“So when we started to run out of food again a couple of months ago, I was afraid I’d be forced to fight. Afraid I’d have to shoot at friends and neighbors again. We were already planning to flee. I… I wish we had run then.”
“We were wondering how Stockton was getting food,” I said.
“I was too—for a while, at least. We started getting packages of wheat, corn, and rice in Chinese packaging, black beans, even dried fruit: stuff we hadn’t seen in more than a year. I had no idea where it was coming from. Red’s not exactly the chatty type.”
“Except about his damn knives,” I said.
“I’d like to jam a knife so far up his ass, he’d taste it,” Darla said.
“Yeah, he does go on about those knives,” Zik said. “Anyway, we heard rumors. Girls were disappearing.”
I instantly thought of the Maquoketa FEMA camp. We had stopped the Peckerwoods from raiding it for slaves—were they turning to another source?
“It was only rumors for a few weeks. People missing. Nobody we knew well. And then they took Emily.”
Mary leaned close. The small fire Darla had built was magnified in her eyes. “They took her from me. Tore her right out of my arms! She’s only fifteen.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Red’s men,” Zik said. “Later, I bribed one of them to talk. Cost me a week’s rations. They traded Emily for food. Red is selling the girls of our town to some prison gang… for food.”
“To the Peckerwoods?” I asked.
“How’d you know?”
“They run in this area. Used to hang around Anamosa and Maquoketa in Iowa too, but most of that group is dead. Might be some still in Cascade.”
Mary seized my left shoulder, rattling it so hard that my stump bumped against my chest. I couldn’t suppress a low moan. Mary was oblivious. “You know them? You know where they took Emily? Where she is? Tell me!”
I peeled her hand off my shoulder. “I don’t know where they took her. They could have traded her to the Dirty White Boys—that’s what they did with Darla when they had her. Or maybe there are other gangs—there must be.”
“They had her,” Mary said, looking at Darla, “and you brought her back?”
I waited until Mary looked back at me and met her gaze, holding it. “I did.”
“You could find Emily.”
“No. I have responsibilities here. And my father got killed looking for Darla.”
“I’m sorry,” Zik said to me. He turned to his wife, speaking softly, “Honey, we’ve got to focus on keeping Wyn and Charlotte safe. We get them settled, then we’ll go looking for Emily. I swear it.”
Mary glared at her husband.
“I don’t like it any better than you do,” Zik said.
“So how’d you find us?” I asked. “And why?”
“We were there when they… shortened your arms,” Zik said. “No choice. Everyone’s got to attend those things—gets the bad lot feeling all patriotic and scares the pants off the good guys. We need a place to go—figured you might take us in, in return for our help. So we snuck over the wall after dark and started looking for you. You weren’t hard to find. I figured that bank was the only shelter you’d be able to reach in your altogethers.”
“You want to join our homestead.”
Zik nodded.
“Everyone works—long days, some nights on guard duty too.”
“We’ll pull our weight and then some, if we can manage it.”
Darla whispered in my ear. “What if they’re spies?”
I thought about that idea—it didn’t seem likely, but it was possible. “You wouldn’t be allowed to leave the homestead without permission. Maybe not allowed to leave at all for a few months. I can’t take the risk that you might lead others to us.”
“We need to look for Emily.” Mary’s voice was freighted with anguish.
“That’s a fair precaution,” Zik said. “But as soon as you see you can trust us, I want permission to go looking for my daughter.”
“You work out, and I’ll do everything I can to help.”
I held out my good hand, and Zik shook it. Suddenly I was responsible for twelve souls. I felt every one of them keenly, weights burdening my already sagging shoulders.
Chapter 40
When I stepped out of the abandoned house where we had been talking, I saw two figures in the distance, trudging down the road toward me. I backed up, reentering the house and closing the door. “Someone’s out there. You all bring any weapons?”
“Just knives,” Zik said.
I stepped over to the window. We had already taken all the glass, so the drape flapped in the wind, giving me an intermittent glimpse of the road. When the figures had halved the distance to the farmhouse, I could make out their faces: Uncle Paul and Max. I flung open the door and ran down the road toward them, with Darla hot on my heels.
“Uncle Paul! Max!” I cried.
“Alex!” he yelled and then doubled over coughing. By the time he was able to resume talking, we had reached him. “We were headed to Stockton. Figured maybe Bikezilla broke—” His breath caught in his throat, and he suddenly stopped. After a short pause, glancing back and forth between me and Darla, he said, “My God. Your hands.”
“Red caught us,” I said flatly “I’ll kill that mother—”
“Get in line,” Darla said.
“I should never have let you go there,” Uncle Paul said. “No.” I grabbed his arm. “No regrets. We’re alive because of the supplies we got in our raids. If you’d told me before all this started that I’d have to trade my hand to get the homestead up and running, I would have done it.”
“Me too,” Darla added.
Max was staring at my stump with grim fascination. “Did it hurt? Having your hand chopped off?”
“No, Max, it was completely painless,” I said.
“Christ,” Darla said to Uncle Paul, “what kind of idiots are you raising?”
“Sorry,” Max said.
“I think we’re both a little rattled,” Uncle Paul said. “Not as much as we were,” Darla muttered.
I looked back—Zik’s family huddled inside the still-open door. “I need to introduce you to Zik and his family. They saved our lives.”
After the introductions, we all trudged back to the homestead together. I asked Uncle Paul to get the newcomers settled in and explain the situation to everyone else. Darla and I headed for our bedrolls. It was just after lunchtime, but we were dead on our feet.
When we next woke, Dr. McCarthy was there, holding a work light on an extension cord and examining my stump in minute detail. “Satan’s teeth, Alex. Would you please quit bringing me unusual injuries to treat?”
“Last time,” I said. “I promise.”
He snorted in disbelief. “Your setup out here is unbelievable. Thought I’d never see working electricity again. I want to switch the light on and off a few dozen times just for the joy of it. Like kids do when they grow tall enough to reach the switches.”
“You’d better not,” Darla said from her bedroll beside me. “Wears out the bulbs faster.”
“I won’t. But I’m tempted to move out here.”
“You and Belinda would be welcome anytime,” I said. “But don’t tell anyone where we are, okay?” I would have preferred it if no one but Rebecca knew, but I could see why Uncle Paul had felt the need to fetch the doctor.
“I won’t. I’m not going to mention your electric lights either. You might wind up with tourists out here if I did.”
“What about, you know, our arms?” I asked. “What do we do about them?”