Dee could feel the stares coming from every direction, tried to focus on the blemishes in the plastic tabletop, ignoring that twinge in her gut like the first day of junior high and the minefield of the cafeteria.
A teenage girl appeared at the end of the table holding a basket filled with small, brown packages, plastic silverware, and a stack of tin bowls.
“Welcome,” she said.
The man who spoke after breakfast was slight and smoothshaven with thinning blond hair on the brink of turning white. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt and a black down vest. He stood on a table at the back of the mess hall so everyone could see him.
“No doubt you all heard the gunshots late last night. I’m happy to report that Liz and Mike and their team managed to take out the soldiers’ checkpoint at the road.”
Raucous applause broke out.
Someone yelled, “Freemen.”
Silence returned when he lifted his hand.
“No casualties on our end, and the really good news is that we took one alive. Badly wounded, but alive. Liz and Mike also managed to save three lives during the ambush.” He pointed back toward the entrance. “Dee, would you and your children stand up please.”
Dee took Cole’s hand and poked Naomi and they all rose.
“Thank you,” Dee said. She glanced down at Liz. “To you. To Mike, wherever you are, and all of the others who came. My children and I would be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. There’s not a doubt in my mind.”
“Why don’t you come on up here,” the man said.
Dee stepped around her chair and walked down the aisle. When she arrived at the table the man was standing upon, he reached down and opened his hand and pulled her up with him. Slipped his arm around her waist, put his lips to her ear, whispered, “Dee, I’m Mathias Canner. Introduce yourself. Tell us about your journey.”
She looked out over the crowd—fifty, maybe sixty faces staring back at her.
Managed a weak smile.
“I’m Dee,” she said. “Dee Colclough.”
Someone in the back yelled, “Can’t hear you.”
Later, she walked with Mathias. It was midmorning and the sun had cleared the forest wall. The dewy grass drying out. He showed her the well, the greenhouse and chicken coop, the gardens which had already been winterkilled.
“I bought this ninety-acre parcel twelve years ago,” he said. “Sold my business and moved out with several friends from Boise. Something, isn’t it?”
“What exactly brought you out here?”
“Wanting to live as a free man.”
“You weren’t free before?”
He waved to the bearded man up in the guard tower holding a sniper rifle. “Morning, Roger.”
“Morning.”
“All quiet?”
“All quiet.”
As Mathias led Dee into the trees, his right hand unsnapped the holster for the huge revolver at his side.
“Roger came to me nine years ago. He was an investment banker pulling down three mil a year and utterly miserable. The electrified razorwire starts fifty feet in and runs through the woods around the entire clearing. We’ve installed motion detectors at key points and six men walk the perimeter day and night. If I learn that you’re a spy or that you’ve lied to me in any way, I’ll kill your children in front of you, wait a day, and then kill you.”
He stopped and stared at her.
She could hear the hum of the fence behind them, and standing in a patch of light, see the color in his eyes—brown with sunlit flecks of green. Her kneecaps trembled, and for a moment, she thought she might have to sit down.
“I’m just a doctor from Albuquerque,” she said. “Trying to keep my kids safe. Everything I’ve told you is true.”
They walked again.
“Ten days ago, we sent someone out on reconnaissance.”
“They haven’t come back?”
He shook his head. “What’s it like out there?”
“A nightmare. You can’t tell who’s affected until they try to kill you.”
“They aren’t just military?”
“No. They group together and travel in convoys. They recognize the unaffected on sight. I couldn’t tell you how many towns we passed through that have been burned to the ground.”
“We had to put five of our own down a few weeks ago. They killed three people before we stopped them. Is it a virus? Do you know what’s causing it?”
“No,” she said. “It all imploded so fast.”
They crossed over a road—just the faintest depression of tire tracks in the leaves.
“You have vehicles?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She caught movement up ahead—one of the guards cruising the perimeter.
“Two of our women are pregnant. We don’t have a doctor.”
“I’d be happy to see them.”
They veered back out of the woods into the clearing, moved past a group of children standing in the grass, each with their own easel.
“We’re really proud of our school here,” he said. “Naomi and Cole are welcome to attend, of course.”
In the afternoon, Dee examined two women with child and checked in on a fifteen-year-old boy with a low-grade fever and rackety cough, just relieved to engage her mind in her old life, if only for a short while.
“I don’t like this place,” Naomi said. “These people creep me out.”
Dee lay in bed in their cabin under the covers with Cole and Naomi, the boy already asleep.
“Would you agree it’s an improvement on starving to death?”
“I guess.”
Cold air slipped in through the windowframe, just a hint of color in the sky and the tops of the spruce trees profiled against it.
“We staying?” Naomi asked.
“For a few days at least. Get our strength up.”
“Is this like, a militia?”
“I think it might be.”
“So they probably believe all kinds of crazy shit about the government and black people?”
“I don’t know, haven’t asked them, don’t plan to.”
“I’d rather just go to Canada.”
“Could we take it a day at a time for now? At least while they’re still feeding us?”
The knock came in the middle of the night.
Dee stirred from sleep and sat upright and looked around. Not a single source of manmade light, and because she’d extinguished the candle before settling into bed, the room was absolutely dark. She couldn’t recall the layout of her surroundings or even where she was until Mathias Canner’s voice passed through the door.