“What can you do, woman?” The man in the doorway addressed me, but he was looking at Lily. His stomach poked out between his greasy pants and hole-ridden sweater. One of his hands was out of sight behind his back; it probably held a gun.

I kept both hands in plain sight. I didn’t want to make him nervous. “I can midwive your women and your animals.” During our several days of observing this homestead, we had noticed — despite the threat of snow in the air — a cow almost ready to drop, several ewes running loose with a ram, and at least three pregnant women, one of them barely older than Lily. “Beyond that I can cook, garden, build, nurse. . .”

“Regular whiz kid, ain’t you? How come you ain’t got no place?” He was still leering at Lily. She’s at that coltish stage girls go through when they first get their height, all arms and legs, her bosom just beginning to bud. Some men like that.

I shrugged. “Things happen.” I resisted the urge to push the girl behind me.

The boy who’d first answered the door had also eyed Lily. That hadn’t bothered me as much; he looked to be about fourteen — Lily’s age — and boys that age are driven by their hormones. But even he had made her uncomfortable; she’d crossed her arms over her breast.

Despite his belly, the man looked as if hard work kept him strong. Broad shoulders, callused hands. A shaggy beard he didn’t bother to trim. I guessed his age at somewhere in the mid-thirties.

I had to look up to meet his hard little eyes. He gave me a brief once over, probably noting the grey in my hair, the lean muscles in my arms. No lust in this look — I was too old to interest him as a woman.

“Okay, you can stay. For a while.”

***

“How come you didn’t tell him you could fight, Isabel?” Lily was unpacking our few possessions, storing her change of clothes on a small shelf in the curtained alcove they had given us for a room. “You said when we were watching that they didn’t have enough fighters.”

Experience has taught me when to keep quiet. Lily hasn’t learned that yet, though she has picked up basic fighting skills pretty quickly in the four years since I found her.

“Better that he doesn’t know,” I said, too tired to try to explain the subtleties.

Maybe I didn’t need to, because Lily said, “I didn’t like the way he looked at me.”

“Neither did I, honey, neither did I.”

She shivered. “I don’t like this place, Isabel.”

I didn’t much like it either. A ramshackle old farmhouse that needed repair even more than it needed paint, a few outbuildings, pens for animals. Not much of a home, even for these days. We’d lived in better. But not lately, and winter was coming on. We’d been camping for a month, living off whatever we could kill, and some days that had been damn little. Unlike most of the ‘steads we’d seen, this one needed a couple more people to work it and looked to have enough food to get everyone through the cold time. Winter goes on longer these days.

The leering man was called Harlan, and as I’d surmised, he was the only grown man on the place. The teenager who’d answered the door was his son. Five grown women made up the rest of the household, along with a number of younger children. Two of the women were due in the next month or so — too pregnant to do much besides household work.

No one said grace before the evening meal and I didn’t see any prayer books or altars in the house. Apparently they weren’t religious. I was grateful. People without religion will kill you for food or things or the pure hell of it, but some of the religious will kill you in the name of God and congratulate themselves afterwards.

The place needed work, for all that it was winter. They kept a lot of livestock — cows, goats, sheep, chickens. Just keeping the animals fed and sheltered took a lot of time, not to mention dealing with out-of-season pregnancies. Animals don’t seem to have a regular estrus season anymore, at least not for the past ten years or so. Emergency repairs to the water pipes, which broke on a regular basis, also kept us busy. The plumbing was only good for taking water out of the house; there was no power source for the pump. We hauled in buckets from the creek for bathing and flushing toilets and used a makeshift hand pump on the old well to get some drinking and cooking water.

Harlan did his share of the work, but it was no secret that he ran the place. Everyone jumped to when he gave an order. And he alone decided who shared his bed.

“Why do they put up with him?” Lily asked me after several days.

I shrugged. “It’s his place. Besides, some of them like him.” Two of the women — Greta, who was very pregnant, and Brenda, who was just beginning to show — did seem to like Harlan. They vied with each other to make his breakfast. When we sat around of an evening, one of them would massage his feet while the other made sure his wine glass stayed full. There are always people who attach themselves to power.

“Idiots,” she said. “Where I grew up, they would have sacrificed him at the solstice.”

I’m never quite sure whether Lily is telling the whole truth when she mentions the place she lived as a small child. More than once she’s mentioned human sacrifice. I hope that they only sacrificed animals, that she was confused, but worse things have happened since everything fell apart.

“He’s not that bad. He works hard and makes sure everyone eats. Beats bandits.”

“I guess.” She hugged herself, something she tended to do when she felt on edge. “What will we do if bandits come here?”

“This place isn’t all that attractive,” I said, not wanting her to worry.

“It’s got shelter and food,” she pointed out.

So I had already taught her too much, or maybe the reality of growing up in this world had.

“Watch the way Harlan moves,” I said. “He’s damn light on his feet for a big man. I suspect he can fight. And they’ve got a few guns.”

“And if that isn’t enough?”

Way too late to protect her. “Then maybe we die here, Lily.”

She nodded. But she was still hugging herself — something besides bandits was bothering her. She turned away from me, and said, almost whispering, “You won’t let him fuck me, will you?”

“No,” I said, startled. “Of course not.”

She gave me a sunny smile and a quick hug, then ran off to do some outdoor chores. Still a child, in some ways.

I sat there alone. I could protect her here, probably. From rape, anyway. But I could think of situations where I couldn’t. Even worse, I could think of situations where I wouldn’t. I’ve seen a lot of things worse than rape.

I was born at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century, at a time when the future was balanced on a razor’s edge. A newscast from when I was about ten sticks in my head: the lead story presented a panoramic view of vast acres of blackness due to fires in Southern California; then they showed pictures of the latest robotic exploration on Mars; a summary of war news followed — suicide bombings, civilians killed by mistakes, the daily body count; next scientists explained how nanobots were healing arthritic knees; and lastly a religious commentator said the shrinking polar ice caps meant the Second Coming was at hand.

At twelve I told everyone I wanted to grow up to design video games — holographic versions were all the rage, but even a kid could see there was plenty of room for improvement. At fifteen, I joined the neighborhood militia; someone had to protect us from roving gangs of bandits — the rising number of jobless increasing their ranks every week — and the political activists of all stripes who figured violence would get them noticed. The police were overstretched — most local governments were bankrupt — and the National Guard was too busy fighting foreign wars.

We might have muddled through this period and come out with an intact civilization but for the dirty bomb that hit downtown Washington, D.C., at rush hour. The government rushed to retaliate with insufficient intelligence, hitting several foreign targets before they discovered that the device had been set by home-grown terrorists. By then every power in the world was either retaliating or trying to get in a first strike. It was far too late for apologies.

I learned to survive. It’s what I do best. I’m past forty now and have almost forgotten what it was like to have electricity, running water, and cars, much less video games and the Internet. Some ‘steads have vehicles, but they’re usually located near old oil and gas refineries. If you see a plane nowadays, you hide out: plenty of bombs left in the world. People my age were the last to get any education; most of those ten years younger than me can’t even read.

Lily learned to read, the last real place we stayed. Willow Creek. A good place, with plenty of food and something resembling a democratic government. Almost big enough to be a town. But a cult of religious nuts found a way in, eventually. It’s easy for a charismatic leader to convince starving people that killing nonbelievers is justified, especially when the followers can end up with food and a house if they go along.

I still dream about the raid at Willow Creek. Only a handful of us got out alive.

By the standards of the day, Harlan’s stead ranked a little below average. I figured we’d move on, once spring showed up. I just hoped we could get that far without trouble.

We’d lived there maybe a week when I heard Lily yelling and came running to find the boy writhing on the ground, his hands holding his crotch. She stood over him, screaming, “Don’t you ever touch me again, you bastard.”

Harlan showed up just as I arrived, took one look at the situation, and kicked the boy. “Get up.”

“I can’t. Oh, it hurts so bad.”

He kicked him again, harder.

“Please.”

“Get up, you goddamned sissy.” Another kick. “Get up.”

The boy got to his hands and knees and started to stand up, and Harlan hit him on the chin, knocking him over backwards. The boy knew what was coming now. He struggled to his feet, trying to get away, but Harlan hit him again.

Part of me wanted to jump in. The boy was barely more than a child. But I knew it would end in disaster. And besides, he had tried to assault Lily. She may not be my blood child, but I love her nonetheless. I held her close and let the man beat his son.

He finally stopped. The boy lay whimpering on the ground. Harlan looked at Lily. “The next time someone asks for it, you better come across, girl.”

I put my hand over her mouth to stop her from replying and looked at him steadily. Lily struggled against me.

He felt my gaze, looked at me, and decided not to challenge what he saw there. “Get on to bed, everybody,” he bellowed. The others followed him out of the room.

Lily struggled free. “Why didn’t you let me tell him off?” she yelled.

“Because then I’d have had to fight him.”

“So what? You can take him.”

I sighed. Lily had an exaggerated opinion of my fighting abilities. “We’re only here for a few months, until it gets warm enough to look for a better place. Let’s try to avoid any unnecessary fights, please.”

“I’m not letting that punk touch me,” she said.

“Of course not. But please try to discourage him without kicking him in the balls.”

“He deserved it,” she said.

“Maybe so, but you could have stopped him without a fight. You know how.”

She looked at me blankly. “He deserved it.”

I gave up. Teaching people how to fight is hard enough, but teaching them when to fight is almost impossible.

“Well, with luck the boy will leave you alone, now. Stay away from him and keep avoiding Harlan as much as you can. We’ll get through this yet.”

***

The weather turned unseasonably warm. Lily muttered to me that if we’d known winter would be this mild, we could have stayed on our own. To conserve feed, we’d put the livestock out to graze on what was left of the summer’s grass. A week later a fast moving snowstorm took us by surprise. As soon as we could dig out, everyone went to look for the animals. It was Lily who saw a man on horseback as she encouraged two recalcitrant ewes to make their way back to the house.

“You sure about the horse?” Harlan said.

Lily nodded.

He shook his head. “Nobody around here keeps a horse. The folks on the other side of the hill used to have one, but they ate it two winters ago.” There were a couple of other ‘steads within a few miles. We didn’t have much to do with them, but occasionally there might be a little trade.

“Did he see you?” I asked.

“Yeah. I think he was watching me. He was hidden among the trees. I wouldn’t have seen him, but his horse made a snuffling noise just when I was looking in that direction.”

“Casing the joint,” Harlan said.

I nodded. “Did he know you saw him?”

Lily shrugged. “I don’t know. He knows his horse made a noise. He probably saw me look in that direction. I tried not to act like I’d seen anything unusual.”

Nobody else had seen a horse. Harlan hadn’t been able to find all the goats, though, and he’d seen footprints in the snow too big to belong to any of us.

“The question is whether they’re just going to try to steal what they can or whether they’re going to attack,” I said.

“Either way, we’ve got to get rid of them,” Harlan said. “We can’t afford to lose any more stock.”

“How are you fixed for guns and ammo?” I asked.

He looked me over then, let his eyes run up and down me. “Would fighting be another skill you got, along with midwifing and cooking?”

“Maybe,” I said. Lily gave me a look. I shrugged. Better the devil you know.

I followed Harlan into his room, watched as he unlocked a cabinet. “You rather have a pistol or a rifle?”

“Pistol. Automatic, if you’ve got it.”

He handed me a nine-millimeter Beretta and a bagful of clips. “Don’t waste the ammo on practice shots.”

I weighed it in my hand. A good weapon. And more ammunition than I had expected. My opinion of the ‘stead went up a notch.

We left everyone else locked in the house. Harlan took the east side of the property; I took the west. It was still cold out; the snow crunched under my feet and I could see my breath. As I got close to the creek that Harlan said was our western border, I could smell something roasting on a fire. I kept moving toward the smell until I could see smoke.

The creek looked to be frozen solid. I took a chance and stepped out on the ice. It didn’t creak under my feet. As I crossed to the other side, I could see a man sitting by a campfire. A makeshift spit hung over the fire and something was suspended from it. Probably one of our goats. The man had stringy black hair. He wasn’t wearing a hat and his ears were bright red with the cold.

As I got within pistol range, I stepped on a stick just under the snow and it broke with a sharp crack. The man jumped up and spun around, a rifle in his hand. He saw me and started to raise the gun. I only had to fire one shot. It got him through the throat at point blank range. I’d been aiming lower, but the gun had a kick to it and jerked up when I shot.

I looked at the body lying in the snow. He wasn’t really a man; he was a boy, maybe a little older than Lily. I was glad I’d shot him in self defense, instead of in the back. It didn’t matter to him, but it mattered to me. His face was covered with tattoos. They looked like a cross between Celtic and Native American. A cult of some kind. A made up religion, probably. I took his rifle and a handful of bullets I found in his pocket — all the ammo he had.

Harlan hadn’t seen anybody, but he’d found evidence of several more people. He shrugged when I told him about shooting the young man. “One down. But they’ll probably attack now.”

I nodded. “They know we know.”

“Let’s hope there ain’t ten or twenty of ‘em,” Harlan said.

We herded all the animals into the ramshackle old barn and took up guard duty, Harlan, his boy, me, and Lily. I’d given her the rifle I’d taken from the young bandit. Harlan had raised his eyebrows when I did that, but he hadn’t said anything. We stood watch in four hour shifts, two of us watching at all times. The boy was using a thirty ought six; Harlan had a semi-automatic rifle. Everyone else huddled in the basement.

If they’d left the horse behind, we might not have seen them until they were on top of the house. But the horse stood out from way in the distance. We had time to position ourselves behind broken bits of stone fence in the yard. As they got closer, we could make out six or seven people.

I heard a sudden barrage of gunfire. Harlan was shooting. The horseman fell to the ground. The horse began running toward the house, then veered to the right. The bandits dropped to the ground and fired toward Harlan. They didn’t have heavy firepower; the wall protected him. We held our fire until they stood up and moved in closer. Then Lily winged one guy and I brought down another. The boy fired a few shots and Harlan laid down another several rounds. The attackers hit the dirt again. But then one jumped up and raced towards us, screaming like a berserker. His rifle had a bayonet on the end.

We all shot at the same time. He fell with a dozen rounds in him. Wasteful. The rest of the attackers turned and ran. Harlan stood and pointed his gun at the last of them.

“He’s out of range,” I yelled. No point in wasting any more ammunition.

“So he is.” Harlan lowered the gun and rotated his neck to get the cricks out.

I could hear it pop. I stretched my arms behind my head, trying to release the tension in my shoulders. Harlan and I walked out to look at the bodies. I picked up the rifle with the bayonet and cracked open the magazine. “He was out of ammo,” I said.

The faces of the dead were all covered with tattoos. Only the horseman had a decent stock of ammo left. He must have been the leader. We’d killed four. We took their weapons, then piled them together and covered them with snow.

“There’s an old garbage ditch way out in the south pasture,” Harlan told me. “We can drag the bodies out to it. Maybe we can catch the horse and use it to drag them.”

I nodded. I wondered what else was in the ditch. I didn’t think I wanted to know.

“Don’t imagine the rest will be back anytime soon,” Harlan said.

“Probably not,” I said.

“Hell, we put a good scare into ‘em.” He started back into the house, then turned toward me. “You did a good job out there, fighting those bastards off.”

“You, too,” I said.

“You got some training somewhere.”

I shrugged. “Here and there. Whenever I got a chance.”

“Yeah. Me, too. That girl of yours ain’t half bad, either. For a kid.”

I nodded. I waited until he started for the house again, and then said, “The others ought to know more. We might get more bandits next time; we could use some help.”

He made a face. “They ain’t tough like you. They expect someone to take care of them.”

“I didn’t start out tough. They can learn. Being taken care of is a luxury no one can afford these days.”

He walked over to me, and stood maybe a foot away, looking straight into my eyes. “I take care of ‘em,” he said. Not loud. Not like he wanted to start a fight. He was just stating a fact. “My kids and my women. I take care of ‘em.”

“Yeah, you do,” I said, and let the subject drop.

***

Greta, Brenda and the third pregnant woman took care of household chores and kept an eye on the kids. I didn’t see much of them and when I did, they mostly ignored me. But I got on well with the other two, Josefina and Marti. The three of us did most of the outdoor chores and the heavy work. They were both older than the other three, though younger than me. Josefina was settling into the roundness of middle age and she took a maternal attitude with everyone — she’d been with Harlan the longest. Marti was tall and skinny, and sharp-tongued whenever Harlan wasn’t around. You could tell that in better times she wouldn’t have been caught dead living the rural life.

One day when I was feeding livestock with the two of them, Josefina said, “You got to do something about that girl of yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“The way she’s hassling the boy. She’s been going after him, letting him know that he ain’t tough enough to do anything with her.”

“Oh, shit. I’ll talk to her again. Though I’m not sure I can get her to listen.”

Marti said, “Yeah, they don’t listen too good at that age. And the boy, now, he’s mostly thinking with his prick. Plus Harlan picks on him, calls him a pussy.”

“Damn him to hell. Can’t he leave well enough alone?”

“He figures he’s got to make the boy tough,” Josefina said.

Marti said, “Yeah, and he wants to be sure you and that girl know your place here. You live on Harlan’s place, you got to do things his way.” She didn’t quite sneer.

“Why do you all put up with it?”

Josefina shrugged. “I got no place else to go. And I’ve lived worse places. Some ‘steads you know, the men just pass you around. Here it’s just Harlan, and he don’t bother me much anymore, not since the younger ones come.”

“Plus we always eat,” Marti said. “You can’t say that about everywhere these days.”

When I got back to the main house, I found Lily in the common room practicing basic fighting moves. Over in the hallway, the boy was watching her. Her black hair was coming loose from the tight braid she’d put it in to practice. Sweat dripped down her face, and soaked her tee-shirt. It wasn’t hard to guess the boy was watching more than her technique.

“Lily, I need to talk with you.”

“Sure. Just let me finish. . .”

“Now.”

She came within a breath of arguing, but then she looked at me and decided it was a bad idea. “Sure.” She followed me back to our room.

“You’ve got to leave that boy alone,” I said.

“I haven’t done anything to him.”

“I hear you’ve been insulting him, reminding him that you beat him, making sure he knows he can’t have you.”

“Well, he can’t. He likes to think he’s a tough guy, but he’s not. So what if I let him know I know it?”

“Damn it. You’re hurting his pride and that always goads people into doing stupid things. Plus you’re the only girl around here, and his hormones are working. And his father is egging him on. You can’t keep putting pressure on him.”

“I can handle him.”

“I’m not worried about your handling him, God damn it. I know you can handle him. I’m worried about what Harlan will do. I’m worried about the trouble that will grow out of any more fights. We don’t need trouble, child. We just need some peace until we can move on.”

“You want me to hide from him?” She sounded incredulous.

“If that’s what it takes for you to leave him alone.”

“I can’t let him think I’m scared of him.” And now her tone was defiant.

No, of course not. Not at her age. At her age you wanted to throw things in people’s faces. And her hormones were starting to work, too. That leads to trouble when you don’t have any outlets. She didn’t want Harlan’s punk, but I knew there’d been at least one boy back at Willow Creek that she’d. . .well, I didn’t think they’d gotten around to sex but they would have, sooner or later.

“You can do whatever you have to do to avoid trouble,” I said in my best no-nonsense voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. But she didn’t meet my eyes.

I didn’t think I’d made a lasting impression.

The snow melted away and we went through another warm spell. Once again we put the animals back out to pasture to conserve feed. I was out rounding up some goats that had crawled through a hole in the fence the day all hell broke loose.

I found out later that the boy had come after Lily with a large stick. She’d been in the front yard when he had jumped out from hiding and swung the stick toward the side of her head. Her training held. She’d jumped toward him, inside the arc of the stick, struck him in the face, then grabbed his arm. In a split second she’d thrown him to the ground and wrenched the stick from his hand.

He’d leapt back up, but now she had the stick and went straight for him. He jumped back the first time she struck, and the stick just missed him. He wasn’t far enough back the second time. He stuck up an arm in a last-minute block and Lily crashed the stick right through it. Josefina said you could hear the bone break.

I’d run full tilt back to the house when I heard the yelling and screaming. But Harlan got there before me. He put one arm around Lily’s throat and wrenched her free arm up behind her. “I’ll show you what happens to bitches like you,” he said.

By then I was there. I moved in front of him. “Let her go.” I kept my voice quiet, calm.

“She’s got to learn how we do things here.”

“Let her go.” I kept my arms at my sides.

“You got to learn, too, you want to stay.”

“Then let her go and show me.” I hadn’t raised my voice.

Lily chose that moment to bite his arm. He yelled and loosened his grip slightly. She moved her hips to try to get away. He struck her on the side of the head, and tossed her aside.

I saw her fall out of the corner of my eye. There was no time to do more than that. Harlan charged me head on, grabbing for my shoulders, counting on his size to barrel me over. I moved inside at the last minute and threw him in the direction he was going. He fell heavily, but bounced right back up. He circled me then, warily, looking for an opening. I waited. I was giving away maybe 100 pounds; better to let him attack and use his weight against him.

He feinted a kick toward me. I stood my ground; he was out of range. Then he suddenly spun to kick me again. I came in as he did, grabbed the leg, and threw him. His head grazed the ground, but he went over without breaking his neck and landed on his back.

I moved in quick to take advantage of him being down, but he grabbed my foot as I tried to kick his head, and dropped me to the ground. I twisted slightly to take the impact with my left side, kicked my foot free, and backrolled up, but he got to his feet ahead of me, and now he held a knife.

My own knife was in my belt, but I didn’t have time to go for it before he came at me, dagger held low. I waited. You have to go in against a blade — backing up just puts you in a corner — but you have to move at exactly the right time. Too early or too late gets you killed. At the last possible moment, I stepped inside, blocking his knife hand with my left hand and striking his throat with my right. He gurgled, and I moved toward the knife hand, immobilizing it in both of mine. I went under his arm and twisted his wrist back toward him, until he screamed and dropped the knife.

I threw him again, launching him forward, and drew my own knife as he fell. I kept the blade low and to my side. He rolled to his feet — though he got up heavier this time — and leapt for me in the same all out rush he’d tried the first time.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. He must not have realized that I now held a knife. All I needed to do was hold it in front of me and he’d impale himself. Just as he reached for my shoulders, he glanced down at my knife hand and his eyes got wide. But he couldn’t stop. I suddenly reversed my grip on the knife and slammed it hilt-first into his solar plexus. He collapsed forward and I brought my knee straight up into his chin with every ounce of power I could muster. He hit the ground hard and didn’t move.

I stood there, panting. The boy was getting to his feet, his face contorted with pain. Lily still lay on the ground. I kept an eye on the boy and Harlan as I went to help her. She started to stir as I knelt down. “Lie still, child,” I said. “Catch your breath.”

Greta threw herself down on top of Harlan. “You didn’t have to kill him,” she screamed at me.

Brenda didn’t join her. She stood with the other women. They were all watching me, waiting to see what I’d do next. Loyalties seemed to have shifted.

Harlan groaned. “He ain’t dead yet,” Marti said.

The boy looked at me with hate in his eyes. His arm was hanging at an angle. Josefina gave me a pleading look. I realized with a start that she must be his mother. “Go fix up his arm, Josefina.” She nodded, moved toward him. He let her take his good arm and lead him into the house.

Lily sat up, still shaky. I hoped she hadn’t suffered a concussion. “Did you kill him?” Maybe she hadn’t heard Marti. Maybe she didn’t believe her.

I looked over at Harlan. Greta was helping him sit up. I could hear him wheezing. “He’ll live.”

Harlan shook the woman off and got to his knees. I stood up and took a couple of steps toward him, just to be ready. He bent one knee and used one hand to push himself up off the ground. He faltered, then managed to make it to his feet. Slowly he raised his head, met my eyes, and nodded once. Then he turned and started toward the house. Greta followed him.

“You should have killed him,” Marti said. The bitterness in her tone startled me. I hadn’t realized how much she hated him. But then, I hadn’t realized that Greta loved him.

I shrugged and helped Lily stand up. From the look she gave me, I suspected she agreed with Marti.

“Go clean yourself up,” I told the girl. She went.

“It’s your place now,” Marti said. “You took it from him. You know that, right?”

I nodded. I hadn’t set out to take the property, but that’s what beating Harlan meant.

“You gotta take care of things,” she said. “Of us.”

I wanted to say, “you got to take care of yourselves,” but it wasn’t the time. Not yet. “I know.”

“You should have killed him,” she said again and walked off. The other two women followed her.

I went over to the well, splashed some water on my face, and took a drink, then went into the kitchen. Brenda was in there, chopping up turnips for dinner. I rummaged in the pantry for the wine they’d made from last summer’s berries. I turned around and Brenda was there with a wineglass. She took the bottle from me and poured me some. I sipped at it. Sweet, but with a definite kick. I picked up the bottle and moved toward the dish drainer to fish out another glass. Brenda said, “Not one of those” and brought me another wineglass from the cabinet. I said, “Thanks,” picked up both glasses and the bottle and went to find Harlan.

He was stretched out on his bed, a wet towel on his head. Greta was sitting beside him. She glared at me when I came in.

Harlan said, “You scoot now, honey. Me and Isabel got to talk.”

I thought she was going to argue the point, but I guess she was too used to doing what she was told. She stalked out.

I filled the second glass with wine, handed it to him. He sat up, took a small sip, coughed, said, “Thanks.”

I leaned up against the wall.

“Okay with you if I wait ‘til morning to leave? I’ll take the boy.”

I took that as a concession speech. “His arm’s broken.”

Harlan shrugged. “I been through worse than that and no old man to help me. He’ll do okay. But I can’t take Greta. She’s gonna drop that kid any day now. She needs a roof over her head. You’ll let her stay, won’t you? She’s got a temper, but she’ll do things your way you backhand her a few times.”

“Sure,” I said. I remembered him saying “I take care of my women and my kids.” I guess he figured I’d take care of the ones who’d deserted him without him asking.

He drank a big slug of the wine. “Gonna miss this wine. You know, something told me you was trouble when you first showed up. But we needed the help. If you’d been a man I’d a turned you away. Or shot you.”

I nodded.

“I knew you was trouble. But I figured, how much trouble could a woman be?” He laughed. “I took this place from Josefina’s man. Did you know that?”

I shook my head.

“Killed him, of course.” He paused, drank a little more wine. “How come you didn’t kill me?”

I shrugged. I didn’t have an answer. All I knew was that when he was coming at me something told me “you don’t have to kill him.” I’ve learned to listen to that something when it talks. So far it’s always been right.

“You don’t have to leave,” I said instead of answering the question.

He snorted. “You’ll let me stay on your place?” He emphasized “your.”

“We could use you if more bandits come around.”

“Ain’t you afraid I might kill you in your sleep?”

I shrugged again. Not that it hadn’t occurred to me he might stab me in the back. But if I was going to kick him out in the middle of winter, I might as well have driven the knife through his heart. “Of course, there’ll have to be some changes around here.”

“It’s your place.” Sarcasm.

“None of ‘em have to fuck you anymore. They want to, that’s fine, but it’s up to them.”

He shrugged.

“Everybody learns to fire a gun and to fight.”

He nodded. “What else?”

“That’s about it.”

“Except you’re in charge.” He gave me a lopsided grin and I caught a touch of defiance in his voice.

I looked straight at him. “Yeah, I’m in charge.”

“And if I don’t like things your way?”

“Door’s always open,” I said. I let my right hand rest on the hilt of my knife.

He looked at my hand and then met my eyes. “Let’s see how it goes.”

Brenda came to me that first night and offered herself. I was tempted. It’s been a long time since anyone shared my bed and I learned long ago to take sex where I found it. Man, woman — it doesn’t really matter. But given that she’d hardly said two words to me before I ended up running things, I figured she was motivated by something more basic than love or lust or even the desire for an hour’s pleasure: she wanted to make sure she was in good with the one who held the power. The whole idea turned my stomach.

I don’t think she understood why I turned her down.

The others showed their shift of allegiance in less dramatic fashion. Except for Greta, who still looked daggers at me whenever I walked by, they asked my advice and did what I told them to. Brenda figured out pretty fast that I didn’t like being waited on hand and foot, but I still got the lion’s share of food. I took to leaving a little so that the pregnant women could finish it off when they cleared the table. You can’t change people’s habits overnight.

Only Marti confronted me about Harlan. “First you don’t kill him. Then you don’t even kick him out. I don’t understand you, Isabel.”

“We need him. One fighter can’t protect this place.” Josefina had fed me bits of history: Harlan hadn’t held the ‘stead by himself all those years. Other men had shown up and worked for a while before they’d tried a challenge and ended up dead.

“What if he attacks you again and kills you this time? Where will that leave us?”

I was tired of hearing how I had to keep her safe. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

Her eyes widened and she moved back a couple of steps. “I can’t fight, Isabel. You know that.”

“Yeah, you can’t fight because you chose to fuck to survive. I chose to kill instead. I tell you what: I won’t tell you who to fuck and you don’t tell me who to kill.”

Marti looked down at the floor and edged away from me. “Sure.” At dinner that night she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Damn it. I hadn’t realized I could intimidate her that easily. But even Marti was used to kowtowing to power.

Surprisingly, Lily never said a word to me about Harlan. She didn’t hassle the boy any more, either — though that might have been because he stayed holed up, letting his arm mend. Broken bones hurt like hell. The girl avoided Harlan, but otherwise she moved around with a spring in her step and a whistle on her lips. She started to teach the little kids their ABCs — and how to fight.

One night as we were getting ready for bed she came and hugged me. “I’m glad you took over. Thing’s are better, with you in charge.”

Easy for her to say. She’s not the one lying awake at night, trying to figure out how to keep everyone safe and fed. Harlan might decide to kill me. Even if he doesn’t, someone else is bound to come along. I’m not even sure the rest of the women think it’s better having me in charge than Harlan. They seemed to be eager to learn how to handle weapons when I gave them a rudimentary introduction to loading guns the other night, but could be they’re just trying to keep me in good temper.

But in the modern world, our current life passes for peace. I’ll take it for as long as it lasts.

Copyright © 2008 by Nancy Jane Moore

This story originally appeared in 2008 in PS Showcase No. 2: Conscientious Inconsistencies from British publisher PS Publishing. This is the story’s first publication in North America.