1632

Anymore than he could have stepped aside, on the first battlefield of his young life, and let the choosers of the slain pass by, flapping their carrion-eater wings.

Jeff Higgins, too, would be a chooser of the living.

***

The decision made, it remained to carry it out. That would be difficult, but not impossible. Not by any means. He would have help. He knew that just as certainly as he knew the rest. Gretchen would help him.

He rose and marched into the library. Well, padded in. His big feet, flapping nakedly, were no more romantic than the rest of his heavy, awkward, intellectual's body. No one would ever confuse Jeff Higgins for a figure of martial glamour.

When he reached the cluster of his friends, he asked for the dictionary. They handed it over. Their eyes were full of question, but he gave no explanation. They did not press him, for which he was thankful. They would be pressing him soon enough, crushing him under ridicule.

With the dictionary in hand, he walked down the long corridor to the room where Gretchen and her family were preparing to sleep. At the door, he raised his hand. Hesitated, but only for a second, before knocking. Gently, so as not to wake whomever might be asleep, but firmly.

He was relieved when Gretchen herself answered the door. He was even more relieved to see that the room beyond her shoulder was quiet and dark. Everyone in the crowded room must already be asleep. That was not surprising, of course, given all that those people had been through that day. But he was still vastly relieved. He had been afraid he would have to wait while Gretchen went about the task of caring for her folk. The wait would have been very hard.

From the look of her face, he thought he had probably awakened Gretchen herself. But, if so, she recovered at once. Again, her eyes and lips were shining with promise.

At his gesture, she stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. Jeff looked up and down the corridor, before deciding that this was as good a place as any.

He sat down on the floor, legs sprawled out before him. Gretchen immediately took the same position, by his side, and nestled against him sinuously. Feeling her body so close, nothing between them but two bathrobes, and seeing the long stretch of bare legs exposed under the robe-long stretch; she had seen to that deliberately, he knew-Jeff felt giddy for a moment. The passion raging in him was almost overwhelming.

But not quite. He took a deep breath, smiled awkwardly at her, and opened the dictionary. Moving from one page to the next, he began spelling out his purpose.

When she realized what he was doing, Gretchen gave a little gasp. Her eyes, startled from the word in the dictionary, came to his. Her mouth opened, shaping a denial. Her head began to shake.

Jeff, seeing that reaction, beamed from ear to ear. He was smiling like a cherub. 'Yes,' he said. 'I do.'

She stared back at the dictionary. She seemed paralyzed. Jeff twisted, rising to his knees, and took her face between his hands. Brought her eyes up to meet his own. Light brown; light green. 'Yes, I do,' he repeated. 'Ja, ich muss.'

***

Then, of course, Gretchen began nodding. Nodding. Nodding and nodding. Nodding and nodding and nodding and now she was beginning to tremble and then the tears began to flow and then she was clutching Jeff so tightly he thought for a moment his ribs might crack. It didn't matter. He couldn't have breathed anyway, he was so relieved.

The nodding meant nothing to him. It would later, but not now. That first little headshake gave him the world. He had been prepared to live without it, but his heart was singing knowing that he had it.

Her first reaction, when she understood, was the key. That instant denial, that unthinking shake of the head. You don't have to do this!

'Yes, I do,' he whispered into her hair, cradling her. 'Ja, ich muss.' He could feel, now, the years of terror which caused the strong body in his arms to tremble like a leaf. Terror held under such tight control for so long that now, when it was finally breaking loose, the one who held it had no idea how to let it go. For all the tenderness of the moment, some part of Jeff wanted to shake her more violently still, just to hasten its departure. It's over. It's over. I promise.

An uncalculating denial, a little shake of the head. That was all he would need to keep him steady, in the hard years to come. It would not be easy for them. He was old enough to understand that much. But at least he could face those years without suspicion. A woman who had lived with no choices at all had still had the courage, at the end, to hold out one for him.

He had been trapped, snared, caught. But not tricked. The lamb was fair and truly slaughtered. But he could never claim, thereafter, that his executioner had not shown him the blade before he came, willingly, to the altar.

Chapter 25

Ed Piazza underlined the last word on the blackboard, with all the flourish of a former teacher, and marched back to the table. 'That's it,' he said. 'That's the bottom line. Ten thousand people. Able-bodied and able to work. Over and above, you understand, the folks we've already got.'

He clasped his hands on the table. 'Some of them can include healthy old people and big enough kids. There's a few thousand jobs that don't require any kind of heavy labor. But most of it does. Especially the farming and construction work.'

Mike leaned back in his chair and clasped his own hands behind his head. He studied the figures on the blackboard for a few seconds before speaking. 'And if we don't get them?'

Quentin Underwood shrugged. The mine manager had been part of the team which, led by Piazza, had developed the production plan. 'Then we have to change the equation the other way, Mike. Subtraction.'

'Driving people off, in other words,' said Mike. 'Push the extra mouths back into the furnace.' There was no heat in the words, just clarification.

Quentin and Ed both looked uncomfortable. So did Willie Ray Hudson and Nat Davis, the other two members of the planning team.

Nat cleared his throat. 'Well, I don't know as I'd put it that way.'

'Cut it out, Nat,' growled Quentin. 'Mike's putting it bluntly, but that's exactly what we're talking about.'

He sat up straight, half glaring. 'I don't like it any better than you do, Mike. But that's the way it is. It's just an estimate, of course, but I think it's pretty damn close. We need ten thousand workers in order to build the infrastructure that'll keep everybody in this area alive through the winter. Food production and shelter are the big jobs. Even if we meet this schedule, winter is going to be a pure bitch. Pardon my language.'

Mike lifted his hands off his head and made a little waving motion. 'I'm not criticizing anybody,' he said mildly. 'I just want to make sure we're all on the same wavelength.' He pursed his lips. 'Does this include the labor force in Badenburg?'

Piazza shook his head. 'Badenburg's not included on either side of the equation, Mike. We're just figuring the people already in town and our best estimate of all the refugees camped out in the area. A fair number of them are drifting in, now. All the churches are already packed to the gills. So's the community center next to the fairgrounds.'

Dreeson, the town's mayor, looked alarmed. 'That fast? What's that doing to our sanitation program?'

'Straining the hell of it,' replied Ferrara bluntly. The science teacher leaned forward. 'And that was true even before we got all these newcomers. The prisoners and the people from the soldiers' camp.'

Dreeson was looking very alarmed, now. Bill Porter interrupted before the explosion came. 'Relax, Henry! The refugee center by the power plant will be operational in eighteen hours. We've got a sanitation system up there that has way more capacity than anything in the town itself. We can cycle hundreds of people an hour through it, easily.'

Melissa snorted. 'And how are you going to get them through it, Bill? With cattle prods? You did notice that I was wearing a bathrobe earlier, didn't you? Is that the way you think I normally prance around in public?'

Porter shrank a little from the same piercing stare that had abashed teenagers over the years. Melissa relented, after a few seconds. 'Folks, I just learned from bitter experience that these people coming in are so-so traumatized-that the only way I got them through the showers was to lead the way personally. Even then-'

She broke off, shuddering a little.

Mike took his hands from his head and set them on the table, palms down. The gesture had an air of authority about it.

'Okay, then. I've been trying to make a decision anyway, and it just got made. We're going to lean on the soldiers. The prisoners, I mean. We don't have any choice.'

Ed cocked his head. 'Lean on them?'

'Rely on them. There are well over a thousand able-bodied men in that crowd. When the wounded recover-those of them who do-that'll add maybe a couple of hundred more. That's the start of our labor force. We'll run them through the sanitation process at the power plant as soon as it's open for business.'

The squawks started immediately.

'That's forced labor!' protested Melissa. 'How are you going to get them through the showers?' demanded Underwood. 'What about resistance?' queried Ferrara.

Mike scowled. 'Melissa, give me a break! I've been a union man all my life, so I'd appreciate not getting any lectures about forced labor. Those guys aren't downtrodden workers. They're prisoners of war captured after launching an unprovoked attack on us. I'm not proposing to work them to death, for Christ's sake. But they will work.'

He turned to Underwood, still scowling. 'How? Simple. 'Take a shower or a bullet. Delouse your hair or we'll delouse your guts.' How's that for motivation?'

Melissa started to screech, but Mike slammed his hand on the table. The flat palm sounded like a rocket. 'Melissa-cut it out!' His scowl was purely ferocious. 'These aren't traumatized women and children, goddamit. These are the guys who did the traumatizing! Frankly, I don't care if they drop dead from fear. They will be sanitized, and they will work.'

The scowl moved on to Ferrara. 'What was that? Something about resistance?'

Ferrara smiled. 'Ah-never mind. I think it's a moot point.'