Clark’s mother got up before him the next day. He couldn’t let that become a pattern, even if her room was the former office and had a window while his former supply closet did not. Hopefully she didn’t wake up in pain a couple of times a night and have to rearrange the pillows to support one of her limbs either.
Thao wasn’t a morning pers—
Nope. Not going there. What part of fresh start did his brain not understand?
“I got word of a Council meeting,” she called. “There’s a mess of bent nails we salvaged out of a demo. Could you straighten them and see to the chickens?”
“Sure!” he yelled back. “Don’t worry about anything, I’ll take care of it.” Straightening bent nails was relaxing. Nails and chickens weren’t enough to keep him busy for a whole day, but even without another list there was work to do everywhere if you had the tools, knowledge, and materials. Buildings needed to be tended just like vehicles or they’d give out on you, and his dad had taught him well on that front. Gardens and greenhouses had to be weeded of plants that stole precious water from food crops. He could go foraging, maybe find some wild plums or other things they could put up before winter. He’d be a slow forager because of all the walking, but if he spotted any rabbits along the way he could bring a couple of those back too.
Before the war started, if someone had told sixteen-year-old Clark that at thirty-one he’d be living in an old garage and gathering his food, he’d have laughed himself silly then spent the afternoon reading comics or watching dance competition videos online instead of doing his homework.
If someone had said his parents would split up, he wouldn’t have laughed, he would’ve flat-out denied it. His father had defied his horrible bigoted family to marry his bisexual wife and defied them again by loving his gay son. In the evenings Melina would coax Hank into dancing in the living room once they thought Clark was asleep. They’d all been happy together.
Then came the war. Afterwards he’d mistakenly believed they’d gotten through it together and would keep going the same way. Instead, when he’d finally felt like he was getting his feet underneath him, she was gone.
He ate the potato and zucchini cakes she’d left him for breakfast despite the scorched taste and started the chores. His mother’s garden was a ways off with her chickens behind an abandoned house on the next property over. No telling what somebody might have dumped into the soil near the garage before Melina moved here so planting stuff close was a no-go. It took him a while over there to get things squared away but by the time she got home he was almost done with the nails too. She looked stressed, and when he finished up he found her rummaging through the little junkyard again.
“You all right?” he asked, lifting the iron fencing fragment she was studying so he could move it for her. Things might be strained between them, but she’d said her hands hurt and he wasn’t a complete jerk.
“Don’t worry yourself.” She gestured for him to put the fencing on the other side of the aisle and retrieved a couple of flat bicycle tires from behind it. She tucked those behind a half-collapsed particle board shelving unit.
“Did the meeting suck?” When she rearranged, it usually meant something was wrong, and this was two days in a row.
She rubbed her sleeve across her face. “The truck that dropped you off got hit on its way back to R-town. It might be the Dollars again.”
Oh no. Oh fuck.
Clark thought about the friendly R-town team who had dropped him off, especially the lead horseback rider, an older white man with prison tattoos. He’d given a group of Doberman kids a hopscotch lesson. Clark had been a last-minute imposition they didn’t need, and in an apocalyptically bad mood to boot, but they’d been kind anyway.
“Are they all…”
His mother nodded. “A group rode out when they didn’t show up. It was quick, or at least that’s what they’re telling people. The truck was gone but they left the bodies and the horses.”
Clark took a long deep breath, trying not to see it. He hadn’t seen it. He’d just seen too many things during the war that made it easy to imagine. But almost no one since the last spate of bandit attacks had been straight-up murdered in the circuit. His chest felt tight. “I thought the Dollars were gone.”
Melina frowned. “In the last few months there’s been a little here, a little there. Property, a few small animals. The Councils didn’t want to scare everybody if it was random. This big of a hit, it’s either the same people or the same idea. So now we have to decide what to do. We’ll probably meet with the defense team tomorrow then talk to the other towns in a couple of days once the shock has worn off. Keep our guard up in the meantime.”
Freshtown was so small they’d only built one lookout tower but his mother had said they staffed it around the clock. Had she told Van that Clark was a sniper? She must have. He’d need to know the resources at his disposal. That was probably the only reason she hadn’t put him right back on the truck and why he had somewhere to live. She’d probably have sent him back if—
“Clark, stop,” she said, quiet but firm. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. You only have to do whatever work you’re okay with. But you brought your rifle. I saw the case. You could have sold it when you got hurt last year, but you didn’t, and that tells me you’re ready to stand up if we need you to.”
This wasn’t why he’d come here and he sure as hell wouldn’t have picked it. He didn’t want his own personal war movies playing behind his eyes. He didn’t want the propellant smell in his clothes when it was the scent of ending a human life.
Maybe this was the universe’s joke on him for setting his sex sights on the defense team lead. Or maybe this was how it was always going to be for him.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Whatever you need.”
His mother sighed, long and heavy. “Right now, I need to not think about it anymore. They could probably use some help with what they brought back in my truck. You want to go check?”