The war council met at noon, and the map on the table was now a battlefield.
Hale stood over it with a stick of charcoal, marking in the Warden way — avenues of approach, dead ground, fields of fire. "They'll come up the valley road," he said. "It's the only route that takes vehicles. Probing force first, to draw our fire and map our positions. Then the main push at the gate, with breaching gear."
"How do you know?" Okafor asked.
"Because it's what I'd do," Hale said. "And because their doctrine says D-09 gets taken alive, which means no indirect fire on any position where he might be. That constrains them more than it constrains us."
Tommy leaned over the map, tracing the road with one finger. "There's a choke point here — where the road bends under the north ridge. If we hold that bend, their vehicles can't deploy wide."
"We don't have the people to hold it," Dana said. "Two patrols, max. They'd get cut off."
"Then we don't hold it," Joel said. "We mine it — spikes, chains, felled timber. Slow them down, make them dismount early, fight them on foot where the walls help us."
Hale nodded slowly, charcoal moving. "That works. That actually works."
Every eye in the room found Ethan.
He'd been thinking about it since the gatehouse. He made himself sit up straight. "Put me on the wall," he said. "Visible. If they can't shell my position, the north wall becomes the safest place in Jackson. You could put your best shooters there and they'd never take a mortar."
"No." Joel didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"Joel, if I'm the reason they're—"
"I said no."
"It's sound," Hale said quietly. "Tactically. He's right about the constraint."
Joel turned on him. "He's fourteen."
"He's also the target," Hale said, not backing down. "And he's volunteering."
Tommy looked at his brother, then at Ethan, then at Maria. The room held its breath.
Maria folded her hands. "We don't use children as shields," she said. "That's their doctrine, not ours." She looked at Ethan — not unkindly. "You stay in the inner town. Clinic basement with the others. That's final."
Ethan wanted to argue. He saw Joel's face and didn't.
Assignments went fast after that. Joel and Hale on the north wall. Tommy commanding the gate. Dana's patrols as mobile reserve. Carrow argued for a rifle post and lost to the doctor in under a minute — "your arm comes apart, you bleed out on my wall, I have to explain it to Maria" — and took the radio station instead with the particular dignity of a soldier accepting a necessary humiliation.
"Ellie," Maria said. "Spotter. East wall, with Theo. You see anything, you run it to Dana. You don't engage."
Ellie opened her mouth. Maria raised one eyebrow. Ellie closed it. "Yes, ma'am," she muttered, and Theo — waking up from where he'd been dozing against the wall — gave her a sympathetic look that suggested he'd lost this exact argument before.
The town prepared the way a body braces for a blow.
Ethan carried sandbags to the north wall until his thigh burned and his hands blistered — the wound from the ridge a deep ache that the cold sharpened, ignored by everyone including him. Barricades went up across the valley road, chained and spiked, timber felled across the choke point the way Joel had said. Okafor directed the covering of the greenhouses himself, tarps over glass, moving like a man tucking in children. Children and the elderly filed into the cellar shelter under the hall, carrying blankets and board games like it was a strange kind of camping trip, and Ethan had to look away from that.
At dusk, the lights started going out. One by one, window by window, Jackson's warm glow died — light discipline, Dana called it. By full dark the town was a black shape against the snow, and the stars came out in numbers Ethan had forgotten existed.
He found Joel on the wall walk, checking the north wall's fields of fire with Hale's charcoal marks still on the timber.
"Hey," Ethan said.
Joel didn't turn. "You did good today. The sandbags, all of it."
"Joel—"
"After this." Joel finally looked at him, and his face was unreadable in the dark. "We talk after this. Not before. I need you focused, and I need me focused." A pause. "That's a promise, not a threat."
"Okay," Ethan said.
Joel nodded, and went back to the wall, and Ethan understood that this — this was what trust looked like from Joel Miller. Deferred, not withdrawn.
Ellie was on the east wall when he found her, sitting with her legs dangling over the inner side, Theo asleep against a sandbag nearby with his rifle across his knees.
"Hey," she said, scooting over.
Ethan sat. Below them the town was dark and silent. Beyond the walls, the ridge was darker still — a black line against the stars, giving nothing back.
"Thirty-six hours," Ellie said. "Minus eight."
"Minus eight," Ethan agreed.
They sat for a while. Then Ellie's head tipped onto his shoulder — just like at the fireless camp, just like a habit they'd never discussed and never needed to.
"When this is over," she said quietly, "I'm going to learn how the greenhouse works. Okafor said he'd teach me. Tomatoes, maybe. I've never had a tomato that wasn't from a can."
"When this is over," Ethan said, "I'm going to sleep for a week."
"Liar. You'll be bored by noon."
"Probably." He was quiet for a moment. "Ellie — whatever happens tomorrow. I just want you to know—"
"Don't." She said it gently. "Don't do the speech. We're both going to be fine, and you're going to be bored by noon, and I'm going to grow a tomato, and that's the whole plan."
"Okay."
"Okay."
Her hand found his on the timber between them. Neither of them mentioned it.
Bootsteps on the wall walk — fast. Dana, breathless, a scout's report clutched in her hand.
"Riders on the valley road," she said. "Headlights. They're not waiting thirty-six hours."
Ethan stood, and Ellie stood with him, and together they looked out past the walls at the far dark — where two small bright eyes had opened on the valley road, and were coming on.