.
“So do I.”
“This time it’s me who doesn’t want to move.”
“This time at least you’d get to take your friends with you.”
“You too,” he said.
“I don’t really have friends…except for Willow.”
“I like Willow,” he said. He smiled. “But not the way you do.”
I gave him a punch in the arm. “I should have let that guy drag you away.”
“You’d miss me. Do you think it’s going to happen, the move?”
“What do I know?” I asked.
&n
bsp; “You know a lot. I guess I’m glad you’re my sister.”
“You guess? After what I did you should definitely be glad I’m your sister.”
“I am glad. I even gave you a carrot.” He looked down. “I know. I could have been dead.”
“We don’t have to think about that,” I said.
“Sometimes I can’t think of anything else.”
“Me neither.”
“I thought it was just me. What was it like? Doing that…killing somebody.”
“I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. I don’t want to do it again, but I will if I have to. I’d rather kill than be killed.”
“I could kill somebody too,” he said. “I could do it to protect you or Mom.”
“That’s why we have to move, so we don’t have to do that again. I just hope they’ll listen.”
“And all of this was your idea?” he asked.
“Some of it. Most of it. All of it.”
“You know, sometimes you’re smarter than I give you credit for.”
“Thank you. And you know, sometimes you’re…well you’re not as dumb as I give you credit for.” I shook my head. “Riding an ostrich?”
“I saw it in a picture once.”
“Wouldn’t one of the zebras have made more sense?”
“Zebras? Why didn’t I think of that? We’ll be taking the ostriches and zebras with us, right?”
“We’ll be bringing everything we can bring. Assuming people agree to it.”
That was a very, very big if, and I knew it.
27
I sat on the porch, reading my book, trying to put my mind someplace else. It had been a hard two weeks of discussion, arguments, yelling, tears, accusations, and more discussion, still without any decision. I really hadn’t expected my idea about moving to the airport community to set off so many things.
Some people were angry it was even suggested. It was so odd—some of the same people who hadn’t wanted to defend the place were now arguing that it was well defended. Some of them had stopped saying hello to me, or even looking in my direction as we passed. Thank goodness I hadn’t been the only one thinking about this possible move.