The Alliance (23 page)

“She’s special-needs, Charlie. She doesn’t think like the rest of us.”

His chin quivers. This mercurial man who’s killed more men than he’s got fingers on his hands is about to cry over a cat. “I swear. I didn’t know she saw me do it. I’ll make it up to her. Taxidermy the fleabag or something.
Then
she can keep it for a pet.”

“Probably skip the taxidermy part, but I have to say I’m relieved.”

Leora

I pass the stack of community possessions, so jumbled that it’s impossible to tell what belongs to whom: cast-iron skillets, old quilts, a box filled with children’s wear, a tray crowded with canning jars, the waning light flashing off the dull gold metal rims and lids. The extent of these provisions makes it obvious the people do not believe the bishop’s unflappable optimism that this might be a temporary exodus and, once the danger’s past, we can return to Mt. Hebron. Then again, it will be a wonder if—by the end—the EMP doesn’t make pessimists of us all.

In three weeks, I have not only become a pessimist; I have discarded my pacifist ideals in pursuit of revenge.
The further I drift from this moral mainstay, the easier it is to be pulled by the current of my own self-preservation. Before the feast, when Bishop Lowell said we would continue sharing our supplies with those in need, I knew what I had to do. I overcame any qualms regarding my decision by telling myself that I was just going to reclaim the supplies stolen from us, and I would share them when—or if—the time came. But I also know my heart would not be drumming in my chest if I truly believed my own reassurances.

My eyes dart across the ground, searching for any inconsistency in the leaves’ pattern, which might notify me of the place where, a few hours ago, Moses and I discovered the trapdoor concealing the dugout cellar. I only have minutes to load some of the canned vegetables, cornmeal, and flour into the empty banana box I brought home from Field to Table and store it with the rest of the community’s things, hoping no one will notice that these rations are in addition to what was allocated to my family.

Maneuvering around the aspen tree, I see the trapdoor is already open. My pulse quickens. Someone is rustling inside. I draw closer, comprehending—with every step—just how foolish I’ve been to come out here on my own. I edge around the trapdoor and peer into the cellar. I see a woman’s back, her narrow shoulders and waist, her long black braid dangling past a sleeping infant strapped to her spine with a length of floral sheet. Sal. It’s Sal. I retreat two
paces and trip over the backpack she brought with her the afternoon she showed up outside the community’s gates and we let her in.

Sal turns. Her eyes appear as feral as the night I found her in Liberty, wearing an enormous blue parka and her face petrified. My mind struggles to understand what to say or do. Should I act as if I have just stumbled across this place myself, like I did with Moses, and it’s merely a coincidence she’s here as well? Sal climbs out of the cellar and slaps at the dirt clotted to the knees of her jeans. But she doesn’t bother shutting the trapdoor. She looks at me, and I look at her—both of us trying to guess what the other person is thinking.

The words are readied on my lips: “So, you’ve been stealing from us, even after we offered you a place to stay? After we offered you food from our own table?” But then I pause and look at baby Colton’s soft hair and smooth cheeks. Sal glances up at me again, her eyes shining, and then looks away, as if ashamed of what she’s done when I was preparing to do it myself. I picture Anna and the rest of Mt. Hebron’s children in Jabil’s wagon, fleeing for their lives.

Since Anna’s attack, I’ve known that I would lie, cheat, and steal to ensure her survival. I have already attempted all three and succeeded at one, the first, by avoiding the truth. Both Sal and I are inadvertently tethered to motherhood, though we are too young to handle the responsibilities trailing along with it. The past two years, I have volunteered to
be a mother and a father to Anna, but Sal . . . she is
forced
to be both mother and father to her fatherless child.

“You and I aren’t too different,” I say instead of accusing, reaching across the cellar to touch her back. “We’d both do anything to make sure our families survive.”

She pivots to face me. “How’s my family supposed to survive, Leora? I am by myself. Even here, in your community, I feel like I’m always by myself. That’s why I’m going back.”

“To where? Your apartment? You saw what Liberty’s like!”

She drops her eyes to the cellar’s plywood door. “I’ve been offered protection.”

“By whom? The gang?”

“Yes. The gang,” she snaps. “You think you got it so rough ’cause your mom’s dead and your dad’s disappeared. You’ve
no
idea what rough really is. My dad’s dead, and I never had a mom—or at least no mom that wanted me. I
do
have a Kutenai grandmother, but she cares more about drinking than teaching me about her herbs. I made up that part about being a healer so you’d let me stay. I was raised by my uncle, my dead dad’s brother, who was just as much of a deadbeat as my real dad was.
He’s
the leader of the gang.
He’s
the one offering me protection.”

Startled awake by the rage in his mother’s voice, Colton begins to cry. Sal loosens the homemade sling, takes him in her arms, and prepares to let him suckle. I look away from
her, to give her privacy and because I’m trying to put the puzzle pieces of her life into place. The night we met her on our way to the museum, we were stopped by a gang on our way back through town. The loudmouthed ringleader of the gang—whom Henri forced to hand over his cigarettes at gunpoint—is
he
the drug-dealing uncle she’s talking about?

I ask Sal outright, and she pauses, as if trying to decide if she should tell me the truth. Then she nods. “Uncle Mike raised me from five years old, when my dad OD’d, until I turned eighteen. He thinks this means the rest of my life should be handed over to him like one big IOU. He forced me to sit by the road that night we met, waiting for anybody who might come by and feel bad for a single mom and her baby. You were so easy.” Sal sighs. “So eager to help out. It wasn’t until I reported seeing you—a Mennonite—in a wagon going down Main Street that my uncle realized you might be from the same community where Luke hid the drugs.”

Hid the drugs?
“What . . . drugs?” I ask, reeling. Sal reaches past her anger to balance me.

“Leora, listen,” she says. “I appreciate everything you’ve done, but there are things going on here that you know nothing about. Your dad used to be one of my uncle’s biggest drug runners. His furniture business was just a front. But then he got so addicted, he became worthless and my uncle couldn’t trust him. After the EMP hit, Uncle Mike’s
supply started drying up because no one could get the stuff into town from the cities like before. But at the same time, the demand went through the roof because nobody could get ahold of anything. People went nuts. Think fresh drinking water’s scarce? Try crack cocaine.”

Sal smiles; she actually smiles, like this story has a punch line. Meanwhile my mouth is so dry I can hardly swallow. I haven’t reconciled the vagrant Moses talked about with the man who raised me, and Sal’s saying a majority of my
vadder
’s life—even before he left—was a lie?

“Your dad was in bad shape,” she continues, “and desperate to get ahold of something too, but had nothing to barter, so he ’fessed up that over the years he’d taken some of the cocaine he was supposed to sell for my uncle and stashed it in the community where he used to live—thinking he’d go back for it one day. How he was able to pull that off, I have no clue. But after the EMP, he was delirious from withdrawal and said he couldn’t remember where he’d hidden the stash. Uncle Mike was spitting mad and tried getting information out of him by using force, but your dad was so out of it that eventually Uncle Mike figured he really didn’t know what he’d done with the drugs, if it was even true that he had them.

“You’d already given me an open invitation to the community, so Uncle Mike sent me as his informant. I was supposed to find out where the drugs were hidden and report
back to him. But then there were a bunch of days where I couldn’t get out to communicate with him, and he panicked, I guess. Uncle Mike sent those boys up here in the old Suburban to basically bust in and force people to talk, and we both know how
that
turned out. I hadn’t said anything about the guys guarding the place, so no doubt they were shocked by what happened.”

“But my
vadder
had a driver,” I insist, as if this fact alone can undo all the others. “An
Englischer
. Named Ronnie.”

Sal laughs. “Yeah, good ol’ Ronnie. He’d pick your old man up and bring him into town and then come back at the end of the day to take him home again. It was all just for appearances. Your dad had a car that he kept at my uncle’s garage.” She looks at my face. “What? Did you really think he delivered drugs by horse and buggy?”

I stand perfectly still, as if trying to offset my whirring mind. I don’t know what to think. I know nothing about drugs. Not how they are taken or how much they cost. “Why is my
vadder
staying at the civic center? Is that where he lives?”

Sal gives me a one-shoulder shrug. “He does now. He used to have an apartment in the same complex as me. Then he lost everything when he couldn’t keep paying my uncle. Honestly, he’s lucky he’s alive. He’s been trying to get clean for a while, I reckon. But now he has no other choice. I didn’t find the stash of cocaine until a few days after the
teenagers were killed, and it looked like it’d absorbed a bunch of moisture and turned or something. I don’t know how long it’s been stored like that, but if it’s still worth anything, it’s probably not much. I’ve been trying to buy us some time, smuggling out food to the gang and telling Uncle Mike I haven’t found anything else, but I’m not sure he believes me anymore.”

Sal strokes her baby’s fine, dark hair, and I can see her fingers are shaking. I realize that, while I’ve been judging her, she’s been putting herself and her child in jeopardy to keep our community safe. “Your dad’s in over his head, Leora,” she murmurs. “He used the cocaine he stole as collateral to get more drugs. The word is out about the cocaine and people are waiting for it. Some have already paid, in one form or another. If my uncle discovers the cache is not worth much, your dad’s a dead man. And to tell you the truth, the only reason he’s not dead already is because Uncle Mike’s hoping your dad’s head will clear up enough that he’ll be able to find the stash himself because, after all, he’s the one who hid it.”

The two of us wait, listening to the off-kilter creak of Jabil’s wagon wheels as he comes through the breach in the fence. I say, “If not remembering’s what’s keeping him alive, then that’s probably exactly why he can’t.”

“That’s the trouble,” Sal responds. “I think my uncle’s starting to realize that your dad’s not remembering on purpose too.”

“But where’s it hidden?” I ask. “The drugs?”

Sal looks at me in confusion, as if she can’t believe I don’t know. Then she points behind her to the cellar. “That’s not just flour in those containers,” she says. “Some of it’s cocaine.”

Moses

I never expected a drug addict to know how to shoot. I also never expected it from a pacifist—or former pacifist. But I was clearly wrong on both counts. Luke Ebersole sends a storm of bullets downrange. His hair keeps getting in the way of his line of sight, and he wipes the oily threads back from his face before firing again. Sometime since I discovered him in the center, he must’ve tried bathing as best he could, because he at least
looks
cleaner than he did that day, though he smells about the same. But the years of hard living can’t be wiped away the same as the filth. They mark him down to the pores, like coal residue.

Thanks to Luke’s marksmanship, which came on the heels of Charlie’s mortar explosion, the gang has retreated until they’re almost out of reach. They’re still shooting, but I think they’re trying to figure out how to escape and then overtake us from a different approach or at a different time. No doubt Charlie would rather finish them all off and not give them the chance.

Before he gets the opportunity, a yellow Pontiac streaks down the center of the highway and lurches to a stop behind the perforated conversion van. A man clambers out, unfolding his huge body from the car’s low-slung frame. His bald, ovule-shaped head catches the light. It takes about five seconds before I place him as the henchman, working for the gang member we met the same night we went to the museum in town.

Luke gestures to our new arrival. “That guy’s part of Liberty’s gang. They must’ve merged with the gang you all’ve been fighting. I bet the Liberty boys told them what’s here.”

Charlie barks, “‘What’s here’? We got nothing. We’re running out of ammo, and we barely got food, so maybe you should tell
that
to the gang, and then maybe they’d leave us alone.” Disgruntled, he doesn’t look across at Luke, but continues watching his scope.

Luke’s hand, which was controlled seconds ago, quivers as he picks up the rifle. “I wasn’t talking about food. I hid cocaine here a while back. But I was out of my mind when I did it and can’t remember where it is. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I had no idea it’d come to this.”

Sean and Charlie stare at Luke in shock. Having known more of his history, I try to clarify by asking, “So . . . you’re saying this whole shoot-out’s over some drugs you stashed here and the gang’s trying to get back?”

Luke turns to the side, away from Sean, and coughs down the front of his shirt. He finishes and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Mike showed up yesterday, along with that guy there—” he points to the Pontiac—”and said I had twenty-four hours to find the cocaine and hand it over, or else they’d burn Mt. Hebron to the ground. I came here to warn the community that I thought the gang was on their way. But then, when I went to cross over the fence in the back, I saw all the commotion and guessed everybody was already heading out.”

“You got yourself some impressive powers of observation.” But then Charlie stops his grumbling and points. We turn to see one of the gang members stepping out from behind the barricade and darting across the grass toward the pine trees along the left. He’s carrying a red container, probably fuel.