The boy met his mother’s anxious gaze. “Papa and the rest never made it, Mama.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. The cast on one arm explained why the boy hadn’t been in the fields with his older relatives.
Mama’s face didn’t crumple. It went cold and hard. “Then grab yourself a rifle, Dinny, ’cause you’re the man of this house, now. All of you, grab whatever you can carry, out of that stack.”
Kafari snatched up two rifles, a shotgun, and a pistol on her way down the cellar stairs. The staircase was a simple wooden structure, with planks for steps and open backs, but there were two handrails, well worn, and it was solidly constructed. More feet clattered down the stairs. The president reached safety, shadowed by his bodyguard. Julie Alvison, disheveled and looking ready to collapse, came down ahead of Hank, the driver. The cellar door swung shut above them, latching with a solid thump, then the boy, Dinny, helped his mother down and urged her to sit on the bottom step.
Her face was grey from shock and pain, streaked with sweat and grime and blood where she’d been hit by debris from the collapsed wall. President Lendan moved to her side and peered critically at her injuries. “Your name’s Dinny?” he glanced at the hovering child.
“Yes, sir. Dinny Ghamal. That’s my Mama, sir, Aisha Ghamal.”
“Is there a first-aid kit down here, Dinny?”
The boy brought a hefty box from one of the shelves. President Lendan found antiseptic and alcohol wipes. Kafari spotted a sink and a stack of towels and hastened to wet one of them. As she waited for the water to run hot, she studied the cellar. The stone shelter was bigger than she’d expected. The ceiling — and therefore the floor of the house — was reinforced plascrete.
It was chilly, down here. The walls were all but invisible behind tall cupboards, their shelves lined with stored food and all the tools essential to keeping a large kitchen garden properly harvested and its bounty properly preserved. Jars of homemade jellies, pickles, and vegetables sat in colorful array beside crockery pots for storing sauerkraut, honey, even butter, according to the labels. Smoked meats hung from metal poles across the ceiling.
Other shelves were stacked high with boxes of ammunition. Lots of ammunition. She saw both loaded cartridges and unassembled components: cases, primers, powder, lead and metal-jacketed bullets. One whole corner of the cellar was devoted to reloading presses. It reminded her — strongly — of her father’s cellar.
Always hope for peace, her father had told her years previously, when she’d asked about all the weaponry stored in the cellar, but be prepared for war. The Camar family — and the Soteris family, on her mother’s side — had lost a lot of members in the last invasion. Kafari understood the compulsion to stockpile the means to fight back. Her grandparents on both sides could still remember the loved ones who’d died, driving back the Deng. She’d seen their photos, as a child, and the grave markers, too, having gone with her mother every year, as a child, to lay flowers in remembrance.
The water had finally started to run hot. She wet two towels and handed one to President Lendan. He bathed Mrs. Ghamal’s face and neck with gentle hands. Kafari blanched when she saw the blood and shredded cloth down the woman’s back.
“We need to get this dress off, Mrs. Ghamal,” Kafari said softly. “Easy, now…”
They eased the torn cloth down, then Kafari sponged away blood and dirt and splinters of wood and glass. Dinny brought a basin with more clean hot water, which helped immeasurably. As Kafari worked, wincing and biting her lip every time Mrs. Ghamal flinched, the older woman lifted her head.
“You look familiar, child,” she said, frowning. “You any kin to Maarifa Soteris, by chance?”
Kafari nodded, having to swallow past the sudden constriction in her throat. She had no idea whether her grandparents — or the rest of her family — might still be alive. Kafari met the woman’s dark, wounded eyes, said very softly, “She’s my grandmother, ma’am.”
“I thought I knew those eyes. And those gentle hands. Your grandmama helped deliver some of my boys.” Tears welled up, sudden and brutal. “My boys… they killed my boys…”
She was dissolving into helpless, heart-wrenching grief. President Lendan put his arms around the distraught woman whose quick thinking and courage had saved all their lives and just held her while she sobbed.
When the worst of the crying died down, Dinny quavered, “I’m here, Mama.”
She snatched him close and held onto him, still shaking with grief. President Lendan glanced into Kafari’s eyes, then nodded toward the woman’s lacerated back. They finished rinsing off the blood and debris, then cleaned the wounds with antiseptic. Kafari used tweezers to remove more shards, then dusted the injuries with powdered antibiotics and bandaged everything with compresses that Abe Lendan helped her tape carefully in place. They eased the remains of the dress back over the bandages. Kafari glanced up and found the president’s driver looking like he wanted to help. She asked him to bring a glass of water from the corner sink.
Kafari dug into the medical kit, then put a painkilling capsule on Mrs. Ghamal’s tongue and held the glass to her lips, helping her swallow the medication. She blessed the foresight that had prompted Aisha Ghamal to include opiate-based medicines in her emergency pack. Only then did Kafari notice her own aching, stinging injuries, minor by comparison. A few bad scrapes and abrasions, one long, deep scratch down a thigh, bruises from shoulders to toes. All in all, luckier than she probably had any right to expect, given what they’d all just been through. I will never, as long as I live, she promised herself faithfully, daubing ointment on the worst of the scrapes, wear shorts and a camp shirt to another war.
Muffled weeping from across the room crept into her weary awareness. The president’s staffer, Julie Alvison, had collapsed into a boneless puddle beside one wall. Her pretty face was swollen from weeping and the bruise that had spread across cheek and brow. The eye in between had swollen shut, a lurid shade of reddish purple. Kafari found another pain pill.
“Here, swallow this. It’ll help.”
The young woman gulped it down, then sat shivering against the cupboards. Kafari was cold, too, with a deeper chill than the cellar’s damp. She’d have to do something about that, but there was a more pressing concern on her mind, first. She found a corner to call her own and settled down to study the guns, not just the four she’d carried down, but all of them. They felt good in her hands. Her father had taught her how to use firearms, the moment she’d been old enough to handle them. Those lessons had not been forgotten, not even during the intense years on Vishnu.
Crouched on a stone floor that shook under the soles of her shoes, Kafari found herself opening the actions to check magazines and chambers, pulling ammo boxes down, matching up calibers and loading with hands that held remarkably steady. Her hands seemed detached, somehow, from the rest of her. She loaded the long guns first. The heavier rifles had more punch than the pistols, while the shotguns would provide a better chance of hitting something, if she — or someone else — had to shoot with an unsteady grip. When she finished loading everything, she tucked one handgun into the front of her khaki shorts, making sure the safety was engaged, then found President Lendan’s gaze on her.