The day after: An apocalyptic morning (173 page)

              "Fuck you," Hope said, turning away. She started down the hill.

              "I'm voting to hang you," Lorene told her. She started after her companion.

              Madeline watched them go, not even pretending to have hurt feelings from their words, not even pretending to worry. "It's a bummer when your friend in high places goes to jail, isn't it?" she said. She turned to her guards. "You two have the watch until you're relieved. Thank you for standing with me."

              "There was never any question," she was told.

              Of the Jessica loyalists that had been trained by Madeline, six of them chose to remain at post under Madeline's rules and three elected to drop their weapons and leave the security detail. None of them tried to fight her forces, perhaps more out of the realization that they would eventually be tried and convicted of treason then out of fear of losing the battle. Of the untrained replacements, twelve of them surrendered their weapons peacefully but the remaining two, both at the same guard position - position five, which overlooked the main approach to the town and was staffed by six people - vowed that they would fight. A struggle ensued with the other four guards on duty there long before Madeline's people came up the hill. One of them - Kelly Cordova, a closet lesbian who was secretly in love with Jessica - was shot and killed. The other - Diana Scott, Kelly's best friend - was wrestled to the ground and taken into custody.

              An hour after Jessica was seized in the high school building, Madeline was firmly in control of the town and all of its automatic weapons. By two hours after, the entire town had been informed that a mass meeting would take place that night at the high school stadium.

              As Madeline had known it would be, the official vote removing Jessica from power was so overwhelming that it did not even require a count, not even with the two-thirds majority rule in effect. Jessica herself was given the opportunity to speak on her own behalf but, if anything, she only worsened her own position with her rants and accusations, with her frequent tirades about Auburn being her town.

              Having removed her from power, the town was left with the decision of what to do with her next. Should they exile her? Should they imprison her? Should they execute her? Should they reassign her to some unpleasant job and keep a close eye on her? And what of her close companions? Those that had stood beside her even after Madeline took steps to rectify the situation? What of them?

              It was Kathy, the unofficial leader of the town's silent majority, who was able to convince most of the women where their best interests lie. She nervously took the podium after the debate had raged without agreement for more than an hour. "A lot of you out there," she told the women, "seem to be hung up on the fact that Jessica was the driving force behind the revolution that freed us from the slavery we had under the men. This is true. She did do that and for that we will be eternally grateful to her. She was able to organize us and empower us to strike out when the odds favored us the most. It is entirely possible that, without her influence upon us, we would, at this moment, still be living as we were: playthings, slaves, human beings without rights.

              "However, Jessica's actions prior to the revolution should not be considered now as we judge her actions after the revolution. Nor should we base our decision wholly on the crimes she has committed to date. What we must do is consider whether this person is dangerous to this community and may be dangerous to us again in the future if allowed to walk among us.

              "Jessica is a very charming, very persuasive person - her speech earlier tonight not withstanding. She has a gift for pulling others to her side, for enlisting the aid of the weaker among us, for riling up sensitivities. This gift was a blessing in our darkest hour. It is a loaded weapon now that that hour has passed.

              "If she were allowed to stay here, I have no doubt that she would eventually amass another following. I have no doubt that she would constantly strive to place herself back in power. I do have doubts about this community's ability to indefinitely resist her poisonous charms. For this reason she is a danger to us and will always be a danger to us. You have seen what happens when someone such as her is able to empower themselves.

              "What I suggest, I do not suggest lightly. But it is my belief that the best course of action for this town is to exile Jessica Blakely permanently from our borders and to send those that stood beside her to the last with her. I would suggest that we give them ample food, medicine, even weapons with which to protect themselves. My wish is not to send them out unprotected and unfed to die. But they must go and they must go immediately; tomorrow morning at the break of day. It is the only way we will be safe from the tyranny that she represents."

              And so it was decided. The vote was made and the next morning, twenty minutes after sunrise, Jessica and four of her followers were led out through the maze of sandbags on the east side of town. They were given one pistol apiece and two hundred rounds of ammunition between them. They were given backpacks full of canned food - enough to last them nearly three weeks. And they were told to leave and never come back.

              "God help you if I live through this," Jessica told Madeline as they parted ways.

              "I'll take my chances," Madeline, holding her M-16 in her hands, replied. "Now go. The guards have orders to shoot you if you step inside of our borders again."

              "That's nothing I haven't heard before," she replied with an arrogant smirk. She turned on her heels and began to walk down the interstate, heading east. Her four companions, all of them looking dejected and scared, trailed after her. They disappeared over the rise and out of the view of the perimeter guards a few minutes later. The recon positions that Madeline had set up to watch for the return of the men picked them up a few minutes after that. They reported that the five of them had left the interstate at the highway 49 junction and headed north.

              It was two days later that those same recon positions - which were located on the top of a small rise two miles down the interstate, hidden in thick vegetation - spotted movement on the freeway lanes a half a mile to the east of them. At first they could hardly credit what they were seeing, could not believe that this could possibly be the opposing force that they had been waiting and training so long to counter.

              "Those aren't the men from this town," said Annette Miller, one of Madeline's recently reinstated guards. "Look at them."

              And indeed the group they were watching did look rather disheveled. To the last man they were limping along, not in any sort of military formation, all of them filthy and heavily bearded. Several of them were being helped along by their companions. Two others were being carried on litters.

              "No, that is them," said Caroline Mickhews, her partner for the shift. She was looking through a pair of high-powered binoculars and the features of the front man were clear enough to her despite the beard. "That's Stinson. I know that face. It's him. And there's Perkins, and Lamkins." She moved to other faces, calling out names as she recognized them. "That's them," she declared.

              Annette took a look through her own binoculars, seeing that Caroline was correct. These were the town men. "Where are the rest of them?" She asked, puzzled. "Is this just the lead elements? Are the rest hanging back?"

              "I don't know," Caroline said nervously. "Do you think maybe they know what happened? About the revolution? Maybe this is some sort of diversion."

              "Something really strange is going on here," Annette said. She picked up the radio. "Let's report in." The radio was connected by wire to an external antenna that was hidden in the trees above them. It was tuned to channel 38 on the citizens band - a channel that Madeline did not think that the militia would be routinely monitoring. "Recon 1 to base, recon 1 to base," she said into it. "Signal zero. I repeat: signal zero."

              Signal zero was the code word that the men had been spotted. By speaking it, Annette had set into motion a pre-planned and pre-practiced deployment of every woman in town that was capable of carrying a gun and for which a gun was available. She knew that within ten minutes of her saying the words, the bunkers and positions all along the east side of town and especially along the entrance maze, would be staffed and ready to fight.

              "This is base," Madeline's voice said, speaking calmly. "Confirming signal zero?"

              "Affirm," Annette said. "Maddie, I know we're supposed to speak in code only, but there isn't a code for what I'm seeing out here. I think we'd better talk in the clear for a moment."

              "Negative, recon 1," Madeline replied. "There's a chance they're monitoring. Do the best you can with the code words and report immediately."

              "Maddie," Annette insisted. "I don't think they're listening. There are only..." she looked over at Caroline, who had been counting them.

              "Thirty-three," Caroline said. "Not including the two on litters."

              "There are only thirty-three of them," she finished. "And they look like... like they've been through some shit."

              "Confirming thirty-three of them?" Madeline asked. "Three three?"

              "That's affirmative," she said. "We have only thirty-three of them in view at this time and two in litters. They have no rifles on them."

              There was a long pause as she considered this information. "Keep a watch on them," she finally said. "Initiate no contact or communication with them. The rest have to be out there somewhere. Let me know the instant you see any sign of them."

              "I copy," Annette told her. "Continuing to watch."

              Madeline was confused. As all of her squad and platoon commanders checked in, reporting that their positions were manned and ready, she tried to sort through the facts in her head and come to some sort of conclusion. Why were only thirty-three men and a few wounded approaching the town? What had happened to the rest of them? Surely the Garden Hill forces hadn't defeated the Auburn militia, had they? And if they had, there was no way they could have killed 365 people, was there? Was there?

              "Maybe the rest of them are lagging back with the prisoners," suggested Kathy, who had taken to hanging out with Madeline.

              "They've never done that before," Madeline said. "Usually they just march in as a group. And why don't they have any rifles?"

              "I don't know," Kathy said. "It doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

              Madeline picked up her radio again. "Base to recon 1. Anything new out there?"

              "Nothing," Annette replied. "They've all passed by us and are approaching the last group of hills. The main positions should pick them up in about ten minutes. No sign of anything or anyone behind them."

              "I copy," she said slowly.

              "And Maddie," Annette added. "There's one other thing."

              "What's that?"

              "We got a good look at them as they passed in front of us," she said. "They don't look like they've been eating real well. They're all really skinny and their clothes are hanging off of them. A lot of them don't even have packs anymore, just sleeping bags."

              Madeline and Kathy shared a look of confusion. "I copy that, Annette," she said. "Keep holding."

              "They certainly sound like a group that hasn't done well in their war, don't they?" asked Kathy.

              "Yes," Madeline agreed. "They do."

              "So what now?"

              "Let's get out to the main positions," she said. "They should be calling in for clearance to enter in about twenty minutes. I guess we'll hear what they have to say."

              It had taken ten long days of marching along the freeway and through the thick mud around the slides and washouts, but now, at long last, the end of this horrible mission was finally in sight. Stinson and the others were but ghosts of their former selves, bordering on malnutrition and scurvy despite the food supplies they had been given by their victorious enemies. Two of the wounded had died on the march back and two more were showing the first signs of lethal infection from their wounds. All group cohesion had vanished more than a week before. Now they were simply a bunch of men that all happened to be heading for the same desSaration. Conversation was almost non-existent from day to day.

              "There are the hills," Stinson said gratefully as he spotted the twin peaks that guarded the entrance maze. "Thank God." His boots were falling apart on his feet, so rotted from mud and water were they, and he was dealing with a very nasty case of trench foot from the constant exposure to moisture. At times he hadn't even been sure where they were. There was just the pain in his legs and feet and the slapping of his tattered boots on the ground. He rarely even bothered worrying how Barnes was going to react when they finally entered the town.

              The other men grunted a little at his observation but none of them said anything. They kept moving onward, their eyes locked onto the maze, which was just now becoming discernable in the distance.