The Alliance (11 page)

I wonder if Seth’s anger and avoidance stem from something more complicated than missing his privacy. Perhaps he is so keenly aware of being outnumbered by women because, like Jabil said, he needs a male presence to compensate for his father’s absence. I sigh and kneel beside Seth’s pallet, composed of two folded quilts our deceased maternal grandmother made before I was born. I wonder if they were wedding or housewarming gifts. If so, their peacemaking properties must not have worked because my
mamm
never had much of a relationship with her family after she went against their wishes by marrying Luke Ebersole.

I tell Seth, keeping my voice to a whisper, “What if I talk
to Jabil about you sleeping at their house? You would have to come over here for meals, to keep the rations the same, but that way you wouldn’t feel like you’re living in a girls’ dorm.”

“Whatever, I don’t care.” Oh, that classic teenage response. I want to shake Seth’s ungrateful shoulders until his teeth clack, but—maybe because of this—I reach out and gently touch the soft ducktail at the back of his neck, which never conforms to the community’s standard bowl cut. “Stop treating me like a baby,” he says, turning toward the cellar door.

Then stop acting like one.
The sarcastic response is primed on my lips, probably because I’m a teenager as well. “I’m sorry,” I murmur instead. “I know you’re not a baby.”

Rising to my feet, I leave the laundry, but keep the door open a few inches so the poorly insulated room won’t get too cold during the night. I look in on Seth and see, by the moonlight coming through the window, that his narrow shoulders are shaking. My brother is caught somewhere between fear and anger, child and man, and though I know he must find his way out, I don’t want him to make that perilous journey alone.

I move closer to the gate in the light morning rain, clutching my small basket of egg sandwiches I made for Jabil as an
excuse to talk to him about Seth. Jabil and Moses look up at my appearance. Their gazes are so intense that I halt in my tracks.

But Moses beckons me over. It is then that I hear the hum of human voices, rising and falling in discordant notes. The locusts? My ears ring, as if attempting to drown out the sound. Wordlessly—for who can speak over the clamor?—he hands me a pair of binoculars and points to a porthole in the logs that was apparently drilled for observation. I set the covered basket down in the dirt beside the perimeter and dry the binoculars on my apron before peering through them, sweeping left to right. Raindrops strike the flat stretch of asphalt, transforming the stark reality of people into a less fearsome mirage.

Though early August, many are wearing hats, scarves, and heavy wool or down-filled coats, the buttons and zippers straining to contain a winter’s worth of layers. Most are rolling suitcases or carrying backpacks or bundles of blankets and clothes, tied with bungee cords or whatever ropelike material they could find. Others are pushing carts no doubt pilfered from the two grocery stores in town and piled high with the detritus of life, pre-EMP: canned goods, a bag of dog food (the golden retriever happily gamboling alongside), even a set of golf clubs that I think is ridiculous to salvage until I realize the owner might be contemplating using them as weapons. I focus on one toddler boy who
kicks his legs, threaded through the seat rungs of the cart. Though his hair and clothing are wet, he smiles and laughs, clapping his hands and banging on the handlebar as the grocery cart wheels rattle over the shining road.

To the child, this new way of life is only a game, and I wonder how long his parents can keep up the facade. The woman pushing the cart—his mother, I presume—with her stooped back and empty expression, looks world-weary in a way I’ve never seen before. In eleven days, how can we have become refugees in our own native land?

I step back from the porthole, only having viewed a percentage of the multitude, and yet having seen more than enough. “You think they’ll stop here?” I ask.

Jabil says, “They can’t. Our resources wouldn’t last a month.”

“Can some of them stay, at least? Perhaps the ones with small children?”

“Leora.” Moses accepts the binoculars and wraps them in a shirt. “Do you want to take these families in, knowing that—because you did—your own family might starve?”

Fury erupts inside my chest. Fury at Moses and fury at myself for having pondered this very question yesterday, but it seems far more brutal hearing my thoughts spoken out loud. “Whatever happened to providing water and soup and medical care to those in need?” I snap.

“Everyone who needs water and medical care will receive
it,” Jabil says. “But judging by that group out there, we cannot offer food.”

I envision that toddler in the grocery cart, happy and plump, even while the woman pushing it looked haggard and thin. And then I understand: she is probably going without food so her child does not. I glance over my shoulder, searching outside Field to Table where Sal is working, and wonder if she did the same for her baby before she found hunger lowering her standards and driving her here. How many mothers are going to die for the sake of their children? I know if I were in their shoes, I would encourage Seth and Anna to eat while I remained hungry. There is honor in sacrifice, but where is the honor in turning people away?

I crouch and pick up the basket. Pulling back the damp tea towel, I show the men the warm squares of egg nestled between homemade bread. “We have eggs in abundance, and we still have wheat. We could at least give them one meal before we send them on their way.”

Moses and Jabil look at each other without speaking, and then Moses says, “Leora, forgive me, but there’s no nice way to put it: These people are either going to starve or not; one meal’s not going to make a difference.”

“Yes, it
wil
l
!” I cry, pressing a fist to my chest. I recall the women in our community coming to our house one at a time, one day at a time, for a week after our
vadder
’s
disappearance—and then again after
Mamm
was buried on Mt. Hebron land. They would take tentative steps up our front porch, their arms laden with cooking trays bearing hot casseroles and pies. I’d seen them do the same for Mt. Hebron families recuperating from a birth or a death. We had experienced neither with my
vadder
, but we were as exhausted as if we’d experienced both. Tears sting my eyes. I dash them angrily away. “What if that one meal provides a young mother with the strength to walk one more mile, and because she can walk one more mile, she is able to reach a place of safety for her family? A place where medical care and food are not dispensed only to those deemed ‘worthy’ by the few holding the power to give?”

Jabil and Moses glance at each other again. “Leora,” Jabil says, “you know as well as I that no such place exists like that for miles on the road where they’re heading. . . . But let me talk to Bishop Lowell.” He sighs. “I’ll see what he can do.”

Moses

Below, between the gaps of the three two-by-sixes we use to walk the scaffolding, I watch Jabil escort another group of fifty through the gate. The families look exhausted, but it is no wonder, considering that most of them aren’t used to walking
one
mile, to say nothing of the ten they just walked
to get here from town. One heavyset man mops sweat from his reddened face and collapses at the table, like we’re nothing but an American café where he can order and be served his food. But he’s a rarity. The rest of the refugees stand in a neat line in front of the table, where the women are serving egg sandwiches and bowls of soup. If I hadn’t witnessed hardships like this before, just not in my homeland, I would weep as I watch one young boy devour a piece of bread and then wipe tear-dampened crumbs from his cheeks.

“Looks like we got trouble,” Charlie calls from the other set of scaffolding.

Since Henri’s off answering nature’s call, I take hold of his rifle and peer down the scope. An old, beat-up blue Suburban is bouncing down the right-hand side of the embankment to avoid hitting the pedestrians who are waiting to enter the community and therefore clotting up the main road. None of it would seem too threatening except for the hawkish brute who’s leaning out of the passenger side with a rifle of his own pointed up to the sky. Most of the people don’t see him waving his weapon because the vehicle is driving right next to the wooded hillside that encloses the valley. But the few who are far enough in front of him—so that when they look back, they see the barrel of his gun—scatter like chickens having spotted a fox in the coop.

“Who’s to say he’s coming here for trouble?” I call over to Charlie. “I wouldn’t be driving a vehicle down the road
unless it was guarded too.” Even as I say this, the tension inside of me mounts. I can see the driver now—this beefy-looking guy with sunglasses pushed on top of his head. The lenses glint as he turns to survey the perimeter. Our eyes meet, only for a second. Yet in that second, I know they’re not just out for a joyride, but that they want what we have. They’re young too. If I peer past the driver’s attitude, and the passenger’s gun, I can see that the two of them might be in high school.

I shift the scope to the left to follow the Suburban as it whips around in the road—making the people disperse in every direction.

Charlie yells down to Jabil, “Shut the gates!”

I peer at the soup tables and lane below and see Jabil and his brother Malachi frantically trying to usher the last of the fifty people inside the community before they have to close the gate. But the mass begins to panic. Grocery carts and backpacks are transformed into battering rams as people shove against each other, trying to force their way through. The Snyder brothers give up and press against them with the gate, but it’s like trying to hold back a tsunami. I maneuver across the scaffolding boards, which bend beneath my weight, and look over the perimeter again. The Suburban is barreling right across the highway and up to our gate. The two boys probably started up their family’s junker—old enough not to be affected by the EMP—much like we had
in mind with the tractors at the museum in town. Bored and scared, they decided to pillage the countryside, hurting other citizens because they want to increase the odds of their own survival. Exactly the way gangs are born.

The passenger begins yelling and waving his gun. The sun makes it difficult to tell if other people are in the backseats of the vehicle. The crowd shoves harder against the gate. I hear something crack. The whole entrance might give way if someone doesn’t divert their path soon.

I hear a gunshot from the Suburban. A whole swarm of people scream, fuel thrown onto the fire of pandemonium and terror. I reach again for Henri’s rifle, but—across from me—I see that Charlie has his rifle in his hands. The gun recoils against his shoulder as he pulls the trigger.

When I glance over the perimeter, bracing myself for blood, I see that he’s only shot out the left front tire of the vehicle, bringing it to a standstill. But the people are trapped between it and the closed gate. Nobody appears injured, so I guess the guy in the Suburban must have shot up into the air just to make a statement. One guy, around my age, moves to the edge of the riotous crowd. It is clear that he is trying to protect his young family behind him, and he doesn’t budge, even when the raging jocks spill out of the vehicle. I watch his face lift in defiance as the driver with the sunglasses pulls a pistol and cracks the butt of it across the guy’s temple.

I don’t believe the jocks know that their tire burst because it was shot out, or that they are in the crosshairs of weapons resting steadily on the perimeter. If they did, there is no way they would be so ruthless and bold. I watch the father’s body crumple to the lane. A woman, who must be his wife, tries to soothe their young daughter even as her own eyes are alarmed with fright. To my shock, the driver raises the pistol and aims it at the prostrate father, but we’ll never know if he intended to kill him right where he lay. For Charlie pulls his trigger before the other trigger can be pulled, hitting the driver center mass and dropping him.

The guy from the passenger side jumps for cover behind the Suburban and aims his weapon toward the source of the gunshot. But he doesn’t get a chance to shoot back. I watch the second guy’s body collapse from behind his cover—which obviously did not cover enough—at the sound of another shot from Charlie. The crowd really starts to panic, probably envisioning their own bloodied bodies sprawled across the gravel leading up to the gate of a community known for its nonresistance. Well, it’s not so nonresistant anymore.

“It’s all right,” I call over the perimeter. “Please . . . everyone remain calm as we take care of the wounded.”

It’s like shouting into the void. People are splitting off: some running back toward town, others moving around the idling Suburban and the two bodies so they can keep pressing
on to a larger city, where there is surely even greater violence taking place than the blood that’s been shed here today.

“Keep watch over the gate,” I call to Charlie, because I don’t think he’s the type who can pacify a crowd on the verge of stampeding. I scale down the scaffolding, having purposefully left Henri’s rifle propped against the perimeter. I feel vulnerable without it, since I don’t know who else is armed and may try to break through the gate just like those jocks did, but the sight of it would only serve to increase the crowd’s anxiety.