“Maybe Max’s friends, Señor King and his family, are home,” Miguel beckoned his wife, as he advanced quickly to the house next door. Maria seemed unwilling to step out of the shadows and into the baking sunlight once more, but reluctantly followed.
It only took one knock this time and Bill King opened up, with a welcoming grin and handshake as if Miguel and his family were old friends. They had met once when Max had him help him work on both their homes. They shared the same friendship with Max, and many of the same secrets.
“Max told us that you might come by. Come on in and let me get all of you some water to drink. You look hot,” Bill said.
“Where is Max? He no home.” Miguel frowned and wiped his forearm across his brow.
“The Ochoa drug gang has him,” Lisa responded from the kitchen. “I’m Lisa. Our daughter Sally is next door at Max’s house, but we told her to not answer the door. Please come in, take off your hot jackets, and introduce me to your baby.” Lisa came out wiping her hands on a towel, smiling warmly to them, taking much joy in offering comfort to Max’s friends.
22.
New Friends and Enemies
Melanie led a dozen men and women down Grand Avenue two blocks east of the Union Pacific railroad tracks in the old town center, or what its residents now referred to as Fort Laramie.
By any measure, Fort Laramie was an amazing creation: forty city blocks walled off from the rest of Laramie by up-ended cars and a wood scaffolding walkway on top, running the entire perimeter of the wall’s squared shape. The walls were bounded by and ran parallel to the railroad tracks on the west, the University of Wyoming campus on the east, North Clark Avenue on the north, and Custer Street on the south. This area’s college-based population was at its lowest level this time of year; the university kids were on summer break and the owners and employees of its symbiotic businesses were on vacation until the fall. That left four hundred and six close-knit residents in their walled community, many of whom had known each other their whole lives.
Fort Laramie had been Melanie and Carrington’s home for the last twenty-two days, where they lived together under the same roof and perpetuated the little white lie of being husband and wife. It started as a slip of her tongue, when one of the town’s young men made a pass, but from there it just grew. Pretty soon her hometown of Laramie, where she’d lived through high school, bought into her story. It felt safe and with what she had been through, the last thing she needed was unwanted advances from the single men, whose chances of finding any unencumbered woman in this sealed-up town were dwindling with each day. After she told him her reasons, Carrington played along completely, as she suspected he would.
Their relationship however, was no mere contrivance; they felt an instant connection, born out of mutual respect. Maybe it was his older age, or his chivalry, which he somehow demonstrated without being sexist, or simply that they were both scientists. Regardless, she felt safe with him. Their (admittedly phony) marital status and their work for the town earned them a private room, off a workshop—what was once a waterbed store, so they could work together in the day, and sleep together at night. The bedroom only had one bed, but Carrington had been a gentleman and insisted on sleeping on the floor.
Their affection for each other grew as they spent many hours working together. After a few days, it no longer felt to either as if they were perpetuating a ruse. To everyone around them they appeared to be a happy couple, because they were. Had their civilized world not ended, Carrington and Melanie would have explored their romance further. However, the passion they focused on at present was the town’s ability to defend itself. Every waking hour was devoted to it.
The idea for this project had germinated in Carrington’s head for years, and especially over the many miles he traveled before reaching Laramie. He conceived a tangible design when he pedaled, near death, over the Highway 130 bridge and saw the railroad tracks below. The image was one of the last things pasted into his consciousness before he passed out from gastrointestinal illness and exhaustion. When he shared his idea with Melanie and the town, everyone was excited about making it work, believing it might be the town’s only salvation from the threats building outside its walls. The town council, led by the town manager, Bob Smucker, assigned them almost thirty men and women from the wall detail and supply teams to help them put it into place.
“Watch out, don’t get too close to that track, you know the jolt could be deadly,” Melanie called out to her group as they hauled the single steel rail through the town, each desperately trying to hold onto the rail-tongs. They were trudging much too close to the connected single rail-spur, which snaked from the existing tracks down Grand, the main road down the center of town, to one of the rail-lines. Melanie had quipped that from above, it must have looked like some errant eyebrow hair that needed to be plucked.
When they reached their destination, they dropped their rail with a thunderous thud near the end of the one-sided spur. Except for Melanie, they all collapsed in a heap where they stood, lungs frantically trying to take in air, already punished by the town’s high altitude.
“Great job, take five,” Melanie ordered, barely out of breath. She turned her attention to another group of eight, lumbering toward them from a different direction, with less difficulty. Their cargo was a large rectangular metal plate, and their job was made easier by a dolly system Tex had rigged up. The plate was formerly used to temporarily cover holes in a roadway. This would be laid lengthwise, end-to-end to the others, connected to one another by metal shims. “It’s perfect right there,” she said. They flopped the heavy rectangle into place at the end of the runway that ran down the middle of Grand Ave, away from the spur. The spur and runway of plates were now only a few feet away from one another. Two more lengths of rail and they’d be done. Perfect, she thought. “You guys take five as well,” she said as she headed back to the workshop. “I’m going to go check in on my husband.” She smiled as she said it, enjoying the ease with which the word fell from her lips, even if it wasn’t really true. Yet.
Carrington was standing over a model of the town in their workshop, describing how his defense plan would be orchestrated and what still needed to be done to an audience of Tex, the sheriff, Bob Smucker, and a guy everyone called Frank, who had been in the military at one time and ran the lookouts around town. Frank wore fatigues and a gun belt holding his Beretta and his lucky hand grenade, which made them all nervous.
“Once we have the Executioner up and running, we can focus on other concerns, but until then, I think you’re going to want to put more people on that wall,” said Carrington.
“How much longer until ya think it’ll be done?” asked Tex.
“It depends on Mel… Here she is now. What’s our ETA on the rails and plates?” He beamed now that she was here.
“We’ll be done by tomorrow at the latest,” she answered, grinning back.
Tex couldn’t help but notice, and he found himself smiling too.
“That’s great,” said Smucker. “Once that’s functional, we can put more on the supply detail. The pickings have been very thin lately and so we’re going to have to extend our search out farther.”
“What are your supplies like now?” Carrington asked.