Anika spoke as if she had never told this story before. Hilda used to call that kind of story a slumber-party confession: the teller experiencing shame and relief in equal parts.
“After that, for a while, there was nothing. We went about our business, building shelters, getting the garden started. And then, one day, I found a red rag tied to a wooden stake, shoved into the dirt right outside the Hotel. I didn’t know what it meant, and no one had seen the rag before, let alone the stick.” Her voice went quiet, and Frida had to lean forward to hear what she said next. “The next day, the Pirates came back.”
Frida held her breath.
“There were probably thirty of them. They were all youngish men, and, I can’t explain it—the greed in their eyes. It was like they were just sitting down to a big feast.” She paused, shaking her head. “We outnumbered them, but over half of us were female, and we were vulnerable, and scared. None of us, the men included, had experience fighting. In our past lives, we’d been scrap-metal collectors, soup-kitchen coordinators. What did we know?
“We had only a few guns, and we were running out of ammo, and they came in on horses. They rode up slowly. I remember the sound of the horses trotting across the dirt as they approached, and how we came out to see who it was. They were wielding guns. Some had knives. We’d been na?ve to think we just had guests.”
Frida shivered, just as she had on the ride out of L.A., thinking about men hurting her and Cal. On the drive, she’d made herself so cold with worry she had to be covered with a blanket at all times. Now she crossed her arms as Anika continued talking.
“That first time, half of them dismounted, coming toward us while the others just lingered. I remember the smell of those horses. The Pirates themselves were covered in sweat and dirt, thick as a second skin. They wanted food, they said. They took our guns. They made John give them his boots. Four of the women…they were—”
“You don’t have to say it,” Frida whispered.
“I didn’t see anything. I have nothing to tell you. They took the women into one of the half-collapsing houses, and the rest of us waited, guns to our heads.”
Anika was looking at her, as if waiting for her to say something, but Frida didn’t know what. Nothing would be sufficient. The smell of the clafoutis had started to fill the room: sweet and warm, a comfort if there was still such a thing.
“Later we tore down that house,” Anika said finally. “We didn’t do it completely, we left pieces of it up. As a reminder, I guess, that we had survived. The brick wall that Cal’s team is dismantling? That’s it.” She stopped. “We tried to give the Pirates all of our vegetables. We didn’t care if we starved, we just wanted them to leave. But the man in charge—he had long hair, and eczema or psoriasis all over his arms, he was scaly like a snake—he took only half of what we had. He would be back. He said he needed us alive to grow more.
“The men wore red. Bandannas on their heads, red shirts if they had them. And their hands, their fingernails, they seemed stained with it. Bloody.” Anika turned to her, condescension spreading across her face. “You see, Frida, red became the color of violence.” She spoke as if she were a teacher, reciting to a particularly dense student a lesson she had been explaining for days. “Every time the Pirates were coming, they’d warn us with something red, usually a piece of fabric, but once it was a red-handled shovel. Another time, red paint splashed across the side of the Church. They wanted to get inside our heads. You’d think the warnings would help us prepare, defend ourselves, but they just got under our skin and made things worse. That’s exactly what they wanted.
“Once we tried to make a plan. As soon as we were warned by a red object, the four women hid in one of the smaller houses—there was a crawl space that was hidden well. We knew they couldn’t handle seeing those men again, they wouldn’t survive, and so we made them as safe as we could. The rest of us hid in the Church. We figured we’d be enough for those monsters—as a group we’d distract them. We barricaded the doors, waited with our last scythe, the one they’d left us to garden with. We heard them outside, tying up their horses, laughing, calling commands at one another. They banged on the door, but didn’t try to get inside.”
“They didn’t? They just left?”
Anika shook her head. “They were waiting us out, and it worked. By the fifth day, we unlocked the doors. One of our men was very sick, he needed water, and all of us were starving. We needed food. We’d been shitting in buckets. If one of those Pirates wanted to shoot me, I would have welcomed it. I really thought they were going to, too. But they just burned down the barn we’d recently built and took off with our reserves of grain.”
“They didn’t hurt anyone?”
“Not anyone in the Church.”