Chapter 22: THE MOTHER SIEGE: A DYSTOPIAN THRILLER

                                    

                                              
Copyright (c) 2014 Phyllis Zimbler Miller
                          
 All rights reserved.
                          
            Julie followed her sister and brother to the bow-and-arrow storage area.  This time, she knew, she would have to aim directly at other human beings – soldiers who would be advancing up the slope below the siege site. 

                          
            Her grandmother had concocted another mixture for this stage – a flammable substance that, when it even touched the surface of the soldiers’ body armor, began a burrowing into the armor while burning the armor and the underlying skin.  This stuff could kill the soldiers, trapping the burning substance against their skin under the layers of their armor.
                          
            Julie turned when she felt a hand on her arm.  “Julie,” Harold – her father – said.  “Your mother tells me that in Judaism there is the notion of pikuach nefesh, saving a life.  That the rabbis long ago established what actions you could do when your own life or someone else’s life is threatened.  And, as your mother explained it, almost all Jewish laws can be broken in order to do this.”
                          
            Julie looked up at this man, her own father.  She had something no other children her age had – except her brother and sister.
                          
            Her actions could save her own life and his as well as her mother, her brother, her sister, her grandmother and the others with her.
                          
            The Provisional Government was wrong to take away these family relationships.  She would shoot to kill to save the people here with her today.
                          
***
                          
            Natalie arranged the fire brigade leading from the cauldron of oil boiling over an open fire in a direct line to the barrier constructed for this siege defense.  While they had built no fires until their site was discovered, once discovered a fire could no longer give away their position.
                          
            As Natalie lined up the others, she shook her head at the ironic situation.  In the early years of the United States, fire brigades were used to pass along buckets of water to douse flames.  Now Natalie and her group were going back further in history, to the days when bucket brigades doused the heads of invaders with boiling oil.
                          
            Her mother had constructed several chute holes cut into the rock barrier they had built.  The holes were directly above the only easy climb toward the siege site.
                          
            Now Graciela shouted the warning signal, and the fire brigade line snapped into action, the adults and older children passing the buckets while the younger children positioned themselves near the barrier and ferried the empty buckets back to the oil station.
                          
            It had taken some ingenuity on everyone’s part to figure out how to create lightweight fireproof coverings for faces, hands, and bodies for those people carrying the siege fire.  Thanks to Natalie’s mother’s recommendation, they had brought with them bolts of fireproof material that they had fashioned into protective fire garb.
                          
            Even if the soldiers were wearing their own protective fire garb, having boiling oil poured down on them would be disconcerting.  And then there were the fire arrows shot by Julie and Jessica.
                          
            Thirty minutes later they had repelled this new attack!  The flammable arrows and boiling oil had gotten the attacking soldiers to back down, perhaps before any had been actually killed.
                          
          Harold caught Natalie up in his arms and kissed her so hard he almost pushed her over.  Their fireproof clothing rubbed against the other’s garb.
                          
            When Natalie pulled away for breath, he kissed her again.
                          
            Finally he let her breathe.
                          
            “Harold!” was all she could say.
                          
            He grabbed both her hands as she surveyed the people in their group.  Everyone was alive, although she knew that Harold had treated Jonah’s left wrist for accidentally coming in contact with the substance in which he had been dipping the flammable arrows.
                          
            Julie brought over a canteen of water, pressing it into Harold’s side so that he dropped one of Natalie’s hands to grasp the canteen and pour water down Natalie’s threat and then his own throat.
                          
            “Thanks, Dad,” she said.  “It helped what you told me.”
                          
            Natalie watched Julie skip off after being rewarded with a smile from Harold.
                          
            “She called you Dad,” Natalie said.
                          
            Harold squeezed Natalie’s hand.  “Who knew that something good could be forged from this drastic situation?”
                          
            Natalie looked down at the scuffed ground below their feet, then up at Harold, who still held her hand.
                          
            “Could you give me some of those derivative morning-after pills?”
                          
            “Whatever for?”
                          
            “I want to give them to Jonah in case he has sex with Isidora.”
                          
            Harold looked into her eyes.  “Why would he need birth control measures?”
                          
            Natalie glanced off to one side where Jonah sat with his arm around Isidora.  Then she looked back at Harold.  “Because I prevented him from being sterilized at birth.”
                          
            “You what?”
                          
            Natalie pulled her hand out of his.  “You had me use your sperm for conception without telling me because you wanted the right to have your own children.  Why shouldn’t I have given my son the same option?”
                          
            Harold pulled her close to his chest, and for the first time in weeks she allowed herself to cry.  She hadn’t asked to be born into such a screwed up world, but she was determined to give her children the best possible chance for having what used to be considered a normal life.
                          
            Surely Harold understood that.
                          
***
            William threw a shoe at the nearest screen on the computer wall in his bedroom.  “Get out!” he shouted to the woman lying amid tousled satin bed sheets. 
                          
            As she scrambled for her robe, he heaved another shoe after her.  In his rage he missed hitting her.
                          
            Gregor rushed into the room, summoned via implant.
                          
            “Arrange for my departure within the hour,” William said.  “I want to be onsite to direct the military operation myself.  How could a small group of women and children hold off my soldiers?  The commander should be shot!”
                          
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If you enjoy reading about the historical past as well as the imaginative future, see my cold war memoir TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY here on Wattpad at http://budurl.com/TAonWattpad