by Lou Cadle
She was moving before she looked, running for her daughter, and by the time she did look and see that Lily was nowhere to be seen, she stumbled, confused. Then she saw what had caused Zoe to scream.
The middle turbine was wobbling badly, and it was shedding parts over Zoe, who stood frozen, her arms over her head.
Sierra ran full out, her heart in her throat, unable to yell at Zoe to move away.
Misha was running too, and she was closer, so she reached Zoe when Sierra was still two dozen paces away. She grabbed the girl, crouching over her, and tried to steer her clear, but Zoe wasn’t budging.
Sierra ran in and wrested Zoe out of Misha’s grip and picked her up, not even noticing her weight. She glanced up and saw something the size of her own head tumbling down. “Move!” she yelled at Misha, and she slung her daughter over her shoulder and took off, running behind the turbine tower, hoping that it’d only shed parts in the direction it was aimed.
Misha howled in pain, and in the distance, Lily howled back. Sierra’s feet slapped the hard, packed earth as she ran, jarring her knees. Seconds later, she slowed down, let Zoe slide off her, and checked her. “Are you okay? Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry,” Zoe said.
“You don’t have to be sorry, honey. It’s not your fault.”
“I was scared. That’s why I yelled.”
“Of course you were. I was scared too.” She didn’t seem hurt. There was no blood, at least. “You’re okay. I’m okay.” She turned to check Misha, who was walking toward them, her hand on her head, blood trickling down her forehead. “Uh-oh. Stay right there. I want to check on Misha.”
“I want my dad,” Zoe said, and before Sierra could stop her, she took off toward the Quinn house.
Sierra was pulled in two directions. But Zoe seemed okay, and Misha did not. She ran back over to her injured neighbor. “Sit, over here, and let me see that.”
“Damned thing.”
“What hit you?”
“I don’t even know.”
Sierra had to peel Misha’s hand away, and she carefully moved her hair until she could see the wound, bleeding freely. “It’s shallow. But you’re bleeding.”
Misha brought her hand around and looked at it. “Damned if I’m not.”
Sierra tore off her own T-shirt. “Put pressure on it with that. I’ll get your mom, and then I’ll run over and get Kelly to see if you need to be stitched.”
First she had to turn off the turbine, which meant getting close to it. But whatever bits it had shed, it seemed to be done. There was a melon-sized gear on the ground, and other, smaller chunks. She flipped it off and then ran across the yard to Joan’s place and called for her.
“What?” Joan said, coming out of her back door.
“Misha’s hurt. Our place. I’m going for Kelly right now.”
“What happened?”
Sierra didn’t answer. She’d see soon enough, and she wanted to get Kelly as soon as possible. Wearing only a dingy bra and worn jeans, she sprinted across her own yard. Her dad was outside too, headed for Misha, who still sat there holding the T-shirt to her head. Sierra ran hard for the Quinn place and came onto a scene where all the Quinns were huddled around Zoe.
Dev was patting her on the back. Kelly checked her over.
“Kelly!” Sierra shouted, meaning to tell her to get her first aid kit and come.
But Dev stood, pushed Zoe into his mother’s arms, and pointed at Sierra. “What did you do to my daughter?”
It stopped Sierra dead for a second. “Nothing. There was an accident, and Misha is hurt. She might need stitches. Kelly?”
Kelly looked at Zoe one last time, saying, “I’ll get my kit.” She started off at a trot but slowed to a walk, headed to her house. “Arch, come with me.”
That left Sierra and Dev facing off. “What happened?” he said, his face red.
She tried to remember that he was worried and not to take his rudeness personally. “I’m not sure exactly. The ailing windmill may have given up the ghost. It spat out parts, and Zoe was right under it. Are you sure she’s okay?”
“No thanks to you.” He had never sounded more like Arch.
“Dev, that’s not fair. Zoe, are you okay? Still scared?” She approached her daughter, whose face was tear-streaked, but who nodded. “Good. I was worried about you.”
“Not enough to come over with her,” Dev said.
“Misha was bleeding. Is bleeding. I checked Zoe before I let go of her and she seemed fine.”
Zoe wiped her face and said, “Don’t fight.”
Dev and she glared at each other one last time and then broke the stare. Sierra said, “We’re not fighting, Zoe. We’re both scared that you might be hurt. It’s making us testy, is all.”
“I’m okay. Is Misha?”
“She’s awake and talking. But her head is bleeding.”
Zoe sniffed loudly and used her shirt to wipe her face. “I’ll help Grandma.” She reached up and patted her father’s arm. “I’m okay, Dad. Really.”
Dev still looked stricken, in more need of comfort than Zoe. But he wasn’t going to want that from Sierra.
Sierra said to him, “She’s fine. She’ll be fine.”
“Go on and find your grandma and see if she needs you to carry anything,” Dev said.
Sierra wanted to get back to Misha, but she knew Dev wanted to yell at her, so she stood there and waited for it, watching his reddened face with a calm expression.
“I,” he began. “You,” he tried.
She didn’t say anything. In a sense it was her fault. She hadn’t realized the turbine was in that dire shape.
“Damn it, Sierra,” he said. “I know you didn’t mean to. But still!”
“She’s okay, isn’t she? You checked her over?”
“Not a scratch, but she says something hit her. So she’ll probably get a bruise.”
“Good. I mean, good she’s not hurt.”
“That’s it? Good?”
“I’m worried about her. I’m worried about Misha and want to get back there to make sure she’s okay.”
“Go on then. It’s not like your daughter needs you.”
She was losing her patience with him. “She has her grandmother right now, and she prefers you, I’m sure.”
He shook his head. “How was I ever in love with you?”
“Beats me.”
“Hormones made me crazy.”
“That’s probably it. Also, you didn’t have a lot of alternatives.” She held a hand up. “No regrets. We got Zoe out of it, and I’m happy about that.”
“Are you?” But he wasn’t trying to be mean in saying it. He was calming down.
“I am happy, except when I’m afraid she’s hurt or in danger. And then I feel so sick, I wonder what I was thinking, having her.”
“Kids,” he said, like an old man who’d had twenty of them. “Here they are.” Kelly and Zoe were walking briskly across the yard with the first aid kit.
“Do you want her back with you tonight?”
“No. I want her away from that stranger. I have a nightmare thought of the pregnant lady getting hold of a knife and putting it to Zoe’s throat, demanding stuff of us that we can’t give.”
“You or Arch would just shoot her.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t want Zoe to see that.”
Kelly and Zoe were past them, headed toward her own place. “I gotta go. Thanks for not yelling too much.”
“Go on,” he said. As she trotted off to catch up, he called, “Let me know if you need help repairing your turbine.”
She raised a hand in thanks and put on speed to catch up to Kelly and Zoe. Joan and Pilar and Rod were all huddled around Misha, who sat on the ground.
Kelly shooed them all away except Joan, who she gave the first aid kit. “Hold this for me.”
Sierra couldn’t help, so she began to collect fallen parts. A gear, bolts, a bracket. Her father brought her a cylindrical integrated unit. “Yaw drive,” she
said, as he held it up.
“And brake,” he said, pointing to another piece on the ground.
“It’s not what I expected to go first.”
“The whole thing was in trouble. I’m honestly surprised it lasted this long.”
“I should have been able to repair it.”
“No, you shouldn’t. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Someone could have died. Zoe—” Her throat closed.
“She didn’t, and Misha is fine. Pissed off, but perfectly fine except the cut. And Kelly will fix that.”
“Here, Sierra,” Zoe said, and came over with a piece of cracked plastic.
“Thanks, hon,” she said. To her father she said, “We don’t have the parts, do we? To repair it?”
Zoe ran off to find more of the broken bits.
“No. And I’d hate to use it and have it fall apart any worse.”
“Maybe we should fence the area off, remind everyone to stay away.”
“We should take that middle one down, and go through and part it out. Use those parts to repair the other two in the future. We could extend their lives that way.”
“Can we afford to lose that much power? A third?”
“We might have to give up using the car during still weather, but I think we’d be okay otherwise.”
“We don’t use it often.”
“That’s true. If we conserve in other ways, we can plan for the use of the car.”
“We’re conserving as much as we can,” she said. Zoe brought over a tiny gear. “Thanks again. You have good eyes.”
“I’d rather be helping Grandma.”
“I’d like it if she trained you to be a medic. Is that something you’d like? Fixing people up?”
Zoe had already been walking away to hunt for more parts, but she turned around. “Does that mean I’d be able to help the pregnant lady?”
“I don’t know. Your grandma seems to think she can do very little for her. But it’s possible you could learn more than she knows.”
“No way,” Zoe said. “Grandma knows everything.”
“Well, maybe we could figure out a way to help you learn. Like, what if we worked on animals?”
“Help hurt animals? Ones that broke a leg or something?”
“No,” Sierra said. “There’s something I learned in school called ‘dissection’ where you take a dead animal apart to learn how it works.”
“Does that help you fix people?”
“It might. You never know what will happen, and the more you know about how the body works, the better. But I’d have to get your dad’s permission before we did any dissecting.”
“I’ve helped cut up rabbits and chickens in the kitchen. And I know what a gizzard is.”
“That’s a great start,” Sierra said. “We’ll talk about it later, with your grandma, okay?”
When Zoe had gone back to hunting for parts, her father said, “We’ll talk about power later too. We need to think it through, see if there’s anything we can do without. We can hand-pump water, of course.”
“In this drought? I’d hate to do that. Speaking of which, I have the garden partly dug up, looking for that leak. I want to find that before I climb up and see if I can repair the turbine. And I want to make sure Misha is okay before I do either.”
“She looks fine,” Pilar said. “Getting a couple stitches, it looks like. As for the turbine, I’m not sure that’s possible to repair.”
A movement in the distance drew Sierra’s attention. It was Lily, the wolf-dog, pacing at the edge of the woods. “Looks like the dog is worried about Misha.”
Pilar said, “I don’t entirely trust that dog. I’ll check over the hen house as soon as Misha is doctored, make sure there is no possible way for that animal to get in.”
“I was worried she’d come for Zoe, tell you the truth.”
“Maybe one of us should drive her off. I know Misha would veto any suggestion of shooting her. But you know, if there’s a baby around here soon, I really don’t want a half-wolf around too.”
“A baby,” Sierra said, in wonder. “I never thought I’d be holding another baby ever.”
“Are you going to have a baby?” Zoe asked, running up with a greasy bit of metal in her hand.
“No, I meant Janine’s baby.”
“I’ve never seen a baby. Not in real life. What are they like?”
Pilar said, “A little dull at the beginning. They only eat and sleep and cry. But about six months in, they’re pretty fun.”
“She won’t stay that long, will she?” Zoe said, her face showing the hope she felt for a new form of entertainment.
“I doubt it,” Pilar said, “but you never know what the future might bring. It’s a funny old world.”
Zoe handed over the greasy part and wiped her hand across her nose, leaving a trail of oil. “I hope she does stay. I’d like a baby to play with.”
Pilar smiled at her back as she returned to hunting through the grass. “She’s a good kid.”
“I can’t take much credit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
She didn’t follow that up. “I’m going to take these into the barn. Then I’ll make sure Misha is okay and finish the garden.”
Zoe came up. “I can’t find any more.”
“Let’s carry these into the barn, and let me wash your face before your grandma notices that grease,” Sierra said. Misha seemed okay over there, for which she was profoundly grateful. Zoe hadn’t been hurt, thanks to Misha. Sierra owed her one—or several—favors to repay her for sacrificing her scalp to protect Zoe.
By the time Zoe was cleaned up, Misha and Joan were on their way back to their house. Zoe went tearing after them.
“Walk!” Sierra yelled. She’d have to go over in a short while and thank Misha and make sure she didn’t have a headache. For now, she aimed for Kelly, who was packing her supplies, to ask: “Misha going to be okay?”
“It only took three stitches, and she might not have needed those. But needles and thread, I have plenty of. Everything else, no.”
“You do great with what we have.”
“With the weather, I can’t even find many herbs. I have some raspberry leaves that slow down bleeding, but not many, and I don’t think it’s going to be enough for Janine.”
“You’re worried about her.”
“Very much. I keep reading that section of the book, and without the ability to do a caesarian, I’m afraid I might not be able to save her if things get bad.”
“Is there any chance the problem will resolve itself?”
“At this point, so close to delivery? Very little. The baby must be making it hard for anything to go drifting around the womb.” She sighed. “When she goes into labor, you should go down and get Becca, so she can be with her at the end. And let her see I’ve done everything I can, or they’ll suspect I did her in on purpose.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“How’s the turbine?”
“Done for. Pilar says we should take it down and keep the parts for repair.”
“It’s getting to be that time for all of us. Our solar panels are so old, they aren’t giving us half as much power as they did when they were new. And my washing machine is going out of balance a lot.”
“I could look at it. Or really, Curt would be better.”
“He has looked. We’re getting some extra months out of it because of him.”
“You can always use ours.”
“I worry more about food. One day, when Zoe is your age, I doubt any of our refrigerators will work. I wish we’d stored more salt.”
“I wish we’d stored more everything.” Sierra watched Zoe come back their way. She looked around for Lily, but the dog was gone. Good. “Today, while I’m wishing, I wish I had more tubing for the olla system.”
“We’re out too. But I do have a backup plan.”
That was the cheeriest news Sierra had all day. “What?”
“Straws. P
lastic drinking straws.”
“Seriously? Why do you have those?”
“You remember the last time we traded chickens in Payson? Had to be over five years ago. There wasn’t hardly anything around any store. Stationery, stupid ceramic figurines, that sort of thing. But I did find packages of straws and thought, well, why not. Maybe at least Zoe would enjoy them.”
“Can’t believe there were still any plastic straws made by that point.” Laws had been passed to decrease the amount of plastic wasted on non-essentials.
“These were old. Anyway, with paste or tape or maybe even just threading them into one another, they might work to deliver water to the ollas. I’ll get you a box, and you can see what you can figure out.”
“Thanks. You’re such a pro. What would we do without your planning?”
“Survive. Maybe a bit less comfortably. But we’d survive.”
“Look at our garden, shaded by the sheeting you bought.”
“You could have used your own sheets and done without those.”
“Ours are worn. That’s going to happen soon enough anyway, that we sleep on bare mattresses. And then they’ll get worn too, I guess, and hardly be of use.” She looked around at the place. The wooden fencing was rotting. The side of the barn that got the southern sun, while not visible from here, was bleached and pockmarked. All the paint and stain they had on hand had been used. One side of their house was now a bizarre blue color, not matching the rest of the house. And she’d give a lot to have another two cans of that ugly blue paint. “Even if we found someone with more supplies, we don’t have anything to trade for them.”
“Seeds. A pair of rabbits or chickens. That’s about it.”
Zoe said, “Misha’s okay. You sewed her up good, she said.”
“That’s great,” Sierra said. “Thank you for that news, Zoe.”
“Sierra says maybe I’ll be our next medic,” Zoe said to Kelly.
“Misha has learned a lot,” Kelly said. “But with her being the one hurt, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a helper for her. Do you think you could sew up a head injury like that one?”
“I’m not afraid of blood,” Zoe said. “And Sierra said she’d teach me some—what was the word?”
“Dissection.”
Kelly looked at Sierra, eyebrows raised. “Okay, if you want. But don’t cut yourself with a knife.”