By the time we fill all our cans except the three diesel ones, there’s not much gas left in this underground tank. We fill the diesel jugs for Jack’s tiller.
It’s almost daylight when we get back to our garage, and we store the gas and wagons inside.
“What’s your plan?” Phil asks me, his eyes puffy and bloodshot, his face strained as fuck.
“You need to sleep.”
“Can’t do that,” he says, and I blow out a loud sigh.
“Then go relieve Bobby as a sniper on the Patrowskis’ roof, and get some rest in the afternoon, even if you don’t sleep. All of you, meet me back here at dusk. Milo and Max, go eat breakfast. As soon as you get a chance, go to the dump and gather up about three dozen beer bottles. Be sure they’re not cracked. See you at the meeting.”
“I’m not goin’ to any meeting,” Milo says angrily.
“Relieve Silas on our roof then.”
“But, Keno, what’s your plan?” Phil asks.
“I’m hoping we don’t have to use it. I’ll tell you about it if we do.”
“Plan B, then?”
“More like Plan X.”
Alma’s starting a fire in the grill with one candle lit and only a little smudge of light on the eastern horizon. She rushes to hug me. I hold her in my arms, but I’m about as loving as a pile of nails.
She backs away and studies me. “You’re covered in I-don’t-know-what, and you smell like death. And gasoline. Go clean up so you can eat.”
“Who cares if I’m dirty and stink like a cesspool? Eddie was murdered, and we’re gonna be attacked. Do you expect me to be all civilized and sit down to a lovely breakfast?”
She glares at me, shaking her head. “Just go!” She points into the house.
“Shit, I’m going,” I mutter, and I stomp across the threshold.
But Alma gasps. “Jesus, Keno. The cut on your arm is filthy and bright red. Get up there and get it clean. I’ll come up and bandage it for you in a bit.”
I look at Alma with her big pregnant belly and our baby inside her. She’s pissed at me, and I don’t blame her. She’s got to be in pain, too, from grief and carrying the baby around. I haven’t comforted her or helped her. She might as well have an automaton for a husband.
“Sorry. I’ll bring the bandaging supplies down so you don’t have to climb the stairs.”
She blinks at me, taking a breath. “Thank you.”
But upstairs, I can barely undress. I’m so tired and my arm is so sore. I wonder if we have any coffee hidden somewhere.
My body is filthy, and my mind’s a thin scab over a gash of horror. Who needs to be clean for a goddamned war? But I think of Nana telling us we need to have dignity no matter what, and I use a whole gallon of water to wash up.
CHAPTER 36
“L et me put goldenrod on that cut and bandage you up,” Alma says when I come downstairs. I wish I could feel more grateful for her help. The pain from her rubbing herb paste on my arm is intense, but it’s helping me feel less numb.
“Your mom says Grandpa strained his back with the machete,” Alma says.
“Good. Wish it had killed him,” I say.
“You shouldn’t talk like that.”
“Don’t try to get me to be nice right now. How about that?”
“I know you’re grieving, but don’t be a shit.”
I hang my head and spike my hair with my fingers. “Sorry.”
Mom comes downstairs with her hair poking out everywhere. She stands several feet away from me, quivering. Except for her red eyes and nose, there’s no color in her face.
“Aww, Mom.” I start to get up and go to her, but she thrusts out her hand like a stop sign.
“I came to tell you I love you and I’m going to see Eddie before the meeting.”
“Do you need someone to go with you?”
“No! I want to go alone.”
Suddenly, I understand why Mom couldn’t let me touch her after she found out that Tasha was dead and why she doesn’t want my sympathy now. Something inside each of us is wielding our grief like a shield. Or a cudgel.
Mom’s turning around to leave when I say, “I brought those guys here. It’s my fault that Eddie’s dead, isn’t it?”
She flips her face toward me with a tight grimace. “I don’t know, Keno. I don’t know anything anymore.”
So, it is my fault is what she means.
Jack knocks on the back door and comes on in, and I go to the table to talk to him.
“I warmed up last night’s dinner for you,” Alma says, and she slides a plate of beans and veggies in front of me.
“Thank you.”
“How’re you holding up, kid?” Jack pats my shoulder.
“Don’t ask.” Part of me wants to cry and let Jack comfort me, but it’s not even something I could do. Too numb on the outside, too explosive on the inside, one spark away from impaling everyone nearby with shrapnel when I blow. “Think there’s any chance those assholes were bluffing and their friends won’t actually come for us?”
“There’s a chance, but a slim one. We have to play the odds and be ready.”
“But how can we even be ready? How do we protect the old people and kids? What about Alma? And Sandra—I heard she’s pregnant, too.”
“Is there room for them all in the Mint cellar?” Jack asks.
“It’ll be tight, but they can squeeze in if they have to.”
“Then, at the meeting, we’ll get people to set up the cellar so they can stay there for days, if it comes to that.”
“I can’t believe we have to do this, but okay,” I say. “The bigger problem is: how do we win a fight? I saw as many guys awake over there as the total number of shooters we’ve got. Even if only half those guys were sleeping, they’re still double our size. They have way more guns and gear than we do, plus they’re not weighed down with helpless people to protect.”
“They don’t have women and kids, old people?”
“Didn’t seem like it. Garbage everywhere, no gardens, no laundry drying, no water tanks. Hard to imagine a woman with kids living that way.”
“She would if it’s the only choice she’s got,” Jack says.
Soon, Silas, Doris, Pedro, and Chris show up at our back door. I wonder if Chris knows how to handle a gun. He’s thirteen. But how can I put Alma’s brother in harm’s way? I’d better leave that decision to her.
Within minutes, most of the neighbors are crowded onto our patio. All the men and some women are armed to the teeth—at least armed as much as they can be. We don’t have automatic rifles for every trained shooter, and we don’t have enough pistols and shotguns to arm everyone else. This is not something we’ve planned for. I’d be surprised if we have enough ammo to hold out for a single day.
Since I’ve got a rifle in a wagon in the garage, I pull the pistol from my hip pocket, check it over, and give it to Alma.
I explain to the gathered neighbors what I saw in asshole territory. Then Jack tells them his idea of hiding vulnerable folks in the Mint’s cellar.
“I’ll go get started on that,” Mom says, the strain on her face adding years to her age. “Someone will have to handle Jeri and Dad, and that’s my job.” She’s as agitated as Milo and I are. When you’re grieving and angry, meetings are like getting your fingernails ripped out.
“I’ll go with you,” Kathy Zizzo says.
“So will I,” says Bobby’s wife Melba. Her baby’s wound up in a cloth across her front.
People start debating what to do. Jack and Bobby go back and forth about military tactics, like distractions and flanking and breaking sieges. I try to follow it, but it all seems absurd.
“We’re not a trained army. We’re not even an untrained one. We have to do something else.”
“Who put you in charge, Simms?” Bobby asks. “
You’re a kid.”
Someone else says “Yeah!” but I can’t see who.
“He’s Bea’s grandson,” Jack says. “She groomed him to be a leader. His uncle was our leader, but he’s gone.”
Tears hit my eyes over Eddie being gone.
Bobby swats a mosquito on his arm, and blood splats out. “So, y’all have your own family fiefdom now, where leadership is passed down in the family? What are we—your serfs?” People grumble, like maybe they agree with him.
“No, wait!” I hold up a hand. “I don’t want to be the leader, okay? I’m just starting the discussion. I have ideas, but I want to know what everyone thinks. We decide as a group.”
Bobby makes half a snort sound. “I’ll go along for now because it’s an emergency, but things need to change around here. I’m not putting up with this forever.”
“Sure. Lots of things need to change, but we’ll figure it out together… After this.”
Bobby barely nods, so I go on.
“Seems like we need someone posted past the park with some kind of signal to let us know when the assholes are coming, so we can take our positions.”
“Good. I can organize that,” Jack says.
“We need more people to help us fight. Maybe more people would make them think twice about attacking us.”
“Who would that be?” Silas asks. “We don’t know anyone else.”
“There’s that guy who stole the rabbit. He and his neighbors were trying to help each other, or that’s the impression I got.”
“He said they weren’t doing so well,” Harvey pipes up. “We’d have to feed them, and no telling what else they’d need. We’re in no position to do that.”
“But it could make the difference in whether or not we survive.”
From the way neighbors stare at me, I can tell this idea won’t fly.
“Yeah. We don’t have time to organize that anyhow.” I pause, racking my brain. We have no idea what we’re doing, but I can’t say that. “That’s all my ideas right now. What do y’all think?”
“We set up fortified positions in our yards and houses, on our roofs,” Jack says, “and we pick them off one at a time.”
“Too many of us will end up dead. It won’t work.” I whirl away from the group and take off pacing around the yard. “There has to be a better way.”
With his rifle at the ready, Milo watches me from our roof, then seems to remember he’s supposed to be watching for danger and turns his back to us. Phil glances at me from the roof on the next corner and goes back to scanning the perimeter.
Neighbors murmur among themselves, spreading out into the yard, and I keep pacing. My mind’s like a high-speed train that’s fixing to fly off the rails. I need a better idea than the only one I’ve got, but it won’t come to me. Everything I think of gets us killed. Even though people say they don’t want me to lead, they also seem to want me to figure things out. The responsibility for all these lives is on me, and it’s terrifying.
“We could send a delegation to make peace with them,” Doris says, and Silas frowns at his wife.
“Doris,” he says, “what would we have to give them to make peace with them? We’d have to be their slaves for life.”
“You don’t know that, Silas.” Doris crosses her arms, looking more obstinate than I’ve ever seen her. “They might be just as scared as we are. They might welcome the chance.”
“They might,” I say, stopping my pacing to focus on Doris and Silas. “But, even if they say they want peace, how do we know they’ll keep it? They’re thieves and looters. At least two of them were murderers. Not exactly trustworthy.” I go back to walking the yard.
“Blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.” People keep debating, but that’s what it sounds like to me. A bunch of useless gobbledygook. I stop and survey the sky, which seems normal today, as though it’s taking a break from its campaign of fuckery against us.
There’s only one answer to this. I turn to squarely face my neighbors and raise my arms in a plea. They gape at me. They’re waiting, but I can’t tell them.
Because, as far as I’m concerned, we have to go on the attack.
In my racing mind, I hear Uncle Eddie arguing with me. “You have no justification to do this, Keno.” But that’s the argument he would’ve made before they murdered him.
The other people in the camo neighborhood didn’t kill Eddie. We don’t know that they’re killers. But they have that rebel flag, like white nationalists would. How many of us will die if we wait for them to attack us? I can’t ask the parents and old people in front of me to risk themselves that way. I have to fall back to Plan X.
I take a deep breath. “Let’s get ready to be attacked while we try to think of other options. I don’t have one for you. Wish I did.”
Bobby goes down to stand watch on Dittmar past the park, taking Jack’s airhorn with him. Max goes a few blocks into the empty neighborhood behind us with a referee’s whistle to do the same.
The rest of us make a plan to defend ourselves—picking out initial spots to fight from as well as fallback positions and divvying up the jobs to be done. Those bastards could attack any time, but probably not until nightfall. It could even be days, if we’re lucky.
Fuck luck. It’s all up to us.
CHAPTER 37
People scramble around, boarding up windows at the Mint and our house, plus the ones on the side street where Jack’s house is. We’re thinking they’ll be coming from the east or south, so these houses are for falling back. Other folks are pushing cars into place and stacking wood and buckets and whatever barriers they can find along the park-end of the neighborhood, creating positions for our shooters to hide behind. I run around, helping, but I also have my own agenda.
In the late afternoon, I see Milo’s friend Danny and take him aside. “I need your help with a secret mission, but it’s dangerous as fuck. Want to help?”
“Shit, yeah. What do I do?” He brushes hair from his face and squares his muscly shoulders. He’s a trooper of a kid, but his enthusiasm for danger is a little worrisome.
“First, sneak your darkest clothes out of your house and dirty up those white sneakers so they don’t shine in the dark. Then meet me at our garage in ten minutes.”
In about five minutes, Danny meets me where I have the garage door open only a couple of feet. He ducks inside, carrying a wad of clothes, his sneakers covered in dirt.
“Good man. Go ahead and put those clothes on.”
“So, what’s the mission?”
“I’ll tell you when you need to know. Right now, while the neighborhood’s all chaotic, I need you to sneak two of these wagons out of here. Milo and Phil are on sniper watch on this side and they’re with us, so go out north to Dittmar and wait in some trees or bushes across the street. It may take a while, but I’ll send others when they can sneak out.”
Max peeks beneath the door. “I’ve got your beer bottles, but the wheelbarrow won’t fit under this door.”
“Hang on.” Shit, someone’s gonna see him. I raise the door another foot, and he shoves a wheelbarrow full of beer bottles into the garage.
“What’s the plan?” Max asks.
“Top secret. I’ll explain when we’re on our way.” I stand back to look him over. His face is full of determination, but he’s gangly and uncoordinated. I hope he can handle himself in a fight. “Your clothes look pretty dark. Turn your T-shirt inside-out so that logo won’t show.” He gulps and pulls off his shirt. “Who replaced you on watch?”
“Harvey,” Max says.
“That’s a good job for Harvey. Do you know who’s relieving Bobby?”
“Silas was gonna do it, but Bobby said he wanted to stay. He wants to be in the front of the fight.”
“That’s good. He’s our best fighter. So, Max, you go with Danny—he knows what to do. First, help me get the tools o
ut of this wagon and put the bottles into it. Let me get you some motor oil.” I grab three bottles of oil off the shelves.
“What for?”
“No time to explain. I gotta find us a couple more people. When Phil and Milo come down from sniper watch at dark, we’ll meet y’all over there. Here, take these funnels, and while you wait for us, pour motor oil into each bottle about a quarter way up, but only as many bottles as you can keep upright in the wagon. Here’s some rags to pad the bottles so they don’t rattle against each other.” I hand him a pile of Grandpa’s red rags.
“Shit, Keno, what are you up to?” Max gapes at me, and so does Danny behind him.
“You don’t have to go, man. Seriously. We could get killed.”
Max licks his lips and rakes a hand backward through his hair, running his eyes over the wagon carts and their cargo. He nods sharply. “I’m going. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“So do I. It’s the best idea I’ve got.”
“Well, I don’t have any ideas, so let’s do this.”
“Okay, time to go.” I give Max and Danny quick hugs and duck out the door. “Coast is clear. Hustle!” And out they come with two garden carts full of gasoline and another full of bottles, rags, and oil.
I whistle softly to Milo, who crouches and looks down at me from the roof. “Let them pass,” I say, and he nods.
Danny and Max trot west toward the railroad tracks, pulling three wagons behind them. I watch them until they turn right on a dirt trail, and then I run to Greta’s house. Of course, she’s not home, so I go in search of her while I also make sure that Silas is going to replace Milo on the roof at dark and Mark is going to replace Phil. Shit, I have to get this other wagon of gas out of here while Milo and Phil are still on watch.
Finally, I find Greta boarding up the front window at Jack’s house. She’s tough-minded and athletic, and she’s usually game for whatever needs to be done. I hold a board while she hammers in the last few nails, and then I talk to her quietly.
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