Mike Mullin - Sunrise

“Ed!” I yelled.

He jumped down on the outside of the gate and came toward us at a run. I dismounted, and we embraced, pounding each other on the back.

“Thought I was going to have to fight through half of Stockton to get to you,” I said.

“How’d you know we were here?”

“Nylce. And when we took out Red’s forces in Stockton, a prisoner told us you’d been moved here. What’s the situation?”

“When Red caught us, I figured we were going to be turned into roasts and ribs,” Ed said. “But he was in the middle of marching on Warren, so he sent a detachment to take us back to Stockton.”

“I knew that much.”

“Red left a big force behind in Stockton—more than fifty men. He learned his lesson the last time you caught him with his pants down. But he took all his most loyal men with him. And so I got to talking to the folks guarding us, telling them a little bit about my history, about Speranta, and well, about you. And I sort of promised them they could move to Speranta.” Ed grimaced, looking at me.

“That’s awesome, Ed.”

“Lots of people have friends and neighbors who’ve disappeared. So we’ve had a bit of a revolution here in Stockton.”

My head was spinning. I had arrived expecting to be shot at, and been welcomed with hugs instead. But first things first—the encircling force would be setting up to attack. They were supposed to wait until they heard gunfire, but if something went wrong… “I’ve got to get to the other side of town, fast.”

“Open the gate!” he yelled.

Ed and the guy currently in charge of Stockton, Lawrence Mason, hopped on our Bikezilla, and we raced across town. Lawrence ordered the west gate opened, and we biked out into the snow, yelling “Nylce!” and looking for her forces. We found them about two miles out, hidden by a low rise in the road, ready to attack.

“Stockton’s already free,” I told Nylce as we pulled up. “You took the city without us? Damn, Chief, I knew you were a badass, but that’s just ridiculous.”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t—Ed did. Never mind. Let’s head into the city, and he can explain it on the way there.”

I set my forces to guard the walls, looking out for the remnants of the Reds, and asked Lawrence to gather Stockton’s population in front of city hall.

It took more than an hour to call them all together. I spent the time talking to Eli, who embraced me enthusiastically, and his wife, Mary Sue, who was as cold-hearted and suspicious as ever. His kids—Brand, Alba, and Joy—were far taller than I remembered them, but if it was possible, even skinnier. They showed me “their” pigs proudly—seven of them now, including a pregnant sow. Red had probably thought he had stumbled into the mother lode when he had captured them and the rest of Ed’s expedition.

Stocktonites flowed into the intersection in front of city hall until it was packed, overflowing with what looked to be hundreds of people, though Lawrence assured me it couldn’t be more than three or four hundred. They were gaunt and dirty, clothed mostly in rags, clearly fatigued and suffering. None of them were particularly old—I saw very little white hair—but they all looked years older than they probably were. There was a certain amount of hope in their stance and smiles threatening to peek from the corners of their mouths.

I climbed to the second floor balcony above one of the businesses on Main Street and raised my hand for quiet. The silence was total.

“My name is Alex Halprin,” I shouted into the stillness. “I’m the duly elected mayor of Speranta. Ed Bauman has told you there is a place for you in our community, and I’m here to affirm that promise.” They interrupted me with cheers. When it got quiet again, I went on.

“There is a place in Speranta for those of you who are willing to follow our laws and work hard. We have food and shelter and power—everything we need to survive this winter, however long it lasts. But we’ve built our settlement through hard work, and no one is exempt from that.

“If you wish to remain here in Stockton, you’re welcome to do so. I want no one in Speranta who’s there against his or her will. But if you remain here, you must do so under your own resources; you cannot expect us to support you with food or protect you with our troops. We will help you as we can, particularly with technical knowhow, but we have no illusions of saving everyone from this winter. We must conserve our resources to support those who support us through their blood, labor, and tears: the citizens of Speranta.

“Red’s forces are broken, and if he survived the battle, he’s on the run.” There was another cheer. “For those of you who followed his orders, I offer forgiveness. But for Red himself, I demand justice. If he is still alive, we will find him, and he will pay for his crimes.” I punched my hook into the air to emphasize the point, and the crowd grew even quieter.

“Think it over carefully. If you’re ready for a new life, a new place, then start packing. Bring only what you can carry. The work will be hard, the hours long, the risks many. But if you’re equal to the task, we welcome you. We leave for Speranta at first light tomorrow.”

The applause was overwhelming.

Nearly everyone chose to move. Speranta’s population had almost doubled in the last few weeks, to over eleven hundred. We had more than two hundred people jammed into each longhouse, and they had each been designed for 150 or fewer. It took two days to get everyone settled, counted, and placed in work assignments. Every preexisting citizen with any experience at all was put in charge of a work party. We broke ground on eight greenhouses and two longhouses all at once, by far the single most ambitious expansion project we’d yet tried.

It would have been impossible to start so many buildings at once except for the supplies the

Stocktonites brought us. They freely gave us the material Darla and I had been trying to steal when we were caught and lost our hands.

Ex-Mayor Petty agreed that all the remaining frozen pork should be shared among the whole settlement of Speranta. He didn’t have much choice; the Reds had thoroughly burned Warren. There was no town for the Warrenites to return to, and I wouldn’t allow him to stay in Speranta without sharing the pork—we were all in this together, I figured. There wasn’t as much pork left as I expected, though. The Warrenites would have been starving within a few months in any case.

Uncle Paul spent two days chasing the stragglers before he and his forces returned. He had killed or captured most of the Reds. There was no sign of Red himself, though—either he had been vaporized by our manure bomb, or he had escaped.

I had a more immediate worry than Red, though. I pulled Uncle Paul aside. “What are we going to do with all these prisoners?”

“Put ’em in a longhouse under guard?”

“Sure, but what then? We can’t afford to feed people who aren’t working. Heck, we can’t even feed the people who are.”

“I’m dead on my feet. Mind if we sit down, get something to eat?”

“Yeah. Of course not. Sorry.” He lowered himself slowly onto a bench in the kitchen area, and I poured him a cup of water and grabbed a bowl of kale chips.

“God,” he said wearily, “I am so sick of kale chips.”

“You know what Darla says whenever I complain?” I said.

“Yeah. ‘Beats not eating.’ She says the same damn thing to me. So these prisoners. Why not put them to work? Like a chain gang or something.”

“Still have to guard them. And it seems like a temporary solution.”

“Hmm.” Uncle Paul put a couple of kale chips in his mouth and chewed slowly. “You ever hear about that Truth and Reconciliation Commission they had in South Africa?”