Chapter 124
Karla and Derek moved into the house. Karla patched the plumbing and powered the well. Derek dragged a queen mattress to the cellar where they slept near an open window despite the late winter chill.
Derek fished daily in the nearby Spring River, returning with bass, catfish, and an occasional variety Karla couldn’t name. Karla sometimes joined him at the river, sometimes not. They kept their guns quiet, though they once heard another, miles away.
Three weeks into their stay, the weather turned warm. They slept outside again, under trees and listened to birds and frogs and insects—the world reborn. It reminded Karla of her first spring in the mountains, before the house, before she had seen the nature of the place. Just she and Jessie, out of the cave and on their own, living in blissfully ignorant peace.
“We need to head north.” Karla had her back to Derek as she placed a filleted catfish on a metal grill set over the gasoline fired camp stove.
“I haven’t seen a living soul.”
“They’ll come. Someone. They always do.”
“You’re afraid. I don’t believe it.”
“I like to pick my battles. Or have the means to defend. I don’t want to be taken by surprise, end up like the men on the road.”
“They were brigands.”
“They were in the middle of nowhere, had everything worked out. But they never saw us coming. We could suffer the same fate. Men could take us any day on the way to the river. Or right now from across the field.”
“North is better?”
“We can either take the fight to Denver or get out of their way.”
“You’d like to stop them.”
“I’d like to live in peace. If that takes killing every person in Denver, I’d be for it.”
“You’re not really considering that.”
“There are easier ways to dent their progress.”
“Okay.”
“What is indispensible to their efforts?” Karla asked.
Derek sucked his lips. “Planes, pilots, food, guns, people.”
“They have hundreds of planes, and there are thousands more for the taking. They have scattered farms in three states and all the weapons they will ever need. Too many people to kill with any weapon we have. Fuel is the answer. Without it, they can’t fly planes or keep their men in the field. We need to disrupt the supply.”
“Ambush their tankers?”
“Destroy the refinery.”
“The two of us?”
Karla nodded as she turned the fish.
“You’re bent on suicide.”
She smiled. “I considered driving a tanker in and blowing it up. But there’s a better way. I know where we can get a Howitzer.”
“Do you know where the refinery is?”
“Someplace in New Mexico, probably. I can find it.”
“Is this gun anywhere near where we need it?”
“I’ve towed them.”
“How far?”
“We’d be looking at a thousand miles.”
“You don’t think that’s a problem?”
“I’ve been back and forth a few times.”
“You can’t tow it with your car.”
Karla rolled her eyes. “If you don’t like that idea, we can use mortars. I have access to them as well.”
“It’s no wonder they have a reward out for you.”
“It would set them back a couple years. That’s a lot of time for us to get settled. We could blow the next one up, too. Maybe haul that Howitzer and shell their headquarters.”
“That doesn’t sound too peaceful.”
Karla forked the fish onto plates and sat beside Derek. “I’m tired of sleeping with a rifle, being shot at every time I turn around. I need to find peace, one way or the other.”
* * *
Karla rolled from Derek crossed to the stove and flung the remnants of the fish dinner well into the brush. She stepped behind a tree and relieved herself, then lay back with Derek.
“What was that about?” he asked.
“The smell is enough to make me gag.”
He shrugged at the loss of breakfast and closed his eyes. He rose after sunrise, put water on the burner and walked the perimeter. Karla was still down when he returned. He made tea and brought her a cup.
She waved it away, scrambled a few feet and heaved the remnants of dinner. “I was never that fond of catfish. I think that one was diseased.”
“It looked okay.”
Karla crawled under the blanket and closed her eyes. Derek stared at the sweat beading on her forehead and the pastiness of her complexion. He picked up his rifle and fishing rod and day pack. He held his eyes on her for yet another minute, then bent and kissed her. She smiled with closed eyes as he stepped away.
Karla shook off her sickness and sought something to eat. She craved sweet corn and peaches though neither was in season. She settled for wintered over walnuts, then stashed the sleeping gear, had three cups of water, and moved the Golf into the yard. They used it, now, only in electric when they searched in town. It needed a full charge if they were to be on the road.
Early in the afternoon she heard a rifle shot, closer than last time. She stashed the car in the barn and jogged toward the river, slowing to a walk as she neared it. Derek wasn’t at his usual spot—under a shade tree on a fallen log, stuck fifteen feet into the river.
Karla walked a mile up river in the direction of the shot, then equally far downstream. She returned to the campsite and sat on a blanket. Derek fished every day. She’d always found him in the same spot. He had said nothing different this morning.
She ate more walnuts and got hungrier. At dusk, she heated the last can of noodle soup, then fetched the night vision and lay on the blankets with her rifle. At dawn she felt poorly again but rallied and forced a three mile walk upriver. In the afternoon she trekked the other way. She saw tracks and trail but couldn’t put age or owner to them. She returned late, vaguely expectant, but Derek had not been back.
Karla searched three more days, because she should, but knowing she would never again see Derek. She grew angry at his departure, sure he’d left by choice. She thought him a coward and cursed men. What was it he couldn’t just tell her?
On the fifth morning, two men appeared from the river trail and approached the farm. They split at the house, one to the back the other to the front. They crept inside and came out carrying an additional rifle Karla had left there.
As they crossed to the barn Karla shouted from a copse of trees, “Hey! Drop the guns and get off my farm.”
The men turned and looked for her.
“Now!”
One man spoke low to the other. Karla shot them before they could finish their plan. She counted to five and crawled from her cover. Two rifles fired from beside the trail. She flipped to full auto, emptied the clip, and slammed home another, sending thirty more rounds into the trees. She slapped in a third and ran for the woods.
One man was down. The other crashed down the trail. Karla took off in pursuit. At the river, the runner turned, a woman. She saw Karla and fired three times from a hundred fifty feet.
“Drop the rifle!” Karla screamed.
The woman did and Karla approached, her rifle lowered. “I’m going to leave your rifles by the barn. You can take what you want in two hours. Right now, you can move up the trail a hundred feet and stand facing the river.”
She turned. “Are you going to kill me?”
“No need to go anywhere for that.”
The woman walked up the trail, stopped, and looked out on the water.
“Five minutes. Till I’m gone.” The woman didn’t move. “If your friends had your instincts, they’d be alive.”
Karla searched the men’s bodies and found nothing useful. Trying to get by, like she was. There was little room for error in this world.
Karla leaned two rifles against the barn and thought about
the woman who had somehow survived four years yet couldn’t kill her from an easy distance. The woman wasn’t going to make it hunting—another Caitlin. Maybe there were more of her people waiting in a camp. Maybe Derek would rescue her. Who knew anymore? Karla left her ten rounds for the rifles and cursed Derek. They should have left before this happened.
Well, Derek had. Now she would, alone again. Karla threw her gear in the Golf and drove north. She hoped the disease was out of her, but the fish sickness had left a touch of uncertainty. That had begun days ago, though. She felt better, a little queasy at times, but better. She was sure anyone with the real sickness would already be dead.
* * *
Karla crossed into Iowa south of Bloomfield and continued north on county roads. She felt safe suddenly. Beyond the reach of Denver. She considered her plan for the refinery. She could go to Burlington, get what she needed, and do it alone. But she would apologize to Ray and ask for his help—if he wasn’t already sleeping with one of the new arrivals. Then, she couldn’t picture any whose guardian wouldn’t shoot Ray. But there were three almost-women under Lamar’s watch and Brittany and Rainy.
Karla smiled. She had a mission. If Ray wasn’t interested. She could count on Rainy.
Chapter 125
Karla passed through the open gate and stopped briefly in front of the ruins that had been her home. She moved on and parked next to the barn, atop her quarters. She started for the south tower and the underground entrance and was met by two unfamiliar young men carrying rifles.
“Hold it right there,” the one on the left said. He was a teenager with long black hair and a sharp nose.
“Who are you?” Karla asked.
“We ask the questions,” said the other boy. He was taller than his partner, but otherwise looked a lot like him. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
“We’ve never seen you.”
“I’ve been away. Now I’m back.”
“Just like that.”
“Where is Ray?”
“Gone.”
“Brittany, Rainy, Lamar?”
“Lamar’s inside.”
“Would you get him?”
The taller boy eyed the pistol in Karla’s belt. “You need to give me the gun.”
“Get Lamar.”
He raised his rifle. Karla grabbed the barrel with one hand, punched him with the other, and shoved him into the shorter boy. She yanked the rifle from his hands just as Lamar and Cameron stepped around the corner.
“Who are these two?” Karla said.
“Security.”
“Well, tell them to back off.”
“She wouldn’t give us her gun,” the shorter boy said.
“No one but security carries weapons, “Lamar said. “That was a rule you established. A good one, I might add.”
“I’m permanent security, besides being the owner of this farm.”
“Not anymore.”
“No longer security or no longer owner?”
“Both. We have an elected government now.”
“And it took my land?”
“Governments have long had the right of eminent domain.”
“With compensation.”
Lamar shrugged. “We have nothing to give.”
Karla shook her head, anger rising. “Fine. Keep it. I’ll retire to my quarters and look after myself.”
“No one gets special treatment. We’ll find you a room.”
“I built it. I’ll use it.”
“What you’ll do is give us access. I’d like to see what you have in there.”
Karla smiled. “Build your own.”
“No individual can store food or weapons. Will you swear there are none in your rooms?”
“I do not have any food that was grown in the communal garden.”
“But you have food, and weapons.”
“I did when I left.”
“Then you will turn them over.”
“Lamar, you can play whatever games you want. I’m not interested. I have my daughter’s remains in the car. I am going to bury her, then I am going to get some sleep.”
“You don’t need the rifle for either task.”
“I think I’ll hold on to it.”
“This isn’t you and me. There are laws here now. Stealing a gun from security is serious business. So is assaulting a security officer.”
“You plan to arrest me?”
Lamar twitched his mouth, but didn’t answer.
Karla turned for the car. A man behind it pointed a rifle at her. She sidestepped and swung hers higher. A sharp blow knocked her to the ground and left her head ringing. Men grabbed her hands and secured them behind her back with plastic ties, then dragged her into the building.
* * *
Karla sat in a wooden chair in the cellar of the first addition. Her hands were tied through the back slats, her ankles attached to the chair legs. Her head ached. Her muscles felt stiff. She was hungry and thirsty.
The boy who had struck her yawned and stretched. He sat across the room, an M16 leaning beside him against the couch.
“I’d appreciate some water,” Karla said.
The boy shook his head.
“I suppose an Ibuprofen would be out of the question, as well.”
“You get to sit till they come for you.”
His voice was neutral, not threatening. “Then what’s going to happen?”
He stared at her without answering. Karla shifted her gaze to the section of missing ceiling. She had worked out a plan to fix it after the mortar attack, but had moved on to other things. No one else had cared enough to try.
Shadows changed in the room. Two men unhooked her from the chair and hauled her into the great room in building three. They sat her in an unpadded, wooden arm chair. Her hands still bound behind her; her legs connected with ties that allowed a few inches of movement.
The room filled, mostly behind her. Seating ran out and people stood in doorways. Lindsay, one of Lamar’s crew was escorted to a chair a few feet to Karla’s left. Lamar walked in last and took his place in a leather office chair behind a small table at the front of the room. To his left, two men and Cameron occupied a long fabric sofa.
Lamar folded his hands on the desk and faced Karla. “Looks like you’ll have company. But first things first. That’s why we’re here.”
Lamar looked down his nose at Lindsay. “This is the fourth time you have been before us. Four times you’ve stolen food. Correct that, four times you have been caught.”
Lindsay nodded.
“Why do you keep stealing?”
“I don’t know. I’m hungry.”
“Don’t you get the same portion as everyone else?”
She nodded again.
“You don’t eat all of what you take, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re putting it away for later, when there might not be as much.”
“Yes, sir.
“Do you understand that your actions will cause others to have less?”
Lindsay returned to nodding.
“If we show leniency, will you stop stealing?”
“I can try.”
Lamar let thirty seconds pass. “Do you remember what we told you the last time you were here?”
She smiled shyly.
“And what did we say would happen if you were caught again?”
Lindsay swallowed.
“Well?”
“That you’d shoot me,” she squeaked.
Karla’s eyes went wide. Lindsay was eighteen, one of Lamar’s girls. She was notoriously timid but a hard worker.
“Did you think we didn’t mean what we said?”
She nodded.
“So what should we do with you?”
She offered the tiny smile again. “Two weeks on half rations?”
“You’ve been restrained without food, given hard work on hal
f rations. You have been whipped in front of your fellows. Yet you continue to steal.”
“Please, no.”
“You have been warned every way we know how and told what to expect. Now we are at the day of reckoning.” Lamar turned. “Karla, what would you have done with a case like this?”
“I would have had a talk, and kept her away from the kitchen.”
“And when that didn’t work?”
“The last resort is to put someone out, but we never had to.”
Lamar nodded. “A death sentence of a different kind—more pain, but out of sight.”
“She would have a chance,” Karla said, “And be no threat to the community.”
Lamar turned to the three on the sofa. They spoke softly among themselves. A man wrote a few words and handed the paper to Lamar. He stared at it, then flipped it over.
“I’m sorry, Lindsay. Your sentence was suspended last time. You knew that. Now it will be carried out. Tomorrow morning will be your last.”
“Please. Please don’t. I promise.”
Lamar shook his head. “It’s too late for that.”
Lindsay sobbed softly as two men helped her to her feet and escorted her from the room.
Lamar conversed with his jury, then drank from a glass and clicked it with a spoon.
“Karla, let’s examine your activities.”
She bit her lip and tasted blood. “Lamar, I have done nothing but take a trip and return with my daughter’s remains.”
“In your absence, things have changed. You do not seem to realize that.”
“I have owned this farm for twelve years. I designed the new buildings and all the amenities, acquired the materials and helped construct them. I have fought every threat.”
“All true.” Lamar paused. “Do you believe in democracy?”
“It has its places.”
“Is one of them here?”
“I said outside, you can do what you like.”
“But don’t ask you to participate.”
“That’s one way of putting it. I’d be happy to leave you be, if you’ll do the same for me.”
Times What They Are Page 47