Hesitation. Carlo, she knew, dabbled in religion. Then, “No, Mom.”
“Spring?”
“Not at all.” Her sweet-tempered boy. “Senni?”
Senni said coldly, “You haven’t left much choice, have you? This hardly seems a time to bring in more dependents, with what happened on that farm near Hobbs. But naturally I’ll go along with whatever you say.”
“Good,” Theresa said. They were all nervous about the other farm, forty miles away. Its owners had disappeared from the Net, and Wenton rumor was that refugees had attacked, killing the owners. There was no law enforcement to check up on the farm, and so far no one else had either, probably from fear. The same thing had happened eighty miles east, in Texas, and there the investigating neighbors had also disappeared. Theresa said, “Now, about rooms—”
Spring interrupted her. “Mom, we need an extension on the house. Harvest is over. The herd is here for the winter—anyway, six more GPS collars broke and we can’t just keep track of the herd remotely any more, so they have to be here. Work is slack enough right now that Alex, Rafe, Sam, and I can build it in a week.” Alex and Rafe, both slight boys next to Theresa’s hulking sons, looked startled. Sam scowled. “All right?”
“Yes,” Theresa said, “good. Now let’s get breakfast.”
Five mothers-to-be, all carrying triplets. It was going to have be a hell of an extension.
For the first time since Madison’s death, she felt better.
CHAPTER 15
Keith died two weeks later. Theresa, amazed that he had hung on this long, got the news on the Net. The computer had been moved into the new part of the building, which had four more tiny bedrooms and a smaller gathering room that Scott called grandly “the den.”
She found Lillie on her knees, weeding the winter herb garden in the relatively calm air after sunset. The girl, seven and a half months along, looked up over the massive curve of her belly.
“Lillie, should you be doing that?”
“Sure. I’m fine.”
“You look like a beach ball.”
Lillie laughed. Theresa could say things like that to Lillie. None of her own kids had ever seen a beach. Lillie’s morning sickness had ended after four months and, like the other five pregnant girls, she was healthy, strong, and active still.
“Lillie, I have something to tell you. It’s going to be hard. Your Uncle Keith died this morning.”
“I’m glad,” Lillie said simply.
Theresa stared at her, then slowly nodded. Lillie was right. Keith had been lingering too long in weakness and pain. And how like Lillie not to cry or wail, but to accept. Julie would have needed emotional attention for days.
Lillie said, “Do I need to do anything? Go to Amarillo?”
“No.” Funerals were simple now; you put the body in a sheet or box and buried it as soon as possible. Embalming, viewings, waterproof caskets, funeral directors… all gone. And by Theresa at least, not missed. “I made the arrangements on the Net.”
Lillie nodded. Sweat stuck tendrils of brown hair to her forehead and nape. The armpits of her maternity smock, a basic tent, were stained dark. Even in November the days, if not the nights, were warm. “I’d like to be alone for a bit, Tess. To walk out a ways.”
“Just don’t go too far.” Theresa would have Jody keep an eye on her.
Lillie hauled herself to her feet and waddled off, her bulky figure silhouetted against the fiery sky.
Theresa sighed and went to find Jody. Instead she found Spring and Julie, sitting in the seclusion of a drooping cottonwood tree. Julie’s head was nestled on Spring’s shoulder. He put his hand under her chin, lifted it, and kissed her.
Oh my dear Lord.
They hadn’t seen her. Theresa crept silently away. She hadn’t seen it coming. Not at all, not at all. Julie was heavily pregnant, and fourteen years old! Spring was twenty-four. And Julie, timid and weepy—why couldn’t Spring at least have chosen Lillie instead?
Theresa sat on the ground behind the barn and laughed at herself. A mother, choosing among pregnant fourteen-year-olds for her son! And it was inevitable that her boys choose somebody, sooner or later. Already she suspected Carlo was visiting a girl in Wenton. And for Spring, that tender-hearted rescuer of wounded rabbits and broken-winged birds, Julie was probably inevitable. Get used to it, Theresa.
It was full dark when she went back to the house, its candles gleaming through the small windows. Jody met her on the porch. “Where’s Lillie?”
Theresa felt her stomach sink. “Isn’t she here?”
“We thought she was with you.”
“No, I was going to… but I forgot because… she went for a walk, she said. Her Uncle Keith finally died, and she wanted to be alone.”
“Which way?”
“West. But you can’t…” Jody was already gone toward the barn to saddle his horse. A half moon, stars… all her boys could ride at night if they had to. Heart hammering, Theresa went inside.
How long?
They were back in an hour, Lillie seated on the horse, clutching the pommel desperately. Lillie, child of New York subways and a spaceship, had never learned to ride. Jody walked alongside, leading the horse. Theresa couldn’t help her image: Joseph and the pregnant Mary. None of her kids except Carlo would even recognize the icon.
“She’s fine,” Jody called. “But, Mom, we’ve got trouble.” Inside, he told them: a large band of refugees camped by the arroyo a mile to the west. Lillie had seen them before they’d seen her, and had caught the glint of moonlight on guns. She’d been starting back when Jody found her. He’d taken a closer look with night-vision binoculars.
“They have at least one shoulder-mounted missile launcher. Military, looks like. About thirty men and women, no kids that I saw. Military tents. This is no ragtag bunch of migrants, Mom.”
No. Theresa knew what it was. How had they escaped it this long, so many years, with the land growing more arable and desirable and prosperous? Dumb luck, she guessed.
She said quietly, “Lillie, take the other girls into the bedroom. You go, too, Sam and Alex and Rafe.”
“No,” Rafe said.
Theresa looked at him. She remembered him as a skinny, intrusive, intelligent nerd, and he still was. She almost tended to forget that he and Alex (but not Sam, noisy as ever) were around, so completely had they become her sons’ responsibility.
Rafe said, “We’re in this together. You said so over and over, Theresa. Whatever you’re going to do, tell us.”
“All right!” Theresa snapped. Rafe wasn’t the problem, anyway. Scott was.
She continued, “We have a few guns and ammunition and five people who can shoot. Nowhere near enough to stand against what Jody and Lillie saw. We’ve known that for a while. But we also have something else, something left over from before you came back, Rafe. A bioweapon.”
Scott jerked in his chair, rose to his feet.
“It’s an engineered virus,” Theresa said steadily. “Ten built-in replications after release before the terminator gene kicks in. Airborne. Lethal within five minutes.”
“Jesus God, Theresa!”
“Scott, don’t lecture me. Just don’t. I knew this day would come eventually, and when I had the chance to buy this stuff left over from the war, I did. I’m not letting all of you die because I’m too squeamish. That would be like being presented with a choice and choosing them to live, not us.”
Her knees trembled. Yes, she’d known this day would come, but she’d dreaded its coming, too. Thirty men and women… who would kill without any trembling. Remember that. At least there were no children with them. She hoped.