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Some people weren’t so sure about attacking the men. “Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Wanda said.
Joan said, “We could wait until they actually threatened us.”
His father’s was the strongest voice on the side of attacking, of course. “If we wait until then, they won’t give us the chance.” They were all in the Quinn yard again, having what was becoming a regular meeting about this new threat.
Yasmin said, “Why are you so sure of that?”
“They want what we have,” Sierra said.
Luke said, “Then why not take it? Kill us right now, strip the land of food, take the hens to their headquarters, do—” He flushed. “Do whatever they want with the girls and be done with it in a day?”
Sierra had told Dev what she’d gotten out of Luke about what the men had been talking about, regarding the young women. It had been a crude discussion of body parts, which Luke had said was like listening to normal people talk about what piece of chicken they wanted for dinner. When they had realized the boys were within hearing range, they’d shut up.
And none of it surprised Dev. Disgusted him, yes. But he’d seen the looks from the men.
Sierra said, “They don’t take everything now because they want us to do the work. Sure, they could take this year’s harvest and the hens, but do they want to be chicken farmers? Or any kind of farmers? No. If they did, they wouldn’t have started their army. Or joined it.”
Joan said, “Do you think they all joined? Or are there conscripts among them?”
“No,” Dev said. “I wouldn’t trust a conscript with a gun. Especially if I’d just hurt someone they cared for.”
“Too bad,” Joan said. “I was thinking we could turn one of them against the rest of them. This whole business is increasing our work more than I thought, hiding food, getting our hens on a brooding schedule different than normal, staying prepared for them to arrive at any time.”
Arch slammed his hand on the table. “You people don’t realize, they’ve done this before. Many times. They know exactly how to string people along, make them think it isn’t going to get bad. But it will get bad. Before long, we’ll be like slave laborers for them, growing their food and having precious little to eat ourselves.”
“We already have precious little,” Pilar said. “I don’t know that we can spare any.”
Troy said, “But that cheese was good.”
Joan said, “I know, but no amount of cheese, or luxury goods of any sort, are worth giving up your freedom.”
Pilar said, “Nor are they worth going to bed hungry every single night. We had nights like that. All of us.”
Rod said, “Misha and I have a plan.”
All eyes turned to them, and Dev noticed the hope on many faces.
“Not a solution, sorry. I didn’t mean to get your hopes up,” Rod said. “But we’ve been talking about what was said before and think it’s worth it to take a trip to Payson, and that other place too. We’ve both met some of the people as kids, so better us than the people from Payson, who haven’t ever met Wes and them.”
Pilar said, “That’s a good idea, but maybe it should be me and Joan. We’re older. We probably do less work around here.”
“No offense,” Rod said, “but with your limp—and don’t deny it, because I’ve seen you limp when you work hard—I don’t think a round trip like that is going to do you any favors.”
Sierra said, “I could go with you, Rod. It’s unfair to have two people from the same household go. It puts a burden on Joan and Emily.”
Nina spoke up, a rare occurrence. She’d adopted her mother’s silent ways. “I do my share.”
Sierra said, “Of course you do. I didn’t mean to exclude you.”
Emily put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and Nina smiled up at her, a sweet smile that made Dev suddenly miss Zoe’s childhood with a fierce pang.
Rod said, “If one of you guys from the barn can come over and stay while we’re gone, that’d help out a lot.”
“Sure,” said Luke. “I’d be happy to. Especially if I can use your hammock. Always thought it’d be fun to sleep in it.”
“Of course,” Rod said. “Everything of mine is yours for the duration.”
Dev said, “What are you going to say to them down the hill?”
Joan spoke at the same time. “How long will you be gone?”
Misha answered that question first. “We figure five days to a week.”
Dev said, “What if Vargas’s men come and notice you’re gone?”
“I doubt they know exactly how many we are, or recognize faces,” Rod said. “And if they ask, you just say we’re out hunting. That actually does happen, after all.”
“It’s none of their business,” Arch said. “We don’t have to answer for anyone’s whereabouts.” He scowled. “I wish I was healthy enough to come with you.”
“I wish you were too, Arch,” Rod said.
Pilar said, “I don’t like risking our medic.”
Rod said, “We talked about that too. But honestly, we’ll probably be safer traveling than you all are waiting here.”
“If things haven’t changed out there,” Joan said. Clearly, she was worried. “What if Wes’s people shoot at you?”
“They’ll still recognize a white flag,” Sierra said. “And Joan and I can write notes. Or give you verbal messages to memorize, in case they don’t recognize you. You were both, what, teenagers when we were last down there?”
“We saw Rudy,” Misha said. “When he came up about the epidemic orphans.” She smiled in apology around the table. “Our extended family now, orphans then.”
Brandie said, “We don’t mind the word. We’re all still orphans, after all, no matter how nice you all were to take us in.”
Troy said, “She’s been feeling her lack of a mother since she got pregnant.”
“I can speak for myself,” she snapped at him. “But he’s right. I have been.”
Sierra said, “Anything you want to know about being pregnant, you ask me, okay? I’m always here for you.”
Brandie smiled at Sierra, a little sadly.
Pilar brought them back to the main topic. “Like Dev asked, what are you going to say to them?”
Rod shrugged. “We haven’t come up with a great plan—no offense, Dev, to your or Arch’s ideas so far. Maybe they have. Maybe the three groups can work together somehow on their great plan.”
“Tell them we have a few grenades,” Dev said, “though we have no idea if they’ll work or not.”
“Is that okay with everyone? I mean, what if they’re more on Vargas’s side than ours?” Rod said.
Dev said, feeling admiration for Rod, “I guess the two of you have been talking about this.”
Misha said, “We tried to think of every possibility. They’re against us. They shoot bullets or arrows at us. They’re all dead. Everything we could think of, we’ve talked about how to handle—including holding back strategic information until we see what’s what down there.”
Zoe said, “I could go instead of Misha.”
Misha shook her head. “It should be me. And my being a medic is part of why. I can take some herbs, I can offer to help anyone who is sick. It’s a way to show our good intentions.”
“We can’t afford to lose you,” said Arch to her.
Joan said, “Either of you.”
Arch looked chagrined, a rare event. “Right. Either of you.”
“I’m not helping you much at all,” Misha said to Arch. “I plan to ask about your symptoms while I’m there, see if anyone has any ideas. And I’ve been keeping detailed notes. Nina knows some of what I know, Zoe other things, Mom still others. If by some chance I don’t come back—like a tree falls on me, Mom, that kind of thing—then you’ll have the herbs and my notes and the knowledge.”
“Don’t say that,” Joan said. “You’re going to come back.”
“I will,” Misha said. “Don’t worry.”
“Of course I’ll worry! I’m your mother!”
Dev would worry, and he wasn’t their father. He’d known them both since they were little kids. “You’ll both be careful.”
“Yes, of course,” Rod said. “Don’t be such nervous hens about it.”
Sierra said, “Sounds like you have it all worked out. When are you planning on going?”
“Tomorrow morning, if that’s okay,” Rod said. He looked to Joan as he said it.
Arch said, “Doesn’t give us much time to come up with questions we might have.”
Dev said, “Seems to me they’ve worked all that out. Remember, Dad, Rod and Misha are thirty now, not little kids.”
“You’re all kids. I mean, except for Pilar and Joan and me.”
“Hey,” Curt protested. He attended most of the meetings now, thankfully. Dev wanted his input.
“You barely count as adult,” Arch said. “The rest of you are just kids.”
Misha said, gently, “Everyone here is a fertile adult, Arch, if you look at it from a biology perspective. Nina could get pregnant. C.J. could impregnate someone.”
Nina looked unsurprised by this, but C.J. was clearly shocked at the thought.
Dev had thought before that C.J. and Nina were a logical couple, if they ever developed feelings for one another. But he hoped they didn’t reproduce soon. He wasn’t all that enthusiastic about Brandie being pregnant. Every mouth to feed was a burden on the whole community. And now, with the military men? It was one more vulnerability. He pushed that thought aside and spoke to Misha. “If you need help with your planning, let us know.”
Misha said, “We had thought about taking a few chicks, but then realized they’d be too much of a hassle. But a cup of grain for each group might be a nice peace offering. They can plant it.”
Dev nodded. “Sounds good to me. We can spare that much.”
Sierra said, “I agree. And I’d rather Wes get it than Vargas’s group.”
Her father said, “Good point. Anything else we can spare?”
Sierra said, “Seeds. It has been long enough there’s probably some genetic drift even in what were once identical varieties. Could be something we have will replace something of theirs that disease or bugs got. Or it’ll do better downhill than up here.”
“Can’t imagine that,” Pilar said. “They’re hotter than us, both of them.”
“So we’ll choose a few seeds that are the most drought-resistant of what we have,” Sierra said. “I can do that using our seed stores.” None of the four households had anything the others didn’t also have, but Sierra had taken better quality notes on which seeds had performed best.
“I’ll give you a few baskets to take down,” Joan said.
Curt said, “I can give you a slingshot I just made.”
Dev said, “You know, this is a good conversation to have for another reason.”
“Why?” Zoe asked.
“To remind us that this is how trade should work. Not forced. Not taxed. But people wanting to share things we’ve grown and made with our neighbors, out of a spirit of generosity. Not relinquished at the point of a blade.”
Joan looked thoughtful. “I wonder if it’s possible to talk the military guys around to that point of view. Maybe if we—I—talked that way, they’d respond in kind.”
Arch said, “Man, you people just don’t get it! We are in deep trouble here. Remember that hen. That could be you or me next time. We have to figure out what to do!”
“We’re working on it, Dad,” Dev said. “Don’t get yourself worked up. Gustavo is getting pretty good with the bow now. And the grenades might work.”
Pilar said, “The problem is, if we kill ten of them, I’m afraid a hundred more will come in their wake.”
Arch was obviously happy they’d returned to talking about strategies of war. “We burn or bury the bodies, and they won’t know for sure it was us.”
They’d been over this before. Should they kill the horses too? If not, what would they do with them? Surely the military had trackers who could follow the hoof prints of a dozen horses they tried to hide in the woods. What about that armored wagon? Could they dismantle it? Were any of the parts useful? If they had the horses pull it away, the path would be easy enough to read for a child, much less a trained tracker. A smokehouse full of horse meat would be a dead giveaway. Taking the horses down to Payson or up toward Show Low would be to risk bringing retaliation on friends or innocent strangers.
The only thing they’d decided for sure was that they needed to keep better track of the men who came to trade or collect taxes or threaten or steal. If it was a different group each time, they might get a better sense of the numbers they were dealing with. Or they might never know their numbers for sure.
Dev let Arch talk for a time, even though he was saying nothing new. Then Dev moved the conversation in another direction. An hour later, they broke apart into households. Everyone had work to do—and as Joan said, a bit more than before for her because of her kids taking off on that trip.
When they broke apart, Sierra hung back. “Can I talk with you?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I wanted to tell you that I spoke with Zoe. I did my best, but I don’t think she’s going to ever agree to hide.”
“She’s a brave girl—woman, rather.”
“Part of it is she wants to protect you, I think. She’d die for you, without a thought.”
“If she did, I’d die too. I couldn’t live with that.”
“No,” she said. “I know you couldn’t. But I did want to let you know I tried. I don’t want her hurt either, and I gave it my very best.”
Dev was disappointed but not surprised. “She understands what rape is?”
“Theoretically, at least. I don’t know anyone understands it fully who hasn’t lived through it. I don’t know that I do.”
Dev shook his head, not at those words, but in surrender to the fact of Zoe’s stubbornness. “Thanks for trying, anyway.”
“Arch seems in a bad mood.”
“Ha. You’re only hearing the tip of the iceberg. Dad is never going to quit talking about this. We should have had more guns, ammo, stored the ammo in refrigeration when we had that, rather than in the barn, screw refrigerating food.”
“Well, he’s right, isn’t he?”
“Yeah?”
“If I could go back and talk to the teenage me, I’d say that she should have learned the bow then. And that we should have stockpiled manufactured bows and arrows, dozens of them, back when I was thirteen or fourteen. And I could have taken a class on flintknapping. And learned martial arts.”
“Your teenage self would have only been confused at that.”
“I know. She would have been more worried about what to wear to some stupid party. And thought it was all important, that nonsense. Parties and who was mad at who and if so-and-so’s new tattoo was too risqué or not, and all that stuff we had in our heads before survival was the only thing our heads had room for.”
“We’ve managed to have good times too,” Dev said.
“We have.” She bit both her lips and frowned. She was starting to look middle-aged, particularly when she frowned.
Dev supposed he was too. Hard work in the sun wasn’t a great beauty regimen. He remembered those sorts of headlines on magazines in grocery stores. Beauty articles. Whether low-fat diets could keep you young. Answer: no. They kept you lean, but in this world, that was far too lean. Lean, on the verge of starving, should there be any major crop failure. They’d barely survived the death of the rabbits, the sickness that had gone through their flocks, and the loss of the apple trees. Now the damned rodents were gnawing away at one of their two prime calorie sources. And he knew they’d been damned lucky at that. A plague of locusts would be the end of them.
“What are you thinking? Worried about Zoe?”
“No. Just thinking how a plague of locusts or grasshoppers would kill us.”
“Or a plague of men with rifles. That might be the thing that finally does it.”
“Try not to worry. It just wastes energy we could spend on practicing on our weapons, or on focusing on coming up with a better strategy.”
“I know. Do you not worry?”
“If I could take a break from it, I’d have Arch reminding me to worry all evening long. It’s like having Zoe when she was really young. Some days, I push his bedtime up as early as I can.”
“I doubt you ever did that with Zoe.”
“Rarely. But she was full of energy. There were days I couldn’t keep up.”
“You’ll have a baby around here soon enough.”
“You will. She’s on your sofa now.”
“True. Maybe I should give Brandie and Troy my bedroom and let them be a couple. I probably would have already, thinking about the next generation, had it not been for those guys showing up. Now the future seems....”
“What? Confused?”
“Unlikely,” she said. “And on that depressing note, I have to get to work. Life goes on. I’m going to be canning tomatoes today, and setting up others to dry.”
* * *
ROD AND MISHA WERE still gone when Vargas and his men returned.
By then, they were no longer split. Dev couldn’t say who had swayed the most minds—Arch, himself, Sierra, or Troy, who was worried about his pregnant girlfriend—but they had decided to attack the military men the moment the opportunity came. And Joan had grown so worried about the delay in her children’s return, even she had quit worrying over the morality of a preemptive strike.
The instant Zoe heard the hoof beats coming up the road, she gave a signal, and everyone flew into action. They had assigned roles. Yasmin ran to find Curt, who was sticking closer to home than was his usual habit, for this exact reason.
Dev knew what was happening at every house. Curt was gathering his crossbow and quarrels and circling around the grain fields to come up on the men on the road from a direction they might not anticipate. C.J. would trail his father and be used as a runner of messages. Sierra hadn’t liked that at first, but Curt had quietly said something to her that had swayed her.
Emily was scurrying with Nina past Curt’s cabin and to the hidden henhouse, to guard the hens and the chicks that had hatched from the first clutch of eggs. No one resented this. Emily wouldn’t be good in a fight, she had a good reason to want to avoid strange men, and no one resented protecting the youngest and most vulnerable of them.
Joan was on her way here. So was Pilar’s household, except for Brandie, who would stay there and guard the place. She hadn’t wanted to be protected because of her pregnancy, but Troy had begged her, and she had relented.
Arch was hiding the bows and arrows in two places, Zoe’s in the compost pile, and Dev’s in the woodpile several yards away. Both of them would stay close to their bows until it was time to use them.
They had decided to, despite the risk of possible retaliation, kill the men today, for they had no doubt their demands would increase. Had the men not shot the chicken, maybe this would not have been their decision. Had Vargas not smashed his own man in the head, maybe they’d have waited longer to judge the kind of men these were. But here they were, planning an ambush, and if this was morally wrong, may God forgive them.
Curt had the hardest job, killing the men who guarded the wagon and guns. Besides the personal cost of killing another human by firing first, he had other challenges. First, he had to move quickly enough from the first man to the next so that the surviving man didn’t have a chance to get off a shot to alert the men up here. Second, he had to gather guns and get them to Dev or someone else who could use them.
But once Curt did that, the burden was on Dev, gun or no. His father too, who he believed would go for the bow himself, but with his father’s hand tremor, Dev didn’t trust his father’s accuracy. Dev had told Zoe she might need to be firm with her grandfather. “Act fast if you need to, and shut out whatever he says,” he had told her. “You can apologize later. Grab the bow.”
He was sick with worry for his daughter, but Dev had to prepare for his own role. When Curt gave the signal, or if one of the guards out there got a shot off, he needed to grab the bow and hit Vargas cleanly with his first arrow. If there was a second armed man, that man was to be Zoe’s. If there were more than two armed men, their chance of success was not good. One rifle could do a lot of damage before a second arrow was nocked.
And whoever had the bows in hand would be their first targets. That meant the two people he loved most in this world were in the greatest danger.
If something went wrong up here, and it looked as if they wouldn’t be able to subdue the men for whatever reason—the most likely being that they might all carry a rifle—they had arranged a signal to call off the attack so that Curt didn’t start executing the plan.
Trouble was, he might be too far away to hear it.
Arch had said, as they were finalizing the plan, “Plans seldom survive contact with the enemy. Stay flexible.”
Dev rubbed his hands on his shirt, drying them. He waited at his post, standing near the table with a file and a hoe, sharpening the blade, watching everyone else get into position. He was aware of running feet and saw Sierra and the boys arrive. They spread out to their positions.
Time stretched. A squeak from the wagon reached his ears. But then he heard nothing, for his ears began to ring from the river of adrenaline pumping through him. He was almost quivering by the time Vargas and his men arrived.
Except it wasn’t the men as they’d come up the driveway before. It was Vargas himself, on horseback, and a line of his men, all on horseback.
Ten of them. All were armed. Vargas’s rifle was visible, held in a sling that went across his chest. But the rest of the men had their rifles out, cradled in their arms, ready to use.
Their planning had all been for nothing.
Vargas said, “Our horses haven’t had water in quite some time. One of you—” he pointed to Sierra “—you. You lead us to the well here. And a couple of you others bring that big tub for the horses at the wagon to drink out of.”
Zoe exchanged a glance with Dev, who gave a little shrug, meaning, “What can we do?”
Curt must have watched the armed men ride by without stopping. Or Dev hoped he had, or that he counted the rifles left in the wagon. Because if he killed the men out there, and the rest of them were up here with rifles, all today would be was a slaughter.
As the military men passed him, he looked at their faces. They were unsmiling. It seemed the same group as before, to a man, but there was little of the friendly demeanor from Vargas that he’d displayed at the dinner table.
When the men had passed, he looked around at his friends and neighbors. Arch’s face was stormy. Dev, afraid his father’s frustration was going to boil over, walked across to him. “You can’t lose control,” he said.
“It’s blown. All the way to hell and back.”
“Shh. Quieter. I know. Remember, you were the one who said to stay flexible. Things changed. We have to accept it. Next time is different. This time, we can’t give the game away.”
“I know, I know,” his father said. He was still fuming.
“Dad,” Dev said sharply. “Get control of yourself, or go inside.”
Zoe came up. “C’mon, Gramps. Let’s sit on the porch together.”
“The porch is too far—” Then he seemed to accept the situation, and the fight drained out of him. He turned without a word and made for the house.
Zoe looked at Dev, a question on her face.
“I don’t know,” he said—then, without a pause, “No, go with him.” It wasn’t that he believed his father needed watching but he realized it was a chance to get Zoe out of the line of fire.
He took the moment to let out the signal that called off Curt’s role. Curt might already know, but there was no reason to omit this safety step.
He had a bad feeling about what was going to happen once the horses had drunk water. It had been their faces, as much as the rifles in hand, that told him he wasn’t going to like what they had to say.
The well head wasn’t far, but it was far enough that quiet voices might not be heard. Troy came toward him and Dev pointed to a spot where they’d meet halfway. Joan aimed for it as well, but Dev held his hands up to stop everyone else from bunching together.
Troy said, “What do we do?”
“Nothing we can do,” Dev said. “Play it by ear, and hope that Curt doesn’t act without knowing they are armed up here.”
Joan said, “He’d see the extra horses weren’t there, and the guns. He won’t.”
“Right,” Dev said, at least that one worry easing. Curt was smart. He’d surely know he should hold back.
“Dammit,” Troy said. “I hoped we’d end this.”
“Everyone did,” Joan said, which wasn’t quite true. She had held out the longest against the idea of killing men who hadn’t yet aimed a gun at them. “Dev, any instructions?”
Dev shook his head. All they could do was react as events unfolded. “Stay calm.” He knew Joan was, of all of them, the most self-possessed. He was intending the message for Troy. “At least Brandie isn’t here.”
Vargas was the first one back. He looked around. “Where’s the old man?”
Joan said, “He isn’t well. He went inside to rest.”
“Huh,” Vargas said to her. “So who’s in charge? You?”
She pointed to Dev.
It was news to him. “Right,” he said anyway. “I am. What can we do for you today? We’re pretty busy, so I hope it’s short.”
Vargas gave him a cold smile. “You don’t look busy. Everybody is just standing here.”
“Because you’re here. Otherwise, it’s a big work day for us. I hope you don’t expect us to feed you again.”
Vargas’s eyebrows shot up. He obviously wasn’t used to people making demands of him. “As luck would have it—your luck—we ate at the last place. We won’t stay long.”
The other men rode up, one by one. The two boys who had carried the galvanized tub out were lagging behind, carrying the full tub of water between them. Sierra jogged past him, grabbed the Quinn wheelbarrow, and pulled it out to meet them. The boys headed down the driveway with the wheelbarrow.
“Okay,” Dev said. Again, he noticed the men with their hands on the rifles. Couldn’t help but notice.
“Let me tell you about yourselves,” Vargas said. “There are seventeen of you in three big homesteads.”
Dev nodded, as if agreeing. There were twenty of them. The men had never seen Curt’s cabin, or Curt, Emily, or Nina.
“A couple of you are missing. And you may have young children you are hiding from us. Happens. But we don’t care about young children.”
“Okay,” Dev said. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You have seventeen people, three big gardens, hen houses, and a grain field.”
They’d not yet found the second field across the highway. Also good.
“Three places, five each place should do it to keep you going. We’re going to draft two of you for highway work.”
Dev could feel the shocked expression hit his face before he could school himself against it. “You can’t take our people.”
“Not take. Borrow. Employ. It’s your trade route. You’re going to benefit from it. So you help build it.”
“But—”
“No buts. I’m doing you the kindness of telling you beforehand so you can say your goodbyes. We’re headed down the hill, and on the way back up, we’re going to collect people at every point. There’ll be twenty or twenty-five in the work crew. You’re only contributing two, so you should be grateful.”
Joan said, “We can hardly be grateful when you threaten to tear our families apart.”
“These aren’t your families. That one there isn’t even white.” He pointed at Yasmin. “She looks young and healthy. We’ll take her. And a man. Not you,” he said to Dev. “One of the young ones. But not the little kid. Where is he?”
“Working,” Dev said. His mind went to the bow and arrows, hidden in the woodpile. His hands itched to have it. But that was crazy. Against a dozen rifles? May as well take out his pocket knife and slit his own throat. “You can’t expect me to pick one of my people to hand over to you.”
“You choose. Usually there’s a troublemaker people are glad to be rid of. Or a shirker. We won’t let him shirk. If you can’t pick, when we come back tomorrow, we will.”
The one called Scooter spoke up. “Food.”
“Right. And they need to pack enough food for themselves plus one other person to last two weeks.”
“And when the two weeks is over?”
“If they work hard, we’ll have the highway cleared. There’s a mess of it uphill. That wouldn’t be your doing, would it?”
Dev said, “I don’t even know what you mean. We stay at home. Except for Payson—and we haven’t been there in years—we don’t travel.”
“There is a bunch of highway destroyed up there several miles. TNT maybe. And old junker cars, gas cars, blocking the road. We’ll move the cars, clear the highway—there and elsewhere—and fill in with rocks and dirt. Your people on the crew will need a pickax if you have it, buckets or that wheelbarrow to move debris, and a shovel.”
Dev wanted to protest, but as he looked around at the men on horseback, the words died in his throat. They were all looking more military than they had before, serious, keeping an eye out in every direction, rifles at the ready.
They’d done this before. Many times. They knew exactly when and how to draft people, what to say. Dev caught up to his new reality, and quickly.
“What about two men?” Dev said. “Not the girl. Two of the young men.” He didn’t want any of the women with these men. Not Zoe, not Yasmin, not any of them.
“One of each,” Vargas said.
Joan said, “How will we know they’ll be taken care of? That you won’t work them to death? Or beat them? Or starve them?”
“You trust us. The first time is hard. I know that. But when your people are returned to you unharmed, you’ll know that the next time you can expect them to come back to you.”
Joan was feeling braver than Dev, apparently. “Entirely the same? You can swear to that? Especially with Yasmin. You won’t touch her?”
“If your people cooperate, they won’t get hurt. If they refuse to do the assigned work, they may be punished. So you need to tell them to cooperate. That simple.”
The wheelbarrow with water had been out of sight down the driveway for a few minutes. In a few minutes more, their horses would be ready to go. Dev had only that time to come up with something—a plan, words to say—something, to make this all go away.
“And if you were thinking of taking all your people and hiding in the woods between now and the time we come back, I suggest you don’t,” Vargas said. “We’ll be back. And while you’re gone, we’ll assume that everything here is free for the taking if there’s no one here to protest that.”
Sierra said, “You’ll take it all anyway, won’t you? Eventually. You’ll bleed us dry.”
“You’ll come to trust us,” Vargas said.
“Never,” said Sierra, fierce and angry.
Now Dev wished he’d sent her in with his father. Not that she’d have gone at his order. They weren’t a military unit where one of them could order the others around, just a neighborhood where everyone had an equal say. He said, “Anyone who wants to, chime in.”
Pilar said, “We don’t want a trade route. We don’t want your help. We don’t want any part of it. What if we promise to never trade, to never use the highway at all?”
“You’ll never cross it to go hunting?”
“Well, that. There doesn’t need to be an even surface between here and there. We need to access our land. All our land.”
“The only land anyone owns anymore,” said Vargas, “is what they can farm. That’s a law now. You hold what you can hold, what you can use for production. But everything else is the government’s, if and when we need it. The highway is ours, and everything across the highway is ours. Got it?”
Without the rifles, Dev knew, there’d be a lot more noise responding to this nonsense. His people were standing alone, looking as lost and confused as he felt, or they were clinging to each other in pairs.
He tried one last thing. “What if we give you food instead of people? Enough to feel all twelve of you for the two weeks of road work?” They’d go hungry this summer if they did, for the food stores they had helped them make it through the weeks when it was too hot to grow almost everything. Better to go to bed hungry some nights than to hand Yasmin over to a bunch of men. Or anyone, but the girls and women would be in the greatest danger.
“What we said. It’s not up for negotiation. After the highway is repaired, then you’ll want that excess food for trade. Or for your taxes.”
Dev couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. He sympathized with Sierra and his father. Anger was the easiest reaction to this. But he admired Joan, for she was managing to think, to ask direct questions without being overly combative. Himself? He was just standing here, slack-jawed, a fool, with no idea of what to say to make this trouble all go away.
Vargas clicked at his horse and turned it, and he led the way down the driveway, his men following in single-file, except for Freddie. Freddie dismounted and wrapped the end of his horse’s reins around a belt loop. He held the rifle in both hands, ready to fire, and he backed away. The horse went along.
They’d done this many times before. That was Dev’s only coherent thought. They knew how, and they’d already seen or imagined every possible response. What could he come up with that would be new, or effective, against such a superior and experienced force?
When the men were out of sight, his own people began to move, gathering together. The two who had been watering the horses came back up the driveway, pushing the wheelbarrow and the empty tub.
Troy took off, saying, “I’m getting Brandie.”
Joan said, “Get Emily and Nina too.”
Sierra said, “When they’re gone, I’ll get Curt and C.J. I’m going down to find them.”
Dev nodded. He could hear the wagon wheels squeaking again, the noise fading. They were leaving. He turned to Joan and waved Pilar closer. “What else could I have done?”
Pilar shook his head.
“You did fine, Dev,” Joan said, and she walked over and put an arm around him, giving him a brief squeeze before letting go. “It was an impossible situation.”
“Thanks,” he said, though he disagreed with her. To the group he said, “We meet in five minutes. I’m going to get my family.”
He went up the porch stairs, and there was Zoe at the back door. “I heard everything.”
“Did your grandfather?”
“I don’t know.”
Dev sighed. “I guess I have to tell him.”
“I can.”
“No, Zoe. It’s my job. You go out with the others. Make sure your other grandfather is okay. Pilar hardly said a word and I know how he worries about people.”
“Okay,” she said. “Love you.”
“I love you,” he said, and then he was fighting back tears, as he went into his father’s room, over the small exchange, routine most days. Not today.
A stool stood in the corner of his old room for a guest to sit. His father sat on it now, his hands pinned between his knees, probably stopping the shaking. “Dad,” Dev said, and then he lost it. He was crying. He sat on the sofa and just let the tears fall for half a minute. He was so worried. And ashamed. He wasn’t the leader, but he was a leader, one of the adults of the group, not too old, not too young. And he hadn’t led them anywhere at all.
“What happened?” asked his father, once Dev had gained control of himself.
Dev told him.
“Could have been worse,” his father said. “Probably will be worse, and soon.” His father held his hands up, palm down. They were both shaking badly. “Motherfucking old age,” he said.
Dev barked a laugh, more surprised than amused. “I didn’t even know you knew that word.”
“I know lots of words. Like ‘kidnapping.’ Which is what this is, taking two of our people, no matter what we say.”
“At least we’ll know where they are.”
“For all the good it does us. What, are we going to go up there with two bows and a crossbow and take out a dozen armed men?”
Dev was glad for the question. It got him to thinking, and not just feeling despair and fear and shame and sorrow. “Maybe so,” he said. He tried to focus enough to imagine it. “At night. There’d be all the captured people, and they’d have shovels and pickaxes. We should send tools with our people that double as weapons.”
“Still. Twelve rifles? Who knows how much ammunition?”
“It won’t be just us,” Dev said. “Wes’s group, Payson, they’re not going to like this any more than we do.” His mood, his despair, his weakness was gone. He felt once again as if it were possible to do something. He wasn’t sure what yet, not entirely. But something. “C’mon, Pop,” he said. “Let’s go outside. We have work to do.”
“About time,” Arch muttered. He had to use the wall to get to his feet. “Stupid body. Whatever you do, I guess I’ll be out of it. When those men are around, I think my symptoms get worse.”
“No, you won’t be entirely out of it,” Dev said. “You’ll be important to whatever we do. Your head is full of military strategies. We’ll need you now more than ever.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Before they come back and snatch our people? Only a day. I’d rather not plan anything until Rod and Misha return, if that were possible. We need to know what the others are thinking down the hill. They might have a plan, or better weapons. I wish we still had a working car.”
“Can’t drive past the platoon. And it’s only good on roads. Better to wish we’d had a horse all along.”
“We’d have needed a pair. Probably would have eaten one when it got too old to work.” Dev said, “Do you need my arm? Or can you walk?”
“I can walk,” Arch said. He seemed to have gained his balance. “Let’s go on out there and figure out what to do.”