The day after: An apocalyptic morning (56 page)

              "It does Micker Christine. That's what I'm trying to tell you. We have five women for every man in this town. Five to one. Would you agree that that ratio is creating problems in this town?"

              It seemed like a trick question and she hesitated for a moment. Finally she reluctantly said, "Yes. It is creating a big problem."

              "We don't live in normal times anymore," Paula told her. "The civilization we grew up with is dead and most of the values we were raised with cannot apply anymore. Do you agree that you should be allowed to sleep with Skip in the first place?"

              "What?"

              "Should this town allow you and Skip to sleep together? Should it allow your brother and Stacy to sleep together?"

              "Well... yes," she answered. "What does that have to do with anything?"

              "Because it's a value that has been changed to suit the situation. Would you have slept with Skip if you had met him before the comet?"

              "No," she said slowly, seeing where this was heading. "I would've told my dad and had him call the police if he would've tried."

              "And how about Stacy and Jack? If you would've found out that a twenty year old pregnant woman had seduced your fourteen year old brother before the comet, what would you have done?"

              "Told my dad and had him call the police," she said.

              "Exactly. Yet now, after the comet, you accept Skip as a lover without question, don't you? You accept Stacy as your brother's lover, don't you? I saw you hugging her this morning. So that must mean that you have changed your value system a little bit to accept these new realities."

              Christine shook her head. "You're talking about apples and oranges," she said. "My brother and I are adults now because of the comet and what happened. All that has changed is that we're trying to be treated like adults and given the rights that we deserve. That is not the same thing as changing my values to accept another woman into my relationship. I won't have any part of that."

              "But you're already a part of it, whether you like it or not," Paula said. "You are one of the women in this town where men are an endangered species. We are the glut here, Christine, and the men are the demand. It's going to come down to either sharing what's available or going without."

              "I'll go without then," she said defiantly.

              "For how long? Forever? That's real easy to say right now. But what about later, when you need him."

              "I don't need him."

              "And what about Skip himself?" she asked. "What about when the town finds out about the two of you and Jessica riles them all up to exile him for having sex with a minor. I don't even have to convince you that she can do that, she's already doing it with Stacy."

              "How will they find out about the two of us if we're not together anymore?" Christine asked.

              "I think you maybe know the answer to that," she said softly, leaning forward a little.

              Christine became very uncomfortable all of a sudden. "What... what do you mean?"

              "How late is your period, Christine?" she asked her.

              Christine paled as she heard this. How had Paula known? How could she possible have known? She had not even told Skip about that! She had hardly even told herself about it, not wanting to face what it meant.

              "How late?" she repeated.

              "How did you know?" she whispered, trembling a little.

              "Elementary," she said. "I mentioned this possibility to Skip last night and it got me to thinking. This morning, before I went out to my position, I took a look at the supply room log. In the entire time you've been here, you have not signed out a single box of tampons or pads. You should have had at least one period in the time you've been here; maybe even two if the timing was right. And you don't seem the type that would've gone in and taken them without signing for them. So how long?"

              She continued to look at the woman across from her, feeling a reluctant respect for her deduction skills. "Almost three weeks," she finally admitted.

              Paula nodded. "A little too long to blame on stress, wouldn't you say?"

              Christine felt herself starting to cry as the very excuse that she had been giving herself all of this time was thrown back at her. In her mind it had seemed a reasonable explanation. Spoken aloud by another person, it sounded ridiculous.

              "You're pregnant, Christine," Paula said gently. "You're carrying Skip's baby in you. Even if you don't want to keep it, which I doubt, there is no way available here to put a stop to what's going on inside of you. We don't have any doctors or medical equipment here. The best we can offer is Paul, who was an EMT on a fire engine and who is equipped with the basic first aid kits that came with it. He's real good at putting ice on sprains and bandaging up cuts, but I don't think he knows how to abort a pregnancy."

              "Oh God," Christine said, fighting not to face the facts and losing miserably. More tears began to fall, dripping from her face into her food.

              "It's okay," Paula said gently, reaching across the table and taking one of her hands. Christine did not protest. "It isn't anybody's fault, it's just the way that things work. You didn't think that you'd live long enough to have to worry about this. But, thanks to Skip bringing you here, you have lived that long. Why not be grateful that you're still around to cry about it?"

              "How can I bring a baby into this world?" Christine asked. "What kind of life is it going to have?"

              "The kind of life that we provide for it," Paula answered. "And in a way, that's what I'm trying to improve by having this talk with you right now."

              "What?" she asked, sniffing a little.

              "Let's take things one step at a time, shall we?" Paula told her. "In the first place, there's the pregnancy itself. What's going to happen when you start to show, when it becomes obvious that you're expecting? Who is the first person they're going to look at?"

              "Skip," she said, seeing the point immediately.

              "And what do you think they're going to do to him?"

              "You know what they'll do with him," she said. "They'll exile him."

              "Right," Paula said. "They'll exile him for statutory rape, just like they're planning to do with Stacy. So what we have to agree upon here is the fact that there is no way that your relationship with Skip can be hidden from the town forever. They are going to find out about it. All we can hope to do is control the manner in which they find out about it."

              "And how does sharing him with you help with that?" she asked, some of her previous bitterness coming back.

              "Because I am a respected member of this town and I am somewhat of a trendsetter. Now I don't know for sure if my involvement in the relationship will be able to counter Jessica's opposition to you and Skip, but I know for damn sure that without it, all hope is lost."

              "Why do we have to share him?" she wanted to know. "Why can't you just give us your support from the sidelines? Or are you trying to blackmail us?"

              "I want to share him," Paula said. "I need a man to hold and to have sex with just as much as everyone else in this town and, to me, Skip is the most desirable we have. Those are my main reasons for suggesting this arrangement. If it doesn't work out that way for whatever reason, then I will still give my support to you and be a voice against Jessica. I will do that, Christine, no Micker what. However, I think my words will carry much more power with the other women if I am actually a part of a relationship with you. My arguments will seem more legitimate to them and there will also be the side-issue of the polygamy to take a little of the heat off of the under eighteen issue."

              Christine shook her head, not understanding.

              "Look at it this way," Paula explained. "Most of the women in town do not have an official man and they desperately want one. They will embrace the polygamy issue the same way that I do; by concluding that it is better than what they have, which is nothing. They will side with me on sharing men. I have no doubt about that. So if they side with me on that against Jessica and the other women who have official partners, they will be hard pressed to side with Jessica against you being with Skip in the first place. They will not be able to jump on both bandwagons at the same time. By tackling both of these issues in one single battle, we will be able to prevail with both of them."

              "This is just too much," Christine said, realizing almost belatedly that she had been giving serious consideration to what Paula was saying. "Too much has happened today. I can't think."

              "But you have to," Paula said. "Time is running out. You don't need to make any decisions right now, but you will have to make one soon. And as you're mulling all of this over, try to think about that baby in you. You mentioned what kind of world you would be bringing it into. It won't be the world that you were brought into, that is a given. But it would be nice if it were a world with some sort of order to it. Sharing men is not perfect, but if we start the ball rolling, it will catch on and it will bring order to this chaos that we have here. And maybe someday that baby's children or grandchildren will be able to go back to the values we used to have."

              "That would be nice," Christine said. "It would be, but... I don't think that I could share a man with someone. I just can't see myself doing that. How could we live with the jealousy?"

              "It will take some time," Paula said. "I suspect that we would probably fight with each other quite a lot at first and we would have to change and rearrange how we would go about certain... things. It won't be a cakewalk. The only way it would work would be if we were friends with each other. And, Christine, despite what has happened, I do consider you to be my friend. I like you a lot and I care about you. And most of all, I would be honored to share a man with you."

              Christine left a few minutes later, without a decision made one way or the other but with a lot on her mind. She walked slowly home and entered the house, seeing that Skip was lying on the couch, reading a paperback novel from the supply room. He looked up at her anxiously, not saying anything.

              "Hi," she said softly.

              "Hi," he replied back.

              Instead of retreating to her bedroom as she usually did, she stayed at the end of the couch. They continued to look at each other and then they began to talk. They mentioned nothing about Paula or polygamy. She said nothing about the near-certainty that she was pregnant. Instead they talked about Jack and Stacy and the possibility of her being voted from town the next night. He vowed that he would do everything in his power to prevent that, both before and after the vote. He told her that Paul was going to try to enlist the aid of the other men in town in support of Jack; a prospect which might be promising if they pressured their official women to vote nay and try to convince others to do so. He did not mention that Paula would try to talk to some of the other women, not wanting to bring up her name. She told him that she was keeping her hopes up, that things had a way of working out. And then she said goodnight and went to her room. It was not exactly a mending of the relationship, but it was the most that they had said to each other with civil tongues since the day he had told her about Missy.

              At precisely 2:00 AM, Bill gave the order to his men. It was time to move in. They stood shoulder to shoulder, moving slowly so their equipment would not clank or make any other sort of noise. They linked arms so that no one would stray off in the wrong direction in the darkness. They then began to move forward, towards the wall.

              Each step was made carefully and slowly, the ground beneath their feet being tested before the weight was shifted onto it. It took them nearly twenty minutes to cross the fifty yards of open ground but finally Bill, who was on the end of the line of men, felt wet concrete against his outstretched left hand. We whispered the word "wall" to the man next to him. That man whispered it to the man next to him. Within three seconds the message had been passed to everyone and they came to a complete stop. They unlinked arms and everyone reached out to touch the wall.

              "I'll go up first," Bill said to the man next to him. "Once I'm over, you come up. We do it one by one that way."

              "Right," the man replied. He then passed the message on to the man on his right.

              "Give me a boost," Bill said. It took a few moments of fumbling in the darkness but finally he was able to insert his muddy boot into the clasped hands of the man next to him. His rifle and pack over his shoulder, his hands touching the wall, he pushed upward with his foot, elevating his head above the top of the wall. He could see nothing on the other side except a distant faint glow from an occupied house. The guard position, he knew, was in front of him and to the left. There was no light coming from it at the moment and it was therefore invisible. He pulled himself completely atop the wall and then, moving with extreme caution, slid his feet over to the other side while continuing to hold to the top with his hands. There was a small clank as his rifle shifted but not loud enough to be heard more than ten feet away. He eased downward until he was dangling from the top by his hands only and then, with a deep breath, he let go.

              He had worried incessantly that there might be a hole or a bush or a sprinkler head beneath him that would cause him to land badly, injuring himself and creating noise, but this worry turned out to be groundless. He landed in soft, spongy mud where grass was currently dying from the lack of sunlight and excessive watering. He sank about six inches into it but was able to easily pull himself free. He stepped a few paces away and waited for the next man to come over.

              Now that someone was safely on the other side, it became much easier to get the rest over. As each man swung his way over the wall, the man before him would grab him around the waist to help him down. The second to last man remained up for a moment to give the last man a hand to the top. Then they were both helped down. Less than ten minutes after Bill's hand first encountered concrete, all eight of his group was inside the subdivision less than a hundred feet from the guard position. There was no indication of any kind that they had been seen. They moved on to the next phase of their insertion.

              As Skip had done when he had penetrated the town by using the bridge, Bill used his extensive recon knowledge to get himself and his group to safety. Though he could not see a thing, he knew that he was directly across the street from the single story house that was next door to the guard position. He also knew that that house, like many of the others in Garden Hill, had lost a good portion of its perimeter fence to a combination of the windstorms and the earthquake. It was a collapsed mess of wooden planks and posts lying along the western side of the house. The group once again linked arms and spread out into a line. Slowly, deliberately, they walked step by step across the street, up over the gutter, and onto the house's driveway. When Bill's fingers encountered the metal of the garage door, they stopped. One by one, moving by feel, they then moved around the corner of the house to the side yard, placing the bulk of the house between themselves and the guard position.

              "Okay," Bill whispered once they were all safely there. "I'm gonna turn on the light now."

              With that he activated a small penlight that ran on AAA batteries. The illumination it provided was scant indeed, but it was enough to allow them to move into the backyard without stepping on any of the fence debris. They made their way onto the patio, which was covered with a roof and took shelter there between the wall of the house and a dead hot tub.

              "Good job, everyone," Bill said once they were in position. "Now we wait until morning."

              Three quarters of a mile to the west, at the house next door to position 2, John and his team had found even better luck. They had found that the house had actually been unlocked and they settled down to wait in the darkened living room behind closed blinds.

              At position 3, Jack and Tim Harding, a former PG&E electrical worker, were on duty. Tim, who had come on at midnight, was in the walk-in closet with the door closed, using his flashlight to read a Penthouse magazine he had found in the former grocery store. Jack, who had long since given up trying to keep his partners alert to their duty, was looking out the window into the darkness. He had seen nothing although he had been looking almost directly at the spot where the men had penetrated. Nor had he heard anything.

              At position 2 Missy and Laura Lewis were pulling the duty. Neither one of them had been looking out the window when the penetration occurred. Instead, the two women were gossiping about Stacy and Jack and wondering just what Skip was going to do when that bitch got voted out of the town. Missy was of the opinion that he wouldn't have the balls to say or do anything. Laura, on the other hand, thought he might try something dramatic, although just what that might be, she couldn't say. When one of John Kramer's men lost his grip on the wall as he came over and fell to the ground, a loud clank was clearly heard as his rifle barrel hit the concrete at the base.

              "What was that?" Laura asked, taking a careless glance out into the darkness.

              "I don't know," Missy said, shifting herself in her chair. "Probably something falling over. There's all kinds of weird noises out there."

              "Oh, okay," Laura replied and there was no more discussion on the Micker. A second later they went back to gossiping in the darkness.

              Twice between the time the invaders hid themselves and dawn, the night perimeter patrol passed by the houses they were in or behind. Though they had heavy-duty flashlights they did not shine them on the houses, let alone notice anything amiss.

              When the first touches of daylight came to the sky at 5:45 the next morning, Bill's group left the shelter of the patio and eased over alongside the eastern fence of the backyard, where a lengthy section was still standing. They knew that the guard posts changed crews in fifteen minutes and they wanted to make extra sure that a random sighting by the oncoming or offgoing crew as they entered or exited did not give them away. It was a small chance at best that anyone would have noticed them on the patio but it was best not to take chances. If living in the wilderness had taught them anything, it had taught them that.

              At guard position 2, Paula and Brenda, the assigned crew for that first portion of the day, arrived promptly at 6:00 AM, relieving Missy and Laura. As was normal when one female crew relieved another, the offgoing lingered for a few minutes to share the latest gossip. Paula took up her position near the window and listened for a few minutes as the three of them began talking about the latest developments in the Stacy and Jack saga. All three were of course of the opinion that she would be voted out of town by the end of the night, and good riddance.

              "What do you think about this, Paula?" she was asked at one point, as she had known she would be.

              And so, attempting to utilize every ounce of influence she had, she began explaining to them that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Stacy and Jack living together as lovers.

              "What?" they asked, taken aback.

              She did her best but, as she had discovered the previous night after her conversation with Christine, her influence in this Micker was not quite as strong as she had thought it would be. They listened to her respectfully and even agreed with many of her points but they were completely unwilling to concede that a fourteen year old, even under the extreme circumstances found in the world these days, was a suitable sexual partner for a pregnant twenty year old woman. All declared that they would be shouting out ayes when Jessica put the Micker of ejecting Stacy to vote.

              "It would set a horrible precedent if we let her stay," Missy said, using the exact phrase that Jessica had used when they'd talked the day before.

              "Yes," Laura added. "Imagine what would happen if we did not respond forcefully to this. Think of what would result in the future." This too was a verbatim quote from Jessica's speech.

              Brenda then put in her own two-cents worth by borrowing yet another Jessica-ism that had to do with protecting the morals of the young.

              By the time that Missy and Laura finally left at 6:40 (Missy heading off in a different direction than her partner), Paula was seriously worried about what was going to happen at dinner tonight. She of course could not know that less than a hundred feet away were eight men determined to see to it that she did not have dinner that night, or any other night ever again.

              At guard position 3, crew-change actually took place at 6:10 that morning since Jeff and Lenny Long, a former grocery store courtesy clerk, were late arriving. This was not an uncommon occurrence at the Garden Hill guard posts and it did not even draw a snide remark from Jack or Tim.

              Tim headed out the door the moment the relief crew entered the house, not even pausing long enough to say hello to either of them. Jack tried to give a pass-on report as he had been taught by Skip, but neither one of the two men wanted to hear it. They simply waved him away, although they did offer him their best wishes in the upcoming Stacy vote.

              "I think it's totally bogus," Jeff opined. "I mean, how dare they try to vote someone out for giving up the puss. What kinda shit is that?"

              "Yeah," Lenny agreed, sitting on the bed and lighting a cigarette. "Even if you are just a kid, if you're able to score it, that's one for you. I'm voting nay on that shit tonight, that's for sure."

              Jack, whose stomach was tied in even worse knots than his sister's, thanked them kindly and then made his leave, heading slowly towards the gym to have breakfast.

              Once he was gone Lenny and Jeff settled themselves in by rearranging their chairs further away from the open window to avoid the damp breeze that was blowing in. They would have shut the window completely had they not tried such a thing in the past and incurred the furious wrath of Skip on one of his unannounced visits. Neither one of them gave so much as a passing glance out the window. Nor did they check their weapons to make sure they were locked and loaded. The only thing that they did by the book was call Skip on the walkie-talkie to report that they were in position.

              "Another fucking six hours in this hellhole," Lenny complained, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet on the end table, knocking the walkie-talkie to the floor. He didn't bother picking it back up.

              "It won't be that bad today," Jeff said, pulling a joint out. "I've arranged for a little entertainment for us."

              "What, the joint? All that does is makes the time pass slower."

              "Not that kind of entertainment," he said, stuffing it behind his ear for later. "I'm talking about real entertainment. Missy's gonna come over. She just got off shift at position 2 and she's gonna skip breakfast today so she can visit us."

              "Missy," he said, shaking his head. "That doesn't do me any good."

              "Dude," Jeff said slyly, "have faith in me. I'll set you up. You'll see."

              "Set me up?"

              "I'll set you up. This'll be a shift to remember."

              It was 7:05 when Bill, who was looking through a knothole in the fence towards the guard position's front yard, saw someone coming. It was hard to tell much detail because of the rain slicker but he was pretty sure it was a woman. He signaled to his men to settle down and be alert. They all gripped their rifles a little tighter and made themselves as small as possible.