The Land of the Shadow (24 page)

“Billy,” Justin said. “Let’s dispense with that idiotic nickname he tried to give himself.”

“I mean, we can’t even prove the smoke detectors were tampered with. Maybe the batteries were just bad.”

Justin gave Carly an offended look. “I test them regularly.” It was one thing he was adamant about using the batteries for. Every house in Colby was supposed to have a working smoke detector.

Carly gave a small shudder. “He would have had to creep through the whole house. Justin, he would have had to come up to the top of the stairs . . .” He would have been less than a few paces from their bedroom door.

“Now do you see the wisdom of letting Sam roam the house?”

Carly didn’t respond to that. “Why didn’t Viper shoot us if he was that close?”

“Maybe he did it earlier in the day,” Stan suggested. “Disabled the detectors at some earlier point and then set the fire that night when he thought you’d be asleep.”

Justin had known there was no possible way to patrol the entire island and prevent intrusion. It was why he’d created choke points, good firing positions from the top of the Wall, fallback positions and strongholds. But it still troubled him it had been so easy for an untrained young man to defeat their defenses. But then again, Justin had planned for defense against a group, not an individual.

“We can discuss this more tonight,” Mindy said, “when the rest of us are around so we can make our decisions and vote on it, or whatever you want to do. Right now, I think we need to eat our dinner and celebrate the fact that we’re all still here.” She glanced over at Stan and took his hand. “We were going to tell you this later, but I think you may need to hear it now. You need some happy news, I think.”

“What is it?”

Mindy’s face bloomed in a smile until it seemed like she was glowing with joy. “We’re having a baby.”

Carly let out a raw cry and her hand fluttered up to cover her mouth. It was a feral sound of astonishment, of an almost desperate need to believe. “Mindy,” she choked. “You’re . . . you’re sure?”

Mindy nodded. “I’m about four months along, if I’ve calculated right.”

Carly blinked hard for a moment and then dropped her head down into her hands and wept.

Justin pulled her into his arms and laid his cheek on top of her head as she sobbed. He knew what she was thinking as clearly as though he could read her mind. There was hope. Whatever had prevented the survivors from having babies was temporary, and Dagny would not be the only one after all. This wasn’t the end of all things. It was a beginning, as she’d hoped. The community they were building would be continued by the next generation after all.

She left Justin’s arms to go over to Mindy and deliver a fierce hug. Mindy was crying, too. She and Carly drew back and looked at each other silently for a moment.

“We’re going to make it,” Carly said. “We’re going to make it.”

It was hot and stuffy in the courthouse, and Carly had a headache. There were some fans in the window, rigged to Bryce and David’s solar panel, but they weren’t very powerful and the air they moved was still warm and humid. The people crowded into the pew-style seats fanned themselves with everything from magazines to old-fashioned feather fans scavenged from an antiques store. Still, it was a little cooler in here than outside, which was why they were all in the courtroom.

They kept the shutters closed to keep out the heat of the afternoon sunlight, so it was dim despite the lamps scattered around the room. Carly sat on the edge of the prosecution’s table, facing the audience, and Sam lay at her feet, panting.

Pearl stood over against the wall beside the jury box, not exactly with Carly and Justin, but not in the audience with the townspeople, either. Veronica sat on the bench nearest to her and chattered to her about the fish she’d caught today. Pearl nodded and smiled, though she looked a little overwhelmed by the continuous stream of words.

Dagny had stayed with Mindy and Stan. Mindy still wasn’t comfortable with large gatherings, even after all this time in Colby. Carly wasn’t willing to insist, even though Stan’s input would have been valuable on occasion.

After everyone was settled in their seats, or as settled as a meeting like this could get, Justin began to speak. He didn’t raise his voice—he didn’t have to. The murmurs of the audience ceased as soon as the first words left his mouth.

“Pearl, Kaden, and I encountered another group in Clayton. A large group.” He glanced around and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll just lay it out on the table. I think one of them was the intruder cut the fence, and I believe that same person, or persons, set the fire at my place last night.”

Jason’s voice rose above the others. “Arson? Justin, really? Are you sure?”

Carly understood why he questioned it. They all knew the risks of having wood-burning stoves in their homes and how a small, careless action like leaving something flammable too close to the stove could cause a house fire. Everyone had assumed it was an accident. Until Justin returned, Carly had assumed it, too.

“Yes, really.” Justin crossed his arms and waited until the murmurs quieted. “The smoke alarms were disabled, which means someone broke into the house before it caught on fire. I think the chicken theft was a test run to see if he could get to the house.”

The room went still. Even their makeshift fans stopped moving.

Kross broke the silence. “What are we going to do, Justin? All the guns burned up in your house.”

Justin looked at him for a moment with an incredulous expression, and then at the townspeople. “Show of hands . . . how many of you think I’m stupid enough to keep all our guns in one cache?”

“Seriously? Where are the rest of them?” Kross asked.

“Places no one would think to look. Next question.”

Carly smothered a smile. She’d teased Justin about his squirrel-like habit of stashing guns, food, and a small collection of trade goods in various locations, but he was always thinking about having to make a fast escape and had contingency plans in case various routes were blocked. He’d insisted Carly memorize all those locations in case something happened to him, and he’d given Stan a map, in case of emergency.

“How many?” It was Grady, and his voice was grim. He wasn’t talking about the guns.

Justin hesitated, but just for a moment. He glanced over at Carly, and she could see the reluctance in his eyes. These were words he didn’t want to have to say.

“At least thirty.” At their gasps and exclamations, he looked back at them and held up his hands. “But twenty of them aren’t combatants. They’re Infected.”

“The crazy people?”

“The retards?” Bryce blurted.

“Do
not
call them that,” Carly said, her tone sharp enough to make him drop his gaze and murmur an apology.

Jason sounded horrified. “They have
twenty
of them? Why?”

“They called them ‘burn-outs.’ They—” Justin raked a hand through his hair. “Well, they’re keeping them as slaves.”

The silence fell again and a few jaws dropped.

“Chained together, unkempt, and scrawny as hell.” Justin rubbed the back of his neck again. “They seem to be treating them rough, especially the women.”

Winces and gasps from the crowd echoed what Carly felt. Nausea churned in her gut, and her head pounded dully. “We have to decide what we’re going to do about this.”

Pete released one hand from the bench and lifted it, then dropped it back down to the back of the pew as though he’d changed his mind in mid-gesture. “Mrs. Daniels, I’m not sure what you mean, ‘do about this.’ Protecting our community is one thing, but are you thinkin’ we need to . . .
intercede
for these people?”

Carly fought against the tickle in her throat and lost. She coughed against her fist. “I—I don’t know.”

Kross spoke up. “But what are you going to do with them? Carly, you can’t bring them here. We can’t take care of them. We don’t have the resources to feed twenty more people. Especially people who aren’t—”

“Aren’t what?”

He looked away. “Aren’t productive.”

“Some of them can be dangerous,” Jason said.

“I know.” Carly’s nightmare about what she’d experienced in the train station was still fresh in her mind. She knew as well as anyone how dangerous the Infected could be. Her voice cracked a little despite her effort to keep it steady, and she coughed into her hand again before she spoke. “And I know I can’t take them in like stray puppies, because that would put all of our survival in jeopardy. I know the truth of these things, but I can’t help but feel like I’m staring evil in the face and choosing to do nothing.”

From the guilt on some faces, Carly knew she wasn’t the only one, but it was helpless guilt. Bystander’s guilt. The kind of guilt that said,
It’s terrible, but what can I do?
She turned her head away and bit the inside of her cheek.

She looked over at the Reverend, who sat beside his wife in one of the benches at the back of the room, listening without comment. She felt about asking his opinion, but she knew he didn’t have practical advice to give.

“We have a more immediate problem, Mrs. Daniels,” Pete said, his tone gentle. “If we’ve got someone—a group—meaning us harm, we’ve got to prepare to defend ourselves. We can discuss the . . . slaves . . . after we’ve made ourselves safe again.”

Pearl scoffed, and every head turned to watch her. “And isn’t that the kicker? We never will be ‘safe.’ There will always be an external threat or an internal challenge. If we wait for perfect circumstances before we feel we have luxury of doing what’s right, we’ll never have it again.”

Grady shook his head. “We need to focus on the more immediate threat. We need to figure out what these people want and how they plan to go about getting it.”

“I agree,” Justin said. He looked over at Carly and lowered his voice. “My job—my primary mission in life—is to keep you and Dagny safe. I gotta do that before anything else, understand?”

“I do,” Carly replied. “But, Justin, I just can’t look away.”

“Me neither,” Pearl said.

Pete cleared his throat. “Miss Pearl, do you think that maybe you’re taking this . . . especially to heart?”

Pearl narrowed her eyes at Pete. “What do you mean?”

He took off his cap and raked a hand through his hair before he continued, and Carly saw a hint of pink stain his cheekbones. “I mean you may take a special . . . umbrage with what they’re doing because of your ancestors’ experiences.”

Pearl shook her head. “I don’t think you have to be black to know that slavery and the exploitation of helpless people is wrong.”

Mark spoke, and Carly jerked in surprise to hear his voice. He hadn’t spoken to her since the day Veronica had disappeared, and she supposed he was upset with her for the sharp way she’d shut down his argument with Stacy. Stacy wasn’t with him, either.

“Look, Pearl, Carly . . . all due respect, ladies, but I don’t think you’re looking at this clearly. The question remains—what are you going to do with them? Let’s say we go in there and rescue them or whatever. Are you just going to unchain them and say, ‘Okay, you’re free. Take care now.’ ”

“Think before you answer that,” Grady said, “and give it some good, hard thought. Because with no one to take care of them, these people are
going to die
. Either they’ll starve when they can’t find food, or they’ll get hurt or sick with no one to tend them. We can’t just pretend they’ll trot off and fend for themselves, like we’re ditching a dog beside the road and telling ourselves he’ll be happy bounding through the countryside, hunting rabbits. It’s easy enough to
say
death is preferable to slavery, but acknowledge you’re making that choice for them.”

“And they could be dangerous,” Jason said, repeating his earlier statement. “These people are crazy. Not of sound mind. You can’t tell what someone like that will do next. So, you’d have close to two dozen crazy people roaming around nearby. The Wall would probably keep them out of town, but what about when we go outside to work in the fields?”

Carly took a deep breath. “You can’t assume they’re all dangerous. That’s like convicting someone before the crime.”

“Noble, liberal sentiments, but are you willing to risk your child’s safety on that? Are you willing to wait until they hurt someone before you take action?”