“I’m sorry.” Tonia crouched down. “I’m really sorry. You need to come with us. There’s nothing left for you here.”
“Javier the Blessed says—”
“He’s not here.” Out of patience, Duncan threw out a hand to show the dead, the blood, the destruction. “You see him?”
“They took him away.”
“Who?” Tonia demanded.
“The people who came to defile the sacred valley. I saw them drag him away.”
“So he’s not here,” Duncan concluded. “Neither is anybody else right now. So you need to come with us.”
“It’s a good place,” Tonia added. “We’re going to a good place.”
“Holy ground?”
“It’s a good place,” she repeated and offered her hand. “We’ll be taking some of your … people there, too. Anyone who wants to come. You’ll have food and shelter.” And a shower, Tonia thought, because, boy, she needed one. “No one will hurt you.”
When she took Tonia’s hand and rose, Duncan noted she was about his sister’s height. Her hair, in a long, matted braid, read dirty blond. Really dirty.
The robe—more of a sack, he thought—looked like some sort of woven material. The same as the useless shoes that came up to her ankles.
But she went quietly enough with Tonia now, so he considered that problem solved. He decided to stay back—his own disciplinary action for breaking ranks—and help burn the dead, as the ground was too hard for burial.
Once they’d settled those of Javier’s cult who came with them—eleven minors, including the infants, and three adults—Eddie made his way home.
They didn’t need him at the clinic, where Rachel and Jonah and the other medicals and healers would deal with the wounded. He’d have her look at his knee in the morning. He just wanted to go home.
They didn’t need him at the kitchen, where volunteers put food together for the people they’d brought in. They didn’t need him to pass out clothes and supplies or to move them into the house more volunteers had readied for just that purpose.
He wanted Fred. He wanted Joe. He wanted to look at his kids, who’d be sleeping. Just look at them.
He walked into the house Fred had turned into a happy, colorful home. Climbed the stairs. He looked into the girls’ room first. Rainbow, their oldest, cuddled under the multicolored blanket with a cat, a puppy, and a smile on her face.
Angel, their youngest, sprawled over her bed, all but buried in her collection of stuffed toys.
He moved on to his son’s room. Max. His middle child, named for a dead friend, slept with another puppy, his favorite truck, and even in sleep looked ready to cause trouble.
His eyes burned.
In all of his life, Eddie had never imagined loving anything, anyone, the way he loved his kids. Would he have them, would he have Fred, who just lit up his freaking world, would he have this life if not for Max and Lana?
He walked toward the room where he knew Fred would be waiting up for him. She sat up in bed, her red hair a glorious halo of curls, her belly rounded with their fourth child as she worked on crocheting a blanket for their new baby.
On the floor, curled on the rug with yet another puppy, Joe thumped his tail in greeting.
“I heard you come in.” Fred set the blanket aside. “Bryar sent word a couple hours ago that everybody was okay.” Her smile faded. “You don’t look okay. I’m going to fix you something to eat.”
“No. No, don’t get up.” He waved her back, walked in, and sat heavily on the side of the bed, one he’d brought back from an abandoned house sixty miles away because he knew she’d like the canopy. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’re limping.”
“Just banged up my knee.”
“Rachel or—”
“Tomorrow, okay? I needed to be home. Somebody’ll look at it tomorrow.”
“I’ll make some ice so—”
“It’s okay, Fred.”
She shifted, pressed herself and the baby against him. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“It was bad. Those people, just standing around in a circle praying or some shit. Kids, too, and they don’t have decent clothes, decent shoes. Skinny and dirty and … I think they must be all fucking crazy, Fred.”
“People have different ways of coping, I guess. Even crazy ones.”
“We had a good plan, good positioning, and it worked. Mostly it worked. The bastards got about ten of them, and more just took off, but we got all the kids. Babies, some of them, Fred. Just babies.”
In comfort, he laid his hand on her belly.
“We had some injuries, but nothing too bad. Everybody got fixed up, or Rachel’ll finish that job. Nothing too bad. We brought fourteen back—eleven of them kids. Some of the crazies scattered, and the scouts didn’t find them, or bodies, so … Some just wouldn’t come, and we’re not going to make them. But we brought fourteen back and that’s something.”
“What is it, Eddie? You need to tell me.”
“I’m working on it.” He gripped her hand, hard. “I saw Rove. Kurt fucking Rove. I saw him shoot one of the crazies, a woman. Shoot her in the back. Then he started running because we were taking them down, Fred. We were whipping their asses, and they were running like the cowards they are. I went after him. I broke ranks, and I took off after him. But I didn’t see the goddamn stupid root. Didn’t see it because all I could think was Rove, that son of a bitch. And I banged up my knee, and he got away from me.
“I couldn’t get him, Fred. I couldn’t get him for Max. I couldn’t get him for Max and Lana. I couldn’t get him.”
Fred wrapped her arms around him and held him while he wept.
VISIONS
Who looks outside, dreams;
who looks inside, awakes.
—Carl Jung
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Within three days one of the women they’d saved slipped out of town with her baby and two of the children. The single male who’d come with the rescuers ran off with a bag of supplies, leaving behind a five-year-old girl he’d claimed as his daughter.
Rachel sat in her office reading over the charts of those who remained.
Malnutrition, exposure, ringworm, impetigo, bad teeth—dentistry would be busy—kidney infection. Two girls no more than fourteen pregnant. A case of double pneumonia, several old breaks, poorly set. Several wounds—animal bites or gouges—poorly stitched.
And that didn’t begin to address mental and emotional issues.
She sat back, took off the cheaters she’d started using a couple years earlier, rubbed her eyes. She had dense, curly hair clipped back and, because it made her feel better after several long days running, had used some of the organic makeup Fred gave her.
Jonah came in, sat on her desk. He handed her a mug. “Pretend it’s strong black coffee.”
“I wish I could forget what that tasted like. A good, dark French roast, beans freshly ground.”
She drank some of the echinacea tea instead.
“Fred’s bound and determined we’re going to have coffee beans.”
She sighed. “Right now I’m ready to say it’s worth the risk of them trying—again. But I’m weak.”
“Never.” He leaned down and kissed her.
He needed a trim, she thought, though she liked his hair when he didn’t take time to go to the barber. “You got the kids breakfast and off to school?”
“Hey, I do my duty. Henry made you the tea. He said you needed it. Luke did the dishes. Under protest, but he did them.”
“They’re good boys, our boys.”
“Speaking of boys, there’s one from the cult. And I’m calling it like it is, Rachel, believe me.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“So this boy? He’s only three. He says his name’s Gabriel. He talked to me. I didn’t bring it up last night because you were tired. We were both tired.”
“We’ve got a group of people resisting basic treatment—or enough of them intimidating the rest to resist. And those who’ll agree to it are going to take a lot of time and care to get healthy. We’ve got an infant severely malnourished and dehydrated because his mother’s the same, and her milk isn’t enough, and another a year, maybe fourteen months, not yet weaned, whose mother died in the raid, with a raging ear infection.”