A Gift Upon the Shore by M.K. Wren Page B

the walls. The air was chill and sterile.
    Rachel went directly to a cabinet by the door, and it was then that Mary realized that all this had been rehearsed in a sense. Rachel had been
told
what she must do in case . . .
    Mary couldn’t hold on to that train of thought. Rachel opened the cabinet. A gun rack. Two rifles, a shotgun, three handguns. Two slots were empty. She thrust a rifle into Mary’s hands. It was heavier than she expected, black metal, polished wood, the lens of the telescopic sight all gleaming with exquisite menace. In front of the trigger guard was mounted a flat, curved magazine, its steel dull and gray.
    Rachel’s voice was as dull and gray as the steel. “It’s semiautomatic. That’s the safety there. You have thirty cartridges in the clip.”
    Mary nodded, accepting those terse instructions as if this weren’t the first time she’d handled such a weapon. Yet its lethal potential didn’t take shape in her mind. She saw Rachel pull another rifle out of the cabinet, put the sling over her head, and shift the gun so that it angled across her back. Mary followed her example.
    Then together they set to work.
    Rachel and Mary became looters—purposeful, conscienceless, and guiltless—programmed by imperatives Mary still didn’t understand.
    We’ll need these things
.
    Perhaps Rachel actually put it into words. Mary was sure she didn’t add:
to survive
.
    Through the summer afternoon under a blue sky dappled with opaline mackerel clouds, they looted the shelter and house, loaded the van time and again, drove to Amarna, emptied their plunder into the garage, then returned for more. They didn’t touch the bodies except to cover them with sheets. And Rachel didn’t shed a tear, didn’t speak an unnecessary word. She moved, as she always did, at a deliberate pace, but she didn’t once stop moving. Her eyes remained lifeless, and sometimes Mary was convinced she’d been struck blind by shock. Yet it was obvious that her eyes did at least register the images necessary to her. Her whole body seemed to function on that basic level. No doubt her heart still beat. She still breathed. Mary could see that: shallow breaths through parted lips.
    Food, clothing, linens, tools, paper, books—all the books—anything the Rovers hadn’t destroyed went into the van, then into the garage at Amarna. Mary didn’t look at any of it, refused to recognize it as touching the lives of two people she had called friends. Only one thing briefly commanded her attention: the engraved handcuffs Jim was awarded when he retired as chief of the Shiloh Veepies.
    And finally, when the last load had been piled into the van, Rachel climbed into the driver’s seat and asked, “What happened to Sparky?” But she didn’t seem to expect or want an answer to that question. Eyes fixed ahead, she drove away from the Acres house for the last time.
    When they reached the gate at Amarna, Mary got out to open it, then after Rachel drove through, she pushed it shut. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the chain and lock. Pulling up the drawbridge, letting down the portcullis. She should call Harry Berden. Not that Harry could do anything. The cavalry was under siege, too, and the captain had lost a third of his troops two nights ago in the battle of the mall. But he could send someone to decently dispose of the bodies.
    She turned away from the gate, looked up, seeking the sun, then looked down to the glow behind the wall of clouds in the west. Her watch blinked the time: 8:14. She got into the van, tried—and failed—to think of something to say to break Rachel’s terrible silence.
    Rachel stopped the van in front of the garage, but all she said was, “We’d better move some of the stuff so we can get the van inside.”
    Shadow and Topaz came to greet them, but they were subdued, panting despite the evening chill. Rachel and Mary