“Kasper, you hungry?”

Mahina gives Brock a disappointed scowl, then climbs down the stage stairs and stalks toward the church.

Brock hops offstage, sticks the landing. Hears his canvas slip-ons hit the gravel, then the metallic clicks and clacks of safeties going off and rounds being chambered. His scalp tingles and he notes the exact location of his gun, and he feels that cool surge of adrenaline that he gets taking off on a big wave, a surge that washes his vision clear and makes him feel strong enough to fly.

Aamon stares at him silently. Looks like he’s expecting Brock to leap ten feet and punch him again. He turns to his fighters on either side. Some nod, others shake their heads.

“Gentlemen,” says Brock. “Please be seated. I’ll be right back.”

He hustles into the chapel and the door clunks shut.

Two minutes later he’s back, with a heaping plate of food in each hand. He offers a plate to Kasper, who looks at him, then to his fighters, knowing he’ll have to take one hand off the flamethrower to accept it.

Which he does. Standing there with a flamethrower in one hand and a plate of turkey in the other, Kasper looks like a grizzly confounded by a bear-proof dumpster. He’s just not sure what to do. So he cautiously sets the plate on the nearest table and takes a full grip on the flamethrower handle again.

Mahina comes from the church, big plates of food on one arm, and her pistol-grip shotgun slung over one shoulder. Gives Brock a look that assures him she’s doing this for him, against her better judgment. Thus the shotgun. In her loose hibiscus-print muumuu she looks to Brock—not for the first time—like some island goddess of war.

She’s a genius, Brock thinks. A scary genius.

Next Casey comes from the chapel with two big doubled-up paper plates of chow in each hand, and two more balanced on one forearm, his years of serving food in the Barrel coming in handy here.

Holds out an offering to one of the Right Fighters, a stout woman in a Right Fight trucker’s hat and a blond ponytail coming through the back.

She rests her carbine over one shoulder, then Casey places a platter in her right hand.

“Have a seat,” says Casey.

“I’ll stand.”

“Cool, totally.”

Casey gets two refusals, then one more taker who holsters his pistol to take a plate.

Bette gets one taker, offers her second plate to another Right Fighter.

“Who’s the China girl?” Aamon asks Brock.

“A friend of my brother’s,” he says, noting the calm resentment on Bette’s face.

“Hmpf. Covid and communism.”

Casey looks Aamon’s way as he passes off another Thanksgiving plate. This time to a heavyset man with short red curls sprouting from under his trucker’s hat.

“Much obliged,” he says.

“Aloha.”

Jen and Juana come out next, each with one hand on a rope-handled plastic tub of sports drinks and sodas. Heft it onto a table with a rattle of ice cubes.

The Stonebreakers carry water.

The Byrnes bring beer.

Aamon tries to sit but the backpack flamethrower won’t let him. He straightens and shrugs off the backpack, carries it and the gun to the wall of the church, and props them under the awning.

Hefting himself into his wobbly folding chair, he gives Brock a look.

“I’ve broken bread with demons before,” he says. “Helps me measure what I’m up against.”

He glances at his plate, then looks again at Brock. “Just now getting to where I can chew regular.”

44

Brock goes to the church wall, draws his sidearm from beneath his Hawaiian shirt, and sets it near the flamethrower.

Comes back and sits across from Kasper Aamon, leaning back and crossing his arms.

No words between Brock and Kasper as they watch the Go Dogs and the Right Fighters crunch off and lean their long guns against the wall. Carefully set their holstered handguns on the ground. Go Dogs guns on one side of the flamethrower; Right Fight’s on the other.

They return to their tables and sit.

Time passes in a muted, near silence. Eyes watch them from the thick manzanita. Children’s laughter comes through the open windows of the chapel. The Kupchiks and their son bring plates of food to one of the far tables. They wave. Brock notes how much better the boy looks, his respiratory infection handled pro bono by an Anza Valley doctor. They’ve decided to stay awhile rather than head off to Tulsa.

Brock sees that some of the Breath of Life parishioners have crept back from their trailers; some of the earlier guests have left their cars and reappeared for the Thanksgiving feast.

Brock spots two drones easing in low from the north—Riverside Sheriffs is his guess, sent in response to the 911 calls no doubt called in by his frightened congregation.

Kasper Aamon takes a long look at them, too, then turns to Brock.

“So your brother won the surfing contest,” he says, trying to saw off a bite of white meat with the tiny plastic knife. Which snaps in half. Kasper leans left a little, almost tipping over his chair, then deploys a big hunting knife to cut the turkey. “I watched on ESPN 3. Drank beer through a straw.”

“Mom won best wipeout. That’s her down at the end.”

Aamon calls to Jen: “I saw your wipeout! You’re weird people to do stuff like that just for fun!”

Jen lifts an energy drink to him. “It’s in our blood!”

Another wordless pause, suddenly broken by the rough clatter of two helicopters descending from the south. Brock sees the green-and-white of Border Patrol, and the black-and-white of the sheriffs.

The drones close in, buzzing like big mosquitoes.

Then Kasper to Brock: “What it comes down to is, we don’t have much to say to each other. We have different beliefs, different convictions.”

“Yeah, well, people can change, too.”

“Don’t give me some shit about agreeing to disagree. We believe in different gods, too. And that’s where I draw the line.”

Brock nods. “Try this: the only god I believe in is the Breath of Life.”