“Yes, Mother,” Lynn said, raising her own gun.
The crack of Mother’s rifle made Lynn startle, even though she’d been expecting it. The lights immediately scattered, except for the farthest left, which fell to the ground and stayed there. Lynn’s first shot went too far right in her excitement, causing the running men to scatter in all directions. Mother’s rifle fired again, and another light fell to the ground, motionless. Irritated, Lynn fired again, this time dropping a light.
“Take a second to listen,” Mother said.
Lynn cocked her gun, ignoring the warm shell that rested against her arm. While they’d initially panicked and scattered, she couldn’t hear any shouting, or cries of alarm. The four remaining lights gathered together in a group, motionless, and stayed that way.
“What are they—”
“Shush,” Mother said. “Listen.”
The lights didn’t move, and the utter silence of the night overwhelmed Lynn. Even though it was cool, she swiped a bead of sweat that rolled down her nose. A stunned cricket tentatively renewed its song, to be answered by another a second later. Soon a chorus had begun. The lights still didn’t move.
“Think they gave up?”
“No,” Mother said tightly. “Be quiet.”
The lights remained still, but the crickets stopped.
“Here they come,” Mother said confidently, cocking her weapon. “Aim at what you hear. They dropped their lights.”
The rustling sounds of field grass followed moments later, and Lynn fired toward it. The scuffling stopped, but another sound followed, a low moan that could only mean she’d hit her target. More silence ensued. A male voice cut through the night, a sound so alien to Lynn that she cringed.
“Come on down now, girlies. We know you’re up there,” he shouted, his voice much nearer than expected.
“And now I know where you are, you stupid son of a—” Mother used a word that Lynn had never heard before, and fired her weapon once. The sound of a body slumping to the ground followed. Minutes passed with nothing but the continuous low groan of the man Lynn had wounded.
“What’s that word you said?” Lynn asked, curiosity getting the best of her.
“Never mind that now.”
A cricket chirped and the wounded man cried out again, silencing it. Lynn thought she heard movement farther out from the house, and Mother’s taut body reflected that she heard it too. It faded, and they sat tensely together for nearly an hour, hearing nothing but the occasional complaint from the wounded man.
“I think they’re gone,” Lynn said.
“Yeah,” Mother agreed, her eyes still scanning the darkness futilely. “We’ll stay up on the roof, go down in the morning, get those flashlights. They’ll come in handy.”
Another low moan rose from the grass. “That was a good shot,” Mother said, nodding toward it.
“Not good enough.”
Mother shrugged. “It was dark.” She rose and stretched out her stiff body, a sign that she truly felt safe. “You’ll get better.”
Another cry. Mother licked her finger, tested the wind, and fired once into the night.
Silence fell.
The morning sun revealed four bodies. Lynn spotted the one she had clipped; he had been standing on the west bank of the pond. The man Mother had spoken to was startlingly close to the house. The thought of him picking his way up the antennae while they sat together facing south gave Lynn goose bumps. She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed them for warmth. Mother rose from where she’d been sleeping during Lynn’s final shift, unmoved by the sight of the carnage.
“They didn’t take the bodies,” Lynn said. “Not even the ones farthest out.” She nodded in the direction of the two who had dropped while still holding their flashlights, nearly a hundred yards from the house.
Mother made an unpleasant noise in the back of her throat. “Type of men who gather up seven of themselves to attack two women in the middle of the night generally won’t go back for dead friends.” She scanned the horizon with her naked eye, nerves still on edge. “Anything?”
“Nothing.” Lynn shook her head. “Think they’ll be back?”
“Depends.”
They descended together, rifles in hand. Mother took a few moments to look over the body of the first man they came upon, the one she had spoken to. “Seems well fed enough,” she commented, after struggling to turn him over. She stripped him of his gun and ammo, leaning them against the side of the house to collect later. Together they dragged his body out to the field for the coyotes.
The other three bodies revealed nothing else. None of the men had been in any danger of starving to death. They relieved the bodies of their weapons, and were lucky enough to find a pack of matches in the pocket of the man lying near the pond. Lynn noticed that her shot had taken him in the kneecap and she winced at the thought. Mother’s tidy, round hole in the middle of his chest had ended it soon enough. He was not a large man, and Lynn looked at him longer than she had the others, trying to figure out what made him seem different.
“I’d say he’s not much older than you,” Mother said when she noticed.
“Really?” Lynn peered closer at his face. “How can you tell?”
“Well,” Mother peered up at the gray sky as she considered how to answer, “I guess it’s in the way his skin isn’t so tough, he’s still got the little bit of baby soft on him.”
Lynn leaned forward, trying to see what Mother meant.
“Also, he doesn’t have much in the way of whiskers.” Mother touched her own face to illustrate. “Kinda built small too. You oughta put your foot up next to his, see if you think his boots would fit.”
Even the appearance of the other men had screamed “enemy” to Lynn. But this one, with his small hands and eyes that were clear even in death wormed at her. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I will.”
Mother watched her cautiously. “It’s probably time for me to—”
A flash of light along the corner of the woods to the southwest brought both of them flat on their bellies, rifles to the ready. Through her scope Lynn saw Stebbs, his own rifle at his shoulder, peering in their direction. To her surprise, Mother stood up and hailed him with one arm. “Yeah, we’re all right,” she said under her breath. “Asshole.”
Mother looked down to where Lynn still lay prone in the grass, her rifle barrel resting across the torso of the dead boy. “You don’t have to help me with this one, if you don’t want to.”
“I’m fine.” Lynn said, proving it by grabbing him under the arms and dragging him away before Mother could move to help. When she came back from the field, his boots were knotted together, dangling from her neck. They were nicer than her own, newer, with steel toes.
The guns and ammo from the men went into the old steamer trunk Mother had tucked away beside the root cellar. Years of dropping anyone who came close to the house had given them a ready supply of weapons and ammo, but both women stuck to the rifles they had learned on, the stocks worn smooth from years of resting their cheeks against them.
Lynn glanced at the shelves of the root cellar while Mother packed away the guns. The dim light that filtered in didn’t show her anything reassuring. The glass jars from last year’s canning were almost gone. The few carrots and celery Lynn had pulled from the ground earlier in the harvest were covered in sawdust, their green tops wilted.
“We need to get out to the garden,” Lynn said. “The second planting is out there waiting.”
“I know it,” Mother muttered into the gun trunk. “But I don’t like being so far from the house with those men from the south about.”
“I don’t like the idea of starving.”
Mother’s answer was to give her a handgun. “I’ll come with you. We work fast and get back to the house. You should be purifying today too.”
Lynn stuck the handgun into her belt. “I can’t take a day sitting next to the tin when we should be harvesting. For all you know it’s wasted time anyway, the water could be just fine.”
“That’s how people in Africa cleaned their water, back when we still knew what people on other continents
