The day after: An apocalyptic morning (55 page)

              Paula shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not," she said. "Time will tell. But you never answered my question. How do you feel about it? Besides thinking it's bizarre and strange that is?"

              "I'm a man," he said. "If two beautiful women want to share me with each other, I'm certainly not going to say no. Does that answer your question?"

              "It does," she said with a smile. "And don't worry too much about Christine. I'll talk to her at dinner tonight after shift."

              "I don't think that's a real good idea," he said, thinking instantly of the gun that Christine carried on her hip. He had a frightfully clear vision of Paula lying dead on the gym floor beneath the table, a large bullet hole in her forehead, and Christine being marched across the bridge the next day, exiled for murder.

              Paula could tell what he was thinking. "Don't worry," she said. "She won't hurt me and I won't hurt her. If she reacts too strongly to my talking to her, I'll just leave and try again tomorrow. I have patience."

              He gave a very doubtful look but offered no further protests. "Have you heard about Jack and Stacy?" he asked her.

              She nodded. "Maria filled me in on the latest when she came on shift at twelve. Quite a powder keg brewing, isn't it?"

              "To say the least," he said. "Did she tell you what Jessica is up to now?"

              "About the two-thirds community vote?"

              "Yep."

              "Yes, she told me about it. Jessica caught her before she came out here and gave her the spiel. It sounds like she is being very persuasive. Maria is not even a town woman and she hates Jessica with a passion but she came in here spouting about that hussy and that bitch and using phrases that I know she could have only been fed by Jess. If she can rile up Maria like that, I can only imagine how riled up the town women are getting."

              "They're pretty riled all right," he said. "You should've heard some of the things they were saying to us while we were moving his things over there this afternoon."

              "He still moved in with her huh?"

              "He did," he confirmed. "He wasn't going to be talked out of it. He told me that if they throw Stacy out of town then he'll be going across the bridge with her."

              "You have to admire his devotion," she said. "It's too bad that this hen party we call a citizenry doesn't see that. He's much more dedicated to his woman than any other man in town, isn't he? Do you think Dale would walk across the bridge with Jessica if we threw her out?"

              "I'd sure like to make the experiment," he said, making both of them laugh.

              "Will what she's trying to do really work?" she asked him.

              "Yes," he said. "I don't see any way to stop it. At tomorrow's committee meeting Jessica will propose that a two-thirds vote of the entire community can override any committee decision. She'll vote for it and so will Dale and that means it will pass. At the community meeting that night, she'll move that we vote on overturning the committee's decision not to exile Stacy for statutory rape. I've sampled the mood of those women out there. She won't have any problem getting a two-thirds majority, even if all of the men vote no."

              "Great," Paula said, slumping a little in her chair. "I'll try talking to some of them after dinner tonight and at dinner tomorrow. Maybe I can swing some of them over to my bandwagon. It can't hurt."

              "Why don't I just give you the day off tomorrow and you can spend all day doing it?" he suggested.

              She shook her head. "Not a good idea," she said. "It would be counter-productive if you had to assign someone to my position so I could go politic for you. It would look rather shady, especially in light of the rumors that are already floating around about the two of us."

              He sighed. "I guess you're right," he said. "Now I know why Paul told me the first night that living in a town full of women was a pain in the ass."

              At 5:30, just as the unseen sun was nearing the horizon, John Kramer and Bill Blades had one last conference. They, as well as all of their men, were sequestered behind the last group of hills before the open ground along the northern wall, almost exactly halfway between guard positions two and three. The recon they had done had convinced them that these were the only two posts on this side of the subdivision. The time had come to stop watching and to start attacking.

              "We ready to get into position?" John whispered to Bill.

              "I think so," he replied.

              "Is everyone's watch synchronized exactly?"

              "I've checked my guys three times," he said. "They're all tuned exactly to my watch and my watch is tuned exactly to yours."

              "Good enough," John told him. "Remember, we move into position at two in the morning and hide ourselves. You can fudge a little on that time, but not on the attack time. At eight o'clock sharp we strike. No more, no less. It's vital that we take out those guards before they have a chance to call in. Don't shoot unless you absolutely have to. Make those Raid-bombs do the job. I don't think they'd be able to hear gunfire all the way over at the community center with this rain, but you never know."

              "We'll do it," Bill assured him confidently. "Two o'clock we penetrate, eight o'clock and the Raid bombs go in. Once the guards are down, we meet in the middle and move on the community center."

              "If we do this right," John told him, "We'll be sinking into some nice juicy pussy in about fifteen hours. Tell your men that. It'll pep 'em up."

              "Already did it."

              "Okay. It's time. Get your people into position and I'll see you tomorrow morning."

              The two men each joined their group. Bill's group, which was tasked with taking down guard position 3 (although they did not know that was the name of it) consisted of Bill and seven of the hunters, all of them armed with their rifles and plenty of ammunition, two of them armed with the special "Raid-bombs" that they had devised and found so effective in quickly taking out people in enclosed places. John's group was tasked with taking down guard position 2 at exactly the same instant. His group also consisted of seven hunters in addition to the leader, two of whom also had the Raid-bombs.

              While they still had some daylight left, the two groups moved in opposite directions, staying behind the concealment of the hills but paralleling the wall. Each leader would periodically check position by peering carefully around a tree or over the top of a rise to see how close to their targets they were. When they found themselves to be almost exactly across from the guard positions, they stopped and hid themselves carefully in the foliage. They had just enough time before it got completely dark to make one last check of their supplies and ammo. Everything was as it should be.

              The sun deserted them and so did the light. They settled in and waited, knowing it was going to be a long night but anxious for the rewards that awaited them on the other side of it.

              Christine was mostly picking at her dinner instead of eating it. She pushed it around with her fork and occasionally took a small nibble, but her stomach, which was tied up in knots due to all the worries on her mind, did not embrace the offerings she gave it. As if the problems with Skip and Paula were not enough, now she had her brother to worry about as well. He had relieved her at her post less than an hour ago and had told her his plan to walk across the bridge with Stacy if it came to that. She had argued and pleaded with him for nearly ten minutes, trying to get him to change his mind. Although she liked and respected Stacy much more than she did any other female in town, she did not want to lose her only brother when she was kicked out. And she had no doubt in her mind that kicked out was exactly what was going to happen. Jessica had visited the guard post that day while she had been on duty and in the space of less than five minutes had been able to whip Brenda, her partner, into a seething fury at Stacy's "crime".

              "Do you realize that if you vote to kick her out, you'll be sentencing her to death?" Christine had asked Brenda after Jessica's departure.

              "No," Brenda answered indignantly (the way she always talked whenever she addressed Christine) "We'll be exiling her, not executing her."

              "Don't kid yourself," Christine responded. "If you send a pregnant women across that bridge, she's as good as dead. You just won't have to have to watch it."

              The conversation had deteriorated from there, eventually ending with Brenda storming out of the room and going downstairs for the rest of her shift. Christine was glad to be rid of her.

              Now, as she forced herself to swallow a small portion of canned peas, she wondered if she should just go with Jack and Stacy when they left. Why not? If they could talk Paul into giving them a couple of guns and few days worth of food, maybe they could live for a while. Maybe they could make their way to Auburn eventually and see what life held for them down there.

              A figure approaching her in the nearly empty gym distracted her from these thoughts. She looked up and at first couldn't credit what she was seeing. Was it really Paula, the woman who had aspirations of sharing Skip, coming over to her? She wouldn't be that crass, would she?

              It seemed that she would. As she got to within ten feet it became obvious that she was heading for Christine. Christine shot her the glare that had cowered her so well that morning, warning her to stay away. This time however, the glare did not work its magic. Paula stopped directly across from her, holding her own plate of food, and looked down.

              "Can I sit with you?" she asked.

              Christine looked up at her in disbelief. "I don't think so," she said, venom dripping from her words. "You are the last person that I want to eat with."

              Paula didn't move. "Even worse than Jessica?" she asked.

              Christine didn't smile. "Go away," she said.

              "We need to talk, Christine," she said.

              "I have nothing to talk to you about."

              "But you do," she said. "You have a lot to talk to me about and I have a lot to talk to you about. So why don't you behave like the adult I know you are and give it a shot, huh? That's what adults do when they have a conflict with each other."

              It was her tone that did the trick. It was not the least bit condescending, not even when she said "adult". It was so rare that someone talked to her that way that she found herself responding to the words. "All right," she said, waving to the seat across from her impatiently. "Sit down. Talk."

              "Thank you," Paula said, setting her plate down. She eased herself into the seat and looked across the table, making no move to pick up her silverware. "I talked to Skip today," she said.

              Christine shrugged. "So you talked to him. So what?"

              "He told me that he brought up the uh... suggestion that I had about you, him, and I."

              "You mean sharing him?" she said, hissing a little but keeping her voice down. "Yes, he brought it up. Did he tell you what I did?"

              "He said you slapped him," she said tonelessly.

              "Damn right. And I oughtta do the same thing to you too."

              Now it was Paula who shrugged. "And what would that accomplish? It would hurt my face, it would probably hurt your hand, and nothing will have changed. We would still be sitting here with the same problems that we had before."

              Christine did not know how to respond to that. She simply continued to stare.

              "Tell me something," Paula said. "Why is it that you are so opposed to what I have suggested?"

              "Why? Are you serious? Because it's sick!"

              "Why is it sick?" Paula wanted to know next.

              "What?"

              "I believe you heard me," she said. "Why do you think that two women sharing a man is sick? I will admit that it is somewhat unconventional to our upbringing, and that it is something that I never considered before the comet fell. I will even admit that it is far from ideal from our perspective. If it were up to me I would much prefer having one man to myself. But that is not the reality we live in anymore. You think it is sick because it goes against the values that you were raised with, right?"

              "Of course it goes against them," she said. "Doesn't it go against yours? Or did your father have two wives?"

              "My parents divorced when I was young," Paula said. "But that is neither here nor there. I too was raised to believe that monogamous relationships were the way things were supposed to be. Everybody was raised to think that, whether they did it in practice or not. But then everybody was also raised in a world where there was an equal amount of men and women, weren't they?"

              "That doesn't Micker."