“Who is she?” Jalak demanded.
“Just help me, woman.”
Jalak and Clary exchanged suspicious stares. Jalak grumbled and tugged off the remains of Clary’s ripped clothes, wiping away the blood and applying antibiotic ointment. The little girl watched carefully as Jalak finished bandaging her torso and cleaning the scrapes on her thighs, cheeks and forehead.
“Give her some aspirin,” Mustafa ordered.
“Is she in pain?”
“What do you think? Look at her.”
Jalak didn’t move, wishing away Clary from her home. Azhar angrily fetched the pills from the medicine cabinet, cradling Clary’s neck as she sipped the water.
“Let her sleep,” he said.
`“Here?” Jalak shrieked.
Clary recoiled like a cornered animal.
“Yes. Here.” Azhar finally persuaded Clary to slide under the sheets, sending Jalak raging out the door.
“Sleep.” Azhar smiled. “You are safe.”
Clary didn’t believe him, but she was so tired.
Mustafa hurried past Omar, dressed for the morning prayers.
“What’s going on, Father?”
“Go back to bed.” Azhar followed his wife down the steps.
Jalak kicked the basement door closed, shaking with fading self-control. “Who is this girl?”
Azhar deliberated how much to lie. Be with those who are true in word and deed, says the Quran. How could that apply to a wife?
“I found her in the car.”
“She was stealing it?”
“Does the child look like she can drive? The poor thing was sleeping in the back seat.”
“Why?”
“Why, why, why? So many questions. Do I know? Allah knows. Ask him.”
Jalak fluttered her lips angrily. “Don’t hide behind Allah. She has run away.”
“The girl is here. That is enough. She’ll sleep and get well.”
“What do you mean get well? She cannot stay. Call the Warriors.”
“No.” Azhar grabbed her wrist. “No.”
Jalak stared suspiciously. “You know who she is.”
Mustafa sighed. Jalak would wear him down eventually. “She is the girl I told you about from the orphanage. The sweet Spanish one.”
“An infidel lies in my bed?”
“Oh shut up. Do you think Allah cares about your linens?”
Jalak went white. “They will look for her.”
“They might. Or not. There are many children there. The sex traders came last night, Jalak. They would’ve taken her.”
“That is not my concern.”
“It’s mine,” he said defiantly, almost proudly. “I don’t want her violated by those pigs.” He shuddered. “She’ll be sold in the market as a whore.”
“So? That is what she is,” Jalak said obstinately.
“No. She is eleven years old. And scared.” Jalak pulled away. “Would you want a Crusader to send back Omar or Abdul if they’d escaped?”
Jalak spat contemptuously on his bare feet. “Never compare my children to one of them.”
“All children get frightened, damn you.”
Jalak ran up the basement steps. The front door was ajar. Omar was hurrying along the street, glancing guiltily over his shoulder at his father in the doorway.
No, Omar. No.
“What happened to my bicycle?” Abdul yelled from the garage.
18
Derek Singh held up his hand until the skittering feet on the roof of his country store passed.
“That a squirrel?” asked his former teammate Easy Sun Yen, squirming uneasily; he’d never taken to the woods. Sunken tubs filled with gin and brunettes, always on the hefty side, that was his idea of fun. Sometimes Derek had joined him. Once, so did Mooshie. The Three Amigos singing and splashing each other.
2062, Singh smiled nostalgically. An August road trip to the Midwest. Damn hotel in Cincinnati banned them. All the damn hotels in Cincinnati banned them. Hell with them. They rented an old mansion and partied 24/7. They were the Yankees. They could do whatever the hell they wanted.
“Nah,” Derek said playfully. “Spaceships. They land every day around this time. Little green men.”
Sun Yen frowned. Somewhere he’d lost his humor. Age’ll do that, Derek thought, rocking in the chair and sipping the brandy. They sat in silence as two old men do, remembering what they couldn’t have anymore.
“And this guy Hazel said nothing?” Sun Yen was a little disappointed, having traveled from Boston, where he still could find an occasional hefty brunette to share a bathtub, to this forest of squeaking animals and smelly trees.
“Acted as if I should know.”
“Maybe you forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“What you were supposed to know.”
Derek scowled. He only forgot the small things nowadays though sometimes the big things drifted away, too, like the battleships who abandoned them on the beach.
“He gave me the damn Miners wig around a lot of crap and that’s it.”
“Well no one knows who he is.”
“How many you ask?”
“Many as still have a pulse. Tekkie Donaldson recalls someone named John in North Africa.”
Singh sighed wearily. “He’s too young to have served with us.”
“Oh.” Sun Yen frowned again.
“I figure he signed up early 70s in the last wave. I wasn’t going to ask too much so he didn’t think I cared.” Derek stretched out his good leg. Sometimes he couldn’t tell the difference. After sixty all the aches hurt the same, mechanical and otherwise. “Probably not.”
“Probably not what?”
“Probably no one would know him no matter,” Singh said.
“Then why’d we ask and take chances?”
“With who? No one cares about us anymore.”
“They’re caring about something,” Easy said. “Else why did this Hazel come out of nowhere?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure,” Derek said impatiently. “Made a point of his knee.”
“How so?”
“Gelinium.”
Sun Yen arched an eyebrow. “On the beaches of Sicily?”
“Don’t add up. Our asses were flying across the Channel to England by then.”
The last desperate attempt to stop the Caliphate ended on the British beaches in 2072. There was no Dunkirk this time because there was no one to rescue them; the American Navy was nearly gone. The entire 7th Army surrendered, hundreds of thousands of soldiers kneeling for days in the sand, watching the feet of the Allahs march past, England invaded for the first time since William the Conqueror in 1066. Once fully ashore, the Grand Mufti’s armies, the Second and Twelfth Arab Legions, confiscated every boat that could float and sailed them down the Thames, their ships blackening the water like bugs, each sail fluttering with the crescent moon and star.
“Maybe he served and
