“You didn’t like me either?” Her turn to be surprised.
“You were the best looking woman in the neighborhood. No, I wasn’t crazy about you. And remember a couple of years ago when you tried your hardest to make me throw up while I was learning to clean and skin rabbits.”
“Why’d you want to learn that, anyway?” she asked.
“Blood, guts, worms… . I just figured, `There she goes again, sticking her nose where it don’t belong.
Well, let her have it!”’
“I wanted to know that I could do that— handle a dead animal, skin it, butcher it, treat its hide to make leather. I wanted to know how to do it, and that I could do it without getting sick.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought someday I might have to. And we might out here. Same reason I put together an emergency pack and kept it where I could grab it.”
“I wondered about that— about you having all that stuff from home, I mean. At first I thought maybe you got it all when you went back. But no, you were ready for all the trouble. You saw it coming.”
“No.” I shook my head, remembering. “No one could have been ready for that. But… . I thought something would happen someday. I didn’t know how bad it would be or when it would come. But everything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn’t believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.”
She turned again and lay on her back, staring upward at the stars. “I should have seen some of that stuff,” she said. “But I didn’t. Those big walls.
And everybody had a gun. There were guards every night. I thought… . I thought we were so strong.”
I put my notebook and pen down, sat on my sleepsack, and put my own pillowcased bundle behind me. Mine was lumpy and uncomfortable to lean on. I wanted it uncomfortable. I was tired.
Everything ached. Given a little comfort, I would fall asleep.
The sun was down now, and our fire had gone out except for a few glowing coals. I drew the gun and held it in my lap. If I needed it at all, I would need it fast. We weren’t strong enough to survive slowness or stupid mistakes.
I sat where I was for three weary, terrifying hours.
Nothing happened to me, but I could see and hear things happening. There were people moving around the hills, sometimes silhouetting themselves against the sky as they ran or walked over the tops of hills. I saw groups and individuals. Twice I saw dogs, distant, but alarming. I heard a lot of gunfire-individual shots and short bursts of automatic weapons fire. That last and the dogs worried me, scared me. A pistol would be no protection against a machine gun or automatic rifle. And dogs might not know enough to be afraid of guns. Would a pack keep coming if I shot two or three of its members? I sat in a cold sweat, longing for walls— or at least for another magazine or two for the gun.
It was nearly midnight when I woke Harry, gave him the gun and the watch, and made him as uncomfortable as I could by warning him about the dogs, the gunfire, and the many people who wandered around at night. He did look awake and alert enough when I lay down.
I fell asleep at once. Aching and exhausted, I found the hard ground as welcoming as my bed at home.
A shout awoke me. Then I heard gunfire— several single shots, thunderous and nearby. Harry?
Something fell across me before I could get out of my sleepsack— something big and heavy. It knocked the breath out of me. I struggled to get it off me, knowing that it was a human body, dead or unconscious. As I pushed at it and felt its heavy beard stubble and long hair, I realized it was a man, and not Harry. Some stranger.
I heard scrambling and thrashing near me. There were grunts and sounds of blows. A fight. I could see them in the darkness— two figures struggling on the ground. The one on the bottom was Harry.
He was fighting someone over the gun, and he was losing. The muzzle was being forced toward him.
That couldn’t happen. We couldn’t lose the gun or Harry. I took a small granite boulder from our fire pit, set my teeth,and brought it down with all my strength on the back of the intruder’s head. And I brought myself down.
It wasn’t the worst pain I had ever shared, but it came close. I was worthless after delivering that one blow. I think I was unconscious for a while.
Then Zahra appeared from somewhere, feeling me, trying to see me. She wouldn’t find a wound, of course.
I sat up, fending her off, and saw that Harry was there too.
“Are they dead?” I asked.
“Never mind them,” he said. “Are you all right?”
I got up, swaying from the residual shock of the blow. I felt sick and dizzy, and my head hurt. A few days before, Harry had made me feel that way and we’d both recovered. Did that mean the man I’d hit would recover?
I checked him. He was still alive, unconscious, not feeling any pain now. What I was feeling was my own reaction to the blow I’d struck.
“The other one’s dead,” Harry said. “This one… .
Well, you caved in the back of his head. I don’t know why he’s still alive.”
“Oh, no,” I whispered. “Oh hell.” And then to Harry.
“Give me the gun.”
“Why?” he asked.
My fingers had found the blood and broken skull, soft and pulpy at the back of the stranger’s head.
