by Mike Mullin
My eighteenth birthday came and went. I remembered it for once, but it was a day like any other—we worked on building the third greenhouse during the day and held a subdued celebration at dinnertime.
Uncle Paul and Darla did indeed blow up the battery from the Volt and then the high voltage battery pack from a Prius, but on the third try—with a battery pack from another Prius—they figured out how to add a circuit to prevent the batteries from overcharging. We had lights that we could turn on anytime we wanted! When Uncle Paul and Darla demonstrated the system, I raised my water cup in a toast, “Here’s to reentering the 1890s!” Alyssa laughed. Darla glared at me.
I sidled over to Darla. “Sorry,” I said in a low voice, “it’s great. Brilliant. I honestly never believed I’d see a working light switch again.”
“You don’t have to be a suck up,” Darla said.
“That’s not true.”
“Why do you say that?”
I leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “Because you’re the only person in the world who wants to have sex with me?”
“That’s not true either.” Darla shot a murderous glare at Alyssa.
I intentionally misunderstood. “What? We’ve known each other two years, and you’re already bored with this?” I swept both hands down my scrawny, half-starved body and had to stifle a laugh.
Darla just rolled her eyes.
“I mean, I was going to let myself go after we got married, but now I guess I can quit working out any—” Darla stifled my speech with a long, intense kiss. Everyone else in the room was doing their best to ignore us. Living in a one-room longhouse takes some getting used to. “Wow,” I said, coming up for air, “that was—”
“Be serious for a moment, okay?”
I nodded, letting the grin fade from my face.
“Your uncle and I want to work on lights for the greenhouses next instead of helping to build the third greenhouse.”
“Won’t the light be visible for miles?”
“We’ll shield all the light fixtures and only leave them on during the day. Might boost production a lot.”
I nodded. It made sense—none of the greenhouses, even the ones at the old farm, had produced as well as they could. There just wasn’t enough light in the dim, yellowish sky. “We’ve got plenty of light fixtures and bulbs—we can scavenge more from any of the farmhouses around here.” “Good. But we also need more flexible tubing and another pump. To heat the edges of the greenhouse.” “And so you want to make another trip to the warehouse.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
“We’ll be fine.”
I was uneasy, but she had a point. We’d raided the warehouse four times with no trouble at all. “Okay. We’ll go next week. I need some caulk and nails too.”
“Thanks,” Darla said.
“But as soon as we finish these two projects, we’re going to spend some time exploring other towns. And find a source of supplies that isn’t in a town controlled by a knife-wielding psychopath.”
Chapter 33
We’d climbed Stockton’s wall often enough that we were getting good at it. Darla flowed up the outside of the wall like a black silk scarf caught by a fast breeze, dropping lightly to the ground on the other side. I followed—a little bit less efficiently and a lot less gracefully, but fast and silent all the same.
Nobody was around except the infrequent guard patrols, but that was no surprise. It was nighttime and so cold that nobody in their right mind would be outdoors. What was surprising was that there were no guards in front of the warehouse. The two empty semitrailers were still there, looming rectangles in the darkness, and the big overhead and pedestrian doors to the warehouse were both locked.
“What does it mean?” I whispered.
“They were mostly guarding the food in the trucks,” Darla whispered back. “No need to waste manpower now that it’s gone.”
We slipped around to the back of the warehouse. Everything looked the same back there. I moved the piece of brush away from the seam we had opened in the wall, wiped the snow away from it, and held the panel for Darla. “Ladies first,” I whispered.
She snorted softly and lay down, sliding sideways into the dark interior of the warehouse. Then she held the seam open from the inside so I could follow her.
We lit a candle and gathered our supplies in silence, stuffing our backpacks with caulk, nails, and electrical supplies, and then settling rolls of flexible tubing over our shoulders. My gaze landed on the leather belts hanging from a hook set in a pegboard wall. I remembered the hard knots of boiled leather, chewy and slightly slimy, sliding down my throat toward my sunken stomach. I shuddered and turned away.
Darla made a point of holding the metal flap out of the way for me when it was time to leave. “Ladies first,” she whispered.
I scowled at her, although I realized she couldn’t see me—we had already blown out the candle. I lay sideways on the floor, thrust my pack and the roll of tubing through, and then wriggled my way into the gap.
On the far side, someone seized my arms and yanked me roughly to my feet.
Chapter 34
At least three guys surrounded me—one holding each arm, and one I could sense as a dark shape looming in front of me.
Darla. I had to warn Darla without tipping off these guys that anyone was with me.
I slammed my heel into the wall, knocking the metal panels together with a clang. “Let go of me!” I screamed. I couldn’t move my arms, so I lifted my foot again and brought it down full force on the instep of the guy to my right. There was a crunch of breaking bones, and he howled in pain.
I heard the scrape of metal on metal as someone unshielded a lantern, blinding me momentarily. The guys holding my arms picked me up, lifting me off my feet, and slammed me facedown into the snow. On my way down, I saw that there were more than a dozen men out there. Behind them, watching everything and fingering a knife, stood Red.
The guys holding me had my wrists twisted and one hand on the back of each of my elbows. All they had to do was pull up on my wrists, push down on my elbows, and snap—my arms would break. I tried to fight anyway, lashing out with my legs. Someone fell on them, holding them down. Another guy approached with a rope. In less than two minutes, my arms and legs were trussed; there was nothing I could do but lay there like some useless, abandoned parcel.
“The other one is still inside,” Red said. “Break into squads. One through the front, one through the back. Tie him, and bring him out here.”
The men split up and disappeared from my field of vision. Nothing happened for a long while. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Red took out a leather strap and stropped his knives. The two-foot gladius at his right hip. Then the hunting knife at his left hip, its spine rippled with wicked serrations. Two small throwing knives, one from his right boot and then one from his left. The snow burned my left cheek and forehead. I heard shouting, Darla’s high voice mixed with the grunts and heavy breathing of men exerting themselves. Red impassively pulled a dagger from a sheath somehow attached to the back of his collar and started stropping both sides of its wicked-looking blade. Just as Red was reaching into his jacket—presumably for yet another knife—the men came around the corner, carrying a wriggling and struggling Darla, bound even more thoroughly than I was. They dropped her into the snow beside me.
“You okay?” I whispered.
“I’m trussed like a calf at a rodeo, lying in snow so cold it’d freeze the tits off a snowshoe hare. What do you think?”
“Shut up,” one of the men near her said, kicking her leg.
I struggled with the ropes that bound me, which only made them bite deeper into my arms. I tried to shift my legs over Darla’s to protect her in some meager way. I couldn’t even do that.
“Load them on the sled,” Red ordered. “Keep them in the barracks under guard tonight. I’ll deal with the problem tomorrow.”
We were tossed roughly onto a sled that resembl
ed an oversized toboggan. I landed across Darla in an X pattern.
“Christ and Santa Claus,” she whispered. “You gain weight?”
“Not really How’s your leg?” Four guys took up ropes tied to the front of the sled and pulled. It lurched into motion with a jerk that rocked me back against Darla’s thighs.
“Ow! It was fine until now.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Might bruise. Hope we’re alive long enough to find out.”
“Me too,” I said. “How’d they know we’d be there?”
“Probably noticed something missing. Stationed their guards in back instead of the front, maybe in one of the buildings nearby, told them not to build a fire.” The steady susurrus of the sled’s runners against the icy road masked our conversation. “I’m more worried about what they might do with us,” Darla said in an even softer voice.
I thought I knew what they were planning. If I had been talking to anyone else—Max, Uncle Paul, Alyssa, whoever—I would have lied. Told some pleasant untruth about a slap on the wrist. But I was lying atop Darla, the toughest woman I’d ever met. I told her the truth. “They’re out of food. Have been for at least a month. But they haven’t attacked Warren like last time they ran out. Red and these guys look pretty well fed. They’ve got to be eating something.”
“Yeah,” Darla sighed so heavily that it might easily have turned into a sob.
“I figure we’ll be flensed,” I said, putting words to what we were both thinking.
“That’s what I figured too.” A long silence followed, which Darla ultimately broke. “Well, shit.” Her voice was surprisingly steady. “I was really looking forward to seeing what our children would look like. I figured my pretty genes would conquer your ugly ones, but you never know. Genetic crapshoot.”
“Any child of yours would be beautiful,” I said quietly. I desperately wanted to hold her hand, to kiss her, but my hands were tied, and I couldn’t even shift my head enough to reach her lips.
“We aren’t dead yet,” Darla said.
I had an idea, but before I could say anything, the sled lurched to a stop in front of the downtown bowling alley. Two guys grabbed my shoulders and dragged me inside. An oil lamp, turned low, threw a dim and shadow-rimmed light around the room. All the racks of balls had been cleared out, leaving a large, open room. An improvised hearth had been built in the middle of the room and a small hole cut in the roof to vent smoke. But the fire was banked and the room frigid. Rows of cots and military-style footlockers filled the space. About three-fourths of them were occupied by sleeping men, maybe a hundred or so in total. A couple of the men woke, glaring blearily in our direction. I wondered why there were only men in Red’s military: maybe he was an old-fashioned sort of tyrant?
My captors dropped me, my head thunking on the hard linoleum floor. Another pair of guys dumped Darla beside me. They turned to leave, and I called out, “Excuse me! I need to take a leak. You mind?” I held up my bound hands.
One of the men turned and growled. “Piss yourself, thief. We don’t care.”
The four guys who had brought us in dragged chairs under the oil lamp and started a card game. I guess they were guarding us. Not that we could do anything—I could barely move. I inched my head closer to Darla’s so we could talk in whispers without being overheard.
We talked through the remainder of the night, falling quiet only when the dim and uncaring morning light seeped into the room through the cracks in the black paper covering the bowling alley’s windows.
Chapter 35
Darla and I expected to be executed at first light. Nothing happened, though. The men who had been asleep in the barracks woke and left, and a smaller crew—maybe fifty or so—came in, stowed their guns and knives, and bedded down. We got four new guards; they built up the fire before settling down to another card game.
I didn’t want to let myself hope—it would only be worse when my hopes were dashed—but if they were going to flense us, wouldn’t they have done it already?
I tried to get our new guards to talk to us. I asked them question after question until one of them got up from the card game and kicked me in the ribs. I didn’t think he had cracked a rib, but it hurt—badly enough that I quit asking questions.
By late afternoon my mouth tasted of dry ash, my stomach felt like it had shrunk to the size of a walnut, and by then I really did need to pee. I squeezed my legs together, desperate to avoid the ignominy of pissing myself. I knew I was going to die, but I wasn’t as scared as I had expected to be. I had done okay; my family could eat because of the homestead I’d helped to establish, the greenhouses I helped to build.
All the men who had slept through the day shift were up, chatting in small knots throughout the room, cleaning their guns, or playing cards or dice. A steady stream of them came and went—using an outdoor latrine or wash area, I figured.
“Alex,” Darla whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said, surprised that I meant it. I had argued against continuing our raids on Stockton, after all. “We did good.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “we did.”
Red slid into the barracks, as silent as a stalking cat. It took a few seconds for anyone else to notice he was there. Then the card players dropped their hands and rose to salute so fast that their cards scattered willy-nilly, fluttering to the floor around them.
“Bring them,” Red ordered.
Our legs were cut free, and men hauled us to our feet. I sagged—hot streaks of pain ran up my legs from my ferociously tingling feet. I wasn’t sure I could walk. The men half-dragged me out the door. I looked over my shoulder; Darla was being dragged through the doorway too. Her foot hit the jamb, and she yelped in pain.
All the men in the barracks followed us—an escort of over fifty. I mean, I knew how to fight, but this was ridiculous. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Shut up, thief,” the man at my right shoulder growled.
“Where are we going?” I repeated.
“I’ve got a gag,” he said. “Open your mouth again, and I’ll use it.”
They marched us down the road to Stockton’s east gate. Every resident of Stockton must have been gathered there, more than five hundred people arrayed in a huge, rough ellipse. People sat atop the car wall or stood in the large, open area just inside the gate. In the middle of the ring of people, a hot fire burned. Cut logs were scattered around the fire as if to serve as stools. A bucket full of a viscous black substance—tar or rubber, maybe—bubbled over the fire. Darla gasped—somehow she knew what all this was for, and she was terrified. We were too far apart to whisper to each other.
Red stepped into the middle and drew his gladius, holding it high over his head, where firelight flickered along its steel like bolts of heat lightning. The crowd was instantly silent.
“We were born,” Red yelled, his voice surprisingly loud coming from his slight body, “in a time of weakness. Of sloth. Of indolence.” He turned as he talked, taking in everyone. They were either mesmerized or terrified. “The laws of our childhoods, the laws of forgiveness,” Red sneered as he said the words, “of rehabilitation—they do not serve us now. They were laws for children, in a society filled with children.
“The volcano has burned away that old world. Those of us who survived have been reforged. We were born to a world of fat; we have been reborn in a world of steel.
“There are laws for a world of steel. Old laws, true laws. Laws of sharp vengeance, not flabby laws of mercy. Laws of the knife.”
Someone in the crowd screamed, “Take their heads!” Red whirled to glare at the spot the interruption had come from. The silence was absolute.
“The old laws are harsh laws and demand strict obedience. The penalty for theft is not a head. It is a hand.” Suddenly I understood what the bubbling tar was for. And the logs weren’t stools. They were chopping blocks.
Chapter 36
I lashed out, launching a side kick at the knee of the guy on
my right. His leg bent backward with an awful crunching sound, and he screamed, letting go of me and collapsing. Three guys moved in to try to take his place. I twisted powerfully, throwing the guy clinging to my left arm into them. I felt almost infinitely strong, like I could have flung him a city block. Two of the three guys advancing on me went down in a tangle of limbs. I heard a high-pitched oof and knew Darla was fighting too. I took a step forward and kicked the guy still advancing on me in the stomach. His body curled around my boot, and he fell.
“Stop!” Red yelled.
I whirled, keeping low, wishing my hands were free to block and punch. Red was behind Darla. His right arm reached around her, and the tip of his gladius was poised against the corner of her right eye. A trail of blood dribbled slowly down her face, as if she were a vampire weeping blood instead of tears.
“I’ll blind her,” Red said calmly.
“No,” I said. It was more a prayer than a command.
“Jeff!” Red barked. “Put your knife to her eye.” One of the men standing nearby drew a dagger from the sheath at his side and held it to Darla’s left eye. Red lowered his gladius and sauntered toward me.
“Take care of them,” he ordered someone else. A group of men scurried forward. The guy I had kicked in the stomach finally caught his breath and walked off under his own power. The guy whose knee I had shattered had to be carried.
“Now, if I cut your woman’s eyes out,” Red said, “I’d do it surgically. I’d pierce the epidermis right at the corner of the eye, pop the eyeball free, and sever the optical nerve and the central retinal artery. Oh, there would be bleeding, no doubt. You don’t sever an artery without drawing blood. And I might nick the sclera, so intraocular fluid would leak along with the blood. But my knives are clean and sharp. My cuts are precise. She’d probably survive.