Sunrise (12 page)

“I’m okay with it,” someone called from the crowd. Someone else replied, “Give ’em your own land, then. Don’t take mine.”

“Quiet down,” Mayor Petty said. “This here’s a speech, not a town hall meeting . . . thank you. Now if some of you want, as private citizens, to build walls on your own land, well that’s your right, and I won’t stand in your way.

“But imagine how foolish you’ll feel on that fine spring day that’s coming soon—I know it is, I can feel it in my bones—when the army will roll up here out of the East in their tanks and Humvees and put this part of Illinois to rights. That wall you spent thousands of hours building is going to look pretty silly then.” More people in the crowd nodded.

“I’ve appealed to the commander of the FEMA camp in Galena for help—several times now. And while he says it’s not part of his mission to intervene in local disputes, he’s radioed our plight to Washington. The government out East is still a going concern. The American spirit can conquer anything, even a supervolcano. And one fine day—very soon—we’re going to look to the east and see an honest-to-God sunrise.” The mayor’s tones were hushed, reverent. He had every ear in the room straining to listen. “And out of that sunrise the cavalry will ride— not on horses but in Humvees. And they’ll carry food: fresh fruit, chocolate, and coffee.” An orgiastic sigh floated from the audience. “Soon,” Mayor Petty promised again.

“Now some believe,” Petty glanced at me, and every eye in the room followed, “that we should further strain our limited resources and aching backs building a wall. We could do that. The people of Warren are equal to any task set before them by man or God. But how many will die— yes, die—in that endeavor? We have neither the equipment nor the trained personnel to build a wall.

“This foolish proposal illustrates why you should vote for experience over youth. Why you should return to office a trusted leader with almost a decade of experience leading this town. You can choose a man you know and trust or a boy who can’t even grow a proper beard yet.” That was not exactly true. I couldn’t grow any kind of beard, let alone a proper one.

“A boy who betrayed us. Vote for experience, steady leadership, and trust. Vote for the man who will hold us together until those Humvees ride out of the east. Write Bob on your ballot. Thank you.”

The applause was long and thunderous. When it died down, I stood slowly. I ignored my still-shaking hands. I had prepared a speech in which I denied Mayor Petty’s charges and rehearsed it a dozen times in front of Darla. It left my mind completely. I could not even remember the first word. The silence in the room started to grow uncomfortable, maybe even a little malevolent. I coughed, and it echoed.

“I did not betray this town. At least not knowingly. But what Mayor Petty and Mr. Sawyer said is true.” Darla winced and hid her head behind her hands. “I told the Reds there was pork in Warren.” A few people booed, but their neighbors quickly shushed them. “Or at least I confirmed it. I made a terrible mistake, and I’m deeply sorry.

“It’s a cliche, that everyone makes mistakes, but it’s also true. A teacher told me once that responsibility has nothing to do with making mistakes. Responsible people own their mistakes. They do everything possible to fix them. And I’ve done that.

“When Mayor Petty led that disastrous march on Warren, I asked him to put out scouts to flank our advance.” Mayor Petty was shaking his head in denial. “My friend Ben Fredericks told you—told all of us in a public meeting—that the attack was doomed, that we should attack at a time and in a direction the Reds didn’t expect. I realize that since Ben and his sister, Alyssa, are even newer to Warren than I am, it may be hard to listen to them. But these are hard times, times that call for a leader willing to hear good advice even from unusual sources.” Many people were nodding now. “But Mayor Petty ignored Ben’s advice.

“I listened. I organized and led the attack that invaded Stockton and gave us the bargaining power to reclaim our food. Everyone in this room has a full stomach because of that attack. Because of me.”

Someone in the audience yelled, “We wouldn’t have lost the food in the first place except for you!”

“Probably true,” I replied. “But anyone you elect—me, Mayor Petty, or the second coming of Abraham Lincoln— would make mistakes. The difference is this: I acknowledge and fix mine.

“Let me remind you: Ben predicted that our attack on Warren would fail. He also planned the attack that reclaimed our food. And now he says we need a wall. Without air power, artillery, or tanks, walled cities will rule the land. We can either build our own or be overrun.

“We’d all freeze to death if not for the wood we burn for heat. And that wood is not an inexhaustible resource. We’re going to run out. Darla and my uncle have a plan for using the wind farm to our east to provide a sustainable power source. We need resources to test and implement that plan. Resources Mayor Petty has refused to provide.

“I don’t want to be your mayor.” Darla winced again. “But I want to live!” I practically shouted the word. “I want a place where Darla and I can get married, have kids, grow old together, and die together. I’m going to create that place. Small groups won’t be viable in the future. A decent way of life demands manpower and womanpower and division of labor. It demands a group large enough to defend itself. If the only way I can create that is to lead it, then that’s what I’ll do. That’s why I’m running for mayor.

“I liked that story Mayor Petty told about the sunrise and the Humvees and the coffee, the chocolate, and the fresh fruit. But it’s just that. A story. There’s no help coming. Ever. We must, we must survive on our own resources with what we can make and raise with our own hands.

“So I ask you for your vote. If you vote for me, we’ll start preparing for the long term. We’ll build a wall. We’ll develop a sustainable way to stay warm. If I’m wrong, we will have wasted some time and effort, sure. But if I’m right about the future, then a vote for me is a vote for survival itself. Thank you.”

As I sat down, a scattering of polite applause echoed hollowly in the church. It was quickly extinguished, as if the clappers were embarrassed or maybe afraid to be seen supporting me.

I lost the election. It wasn’t even close. So much for my political career—doomed from the start.

“Did you even use three words of the speech you practiced?” Darla asked as we pedaled back to Uncle Paul’s farm.

“Nope. Just two,” I replied. “‘Thank’ and ‘you.’”

Chapter 18

“Did you even use three words of the speech you practiced?” Darla asked as we pedaled back to Uncle Paul’s farm.

“Nope. Just two,” I replied. “‘Thank’ and ‘you.’”

“Christ on a broomstick,” Darla muttered.

I bore down on the pedals in silence for a while. We were moving so fast that the wind fell like a lash across my eyes. Uncle Paul was curled in a blanket on the load bed. He either ignored the conversation or couldn’t hear it. “I just . . . when he brought out Sawyer, it threw me off my stride. Everything I planned to say flew out of my head. I guess I had nothing left in me but the truth. . . . I’m sorry.”

Darla swiveled in her seat to look at me. “I’m glad you’re not some kind of goddamn politician, Alex. If—no, since—they won’t listen to the truth, those fools in Warren deserve what they get.”

“No, they don’t. Nobody deserves what’s coming. Nobody deserved any of this.”

“Maybe the few who actually paid attention to you don’t deserve this. But the rest? Pfft.” She waved one gloved hand in the cold air.

“They all listened. Most of them just didn’t like what I was saying.”

We had to slow to make the turn onto Canyon Park Road. When we were back up to speed, Darla said, “We’ll figure it out. Some other way of defending ourselves.” “Like what?”

“Let me talk to Ben about my ideas. Work out a solid plan.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t ready to think about other options anyway. We had spent months of effort on the election. I needed to mope some more before I could move on to plan B—whatever it was.

“What you said in that church, in front of all those people, about us, about wanting a place we could raise a family and grow old together. It . . . I don’t know how to say it . . . I was mad at you for screwing up the speech, and suddenly all that anger turned to fire.”

“Fire? Like you were even madder?”

“I’m not saying this right. I want that future. I will kill for it. I will drag all those people in Warren kicking and screaming into something resembling sense if I have to, even though I don’t care about most of them.”

“I know,” I said. “I feel the same way.”

We pulled to a stop beside the house and dismounted Bikezilla. I took Darla in my arms, and she crushed me against her body. The world around us was frozen, quiet, and still, as if the last point of warmth in the universe burned between her chest and mine.

Chapter 19

Little changed except that Darla and I didn’t have to ride to Warren every afternoon to campaign. Instead, Uncle Paul and Darla often took Bikezilla out to the wind farm east of Warren. They broke into three of the windmills, climbing inside the turbine towers to study their workings and refine the plan for converting one to produce heat.

I spent part of my time with Ben working on a plan to survive if the farm were attacked again. We built a platform atop the roof of the farmhouse, accessible from a hatch we cut in the attic. I created a watch schedule—there were ten of us, so to cover the entire day and night, each watch had to be two hours and twenty-four minutes long. With one of us constantly on watch, the workload for everyone else increased. We were always tired; tempers grew shorter as the workdays grew even longer.

Darla helped me rig a rope from the platform to a bell hung in the second floor hallway so that whoever was on watch could wake us without leaving their post. We practiced endlessly; if more than six hostiles showed up, we’d run rather than trying to fight. Everyone had a go-bag of food and crucial supplies. After weeks of practice and drills, we got to the point where we could be out the back door and away from the farmhouse less than two minutes after the bell rang, even starting from a deep sleep. Actually it took longer during the day, because we were spread out all over the farm doing chores.

Ben studied the approaches to the farm, and we did our best to block the problematic ones. For example, behind the barn there was a huge blind spot, a wedge of land that wasn’t visible from the observation platform. So we spent almost a week moving snow into that area, creating a huge pile of loose snow and ice that made it difficult to walk in the places invisible to our lookout. In other places—atop the low hills around the farm, for example—we packed down the snow, creating areas that were easy to traverse and visible from the observation post.

One afternoon, Anna was on watch on the platform. I joined her, checking the sightlines, making sure that a new pile of snow Ben and I had moved that morning would funnel attackers into a spot where we could see—or shoot—them easily.

Alyssa came, opening the hatch from the attic to the platform and clomping up the stairs. The platform was not really big enough for three—we were packed on it shoulder to shoulder.

Alyssa flung her arms around me and gave me a huge, smacking kiss on the cheek.

“What . . . what’s that about?” I spluttered, trying to remove her arms without knocking either of us off the platform.

“I love them!” Alyssa was practically gushing enthusiasm. Anna had turned beet red.

“Love what?” I asked.

“The earrings you left under my pillow.” She tossed her head so her earrings bobbed. I hadn’t noticed them before, but they were lovely—gold filigree hummingbirds with tiny ruby eyes.

“They’re beautiful,” I said. “But I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“They’re even better than the square of chocolate you left for me last week. It was a little stale.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that either.”

“You don’t need to be coy,” she said. She pressed herself up against me, and I turned my head, dodging another kiss.

Alyssa left, and I turned back to Anna. “Not a word to Darla,” I warned.

She nodded, her lips pressed together, her face still flaming red.

When Darla and Uncle Paul returned to the farm after a day of studying wind turbines east of Warren, I met them outside. “I need to talk to you,” I told Darla as she dismounted Bikezilla II.

“I’m freaking freezing,” Darla said.

“It’ll just take a second.” I waited for Uncle Paul to get inside and then turned back to Darla. “Alyssa thinks I’ve been leaving her gifts.”

“Oh?”

“I haven’t.”

“Figured,” Darla said. “So who has?”

“I don’t know. But Alyssa was all huggy when she was trying to thank me. She didn’t believe it wasn’t me.”

Darla didn’t reply.

“You okay?”

“If I turn flenser, I’m eating Alyssa first,” Darla said. “She would be delicious,” I said.

“Hey! Don’t be coveting the meat of another woman.” “Yeah, but I don’t think you’d taste nearly as nice. Too tough and stringy.”

Darla glared at me. “Stringy?”

“It’s okay. I like my women tough.”

“Your women?” Darla’s glare had turned positively murderous.

“Woman, I mean, woman.”

Darla smiled and gave me a quick kiss.

“Seriously,” I said. “Are we okay?”

“Yes. I trust you, Alex. You’ve never given me any reason not to.”

I held the door for Darla, and we went inside.

After more than a month spent studying the wind turbines, Darla had a new list of electrical supplies she needed: eight-gauge wire, electric stoves, electric water heaters, and more. They were mostly things that could be scavenged from homes. We biked to Warren with two sacks of kale to try to trade.

Nobody would talk to us. Doors were slammed in our faces. Shotguns poked out windows as we approached. Oh, a few were friendly enough, like Nylce, but we already had taken everything we could use from her house. We asked Mayor Petty for permission to scavenge from abandoned houses in town, and he smiled sadistically as he said no.