Текст книги "Sunrise"

Автор книги: Mike Mullin

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

The next morning I called Uncle Paul into my conference room and told him the whole story. I felt a little bit uneasy telling Anna’s secrets, but I wanted someone to keep an eye on her, and I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough time given everything else I had to do.

Later that day I heard that Alyssa had dumped Max. Max moped around for a few weeks, and then he started chasing after one of the newcomers, a stunning eighteen-year-old girl who was clearly out of his league.

The only thorn in my side was Red. He was still out there with a group of Peckerwoods. Occasionally they tried to raid one of our expeditions, which forced us to post a heavy guard on every foraging party and supply convoy, wasting a lot of manpower. But all in all, things were going well. At least until Rita Mae called on the shortwave.

A messenger ran up to me at the building site where I was working. “Rebecca says you’re needed at the shortwave set, stat.” I commandeered two workers, the messenger, and a Bikezilla and pedaled my way back to Longhouse One.

As I approached the table near the turbine tower door where we kept the shortwave receiver, I heard Rita Mae’s rough, distinctive voice, “Is he here yet? Over.”

“Running up now,” Rebecca replied. “Over.”

She handed the mike to me, and I mashed the talk lever. “Good to hear from you, Rita Mae. Over.”

“I’ve got no time,” she said, and I heard the pop and rattle of gunfire in the background. “The DWBs are here. Hundreds of them. They’ve taken half the city. Mayor Kenda’s dead. We’re going to have to bug out any minute now. Over.”

I thought furiously. Last I’d heard, there were still flensers in Dubuque. Peckerwoods, though, not Dirty White Boys. It would take at least four days to get a force of any size all the way to Worthington. Obviously Rita Mae didn’t have that kind of time. “Head for Bellevue. I’ll meet you there. Over.”

“We may not—” There was a pop and a hiss. The line went dead.

Chapter 75

It took all day to get ready to leave. Ed and Nylce had all kinds of questions I couldn’t answer and issues I didn’t know how to deal with. Charlotte and Anna were panicked about the dent that taking three hundred people out of Speranta on an expedition toward Worthington would make in the work rosters. And then, to top it all off, a council meeting was called, and I spent more than an hour twisting arms, trying to convince four of the seven of them to vote to authorize the expedition. The real sticking point was whether I would be allowed to go, but I wasn’t willing to compromise on that—Rita Mae was in trouble, and I owed it to her to help. By the end of the meeting, I was cursing the stupid system of divided government we had adopted. We didn’t get away from Speranta until the next morning.

Rebecca stayed up all night personally monitoring the shortwave. She heard nothing from Worthington; the frequency they normally used was dead. The delay did have one benefit: Ed and Nylce had used the time to prepare superbly—we had more than three hundred armed men and women ready, all of whom were on Bikezillas or skis. The Bikezillas carried tents, bedrolls, tools, cooking gear, medical supplies, extra weapons, ammo, and about a month’s worth of food for the entire force, plus extra for the folks in Worthington we hoped to rescue. Ed would stay behind– he was responsible for the overall defense of Speranta—and Nylce would lead the military side of the expedition. We planned to be gone less than a week, but in the postvolcano world, there was no such thing as overprepared.

We made great time, reaching the Illinois side of the Mississippi, just before dark on the second day. Uncle Paul and Darla had modified one of the Bikezillas with a small battery pack and pedal-powered electrical generator that allowed us to run a shortwave transceiver and stay in touch with Speranta. The gleaner, Grant, had turned up offering to sell us another transceiver at a ridiculous price, and after hours of haggling with him, I had bought it. We could listen to transmissions any time, but to send our own farther than a couple of miles, we had to stop and string an antenna. Each night, I spoke with Rebecca and

Darla via the shortwave. Rebecca hadn’t heard anything from Worthington. Darla was fuming at being left in charge of Speranta—she hadn’t been able to work with Uncle Paul at all since I left, but it sounded like everything was running smoothly in my absence.

The next morning we rode across the frozen Mississippi—a five-mile trek. When we arrived in Bellevue, Iowa, midmorning, it was empty and abandoned. Rita Mae and the folks from Worthington were nowhere to be found.

Nylce sent out nearly a hundred scouts in small groups. If Rita Mae was still on her way from Worthington, it would be easy to miss her. We left a group hidden on the second floor of one of the old brick buildings in downtown Bellevue to keep watch in case Rita Mae showed up, and then we moved out, heading slowly toward Worthington.

Our scouts found no sign of Rita Mae, the DWBs, or anyone else from Worthington, and we made camp that night around an abandoned farmhouse near La Motte, Iowa, about twelve miles west of Bellevue.

The next morning we finally found Rita Mae less than fifteen miles from Worthington. A huge shotgun was slung across her tiny back, and her crazed white hair escaped from her hat in straggly wisps. She led a ragtag group of twenty-four, mostly children, six of whom were so sick that they were being dragged along on makeshift stretchers. I ran forward to give her a hug.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked. “Earl and—” “They’re dead, Alex,” Rita Mae said. “They stayed behind to fight, to delay the DWBs so we could get away. I would have stayed too . . . but . . . but someone had to . . . had to . . .” she gestured at the kids arrayed around her and broke down crying. I held her head against my shoulder, amazed that she had brought anyone out. Rita Mae was beyond tough—she was easily the oldest person I had seen in more than a year, as almost all the survivors were under thirty-five—maybe she was too cantankerous to die. Still, the death toll had been horrendous. The last time I’d talked to Mayor Kenda on the shortwave, nearly two hundred people had called Worthington home.

“You’re safe now,” I said softly.

Rita Mae broke the embrace and looked around. Our soldiers were everywhere—some of them spread out in a defensive posture, some of them tending to Rita Mae’s charges. “You’ve got more than a hundred soldiers here?” “Three hundred. About a third of them are out scouting, though.”

“It’s enough. You could retake Worthington. Kill those sons of bitches. Kill them all.”

“We could.”

“But you won’t, will you?”

“No.” I let my breath escape my lungs. It sounded like a dying man’s sigh.

Rita Mae’s tiny fists were clenched. “They killed everyone, Alex. Mayor Kenda, Sheriff Earl, Mrs. Nance, Mr. Chapman—”

“I know.”

“Then why? Why not restore some order to this corner of the world? The DWBs deserve to hang, every one of them, but shooting will do just fine.”

“I can’t restore order everywhere—”

“But—”

“And if I try, not only the DWBs will die. Some of our people will die too. Sometimes it’s best to do nothing.”

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

“Why do you think they attacked Worthington?” I asked.

Rita Mae snorted. “We know why they attacked. They were starving. We had food and they didn’t. To them, we are food.”

“Right. And Worthington was the toughest target in the area. Now that you’re gone, what will happen?” “They’ll migrate in search of food.”

“Maybe. And if they come our way, we’ll be able to deal with them on our own ground, using our prepared defenses. Far fewer of our people will die in that kind of battle. But what if they don’t—or can’t—migrate?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’ll eat each other. I’ve seen it before in Freeport. Cannibalism is simply not a viable long-term survival strategy. The problem solves itself.”

Rita Mae folded her arms across her chest. “That’s a cold way of looking at it.”

“It’s a cold world.”

“I want to see them hang.”

“Which do you think is a more horrible way to die? The few seconds of pain during a hanging? Or having a friend knife you in the back while you sleep?”

We stopped for the day, setting up a defensive perimeter around another mostly burned farmhouse. Nylce spent the day consolidating patrols, sending scouts out toward Worthington, trying to locate the DWBs, and planning for a retreat the next day.

I circulated among Rita Mae’s charges, making sure they all had food, water, and warm clothing. A few of them had minor injuries—mostly frostbite—but there was nothing that couldn’t wait until we reached Dr. McCarthy and Belinda. The sick kids seemed to be improving now that they had food, warm clothing, and could ride in the Bikezillas’ load beds.

We made great time the next day, collecting our people in Bellevue and reaching the west bank of the Mississippi just before dusk. We could travel faster when we were on a known route; it was easier to plan and coordinate the movement of our scouts.

We set out across the frozen expanse of the Mississippi the next morning at dawn. Less than fifteen minutes after we started out, the shortwave crackled to life. “Alex, if you can hear this, stop and set up your antenna. It’s urgent.” The voice was Darla’s, which was strange. Normally

Rebecca operated the shortwave during daylight hours. I squeezed the brakes, and my Bikezilla skidded to a stop. I handed one end of the antenna wire to each of the guys behind me, and they ran out along the ice on either side of me, stretching the wire horizontally to its full sixty-plus-foot length. It was better to suspend the wire higher, in a building or tree, but out here on the ice, all they could do was hold it over their heads.

“Alex here. What’s wrong? Over.”

“It’s your mother, Alex. They took her.”

Chapter 76

I jammed the talk lever down so hard I briefly wondered if the mike would break. “Who took her? Where? When?” I was so rattled I held the lever, forgetting to let up and allow her to speak for a moment. “Over,” I finally said, releasing the lever.

“There are five people missing—Stocktonites. Sort of a sleeper cell of Reds, we think.”

“Maybe she left with them on purpose?”

“No. They left a note tacked to the door of Longhouse Five. They want five Bikezillas loaded with food. We’re supposed to leave them at that wrecked bank near Stockton. And Alex, there was . . .

a pinkie finger attached to the note. It looks like your Mom’s.”

I ordered Nylce to detach her twelve fastest Bikezillas carrying forty-seven soldiers plus me. Nylce stayed with the remaining soldiers and the refugees from Worthington while I raced for Speranta, finishing the roughly forty-mile trek before dark. Darla met me at the door of the longhouse.

“I sent out scouts to try to track them, but we lost their trail on an icy stretch of Highway 78. I’m sorry.” My legs were rubbery from the exertion of the long ride. I held open my arms and stumbled into Darla’s embrace. “It’s okay. You did exactly what I would have. Get five Bikezillas loaded up with food, would you? I want to leave at first light.”

“You’re going to give in to them?”

“Sort of. Have someone find Ben and send him to the kitchen, please. I’ve got to sit down and eat something.”

I went over my plan with Ben. He made a few tweaks, and then we went over it several more times, thinking through everything that could go wrong. Finally, I excused myself to go to bed. I had to be at one hundred percent the next day, which meant I needed to sleep.

As I stood up from my late, working dinner, I saw Mayor Petty wheeling himself across the floor toward me. “Who’s watching Alexia?” I asked.

“Alyssa and Wyn,” Petty said. “Are we leaving now?” “Is she okay?”

“She wasn’t there when they took your mother, thank God. When are we leaving?”

“Not now. First thing in the morning.”

“We need to go now. God knows what’s happening to her out there!”

“They want to make a trade. They won’t hurt her.” “What? Chopping off a finger doesn’t count?”

He had a point. “Regardless, there’s nothing we can do until the morning. And Bob, I’m sorry, but you can’t come.” Petty stared at me for a moment, his face turning a progressively deeper shade of purple. Then he banged his hands on the armrest of his wheelchair so hard that the whole thing rattled. “Goddamn these legs!” He drew in a heavy breath and seized my right hand. “You’ll bring her home, right?”

“I will. Now let me get some sleep. We’re leaving before dawn.”

But I was still awake when Darla came to bed more than two hours later. “Everything’s ready,” she said. “We can leave at first light.”

“You’ve got to stay and run things here.”

“I already worked it out with your uncle. I appointed him vice-vice mayor. I’m going.”

“There’s no such thing as a vice-vice mayor!”

“There is now.” Darla silenced my further objections with a kiss.

I split our forces into three groups. I’d gutted Ed’s defensive force, commandeering five Bikezillas and seventy soldiers from him. Two groups left at dawn, traveling across country. My group would take up a position on the hilltop at the northeast corner of Highway 20 and Highway 78. We could hide amid the stumps and deep snow up there and observe the ruins of the bank on the east side of Stockton. The second group with Darla would swing wide around Stockton, hiding behind the car wall on the south side of the city. We took the portable shortwave and the transceiver from Longhouse One so the two groups could coordinate. The third group—five Bikezillas loaded with food—would leave an hour after us, taking the direct route to Stockton. They were supposed to follow the directions on the ransom note and leave the Bikezillas at the ruined bank. Then they would hightail it back to Speranta on skis.

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.

Uncle Paul yelled to us from the longhouse door. “Turbines 8-A and 8-B didn’t get shut off in time. Storm burned them out. We’re going to lose four greenhouses if we don’t get some power over there.”

Darla sighed and dropped my hand. “I’ve gotta go. Don’t wait up.”

“Want help?”

She smiled her answer, and I wound up spending all night helping her and a crew of other volunteers string temporary lines from other turbine towers to fill the hole in our electrical grid. By the time we got back to the long-house, the sky was already hinting at grayness.

“Let me show you my favorite place to watch the sunrise,” I said.

“Aren’t you tired?” she asked.

“Sure. But it won’t take long.”

We got two claw hammers and climbed the longhouse roof together, sitting on the peak.

“I am freezing my butt off,” Darla said, “literally.” “That would be a true national tragedy.”

She laughed, a sound as lovely as the crystalline shards of light refracted off the new ice.

“I talked to Dr. McCarthy while I was in sickbay,” I said. “There was a good obstetrics department at the hospital in Dixon. They had heart monitors, preemie incubators, all that stuff. There’s no reason anyone would have looted the equipment, since nobody else has electric power—it should still be there. Doc thought maybe we could mount an expedition and move a bunch of it back here. There’s some other stuff he could use too.”

“Are you . . . are you saying what I think you are?”

“I am. Let’s start a family.”

Darla leaned over and kissed me long and softly, setting off fireworks in my brain and longing in my body that lingered well after the kiss ended.