by Lou Cadle
“They’re not the greatest thing you ever ate. Like chard or kale or beet greens, pretty much. I wouldn’t eat them raw in any quantity. Cook them quite a while. There are still a couple pots and pans in there, aren’t there?”
“Cast iron ones,” Gili said.
“Right, I remember now.” They’d left them there for lack of space to store them and a lack of need. While everything else was falling apart, cookware wasn’t, and wouldn’t soon, as long as they took good care of it. “So anyway, just this last field here. Leave the stems and any brown leaves for composting.” He reached over to the nearest plant and snapped one of the top leaves off. It was dusty, so he shook it. Then he stripped off a bit and handed it to Gili and another to hand to Jacob to taste.
They both looked at the plant, and then at each other. It took Dev a second to realize they didn’t really trust him, so he pinched off a bit of amaranth, chewed, and swallowed. “It’s tough. And a little bitter, unless you boil it in a lot of water. But we figure it’s full of vitamins, and that we lose them through boiling, so we usually steam it.”
They each chewed on the amaranth leaf. Gili said, “Chewy. But I could eat this, yes.” She looked at Dev. “You’re giving up this to us? Food you would have eaten?”
“My mother is pressing for kindness. I have to be honest with you: my father is not.”
Jacob said, “And where do you stand?”
“Right here, I guess, willing to side with my mother for now. Janine seems okay. Sounds like she’s had a hard time.”
They exchanged glances at that.
“Or you all have, I guess. So have we. I doubt there’s a survivor out there who doesn’t have a tale to tell.”
“At least you have your homes.”
“We built for this. We planned for it. Some people thought we were crazy, but as it turns out….”
“You weren’t.”
“No. But the people who lived here in these houses also planned for it. They were off the grid. I’m sure they had weapons. But when they were attacked, they didn’t manage to fight the attackers off.”
“You were attacked?”
“Several times. And we helped another group who had been overrun.” He flashed back to the shock and disgust of watching what happened to Emily. Now that he knew her—that he counted her as a friend—anger over it was an emotion he could easily access. “We’ve lost things. People. I was sixteen when it all started. Barely sixteen.”
Gili studied him as if sizing him up for clothing size. “You seem older.”
“I guess hard work and stress ages a guy,” Dev said, summoning a wan smile. “And worry over my child.”
“Just one?”
“So far,” he said. “Who knows what the future will bring?”
“Who knows indeed,” Gili said.
Jacob said, “I guess I should thank you for the food.”
“Jacob,” Gili said, admonishing him. “We do thank you for it. You’ll take good care of Rebecca? Jacob is going to be worried about her, I know. They’ve always been close.”
“We will. Both of them, but you know, my mother isn’t optimistic about Janine’s chances. I have to be straight with you. It’s part of why she wanted Becca up there—in case they’ll be saying their goodbyes.”
“Up there, so you’re uphill,” Jacob said.
Dev hadn’t meant to say that.
Gili said, “It’s okay. We suspected you were. And we still won’t come up. But please think about the fact that we all love Janine. She’s family to me too.”
“I understand,” he said. “We’ll do what we can. We’re not trying to make your life harder.”
“You wouldn’t have offered to help Janine in the first place if you were,” she said.
Dev nodded and turned for the car. Becca and Rod were waiting there. She had a rolled blanket. Possibly some clothes inside, but he’d want to check it for a weapon. It’d be terrible if he was lax about security and let his mom get hurt. He opened the trunk and had her put it in. He didn’t hear any muffled thump that suggested there was a handgun in there, but he’d make sure it was him who took it out for her when they got home.
She hugged her brother and sister-in-law, said, “I said my goodbyes inside. Except to Saul.”
“We’ll give him your love.”
“And explain. Make sure he knows I wanted it.”
Jacob said, “We will.”
Dev got in the car and watched Gili put her arm around Jacob. Then Rod had the car reversed, and they were on their way. At the end of the private road, he told Rod to hold up, and turned in his seat. “Sorry,” he said, “but we don’t want you knowing exactly where we live. If you’d lie down on the bench seat there?”
She shrugged but did it. To Rod he said, “Drive past it.”
Rod look confused for a second. Then he got it. Until they were 100% certain this situation wasn’t going to hell anytime soon, there was no reason to make it easier for the woman to remember precisely where they lived. Rod gunned the car, getting up to a speed Dev hadn’t felt in quite a number of years, sped past their turn-off, went beyond it, and only slowed to turn in a circle at a wide spot in the road that had once had a passing lane for slow traffic moving up the mountain. He drove back downhill at a more sedate pace and turned in another full circle before driving into their road.
Long ago, they had kept a felled tree in front of their road to disguise it. But once people had quit coming by, they moved it away. The brush had grown up and the lack of travel on the road had let weeds gain a hold, so the space had narrowed, but it was still clear to Dev that it was a road. Maybe once his charge was delivered safely, he’d pull up some other brush and drag it across today, something light enough that not even the physically weakest of the women—his mother—would have trouble moving.
“Turn up our driveway,” he said to Rod, and he did.
“Leave the car here?”
“For now. I’ll move it back to the Crockers’ later on.”
Rod tossed him the key and said, “Thanks for letting me drive. Becca, glad you get to see your wife again.”
“Go on in, up the back stairs,” Dev said to her, pointing. “Through the kitchen, into the hall, and it’s the first door on your left. Bathroom is almost straight across from it. I’ll bring your things.”
“Thanks. Should I knock?”
“Just a tap and a hello. I doubt anyone is in there. We have chores to do.” Just then the Crocker rooster crowed. Becca didn’t seem interested by it, moving at a fast walk toward the house.
There was nothing in her blanket but some underwear, a T-shirt that might have been white once, and a faded photograph of what had to be her and Janine’s wedding. They were both in a pale, muted pink, like the color of the moons of his fingernails. There seemed to be a minister and a rabbi there. He rolled the blanket up, taking care not to fold or damage the photo. It was, no doubt, precious to them. And if Janine didn’t make it through the childbirth, it would be more precious still.
He hoped his mother was wrong about that. And if she wasn’t wrong, and Janine died, he hoped this group wouldn’t blame them. At least Becca would be a witness to his mother doing everything she possibly could. It was worth the risk of bringing her up here to guarantee that, or there’d be no chance at all of building a good relationship with the group.
Yeah, they could be driven off, and pretty easily, considering the difference in their weaponry. But his heart wouldn’t be in it. Knowing they had kids—maybe even a girl Zoe’s age, for all he knew—made him sympathize more with their plight. Hadn’t the Jews been forced out of places in the first books of the Bible, wandering all over, homeless, miserable? Maybe these Jews were cursed to repeat that story. Must feel like a terrible fate you’d want to be rid of.
He carried the rolled blanket into the house, following Becca. In the kitchen, his mother was at the table. “Don’t bother them,” she said.
“I won’t. I just wanted to bring this.” He laid
the blanket on the table. “Nothing in it but clothes. And a photo of their wedding.”
“You shouldn’t have snooped.”
“Dad would have wanted me to. I had to check for a gun. I’m not going to let you be alone with an armed stranger.”
“I can take care of myself.” She leaned her elbows on the table.
“You look tired. You take care of everybody. Let me make you some tea for a change. Do we have any?”
“There’s some yarrow.”
He checked the tins where she kept tea and herbs. “You have plenty of this—what is it?”
“The raspberry. I’m hoping it will slow any bleeding for Janine.”
“Is she already drinking it?”
“Just once a day. I don’t want to run out right when it’s important.”
“I can harvest more.”
“I’ve taken as much as the bushes can spare.”
“You look awfully tired. Maybe you should take a nap.”
“Maybe I should.”
That surprised him. She usually worked herself hard every day. He’d never seen her nap, not unless she’d been up all night. That was rare. Once, they’d had guard duty that ran twenty-four hours, but that had stopped years ago. The only time he could remember not sleeping in the past year involved a commotion with a fox at the hen house, discovering it had managed to get past their defenses, and they were all up in solar lantern light repairing the hen house, and then sitting on guard duty there with a rifle in case the fox came back before they could effect a better repair in full sunlight. He thought about that as he made the tea. It might be time to take apart the hen house again, check every board for soundness, scrub them, and leave them out in the sun to sun-bleach—basic defense against mites. Liquid bleach would be better, but that had run out some time ago, except for a single gallon, half empty, that his mother kept in reserve for medical emergencies and had forbidden him and his father to touch. She soaked needles in a bit of it every time she stitched up a wound.
He turned on the hot water tap and ran it until the hot water from the roof passive heater came out, poured it over her tea, and set the teapot on the table, and grabbed a cup from the cabinet. He leaned against the counter. “Before Misha, when was the last time you had to stitch someone? I can’t remember.”
“Curt. About a year ago.”
“I forget why.”
“He sliced his hand, at the base of his thumb.”
“Right. I remember now. That was ugly.”
“The scar is fading, but he’ll always have it.”
“Drink your tea.”
“I’ll wait another minute while it cools. Do you have chores?”
“I was thinking about taking apart the hen house. Washing it thoroughly.”
“Good time for it. No nest right now.”
“We should start a brooder.”
“I don’t know if they’ll do it in this heat, but you can try. Maybe it’ll rain still and cool down.”
“I hope. Two rainless years in a row worries me. Not much snow last year either. One of these days, the water table will drop below the level of our well.”
“I know. I worry about it. About you and Zoe.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”
“I know you will, son.” She looked at him. “Even if that means, in the future, pulling up stakes and moving on, you do whatever you need to.”
“We’ll all stay right here.”
“I mean way in the future, once your dad and I are gone.”
Dev didn’t want to think about that. Losing his mother would hurt. And either of his folks’ deaths would devastate Zoe. “Zoe has never known real loss,” he said.
“That’ll come soon enough.”
“I hope not. I mean, I know—” And he jerked his head toward the room where Janine was. He could barely hear their low voices, but not what they were saying to each other. “But everyone on the block is pretty young.”
“No one lives forever,” she said. “And Curt’s problem carries a limited life expectancy.”
“It does?” It was the first he’d heard of it. “Why?”
“I have no idea really. He mentioned it once.”
“I thought he was cured.”
“He went without treatment for more than a year. Damage happened, I imagine. How much, I’m not sure. He knows more than he tells me.”
“He does keep quiet about it,” Dev said. He reached over and poured the tea for his mother. “Drink up.”
“Thanks for making it.” She sipped at the tea. “I miss sugar.”
“Sugar. Salt for the table. Barbecue sauce. Soy sauce. Cheese. Parmesan cheese on spaghetti squash—that’d taste darned good, wouldn’t it?”
“I do my best.”
“You’re a great cook. It wasn’t a complaint. And we have spaghetti squash with sauce, which is just as good. With sausage, even, when we have any.”
“I made some of the javelina last week.”
“You’re the best,” he said. Though he didn’t often hug or kiss her, he felt the urge, and he leaned over and kissed her head. “I gotta get to work. You sure you’re going to be okay in here with them?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll go in and talk with them in a minute or two, after they’ve had the chance to talk in private a little more.”
“Okay. Yell if you need me. I’m going to take the car back to the Crockers’, and then I’ll start on the hen house.”
“Kiss my Zoe for me if you see her.”
“Will do.”
Chapter 12
Sierra had shot a pigeon out of the air while working on her blowgun training with Zoe, after Dev had come and gone. She and Zoe had plucked the bird’s breast, and she slit it open and started teaching Zoe about the various organs. The girl already knew a lot from cooking alongside Kelly. “Heart, liver, gizzard,” she said, pointing them all out. “People don’t have gizzards though.”
“No, they don’t. You know what the heart does?”
“It’s a pump?”
“That’s right. Do you like to eat them?”
“It’s tough.”
“Its function—its job—is why it’s harder to eat. It has muscles and they push the blood all around, and they work all day, every day, every night. Chickens’ hearts beat faster than ours, so their hearts work harder.”
“Rabbits’ do too. I can feel their hearts in their chests.”
“Yes. Usually, the smaller the animal, the faster it beats.”
“Does mine beat faster than yours?”
“I don’t know!” Sierra said. “Let’s check it out. I’ll say go, and we’ll both count to ourselves, and I’ll say stop, and we’ll report the numbers, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “But how do I count it? I can’t hear it in my head.”
“Oh, at your wrist, here.” And she showed her. “Or in your neck somewhere. I’m not sure where exactly is best.” She began feeling her own neck.
Zoe did too. “Oh, I found it!” she said.
“Let me feel. Sit still so I can really feel it.” She felt the tacky, sweaty neck of her daughter and the heartbeat under the soft skin. It really was a miracle, wasn’t it? That once, there had been no Zoe. And then she had grown inside Sierra from the tiniest start, and now here she was, her own little person, with a perfect heart, doing its job, beat after beat, for almost ten years now. All this brightness and energy and curiosity made of nothing but food redesigned into a fully formed person by genetic codes. She pushed down the emotion rising in her throat. “It was faster when you were a baby. And when you were inside me.”
“You could feel it then?”
“Hear it. Kelly let me listen with her stethoscope.”
“Would she let me listen to the lady’s baby?”
“I don’t know. We’re trying to keep you safe, so that’s why you’re not around the pregnant lady. And she would have to say okay.”
“Dad said she has a visitor.”
; “Her wife. The woman she’s married to.”
She frowned. “Two ladies can’t have babies, can they? Two hens can’t make a chick.”
“No. I mean, yes, they were able to, ten years ago, with a lot of medical help and equipment. It was a brand new thing then, done under special microscopes, and only a few hundred people got to do it. But not naturally, no.” She wondered if somewhere on the Earth, maybe in China, everything was still normal enough that medical tech was still at that level. If it were, it hardly mattered to them, did it? She drew her hand back. “You have a good, strong heartbeat.”
“Let me feel yours.”
“Okay.” She tilted her head back a fraction.
Zoe had to poke around Sierra’s neck to find it. “There it is. I was worried you might not have a heartbeat.”
Sierra was glad she hadn’t said “heart.”
“I suspect you’re slower than me.”
“Let’s count together.” Sierra found her pulse on her own wrist. “Ready?”
Zoe found her neck pulse again and nodded.
“Set. Go.” She counted her own until 20, and said. “Stop.”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Twenty for me.”
“Does that mean all kids are higher than all grownups?”
“I don’t know. That’s a good question. Two people aren’t enough of a test to know something for sure. In fact, if we tested everyone here, it still might not be enough to tell us because people vary. And science—which is what we’re doing—gets better results if you use a whole lot of examples in your experiment.”
“Do old people go even slower?”
“We don’t have really old people here. We did, but they’re gone.”
“The people buried by the crab apple trees?”
“Yes.” A new tree was growing right over the graves.
“Dad sometimes goes there and says a prayer.”
“That’s really nice of him. He liked them a lot. So did I, but your dad was closest to the man of all of us.”
“Did you like the woman?”
“I didn’t really know her well. She was very sick at the end. She didn’t even talk for the last two years of her life.”
“That’s sad.”
“It is.”