Not a Drop to Drink

Three

Hours later Mother’s voice jerked Lynn out of sleep.

“Remember what you asked earlier? About what will we do if they come after dark?” She gestured toward the south field. “The idiots are bringing flashlights.”

They flattened themselves onto the shingles, cocked their rifles, and sighted toward the fan of lights coming for them. Mother counted slowly under her breath.

“I see seven,” she said. “I’m going to drop the one on the far left, supposing the others will break right when he falls.” She raised the rifle to her shoulder. “You might want to lead in that direction.”

“Yes, Mother,” Lynn said, raising her own gun.

The crack of Mother’s rifle made Lynn startle, even though she’d been expecting it. The lights immediately scattered, except for the farthest left, which fell to the ground and stayed there. Lynn’s first shot went too far right in her excitement, causing the running men to scatter in all directions. Mother’s rifle fired again, and another light fell to the ground, motionless. Irritated, Lynn fired again, this time dropping a light.

“Take a second to listen,” Mother said.

Lynn cocked her gun, ignoring the warm shell that rested against her arm. While they’d initially panicked and scattered, she couldn’t hear any shouting, or cries of alarm. The four remaining lights gathered together in a group, motionless, and stayed that way.

“What are they—”

“Shush,” Mother said. “Listen.”

The lights didn’t move, and the utter silence of the night overwhelmed Lynn. Even though it was cool, she swiped a bead of sweat that rolled down her nose. A stunned cricket tentatively renewed its song, to be answered by another a second later. Soon a chorus had begun. The lights still didn’t move.

“Think they gave up?”

“No,” Mother said tightly. “Be quiet.”

The lights remained still, but the crickets stopped.

“Here they come,” Mother said confidently, cocking her weapon. “Aim at what you hear. They dropped their lights.”

The rustling sounds of field grass followed moments later, and Lynn fired toward it. The scuffling stopped, but another sound followed, a low moan that could only mean she’d hit her target. More silence ensued. A male voice cut through the night, a sound so alien to Lynn that she cringed.

“Come on down now, girlies. We know you’re up there,” he shouted, his voice much nearer than expected.

“And now I know where you are, you stupid son of a—” Mother used a word that Lynn had never heard before, and fired her weapon once. The sound of a body slumping to the ground followed. Minutes passed with nothing but the continuous low groan of the man Lynn had wounded.

“What’s that word you said?” Lynn asked, curiosity getting the best of her.

“Never mind that now.”

A cricket chirped and the wounded man cried out again, silencing it. Lynn thought she heard movement farther out from the house, and Mother’s taut body reflected that she heard it too. It faded, and they sat tensely together for nearly an hour, hearing nothing but the occasional complaint from the wounded man.

“I think they’re gone,” Lynn said.

“Yeah,” Mother agreed, her eyes still scanning the darkness futilely. “We’ll stay up on the roof, go down in the morning, get those flashlights. They’ll come in handy.”

Another low moan rose from the grass. “That was a good shot,” Mother said, nodding toward it.

“Not good enough.”

Mother shrugged. “It was dark.” She rose and stretched out her stiff body, a sign that she truly felt safe. “You’ll get better.”

Another cry. Mother licked her finger, tested the wind, and fired once into the night.

Silence fell.

The morning sun revealed four bodies. Lynn spotted the one she had clipped; he had been standing on the west bank of the pond. The man Mother had spoken to was startlingly close to the house. The thought of him picking his way up the antennae while they sat together facing south gave Lynn goose bumps. She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed them for warmth. Mother rose from where she’d been sleeping during Lynn’s final shift, unmoved by the sight of the carnage.

“They didn’t take the bodies,” Lynn said. “Not even the ones farthest out.” She nodded in the direction of the two who had dropped while still holding their flashlights, nearly a hundred yards from the house.

Mother made an unpleasant noise in the back of her throat. “Type of men who gather up seven of themselves to attack two women in the middle of the night generally won’t go back for dead friends.” She scanned the horizon with her naked eye, nerves still on edge. “Anything?”

“Nothing.” Lynn shook her head. “Think they’ll be back?”

“Depends.”

They descended together, rifles in hand. Mother took a few moments to look over the body of the first man they came upon, the one she had spoken to. “Seems well fed enough,” she commented, after struggling to turn him over. She stripped him of his gun and ammo, leaning them against the side of the house to collect later. Together they dragged his body out to the field for the coyotes.

The other three bodies revealed nothing else. None of the men had been in any danger of starving to death. They relieved the bodies of their weapons, and were lucky enough to find a pack of matches in the pocket of the man lying near the pond. Lynn noticed that her shot had taken him in the kneecap and she winced at the thought. Mother’s tidy, round hole in the middle of his chest had ended it soon enough. He was not a large man, and Lynn looked at him longer than she had the others, trying to figure out what made him seem different.

“I’d say he’s not much older than you,” Mother said when she noticed.

“Really?” Lynn peered closer at his face. “How can you tell?”

“Well,” Mother peered up at the gray sky as she considered how to answer, “I guess it’s in the way his skin isn’t so tough, he’s still got the little bit of baby soft on him.”

Lynn leaned forward, trying to see what Mother meant.

“Also, he doesn’t have much in the way of whiskers.” Mother touched her own face to illustrate. “Kinda built small too. You oughta put your foot up next to his, see if you think his boots would fit.”

Even the appearance of the other men had screamed “enemy” to Lynn. But this one, with his small hands and eyes that were clear even in death wormed at her. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I will.”

Mother watched her cautiously. “It’s probably time for me to—”

A flash of light along the corner of the woods to the southwest brought both of them flat on their bellies, rifles to the ready. Through her scope Lynn saw Stebbs, his own rifle at his shoulder, peering in their direction. To her surprise, Mother stood up and hailed him with one arm. “Yeah, we’re all right,” she said under her breath. “Asshole.”

Mother looked down to where Lynn still lay prone in the grass, her rifle barrel resting across the torso of the dead boy. “You don’t have to help me with this one, if you don’t want to.”

“I’m fine.” Lynn said, proving it by grabbing him under the arms and dragging him away before Mother could move to help. When she came back from the field, his boots were knotted together, dangling from her neck. They were nicer than her own, newer, with steel toes.

The guns and ammo from the men went into the old steamer trunk Mother had tucked away beside the root cellar. Years of dropping anyone who came close to the house had given them a ready supply of weapons and ammo, but both women stuck to the rifles they had learned on, the stocks worn smooth from years of resting their cheeks against them.

Lynn glanced at the shelves of the root cellar while Mother packed away the guns. The dim light that filtered in didn’t show her anything reassuring. The glass jars from last year’s canning were almost gone. The few carrots and celery Lynn had pulled from the ground earlier in the harvest were covered in sawdust, their green tops wilted.

“We need to get out to the garden,” Lynn said. “The second planting is out there waiting.”

“I know it,” Mother muttered into the gun trunk. “But I don’t like being so far from the house with those men from the south about.”

“I don’t like the idea of starving.”

Mother’s answer was to give her a handgun. “I’ll come with you. We work fast and get back to the house. You should be purifying today too.”

Lynn stuck the handgun into her belt. “I can’t take a day sitting next to the tin when we should be harvesting. For all you know it’s wasted time anyway, the water could be just fine.”

“That’s how people in Africa cleaned their water, back when we still knew what people on other continents were up to.”

“Hell of a lot hotter in Africa,” Lynn argued. “Their water probably just about boiled on sheets of tin.”

Mother snapped the lid of the gun trunk shut. “You ever had cholera?”

“No.”

“Then it must be working,” Mother said.

“Either that or the water’s always been fine,” Lynn said, hating the idea of useless hours spent watching over bottles of water that didn’t need purifying.

“Only one way to find out, and if you’re wrong we’re both dead. Now let’s get out to the garden before I change my mind about that.”

Mother’s mouth stayed down in its normal position, not inviting conversation as she stripped husks off sweet corn. Lynn was shelling the last peas while debating the pros and cons of breaking the silence. Though they spent most of their days working side by side, they hardly spoke to each other if they weren’t on the roof. Voices could attract people, or cover the sound of someone approaching. Mother kept her rifle within reach, the safety off. Only the right words could be used to break the silence.

“We had four cords of wood, this time last year.”

Mother stopped shucking, her hands still for once. There was a small grunting noise that Lynn took for agreement.

“We’ve got two.” Lynn ventured. “It’s not enough.”

“No,” Mother agreed. “It’s not.” Her hands kept working, building up their store even in the face of futility.

“So why bother?” Lynn’s voice shook as she tossed the last pea pod into the bucket. “Why gather water? Why pick the vegetables?”

Mother smiled thinly, hands still working. “If I’d thought like that sixteen years ago, I’d have drowned you the second you were born, then shot myself.”

“But you didn’t.”

Mother snapped another ear of corn from the stalk. “Plenty did. ‘I took the road less traveled by—and that has made all the difference.’”

Familiar with the glance Mother gave her, Lynn asked the question. “Who wrote that one?”

“Robert Frost.”

Lynn tossed another handful of peas into her bucket, where they barely covered the bottom. “Why do you always quote poetry at me when all I want is a straight answer?”

“Because I need to use my English degree,” Mother said, then cracked a smile when Lynn’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Yes, I’ve thought about quitting once or twice. Then I remember how they looked when they died—others who quit. It’s not an easy death.”

“I’ve seen people die.”

“Not slow, you haven’t. Not people who know they’re dying and have got the worst of it ahead of them still.” Mother kept working, calm hands unfazed by the images in her mind. “No, I’ve never really considered quitting. Not after seeing them.”

Lynn began plucking tomatoes off the vines, the spicy scent of the broken plants making her belly rumble. She talked over it quickly so that Mother wouldn’t notice.

“So what are we gonna do?”

“Tomorrow I’m going to start turning the little outbuilding into a smokehouse. Shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll pull up some flooring and put some stones for a fire pit between the joists, cut a hole in the roof for ventilation. It won’t be airtight around the door, but it’s better than nothing. Like I said before, I can kill a deer sooner if we smoke the meat instead of freezing it. You’ll do the canning over an outside fire and we’ll keep a lookout while we work. With luck, we’ll have everything we need for the winter squirreled away sooner rather than later, then spend most of our time on the roof and wait for them to try again for us. Meantime we hope they starve or freeze to death.”

“And what about us? What’s to stop us from freezing to death if we don’t have enough wood for the winter?”

“There’s always ways to get warm, Lynn. We’ve got blankets, our own body heat. We can go back to sharing a cot like we did when you were a kid if we have to.”

“Or you can let me take the truck and go cut wood on my own.”

Mother shucked the last piece of corn, her mouth back down in its usual position. “I could,” she said. “But I’d worry the whole time you were gone. You haven’t been running a chain saw that long, and you can’t cut wood and hold a gun at the same time. The noise would bring people to you like bees to honey.”

“What if I took the ax and looked for smaller trees?”

“Smaller trees mean smaller pieces of wood.”

“Smaller pieces burn better than nothing,” Lynn shot back.

Mother didn’t answer; instead she looked at the pile of tomatoes beside Lynn, and the heap of potatoes between the two of them. “It’s not a bad harvest. You get all the root crop down into the cellar, and the canning done here before the day’s out, and I’ll let you take the truck and ax out tomorrow.”