“Just a drill,” I explained while he climbed up into the sniper’s nest, letting the hatch bang shut behind him.
“Cool,” Max said. “You can do that? Find a target with your eyes closed?”
“Usually. I’ve been practicing awhile,” I said. “What brings you up here, anyway? You’re not on watch until tonight, right?”
“Yeah. I wanted to talk to you. We’re almost ready to start the fifth greenhouse, and we have to wire up a new wind turbine.”
“Yeah…” Darla and I had gone over this with everyone already. Why was Max rehashing it?
“We’re going to need a ton of heavy-gauge wire. I’m going to go to Stockton and get it.”
“Wait, what? Are you nuts?” I held my hook-topped stump up between us and shook it at him. “Nobody’s going back to Stockton. Ever. Unless we come by a high-powered rifle, scope, and someone who knows how to use it, then I might mount an expedition to snipe Red—but from a hell of a long way off.”
“I could do it,” Max said. “I could get the wire we need.”
“I’m sure you could. Darla and I raided that place four times, no problem. But the fifth was a bloody bitch. Maybe you’d be fine. Maybe you’d get caught on your first raid. No, absolutely not. Your dad would forbid it too.”
“I’m fourteen and a half—almost as old as you were when the volcano erupted.”
“And we treat you that way. You work as hard as any of us. You stand watch like the rest of us. But—”
“But you don’t trust me to do the really important stuff.” Max reached down to open the hatch.
I stepped on the hatch cover, holding it closed and preventing him from leaving. “If that’s the case, I don’t trust myself either, ’cause I’m not going back to Stockton.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Max said. “Can I leave now?”
“No. You know, the only person who’ll be impressed if you get a bunch of wire is Darla. You’re not trying to horn in on me, are you?”
“What? No! I would never—”
“I know. Darla wouldn’t be interested either. I mean, you’re a good-looking guy, but—”
“Alyssa doesn’t think so,” Max muttered.
So that was what this mood was about. Max reached for the hatch again, but I didn’t move. I thought about how to respond, until the break in the conversation got uncomfortably long. “Are you the one who’s been leaving Alyssa gifts?”
“She thinks you’re leaving them,” Max said. “She got a gold-and-diamond bracelet last week.”
“Hmm. I hadn’t heard about that one. Where’s all this stuff coming from?”
“There’s lots of jewelry left in the farmhouses we’re taking apart for supplies.”
That made sense. Gold and gems were pretty much worthless. You couldn’t eat them or start a fire with them, after all. Most people wouldn’t bother bending over to pick up the Hope Diamond these days. “So you are the one leaving her gifts?”
“No,” Max said emphatically. “You’re not?”
“Are you nuts? Darla would skin me alive.”
“I wonder who’s doing it?” Max said. “I wish they’d quit. I don’t stand a chance with her.”
“That’s not true. Who’s the most important person in Alyssa’s life?”
“You are,” Max said instantly.
“Wrong. Guess again.”
“You ever seen her looking at you? Wish she’d look at me that way.”
“Be serious.”
“Ben. She cares about Ben.”
“Right. Maybe someday she’ll tell you what she did to protect Ben when the Peckerwoods had them both—she hasn’t told me much of it, but it wasn’t pretty. She’s as tough as any of us, as tough as Darla, but in a different way.”
“So what are you saying?”
“You follow Alyssa around like a puppy looking for its mother’s teats—you should be following Ben.”
“All Ben cares about is military stuff—he seems all right, but it gets boring.”
“What do you think we’re headed for anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. We’re doing okay because nobody thinks to look for us out here. This is supposed to be an empty field with a bunch of wind turbines. As far as I know, only Dr. McCarthy and Rebecca know where we are. Will that last?”
“Maybe.”
“Be real. We’re ranging all over this area scavenging stuff. And we’re going to continue to expand. We need a huge food surplus, in case something goes wrong.”
“Yeah. I guess someone will notice eventually.” Max shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.
“And what happens if Red or someone like him finds us?”
“Nothing good.”
“That’s why the walls of the longhouse are so thick—why we built the sniper’s nest, and why we’ll be building more of them. But still, if Red finds us, we don’t stand a chance. He’s got a standing army of something like 150 men.”
“What’re we going to do?”
“We need allies. Or a much bigger population. A military of our own. See where I’m going with this?”
“Yeah. I’ve got it.”
I backed off the hatch to let him open it. “And Max, please don’t do anything stupid. I’ve got enough on my plate, okay?”
“I won’t.”
I reached out my good hand to shake but thought better of it and pulled him into a rough hug.
The biggest problem that we hadn’t solved to my satisfaction was water. We’d started out melting snow, but after a couple of months, we had used up all the nearby snow. With a dozen people and four greenhouses, we needed hundreds of gallons every day. The easiest way to get it was from the well at one of the abandoned farmhouses, but that meant someone had to haul it back. Two of us, on a rotating schedule, spent all day dragging a sled loaded with water bottles back and forth nearly a mile each way from a demolished farmhouse to our greenhouses. It was an incredible waste of manpower.
Darla had come up with two possible solutions. We could bury a pipe below the frost line and bring the water to us with a powerful pump. For that to work, we would need a lot of pipe and electrical wire that we didn’t have. We also weren’t sure how deep the frost line would become if this unending winter continued. The other— and better—possibility was to drill our own well. For that, we needed drilling equipment that we didn’t have and neither Darla nor Uncle Paul knew how to use.
I put Max in charge of solving the water problem and asked Ed to help and keep an eye on him. Some responsibility might help settle Max down—at least I hoped so.
To prepare, I helped Max and Ed make ghillie suits using the technique Rita Mae, the librarian in Worthington, had taught me. The suits had to blend in with the snow, so we made them by sewing strips cut from an old white sheet onto coats and coverall pants.
As I worked, I thought about Rita Mae and Worthington, Darla’s hometown. I hoped Rita Mae was okay. I hadn’t spent much time with her, but she had always listened to me and treated me well, despite the fact that I had been a stranger to Worthington and a teenager.
When we finished, the suits made Max and Ed look like shaggy white Yetis—completely covered in strips of cloth sewn to their ski masks, coats, backpacks, and coverall pants. When they dropped flat and lay motionless in the snow, they were very difficult to spot, even though I knew where to look. I liked the effect so much that I insisted on making two more suits—one for me and one for Darla, just in case.
When we finished the suits, Max and Ed started visiting nearby towns to the east. Mostly they were looking for old phone books. A Yellow Pages that listed all the well-drilling companies in northwest Illinois would be perfect. That’d at least give us a lead on where to find the equipment.