Julia
The charges were all set and Vulpes and his men were in position. Julia finished up around midnight, which left her an hour to prepare. Her part of the plan was over. She made sure that Vulpes needed her up until the last second, since he so obviously intended to screw her over as soon as he could, possibly literally. Once she proved she was serious he'd started to look at her differently, and she wasn't naive enough to miss the lust buried deep in his dead eyes. She had no illusions about who she was dealing with, and if she didn't still have personal business she'd leave Dry Wells behind and leave the Twisted Hairs to their fate. That would probably be the wiser decision, but she wasn't Vulpes. In her own fucked-up way she cared about the tribe that raised her. If she didn't she wouldn't have bothered to come back from the Dam, and she wouldn't be selling them out to Caesar. When everything was done and her success was all but assured she still had to go back.
Her first order of business was putting clothes on. That was easy. In advance of her plan she stole back her custom leather armor (confiscated by Harpy when he dressed her superficial, self-inflicted sympathy wounds) and secreted it out to the campgrounds during the day. The benefits were two-fold, one it meant she didn't have to go back to Dry Wells until she had everything she needed, and second it meant that when she stripped off her canvas bag of a dress at the campgrounds she did so knowing she'd never have to put the damned thing on ever again, and that definitely helped her get in the mood. The second order of business, once the boys went back to their posts and she slipped into her armor, was to recover her weapons. Before she hurt herself in the path of the Twisted Hair raiders she hid her handcannon revolver with the silver snake grips and the greasegun she could actually shoot without getting thrown to the ground. At the time they seemed easily recoverable, but now that she needed them they might as well have been back at the Dam. Luring the guards to the campgrounds was a matter of precedent (the old picnic tables were long a popular spot for Twisted Hairs to sneak away and conduct affairs, although the practice had fallen out of favor once Julia started participating. Even though the place was used exclusively in betrayal of their marriages, the place was still considered exclusive to 'married' people) but she also chose it as a matter of practicality, as it was north of the village and therefore a little bit closer to her beloved guns. Even still it took her thirty minutes to reach her stash.
She rushed back after she checked the nice watch Vulpes gave her (to sync the assault) and realized how little time she had left. In her hurry she was much less cautious, and already drained of electrolytes, she took one of the tumbles she'd narrowly avoided on her way up. It wasn't as bad as the dead boy's, but it didn't feel good. She lost her over-sized fishing hat in the brush, and she gave her leg a nasty scrape. Although her leg was sore she determined it wasn't broken and continued to limp back to Dry Wells at an advanced clip. The pain from her leg and the desperation to get back before the C4 went off kept her from obsessing any more over the plan. At first she'd been more worried about whether she should just leave, but thinking about that led to reconsidering the C4, and reconsidering her deal with Vulpes, and reconsidering destroying the Twisted Hairs at all. After all, who was she to decide this was the end of the tribe? Sure, there were plenty of things she hated about her people, and she imagined there were plenty of reasons to align with Caesar, but it only occurred to her this late in the plan how she'd decided she was arbiter of their fate, and that maybe she'd given herself too much authority in doing so. The doubts swirled in her brain like the churning eddies of the Colorado, but the pain in her leg drowned them all until all she thought about was getting back to Dry Wells as fast as possible.
Even with her injury she found it easier to return to the village of her birth than to leave it, but she still only barely made it back. The guard that just an hour ago had pulled her hair even though she asked them all not to was asleep at his post. The path she took into town was supposed to be cut off by rubble like all the others but she disconnected the detonator on her way past. She wondered if the guard, when the time came, would be aware and take advantage of his luck, but she doubted it. A little further ahead, but not in town proper, was Dark Mother's hovel. As she passed she whispered, "This is for you."
Inside Dark Mother, tormented by restless dreams, stirred from sleep. She didn't know why, but the feeling of overwhelming dread consumed her, to the point that she had to leave her crude yurt and calm herself in the still night air.
She hugged herself in the breeze from the river and the village exploded. When Dark Mother was a young girl, she'd fallen in the river without knowing how to swim. She was rescued by her older brother, but not before she felt what it was really like to drown. The roar of the water swirling around her head as she struggled for breath was exactly the same sound the C4 made when it detonated, so much so that for a moment she assumed the river had swelled without warning and consumed Dry Wells.
She thrashed around on the ground in fear before she realized she wasn't underwater, that people were screaming and the village was on fire. The guard stationed near her hovel helped her up and then rushed into Dry Wells without a word, wild-eyed and just as scared as her. Nearby a child screamed, naked and alone, illuminated by the fire. As she stared at it in horror she realized its right hand was completely gone, and it was holding the bloody stump with its other hand. A man ran to the shore with a bucket but before he could dip it in the water a pole with a loop on the end appeared out of nowhere and caught him by the neck. He fell to the ground and two men stepped out of the fire itself and began to beat him with clubs. She recognized their armor, the red and black leather of the Legion. More Legionaries emerged from the fire and she saw them beat more of her tribe away from the river, back into the flaming village. One of the Legionaries had the head of a coyote, and he ordered the others to corral her people into the center of the village. Almost all of the Twisted Hairs of Dry Wells were now trying to reach the water, but the coyote-man forced them all back, back into the fire and the screaming and the horror.
"You are scared of your homes burning," the coyote with the body of a man barked, "But these are not your homes any more! They are Caesar's homes. And Caesar wants them to burn!" Dark Mother smelled rubber and plastic and bodies burning. A child, a young boy, tried to slip past the Legionaries but with one swift motion a Legionary lopped the boy's head off. It rolled down the shore and into the water, and a woman screamed a primal howl of grief as her son's body fell lifeless at the soldier's feet. Dark Mother acted without thought, so consumed with fear. She fled north, fled up the path Julia left open for her own escape.
When Harpy was thrown from bed by the timed demolition, his first thought was of his granddaughter. He rushed to her room only to find it empty, to his horror. He burst out of his house, screaming her nickname over the wails of his people and the crackle of fire. He thought he saw her dart between two houses and gave chase, continuing to futilely scream the only name he knew her by. The village was a living nightmare. Mothers wept over corpses mangled by the blasts, infants screamed in the dirt. A warrior he recognized scrambled madly through the chaos and grabbed Harpy by the arm. The elder instructed him to get a bucket, get men, get to the river, and put out the fires. The old man had to keep his cool with the whole world collapsing all around him, but more than anything he had to find his family. Everything was fine as long as Arama was safe.
He chased her shadow all the way to the edge of the village, opposite the river. She sat calmly on a rock, wiping her gun with a cloth. She'd led the old man somewhere they could have some privacy. He didn't notice her gun or her calm before he ran up to her and bellowed, "Arama! Thank the ancestors, you're alright! We need to help extinguish these fires!"
When she ignored him and continued to fiddle with her submachine gun he became impatient. He shouted at her, "Child! Our people are in danger! Do not ignore me! I am your grandfather and you shall do as I say!"
She pointed her gun at the ground in front of him and fired off a little squirt. He jumped back and fell to the ground in surprise. She rose from her rock, slowly and deliberately, and in the light of the fire she was true horror, an angel of vengeance unleashed. Harpy watched her with dawning terror, the little girl he'd raised now something so dark and powerful he could no longer understand it. She pointed the barrel of her gun right at his forehead and said, "No."
Harpy pissed himself. Here he was, the man who for more than a decade had made her life hell. Who embodied every cruelty, every injustice, every indifference and isolation and marginalization that she'd ever been put through by the tribe, cowering on the ground, covered in his own urine. Afraid of her. She remembered every time he whipped her with a belt, every time he locked her in the wardrobe, every time he trusted the word of others over her's, every time he mocked her, or bullied her, or was just plain mean. And behind him, an entire world of mockery, cruelty, and petty slights carried out against her because she was different. Because she wanted more, for herself and her people. Because she had hope, and she believed in the future. Well, now they didn't have a choice. She was bringing her tribe into the future, kicking and screaming. It didn't have to be this way, she rationalized, but they forced my hand.
"Arama, michoo," Harpy started, and Julia fired some more bullets into the ground. He flinched, but got up on his knees and continued.
"Please, my beloved granddaughter, don't do this. Please. I know, I know you're angry. And you have every right," she was about to finish this, but his words stopped her cold. She expected him to beg for his life, but he still surprised her. She knew she was right to be frustrated and upset, but she never once considered that Harpy might acknowledge her feelings, or even admit she was right to feel them, "But think about this, please! I know I was not the best man to raise you, but everything I did, I did because I thought it was right. I know you're smart, that might be what I love most of all about you! But as smart as you are you don't understand why things are the way they are. Did it ever occur to you there might be a reason? No, we aren't perfect, and we make mistakes, but so does everyone! The Twisted Hairs have made mistakes for a dozen generations, and over time we learned what worked and what was wrong. There is a reason for everything! Don't throw it all away, please, michoo!"
The flames crackled behind him and Twisted Hairs denied water wailed. Harpy took her hesitation as a sign to press on.
"I always... I always wanted you to lead everyone someday. I knew you had it in you. Your whole life I've been trying to prepare you for how hard it is. You hated my mark, but it was for your own good. I did it so nothing would stand in your way. And everything else I did, I did it because I was trying to show you what it is like. How not everything will be perfect, how sometimes you must wait for things to grow, how you must think of others before yourself, how you must learn to embrace hardship and grow from it. What we do we must do for everyone, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. If ever I was cruel to you, or difficult to understand, it was because I always had faith in you, michoo. Because I love you," he stared into her eyes.
Her expression was too oblique to leave him any hope. She came back to kill him, and tell him off, so that he would die knowing why. She didn't expect this. He was wrong, of course. The Twisted Hairs were a sick society that needed to be abolished, no matter how earnest or impassioned his defense. Her eyes softened. He could see she loved him. He could see it was too late.
For the rest of her life Julia never forgot two memories of her grandfather. The first was the day he took her and her brother hunting. The second was shooting him in the face.