And Mother’s response, their evening prayer. “Then you will have to kill.”
Regret was for people with nothing to defend, people who had no water.
When Lynn was ten years old, Mother had fired up the shortwave radio in one of her sporadic fits of optimism. Whether she had hoped to hear that normalcy had been returned somewhere in the world, or that the cities had begun to loosen their grip on water supplies, Lynn did not know. But the news that came caused Mother to smash the radio, not caring what the outside world had to offer anymore.
Cholera. Mother explained that it had once been the most feared disease in the world, striking people in the morning and killing them by nightfall. It was waterborne, contagious, and deadly. Clean water sources and antibiotics had banished it for decades, but desperate people were now drinking brackish water, and the demand for medicine far outstripped the supply. Now thousands died from a disease that had been laughable a decade before.
With dead bodies dropping all around the countryside, and the water table rising with the spring rains, Mother had decided that the pond water could kill them as easily as save them. Mother’s purification system was a simple strategy she learned from an issue of National Geographic. Sheets of tin roofing from the old red barn were laid out in the yard, the ends weighted with rocks to prevent them from blowing away. Bottle by plastic bottle, all the water collected from the pond rotated out to the tin sheets. They could only purify on clear days, when a full eight hours of summer sun could heat the bottles enough to kill any bacteria in the water.
Even though it had lately been cooler in the evenings, the morning sun pounded on the back of Lynn’s neck as she made the early water run to the pond. It would be a purifying day, for sure, which meant hours of labor. She pushed the lip of her first bucket under the surface of the water, trying not to disturb the muddy bottom. No matter how careful she was, there were always flecks of dirt and algae that settled in the holding tanks. She moved along the bank to a new spot to dip the second bucket.
When it was full, she set both buckets on the muddy bank and raised her arms to show Mother she was ready for the trek to the barn. Sunlight flashed off the barrel as Mother followed her progress, scanning the horizon for the slightest hint of someone watching. Lynn’s upper arms were quivering by the time she covered the hundred feet to the barn doors. She set both buckets down to rest before sliding the massive door open.
The water tanks sat there in the darkness, motes of dust settling onto their long, white bodies. They had once carried chemicals to the fields that were now fallow. Mother said she had rinsed and re-rinsed them, terrified she and Lynn might be poisoned by the very water she was depending on to save them.
As Lynn climbed the ladder to the top of a tank, she remembered Mother’s story, how she had run a hose from the tap and left it running into the tanks right up until the water had been turned off. Lynn knew that her first few sips had been from those tanks of tap water, clear as crystal. But she could not remember. The only water she’d ever known was laced with dirt and tasted slightly of fish. And she was grateful for every drop.
She twisted the plastic cap off the top of the tank and dumped both buckets into it, listening to the tone of the falling water change as the level rose. This tank was the unpurified pond water. The other stood half full of water that had already been rotated out to the tin sheets, and would be drawn off through the winter to fill the smaller thousand-gallon tank that was in the basement, where they lived.
Lynn snapped the cap back on the tank and sat astride it for a moment, weary at the sight of all the work waiting for them. She hadn’t slept well last night, staring at the cinder-block walls of the basement but seeing only the twin spires of smoke in the sky. Mother had not slept at all. Lynn could hear her fingers tapping against the barrel of her gun as she’d finally drifted down to sleep. Yet Mother was on the roof before Lynn was even out of her cot, eyeing the horizon and waiting for a target.
Lynn cut through the long grass of the yard to the rusty antennae on the side of the house, ignoring the thistles that snagged her jeans as she went. She was covered in a thin film of sweat by the time she climbed to the roof. She swiped a few drops out of her eyes and slipped to the shingles beside Mother.
“Warm day.”
“Good for purifying,” Mother said idly, her eye still tight to the scope. Lynn slid her rifle strap off her shoulder, bringing the gun around to see what Mother was seeing.
“No smoke this morning,” she said. “Do you think—”
A persistent buzzing sliced through the air. All her muscles tensed, but years of handling guns prevented Lynn from jolting the trigger. “What is that?”