Parched

by Lou Cadle

  Sierra had no doubt she could, and she knew Kelly was right. Arch wouldn’t want to show any kindness or leniency to these people. But she knew who would. “Zoe would say to invite them to stay, at least until they’re rested.”

  “Sierra, that’s low of you,” Kelly said, but without rancor.

  “I agree with her.” They all knew her position, if not the whole reason for it. As far as they knew, she merely wanted the killing to be done. Yes, she’d defend her home against armed invaders, but if all they were armed with was rocks and sticks, she’d try her damnedest to convince them to leave before using any weapon on them. “That’s the worst thing we should do here,” she said.

  “What?” Joan said.

  “Sorry, I didn’t say that, did I? Just thought it. At the worst, we should explain we have guns and ammunition, and that they should get back on the road. Put their sick woman in the wagon and move on.”

  “Move on where?” Joan said. “I mean, what direction did they come from? And what was happening there? I’d like to know.”

  “They had to come on the road with that wagon,” Kelly said.

  “We’re ready to harvest the next field,” Sierra said, and Kelly moved her position to stay between them and the strangers. The man with the bat glared at her, but once he’d done that, he backed off several feet. Might be he was making it a challenging shot for her, should Kelly decide to fire the revolver. And it might be a challenge. It wouldn’t have been ten years ago. Not even five years, when the Quinns still hunted for the table with firearms. But now, when Arch and Dev only used a longbow, and Kelly not even that, perhaps those old skills were gone.

  Sierra believed hers were. And if she shot to miss, that’s what she’d tell Arch. “A single shot over someone’s head should be the end of any confrontation.”

  “If they don’t have guns, yes, it should be,” Kelly said. “There could still be worse out there.”

  Joan said, “Another reason to talk with them. What if someone drove them out? What if they are being followed by dangerous people? We need to know if trouble is coming up the hill for us.”

  “Damn,” Sierra said. “You’re right.” She really wished this hadn’t happened. But while she was making useless wishes, why not wish the war had never happened that had cut off petroleum deliveries? This situation was what it was. “Kelly, are you willing to look at the pregnant woman?”

  “I guess,” she said. “I’ll give you the gun while I do.”

  Sierra didn’t want it. “Maybe Joan would be better.”

  “I’m out of practice,” Joan said. “And I was never great at it. You know that.”

  Kelly said, “Sierra, you always were the better shot.”

  “Fine,” Sierra said, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to point the gun at anyone.

  The harvesting of the less-ripe grain was easier, accomplished with the scythes, with Emily working hard to bag up everything the other two scythed down. Only two of the strangers were still watching them by the end, as they hauled all the full sacks of grain to the car and crammed them into the trunk and rear seat. The sacks on the rear deck would block the view out the rear window, but with no other traffic, that didn’t matter one bit.

  “Okay,” Kelly called, once they were done. “I’ll look at your sick person.”

  “Why?” said the man with the bat.

  “Because she’s sick, and I have some skill, and we’re all human beings here.”

  Joan and Emily stayed with the car, locking themselves in with the fob that held the smart key. They knew to run back home for help if there were gunshots. In minutes, they could return with a force of five or six armed people.

  Not that it would be soon enough for Sierra, if things went south in the next few minutes.

  Kelly handed over the revolver, and Sierra checked it, the actions still automatic to her after so many years. Round in chamber, cocked, safety on. She flicked the safety on and back off twice to make sure it moved easily—of course it did: it was Arch’s, and he took care of his guns—and nodded that she was ready.

  They walked up the dirt road, which was overgrown with dried weeds beyond where they always parked the car. The man with the slingshot led, and the man with the bat wanted to trail. Sierra gestured him to go on in front of her, but he shook his head. They compromised by walking side by side, but farther apart than the length of his arm plus the length of his bat. Kelly and the other man went first. He turned in at the last house and they walked up to the front door, propped open with an ottoman.

  The musty scent wafting out was powerful. Sierra stifled the urge to sneeze. An older man who had not been outside was standing there, looking tense. Kelly said, “Where’s the patient? The pregnant woman? I’m a medic.” The man pointed wordlessly inside.

  Sierra’s neck was crawling as she trailed Kelly into the hallway. Anyone could jump out from any of these doors. Her fingertip found the gun’s safety, but a voice in her mind was begging them: Don’t make me kill you. She hoped if it came to that, she’d be able to shoot to kill. And then she hoped she wouldn’t be able to. Sweat broke out on her face again, but not from the heat. Her breathing grew faster, and she had a powerful urge to run. But Kelly’s back ahead of her reminded her she could not, and she forced her legs on.

  She could still remember turning over the Paysonite Roy that night in Payson, seeing who she had shot, a new friend, and the sinking feeling as the whole world seemed to be falling away. She didn’t in any sense think she was there right now, and she never had, so she didn’t think what she had could qualify as a flashback, exactly. But the memory had never faded while most of the others from that time had. Her father falling, for instance. That had been scary, and awful, but she remembered only one quick visual from that day—the look of his crumpled body under the wind turbine as she ran toward him. The rest of it had faded away.

  But killing poor Roy was still fresh, in every detail, in her mind. The smell of rain, the dark night, the apartment building looming up on her left, the moan from Jackson, one of Wes’s men who had been along that night and was injured. The metallic smell of blood from both men, a sort of stereo version of a smell. Every detail was still crisp, accessible, and tinged with the horrible guilt of her stupid, stupid mistake. She was walking through a hall, Kelly’s back in front of her, still aware of where she was, but the memory walked the hall with her.

  The woman who had said “my wife” was in the bedroom, sitting in a chair, as they entered. On the bed was a black woman, light-skinned, and very pregnant. One of the men came in behind Sierra—not the one with a bat, thankfully.

  The woman in the chair said, “I’m Becca. And this is Janine.”

  Kelly introduced herself and Sierra, who nodded. The room was packed with five.

  “Jacob, you should leave,” Becca said. “I don’t think Janine wants you watching this.”

  “I can talk for myself,” the pregnant woman said. “And you’re right, I don’t.”

  “But—” said the man.

  “It’ll be fine,” Kelly said. “I’m not going to hurt her.”

  Jacob glanced at Sierra. She shrugged. Either he’d trust them or not. Sierra had some sympathy with his reluctance to leave, but for the moment, he didn’t have the power. They did, and not because of the gun. Because Kelly had a skill they needed.

  Becca said, “We have to start somewhere in dealing with each other. And I’m worried about Janine, so get, Jacob. Go on now.”

  He left.

  Sierra un-cocked the revolver and let her arm hang. She didn’t think she was going to need to shoot anyone in here.

  “So, you’re spotting?” Kelly said, leaning over the pregnant woman.

  Becca got up from the chair. “Take this.”

  “That’s okay,” Kelly said. “I’ll be moving around. But maybe you can pull it back to the wall over there to give me more room.”

  Becca did so and stood on the opposite side of the bed as Kelly, who was checking out the patie
nt, her eyes, feeling her forehead, getting her to open her mouth.

  Kelly said, “I don’t have any way to test this—and I don’t have my first-aid kit with me to so much as take your temperature, but you might be anemic. How much are you bleeding? A lot?”

  “Not a lot. Only right after I do a lot of work, like pull the wagon. Then it gets worse.”

  “Does it hurt? Contractions ever?”

  “No, and no. My back hurts, but that’s it.”

  “All the time, or periodically?”

  “All the time,” she said.

  “Can I feel your belly?” Kelly said.

  Becca said, “It’s still alive. The fetus, I mean.”

  “That’s good,” Kelly said. “And it’s good you’re resting in bed. Have you been walking a lot?”

  Janine said, “They let me ride when it gets bad. But it’s hard on everyone to do that, to pull my weight.”

  Sierra spoke up. “You have a horse or donkey? Or do you all pull the wagon yourselves?”

  “We do it,” said Becca, glancing back. “In pairs. We take turns.”

  Kelly was feeling her patient’s abdomen. “Oh yeah, I felt that move. His elbow.”

  “Do you feel anything I should worry about?” Janine said.

  “No. I was checking to see if your abdomen was abnormally hard. It’s not.”

  “So you were what, an ob nurse?”

  “No, an EMT. Briefly. But I helped Sierra through her pregnancy,” Kelly said, and she glanced at Sierra and smiled. “And I remember almost everything I read back then.”

  “You have a baby?” Becca asked Sierra.

  “A nine-year-old,” Sierra said.

  “Did your delivery go okay?”

  “It did,” Kelly said.

  “If you think me screaming like a crazy person for more than twelve hours is okay, yeah,” Sierra said, correcting Kelly’s version. “It hurt.” And pain wasn’t usually that big a deal. But it was significant pain and it went on for more than half a day. No drugs to take the edge off. And it didn’t help that Arch had yelled in the door that women had been doing it for thousands of years without drugs. Dev had to hold her down in bed to keep her from running out and slapping this shit out of Arch for that one.

  “But it went fine,” Kelly said. “And the baby was healthy, and Sierra was, and nothing went wrong.”

  “I hope that’s how it goes for me.”

  “I’m worried about your anemia, which I’m guessing at, from your gums and eyes,” Kelly said. “I apologize, but I don’t have a lot of experience with people of your coloring, so I might be wrong about that.”

  “We haven’t been getting much meat,” Becca said, “or food at all.”

  “I’m hungry all the time, and tired,” Janine said. “But that doesn’t matter. What’s wrong with me? Is it normal?”

  “I’d like to examine you vaginally—but I really don’t have my supplies here. Tell me more about your bleeding. Is it just spotting, or more? Bright? Dark?”

  “Bright,” said Becca. “And I’d call it more than spotting.”

  “Okay,” Kelly said, tapping her thumb against her upper lip.

  Sierra could tell somehow that she was thinking she might know what was wrong with the woman. And something was wrong, she thought, from the look on Kelly’s face, which she could only see the left side of. But she knew her child’s grandmother pretty well. Kelly was worried. “Tell her what you’re thinking,” Sierra said. “It’s better to know, and not lie there and think the worst.”

  “It could be—now I’m no doctor, understand,” Kelly said.

  “That’s okay,” Janine said. “Give it to me straight.”

  “Maybe a placenta problem. Placenta praevia, or the placenta might be trying to detach, or something like that. I’ll want to read up in my medical book before I commit to it.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s not rare. I’m sure you’ll be fine. How long has this been going on?”

  “I spotted the first trimester, and not hardly at all the second, and now it’s back and worse,” said Janine. “Can I survive it? Can the child?”

  Sierra thought the order of the questions was telling. The idea that the pregnancy resulted from a rape seemed more likely to her. “How long have you been on the road like this?” she asked, unwilling to ask directly about the source of the pregnancy.

  The two women glanced at each other. They didn’t want to talk about whatever had put them on the road—that much seemed clear.

  “It’s okay. Not important right now,” Kelly said. “You’re doing right by resting. This could resolve itself. How much longer until you’re at nine months?”

  “Ten days.”

  “Could happen any time. Today, even,” Kelly said. “We’ll be back later. And I’ll have more medical information for you. So no matter what happens, you’ll have that.”

  “What do you mean?” Becca said.

  “This is our farm. I know my husband won’t want you to stay. And truth be told, I’m not very happy with finding you here either.”

  “I—” The pregnant woman looked at her wife. “I don’t know that I can travel in this condition.”

  “We’ll manage,” Becca said. “But it would be easier if we could stay here until this is over.” She reached for her wife’s hand and held it, speaking gently to the pregnant woman. “You’ve been through enough.”

  “Who hasn’t?” Janine said to her, with a sad smile.

  “Expect us back. Maybe late today. Maybe tomorrow morning,” Kelly said. “Until then, stay in bed.”

  “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  “Yes, but only that. Otherwise, don’t move. There’s a well here. No electricity now, but there’s a hand pump that we installed on the central house’s wellhead out back. So you can haul buckets of water and flush the toilet.” That was directed toward Becca.

  Becca said, “What happened to these people? It sounds like these weren’t your houses.”

  “They were burned out. Marauders.”

  “Are they dead? Or living with you?”

  “I’m not sure that’s information you need to have. Certainly not if you’re gone by tomorrow morning.” Kelly had been sympathetic with Janine, but her posture and tone of voice changed now. “Expect us back soon, today or first thing tomorrow. Until then, you have our permission to be here—temporary permission. Hunt if you want, within a few miles. But don’t try to find us, and don’t trash the place. And leave our fields alone.”

  Janine said, “I’ll pass that on.”

  “No, you just rest,” Kelly said. “I’ll pass it on myself, on my way out.”

  Kelly came to Sierra, who handed her back her revolver. Kelly checked it again quickly and left the room, gun in hand. Sierra raised a hand in farewell to the pregnant woman.

  In the living room, there were four people gathered, three of them men. They were all white, and all dark-haired. So was Becca. Was it an extended family? Sierra thought perhaps so. Janine was an in-law.

  “How is she?” the man who’d had the slingshot asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Kelly said. “Fine for now.”

  Sierra said, “Are you Jacob?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I was getting your names straight is all.”

  The woman said, “I’m Gili. Jacob and I are married. Saul—”

  He interrupted her. “There’s no reason to share our business with these people.”

  “There’s every reason,” Sierra said. “You want our cooperation. Believe me. You don’t want to be our enemies.” She didn’t say it in a belligerent way. What she felt was sad and worried. “Please,” she added. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

  “We’ll be back soon with the others,” said Kelly. “And some medical help for your pregnant woman, if I can figure out what to do for her.”

  “Why shouldn’t we just kill you right now?” Saul said.

  “Because He
ll would rain down on you,” Kelly said, in a calm voice. “None of you would survive, including your children, and I know you have at least one of those. You really do not want to cross my husband. Word of advice, there. You’ll be dealing with him soon, so keep that in mind. Be very polite with him.”

  “Saul, please don’t make this worse,” Gili said. “We are trespassing, after all.” She looked back at Sierra. “We’re dead tired. We need a day’s rest, and a week would be better. And Janine—she’s getting close, I think, and with the bleeding and all….” She trailed off.

  Sierra felt the other people fade away from her focus as she locked eyes with the pleading woman. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Do the men run things in your group?” Gili asked her.

  “No, it’s a democracy,” Sierra said.

  A man who hadn’t spoken before now said, “How many are you?”

  Kelly said, “Enough. There’s enough of us, and more than there are of you.” She pointed to the ceiling. “And that counts the young man you have hidden up there, and however many other children who are with you.”

  “You’re strong. We’re weak. We get it,” Jacob said, weary, resigned.

  “You hunt with that slingshot?” Sierra said. “Pretty good with it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, reluctantly, as if he wasn’t sure where she was going with this.

  “I never took to the longbow,” she said. “We have ammunition and plenty of guns, but we try to hunt with other weapons to conserve our ammo. I was thinking about what you might have to offer us. Instruction in use of that weapon would be one thing. I’m pretty sure I could make one, but I wouldn’t have the first idea how to use it.”

  Kelly said to her, “Not now. We need to get home, or they’ll start to worry.” She looked around at everyone there. “We will be back, and soon.”

  Sierra said, “Middle house has a pump for the well out back. There’s a bucket over it. So you can use the toilet in here.”

  Kelly motioned her out and left last. Sierra didn’t turn to watch but guessed she was backing out the door and not turning her back on those people.

  “You said too much,” she muttered, when she’d caught up to Sierra.

  “Probably,” Sierra said. “I don’t know that we need them out of here today. The only real issue is the grain. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t care if they spent a month here.”