This evening, trouble came right around dusk. The worst time, with the light fading. Her first hint came as movement on the horizon. Could have been anything, so she waited for the movement to resolve into shapes, or fade into nothing. Shadows appearing in wavering heat lines in the distance could be deceptive. She brought binoculars to her eyes, spent a moment focusing with one hand, the other clenched on the shotgun.
The shadows gained definition. Not a mirage, not deer or something else wandering in the distance. Now that she saw them, she heard the noise, a rumbling sound that was becoming rare. Gas-powered engines, beating against the air. Three cars, a couple of motorcycles, more than a dozen people, and those were just the ones she could see from this distance. Who knew how many were hiding inside the vehicles?
The convoy was racing straight for them.
She let the binoculars hang off their strap and cupped a hand to her mouth. “Incoming! Incoming!”
Someone at the clinic heard her and clanged the brass bell hanging off the front overhang.
They didn’t need it very often, but they had a routine for this, when strangers came barreling at the clinic compound in a way that didn’t suggest friendship. Those standing watch at the barricade stayed put, in case the invaders came on multiple fronts. A dozen others, whoever was on hand, grabbed weapons from the locker and came out to where the alarm had sounded.
Kath waited for her backup, shotgun in both hands, watching her targets come into range. The cars bounced and jutted over broken asphalt, while the motorcycles curved and weaved.
“Where the hell are they getting gas from?” Dennis asked. He’d climbed up on the barricade next to Kath.
Maggie was right behind him. “Don’t know, don’t care. What do they want?”
Kath said, “Better get down, in case they come in firing.”
The barricade had places to shelter: inside cabs, on shielded truck beds. All the invaders would see was their shotguns and rifles bristling out.
The caravan stopped at the edge of firing range. If one of the rifles fired at them now, it might or might not hit. A big man, white, wearing a leather jacket and cowboy hat, scrambled out of the driver’s side of one of the cars and marched forward a few paces. He didn’t seem to be armed.
Kath stood tall and shouted at him across the barrel of her shotgun. “Stop! Stop and show your hands!”
The man’s thick beard worked, as if he was biting his lip under it. He raised his hands. “Is this the clinic?” he shouted. “The one people talk about, that has doctors and medicine? Is that you?”
“What do you want!”
He gestured back. “We have wounded! We need help! We can trade for it! We have gas, guns, bullets—”
“Food?”
He paused a moment. “Yes!”
Kath looked at Maggie and Dennis.
“What kind of wounded?” Dennis shouted back. He stayed behind his shelter.
“Gunshot! Two men. God, please, help them!”
It could be a trick. Or the man could be honest. In the end, half the people here were doctors and nurses, and they recognized that kind of desperate plea.
The clinic had a process for this kind of situation, too.
Maggie and Dennis both emerged on top of the barricade, and Maggie called out. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to work. You bring the injured men inside, the vehicles stay out. Just the injured and two people each to carry them, no one else gets in, and you leave all your weapons outside. Got it?”
“Yes, okay, fine!”
And they checked, too. While the caravan pulled their injured out of the backs of the vehicles, Maggie and the clinic folk hauled open the gate, but only a couple of feet, just wide enough for two people to walk through. Two of the clinic’s biggest guys, Jim and Jorge, patted down everybody at the opening, even the injured. But they didn’t have anything, which gave these people an incremental point of trust.
The injured men were being carried chair style, one by two men, one by the man who’d greeted them and a woman. One of the injured seemed to be unconscious, but the other was making the guttural, deep-belly groans of someone moaning through clenched teeth. Every shadow on them looked like stains of blood.
“Okay, get ’em inside!” Maggie, Dennis, and a trail of clinic folk escorted them to the door of the clinic.
Jim stayed at the barrier. “Kath, go with them, stand watch inside, we’ll keep an eye out here.”
An odd quiet had fallen—the vehicles in the convoy had shut off their engines, turned off their headlights; those left behind waited quietly. Evening light had all but gone, so figures moved as shapes in the dark. Shotgun in hand, extra shells jangling in the pocket of her windbreaker, she trotted after the others.
Unlike the quiet at the barricade, inside the clinic was loud and brightly lit. Someone was herding the kids outside, to sleep in tents. Kath spotted Chloë and spared her a smile. She and her siblings looked like they might bolt at the sign of the injured men. Kath hurriedly told her, “It’ll be fine,” and hoped that was enough. Chloë nodded, and might even have been convinced.
Past the waiting room, the first exam room was noisy with shouted orders. Dennis and Melanie had taken the first of the injured men here, the one grunting with fierce pain. Maggie and Anita took the unconscious man to the second exam room. Both doors stayed open and Kath was able to keep an eye on them all. Dennis was shouting orders. Melanie was talking to the first patient in Spanish, telling him to lie back, to breathe, respire, respire, bien, bien. The man started crying, ayudame, ayudame! Help me, help me.
In the second room, Maggie and the gang’s spokesman were talking.
“We can barter,” he was explaining. “We have a whole warehouse, whatever you need. We have food. Just save them. Can you save them?”
The man laid out on the table had a great stain of blood covering his chest. It seemed centered on his right shoulder. A gunshot wound, not necessarily fatal. Likely he was in shock and needed support, fluid and oxygen, while the doctors cleaned the wound. But they’d need to get started on him right away. Anita and one of the nurses had cut away his shirt, inserted an IV and were peeling away cloth that had been stuffed into the wound.
After a deep breath, Maggie seemed to come to a decision. She explained, “We don’t need food as much as we need protection.” She looked him straight in the eye, unwavering. “We help you, you help keep us safe. You get the word out to your people, to anyone else—this is neutral ground. We stay safe, no matter what. No one attacks us, no one hurts us, no one hurts anyone while they’re here. Got it?”
“We protect you. And you help us and no one else. Just us.”
“No. We help everyone or it doesn’t work. We’re not a commodity. We’re here for everyone.”
“Can’t promise that.”
Maggie bit her lip in a moment of thought. Then she put up her hands and stepped back from the table. After glancing at her and each other in a moment of hesitation, Anita and the other nurse stepped from the table, hands up like hers, blood on latex gloves.
The guy and the woman with him started forward, fists raised as if they could beat her into saving the man’s life. Kath stepped in front of him, shotgun raised, warding them off. The standoff persisted for a handful of heartbeats.
The lead thug grinned. “You ever even shot anyone, kid?”