by Lou Cadle
“Seems clear,” Dev said. “Just these two.”
“Question is,” Sierra said, “now what?”
“What do you mean, ‘now what?’” said Oliver, heavy brows drawing together.
Sierra ignored him.
Dev’s mom said, “They say they knew someone up here.”
“Across the street,” Rudy said.
“In one of the burned houses?” Dev said.
“Their house is burned?”
Dev pointed with his rifle. “If they lived over there, it is.”
“Gosh. I hope they got out okay.”
“How did you know them?”
“A friend of my mom’s and her husband. They were in some quilting thing together where they made quilts for poor people.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“I don’t know,” Rudy said. “I wish I did. She went out with a bunch of quilts and other stuff, seeing if she could trade them for food, and she never came back.”
Dev and his mother exchanged a glance. Odds were, she was dead.
Oliver said, “My folks are still in Payson. But I haven’t talked with them in a month.”
“It’s dangerous in Payson,” Sierra said. “They’d put you in jail or shoot you.”
“Yeah?” Oliver said, with an “I’d like to see them try” sort of tone.
“Where’d you get your gun?” Dev said.
“It was mine.” He met Dev’s eyes, and then his eyes slid away. “My dad’s. He said I should take it. He has a shotgun.”
“Probably not any more,” Sierra said.
“Why do you say that?”
“From what I understand, everyone was—”
His mother cut her off. “We don’t know yet what we should be sharing with these two. What if they are from Payson? Collaborators, getting information to take back there? We don’t need to tell them how much we know.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Sorry.” Sierra looked chagrined, but then brightened almost immediately. “If that’s the case, they already know about the gun situation and the jail and so on.”
“What about the gun situation?” said Oliver. “And what’s ‘so on’ mean?”
Everyone ignored him. Dev said, “So we can’t take them home, obviously.”
“No,” his mother said.
“But we can’t sit here and guard them every day, all day,” Dev said.
“What if we just let them go?” Sierra said. “I did with Mia, and it turned out okay.”
“So far,” Dev said. “But she was your friend. These are strangers.”
“Where were you headed after this?” Sierra said to their prisoners.
Rudy answered, “Here, nowhere else. I remembered my mom’s friend had a big garden, and I thought I’d offer to work for food. I mean, I’d do anything at all.” His face looked thin, and his clothes were loose.
“When did you run out of food?” Dev said.
“A couple weeks ago, we started eating real carefully, and two days ago, we ate the last of it. Some plain barley we soaked all day in the sun. Our stove is electric, and electricity went out over a month ago. The barley was gross, but we ate all of it. That’s when my mom left, two weeks back. She didn’t take much food with her.” He looked worried again. “I hope she found some.”
“Let’s the three of us talk over there,” said Sierra. “I have an idea.”
“Okay,” Dev said. His idea was pretty simple. Shoot them. That, or bring them into the neighborhood. Seemed like the only two choices.
“Wait,” Rudy said. “I have some stuff on me. Maybe we can trade for food?”
Dev stopped. “What do you have?”
“Knives from the kitchen. Some money. A pearl necklace of my mom’s. She said I could trade it for food.”
Dev shook his head. None of that was useful. Knives, of course, were useful, but they had plenty. “Is that all?”
“I have a plug-in that turns your cell phone into a walkie-talkie.”
Dev perked up at that. For a month, their cell phones had been useful only as clocks or flashlights or ways to jot down a reminder. “Tell me about it.”
“It’s a pair of them. Me and mom used them sometimes when we hiked. I’d get ahead of her, and so she bought them so I could do that and she wouldn’t worry. I mean, I was a little kid then. Oliver and I have used them the past few weeks.”
“How do they work?”
“You plug ‘em in to the phone, and as long as the phone is charged, you can text each other.”
“That might be useful.”
Sierra nodded. “Give one to Curt, and the issue of him being too far to hear whistled signals would go away.”
Dev’s mom said, “You two just wait here for a minute. We’ll be back soon.”
The three of them walked up to the back stoop of the house and spoke in low tones.
“Do we kill them?” Dev said.
“We can’t. They haven’t done anything to us, not even threatened us,” Sierra said.
“That’s so,” his mom said. “But I’m not going to be bringing them into our neighborhood. Not yet. Not until we get to know them.”
Sierra said, “We could set up some kind of test for them. Make them—I don’t know. Do something. See if they’re trustworthy.”
Dev frowned. “You mean leave them alone here?”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
“That seems risky.”
“Look,” she said, “if their stories are true—and I don’t see any reason they wouldn’t be—they aren’t our enemies.”
“Until they get hungry,” Dev said.
“There’s plenty of food here in the garden. There’s no meat. But we could let them stay here and eat off these gardens. The houses are empty. There’s electricity and food and water. They could live here and be better off than they were.”
“Not much protein. I guess we’d have to bring them meat or beans,” his mom said.
“You really aren’t thinking of doing this?” Dev said. He didn’t like the idea, and he was sure his father would like it less.
“I tell you what has me thinking they might be okay,” his mother said. “It’s that the one boy’s mom did volunteer work, making quilts for the poor. How awful could her son be if she did that?”
Dev said, “He could have made that up.”
“I can’t imagine a boy that age coming up with a lie about quilts,” she said. “What about if we use them as sentries? A distant early warning system? If someone comes up the hill, they would see it first. Take their cell phone thing, leave them one, and take one with us. Have them report in daily, and have them warn us if any kind of force attacks or passes on the road.”
“So sacrifice them to it?” Sierra didn’t like that idea, obviously.
“No, not necessarily. The two of them could just melt into the woods if they needed to.”
“And then what? After this imaginary future where they warn us of an approaching danger and hide in the woods?” Dev said.
“If they’ve not given us any sign that they’d be a risk to us, I guess at that point we might have them come to our place. Two more defenders would be useful.”
“So why not invite them now?” Sierra said. “We could put them in our barn.”
“We don’t know a thing about them. Think of those little girls. What if one of these two is a sex pervert?” his mom said.
Sierra seemed stopped by that. “They’re pretty young. That Rudy, he must be younger than you, Dev.”
“That kind of thing starts young,” his mother said. “So I’m not willing to invite them up and give them the run of all our homes. Not just yet. Well, what do you think, Dev?”
“I don’t know. I’d rather send them on their way. Or drive them up the hill a hundred miles and leave them. Let them live, but far away from us.”
“I guess your idea is okay,” Sierra said to his mom. “Better than driving them into the forest and dumping them like some unwanted cat.”
“Okay.”
“And if anyone else comes through the woods in their wake, run like hell,” his mother said. “We won’t be long.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I’d take them inside while you wait, for cover.”
He understood what she was saying. If anyone else was following them, it would be safer in the house, behind walls. “Okay.”
“Let’s grab those last baskets and go, Sierra,” his mother said.
Sierra nodded, looking thoughtful. They hauled the produce away, leaving Dev with the two cousins.
He said, “Okay, I’m going to untie you from the post. Don’t try and run, and we’ll sit inside and be comfortable.”
“Can we have something to eat?” Rudy asked.
“Fine by me. Hang on.” He walked into the garden. Looked like the women had gotten just over halfway done with harvesting this one. He picked bell peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, then realized he had no way to carry them. He untied the kids’ feet, then let them loose from the post, and said, “I’m going to free your hands and you can carry the food in. Don’t run. I don’t want to shoot you, and we might be able to work something out here, so it’d be dumb of you to get yourselves shot over nothing.”
“Work what out?” said Oliver.
Dev could see no reason not to tell him. “Finding a way to let you stay here. That would keep you fed.”
“Here?” said Rudy. “Like in this house?”
“Sure. Or another one on the block if you prefer it. But right now, this one has the most food out back.”
He led them into the garden, and untied Rudy first. Rudy grabbed a tomato and bit into it, sending juice squirting out. Dev said, “There’s water inside to rinse these.”
“Don’t care,” Rudy said, mumbling.
To Oliver, who was glancing around, Dev said, “Really, man, don’t mess with me. Just do what I say.” He tried to keep his tone as unthreatening as possible.
“What if you say to kill myself? Or stab Rudy?”
“I wouldn’t say that. If I want you dead, I’ll do it myself.”
“Fuck you, man.”
“Look,” Dev said. “I’m trying to help you here, but you don’t seem to have the ability to see that. Maybe you’re just hungry. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that’s what’s making you think slow. But here’s your situation: I’m trained, I’m experienced at killing, and I have the gun.”
Oliver glared at him, but when Dev untied him and stepped away, all he did was get to gather up the harvested vegetables. “Rudy, you’re acting like an animal, eating these dirty tomatoes. Let’s go inside, wash these off, and eat at a table.”
And that’s what they did, going first to the house. The back door was locked, but it had glass panes. Dev and Sierra had gained access through a window before, but that wouldn’t be a good way to take prisoners inside.
He said to Rudy, “Put down the vegetables. Then take your shirt off and punch through the nearest glass to the lock, reach inside, and unlock it.”
“Why take off my shirt?” said Rudy, though he was complying.
“To wrap around your hand so you don’t cut yourself.”
“Oh, right. I get it.”
“Let me,” Oliver said.
“I can do it.”
“I know. I’d rather I get cut up than you. Aunt Rita will kill me if I let you get hurt.” And he set down his vegetables and punched the pane of glass barehanded. It didn’t break, so he backed up a step and used his foot. That did it.
Dev noticed he was wearing running shoes, not boots.
Oliver had his hand inside and was fumbling with the lock. “What the—?” he said to himself. “Oh, I see.” And then he pulled the door open.
Dev said, “There should be running water. There are solar panels on the roof and they’re on a well.”
“I could use a shower,” said Rudy.
“Eat first. Wait for my mom to come back. Sink’s right there.”
They rinsed the vegetables, carried them dripping over to the table, and started eating without any more talk. Dev pulled open the window curtain over the sink and glanced outside. He didn’t expect trouble, but it still wasn’t impossible that these two were the lead two of a bigger force. Cannon fodder, in effect, sent ahead to do the riskiest job.
But truthfully, he doubted that idea more and more with each passing minute. He thought they were exactly what they seemed: a couple of clueless kids, one more clueless than the other. He leaned against the sink and held his rifle loosely. “How old are you, Rudy?” Oliver had to be sixteen or seventeen if he had just finished his junior year.
Rudy said, “Fifteen.”
A young fifteen. He acted years younger than Dev, not months. “You go to school?”
He waited until he had swallowed before answering. “I do school online.”
“And I take it there was no trouble in your neighborhood this past month? Raiders, gangs from Phoenix, criminals from Payson coming in?”
Rudy shook his head. “No. Some theft in the main part of town, but we live out two miles. No one bothered us.”
“And the only reason you left was to find food?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not go to Payson?”
Oliver spoke. “I tried, alone. But there are armed guards walking the streets. My house is in the middle of town. If it was at the edge, I’d risk it. I’d like to see my parents.”
“What’s the mascot of the Payson High School?”
“What, like the athletic teams?” he said. “Longhorns. I guess you don’t go there.”
“No,” Dev said, but he knew the name of the team. He just wanted to make sure this kid did too. “Where did you hang out in Payson?”
“The park.” He named a burger joint where Dev had seen kids hanging out in the parking lot when his family drove by it. “Why?” he said, now suspicious of the questions.
“I was making sure you were what you said you were. And that you were from Payson.”
“Why would I lie about that?”
“I don’t know.”
Oliver looked him up and down. “You know you act tough, but you aren’t.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I bet you never even fired that rifle, except at squirrels.”
Dev thought about his lifetime of training, hunting, and visits to the firing range. “I’ve probably fired close to a hundred thousand rounds in my life. Not just this rifle. Various weapons.”
“Oh, c’mon,” Oliver said. “No way.”
Dev said nothing to that. He didn’t give a damn if the kid believed him or not. “How much have you fired the Colt?”
Oliver said, “Enough.”
Rudy said, “But you really wouldn’t shoot us, would you?”
“If you give me trouble, yeah. Like if you threatened my mom or stole from us. Do what I say and we’ll get along fine.”
“Did you ever shoot at a person?” Rudy said.
“This past month, I’ve killed several.”
“Several,” Oliver said, his disbelief clear.
“Twenty, twenty-one, somewhere in there. I’ve lost count. Last kill was two day ago. No, three days. Just one that time.”
“Why?” Rudy said.
“People attacked our homes. And three days ago, these two guys from Phoenix were assaulting a girl, one younger than you. So Sierra and I killed them.”
“Just walked up and did it?” Rudy was wide-eyed.
“No walking up about it. We stayed well back. Four hundred yards.”
“That thing shoots that far?” Oliver sounded more impressed t
han skeptical this time.
“Sure. My dad has a rifle that’s good for two thousand yards, but tell you the truth, in this terrain, I doubt he’ll ever have the chance to use it.”
Rudy said, “I’ve never even held a gun before Oliver’s.”
Dev couldn’t imagine not growing up around guns, not hunting every autumn. “Do you think you could learn to shoot?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He looked down at the table and picked up what was left of a bell pepper, nibbling around the stem. “I’m still hungry.”
“You can eat your fill after my mom comes back.”
“I guess you want me to wait to take a shower until your mom is back?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I have some water?”
“Go on, get a glass for both of you.”
He got up but hesitated. “Do you know the people who live here?”
“Nope.”
“Do you think they’d mind?”
“I doubt they’ll be back. Might surprise me, but I think they’re gone for good.”
“What if they come back while we’re here?” Oliver said. “Will you shoot them?”
“No, if I can get them to talk. I’ll apologize for breaking in, thank them for the vegetables, offer to pay for those and the window, and leave.”
“What if they shoot at you?”
“That’s a whole ‘nother situation.”
“What if—” Oliver started.
“Look. Let’s just sit here and wait. No sense in speculating about the future.”
He glanced out the window again. After a few minutes of silence, Rudy and Oliver started talking quietly with each other. Mostly about their family. Getting to Payson to see how Oliver’s parents were. Finding Rudy’s mother. Neither seemed aware their parents might all be dead. Rudy’s mom, almost definitely, unless she....
Dev couldn’t imagine a scenario where she might be alive. Okay, let’s see. She broke her leg, a stranger took her in and has been feeding her and nursing her. Right. Not much of that going on right now. The Kershaws had rare luck along those lines. Not that they’d been lucky before that, and Sierra was the reason for their luck. Without her, he wouldn’t have rescued them from their situation. There might be more Sierras out there, people willing to help a stranger.