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NICK REFUSED TO STAY in bed. It was just a shoulder wound. He wasn’t going to acknowledge the minor concussion he’d gotten falling over. It was embarrassing. The shot had thrown him off balance making him overcompensate in his lunge for cover. It resulted in him slamming head first into the floor. He was grateful the lump was on the side of his head, hidden in his hair. James gave him a sling to wear and the usual warnings about dizziness and such. They were probably glad to get rid of him. There were still a few burn victims that needed all their attention.
Once released, Nick went in search of Jean. He’d heard some discussion about the debate and wanted to be there. It had already started by the time he got to the auditorium. He slipped into the back row, taking a seat next to Martin.
“Should you be out?” Martin asked softly.
“Shh. I want to hear Jean.”
“Three men ran out the door when she told Jackson about the firefight,” Martin reported.
Down the aisle, Jean stood tall in her fury. “Do you know who they were?”
“No, no, of course not,” Jackson stammered. “Why would you think that?”
“Do you know who has been stealing food from the kitchen?” Jean asked.
Jackson fussed with some papers on his podium. “I am not the person in charge of this facility, and all of my offers to help have been refused.”
Angus came on stage looking like he’d been turned upside down and shaken. His white hair was standing on end. His jacket was a size too large.
“What the hell?” Nick mumbled.
Martin shook his head with a grunt. “Guess we’ll find out later.”
“You have made no offers of help,” Angus said. Despite his appearance, his voice was calm.
Jackson startled. He stared at Angus in way that Nick found highly suspicions. “Well, I...um...”
“You make suggestions that we are incompetent, but you are eager to get your hands on what we have worked so hard to establish here. How do you think we have we achieved so much if we know so little?”
“Luck,” Jackson said. “You will fail eventually.”
Angus snorted. “We’ve had flu and fires, raiders and blight. Is that luck? We’ve worked side by side, sharing everything fairly. I don’t think luck has had anything to do with it.”
“You would say that because you have arrived here with no thought to the future.”
Nick gritted his teeth. He wanted to shout Jackson down. All the planning and meetings about food and safety he’d sat through, all the lists and rosters they had created, said they had considered the future very carefully. It infuriated him.
“You may find this surprising, but I do have a plan for the future. However, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it does not involve you,” Angus said curtly.
“I think we should call for an election,” Jackson yelled turning to the audience with a mad grin. There was a scatter of applause that died out quickly.
“No.” Angus leaned an elbow on his podium and stared at Jackson. “You seem to think this is a democracy. It isn’t. I run the Survivor’s Alliance. You can’t walk in here and take over something that you haven’t put any work into. I won’t let you.”
Jackson looked outraged by Angus’s calm words. He started to answer, but Angus raised a hand to stop him. “You can join us and work with us. If you know what you’re doing, we’ll give you more responsibility. But we don’t put outsiders in charge just on their sayso.”
“I refuse to work with you!” Jackson shouted. “You are doing it all wrong.”
“And yet we have rehabbed the houses where people are living and set up a militia to keep the raiders out and gathered food to hold us over our first winter without train food.”
“But you have done it all wrong. This cannot last.”
Angus paused. In the silence Jackson’s heavy breathing sounded loud. The audience waited. “I’m afraid it’s we, humans, who might not last. What plan do you have for the next flu season?”
“Who says there will be one?”
“It has come every spring for ten years. Do you think it won’t come next year? Have you built in redundancies for every skill, because we could lose up to 40% of our population.”
“That is an outrageous number. It will never be that bad again.”
“Do you know how many died this year?” Angus asked with a frown. “Why do you think the train food factories failed? They ran out of people to run them. Even with the press gangs, they couldn’t bring in enough people. Every small community lost too many people to remain viable. That’s why they are all here now.” Angus drew a long breath. “We don’t have time to play political games. We need every minute and every able hand to be working toward storing food for the winter and making our territory safe.”
“I think—“
“So you need to go.” Angus turned his back and walked off stage.
Nick wanted to cheer, but the audience was rumbling. “Now what?” he asked Martin.
“We get back to work,” Martin said with a shrug.