Mike Mullin - Sunrise

“I was told you elected your leader. Like they did in the dead age, the fat age.”

Keep the pressure on his ego, I thought. “You and I both know that this is an age for the strong. You kill me, and there’s nothing stopping you from claiming my place, from ruling over my greenhouses. My people.” I stepped forward, letting the light from the lantern hit my knife.

“You’d stand as much chance against me in a fair fight as a strawberry in a blender,” he said.

“So what are you waiting for?” I stretched my arms and neck and took another step toward him.

“You’ll face me one on one? Knife to knife?”

“I give you my word.”

Red threw my mother to the road and leapt, drawing his gladius midair and coming down on top of me in a flurry of knife blows. I tried to block his gladius with my hook, missed, and it bit into the back of my forearm. The scrape of the blade against my bone sent icy shivers up my spine and fiery licks of flame up my arm. His other knife slashed at my eyes, and I ducked, taking the blow on my forehead. Blood ran into my eyes, turning the world into a confused patchwork of red and black shadows.

I stabbed toward his stomach, but he was ready for me, throwing his hips backward to dodge the blow. A knife flashed from somewhere, cutting my right wrist on the inside, where the tendons and arteries run. My fingers loosened involuntarily, and my knife fell to the snow.

I was hopelessly outclassed. Darla stepped into the circle of light, raising her rifle, but he was on top of me again. If she shot him, the bullet would likely hit me too. Shadowed forms moved in the darkness. The gladius swept down, and I saw it barely in time to step inward, toward the strike, and throw my hook up. My hook caught his wrist, not the blade, slicing deep into the joint. The gladius fell, clunking harmlessly into the padded shoulder of my coat on its way down.

My head swam, and my vision constricted. All I could see out of the corners of my eyes was blackness, and the rest of my field of vision wasn’t much better, rendered splotchy red by the blood pouring from my forehead. I was losing far too much blood. I had to end this fight, fast.

Red thrust with his other knife, and I dodged to the side, taking the blow on the outside of my thigh instead of in my groin. He stepped toward me, knife held low for another gutting strike. I kicked out, trying to sweep his legs from under him with a round kick. It worked, but my injured leg buckled, and we both went down. Somehow Red wound up on top of me, his knife above my throat, bearing inexorably downward.

I felt consciousness fading. I was finished. If this had been a taekwondo fight, I might have stood a chance. But during all those thousands of hours I had spent training in taekwondo, Red had been training with knives. At least my mother was okay, I thought as the knife bit effortlessly into the scarf at my neck.

The butt of a rifle slammed into the side of Red’s head. Instantly the pressure on the knife eased. I threw Red off me, rolling him onto his back in the snow beside me. Darla reversed the rifle and shot him three times at a range of less than five feet, hitting him dead in the center of his chest.

The knife dropped from his limp fingers. Darla stepped over me and prodded Red’s body with the toe of her black combat boot. He didn’t move. “I didn’t promise you a goddamn thing,” she hissed. “And I never fight fair.”

She safetied the rifle and slung it over her back. Then she was on her knees beside me, cutting strips of cloth and bandaging my wounds at a near-frenzied pace.

Mom crawled over to help. Blood ran freely from the cut on her neck, staining the snow. She glanced at Darla. “You… you…”

Darla was silent, still working on the deep cut in my left arm.

Mom hesitated a moment and then said, “You saved my son.”

Darla nodded but said nothing, focused on her work.

When they had finished putting temporary patches on all my leaks, Darla pushed herself to her feet. She reached down, helping Mom up. “Can I help you with that cut on your neck?”

“I… yes. Thank you.”

Darla turned away, presumably to get more medical supplies, but Mom didn’t let go. She pulled Darla back, drawing her into a fierce embrace. Blood dripped from Mom’s neck into Darla’s hair. I closed my eyes for a moment—the pain had peaked and set off a wave of nausea so intense, it was all I could do not to vomit.

Our troops had taken all the weapons from the nine Reds who were left. “You have one day to leave the State of Illinois,” Darla told them. “If you walk west on Highway 20 all night and all day tomorrow, you might make it. I catch you in this state again, you’ll be shot.”

The cut in Mom’s neck was superficial. Darla used a scrap of boiled cloth and a precious strip of duct tape to hold it closed. We had three other people wounded, but miraculously no one had been killed. Darla organized a party to drag Red and his ten dead followers over the snow berm and bury them.

We camped the rest of the night in the ruins of the bank. I wanted desperately to get home—my wounds needed Dr. McCarthy’s attention—but blundering around in the darkness wouldn’t help.

The trip back to Speranta was slow because we didn’t have enough people to fully man all the Bikezillas. I couldn’t pedal at all and had to ride along like cargo. We arrived back at the longhouse well after lunchtime.

Bob Petty was waiting inside the door of Longhouse One. As I came in riding on a makeshift stretcher, he grabbed my hand, his lips worked, and he stared at me beseechingly, but no words came. I shook his hand off mine, and my stretcher bearers carried me through. Mom was right behind us. When she stepped through the door, Petty burst into tears. Mom leaned down to hug him, and they held each other for a moment.

“How’s Alexia?” Mom asked.

“She’s fine. Rebecca and Wyn are taking good care of her,” Petty said.

Darla tried to step around the logjam at the door, but Mom reached out and grabbed her elbow. “Bob, I want to introduce my daughter-in-law, Darla Halprin.”

“We’ve met,” Petty said, shaking Darla’s hand gravely.

Nylce, Rita Mae, and the kids from Worthington were back already. They had taken Stagecoach Trail, bypassing

Stockton completely. Anna, Charlotte, Uncle Paul, and Belinda were all working with the kids, trying to get them settled.

I spent the rest of the day in Dr. McCarthy’s makeshift OR. He gave me a blood transfusion, reopened all my wounds, cleaned them, stitched them closed again, and rebandaged them. I was only conscious part of the time.

Early the next morning, I sent for Mom, Alyssa, and Rita Mae. They sat around my cot in what I jokingly called the sickbay. “We need to turn Speranta into a real town. We’re finally producing a significant food surplus. It’s time to open a real school and a library.”

“I’m a little too old to be changing careers,” Rita Mae said, “so I guess you’ll be wanting me to open a library”

“I’d be grateful if you would. I’ll see if I can get Uncle Paul and Darla to give up their stash of technical manuals so you can get those organized to start. And Ben’s been collecting military books.”

I turned to Mom, and she spoke up before I could. “I don’t think I have time. I’ve got to take care of Alexia.” Mom drummed her fingers on the table, forgetting her missing pinkie. When the stump hit the table’s rough surface, her face scrunched up, and she moved both hands to her lap. Alyssa watched anxiously

“I know someone who’d love to help with babysitting,” I said.

Mom looked down at the table. “I’m not sure why she’d want to help me, after—”

“It’s okay, Mom. We’ve all… it’s been a hard couple of years.” I laid my hand palm up along the edge of the cot, asking her to take it. “I never stopped loving you. Darla doesn’t know you the way I do, but if you let her, she’ll love you too.”