The plan went off perfectly. We all got into position, the Bikezillas with their ransom of food parked just inside the bank’s mostly collapsed brick walls—and nothing happened. We waited, and waited, and waited. After a couple of hours, I set up a watch schedule and went to check on the scouts I had posted. There was nothing I could do but try to stay calm. I wasn’t, of course, but I thought I did a pretty good job faking it.
Late that night I had fallen into an uneasy slumber, when Trig Boling shook me awake. “Lights, Mayor,” he said, “on the road below us.”
I leaped up and crawled to our forward observation post, taking the binoculars from the soldier posted there. Trig was right behind me. The lights were almost directly below us, approaching the intersection. Five or six hooded lanterns or flashlights leaked just enough illumination, I could see that a group of about twenty people was moving along the road toward the bank.
“Radio Force Two. Tell them to get ready,” I murmured to Trig. He crawled away, back to the main part of our camp.
I waited another five minutes until they were well clear of the intersection below us and crawled back to camp myself. I picked up the shortwave mike, mashed the lever, and said one word: “Go.”
“Roger,” Darla replied.
My name is Alex, not Roger, I thought. Some people deal with tension by breaking down; others get angry. I think of stupid jokes.
We mounted our Bikezillas—six of them—and whooshed almost silently down the hillside in the darkness. It took almost a minute to drag the Bikezillas across the snow berm onto the road, and then we were flying toward the group on the road. I could see their lights now, even without the binoculars.
Each Bikezilla switched to attack mode—the back two riders kept pedaling, one of the front riders managed the steering and brakes, and the other lifted a rifle, ready to fire. Four riders on each load bed also prepared to fire. We hugged the south side of the road—Darla’s group would do the same—so that we could fire at anyone in the middle of the road without hitting each other.
The men in the road didn’t notice us until we were close—less than 150 feet away. Some of them turned, holding guns. “Freeze! Drop your weapons!” I bellowed. Three of them turned to aim at me, but without any light, I was only a voice in the dark. Rifles boomed from the west—Darla’s group. I couldn’t see them, but the muzzle flashes were clearly visible.
A short, chaotic battle ensued. Rifle shots seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. They had lights, and we were in near-total darkness, but they returned fire at our muzzle flashes. Some of the Reds ran; we shot at them, but without lights they melted away into the darkness, and I was sure we didn’t hit them all. I hoped they wouldn’t show up on our flanks. I hoped my mother had the sense to throw herself flat if she was out there. People fell on both sides, and the reports of the rifles were augmented by screams and moans, a chaotic symphony of suffering.
Someone yelled, “We surrender! We surrender!”
I bellowed, “Cease fire!” A few more rifle shots sounded. Then everything fell quiet.
A new voice rang out, “Shine a lantern over here.” It was Red.
When the light swung onto him, I saw that he had one arm wrapped around my mother, holding her tightly against his body. The other hand held a knife at her throat.
Chapter 77
“Mom!” I yelled.
“Alex!”
“While this reunion is no doubt touching,” Red said, “I have business to attend to. You are going to allow us to walk over to that bank, pick up our food, and bike out of here. Or I will give your mother a very messy tracheotomy.”
I looked around the battlefield. There were only nine or ten Reds left. I had almost fifty soldiers with rifles backing me up, and there were more in the darkness on Darla’s side of the battle. A sudden stab of fear nearly paralyzed me: what if she’d been hit?
Behind me a couple of our guys—field medics—were scurrying around treating our injured.
“No,” I shouted back at Red. “You’re going to put your weapons down, come back to Speranta, and stand trial for your crimes.”
“This knife is so sharp, it will not only part your mother’s trachea and jugular, it will also sever the sternohyoid, omohyoid, and thyrohyoid muscles. It may not cut her spine, but in any case, her head will be left flopping, connected by only a few threads of cartilage.” “You do that, and we’ll shoot you. So we’re stalemated.” “I have nothing to lose.” The knife glided sideways. My mother started to bleed.
I thought furiously for a moment. What would convince Red to let my mother go? He had an ego as large as his body was small—particularly where his knives were concerned. “Let’s raise the stakes.” I laid down my rifle and drew my belt knife. “You think you’re the knife god? Let’s find out. You and me, knives only I win, I get my mother. You win, you get Speranta.” I knew there was no way Darla would honor that promise, but I thought Red might believe it.
“I was told you elected your leader. Like they did in the dead age, the fat age.”
Keep the pressure on his ego, I thought. “You and I both know that this is an age for the strong. You kill me, and there’s nothing stopping you from claiming my place, from ruling over my greenhouses. My people.” I stepped forward, letting the light from the lantern hit my knife.
“You’d stand as much chance against me in a fair fight as a strawberry in a blender,” he said.
“So what are you waiting for?” I stretched my arms and neck and took another step toward him.
“You’ll face me one on one? Knife to knife?”
“I give you my word.”
Red threw my mother to the road and leapt, drawing his gladius midair and coming down on top of me in a flurry of knife blows. I tried to block his gladius with my hook, missed, and it bit into the back of my forearm. The scrape of the blade against my bone sent icy shivers up my spine and fiery licks of flame up my arm. His other knife slashed at my eyes, and I ducked, taking the blow on my forehead. Blood ran into my eyes, turning the world into a confused patchwork of red and black shadows.
I stabbed toward his stomach, but he was ready for me, throwing his hips backward to dodge the blow. A knife flashed from somewhere, cutting my right wrist on the inside, where the tendons and arteries run. My fingers loosened involuntarily, and my knife fell to the snow.
I was hopelessly outclassed. Darla stepped into the circle of light, raising her rifle, but he was on top of me again. If she shot him, the bullet would likely hit me too. Shadowed forms moved in the darkness. The gladius swept down, and I saw it barely in time to step inward, toward the strike, and throw my hook up. My hook caught his wrist, not the blade, slicing deep into the joint. The gladius fell, clunking harmlessly into the padded shoulder of my coat on its way down.
My head swam, and my vision constricted. All I could see out of the corners of my eyes was blackness, and the rest of my field of vision wasn’t much better, rendered splotchy red by the blood pouring from my forehead. I was losing far too much blood. I had to end this fight, fast.
Red thrust with his other knife, and I dodged to the side, taking the blow on the outside of my thigh instead of in my groin. He stepped toward me, knife held low for another gutting strike. I kicked out, trying to sweep his legs from under him with a round kick. It worked, but my injured leg buckled, and we both went down. Somehow Red wound up on top of me, his knife above my throat, bearing inexorably downward.
I felt consciousness fading. I was finished. If this had been a taekwondo fight, I might have stood a chance. But during all those thousands of hours I had spent training in taekwondo, Red had been training with knives. At least my mother was okay, I thought as the knife bit effortlessly into the scarf at my neck.
The butt of a rifle slammed into the side of Red’s head. Instantly the pressure on the knife eased. I threw Red off me, rolling him onto his back in the snow beside me. Darla reversed the rifle and shot him three times at a range of less than five feet, hitting him dead in the center of his chest.
The knife dropped from his limp fingers. Darla stepped over me and prodded Red’s body with the toe of her black combat boot. He didn’t move. “I didn’t promise you a goddamn thing,” she hissed. “And I never fight fair.”
She safetied the rifle and slung it over her back. Then she was on her knees beside me, cutting strips of cloth and bandaging my wounds at a near-frenzied pace.
Mom crawled over to help. Blood ran freely from the cut on her neck, staining the snow. She glanced at Darla. “You . . . you . . .”
Darla was silent, still working on the deep cut in my left arm.
Mom hesitated a moment and then said, “You saved my son.”
Darla nodded but said nothing, focused on her work.
When they had finished putting temporary patches on all my leaks, Darla pushed herself to her feet. She reached down, helping Mom up. “Can I help you with that cut on your neck?”
“I . . . yes. Thank you.”
Darla turned away, presumably to get more medical supplies, but Mom didn’t let go. She pulled Darla back, drawing her into a fierce embrace. Blood dripped from Mom’s neck into Darla’s hair. I closed my eyes for a moment—the pain had peaked and set off a wave of nausea so intense, it was all I could do not to vomit.
Our troops had taken all the weapons from the nine Reds who were left. “You have one day to leave the State of Illinois,” Darla told them. “If you walk west on Highway 20 all night and all day tomorrow, you might make it. I catch you in this state again, you’ll be shot.”
The cut in Mom’s neck was superficial. Darla used a scrap of boiled cloth and a precious strip of duct tape to hold it closed. We had three other people wounded, but miraculously no one had been killed. Darla organized a party to drag Red and his ten dead followers over the snow berm and bury them.
We camped the rest of the night in the ruins of the bank. I wanted desperately to get home—my wounds needed Dr. McCarthy’s attention—but blundering around in the darkness wouldn’t help.
The trip back to Speranta was slow because we didn’t have enough people to fully man all the Bikezillas. I couldn’t pedal at all and had to ride along like cargo. We arrived back at the longhouse well after lunchtime.
Bob Petty was waiting inside the door of Longhouse One. As I came in riding on a makeshift stretcher, he grabbed my hand, his lips worked, and he stared at me beseechingly, but no words came. I shook his hand off mine, and my stretcher bearers carried me through. Mom was right behind us. When she stepped through the door, Petty burst into tears. Mom leaned down to hug him, and they held each other for a moment.
“How’s Alexia?” Mom asked.
“She’s fine. Rebecca and Wyn are taking good care of her,” Petty said.
Darla tried to step around the logjam at the door, but Mom reached out and grabbed her elbow. “Bob, I want to introduce my daughter-in-law, Darla Halprin.”
“We’ve met,” Petty said, shaking Darla’s hand gravely.
Nylce, Rita Mae, and the kids from Worthington were back already. They had taken Stagecoach Trail, bypassing
Stockton completely. Anna, Charlotte, Uncle Paul, and Belinda were all working with the kids, trying to get them settled.
I spent the rest of the day in Dr. McCarthy’s makeshift OR. He gave me a blood transfusion, reopened all my wounds, cleaned them, stitched them closed again, and rebandaged them. I was only conscious part of the time.
Early the next morning, I sent for Mom, Alyssa, and Rita Mae. They sat around my cot in what I jokingly called the sickbay. “We need to turn Speranta into a real town. We’re finally producing a significant food surplus. It’s time to open a real school and a library.”
“I’m a little too old to be changing careers,” Rita Mae said, “so I guess you’ll be wanting me to open a library” “I’d be grateful if you would. I’ll see if I can get Uncle Paul and Darla to give up their stash of technical manuals so you can get those organized to start. And Ben’s been collecting military books.”
I turned to Mom, and she spoke up before I could. “I don’t think I have time. I’ve got to take care of Alexia.” Mom drummed her fingers on the table, forgetting her missing pinkie. When the stump hit the table’s rough surface, her face scrunched up, and she moved both hands to her lap. Alyssa watched anxiously
“I know someone who’d love to help with babysitting,” I said.
Mom looked down at the table. “I’m not sure why she’d want to help me, after—”
“It’s okay, Mom. We’ve all . . . it’s been a hard couple of years.” I laid my hand palm up along the edge of the cot, asking her to take it. “I never stopped loving you. Darla doesn’t know you the way I do, but if you let her, she’ll love you too.”
Mom wiped her eyes and took my hand. “I’d be honored to start Speranta’s first school.”
“I want to help,” Alyssa said.
“I know,” I said. “You’ll both be assigned to the school full time. We’ll add more teachers as soon as we can spare the manpower.”
“We’ll both teach,” Mom said. “And I’ll start training Alyssa to take over the school in case—well, when I can’t do it anymore. What did you have in mind as far as students?” “Start with the youngest kids—say, everyone ten and under,” I said. “As soon as we can—as soon as I’m sure we can handle it, labor and food-wise—we’ll expand the school a year at a time. Within six months or so, I hope to have everyone under sixteen in school.”
“Maybe we should plan a trade school or apprenticeship program for those older than sixteen. We need more builders, engineers, and farmers, right?” Mom said.
“Good idea. Put your heads together and figure out what you want in terms of a building to house both the library and school.”
My wounds were deep; it took six weeks before I felt strong enough to resume a normal schedule. A few days of strangely warm weather greeted my return to the workforce. Late each afternoon the temperature even rose briefly above freezing; the top layer of the snow turned slushy, perfect for snowball fights. After a couple days of that, a storm blew through. We huddled in the longhouse, listening to the thunder in amazement—between the drought and winter, we hadn’t had an honest-to-God thunderstorm in more than three years. When it ended a couple of hours after dark, Darla and I took a lantern and wandered around outside. The rain had frozen, leaving a crunchy layer atop the snow. The lantern’s beam glittered on the ice, throwing magical yellow and orange sparkles across the snowscape.