“Didn’t see him.”
Lynn handed the binoculars back to him, gesturing toward the town. “Across from the church, there’s a big brick house, with a porch. He was out there yesterday, doing his dealings with the people.”
She raised her rifle back to her eye again but found the porch empty. Movement in one of the windows caught her eye. “Heads up,” she said. “He’s coming.”
One of the women from the yellow house opened the front door, clutching a blanket around her thin shoulders. She crossed the road limping, even though she’d been uninjured the day before. Tall Red walked onto the porch holding a cup of coffee and leaned against one of the pillars.
“That’s him,” Lynn said, but there was no response. “What do you think? Should we pick him off before the guard at the hall?”
Silence.
“Stebbs? What’s the call?”
He pulled the binoculars away from his eyes slowly, handing them back to Lynn. “That’s got to be your decision.”
“Why?”
“’Cause that’s your daddy.”
“You’re sure?” Lynn asked as they slipped back to her house in the dark on stiff legs.
“There’s no mistaking him. This change anything? He’s the only blood you’ve got left in the world, you know.”
“He’s my blood, true. But I’ve been thinking lately that maybe he’s part of what makes up the bad bits, the things I’ve done that never bothered me until you said they should.”
Stebbs thought about it as he trudged along beside her. “I knew your father, Lynn, and I know you. What you did, you thought you had to. Wasn’t no part of you enjoyed it, or liked hurting for the fun of it. If there’s some of him in you, it’s been for the good—the will to survive and the brains to figure out how. There ain’t ever been one person who was all good or bad, not me or you, not your mom or your daddy either. So I say again that it’s up to you—does this change anything?”
“Good blood or bad, he’s a stranger to me and a threat to my friends,” Lynn said. “We take him out.”
Their shoes crunched through the evening dew that had frozen the scanty patches of snow still left on the ground. “There’ll be a hard freeze in a few days,” Stebbs said. “That truck with the scavengers went out this morning. If you’re right about them spending the night outside of the village, we’ll need to do this right quick. I say we talk to Eli now. We can be in place by morning.”
“He doesn’t want any part. You and I can handle it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Two snipers are only good to have if they’re reinforcing someone on the ground. There’s no guarantee we’ll make every shot, and after that first one, they’ll scatter. We’ll be hard pressed to nail three right off, and then we’re in for a long wait while they’re undercover. We’ll be sitting in trees with only what we’ve got on our backs, and a truck with four more men in it coming back anytime. And that’s the best-case scenario, assuming neither one of us gets shot. One of us goes down, the other is dead.”
“I don’t like it. I know you’ve been working with him, but Eli’s not good with a gun.”
“No, but it’s his water we’re fighting for. Don’t you think he’d want the chance to defend it himself?”
Lynn thought of their exchange on the roof, the bitter tang of uselessness that had threaded Eli’s words. “We’ll put it to him, see what he says.”
“Where you go, he’ll go,” Stebbs said.
“I know it.”
“Tough caring about people, isn’t it?”
Lynn considered the long, cold winter that had passed happily, with Lucy sharing her basement and a stolen night with Eli sharing her cot. Without them, she would’ve been alone for the dark hours, staring into the blackness fighting off grief and madness. “Wouldn’t trade it,” she said.
“You’re sure this is necessary?” Eli asked, dissecting the crudely penciled map that Stebbs had drawn.
“They’ll only grow stronger. The scavengers will keep looting the countryside until there’s nothing left for anyone in the area. We’ll all be begging them for something sooner or later,” Stebbs answered, bouncing a grinning Lucy in his lap. Not even the seriousness of the adults could cut through her happiness at avoiding bedtime.
Vera stood at the stove, boiling stream water for Lucy, with a concerned frown. The stove heated the little stream house so well that Lynn felt a trickle of sweat running down her chest.
“I know you don’t like it,” she said to Eli. “But you need to know I wouldn’t do this if we didn’t need to.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m not killing people for spite. This is about living.”