“Ed!” I yelled.
He jumped down on the outside of the gate and came toward us at a run. I dismounted, and we embraced, pounding each other on the back.
“Thought I was going to have to fight through half of Stockton to get to you,” I said.
“How’d you know we were here?”
“Nylce. And when we took out Red’s forces in Stockton, a prisoner told us you’d been moved here. What’s the situation?”
“When Red caught us, I figured we were going to be turned into roasts and ribs,” Ed said. “But he was in the middle of marching on Warren, so he sent a detachment to take us back to Stockton.”
“I knew that much.”
“Red left a big force behind in Stockton—more than fifty men. He learned his lesson the last time you caught him with his pants down. But he took all his most loyal men with him. And so I got to talking to the folks guarding us, telling them a little bit about my history, about Speranta, and well, about you. And I sort of promised them they could move to Speranta.” Ed grimaced, looking at me.
“That’s awesome, Ed.”
“Lots of people have friends and neighbors who’ve disappeared. So we’ve had a bit of a revolution here in Stockton.”
My head was spinning. I had arrived expecting to be shot at, and been welcomed with hugs instead. But first things first—the encircling force would be setting up to attack. They were supposed to wait until they heard gunfire, but if something went wrong . . . “I’ve got to get to the other side of town, fast.”
“Open the gate!” he yelled.
Ed and the guy currently in charge of Stockton, Lawrence Mason, hopped on our Bikezilla, and we raced across town. Lawrence ordered the west gate opened, and we biked out into the snow, yelling “Nylce!” and looking for her forces. We found them about two miles out, hidden by a low rise in the road, ready to attack.
“Stockton’s already free,” I told Nylce as we pulled up. “You took the city without us? Damn, Chief, I knew you were a badass, but that’s just ridiculous.”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t—Ed did. Never mind. Let’s head into the city, and he can explain it on the way there.”
I set my forces to guard the walls, looking out for the remnants of the Reds, and asked Lawrence to gather Stockton’s population in front of city hall.
It took more than an hour to call them all together. I spent the time talking to Eli, who embraced me enthusiastically, and his wife, Mary Sue, who was as cold-hearted and suspicious as ever. His kids—Brand, Alba, and Joy—were far taller than I remembered them, but if it was possible, even skinnier. They showed me “their” pigs proudly—seven of them now, including a pregnant sow. Red had probably thought he had stumbled into the mother lode when he had captured them and the rest of Ed’s expedition.
Stocktonites flowed into the intersection in front of city hall until it was packed, overflowing with what looked to be hundreds of people, though Lawrence assured me it couldn’t be more than three or four hundred. They were gaunt and dirty, clothed mostly in rags, clearly fatigued and suffering. None of them were particularly old—I saw very little white hair—but they all looked years older than they probably were. There was a certain amount of hope in their stance and smiles threatening to peek from the corners of their mouths.
I climbed to the second floor balcony above one of the businesses on Main Street and raised my hand for quiet. The silence was total.
“My name is Alex Halprin,” I shouted into the stillness. “I’m the duly elected mayor of Speranta. Ed Bauman has told you there is a place for you in our community, and I’m here to affirm that promise.” They interrupted me with cheers. When it got quiet again, I went on.
“There is a place in Speranta for those of you who are willing to follow our laws and work hard. We have food and shelter and power—everything we need to survive this winter, however long it lasts. But we’ve built our settlement through hard work, and no one is exempt from that.
“If you wish to remain here in Stockton, you’re welcome to do so. I want no one in Speranta who’s there against his or her will. But if you remain here, you must do so under your own resources; you cannot expect us to support you with food or protect you with our troops. We will help you as we can, particularly with technical knowhow, but we have no illusions of saving everyone from this winter. We must conserve our resources to support those who support us through their blood, labor, and tears: the citizens of Speranta.
“Red’s forces are broken, and if he survived the battle, he’s on the run.” There was another cheer. “For those of you who followed his orders, I offer forgiveness. But for Red himself, I demand justice. If he is still alive, we will find him, and he will pay for his crimes.” I punched my hook into the air to emphasize the point, and the crowd grew even quieter.
“Think it over carefully. If you’re ready for a new life, a new place, then start packing. Bring only what you can carry. The work will be hard, the hours long, the risks many. But if you’re equal to the task, we welcome you. We leave for Speranta at first light tomorrow.”
The applause was overwhelming.
Chapter 71
Nearly everyone chose to move. Speranta’s population had almost doubled in the last few weeks, to over eleven hundred. We had more than two hundred people jammed into each longhouse, and they had each been designed for 150 or fewer. It took two days to get everyone settled, counted, and placed in work assignments. Every preexisting citizen with any experience at all was put in charge of a work party. We broke ground on eight greenhouses and two longhouses all at once, by far the single most ambitious expansion project we’d yet tried.
It would have been impossible to start so many buildings at once except for the supplies the
Stocktonites brought us. They freely gave us the material Darla and I had been trying to steal when we were caught and lost our hands.
Ex-Mayor Petty agreed that all the remaining frozen pork should be shared among the whole settlement of Speranta. He didn’t have much choice; the Reds had thoroughly burned Warren. There was no town for the Warrenites to return to, and I wouldn’t allow him to stay in Speranta without sharing the pork—we were all in this together, I figured. There wasn’t as much pork left as I expected, though. The Warrenites would have been starving within a few months in any case.
Uncle Paul spent two days chasing the stragglers before he and his forces returned. He had killed or captured most of the Reds. There was no sign of Red himself, though—either he had been vaporized by our manure bomb, or he had escaped.
I had a more immediate worry than Red, though. I pulled Uncle Paul aside. “What are we going to do with all these prisoners?”
“Put ’em in a longhouse under guard?”
“Sure, but what then? We can’t afford to feed people who aren’t working. Heck, we can’t even feed the people who are.”
“I’m dead on my feet. Mind if we sit down, get something to eat?”
“Yeah. Of course not. Sorry.” He lowered himself slowly onto a bench in the kitchen area, and I poured him a cup of water and grabbed a bowl of kale chips.
“God,” he said wearily, “I am so sick of kale chips.” “You know what Darla says whenever I complain?” I said.
“Yeah. ‘Beats not eating.’ She says the same damn thing to me. So these prisoners. Why not put them to work? Like a chain gang or something.”
“Still have to guard them. And it seems like a temporary solution.”
“Hmm.” Uncle Paul put a couple of kale chips in his mouth and chewed slowly. “You ever hear about that Truth and Reconciliation Commission they had in South Africa?” “No.”
“Before your time. Anyway, they interviewed victims and perpetrators of violence in the apartheid era—not necessarily to prosecute anyone, just to bring closure. We could try something like that.”
“Have them talk to all the refugees and prisoners— sort out who the really bad ones were and who we might be able to integrate into Speranta?”
“Sure. A commission like that might help us get Mayor Petty’s bunch integrated too.”
“I know the perfect person to run it too. Thanks!” “You bet.”
Uncle Paul turned back to the kale chips as I got up to look for Zik. He was perfect to lead the commission. Anyone who had fought for Red was suspect, and who better to sort out those who might be reformed from the rest than Zik, who’d lived in Stockton and knew most of the prisoners personally? It also would give him a chance to question them about his daughter, Emily, who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I told Zik that the top priority was getting rid of the prisoners—they all needed to become members of our community or be exiled as quickly as possible.
I also set up the constitution committee I had promised over a month before when we had held the vote to confirm me as mayor. I tapped Reverend Evans to run it. If he were in charge, I figured he would have a tough time arguing that the constitution was invalid. I insisted that he put my sister, Rebecca, on the executive committee and asked her to keep an eye on Evans for me.
On the evening of the second day after battle, I summoned Anna and Charlotte into the base of the Turbine Tower 1-A, my improvised conference room. When I opened the door, though, Max and Alyssa were already in there. It looked like Max was trying to shove his tongue down Alyssa’s throat. She didn’t mind, though—she was pressed up against him, moaning softly. Their hands were everywhere.
I cleared my throat. Then cleared it again, louder. Max broke the kiss and looked over at me, startled. “I need my conference room,” I said.
Alyssa tossed her hair, smiled, and marched out with her head held high.
Max’s face turned tomato sauce red, and he slinked past me with a muttered, “Sorry.”
I caught his arm, holding him there a minute. “Is she still getting gifts under her pillow?” I asked in a whisper.
“Sometimes,” Max said.
“Did you tell her it’s not you?”
“Um, not really.”
I made a mental note to move Darla and my bedroll closer to where Alyssa slept. I wanted to know who was giving her gifts surreptitiously, before it exploded into some kind of drama. “You should tell her.”
Max shrugged and pulled free of my grip. He nearly crashed into Anna on the way out of the turbine tower. She shoved her way past him, and Charlotte followed her into my conference room/improvised make-out spot and closed the door so we could have a private conference. “How bad is the food situation?” I asked.
Anna spoke first. “We can handle it. If we cut back to survival rations now, go on a crash building program, and borrow some food from the Wallers, we can feed everyone. But it’ll be rough for about three months.”
The most critical project was building greenhouses, so I threw my energy into that. I sent a team led by Nylce to trade with the Wallers for more food. Thelma, who’d started as our hostage but was now our guest, went along as an advisor—she had finally decided we weren’t going to kill and eat her. Now she saved her paranoia for all the other ways she might die: a flenser raid, a rare disease, or a fall from a turbine tower were her three favorites. I normally tried to avoid her. Nylce took Ranaan Kendall—the
Iraqi war vet—along with her too. He hadn’t made the trip to the WalMart warehouse yet and wanted to see it.
After dinner a few days later, Ben approached me. “Mayor Halprin, may I speak with you?”
“You can call me Alex,” I said for the gazillionth time. “And sure, what’s up?”
“The sniper’s nest is above us,” he said.
Okay. That wasn’t like Ben anymore. I mean, yes, sometimes he was way too literal, but he was getting a lot better about interpreting figures of speech. He must have been incredibly nervous to misunderstand a simple expression like “what’s up.” “I mean, what can I help you with?” “Could we talk in private, Mayor Halprin? I am sorry, I forgot to call you Alex, Alex.”
“It’s okay. Sure. Step into my office.” I ushered Ben into the bottom of Turbine Tower 1-A, careful not to touch him. Normally these days a casual touch didn’t seem to set him off, but he was clearly already tense. I pulled the door closed behind us and asked, “What can I do for you, Ben?”
“You can grant me permission to call on Rebecca.” “Call on?”
“May I have your permission to take your sister out on a date?”
I rocked back on my heels in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Where had that come from? “Rebecca doesn’t need my permission to go on a date.”
“It is appropriate to ask the father of the young woman for permission to court her, but if the young woman’s father has passed on, one may seek permission of an older brother.”
“You’ve been reading some really old books on dating, haven’t you?”
“I have read The Marriage Guide for Young Men, Courtship and Marriage: And the Gentle Art of Homemakmg, and The Way to Woo and Win a Wife—”
“No, never mind, that’s okay. I don’t need to know them all. Yes, you may ask Rebecca if she would like to go out on a date with you.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ben held out his hand to shake. I took it—every muscle in his hand was corded and straining. I could feel how much mental and physical effort the handshake cost him and cut it short after one arm pump.
I didn’t catch up to Rebecca until breakfast the next morning. “Did Ben talk to you?” I asked.
She just about bubbled over right before my eyes. I could practically see the hearts rising from her head and bursting, spreading a heady scent around her. “He brought me flowers! Real flowers! What kind of guy plants real flowers in the corner of a greenhouse and tends them for three months just so he can give them to you on your first date?”
“A keeper?” I guessed.
“Hell to the yes!”
“I’m happy for you. You . . . um . . . Mom, she talked to you about, you know, all that—”
“You are truly disgusting, Alex. And yes, she did.” Rebecca flounced off while I heaved a huge sigh of relief.
Chapter 72
Not long after dinner that evening, Rebecca yelled at me from the phone across the room. “Something’s going on in Longhouse Five. You’d better get over here.”
Normally I don’t stand much on ceremony, but did she have to yell it across the entire longhouse? And Longhouse Five? That was where my mom and Mayor Petty were staying—were they in trouble or causing trouble? Everyone turned to stare at Rebecca and the phone outstretched in her hand. I ran over, taking the receiver.