“Hide? Exactly how do we do that, Pete? In what world can you or anyone else keep this many women hidden and still manage? Everyone knows your daughter is alive. How do you propose to keep doing your job and not explain where your daughter has disappeared to? Everyone knows Charlie and I are alive and you’re trying to keep us and all the others safe. It will take all of two seconds for this whole county to know you’re hiding us and follow you right to where we are. If we stay, we can’t hide. And this is my home.”
It’s strange to hear her mother call the sheriff by his first name. Charlotte hadn’t even known who Pete was the first time she heard it. But when she hears her mother use that name, she also knows they’re talking not as Sheriff and citizen, but as friends and fellow parents.
Also, everything her mother says is true. Even Charlotte can figure that out.
“I know that, Tabitha,” the sheriff said. “I’ve been trying to figure out some way to do both, but I can’t. If we go, then I go entirely. I think those of us who leave will have to go somewhere else, a place where no one knows us. Maybe west, into the mountains. Maybe near Asheville.”
“The mountains?” Her mother’s voice is incredulous. “You mean the quasi-mountains filled with new roads and packed with houses and vacation cabins? And without having a safe place to go into, how do we hide? Do we stay covered up in the back of a van for a few weeks while you look for some handy hole in the wall? If that’s your idea, then it’s a bad one. Every person left out there would know exactly why you’re looking for a remote cabin in the woods or whatever else.”
“Something has to be done.”
The hard rapping of her mother’s angry footsteps grows louder as she nears the register. Charlotte flinches at the hard words and harder tone. Her mother’s voice comes out like chips of ice. “We can kill them before they kill us.”
A beat of silence, then a disbelieving, “What?”
Crossing the floor in the same heavy steps, her mother moves a little away and Charlotte presses closer to the register. “Listen to me, Pete. Charlie has never seen this happen and I don’t want her to. I haven’t either, but I’m not stupid. We all know we die if we’re taken because it’s the taking that kills us. It’s as plain as the nose on my face and my nose isn’t small. At some point, those of us left have to go on the offensive or we’ll all die.”
“Offensive? Listen to yourself, Tabitha.”
“Oh, I’m listening to myself. I’ve been listening to this in my head for months while terrified that my child will turn her face to the sky! I’ve been listening to it and wondering about my older daughter, who is a much softer girl than Charlie. I’ve been hearing it and worrying for my younger sister, who’s as hard as me in her own way, but all alone on the other end of the country. That’s all I’ve been listening to except for constant news that more women are dead. At some point, I have to stop listening to the warnings in my skull and take action!”
Charlotte can hear the desperation in her mother’s voice, but also the anger. Frustration at her inability to fix the problem. Most of all, what she hears is her need to protect what she loves. Charlotte’s eyes swim and she dashes away the tears.
“Tabitha,” the sheriff says. There’s the small creak of a board, then, “Tabitha, you can’t kill everyone in the world to keep your child safe. And I’m a man too.”
Her mother’s voice is choked with tears. “We’re all dying. All of us. Then men will die anyway, so what does it matter if I kill some now. We can create a safe place without any men we’re not sure of.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things when you put it like that. That doesn’t make killing them right.”
“And the current state of affairs is?”
The sheriff doesn’t answer right away. More boards creak, then there’s the slide of one of the bar seats. “No,” he says, his voice weary.
“Then what? What can I do to protect my child?” Another squeak of a bar stool.
The sheriff’s voice is back to normal, his tone matter of fact. “The logistics alone are impossible to contemplate. There are what, somewhere between nine hundred and a thousand men nearby? Another two thousand in Taylorville? How would you even do that? And how would you decide who should live and who should die?”
Again, her mother’s voice is hard. “They’ll choose themselves. If they come to the place where women are, we kill them. Simple as that.”
“Like those men today?”
“Yes, like them. They wanted to hear my voice, but is that all they wanted? Or were they simply stopped because they knew I would die if they grabbed me? I’m not some sweet and pretty thing. I’m fifty-six years old, but they still came here. It’s not about sex. It’s about possession and control and freedom. That’s what kills us now. When we lose all of those things, we die. Whatever this is, it’s wired into our minds now. You and I both know it, no matter what the government says about diseases and unknown pathogens.”
“Tabitha, you know that kind of offensive would never work. Sure, it would the first few times, but then it would become clear that this was war. They would overwhelm you with numbers or find a way to sneak in or simply make the war an open one. In the end, most sieges end the same way.”
Charlotte feels the dread rising in her like a dark tide. She understands more than her mother thinks she does. She also knows her mother’s desire to live the life she chose for
