C.C. nodded in breathless understanding.
Loup turned to T.Y. “You told him.”
He hung his head. “Sorry.”
Mack walked over to Loup. “Told him what?”
Everyone was listening. On the floor, C.C. pushed himself to sit upright, taking deep, racking breaths as his locked muscles unfroze. Loup considered Mack with his plain, scarred face and his too-adult voice. There was something steady in his gray eyes, something she recognized. Mack the Knife had been to a place beyond fear.
“I’m sorry!” T.Y. repeated.
“ ’S’okay.” Loup shrugged. “I guess it probably would of come out anyway.”
She went to fetch the brittle tabloid, the artifact of her father. By the time she returned to the rec room, all the church’s kids were there, watching and waiting. Whatever T.Y. had told C.C., he’d obviously repeated it to them.
Mack read the story without comment, then passed it on. Almost everyone read it in silence. Jane made a scornful sound. Dondi sounded out the big words. Loup waited, perched on an arm of the rec room’s worn, stained couch.
“Jaime?” Mack asked when everyone had read it.
“Well, it’s mostly bullshit, of course.” Jaime adjusted his glasses. “Sensationalized bullshit. This isn’t a real newspaper, nothing like what you find in the archives. But that doesn’t mean there’s not some kernel of truth there. Jesus, look what the government’s done to us!” He peered at Loup. “Did you know your father?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Tommy did.”
Jaime’s glasses gleamed. “And your father left him instructions, you say?”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “Him and my mother.”
“Oh, puh-leaze!” Crazy Jane folded the tabloid carelessly, slapping it against her palm. “You’re not gonna ask me to believe—”
“Don’t do that.” Mack’s low voice silenced Jane. He took the paper away from her and gave it back to Loup. “I don’t know how much of this is true. But if any of it is, the army would want her, right?” he asked Jaime. “To run tests and shit?”
“Count on it,” Jaime agreed.
“That’s why you were keeping it a secret?” Mack asked Loup.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Then we will, too.” Mack looked around at the others with his hard gray eyes. “We’ve gotta be loyal to each other. We’re all we’ve got, right? If anyone talks…” He paused. “Don’t.”
His last word hung in the air.
Loup decided she liked Mack the Knife.
“We’ll help keep an eye on you,” Mack added. “Like T.Y. said he was gonna do, right?” He looked around again to make sure everyone nodded. T.Y. looked shamefaced.
“I’ll go along, but I’m not buying it.” Jane folded her arms over her chest. “I think you all made this up to make Loup feel better about not knowing how to read and write. Or maybe you and T.Y. just wanted to seem cool.”
“Yeah, right,” C.C. wheezed. “I volunteered to take a punch in the gut.”
“You might!” she retorted.
“No, but he might as well have,” Mack said laconically. “Even if it wasn’t true, it’s pretty stupid to go throwing punches at someone who grew up in the boxing gym.”
“She’s just a kid!”
“So are you.” Mack eyed Loup. “How strong are you, anyway?”
“Like lifting weights?” She shrugged. “I dunno. Tommy never let me try at the gym. He was afraid someone would see.”
“Let’s try something.” Mack rolled up his right sleeve, baring a thin, wiry arm. He held out his hand, planting his feet like a boxer. “Indian-wrestle me.”
“Huh?”
Mack beckoned. “Give me your hand and put your right foot on the outside of mine. Yeah, like that.” He gave a quick, fierce grin, his hand tightening on hers. “On the count of three, we both try to pull each other off balance. Got it?”
Loup smiled back at him. “Yeah.”
“One… two…”
Loup felt the series of minute shifts in Mack’s stance and grip and knew he wasn’t going to wait for the three count. She braced herself, her body swaying only a little as he yanked on her arm with all his might. “Three,” she commented. Mack grunted, hauling at her. She let him, not yet pulling in the opposite direction. His wiry muscles stood out beneath his pale skin.
“She’s got a lower center of gravity,” Jaime observed.
“Fuck that!” Mack’s face was turning red. “You’re not even trying, are you?”
“Not yet,” Loup agreed.
His grip tightened harder. “C’mon!”
She exerted a little bit of pressure, shifting Mack’s weight to his forward leg, slowly and steadily, then gave one strong, fluid yank. Mack stumbled past her, his arms flailing, threatening to fall headlong. Loup pivoted and caught his arm, steadying him before he planted himself face-first in the carpet.
“Cheater,” she said without malice.
“Didn’t matter, did it?” Mack laughed unexpectedly, his eyes sparkling. It transformed his face. “Shit, you’re fast, too! That was fun, wasn’t it?”
Loup grinned. “Yeah.”
“Oh, great,” Jane muttered. “Our resident sociopath has found a kindred spirit.”
The light went out of Mack’s face, turning it hard and old beyond his years again. “If you want to put that big brain to good use, Jane, why don’t you look into what kind of genetic research was going on thirty, forty years ago? Aren’t there old medical books in the clinic’s dispensary?”
“Journals,” Jaime murmured. “It would be in journals.”
“Whatever,” Mack said. “Maybe you could find something that would help us figure this out.”
“Figure out what?” Katya waved a dismissive hand in Loup’s direction. “Wolf-girl’s a freak. You already figured that out.”
“Hey,” Diego said mildly. “Pax Olivia, guys.” It was the phrase Father Ramon used to invoke the rule against fighting in the church’s orphanage, and it quieted them. Diego wasn’t a natural leader—that was Mack—but at fourteen, he was the oldest and it carried a certain authority.
“I’m sorry, Mack,” Jane said in a small voice. “I didn’t mean it.”
He nodded stiffly. “ ’S’okay.”
“Guys?” Maria said, wondering. “What if this means something?”
“Like what?” Diego asked.
Maria looked around shyly. “You were born on Santa Olivia’s day, weren’t you?” she asked Loup, who nodded. “I heard Sister and Anna talking about it. Right in the middle of the town square with the effigy of Santa Olivia looking on and everything.”
“Yuck,” T.Y. said.
“Yeah, but…” Maria crossed herself. She’d been raised a believer and nothing she’d learned about the dubious credentials of the clergy in Outpost had shaken her considerable faith. “What if it’s a sign? A sign from Santa Olivia herself? She was just a kid, right? I mean, look at her.” She pointed at Loup. “Doesn’t she look a little like Santa Olivia?”
Everyone looked at Loup.
“Yeah,” C.C. admitted. “A little bit, anyway.”
“So!” Maria clasped her hands together. “As a child, Santa Olivia came to bring peace to fighting armies.” Her eyes shone. “Maybe she’s come back!”
Katya snorted.
“Peace, my ass,” Mack muttered.
“Jesus himself said he came to bring not peace, but a sword.” Jaime lifted his head, the light reflecting off his glasses. “To set men against their fathers and daughters against their mothers. Maybe that’s what Outpost needs to reclaim its place in the world. Maybe our time has come, time to take back the birthright that our fathers and mothers gave away. Maybe Loup’s arrival isn’t meant to evoke Santa Olivia’s basket of peace, but her sword of war.”
“You don’t believe that,” Jane scoffed.
Jaime bent his head toward her. “I believe in the power of symbols.”
“You would!”
“Pax Olivia,” Diego murmured.
After her exertions, Loup’s stomach was beginning to grumble and the conversation was sailing over her head. She wished they would all shut up. “Guys?” she asked plaintively. “Isn’t it almost time for dinner?”
FOURTEEN
In the year that followed, war did break out in Outpost, but it was a war that owed nothing to either the fabled El Segundo or Loup Garron’s presence.
It happened because shrewd, greedy Hector Salamanca finally died, expiring in bed with a smile on his face and a hysterical nineteen-year-old mistress beside him. Hector Salamanca died well.
Danny Garza, acting on his own ailing father’s behalf, moved swiftly and smoothly, extending an offer to Hector’s eldest daughter Rosa on behalf of the Garza clan to assume operational control of her hereditary properties in exchange for a percentage of the proceeds they generated. He discovered too late that Rosa had long been anticipating her grizzled father’s death, and had used her father’s ill-gotten gains to hire away a good percentage of Clan Garza’s muscle right under his nose.
Thus began the turf wars.
At first the army turned a blind eye. If a single military serviceman was threatened, the MPs would appear, riding in armored vehicles, truncheons or pistols in hand. When that happened, people disappeared. But so long as it was only Outposters fighting Outposters, they left the locals to sort it out.
Factions formed.
From time out of mind, the church had been neutral territory. It stayed so, but just barely. Though Father Ramon swore a blue streak, he couldn’t get assurance of safety save behind the church’s gates. The streets on which the church’s orphans had been wont to play stickball became fair game. Only on Fridays when the military doctor came to the free clinic was a security detail provided.