“Then I should be checking my clothing.”
“Possibly.”
She rolled on top of Ray and winced. “Jessie loved it out here with you. I couldn’t put her in her own bed.”
“I’m truly sorry. I felt for her like my favorite niece, maybe even the daughter I’ll never have.”
Karla sighed. “I know. And in a very odd way, I hated you for it.”
“Why?”
“Because I married a worthless piece of shit and thought all men were like him.”
“That doesn’t explain anything.”
Karla kissed him, then stiffly got to her feet. “When you figure it out, well talk about the rain check.”
* * *
“You’ve got one chance to help yourself,” Karla said. “You won’t get a second offer.”
The prisoner named Sean was handcuffed behind his back, on the floor against the wall of a damaged cellar bedroom. He was younger than her, not much taller, lean, not simply thin. Karla pressed a gun to his forehead.
“Where exactly are the farms you collect from?”
“If I tell you?”
He was the first she’d put the question to who seemed to know. “You’ll get better treatment than if you didn’t.”
“You’re not offering much.”
“Depends on your perspective. Your friends will be brutally tortured. Hours with hot pokers, acid in the eyes, hands in a meat grinder. That sort of thing. They’ll die eventually and wish it were a lot sooner. If you give me good information, you will stay alive. You’ll be fed and at least semi-comfortable. Your restraints will be removed. If you show a positive attitude, you may regain your freedom one day.”
Sean stared at her. “I’d like to hear that from someone in charge.”
“Do you understand what one chance means?” Karla sat on his legs and caressed his genitals with the pistol. “I’m all that stands between you and an excruciating journey to a hole in the ground.”
His eyes held hers, probing for truth. He found nothing, and Karla read his collapse. “I can draw maps,” he said.
“Okaaay.” She left and returned with a pad of paper. She sat beside him, the gun tucked in her jeans. “Give me a starting point and directions.”
* * *
They left in her truck—Sean cuffed in the front seat, Rainy in back with a gun to his head. They saw eight farms from a distance. He knew of three more. All had crops in small fields but no people visible. Karla added notes to the maps. Then she drove for home.
“Do you care what happens to your friends?” Karla asked.
He looked at her without answering.
“It’s not a trick question. You saved them a lot of pain. I thought you should know.”
“What’s going to happen, now?”
“To you or to them?”
“Both, I guess.”
“They’ll be shot. You’ll be released a few days after. For real. I’m brutally honest.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
* * *
“What was so important,” Ray asked as Karla chained her prisoner to a pedestal sink in a bathroom, leaving him with one hand free. Karla swiveled a camera to face him.
“You can’t move the sink. Please don’t try. It will only make me angry.” She shut the door and stepped away.
“Our future. They took a beating, eighty to four.”
“Five,” Ray said.
“I don’t count Blake as a loss.” He had died in the field beside Ray. Karla hadn’t pressed for details. “Two more tries; there won’t be enough of us to fight off a mosquito.”
“We were lucky. They come again it will be worse.”
“I am going to find our neighbors. I am going to ask them to join us. I am also going to kill every last Tri-State man I can find.”
“By yourself?”
“You said I was lucky. I shouldn’t need much help. Anyway, it’s the people beside me who are at real risk.”
“You want me along?”
“No one better. You know how to operate a mortar?”
Ray nodded.
“Show me and stay home.”
* * *
Karla and Rainy set up on a warehouse roof across the southern split of the Mississippi River from the Rock Island Arsenal. Full dawn was a few minutes off. The still morning would then be broken and Karla would concentrate on her last two targets.
“What does it feel like to not be afraid?” Rainy asked. She was watching Arsenal Island through the scope of the TAC 50.
Karla repositioned mortal shells laid out on the flat roof. “Sometimes it’s every bit of you focused on the minutest detail. Or anger so hot nothing else matters. Always it’s forgetting what could happen.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Think about being dead,” Karla said.
“There’s nothing to think about. You’re dead, you don’t think. You don’t see. You’re dead.”
“The key is you don’t know you’re dead because there is no you. Nothing matters. There is no pain, no regrets. Nothing to be afraid of.”
Rainy pursed her lips in thought. “How long?”
“Very soon. Get ready.”
Three huge explosions to their left and two to the right. Bridges. Karla fired the Mortar, landing the shell one building short of her target. She adjusted and fired another. The shell fell among people fleeing the buildings. The third round hit what Sean said was the leader’s quarters. Six more followed.
Rainy shot at men in the street and in facing windows. Karla moved on to her main target and let loose on Tri-State’s food storage building. She dropped the last mortar rounds on two barracks. Men climbed to a factory roof carrying a machine gun. Karla picked up the M24 and shot them as they set it up. Rainy picked off two men farther off in a stone tower.
Return fire from unseen riflemen raked their building. Karla motioned Rainy and they fled down a ladder at the back and ran to their truck. Screened from the island, they headed south, abandoning the boat Karla had used to plant explosives. They crossed the Mississippi river in Muscatine and were home an hour and a half later.
Ray met them at the truck. “You going to fill me in on the black ops?”
“We blew the bridges,” Rainy said.”
“What bridges?”
“They took over the Rock Island Arsenal. We disconnected them from the mainland. They’ll have a bit more trouble getting artillery off.”
“Judging from the number of rounds they had with the Howitzer, their real problem is ammunition.”
“They didn’t make it at Rock Island?”
“No. The ammo probably came from a Guard outfit. Same as the mortars.”
“Where would you get rounds for a Howitzer?”
“I think they come from Burlington . . . .” Ray stared at the equipment barn. “Iowa. Where is that?”
“Down the river.”
“How far?”
Karla shrugged. “Sixty miles? What else is there?”
“Everything you ever wanted in artillery shells and more.”
“Think there’s anyone there?”
“I guess we’d have to look.”
“Think you can handle it?” Karla asked. “I’ve got house calls to make.”
* * *
Karla showered and changed into work jeans, boots, and a powder blue, sleeveless T-top. Rainy met her at Ray’s truck.
“You don’t have to do this,” Karla said.
“I like to watch how you work.”
“It can be dangerous to get too close.”
“TJ would be alive if he’d gone with you.”
“Someone had to stay. I’m sorry it was TJ.”
They climbed into the pickup, Rainy driving. Karla carried an M14.
“He was all gaga over Brittany.” Rainy said. “He wanted to stay,”
“I shouldn’t have let him. Just don’t make th
e same mistake. Don’t ever think any place is completely safe.”
“It’s hard to not let your guard down sometimes.”
* * *
Rainy stopped in the road, at the end of a graveled drive near Cresco. Karla stepped out and stood unarmed in the driveway. She let several minutes pass before she started slowly toward the house. Behind her, Rainy slid out and sat cross-legged in the shade of the truck.
Karla climbed the porch steps and knocked on the farmhouse door, wondering how long it had been since anyone had. The door remained closed. Karla stepped back.
“My name is Karla Becker. I live near Alburnett in Linn County. My grandfather was Walter Himes from Decorah. He married Cassie Phelps from Ridgeway. Maybe you knew some of my family.” Karla performed a slow spin. “I have no weapons. I just want to talk.”
Karla waited. “I’m not looking for food or any kind of handouts. I’ve got a fine garden that no man from Tri-State has laid a hand on.”
A woman opened the door. She had grey hair tied back and wore a patterned dress with work boots. “What is it you want?”
“To tell you my story, and see if we can find common interest.”
The woman stepped out and pointed to a chair angled by a porch swing. “I can’t offer anything.”
“I can, if you’ll let me,” Karla said. “My friend can bring a pitcher of tea and some corn biscuits.” The woman looked concerned. “She’ll just leave them on the porch. She won’t join us. Is that okay?”
The woman nodded. Karla waived to Rainy. She carried the setup down the drive in a wicker picnic basket. As she neared the porch, a young man stepped out with a rifle. Rainy placed the basket on the top step and backed away. The man lifted the lid with the barrel of the rifle.
“You can serve, if you like,” Karla said. “Or bring the contents here.”
“It’s okay, Josh,” the woman said. He unloaded the basket onto a small metal table.
“Hello, Josh. I’m Karla. My friend is Rainy.”
The woman’s name was Gail. She poured tea and dropped in ice cubes. She studied the sample size jars of preserves the same way Josh examined Rainy. Karla was glad she hadn’t asked Brittany along.
“You still have such things?” Gail asked.
“The ice, plenty,” Karla said. “The tea and preserves are in much shorter supply.”
“Those men haven’t gone through your house?”
“They flattened my old house. Damaged a couple newer buildings. But every last one that came is dead. Ninety-four in all.”
Gail looked aghast. “How did you manage that?”
“I have been fighting their kind for three years. I’ve gotten good at it.”
“You have weapons?”
“Everything they have. We took it from them.”
“Ninety-four,” Josh said.
“At my farm. More at their base.”
“You went after them?”
“They destroyed my home. They killed two friends. I don’t take that lightly.”
“What do you want from us?” Gail asked.
“We hit them very hard. I don’t expect they’ll try us again. I am visiting the farms in Iowa they collected from. I am offering anyone who will speak with me the opportunity to move to my farm. You can have land for yourself or work as a co-op. But we stand a common defense against the thieves.”
“What’s the response?” Gail asked.
“You are the first. I would be pleased if you’d pay me a visit. Look things over. It’s not without risk, but neither is dealing with those men.”
“They leave us alone so long as we pay.”
“What do you think will happen when you have a bad crop, or several of the others join me?”
“They need us for food.” An older man, maybe Gail’s husband, stood in the doorway. “They take more than they have, won’t be anything next year.”
“You give them too much credit. Hungry men worry about now more than next week. They will take all you have and be back for more.”
The man stared at her.
“Don’t underestimate hunger. I’ve seen unimaginable things. I lost my daughter to men a stage more desperate than these. I will fight them to my last breath.”
“How would we get there?” Gail asked.
“And our garden?” the man said.
“Do you have a vehicle?”
“They give us a jug of gas in the spring.”
“Come for a visit first, then we’ll sort it out. I’ll swing by in a couple days—give you some time to think about it.”
* * *
Ray returned with a trailer full of ammunition and weapons. That night, Karla, Ray, and Lamar shelled the Rock Island Arsenal from beyond Davenport, firing high explosive and incendiary rounds from the Howitzer while Rainy spotted. They followed up with a mortar barrage dropping two hundred rounds on the complex. Karla and Rainy stayed till morning and sniped from the I-74 bridge.
A few of the survivors abandoned the island the next day. Karla let them go, counting on them to spread the news on the use of artillery and the complete rout of the outpost. She expected the message to hit home in the remaining communities of the former Tri-States. If it didn’t, she knew where they were.
Chapter 102
Ray sat beside the open loft door and watched under a part moon as a woman crossed the yard toward the barn. He smiled at the thought of Karla’s return, then as she stepped from the shadow of the last addition, he saw it was Rainy. But for the lighter hair and hollowed cheeks, Ray guessed Karla would have looked much the same in high school.
Rainy slid the main door open and climbed the bales to Ray’s platform.
“Can’t sleep?” Ray asked.
She sat beside him and stared out at the night sky. “A lot to think about.”
“The women, you mean.”
She nodded. “I understand why. They tried to take our food. Two said they’d kill us if they could. They’ve had plenty of time to think and none of them were willing to help when they had the chance. But even all that, they didn’t shoot at us.”
“War’s fought in all kinds of ways. It’s not pretty and some parts are hard to stomach. We agreed what to do. Let Karla handle it. She’s made of ice.”
“It’s no worse than Grace, I suppose. TJ didn’t hesitate.”
“Neither did you, last time.”
“I’d shoot the men myself and not think twice. They have it coming, and they know it.”
Ray scooted closer and hugged her. “Anticipation is worse than the real thing. Try to get some sleep.”
Ray spread out a blanket for Rainy, a tier down in the straw on a space he’d created for Jessie. He watched her curl up, then folded the blanket over her. He readjusted his remaining covers and nodded off.
Ray sensed the woman snuggled beside him. He draped an arm on her thigh and kissed the back of her head. She rolled and kissed him eagerly. Ray ran a hand down her back and startled full awake. He broke the kiss and eased to his back—embarrassed at his mistake, surprised at Rainy’s reaction.
Rainy nestled to him, sliding her head to his chest. Her hair smelled of fresh flowers. She wrapped her legs around his as Caitlin had often done. Ray held her loosely and closed his eyes. Rainy was long and lean and a woman in every way but age. He wondered if in these new times, the rules he had grown up with still mattered.
He woke alone in the predawn, then heard the door slide closed. He sat up and watched Rainy walk the drive. He thunked his head to the wall wishing she’d come back, worried he’d made a lasting mistake. She turned at the addition and let a hand-wave trail her around the corner.
* * *
Karla flipped on the light then peered through the small window in the holding room door. Satisfied, she unlocked the door and stepped in. The six women stared at her from bunks and cots.
“The Tri-State has come. Their dead litter our fields. We have chased them to Rock Island
and leveled the arsenal.”
The women remained silent.
“You will not be rescued or reunited with your group. I am offering a last chance to any who would think to join us, provisionally. We accept only those who will pull their own weight.”
“You must be desperate,” Hannah said. “To ask us in.”
“Forgiving,” said Karla. “Within limits.”
An older women laughed.
Karla continued. “The world is changing fast. Our choices are limited. We can make you work, but we won’t. We want volunteers, not slaves.”
“We’ll wait,” Hanna said. “You don’t have a future.”
“Does anyone have a different opinion?” Karla asked.
No one answered.
“Then we have no use for you.”
* * *
Two hours later, Rainy marched three Tri-State male prisoners from an outbuilding and stood them against the concrete wall of the addition. Ray, Karla, and Henry, from Lamar’s group, shot them without ceremony.
The bodies were placed on a farm wagon and covered with a tarp. Karla and Lamar crossed the yard to the six women prisoners held out of sight behind the equipment shed. Their hands were bound behind them. One woman was crying.
Karla spoke. “You came to steal our food and to murder us. It didn’t go as planned and here you are.” Karla paused and stared at each woman in turn. “We fed you and saw to your needs, and still you declined the opportunity to join us. We don’t have a jail or the food to sustain prisoners. We won’t send you home and pretend it never happened.” A woman on the right spat.
“The men who came with you are dead,” Karla continued. “You will join them. I’m truly sorry the world has come to this.”
Hannah and another woman were brought to the wall. Cameron hugged Lamar then took her spot beside Karla. They raised their rifles and shot the women. Cameron backed away and Rainy took her place. Two more women were brought out and two more after them. When all lay dead, Karla and Rainy walked to Rainy’s room. Ray dug a trench by the road with the backhoe.
Chapter 103
Times What They Are Page 40