“Me too,” I said. “How’d they know we’d be there?”
“Probably noticed something missing. Stationed their guards in back instead of the front, maybe in one of the buildings nearby, told them not to build a fire.” The steady susurrus of the sled’s runners against the icy road masked our conversation. “I’m more worried about what they might do with us,” Darla said in an even softer voice.
I thought I knew what they were planning. If I had been talking to anyone else—Max, Uncle Paul, Alyssa, whoever—I would have lied. Told some pleasant untruth about a slap on the wrist. But I was lying atop Darla, the toughest woman I’d ever met. I told her the truth. “They’re out of food. Have been for at least a month. But they haven’t attacked Warren like last time they ran out. Red and these guys look pretty well fed. They’ve got to be eating something.”
“Yeah,” Darla sighed so heavily that it might easily have turned into a sob.
“I figure we’ll be flensed,” I said, putting words to what we were both thinking.
“That’s what I figured too.” A long silence followed, which Darla ultimately broke. “Well, shit.” Her voice was surprisingly steady. “I was really looking forward to seeing what our children would look like. I figured my pretty genes would conquer your ugly ones, but you never know. Genetic crapshoot.”
“Any child of yours would be beautiful,” I said quietly. I desperately wanted to hold her hand, to kiss her, but my hands were tied, and I couldn’t even shift my head enough to reach her lips.
“We aren’t dead yet,” Darla said.
I had an idea, but before I could say anything, the sled lurched to a stop in front of the downtown bowling alley. Two guys grabbed my shoulders and dragged me inside. An oil lamp, turned low, threw a dim and shadow-rimmed light around the room. All the racks of balls had been cleared out, leaving a large, open room. An improvised hearth had been built in the middle of the room and a small hole cut in the roof to vent smoke. But the fire was banked and the room frigid. Rows of cots and military-style footlockers filled the space. About three-fourths of them were occupied by sleeping men, maybe a hundred or so in total. A couple of the men woke, glaring blearily in our direction. I wondered why there were only men in Red’s military: maybe he was an old-fashioned sort of tyrant?
My captors dropped me, my head thunking on the hard linoleum floor. Another pair of guys dumped Darla beside me. They turned to leave, and I called out, “Excuse me! I need to take a leak. You mind?” I held up my bound hands.
One of the men turned and growled. “Piss yourself, thief. We don’t care.”
The four guys who had brought us in dragged chairs under the oil lamp and started a card game. I guess they were guarding us. Not that we could do anything—I could barely move. I inched my head closer to Darla’s so we could talk in whispers without being overheard.
We talked through the remainder of the night, falling quiet only when the dim and uncaring morning light seeped into the room through the cracks in the black paper covering the bowling alley’s windows.
Chapter 35
Darla and I expected to be executed at first light. Nothing happened, though. The men who had been asleep in the barracks woke and left, and a smaller crew—maybe fifty or so—came in, stowed their guns and knives, and bedded down. We got four new guards; they built up the fire before settling down to another card game.
I didn’t want to let myself hope—it would only be worse when my hopes were dashed—but if they were going to flense us, wouldn’t they have done it already?
I tried to get our new guards to talk to us. I asked them question after question until one of them got up from the card game and kicked me in the ribs. I didn’t think he had cracked a rib, but it hurt—badly enough that I quit asking questions.
By late afternoon my mouth tasted of dry ash, my stomach felt like it had shrunk to the size of a walnut, and by then I really did need to pee. I squeezed my legs together, desperate to avoid the ignominy of pissing myself. I knew I was going to die, but I wasn’t as scared as I had expected to be. I had done okay; my family could eat because of the homestead I’d helped to establish, the greenhouses I helped to build.
All the men who had slept through the day shift were up, chatting in small knots throughout the room, cleaning their guns, or playing cards or dice. A steady stream of them came and went—using an outdoor latrine or wash area, I figured.
“Alex,” Darla whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said, surprised that I meant it. I had argued against continuing our raids on Stockton, after all. “We did good.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “we did.”
Red slid into the barracks, as silent as a stalking cat. It took a few seconds for anyone else to notice he was there. Then the card players dropped their hands and rose to salute so fast that their cards scattered willy-nilly, fluttering to the floor around them.
“Bring them,” Red ordered.
Our legs were cut free, and men hauled us to our feet. I sagged—hot streaks of pain ran up my legs from my ferociously tingling feet. I wasn’t sure I could walk. The men half-dragged me out the door. I looked over my shoulder; Darla was being dragged through the doorway too. Her foot hit the jamb, and she yelped in pain.
All the men in the barracks followed us—an escort of over fifty. I mean, I knew how to fight, but this was ridiculous. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Shut up, thief,” the man at my right shoulder growled.
“Where are we going?” I repeated.
“I’ve got a gag,” he said. “Open your mouth again, and I’ll use it.”
They marched us down the road to Stockton’s east gate. Every resident of Stockton must have been gathered there, more than five hundred people arrayed in a huge, rough ellipse. People sat atop the car wall or stood in the large, open area just inside the gate. In the middle of the ring of people, a hot fire burned. Cut logs were scattered around the fire as if to serve as stools. A bucket full of a viscous black substance—tar or rubber, maybe—bubbled over the fire. Darla gasped—somehow she knew what all this was for, and she was terrified. We were too far apart to whisper to each other.
Red stepped into the middle and drew his gladius, holding it high over his head, where firelight flickered along its steel like bolts of heat lightning. The crowd was instantly silent.
“We were born,” Red yelled, his voice surprisingly loud coming from his slight body, “in a time of weakness. Of sloth. Of indolence.” He turned as he talked, taking in everyone. They were either mesmerized or terrified. “The laws of our childhoods, the laws of forgiveness,” Red sneered as he said the words, “of rehabilitation—they do not serve us now. They were laws for children, in a society filled with children.
“The volcano has burned away that old world. Those of us who survived have been reforged. We were born to a world of fat; we have been reborn in a world of steel.
“There are laws for a world of steel. Old laws, true laws. Laws of sharp vengeance, not flabby laws of mercy. Laws of the knife.”
Someone in the crowd screamed, “Take their heads!” Red whirled to glare at the spot the interruption had come from. The silence was absolute.
“The old laws are harsh laws and demand strict obedience. The penalty for theft is not a head. It is a hand.” Suddenly I understood what the bubbling tar was for. And the logs weren’t stools. They were chopping blocks.
Chapter 36
I lashed out, launching a side kick at the knee of the guy on my right. His leg bent backward with an awful crunching sound, and he screamed, letting go of me and collapsing. Three guys moved in to try to take his place. I twisted powerfully, throwing the guy clinging to my left arm into them. I felt almost infinitely strong, like I could have flung him a city block. Two of the three guys advancing on me went down in a tangle of limbs. I heard a high-pitched oof and knew Darla was fighting too. I took a step forward and kicked the guy still advancing on me in the stomach. His body curled around my boot, and he fell.