The Hills

     Dawn was breaking over the sand dunes, slowly but surely, staining the horizon red and purple. The darkness that seemed negative-light, like it was greedily drinking up what light there was, was starting to disappear.
     Centuries before, there had been stars and a moon in the night sky. Now, the moon was so covered with ruined, dead cities that it was black and gave no light. Decades of uncontrolled air pollution had long since blacked out the stars, but it made for some spectacular sunrises. This one was going to be breathtaking, with broad splashes of dense color that would eventually fade to a uniform dusty tan in every direction.
     Taire was in a good mood, not because of the sunrise, but because of the cache of canned goods she had found in an empty cabin, away out in the foothills. No one else had hit this house yet (except many insects and rodents), so there were clothes, blankets, firearms, ammunition, water, and batteries. It was a virtual treasure trove.
     What items she couldn't hide in the various pockets in her tunic and skirts, she stuffed into the two capacious backpacks she carried. This house was easily a good day's work. That meant she could go home early and spend some time with Rhiza, her roommate and paramour of ten months.
     Taire was a tiny woman with big hands and feet, robin's-egg blue eyes in a tanned face, and hair that had been black at one time, but had bleached in the constant sunshine to blond-streaked brown. This she kept chopped chin-length, to be out of her way as she worked.
     As she walked toward home, happily whistling a low tune, she spied a lone, dark dot approaching on the horizon. Still whistling, she eased her small penlaser out of her skirt pocket and concealed it in her right hand. The dot grew swiftly into a serious-faced, sandy-haired young man, no doubt a fellow scavenger. He had his left hand in the pocket of his gray sweatshirt jacket, fixed around a much larger lump than Taire's little penlaser, which wasn't good for much more than opening cans or cartons. She hoped he was a nice scavenger who minded his own business. She didn't have any of her scavenged firearms loaded or even cleaned.
     But he passed by, seemingly as wary as she was, without so much as a murmur. He was handsome, and Taire was in a good mood, so she called to him over her shoulder.
     "There's a log house just around the next hill," she said. "I couldn't carry everything. Good pickings."
     The stranger looked surprised, for she had violated a scavenger's rule of thumb: never tell competitors about a source of "pickings." He cut his eyes suspiciously, but said "Thanks," all the same. Then, in an uncommon gesture of familiarity and trust, he removed his gun hand empty from his pocket and raised it in a tentative wave.
     She nodded back with a hesitant smile and hurried on, eager to get home to the grouping where she lived so she could see Rhiza.
     The time of the air sickness had been many years before. So many people had died so suddenly that the economy had gone into immediate epileptic seizures. The old money was still around, and was commonly used for bookmarks, stationery, toilet paper, and emergency rolling paper for cigarettes. As currency it was useless.
     Needless to say, there were no retirement benefits anymore, no 401(k) plans or military pensions to fall back on. So when a scavenger got too old to be a scavenger anymore, it was common practice for him or her to find an old empty building, declare ownership, strip it of anything of value and then charge people rent in the form of goods or services to live there. Such an establishment was called a grouping, and everyone got something out of it: the "landlord" got a retirement plan, not to mention a whole building full of virtual servants, and the tenants got a place to live and neighbors they could more or less trust. It was in a grouping that Taire had set up some semblance of housekeeping.
     When Taire got home, there was no one in the lobby, which was a strange sight, but not all that unusual for nine o'clock in the morning. When she was home, everyone else usually was, too. They liked to congregate in the large space of the lower floor, out of their tiny, stifling apartments, to socialize and laugh and play cards until the landlady called for lights out.
     Rhiza was a good-looking man, tanned and muscular with a debonair smile, which was why Taire wasn't at all surprised when she walked in and saw him in bed with their neighbor, Patricia. The two were quite wrapped up in what they were doing, so it took a moment before he noticed that she had come in. Then all he could do was stare.
     Taire stared right back for a full minute, standing motionless in the doorway. Bile rose in her throat and tears in her eyes, but otherwise she retained her composure. She nodded slowly. "I'll get my things."
     She didn't own much, so there wasn't a lot to pack. She placed in her spare backpack her towel, her comb, her soap, her clock, her toothbrush, her other boots. She picked up all three backpacks and left without another word, shutting the door firmly behind her.
     On her way out the door, she overheard two of her neighbors talking. They noticed her distress, her tears, her backpacks, and laughed gently. "Looks like Taire finally caught on to Rhiza," one commented quietly.
     She felt a stabbing pain in her breast. They knew! They had known-doubtless for as long as it had been going on-and they hadn't told her! Taire's cheeks burned with rage and humiliation, but she squared her narrow shoulders, set her mouth in a grim line, and walked on as if she hadn't heard.
     She walked. The dagger of pain in her heart soon swelled to the dull, heavy ache of grief, like a fluid-filled balloon in her chest, a festering emotional gangrene. Sometimes she cried. Often she wanted to scream. She dwelt on the hurt, on self-pity, on self-loathing, on romantic notions of a broken heart. She didn't bother to eat, or drink, or try to sleep, but plodded on in heat and rain, morning and night, and continued this way for four long, listless, slogging days.
     Quite understandably, it didn't take her much longer to collapse.
     The day after she fell unconscious, a sandy-haired young man in a gray sweatshirt jacket found her-unconscious and nearly dead-lying by the side of a heavily traveled road. He picked her up and draped her over his shoulder, appalled that no one had helped her, yet amazed that she hadn't been robbed. Of course, he recognized her as the savior of his family, the girl who had told him about the cabin.
     The log house they had both been through was closer to where they were than his home, so he took her there. When she awoke, it was several hours later. The young man, looking anxious and tired, was standing over her, holding a wet cloth on her forehead. She gave a weak scream, clumsily shoved him away, and almost immediately fell off the raised platform she was on. He was after her in an instant, grabbing her as if lifting a child and lifting her back up. Awkwardly, she still slapped at him. She managed to squirm out of his grasp, and dropped to the floor.
     "If I try to help you, are you going to hit me?" the young man inquired, with a trace of impatience, standing well away.
     Taire began to cry from the sheer accumulation of discomfort and humiliation. Her head ached and her stomach hurt. She allowed herself to be lifted and placed back on the rather dusty, unmade box spring and mattress she had fallen from. The young man covered her with a blanket from one of her packs.
     "Now be still and don't try to get up; I don't want you to fall and hurt yourself. I'm going to heat up some broth."
     Her head ached with fever, but she was lucid enough to understand that she needed food, and he was bringing it for her. She nodded weakly, an arm over her eyes. By the time he got back, she was asleep. He gently woke her, and fed her a few little spoonfuls of broth-too much would have made her stomach cramp-and allowed her to go back to sleep. She slept the rest of the day and most of the night. When the young man opened his pale-gray eyes, she was sitting up in bed, looking out the window at the sunrise.
     "Breakfast?" he suggested.
     She looked at him. "You're awake," she observed.
     "No," he corrected, "I'm Alexander. Or Aleck; I'm called both."
     "I'm Taire. You're the other scavenger, aren't you?" she said, "from the log house."
     "Where do you think we are, now?"
     Taire glanced around, then looked back at Aleck. "Did I sleep with you?"
     The directness of it startled him, but he said, "No. You were lying by the side of the road, and I picked you up. It's a miracle you weren't raped."
     She made a noise of assent. "Thank you," she said sincerely.
     "I have two sisters. I couldn't stand to see you there just waiting for the next scavenger to pick you over like a dead thing," He got up and loaded wood into the woodstove. "especially after you showed me this place. I couldn't carry back all the cans; that's how many there were."
     "I didn't leave any canned stuff, and I tore this place apart!"
     "Did you check the cellar?"
     Cellar?
     "The door was under the rug," he went on. "There're shelves and shelves of cans down there."
     Moodily, Taire flopped back on the bed and vowed to go back to every house she had ever hit in her life and check under the rug for a cellar. She watched Aleck open a can of roast beef hash with her penlaser and dump the contents into a battered saucepan.
     "This is handy," he commented of the penlaser, handing it to her.
     She studied it sadly. "It was a gift," she said slowly. Someone had given it to Rhiza in exchange for a case of cigarettes. He'd given it to her to use for protection when she was out scavenging. Taire's eyes filled with tears. Why had he betrayed her? And with Patricia, of all people, tall, blonde, beautiful Patricia! Taire lay back and closed her eyes, lacking the energy for tears. By the time she had finished feeling sorry for herself, the food was hot. They ate in silence.
     Exhausted in her weakened state by the simple act of eating, Taire felt incredibly sleepy. She set her plate aside and snuggled under the blanket, comforted by the fortitude of a hot meal, soothed by the quiet, the warmth, the company of a... well, she thought of him as a friend... Taire dropped off peacefully to sleep in only a few minutes.
     Aleck went out while she was asleep, being sure to leave a note beside her bed. In the note, he claimed to be checking up on his sisters, which was true, but he really had another destination in mind. Aleck's twin sister, Elene, had been a "girl friend," meaning prostitute-in-training-to Rhiza Sevier, and Aleck had asked that she be allowed to go home. Rhiza agreed, but only on the condition that he was paid back, with interest, what Elene was worth. Barring special circumstances, a woman working as a prostitute could get in six or seven good years before the risks of the job killed her or her pimp decided she was too old or too ugly to continue to work. Therefore, Rhiza had decided Aleck owed him seven years of service, mostly as a messenger or errand boy. Aleck didn't enjoy it, but it was better than having Elene work as a prostitute against her will.
     When Aleck got to Rhiza's apartment, he set down his rucksack and politely declined the offer of a cigarette. "What's new?" he asked, mainly to get his gigs for the day over with and then check on his family.
     "One of my girls caught me with another one. You know they all think they're the only one. So she split, and now I'm down to two."
     Aleck made an effort to keep his face blank, but he wasn't very good at it. Rhiza's attitude toward women brought out the ugliness in him.
     Rhiza laughed. "You don't like that, do you?"
     Aleck stifled his rage. "I didn't say that."
     Rhiza laughed again. "It don't matter. Here's what I got for you today; you go to this house on the next street, the one with the windows painted black. You give the bald guy that bag in the corner, and you bring his daughter Louella back here. You speak Spanish, don't you? These people only speak Spanish."
     "Yeah. Who doesn't?"
     The bag was full of bottles, more than likely homemade whiskey. Some bald alcoholic was selling his daughter to feed his habit. Disgust crowded Aleck's throat.
     "You know," Rhiza said, looking critically, "that's the same look my girl got on her face right before she left."
     If I ever sink to his level, Aleck thought, I hope I'm smart enough to shoot myself.
     He was prepared to deal with difficulty from Louella, but surprisingly she came without argument and with very few tears. Halfway to the grouping, he stopped and allowed her to put her head on his shoulder and cry.
     "It's all right; it's only for a few years, and then you can go home," he said in his shaky Spanish.
     "I'm a Catholic," she confessed. "I just know I'm going to Hell for not running away, but my father might be killed!"
     "God understands you don't have a choice," Aleck told her. "He recognizes the sacrifice, and he will bless you for it."
     Louella didn't look like she believed it. She wiped her eyes and thanked him for comforting her, and they traveled the rest of the way in silence.
     Rhiza sent him on a few more errands before deciding he had played with him enough. Aleck went to his sisters' place, which was near a rare stream of clear water. Deed greeted him at the door and offered him dinner, which he politely declined.
     "Where are you living now, Aleck?" Deed said. "I went to take you some dinner last night and you weren't where you used to live."
     "I'll be at a cabin in the foothills for a while. There's a lot of cans and stuff there, and I thought I'd stay on until it runs out."
     "Did you bring us anything?" Elene asked. Aleck grinned and dumped a load of cans onto the floor.
     "Wow! You did great, Aleck!" Deed remarked, unlocking the cupboard to put the cans away.
     "I've never seen so much food at one time in my life!" Elene squealed. "Where did you ever get it?"
     "The cabin. You wouldn't believe how much there is."
     "Maybe we should move out there with you," Deed quipped.
     "No," Aleck decided quickly. "There's clean water here. That's not something you find every day. You should stay here."
     Deed looked up at him quizzically, but said nothing. Elene didn't seem disturbed.
     Elene and Aleck were twins, born as a result of an attack on their mother twelve years after the death of their mother's husband. Deed had raised Elene and Aleck since their mother's death of the air sickness, when Deed was twenty and the children only five. She had proven a gentle and understanding foster mother, even when saddled with two grief-stricken children and her own bereavement. She had managed to keep them fed, warm and safe, during the last hungry years of the Long Winter, when many people had starved and frozen to death, and children had often been killed and eaten.
     Elene went to bed early. Deed forced a plate of dinner on Aleck and prodded him for details. All she could get from him was that he was very tired from running errands for Rhiza Sevier. He begged Deed again not to tell Elene about how he was repaying Rhiza for her safe return. Deed assented, gently urging him to go on, but he insisted there was nothing else bothering him. She gave up.
     It was late indeed when he got back to the cabin. Taire was shakily packing things into the backpacks she'd had with her.
     "You're not supposed to be up," he teased as he walked in.
     "You weren't supposed to be gone," she shot back, far from teasing.
     "I left you a note; look," he said, indicating the scrap of paper on the overturned crate beside the bed.
     "Oh, that," she said. "I didn't see it."
     He looked hard at her. "You don't read," he said.
     She glared at him and looked away, and he knew he was right.
     "May I teach you?"
     "What for? Reading doesn't make food or keep the rain off your head."
     "That's not what reading is for. And there's more to life than staying dry and being fed."
     "Like what?"
     He raised his eyebrows at the challenge. Turning, he chose a volume off the shelf behind him and opened to first the beginning, then to a page in the middle of the book.

          " 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the
          hills, from whence cometh my help.
          My help cometh from the LORD,
          Which made heaven and earth.
          He will not suffer thy foot to be
          Moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
          Behold, he that keepeth Israel
          shall neither slumber nor sleep.
          The LORD is thy keeper: the
          LORD is thy shade upon thy right
          Hand.
          The sun shall not smite thee by
          day, nor the moon by night.
          The LORD shall preserve thee
          from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
          The LORD shall preserve thy going
          out and thy coming in from this
          time forth, and even forevermore.' "

     He closed the book. It made him think of Louella, and he wished he hadn't chosen it. He looked at Taire. "Would you consider staying awhile and letting me teach you to read?" he asked.
     "No!"
     "Why not?"
     "I said no! I just don't want to, okay?" She continued to pack.
     "Okay, calm down. I won't make you read. But you should still stay, at least until you're well."
     She stood, teetering, and declared, "There's nothing wrong with me. Only a little sunburn, and that will..." She trailed off as she noticed Aleck appeared to be falling. As she reached out to steady him, something hard and flat struck her in the face. She realized it was the floor.
     Aleck dropped Taire into the rain barrel outside, and she came to with a shriek. She stood, feeling wet and a little foolish.
     Aleck looked at her with a pleased expression on his face. "You were saying something about keeping dry, weren't you?"
     After discovering the hard way that she couldn't climb out of the barrel without help, she relented and allowed herself to be carried from outside to the bathroom inside. Aleck deposited her without ceremony into the claw-footed tub and left her there while he heated up some water. When it was boiling, he mixed it with cold and carried it back to the bathroom. He couldn't help but stare. Taire had undressed and was standing nude, squeezing out the water from her clothes into the sink.
     She stared fearlessly right back at him. "Are you finished?"
     "Finished?"
     "Looking at me. Are you finished, or did you want me to turn around?"
     He flushed mightily and looked away. The blood circulation was much improved to certain other areas of his body, as well.
     "Amazing," Taire commented. "A man with the decency to blush. Most men couldn't be bothered."
     "I'm not most men," he muttered on his way out. He went back twice with more water, and didn't look either time. He didn't have to. He remembered what she looked like-in detail.
     Taire was in the bathtub for a long time, soaking and scrubbing and considering her current situation. She had no rent to pay, a cellar full of cans, and no Rhiza to boss her around. She had it pretty good. She thought that maybe, if Aleck didn't take everything, she'd stay around for a while.
     Aleck presented a special sort of problem. How could she possibly repay him for repeatedly saving her miserable life? She had literally been willing to die for the loss of Rhiza Sevier, who was good-looking, but domineering and manipulative. Aleck had picked her tenderly up out of the dirt, taken care of her, fed her, offered to teach her to read, and forced her to wake up and look at her situation in only two days, counting the day she had spent unconscious. Best of all, he had done it without violence or the threat of violence. No one else had ever had such a significant effect on her life in such a short time, and she'd been so ungrateful that it disgusted her to think of it now. It was Rhiza who had told her she shouldn't waste time learning to read. There was no reason anymore to believe without question that Rhiza knew best.
     The next day, Aleck was gone when Taire woke up. She put on her clothes and wondered again at being an inch under five feet tall and having size nine feet, not to mention hands as big as a man's. She went to the bathroom and the ancient, spotted full-length mirror to critically examine her strange shape. She was painfully thin from her ailment, not that this was a huge change, and her face was still peeling from sunburn. She had narrow shoulders and hips, breasts that would have been concave if they were any smaller, a tummy that truly was concave, short legs and a long body. She looked like an elf or a fairy, minus the pointy ears. So why had Aleck reacted the way he had to seeing her disrobed? Lack of female human contact, she reckoned. Or maybe he was amazed at how ugly she really was.
     He was back early in the afternoon. Taire had not yet had lunch, so Aleck fixed it for her though she pleaded no appetite. She was surprised at how hungry she was. Aleck was an excellent cook, in a generation that hadn't seen enough food to be good cooks. They ate and he sent her back to bed. She would have protested, but she felt the weakness creeping back into her limbs, so she dutifully crawled between the sheets. Sleep came easily, despite all she had on her mind.
     Aleck looked at her sleeping form for a long time. Rhiza had told him that he should keep an eye out for a "short, funny-looking gal" by the name of Taire, with brown hair and big blue eyes. Aleck knew it was her.
     He couldn't believe she was a prostitute. It explained her unabashed nakedness before him, and her cool perception of the habits of "most men," but he didn't want it to be true.
     But if it were true, why would she have been out scavenging, the first time he'd seen her, instead of hanging around the grouping, waiting for customers? And how had she developed the courage to leave a pimp who now wanted her dead?
     He couldn't turn her in. There was no way. But he also didn't want to put his sisters in jeopardy, so he'd have to be very careful not to say anything, and not to let Taire out of the cabin until he was completely sure she was out of danger. By now, it was clear to him that he was growing attached to her. Though he knew it was a bad idea to care so much about someone he knew so little about, he knew Taire was a special case. She was tough and efficient, qualities that made a good scavenger-true, she had not found the cellar, but she had found other things in places he wouldn't have thought to look. She was very direct, a generally admirable quality, and could, on occasion, have a streak of irony to her humor. She was sensitive, a rarity in this day and age, and she was-if only in his humble opinion-beautiful. He wasn't certain whether or not she was a prostitute, but at this point he didn't care if she was the Whore of Babylon. She would never have to earn her wages on her back again.
     When Taire woke up, it was dark out, and Aleck was gone again. She lay in bed for a long time, thinking. How had Rhiza felt when she'd left him? What was he going to do? He had once threatened to kill her if she ever left him-and he only ever threatened anything once.
     Flopping over onto her back, she wondered about Aleck. He was always leaving. Where did he go? He visited his sisters quite a bit, but what about the rest of the time? He was very reticent about it. Maybe he had a girlfriend. A redhead, perhaps, at least as tall as he was, with small, delicate hands and feet. Taire hated her already, though she didn't know quite why.
     She got up morosely, lit a candle for light, dressed, ate. She found some yarn and knitting needles and knitted clumsily for a few minutes, reminiscing about how she and her aunt would knit to take their minds off hunger all those starving years ago. She had knitted ten rows when Aleck finally made an appearance. He had been at dinner with his sisters, and had brought back a gingery pear tart that his sister had made from a can of pears out of their cellar.
"You have to try this. Come on, sit down."
     Taire rolled her eyes, but she sat. She took a bite and raised her eyebrows. "This is great! Where did your sister learn to cook?"
     He put a finger to his lips. "Undisclosed sources."
     "Well, next time you see her, tell her that I really appreciate this."
     "I can't. She doesn't know about you."
     "Why not?"
     Aleck said, "Because a man named Rhiza Sevier wants to kill you."
     Instead of being shocked, amazed, or horrified, she just nodded. "I thought he would, eventually."
     "Did you work for him?" he asked carefully.
     She stopped chewing. "How do you mean?"
     "Rhiza had a lot of little businesses on the side, but for the most part, he was a pimp."
     She put her spoon down and looked sad. "Oh, Aleck, is that how you think of me?"
     "Taire! No!"
     "Then why did you ask?"
     "Curiosity. Willingness to take you away from him, if you wanted to go. No one should have to live like that."
     "Well, I never have lived like that," she said, "and I can't see how you would think so. I'm too ugly to be any kind of whore."
     "You think you're ugly?"
     Taire hung her head and didn't answer.
     "Taire, I think you're beautiful."
     Taire snorted. "You must be awfully near-sighted."
     "Better than twenty-twenty out of both eyes. Taire." He stumbled and reddened over his next statement. "I think I've fallen in love with you."
     Taire looked up, her pale eyes as round as saucers. "You what!?"
     "Love you," Aleck repeated.
     "You don't fall in love with someone after two days!"
     "I didn't. I've been thinking about you since I first saw you, six days ago."
     Taire was growing flustered and embarrassed. "Well, for crying out loud, Aleck!" She said in exasperation. "I need time. I need time to think."
     "You can think by yourself, if you need to. Or I can stay, and we can talk about it."
     "No, no; stick around. Let's discuss this. Why did you fall in love with me?"
     "Why not? Where's the harm in it? Besides, it's not as if I had much choice."
     "You realize I have to try to talk you out of it."
     "Fair enough. I'm going to try to talk you into it."
     "What?"
     "I can think of twelve reasons why you should be in love with me."
     "Twelve?"
     "Twelve. First of all, I'm much nicer to you than Rhiza could possibly have ever been. Second..."
     "Stop!" she was laughing. "This is too much. You're too much." She sat and smiled for a moment. "Where do you go during the day? You don't spend every day with your sisters."
     "I work for Rhiza. I don't enjoy it."
     Taire grinned. "I thought you had a girlfriend. I was jealous."
     He leaned over to kiss her, and upset the candle. Fortunately, it went out before it hit the planks, but even if the cabin had burned down around them, they wouldn't have given it another thought.
     They were still awake when the sun rose. They lay snuggled together under the covers and watched the sky explode in slow motion into deep reds, oranges and yellows. Never in her life had Taire been so content. She and Aleck were together.
     "What's the matter with you today, man?" Rhiza demanded of Aleck later in the day. "You're walking around like you're half asleep!"
     "I am half asleep," Aleck muttered.
     Rhiza chuckled. "You get lucky last night?"
     "That's none of your damn business."
     "I knew it. Who were you with? Not one of my girls."
     "A friend of my sister's."
     Riza laughed again. "Why don't you go on home and rest up?"
     When Aleck was out of earshot, Rhiza called to Patricia. "He knows where Taire is," he said. "Follow him and kill them both."
     "How do you know it's her?" Patricia inquired.
     "Who else could it be? He wasn't at the grouping last night, and none of you girls were anywhere else."
     Patricia, who was an excellent marksman, loaded one of her favorite handguns with just two bullets, sure that was all she'd need.
     Following his tracks was easy. They led to an old log house, the traditional kind with three rooms. She got her gun out and cocked it. Strong hands grasped hers from behind, forced her gun hand up, and fired both bullets into the air. Then the gun was wrested from her grip and it was used to knock her unconscious.
     Aleck dropped Patricia and looked down at her with disdain. The gun he pocketed, deciding not to let her keep it, loaded or unloaded.
     Taire went outside to see what had gone on. "Are you all right?"
     "Rhiza had me followed," he said. "I think he knows about you."
     "Then we need to leave," Taire said. "He'll track us here."
     "He'll track us forever. I'd rather fight. You go," he said. "I have to stay."
     Taire glared at him. "You know I can't go if you don't."
     He studied her for a moment, then turned from her to Patricia, who was still unconscious on the ground.
     "What are we going to do with her?" Taire asked. "She'll tell Rhiza where we are when she gets back."
     "She isn't going back. Not until she's killed us, or we've killed her. And you might as well get up, Patricia, because I know when someone is conscious and when they're not."
     Patricia came up with a knife from her boot and lurched at Aleck, knocking him down. She was surprisingly strong; Aleck's equal or better. He rolled her into the corner of the cabin, slamming her repeatedly into the hard wood, but she was unfazed. The knife drew dangerously closer to his neck, despite Aleck's best efforts against it. The knife was inches away. He pushed and she pushed, he grunted and she grunted, he cursed and she laughed. The point of the knife was just an inch away, then just touching his neck, then just piercing the skin...
     Then Taire shot Patricia with her penlaser. The beam entered under her arm and propelled her over to one side, instantly killing her. The knife flew harmlessly off to her left, and Aleck was bleeding, but spared. He stood up, hurriedly stumbled backward a few feet, and fell to the ground again. Taire was at his side in a flash, checking him all over for wounds.
     "Taire, I'm fine, I'm all right," Aleck said. "You saved me."
     "You're welcome. Now get up and tell me what we're going to do."
     It was half a day before Rhiza showed up. The sun was starting to set, dying with a whimper as it always had, streaking the sky with pale color before sinking sadly behind the horizon. It was nearly dark.
     He'd brought with him, among several other people, two of his favorite girls, Elene and Deed. They'd been a little resistant at first, but once he'd shown them the pistol he had with him they were quite well behaved. Aleck would give Taire up readily when faced with danger to his beloved sisters, his only family in the world.
     "Alexander!" He called.
     Inside, Aleck and Taire paused as they packed Taire's things. The plan had been that Taire would go to Aleck's sisters' house, and Aleck would stay behind. They'd had no idea that Rhiza would check up on Patricia so quickly.
     Before Aleck could stop her, Taire went outside. "Rhiza," she said, as if nothing had happened, "I'm glad to see you. I was just packing my things. Will you come inside?"
     "I'm going to beat you until you can't stand up!"
     "Oh, Rhiza!" Taire scolded playfully. "Stop fooling. Patricia's inside; she hurt her ankle on the way over and I had to take care of her, or I would have come back sooner. I was so happy when she told me you wanted me to come back! I thought you would never want to see me again, since you were with someone new. Come in; I'll fix you something to eat while I pack, and then we can go back together." She looked around. "Rhiza, who are all these people?"
     Rhiza grabbed her by the throat. She yelped in pain and surprise.
     "I told you once that if you ever left me, I would kill you," Rhiza said through gritted teeth.
     "I thought you wanted me to leave!" protested Taire, putting on her best dumb act.
     "Where's Aleck?"
     Taire feigned a quizzical expression. "Who?"
     Disgusted, Rhiza threw her aside. He charged past her into the cabin, calling Aleck by name. Taire went in after him, calling, "There's no one here! Why don't you believe me?"
     Aleck, who wisely had hidden himself, looked on from his closet as Rhiza gave the room he was in a thorough search. Just as Rhiza was about to search the closet, Taire took his arm gently and turned him about.
     "There's no one here. Just you and me."
     "Bull. Where is he?"
     "I still don't know what you're talking about, Rhiza. Sit down, have a bite to eat, let me get my things and let's go. Unless..." she smiled coyly, "...you'd like to show me how much you missed me?"
     Rhiza smiled back. He took Taire into his arms and kissed her, beginning to remove her dress as he did so, nearly driving Aleck out of the closet in a fury of jealousy. Then Rhiza stopped.
     "Where's Patricia?" he asked suspiciously. By then it was too late.
     He gave a squall of pain, and there was a stench and sound of frying flesh and hair. Rhiza stumbled back, a fatal cut from Taire's penlaser bleeding freely in his neck. He reeled forward, past the closet door, and Aleck emerged. Grabbing Rhiza from behind, he stuck his thumb directly into the cut, tearing loose where the laser had seared off blood vessels, making the blood flow even harder. Rhiza flailed about to throw him off, but his strength was ebbing fast. Finally, he was dead.
     Breathing heavily, covered in blood, they lay on the floor, exhausted.
     "Rhiza?" a deep male voice hailed.
     Taire and Aleck exchanged glances.
     "Rhiza, what should we do with the guy's sisters?" the voice continued.
     Aleck blanched. His sisters! What were they doing here?
     "Should we kill them?" The soldier called after a silence.
     "No!" Aleck called back. "Let me do it. Get out of here, I'm busy."
     "Okay," the other man said, "we'll wait outside." Then, quietly, "Horny bastard."
     "What now?" Taire asked in a hushed tone.
     "I don't know," Aleck said.
     "There were half a dozen people, not including two women who were tied up by their wrists..."
     There was a yell of pain and rage outside and a shout in a male voice: "You slut!" A sharp slap followed, and a whimper that sounded to Aleck like Elene.
     Aleck's face turned puce. He stood and looked for a weapon, then ducked down at a shout of, "There's the bastard!" A shot rang off the window frame. Taire thrust a can of peas into his hand, and he chucked it out the window at one of the men. His aim was true. The man fell with a great crash, dragging Elene with him to the ground. Elene scrambled to her feet and dashed for the cabin, with Taire covering her from the door with a loaded shotgun. She cocked the gun with a vicious jerk and shot down two of the men. Ducking back inside to reload, she sweated as shots zinged off the door frame and through the door past her. How could she kill so blithely? It had happened so fast! She cursed herself for her soft way of thinking and for her slowness. Her nervous fingers felt like sausages, fumbling the bullets into the gun.
     "Taire," Aleck hailed, "Deed's coming!"
     Taire resumed her post at the door, saw Deed in ... and watched in amazement as two more men fell to shots neither she nor Aleck had fired! Two men were left now, and they glanced around wildly as shots continued from an unseen source. One was shot down, and the last began to run, frantically looking for his assailant, screaming, "Don't kill me! I surrender! Mercy! Please!"
     Louella rose from her hiding place in the bushes and shot him anyway. She lowered her gun and slowly walked to the place where the men lay. She knelt, crossed herself, and said the Last Rites, as the last pope ever to occupy that holy station had given all Catholics the power to do in the absence of a priest. She stood, gave the stunned people inside the cabin a brief nod, and coolly strolled off to the west.
     When the shock had worn off somewhat, Aleck hugged his sisters and Taire.
     "Elene, Deirdre, this is Taire," he said.
     "You're what he's been hiding from us!" Elene seized Taire and kissed her heartily on both cheeks.
     "Welcome to the family," Deed said, hugging Taire as enthusiastically as her exuberant younger sister.
     Taire glanced at Aleck, who was turning very red from embarrassment at his sisters' high-spirited greeting. Taire smiled at him. To his sisters, she said, "It's very good to meet you both. Aleck's forever talking about you."
     "He hasn't mentioned you at all. I'm afraid we know nothing about you. You'll have to tell us everything!"
     Taire smiled, happier than she'd been in a long, long time.
     A few months passed. Taire and Aleck were still together, living in the cabin with Aleck's sisters. Since Aleck had not had to go to Rhiza's every day, he'd had more time to spend with his family. Taire married Aleck in the spring. Over the following few months, Taire's thin frame had filled out considerably, though not from all the food she'd been eating.
     Taire sat in the rocker, a book balanced on her ample pregnant belly as she struggled to sound out the words:

          " 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the
          hills, from whence cometh my help.
          My help cometh from the LORD,
          Which made heaven and earth.
          He will not suffer thy foot to be
          Moved: he that keepeth thee will not
          slumber.
          Behold, he that keepeth Israel
          shall neither slumber nor sleep.
          The LORD is thy keeper: the
          LORD is thy shade upon thy right
          Hand.
          The sun shall not smite thee by
          day, nor the moon by night.
          The LORD shall preserve thee
          from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
          The LORD shall preserve thy going
          out and thy coming in from this
          time forth, and even forevermore.' "

The words were still foreign to her, sounding odd and old-world. She placed a hand on her abdomen, for the infant within had stirred and kicked. Laughing softly, she said, "You want out, don't you? You've got three more months left, so quit complaining." He kicked again.
     "Aleck," she called, "come and feel him kick."
     Dutifully, Aleck approached and touched his wife's distended midsection. He was rewarded with several emphatic kicks. "My strong son," he said proudly. "You'll be big like Daddy one day."
     "What if she gets big like Mama?"
     "Then she'd better be married to the son of a bitch responsible."
     Taire laughed. "Seriously," she said, "have you thought of any girl names you like?"
     He looked thoughtful. "I think Louella would be appropriate," he said, "don't you?"
     "I like that." She smoothed her dress over her tummy. "Louella."