Sunrise

The jury retired to a greenhouse to deliberate in private. Three hours later, they were back. The foreman handed a folded scrap of paper to Uncle Paul. He unfolded it and stared at it for a moment, his face grave. Then he read:

“On the count of first-degree murder, the jury finds Francine Lewis guilty. On the count of attempted first-degree murder, guilty.

“Are you ready to recommend a sentence?” Uncle Paul asked gravely.

“We are.” The foreman handed another folded scrap of paper to Uncle Paul.

He unfolded it and read: “Francine Lewis shall be hung by the neck until dead.”

No! She was a friend. Yes, what she had done was wrong, but who could blame her when faced with the man who had ordered the death of her fiance? Surely she deserved no worse than exile. Surely Uncle Paul would overrule the jury.

After a short pause, Uncle Paul said, “So ordered.” Speaking to Ed he added, “Take her into custody, please, Mr. Bauman. The sentence will be carried out at sunrise tomorrow.”

I stormed up to the table he was presiding from. “My office. Now.”

Uncle Paul followed me into the turbine tower.

When the hatch clanged shut behind us, I wheeled to face my uncle. “We are not going to kill Francine.”

“Yes, we are,” he said.

“She’s a—”

“Alex, she killed a man. Was pla

“A jury of her peers can and did blame her.” Uncle Paul leaned against the cold metal wall of the turbine tower.

“She deserves to be punished, no question. But killing her? No. She’s not the only culpable party. Mayor Petty deserves to be on trial too.”

“Maybe so. But that trial might not go the way you expect. I understand that he didn’t actually order a mas-sacre—he just told Sheriff Moyers to keep the refugees out of Warren. Somehow the shooting started. Maybe a finger slipped or one of the refugees had a gun. We’ll never know.”

I took a step toward him. “But the result—”

“And another thing: If we start prosecuting people for crimes they committed before they got to Speranta, we’ll all wind up in jail. Mayor Petty was following the rules of Warren. Should he be liable under the rules of Speranta?” He sort of had a point there. “But what gives us the right to take her life? Hasn’t there been enough killing?” “Alex, if you want to ban capital punishment, then argue to have that rule incorporated in our constitution. Hell, I might even join you. But the jury recommended the harshest punishment they could. And they’re right. If we lose control of this—if we allow the refugees and the Warrenites to go to war with each other, we’re going to lose a lot more people than just Sam and Francine.”

I willed my fists to unball. “What’s the saying? An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind?”

“You can change the rules after tomorrow morning. But if you try to change this ruling, the whole system becomes suspect. You’d be saying your judgment supersedes the jury’s and the judge’s. That’s a step down the road to dictatorship.”

“We can’t kill her,” I said, although I was starting to resign myself to the fact that we might have to. Uncle Paul was right: We needed to put a lid on the tensions between the refugees and the Warrenites, and if I overruled the sentence, it would undermine our fledgling justice system.

“I’ll do it,” Uncle Paul said gently. “I affirmed the recommended sentence. I should carry it out.”

I thought about the terrible burden of serving as a hangman and my history of taking all the worst jobs on myself. Part of the cohesiveness of Speranta, I was convinced, was due to the feeling that we were all in this together, that their leader was a part of the community, not above it. “No. If it has to be done, and you’ve convinced me it does, then I should be the one to do it.”

I rousted everyone before dawn the next morning and threw them out of the longhouse. We would damn well never have any more barbaric spectacles while I led Speranta. I allowed only Uncle Paul, Ed, Darla, and, of course, Francine to stay.

“Do you want a blindfold?” I asked Francine.

“No. I’ll go with my eyes open,” she replied quietly. “And Captain . . . I don’t blame you for this.”

I turned away, biting the inside of my cheek, struggling not to cry.

When I had myself mostly under control, I helped her up onto the table. It wobbled a little as I stepped up beside her. I fitted the dangling noose around her neck, cinching it snug. “Do you have any last words?”

“I’m not as scared as I thought I’d be,” Francine said. “I’m going to see my Brock.”

I didn’t have to push her. She stepped off the edge of the table on her own. The noose dug into her neck. Her mouth opened, as if to scream, but no sound came out. Her legs thrashed and her face turned bright red, then deep purple. A line of pale spittle ran from one corner of her mouth.

My knees shook, and I almost fell trying to climb down off the table. Darla caught me. When Francine was completely still, I fell to my knees beside her hanging body, hugging her ankles and sobbing.

Chapter 74

Nylce’s expedition was back right on schedule, five days after they had left. She found me at the worksite where I was building yet another greenhouse. It didn’t seem possible that she had left before the lynching debacle. “We need to talk,” she said.

As soon as we were out of earshot of the rest of the work crew, I filled her in on the lynching. Then she started her report. “Our expedition was attacked by a group of Peckerwoods and Reds on the way home today We lost one Bikezilla with a full load of supplies. Ranaan Kendall is dead. We have three injured, one seriously Dr. McCarthy is operating now. We killed one of the attackers—the rest got away.” That hit me hard. Ranaan had survived the war in Iraq, only to die now? “I didn’t know Ranaan well—he have any family here?”

“A sister, Marcella. I checked with Charlotte. Marcella’s got cleaning duty in Longhouse Four today.”

“We’d better go tell her before she hears about it through the grapevine.” I sighed. I would rather do absolutely anything else with the next couple of hours instead of telling Marcella her brother was dead. But she deserved to hear it from me.

On our way, I asked Nylce, “How do you know it was Peckerwoods and Reds?”

“The guy we killed had Peckerwoods tattoos. And I saw Red.”

Crap. I had started to believe that he was dead, vaporized by the manure bomb. But there was no way Nylce could be mistaken. How many 5’4” redheaded knife fiends could there be in northern Illinois? “I’m thinking about reorganizing our military. Putting Ed in charge, with you as his second-in-command. We need a police force too.”

“I don’t know anything about ru

Nylce nodded. “That’d work okay.”

“I want Red’s head mounted on a pole in front of Longhouse One.”

“Gross,” Nylce said. “Are you serious?”

“About posting his head?” I said. “No, it was just a figure of speech. About killing him? Yes, I’m deadly serious.”

Ben was thrilled with his new assignment—he said he’d be an S5. I had no idea what he meant, but I didn’t really care what Ben called himself so long as he figured out how to catch Red.

That night after di