Sunrise

About a week later, the itching started to subside, and my thoughts turned to practical matters. A bionic hand was impossible, but could I fight with the stump? How could I make it more useful?

I went looking for Darla and found her standing on a stepladder, trying to string wire one-handed across the rafters in the shell of the greenhouse, cussing softly as she worked.

“You know what we need?” I said to her back.

She startled, hitting her head on a rafter. “Christ! Don’t sneak up on me!”

“We need hooks.”

She stepped off the ladder and turned to face me. “Do you want an eye patch too? Halloween was . . .” she stopped to think, “six weeks ago.”

I put my good arm around her waist. “If we had hooks instead of stumps, we could climb the ladder in the turbine tower way easier. We could make the hooks the right size to hold a rifle barrel, so we could shoot and reload faster.” What I meant, of course, was that she could build the hooks that size. I had no clue how to even start making a hook.

Darla started to get excited. “I could rig them on a leather cuff, run a strap back to our elbows to keep them on tight.”

“Might even be better than a stump in a fight.”

“Heck, yeah. I could even rig different attachments— how would you like a knife sprouting from the end of your stump?”

“Hmm. I’d probably be wearing the hook whenever I needed the knife. Could you sharpen the outer edge of the hook?”

“Sure. But I’m never going to make out with you again. Knowing our luck, you’d give me a mastectomy by mistake.”

“I’ll take it off,” I said, trying to suppress a giggle.

“I’m putting a ratchet and a socket for screwdriver bits on mine. That’s going to make some stuff so much easier.”

Darla started spending most of her time working on the hooks. That slowed down our greenhouse building some, but it also seemed to banish the last of her lingering funk, so I didn’t object. We were producing more food than we needed anyway.

It took Darla almost two months to finish the hooks. It was more of a job for a blacksmith than an amateur welder, she said. Several early prototypes broke. When she was finally done, my hook was a thing of beauty. A smoothly curved, C-shaped blade, sharpened to a razor’s edge on the outside and rounded off on the inside. Darla’s was ugly by comparison. She only sharpened the point of her hook because of the ungainly ratchet and driver bit attachments welded along its length.

I practiced endlessly, developing modifications of my taekwondo forms to take into account the deadly blade on the end of my left arm. I also spent hours upon hours of mind-numbingly boring practice with the guns—not firing them, just picking them up, aiming, and reloading. I had to be sure I could get the hook in exactly the right spot in the dark, when I was shivering from the cold, and when I was hopped up on adrenaline, which ruined my fine motor control. I got to the point where I could use the hook so well that it was almost as good as my lost hand, at least for shooting. It might be better than a hand in a fight, I mused. I could bring it to bear a lot faster than a belt knife or a gun. In close combat, the first unblocked strike can win the fight, so speed is critical.

Max found me during one of my practice sessions. I was on watch in the sniper’s nest, so I made use of the time with a little drill. I would scan the horizon with the binoculars and pick out a landmark. Then I would close my eyes, spin two or three times, and try to pick up the unloaded rifle and get it aimed at the landmark without reopening my eyes. I was getting pretty good at it too.

I was in the middle of a drill when I heard a knock on the hatch. I stopped and snagged the eye with my hook, dragging the hatch open. Max poked his head up into the sniper’s nest. “What are you doing up here? Sounds like a herd of elephants stomping on the floor.”

“Just a drill,” I explained while he climbed up into the sniper’s nest, letting the hatch bang shut behind him.

“Cool,” Max said. “You can do that? Find a target with your eyes closed?”

“Usually. I’ve been practicing awhile,” I said. “What brings you up here, anyway? You’re not on watch until tonight, right?”

“Yeah. I wanted to talk to you. We’re almost ready to start the fifth greenhouse, and we have to wire up a new wind turbine.”

“Yeah . . .” Darla and I had gone over this with everyone already. Why was Max rehashing it?

“We’re going to need a ton of heavy-gauge wire. I’m going to go to Stockton and get it.”

“Wait, what? Are you nuts?” I held my hook-topped stump up between us and shook it at him. “Nobody’s going back to Stockton. Ever. Unless we come by a high-powered rifle, scope, and someone who knows how to use it, then I might mount an expedition to snipe Red—but from a hell of a long way off.”

“I could do it,” Max said. “I could get the wire we need.”

“I’m sure you could. Darla and I raided that place four times, no problem. But the fifth was a bloody bitch. Maybe you’d be fine. Maybe you’d get caught on your first raid. No, absolutely not. Your dad would forbid it too.”

“I’m fourteen and a half—almost as old as you were when the volcano erupted.”

“And we treat you that way. You work as hard as any of us. You stand watch like the rest of us. But—”

“But you don’t trust me to do the really important stuff.” Max reached down to open the hatch.

I stepped on the hatch cover, holding it closed and preventing him from leaving. “If that’s the case, I don’t trust myself either, ’cause I’m not going back to Stockton.” “Yeah, whatever.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Max said. “Can I leave now?”

“No. You know, the only person who’ll be impressed if you get a bunch of wire is Darla. You’re not trying to horn in on me, are you?”

“What? No! I would never—”

“I know. Darla wouldn’t be interested either. I mean, you’re a good-looking guy, but—”

“Alyssa doesn’t think so,” Max muttered.

So that was what this mood was about. Max reached for the hatch again, but I didn’t move. I thought about how to respond, until the break in the conversation got uncomfortably long. “Are you the one who’s been leaving Alyssa gifts?” “She thinks you’re leaving them,” Max said. “She got a gold-and-diamond bracelet last week.”

“Hmm. I hadn’t heard about that one. Where’s all this stuff coming from?”

“There’s lots of jewelry left in the farmhouses we’re taking apart for supplies.”

That made sense. Gold and gems were pretty much worthless. You couldn’t eat them or start a fire with them, after all. Most people wouldn’t bother bending over to pick up the Hope Diamond these days. “So you are the one leaving her gifts?”

“No,” Max said emphatically. “You’re not?”

“Are you nuts? Darla would skin me alive.”

“I wonder who’s doing it?” Max said. “I wish they’d quit. I don’t stand a chance with her.”

“That’s not true. Who’s the most important person in Alyssa’s life?”

“You are,” Max said instantly.

“Wrong. Guess again.”

“You ever seen her looking at you? Wish she’d look at me that way.”

“Be serious.”

“Ben. She cares about Ben.”

“Right. Maybe someday she’ll tell you what she did to protect Ben when the Peckerwoods had them both—she hasn’t told me much of it, but it wasn’t pretty. She’s as tough as any of us, as tough as Darla, but in a different way.”

“So what are you saying?”

“You follow Alyssa around like a puppy looking for its mother’s teats—you should be following Ben.”

“All Ben cares about is military stuff—he seems all right, but it gets boring.”

“What do you think we’re headed for anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. We’re doing okay because nobody thinks to look for us out here. This is supposed to be an empty field with a bunch of wind turbines. As far as I know, only Dr. McCarthy and Rebecca know where we are. Will that last?”