Текст книги "Sunrise"

Автор книги: Mike Mullin

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Chapter 8

I checked the trucks first—all three of them had between a quarter and a half tank of gas. Plenty to get to Stockton. Then I started running around trying to convince people to join us.

The first guy I talked to, Lynn Manck, agreed right away. I’d barely gotten the words “attack Stockton” out of my mouth when he said, “I’m in.” While we were talking, Nylce Myers stopped to listen and volunteered without being asked.

They couldn’t have been more different. Lynn was a huge bear of a man, a farmer in his fifties who sported a beard so long, he must have been growing it out for years. Most guys had beards now—razors were hard to come by—but Lynn’s was magnificent. By contrast, all I could grow were stupid-looking wisps of facial hair. He’d lived on a small farm on the outskirts of Warren all his life. His kids were grown and gone—he hadn’t heard from any of them since the volcano had erupted. But he and his wife still lived on their farm—or had, until the invaders from Stockton had driven them out.

Nylce probably massed less than half of what Lynn did. She was short and slight, in her early twenties. I’d heard from Uncle Paul that her fiance was a salesman for Kussmaul Seeds—he’d been on his route in Nebraska when the volcano blew. Which meant he was almost certainly dead. I had no idea how she’d be in a fight, but she seemed determined enough.

The next guy I collared, Kyle Henthorn, was more skeptical.

“Shouldn’t the mayor have a say-so?” he asked.

“He’s unconscious. Dr. McCarthy had to amputate both his legs. Might not survive.”

“Hmm, and what’d you say the plan was again?”

That stumped me. Ben hadn’t mentioned a specific plan. Just the general idea of attacking Stockton, now, while they were still recovering from yesterday’s fight. “I need to talk to Ben. If you decide to help, meet us at the trucks.”

“You’re going to get military advice from a teenager?” “Yep. Look, I realize you don’t know him, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it. Ben’s probably the smartest person I’ve ever met, and he’s spent basically his whole life studying all things military”

Kyle shrugged skeptically, and I turned away to look for Ben.

I found him in the upstairs bedroom of Uncle Paul’s house, asleep. I reached out to shake him awake, stopping when I remembered how much he hated to be touched. Instead, I said his name—over and over, until I was yelling it.

He finally woke, flailing his arms. “Who is yelling Ben’s name?” he mumbled.

“It’s me. I need your help.”

“Ben’s sleep should not be interrupted.” He rolled over so his back was toward me.

“Your plan for attacking Stockton. I want to try it. But I’m having trouble convincing enough people to join. And we only have three pickups. Is there any way to make it work with only a couple dozen folks?”

“What time is it?” Ben asked, back still turned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“If the lieutenant wants to know whether he should carry through with his planned attack, he must tell his strategist what the current time is.”

Oh-kay . . . “I don’t know exactly. Sometime between one and two in the morning, I think.”

Ben was quiet for a moment. “You should proceed with the attack. With two dozen men—”

I started to say, “They won’t all be men,” but Ben talked over me.

“An effective attack can be executed. But it must be done quickly, and the attackers must take the defenders by total surprise. Here is a plan with a good probability of success. . . .”

As soon as Ben finished explaining his plan, I ran. We had no time to waste. I grabbed a small backpack, a water bottle, and an empty semi-automatic rifle. As I reached the front door, Dr. McCarthy stopped me, laying a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m in a hurry, Doc,” I said. His eyes were nearly solid red, and his face was slack with exhaustion. “We’re headed to Stockton.”

“I heard,” he said.

I tried to turn away.

Dr. McCarthy held onto my shoulder. “Alex. Haven’t enough people died? Where will it all end?”

“With us starving to death, if we don’t get our food back.” “I just spent sixteen hours trying to save the people who got shot in the last fight. Most of them died. My overalls were so caked in blood that when I took them off, they stood up on their own. As if I were still in them! How many more people have to die?”

“What do you suggest? What’re we going to eat? We could eat our dead, I suppose. Do you want to be the one to suggest that to Uncle Paul? To Max and Anna? That they eat their mother?”

Dr. McCarthy recoiled, drawing his arm back from my shoulder. I bolted out the door.

I stopped by the barn, picking up a coil of rope. Only twenty people, including me, Darla, and Ed, were waiting by the trucks. Twenty to attack a town that had held almost two thousand before the eruption. It seemed the height of foolishness to even try. But I believed in Ben’s plan. In Ben himself. We loaded up the trucks and headed out.

We drove south on Canyon Park Road to avoid Warren. The roads deserted, the only noises were the rumble of our engines and the crunch of our tires on the thin layer of frozen snow. We turned on several minor roads, working our way over to Highway 78, the main route between Warren and Stockton. Neither Ed nor I knew the roads well since we weren’t from Warren, so Lynn gave Darla directions.

When we reached the intersection of Highway 78 and Highway 20, which led directly to Stockton, we pulled the trucks against the snow berm on 78, where they’d be hidden.

I called everyone together and explained the plan, splitting us into two squads of six and one of seven. Darla would stay behind with the trucks. I wasn’t sure how to choose people to lead the other two squads. Ed could have done it, but no one would trust him—a former flenser—as a leader. Someone had to be in charge, though, so I called for volunteers. Nylce and Lynn spoke up, which made sense, I guessed. They were the first ones to volunteer for this whole crazy plan. I wished Uncle Paul were with us. He was always steady in a crisis, and I knew I could have trusted him to lead a squad.

Ben had told me to circle around Stockton at this point and approach from the south. What he hadn’t explained was how I’d even find Stockton after we left the road. It was dead black. And any light would have made us painfully obvious.

I led the column over the snow berm on the south side of Highway 20. We trudged through the thick snow, hoping we were moving in the general direction of Stockton. The walk seemed interminable.

I’d been counting in my head, trying to estimate how long we’d been out there. I reached four thousand—more than half an hour. Surely we should have reached Stockton by then? I started curving to the right, straining to catch sight of Stockton’s barricade of upturned cars.

My count passed six thousand. Still no Stockton. A wall loomed suddenly in front of me: not Stockton’s car wall, but the backside of a snow berm. We must have walked in a huge arc, winding up back at Highway 20. I took a left, following the berm. No doubt Ben was correct, that it would be better to approach from the south, from a place where there was no road. But we couldn’t attack Stockton if we never found it.

Not five minutes later, we finally reached the wall of cars. A sedan was propped on its front bumper, trunk thrust in the air. On either side of it, more cars were wedged together tightly, forming a solid barrier.

On the other side of the berm, I remembered, there was a log gate blocking the road. That would surely be guarded. I led our troop south along the car wall in near silence. No one talked, but in the frozen night, every crunch of our boots in the snow tightened the cold knot of fear growing at the base of my spine.

I glanced overhead constantly, fearing the moment when someone would appear atop the wall. The scene played over and over in my mind—the figure barely visible in the darkness, swinging a gun toward us, opening fire.

I also looked for a particular kind of car in the wall. I needed an older truck with hefty side mirrors mounted on steel brackets, not the modern, plastic, breakaway type. When I found one, I signaled a halt with an upraised palm.

I stopped—waiting, watching, and listening for any sign of opposition above where we stood. I started counting silently: one Mississippi, two Mississippi. About the time I hit four hundred, I heard a low mumble behind me, and turned to glare, raising my hand in a stop gesture. The grumbling silenced. I forced myself to wait a full ten minutes, as Ben had recommended, counting all the way to six hundred Mississippi. I neither saw nor heard any sign of guards on the wall.

The mirror bracket was just above my head. I grabbed the metal bar and tugged hard, putting my whole weight on it. The bracket and truck were rock-solid. I pulled myself upward. It was no different than doing a chin-up in gym class. I hooked an elbow over the mirror and reached higher. I could barely grab the back of the cab. I pulled myself up until I was standing on the mirror bracket. From there, it was fairly easy to scramble up into the bed of the truck and climb the rest of the way by shimmying up the side rail.

I waited another full two minutes up there, flattened against the tailgate atop the truck. I saw a couple of flickering lights off in the distance, but they didn’t move. Apparently, no one was patrolling this section of the wall. The truck I was on was held upright by a log wedged under its rear axle. The log sloped down to the ground, forming the hypotenuse of a right triangle.

When I felt certain it was safe, I got the rope out of my backpack, tied one end to the tailpipe, and tossed the other end down to Ed. Then I climbed down the inside of the wall. That was much easier than the climb up had been—I just lowered myself down the exhaust pipe until I reached the log that supported the truck. Wrapping my legs around the log made it easy to slide the rest of the way to the ground.

Eighteen people followed the path I’d blazed over the truck. Every grunt and clunk jangled my already-rattled nerves. I moved away from the wall. I’d come down beside a cemetery, so I took a position along its fence, scanning back and forth for any sign of opposition. I couldn’t help but remember Elmwood Cemetery outside of Warren, the carnage there yesterday I hoped Stockton’s cemetery wouldn’t see similar bloodshed—if this went off perfectly, no one had to die.

The last person over the wall untied the rope and returned it to me. We broke into our pre-arranged squads, and Lynn and Nylce led their groups along the wall in opposite directions. I sent a silent prayer out with them, that they’d both be up to the task they’d volunteered for. Then I took my squad straight for the center of Stockton.

My squad left the graveyard, jogging through what looked like a residential neighborhood. It was tough to tell—buildings, except for those right on the street, were hidden by the darkness. The streets were dark and silent—deserted.

We’d been running for only three or four minutes when I caught sight of a small fire up ahead, flickering in the surrounding darkness. I raised a hand, signaling stop. Working in whispers and gestures, I split my squad into two groups, sending Ed and two others to swing wide and sneak up to the fire from the other side, and leaving three guys with me to approach directly.

I gave Ed’s group time to work their way around the fire while I waited, counting off two minutes in my head. Then I bent low and stalked along the road, directly toward the fire.

As I got closer, I saw two figures beside the fire—one silhouetted, with his back to us, and another facing us on the far side. The plowed track in the road split where they were camped, one branch continuing straight and the other veering to pass under a huge overhead door, directly into a warehouse. The warehouse looked massive, extending far beyond what the circle of firelight could illuminate. The sign over the closed overhead door read Furst Electrical and chemical Distributors, est. 1951.

I dropped to a crawl, moving in the darkness along the edge of the road. When we got so close that I was sure the guys by the fire had to hear us, I held up my hand, all five fingers splayed. My fingers didn’t shake, which surprised me. On the inside, I was trembling like an autumn leaf. I lowered my fingers one at a time: five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one.

All of us jumped to our feet, sprinting toward the fire. The two guards lurched up, spinning and peering into the blackness toward us. One of them bent, reaching for a long gun propped against his chair. Ed materialized from the darkness behind him, pressing his gun to the guy’s neck. I reached the fire, training my rifle at the other guy. The rifle was empty, but he didn’t know that.

He said, “What the—?”

“Any more guards here?” I asked, gesturing with my rifle.

“Who in the seven hells of Sheba are you?”

“I’m holding the gun, so I’ll ask the questions. Got it?” Without waiting for an answer, I ordered Ed, “Search them.”

Ed slung his rifle across his back and frisked both of them, coming up with a bowie knife and a machete. They both had shotguns too, which Ed promptly confiscated. He passed the machete and one of the shotguns to other members of our squad.

“Are there more guards here?” I repeated.

“Cliff’s in charge. Ask him.”

I aimed my rifle at the other guy—Cliff. “Talk.”

“Cain’t. Doctore wouldn’t like it if ah did.”

“Doctor? What doctor?” I asked.

“Cain’t tell you.”

Ed turned back to Cliff, bowie knife clenched in his fist at about chest level. The blade shone orange in the firelight. He wrapped a hank of Cliff’s long, greasy hair around his left hand, forcing his head back.

“Ed. What’re you doing?” I asked.

Ed slipped the edge of his knife along Cliff’s throat.

“This guy’s in charge. Kill him, and the other one’ll talk.” The other guy backed away, running right into the barrel of a shotgun held by Steve McCormick. That stopped him in his tracks.

We didn’t have time to waste. One of the other squads could run into trouble sweeping the walls. I stared at Cliff. He was sweating despite the cold. Could I do it? Order Ed to kill this man while I watched just to get the other guy to talk? If we didn’t gain control of Stockton through surprise—before any gunfire broke out—some of us would die. Maybe all of us. Was that worth taking Cliff’s life? I thought of my dad, how vicious he’d been with captured slavers in the Maquoketa FEMA camp. I understood him better now.

Would Ed even do it? I lifted my gaze to Ed’s face. The flat look in his eyes told me yes, he would. He shrugged as if to say get on with it.

I nodded. “Do it,” I said. “Cut his throat.”

Ed’s grip tightened on the knife handle.

“W-wait,” Cliff stammered. Ed checked his cut. A thin line of blood, dark and viscous, appeared along Cliff’s neck. Two black runnels parted from the line, trickling toward Cliff’s collarbone.

“J-just hold on, hold on,” Cliff said. “There’s no other guards nearby. Just us.”

“What’re you guarding?”

“Warehouse.”

I scowled at him. “Duh, what’s in it?”

“All our supplies. Spare guns, ammo, gas.”

“How many guards are on duty in town right now?” Cliff hesitated. I took a step toward him.

“Six, just six. Us, two on the west gate, two on the east gate.”

“No patrols?”

“Not tonight. Everybody’s up in Warren.”

“You’re bullshitting me,” I said flatly, glancing at Ed, who still held the knife close to Cliff’s throat.

“N-no. Everyone’s in Warren, I swear. Doctore cleaned us out, sent everyone with the primus to fight in Warren.” “But they left you behind.”

“Doctore wanted a few men held back. Just the most trustworthy. To guard the town.”

“Who’s this doctor guy?”

“Red. He runs things here now. Calls himself a doctore, trainer of gladiators. Calls us a familia. Thinks he’s some kind of reborn Roman, even studies Latin. Whatever—I just do what I’m told.”

“So why’re you in front of this warehouse?”

“Little food’s left. It’s in there too. Been broken into twice. Gotta guard it.”

“From your own people,” I said. Cliff nodded. They must be starving to try to steal from their town’s own food stores. The thought made me a little sick. “Six on duty tonight, how many in the daytime shifts?”

“J-just twelve more. They’re in the sack right now.” “Who’s in charge?”

“Doctore s here. He sent Primus Alton to Warren.” “Where?”

“He’s got a house up by City Hall.”

“And where’re the guards sleeping?”

“Y-you’re just going to kill me, ain’t you? After I tell you everything?”

“Ed’s going to kill you right now if you don’t tell me everything.”

Cliff’s Adam’s apple bobbed, triggering a new trickle of blood down his neck. “Barracks are near City Hall too. In the Stockton Bowling Lanes.”

“Ed,” I said, “detail two men to guard this warehouse and hold him.” I gestured at the second guard. “Cliff is going to take the rest of us to visit this doctore of his.”

I got the rope out of my backpack, cut a hank, and bound Cliff’s hands behind his back.

“You’re going to lead us directly to Doctore s house. And you’ll be quiet about it. Or Ed will finish the cut he started in your neck.”

Cliff led us down the street until we reached an old, two-story brick building labeled City Hall and Police Department. A few businesses were scattered on the other side of the street, including a bowling alley with its front window covered in black paper.

“That the barracks?” I asked Cliff in a whisper.

“Yes,” he replied.

As we crept past the bowling alley, the stillness of the night was shattered by gunfire.

Chapter 9

The gunfire was coming from somewhere to the west, near the car wall. “Shit,” I muttered. “Run! To Doctore s house!” I prodded Cliff with my gun, and we all broke into a sprint.

I glanced over my shoulder. Cracks of light shone around the edges of the bowling alley-cum-barracks’ windows. A new fusillade of noise broke out somewhere northeast of us—there were two separate firefights going on. Everyone in Stockton must have been awakened.

Just past the tiny downtown area, the character of the street changed; it was lined with Victorian mansions set so close to the street that they loomed out of the darkness, turrets and gables hanging threateningly over our heads. As we ran, lights appeared in several of the windows. “Which house is it?” I yelled at Cliff, prodding him again with the barrel of my gun.

“First one,” Cliff gasped, pointing at a particularly ornate house.

I glanced over my shoulder again. A man with an oil lamp and rifle was emerging from the side door to the bowling alley I cursed myself silently—I should have set up an ambush at the door of the barracks. That’s what Ben would have told me to do. But by then it was too late.

I swerved into the side street between the last commercial building and Doctore s house. A light was moving around on the second floor. Cliff lagged behind, and I let him, racing ahead. Ed was alongside me, the three remaining members of my squad trailing behind.

I ran to the back of the house and flung open the storm door. There was a small window set into the top of the back door. Inside it was dark. I raised my foot, launching a front kick at the lock. All my desperation and fear flowed into that kick. The lock was solid, but the jamb wasn’t. It splintered with an obscenely loud crack, and the door banged open.

In the dark, we raced through the main floor of the house, crashing blindly into unseen furniture, looking for a staircase. Finally I spotted a dim ray of light. I ran toward it, my empty gun held at shoulder level in front of me, commando style—at least I thought it was from what I’d seen in video games.

I pulled up at the base of a grand Victorian staircase. Polished wood and elaborately turned balusters gleamed in the light of an oil lamp. The lamp sat on the floor next to a whip-thin guy, so short that even I could have looked down on him if he hadn’t been at the top of the staircase. His brown hair was chopped into a cruel buzz cut, his upper lip adorned with a wispy Hitler mustache. He had a large straight knife, almost a sword, in his right hand and a short blade with a wicked serrated spine in his left. He played with the shorter blade, rolling it across the back of his hand over and over, as if it were a habit ingrained through hundreds of hours of practice. Other than the motion of that hand and blade, he was preternaturally still.

Ed was on my right, another squaddie on my left. All three of us aimed our guns up the stairs. Ed had the shotgun he’d taken from one of the warehouse guards—the only gun that was loaded. “You brought knives to a gun-fight,” I called up the stairs.

I fought to keep my hands steady, to keep the tremors rattling my innards from leaking out. If my gun shook, surely he’d notice, realize I was bluffing. Then what?

The guy at the top stared at us over the tip of the larger knife. The smaller knife flashed in the lamplight, its motion unceasing. “Knives to a gunfight?” he said. “Really? That hoary old saw? It’s not such a bad strategy as you might think, bringing a knife to a gunfight. Within twenty-one feet, the guy with the knife can win every time.”

I didn’t believe him, but it didn’t seem like the time or place to argue the point. “Put your knives down. On the floor. Now!”

He continued in a conversational tone. “If there were only two of you, you’d be dead already. Julia, my throwing knife, would enter your body just above the suprasternal notch. It would puncture both the trachea and the jugular vein. You’d asphyxiate, drowning in your own blood. In the meantime, I’d charge the other guy. His hands would shake—like yours are. He might not even get a shot off, and if he did, it would miss. The first blow with Claudia, my gladius, would sever his arm at the elbow. It’s tough to pull a trigger when your hand isn’t connected to your arm. The second blow, the killing blow, would be an uppercut through the stomach, the liver, and into the descending thoracic aorta. He’d go into hypovolemic shock in seconds and be dead of blood loss within two minutes.”

The other two guys in my squad, Cliff in tow, clattered into the foyer.

“Shoot this guy, Ed,” I said. “I’m tired of listening to him.”

Ed raised the shotgun to his shoulder.

The guy dropped both his knives. They stuck, quivering in the hardwood floor, handles up, ready for fast retrieval.

I charged up the stairs, Ed and the rest behind me. The guy didn’t move, not even when I reached the top and grabbed his knives. When I stood, I was just inches from him, so close I could smell him—an alcohol scent like cheap cologne.

“Where’s Doctore?” I asked.

He smiled and said nothing.

“Ed, watch him. The rest of you, search this floor. Find Doctore. Make sure there’s nobody behind us.”

Ed took the lamp from the floor. I stepped around him to let the other guys past and tucked the gladius into my belt.

I was stowing Julia, the smaller knife, just as the front door near the base of the stairs burst open. A stream of guys dressed in black rushed in, guns raised. I stepped behind our captive and raised his own knife under his chin. He barely flinched.

A forest of rifles aimed up the stairs toward us. “Tell them to put their guns down,” I said, pressing the point of the knife into his chin.

The guy in the lead yelled up at us. “Orders, Doctore?” He very nearly growled his response. “Standish, you idiot. To start with, don’t give the enemy intel—the fact that I’m in charge, for example.”

“Tell them to put down their weapons,” I said. “S-s-sorry, Red,” Standish said.

“You know why they call me Red?” the guy asked. As he talked, the knife I held nicked his throat, a thick line of blood dripping downward.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I said. “Tell them to put their guns down!”

“Red is the color of the knife, the color of blood, the way of iron, the way of the new world, the world of men. Our laws are the ancient laws, the Laws of Steel,” Red said. His voice crescendoed to a shout, “We are!”

“The Reds!” the men below us screamed in unison. “Johnson!” Red called.

“Sir!” a guy in the middle of the pack yelled back. “Standish failed me. You are hereby promoted.”

“Yes, sir!” he called back.

“Shoot Standish.” Everyone was still for a second. “Now!” Red hollered.

One of the guys in the front started to swivel, but Johnson was faster. He lowered his gun and shot, hitting Standish in the back with a three-round burst. Standish flew forward, crumpled.

“Jesus,” I yelled, “I almost stabbed you! If a firefight starts here you’re—”

“Cliff led them here,” he said. “Shoot him next.”

Cliff tried to move around behind me, but Johnson raised his gun and shot. Cliff was standing so close to me that I could hear the meaty thunks of the bullets hitting his torso.

“Tell them to put down their guns! Now!” I rammed the knife up into the soft underside of his throat, drawing more blood. “I’m this close to stabbing you.”

Red’s voice came out as a croak. “Do as he says.”

The men in the foyer below us—eleven of them now—laid down their guns. Drawn by the gunfire, the rest of my squad had returned. “Floor’s clear,” one of them said. “Just him up here.”

“Yeah, he’s Doctore,” I replied. “Tie ’em all up. We need to check on the other teams.”

Lynn’s patrol at the west gate had been spotted before they could take out the guards. Lynn was dead. The rest of the squad had overpowered and killed the two Stockton guards.

That firefight had put the guards at the east gate on alert. They pinned down Nylce’s patrol, and things were stalemated until Darla, hearing the gunfire, rammed the gate with her pickup truck, killing the guards who’d been using it for cover. Everyone on Nylce’s squad was okay, but we were down a pickup. Darla seemed to be fine.

“I thought you were going to guard the trucks?” I said when I finally caught up to her.

“I never left the truck,” she replied, giving me a shit-eating grin.

It took what little remained of the night to get organized. I sent Darla and Nylce back to the farm with our two remaining trucks to try to recruit reinforcements. Ed consolidated all our captives—including the guy I’d left at the warehouse—on the main floor of Doctore s mansion, tied and under guard. I split everyone else up into groups: three to guard the east gate, a pair to guard the west gate, a pair to guard the prisoners, two pairs to patrol the walls, and two pairs to patrol the streets of the town. I told the street patrols to enforce a curfew—keep everyone at home, indoors.

We were woefully undermanned. I hoped Darla and Nylce would return quickly and bring a couple of pickups full of help. The one bit of good news was that with all the rifles we’d taken from Red’s soldiers, all our people were armed now. Ammo, however, seemed to be in very short supply—nobody had more than thirty rounds. When I finished setting up all that, Ed and I grabbed a lantern and headed to the warehouse.

It was locked up tight. “Guess we’ll have to bust open the door.” I started hunting for a log to use as a battering ram—both the overhead door and pedestrian door were metal, and kicking them would only bruise my foot.

“Uh, boss?” Ed said. I paused to look his way. He held a ring of keys, jingling them so they glinted in the light of my lantern.

“Where’d you get those?”

“Took ’em off Cliff’s corpse.”

The third key opened the pedestrian door. Inside, we saw a huge stack of electric water heaters, their boxes forming a wall that blocked our view of the rest of the interior. We crept farther into the warehouse. Most of the racks were loaded with oddments—plumbing fixtures, pipes, electrical boxes, and the like. Along one wall, huge spools of wire rested on their sides.

Finally we found the food: a wall of nearly empty shelves with a few forlorn boxes scattered here and there. A case of sugar-free grape Kool-Aid. A dozen tiny glass bottles of saffron. Two cases of Sriracha hot sauce. A few hundred small paper packets of Sweet ‘N Low, Equal, and Splenda in a moldering cardboard box. I’d like to see the Iron Chefs do anything useful with those ingredients.

Farther along, we found the weapons—hundreds of them laid out in neat rows on floor-to-ceiling shelving. Old black powder rifles. Bolt-action rifles. Pump shotguns. Skeet shotguns. A huge selection of revolvers. I didn’t see any semi-automatic rifles, and the few semi-auto handguns looked old and poorly maintained. I also didn’t see any ammo. A huge section of shelving near the guns might once have held bricks of ammo, but the shelves were empty except for a bottom shelf that held three large wooden crates. I pulled the first crate out onto the concrete floor.

It had no top. I lifted my lantern, letting light spill into the box. Inside were hundreds of cartridges—for rifles, handguns, and shotguns—in a bewildering assortment of calibers. Some of the cartridges were shiny yellow brass, others gray—steel, I figured, although I wasn’t sure. The other two crates held the same chaotic mix of loose ammo.

“We can work with this,” Ed said.

“It’s going to take too long. It’s almost dawn. Let’s carry a box to the east gate and sort it while we wait for Darla and Nylce to get back.”

“Yessir,” Ed replied.

“Don’t ‘yessir’ me,” I said.

“Nosir.” Ed grinned, a rare crack in his normally grim visage.

I laid six of the best-looking rifles on top of the wooden ammo crate. Ed grabbed one of its rope handles, and I grabbed the other. It was heavy—barely manageable between us. We trudged to the gate, reaching it just as the black sky began to fade to the yellow-gray of morning.

Steve McCormick was there with another guy. They were working on the gate, trying to complete a jury-rigged repair of the hinges Darla had shattered when she rammed it. “All quiet?” I asked.

“So far,” Steve replied.

Ed and I knelt in the packed snow behind the wall and started sorting ammo. I found five cartridges for one of the bolt-action rifles we’d brought with us. It looked like a twin of Uncle Paul’s hunting rifle, and I’d learned to fire that over the last year, although Darla was a much better shot than I was. “I’m going to go check on the patrols and the west gate. Get as many rifles ready as you can—we’ll need them when Darla gets back. If you see anyone coming, fire two quick shots. That’ll be the signal that you need reinforcements. I’ll tell everyone.”