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“You know what I noticed,” Joan said. They’d been talking for fifteen minutes, not very organized about it, mostly expressing their worry and anger. “They didn’t have any women with them. I think it’s fair to say, and I hope you guys don’t hate me for thinking this, that when there are women, they can be a temporizing influence.”
“I don’t know about that,” Pilar said. He glanced at Sierra.
“I didn’t like the way they looked at Brandie,” Troy said.
“Nor did I,” Dev said. “I got the distinct impression they saw women as more resources. I think our female half should make themselves scarce the next time these guys come along.”
None of the women liked that, and they made it known.
“I’m not going to hide in the trees while the rest of you have to fight,” Yasmin said.
“Me neither,” said Zoe. “Sorry, Dad, but if you fight, I’m fighting right by your side.”
They all had their say. When that reaction had wound down, Pilar said, “We have to be clear about this. It isn’t going to be much of a fight. They have guns, and we don’t. Even with the crossbow and hunting bows aimed at them, we’re going to take casualties at least at five times the rate.”
“Which begs the question,” Dev said, “how many of them are there altogether?”
“Has to be quite a lot,” Joan said. “You wouldn’t send out any more than—what, ten percent of your troops, would you?”
“Arch might know that answer,” Zoe said. “Maybe there’s some official rule.”
Dev said, “I wouldn’t send out that many, not if I could help it. I’m guessing there are at least a hundred more back home.”
Rod said, “They mentioned scouting Show Low from the north. So that means they must control everything in Flagstaff, right? And east to Winslow.”
“A lot of Indian land in there,” Pilar said. “I can’t imagine the Navaho taking that without a fight.”
Joan said, “But it’s poor land. It didn’t support the Indians at any point in the last few hundred years. They needed grocery stores, like we did.”
“But we didn’t,” Sierra pointed out. “We thought we did, but we didn’t need them.”
Brandie said, “I remember farmer’s markets once a week. We traded stuff we’d grown. Stuff we’d made too. In Payson, before the epidemics.”
A few nods from the other kids. “I hadn’t realized that was happening,” Dev said. “I wonder if they still do.”
“Only before the second sickness came through,” Troy said. “That changed everything. Our lives most of all, but everything. I hope they’re still holding it together down there.”
“We need to find out,” Rod said. “That’s the first thing we should do. Get down there, ask them if those guys visited them. Find out if they killed animals or stole food. See what they offered them, and in exchange for what.”
Joan said, “It’s a long walk.”
Dev said, “We can’t split up our forces. We have few enough people.”
Curt spoke up, a rare thing if he was in a group. “Better to go now and get back quickly. If those guys don’t return tonight, they might not return for several more days. From the little I heard, they’ll have others to approach with their offer.”
“Offer? Threat, more like,” said Sierra.
“Definitely threat,” Dev said. “They sounded as if they’d be working on building the highway back up no matter what. And that they’d do it even over our protest.”
“And tax us for it too,” Pilar said.
Dev said, “You know what Dad would say to that.”
“I wouldn’t disagree. Taxation without representation and all that,” Pilar said. “A cleared highway means more danger for us.”
“Oh crap,” Dev said. “I wonder what they’ll think when they come to the destroyed place up the hill.”
“Or if they’ll turn around,” Joan said, frowning with concern. Her face was wrinkled from years in the sun, and the frown drove the lines deeper.
Curt said, “Horses won’t be bothered by that. They’ll go over or around it.”
Yasmin said, “I wish I’d seen the horses. I’ve never seen one.” A number of the younger kids nodded. Of course they wouldn’t have. They’d been born after the end of oil, and after the first hunger, when horses and even dogs and cats had been eaten for food.
Pilar said, “I’m afraid you’ll have a chance to see them again, sooner than we’d like.”
Everyone went silent at that. There were only worried faces around the circle. No one was excited about a fight, as had been true way back at the beginning when they’d had the means to defend themselves.
Dev broke the silence. “We need to work on our skills. Whatever hunting weapon you’ve been trained to use, you need to practice with it.”
Yasmin said, “I use a sling. Can you hurt a person with that?”
Sierra said, “Maybe not kill him, but you might ruin his aim, give someone a chance to run away. Better than my blow gun. Unless I got a lucky shot in an eye, it wouldn’t do much damage.”
“Hate to use up the remaining hardware on darts for so remote a chance,” Pilar said.
Dev passed along the message he’d been asked to convey. “Dad said we need to hide some things in the woods. A cache of seeds.”
Curt said, “That won’t do us any good unless there’s food to carry us over until the plants mature.”
“Four weeks for radishes to grow,” Sierra said. “But we can’t live on radishes.”
Curt said, “No. So we need to take food like potatoes, winter squash, sweet potatoes.”
“Or,” Joan said, “we disguise the root cellars.”
“They’re all in logical places,” Curt said. “They’re going to know where to look if they’ve been doing this for a while.”
“How long have they been, do you think?” asked Georgia.
“Gotta be years, don’t you think?” Pilar said, looking around. “Long enough to win someone over and build an irrigation system, or repair windmills. I wonder if those are to grind grain or what. And where they are.”
Joan said, “We’re taking them at their word about all they said they did. I’m not sure that’s smart.”
Dev realized this was true. “Good point.”
Sierra said, “If we send someone down to Payson, we need to check with Wes’s group too.”
“If they’re still there,” Dev said.
“They will be,” Sierra said. “They were six years ago. At least Rudy said they were.”
Rudy had stayed with them for a time, way back at the beginning of all this, after his cousin was killed. When they’d helped to liberate Payson from invaders from Phoenix, he’d decided to live in Payson and teach children, something he’d found a real talent for with another set of children who’d been stranded up here, including Rod. Joan had made sure that group of orphans was adopted in Payson—as a minister there, or priest rather, she’d had not only standing and respect in town but some moral authority.
When the second of two diseases had swept through Payson and left more orphaned, Rudy had come up here and begged them to take some on. He’d kept his physical distance from them, worried he carried a disease he was immune to but they were not. But from two dozen feet away, he’d negotiated the situation they had now and stayed a night on the Quinn porch.
After a discussion, the neighborhood had agreed to take six children older than ten, but none with a sibling they had to leave behind. The age requirement was because they had needed people who could carry their own weight. Ten-year-old kids could hoe and weed and plant and harvest. They could preserve food. They could stand guard at the grain fields and wave away some of the birds that came for the ripe grain.
Dev said, “Who should go to Payson?”
Troy said, “I would.”
“Not without me,” Brandie said.
“Maybe not you two, considering,” Dev said. “Who else is willing to go?” Every hand but Yasmin’s shot up.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but it’s too sad for me to go down there.” She’d lost a whole family—mother, father, grandparents, and uncle. “I’ll do anything you say, but not that.”
“No problem,” Barry said. “Should all five of the rest of us go?”
“Two,” Pilar said. “Think about it overnight. Discuss it together. And I guess Sierra should write a note to Wes’s group for you to take, introducing you. She knew them best.”
“Okay, but whoever goes, what do we say to them?” Misha asked.
“Whoever goes would be trying to figure out what’s going on,” her mom said. “Ask if the men came through, what they offered, what they threatened, if they have a plan, if we might coordinate our defense. Share information, in short.”
“We need to figure out what we’re going to do to prevent those guys stripping the farms bare,” Sierra said, “beyond digging a new cellar to hide high-calorie food, and beyond caching seeds.”
Zoe said, “And practicing with our weapons. I can set up a training schedule if you want, Dad. We could get a couple people up to speed on bows, maybe, if those guys don’t come back for a few weeks. In a fight, you and I could go down, and if we do, we don’t want the bows just lying there unused.”
Dev couldn’t bear the thought of his daughter dying in a battle. He glanced to Pilar, wondering how he’d made it through Sierra’s aggressive, often reckless months back at the beginning. Joan’s girls were not aggressive in the least. Misha was a natural healer, and Emily would forever be shy of strangers and confrontation. Or maybe not, he thought, watching her watch Nina. Maybe she’d go all mama bear on attackers if it meant protecting her cub.
Pilar said, “This makes me sick.”
Dev nodded. “I thought we were done with it. I’ve been too complacent.”
“Not your fault,” said Joan. “Not anyone’s. There was no reason to foresee this. And we had plenty to keep us busy trying to survive. There wasn’t a lot of time for drilling with bows and so on.”
“My dad can kill anything with the crossbow,” C.J. boasted. “I can use it too.”
Sierra said, “Can you draw it on your own now?”
He shot an angry glare at her.
Sierra didn’t appear to let it bother her. “I just meant, that’s something you can work on when we train in weapons. Maybe you’re getting strong enough to do that now.”
He looked to his father.
Curt said, “Maybe. We’ll talk about it later.”
Dev said, “Short-term, we need volunteers to keep watch tonight out on the main highway. A team of two, a couple of shifts. Who has the best eyes among the young people?”
Zoe’s was one of the hands that shot up. She did have good vision. So did Dev. Sierra was a bit nearsighted in one eye though swore she hadn’t started to lose her close-in vision yet. Joan had, but the Morrows, whose house it was before it was hers, had a drawer full of reading glasses, and so she had found one that worked pretty well for her. Good thing, for she did a lot of the sewing for the neighborhood.
They set up not two but three shifts for the night watch. Days were long, nights short, so no one would lose much sleep. One analog watch survived in the neighborhood, formerly Mr. Morrow’s, an early 20th century pocket watch that worked as long as you wound it. They didn’t need it typically, but they’d pull it out for tonight’s use. It didn’t need to be right, but it could be used to mark off a shift.
Curt cleared his throat. “There’s one more thing we should all be thinking about,” he said. “We’ve talked before about heading for a cooler place. Maybe it’s time to revisit that idea.”