Aftertime

“Ain’t no big deal,” Nance said. “What you’re gonna owe us big for is taking the only good-lookin’ man we got with you. Here, give me that.”

She took the cloth from Cass and dabbed at the back of her neck, her shoulder blades, letting the water sluice down to soak the back of her shirt. The water stung when it came in contact with the torn flesh, and Cass worried that the fabric would cling tightly, transparently, to the canyons of her wounds, and she twisted away, pretending to soap her back as far as she could reach. Nance pulled away from her, mild hurt in her expression, and Cass wished she could explain, No, it’s not you, it’s me, that her own body was a horror she couldn’t shed, that Nance’s healing touch was a gift she hadn’t earned and couldn’t accept.

Nance squeezed the water from the cloth and folded it carefully, once, twice; then she pressed it into Cass’s hands, but before she let go, she gathered Cass’s smaller hands in her own large and capable ones and held them for a moment with a tenderness that brought tears to Cass’s eyes. Her sense of exposure deepened; while men had touched every inch of her body, sometimes without even knowing her name, and sometimes with the kind of careless fervor that left her bruised and battered, no woman had touched her since her own mother stopped bathing her since the age at which she was old enough to turn the taps herself. The image that flashed through her mind: her mother watching her impassively, smoking, as Cass struggled to let the water out the drain—she must have been all of nine, smarting from her father’s absence and shriveling from her mother’s indifference.

When she finally let go, Nance picked up her own towel and began drying off. Cass finished her washing, concentrating on the sensation of the warm water as it ran down her stomach, down her thighs and calves to puddle at the ground. When the others turned politely away, she washed between her legs, lathering and scrubbing as though she could wash away a decade’s shame with meager and inadequate supplies, rinsing the panties as well as she could with handfuls of murky bathwater, the synthetic fabric clinging to her skin and revealing the thick, dark patch of hair beneath.

“Smoke will come right back here after he walks with me,” Cass said, wanting to turn the attention away from herself. “I just need … “

But she didn’t need Smoke. She’d come this far on her own; surely she could manage to cross the last four miles of bare road before the outskirts of Silva, the handful of blocks to the library.

“You take him, girl,” Gail said, suddenly serious. “You let that man help you. You’ve been out of the towns, you don’t know what you’re up against.”

“I’ve seen Beaters,” Cass protested. “A few, anyway, on my way here.”

“It’s the people you need to worry about just as much nowadays,” Gail replied.

“You come through cities?” Nance demanded, ignoring Gail. “You seen their nests?”

Cass hesitated. The biggest town she’d passed was a half a dozen houses and a gas station clustered around a crossroads, Highway 161 intersecting a farm road that disappeared into dusty fields. But she hadn’t seen Beaters there, no evidence of a nest—no alcoves or storefronts littered with filthy clothing mounded in shallow rings, no piles of household castoffs hoarded for the haphazard, long-ago memories they held. No fetid stink of unwashed, ravaged bodies mingled in restless sleep, of torn flesh and leaking, damaged bodies seized upon and devoured and, finally, abandoned.

The few Beaters she’d seen had been small and restless roving teams, and if she’d wondered where they sheltered, she cast her doubts aside, plunged them into the unknowable so that she could take another step and another, so that she could salvage sufficient hope to continue on.

The others exchanged glances. “How many at a time?”

“Two … three.”

“And tell me, didn’t that strike you as strange?”

It had, of course, once the cloudiness had shaken itself loose from Cass’s mind and she was thinking more clearly. Since the Beaters had evolved, they had formed larger and larger packs, like a snowball rolled around a snowy field, picking up mass. They seemed to take comfort in their own kind. Occasionally, you’d even see them in a clumsy imitation of an embrace, patting each other or grooming the hard-to-reach tufts of hair at the back of their heads, even hugging. They didn’t ordinarily feed on each other after the initial flush of the disease—they hungered for uninfected flesh—but occasionally you’d see them nipping and tugging gently at each other with their teeth, almost the way puppies played, biting with their tiny milk teeth.

“I don’t know,” Cass said. All of it was strange. All of it was horrifying.

“Well, this is new, just the last few weeks. They’ve started going out a couple at a time, kind of poking around together like they have a plan. We—some of us—we think they’re scouting.”

A thrill of fear snaked along Cass’s spine, a sensation she had thought was lost to her. After the things she’d seen and suffered, she didn’t think she could be terrified again. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

“They’re on the lookout for opportunities. For us. They’ve started working on strategy.”

Whispered: “No.”

It was impossible. The Beaters were disorganized, stripped of their humanity, reduced to little more than animals motivated by an overwhelming need to feed. The spells of humanlike behavior were nothing but the debris left behind when the soul made a clumsy exit from the shell of a body that remained. To suggest they were evolving the ability to reason, to plan—that was as senseless as suggesting that a flock of ducks could orchestrate a diving attack.

“We’re not saying they’ve succeeded yet,” Nance said quickly. “I mean it’s not like they get very far before they get distracted or wander off or whatever. But the fact they’re coming out in small groups like that—and they hang out around the edges, across the streets all around the school—it’s got to mean something.”

“It might just be the evolution of the disease,” Cass ventured, grasping at possibilities. “You know … like, in the whole first population, as it progresses … “

There had been a lot of discussion of the evolution of the disease, when people first realized that the sick were turning into something else, something far worse. Before anyone called them Beaters, people repeated rumors that their brains were infected with a madness similar to syphilis. But back then, much as nineteenth-century syphilitics suffered from lesions and tumors and dementia before they died, Aftertime, people had initially thought that those who ate the blueleaf would eventually die once the fever escalated.

“Maybe,” Gail assented, an act of generosity. “Just, I want you to know what you’re up against. Smoke knows…. He’s been watching them.”

“He takes notes,” Nance added. “He keeps a journal. He used to be a teacher or something.”

“Well, we don’t know that,” Gail corrected her. “He doesn’t talk about himself much.”

“He said something about it once,” Nance insisted. “Teaching.”

Cass toweled off her damp body and thought about the man who had offered to freewalk with her to the library. Four miles of unnecessary risk. The overwhelming impression she got from Smoke was of … depth. Layers. He would not be an easy man to know.

There was the story he told about the air force pilots. She still didn’t think he was telling the whole truth. So … maybe he was a liar, or maybe he was just keeping parts of the truth to himself.

But he was brave. Or more precisely, he had a lack of concern for himself, and an abundance of concern for others. He had been the first to come at her when she and Sammi approached the school, and it had been his body crushing hers when he took her down. His arms had been hard-muscled. Despite her strength and fitness, she was smaller by several inches and thirty or forty pounds. He could have hurt her easily.

But he hadn’t even bruised her.

“What about Nora?” Cass found herself asking. “His … girlfriend?”

Gail made an exhalation of air through her teeth. “Is that the impression you got? Well, they’re … I don’t know what you’d call it.”

“They met here,” Nance said. “Nora, when she showed up she was a mess. Kept to herself. Wouldn’t let anyone close at first, after her nephew … once he was taken. Smoke got her talking again.”

“I mean I’m pretty sure they’re doing the nasty,” Gail said, flashing a grin that didn’t make it to her eyes. “Smoke’s hot, and there’s lots of women wouldn’t mind a little of that.”

Cass felt heat rising in her face. That wasn’t what she’d meant—not sex. Just the way they had been around each other, it suggested a relationship beyond the bond of people sheltering together in close quarters, and she’d been—

What, exactly? Curious? Envious, the voice inside her suggested. She didn’t like that answer, but it had the ring of truth. To have someone else to go through this with—what would that be like? To have someone to tell your fears to—your wishes—your regrets?

“People are funny,” Nance mused. “Some people, Aftertime, it’s like they’re dead inside, like they were already taken even though their bodies are still here. And other people just … I don’t know, it’s like they light up. Not in a good way, necessarily, mind you. But more like some sort of crazy energy that they rely on just to keep them going.”

“Yeah,” Gail agreed. “Some people get all manic. There’s been all kinds of hookups, you go looking for a flashlight or something and open a door and there’s people on the floor like, well, you know. And then next time you turn around they’re doing it with someone else.”

“Remember Scott and Meena …?” Nance said, and then the two of them were doubled over with laughter. Cass couldn’t help smiling along, their mirth was so infectious.

“What’s so funny?” Sonja had returned, carrying a stack of folded clothes, which she held out to Cass. “I had to guess at sizes, but I was trying for practical. Here, I’ll take your towels, I’m on wash tomorrow anyway.”

Cass accepted the clothes. She hesitated, embarrassed, before handing over the sodden towel and the washcloth, dingy from scrubbing the dirt from her skin. “I don’t want you to have to—”

“Don’t worry about her,” Nance said affectionately, tossing Sonja her own towels. “She’s a shitty laundress. She needs the practice.”

“Well, if I had something to work with besides creek water—”

“Yeah, yeah, cry me a river,” Gail laughed. “Sonja here was a designer at Nike, Before. She had like a million-dollar budget. A staff and a fancy office, and this chore stuff has been really hard for her.”

“Oh, right,” Sonja said, giving her a good-natured shove. “I had my own latte machine and a Jacuzzi in my bathroom. And a dozen male interns to go down on me under my desk during lunch, too.”

“Good times,” Nance said as they made their way back toward the building, relaxed and laughing, the sun sinking toward the tree line in a pool of molten orange.

Cass hung back, watching. She’d never had women friends. Never known what to say, how to breach the boundaries. But now, as she prepared to go into the unknown again, she suddenly wished she’d tried harder.

09

CASS DRESSED IN THE CLOTHES SONJA BROUGHT. The fabric was stiff from line drying and rasped against her scabs, even through the damp tank top, but Cass was so accustomed to the dull ache that she barely noticed.

Her wounds hurt almost unbearably when she first woke, but before long she was left with a dull, constant sensation that was as much numbness as pain. The disease, which had boosted her immunity before retreating, had clearly changed her sensitivity to pain, as well. Something to be grateful for.

The clothes smelled faintly of lavender. A soft jersey shirt that had belonged to another woman. Hiking pants that were new or nearly new, maybe nabbed from one of Silva’s several outdoorsman shops when the looting turned to general panic and then mass stockpiling.

The greatest luxury was a new pair of socks. Sammi had brought these to her in the small office where Cass had retreated to wait, after the bath. It was part of a warren of tiny rooms behind the old reception area, and Cass guessed it had once belonged to an administrator, a vice-principal or part-time nurse. There was no window, only a desk that had been pushed against the wall, a couple of chairs, an expanse of industrial carpeting still littered with staples and eraser dust and tiny paper circles from a hole punch. The detritus of human activity Before. The sight brought back a memory of the sound of a vacuum cleaner, and Cass realized she was moving her arm back and forth in the obsolete appliance’s once-familiar arc with a sense of longing. Even when she sat in the chair with her hands pressed tightly between her knees and her eyes closed, her mind was filled with a memory of the task, and it was almost like a forbidden thrill to envision making long, slow paths on the carpet, feeling the handle vibrate in her hand, the debris disappearing into the vacuum.

After a while, Sammi came, unannounced and furtive. The socks were rolled up and hidden in her pocket, the tags still attached. Men’s hiking socks, pale gray with an orange stripe knit into the band at the top. Sammi handed them over and shook her head impatiently when Cass protested that she couldn’t accept them.

“They’re for you. Besides, you can do something for me. If you ever get to Sykes, and if you meet my dad, tell him I’m okay,” she said. “His name is Dor. Doran MacFall.”

“Sammi … as soon as I get my daughter, I’m going to go to the safest place I can find. I’m sorry, but I can’t promise—”

“I’m not asking for a promise,” Sammi interrupted, impatiently. “Only, no one knows what’s going to happen anymore. No one knows the future. And maybe you’ll see him. I mean … you got this far, didn’t you? You were attacked, you got infected, you’re the only person I’ve ever seen who got better.”

Fear sluiced through Cass’s veins. “Sammi, I never really said—” she began, her mouth dry.

Sammi shrugged, but she held on to Cass’s gaze. “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. But your skin … I mean, that’s the way it starts. That and your eyes. They’re way too bright. Most people just don’t want to remember that anymore. I mean, now that they just kill anyone they suspect might be infected.”

“Wait—what?”

“Yeah, if someone’s even suspected, they’re shot. There’s like a special store of bullets for it and everything. They have these elections for who has to do it. Winner loses and has to kill the dude. Kids aren’t supposed to know,” Sammi added, shrugging, as if the absurdity of such a rule eluded her.

Back at the library, before Cass was attacked, those who were suspected of infection were rare enough—there was so little blueleaf left, and no one ate it on purpose—that Bobby ordered that they be kept in the old operations room, among the silent heating and air-conditioning equipment, until their future was clear. Other diseases brought on fever, after all, so you didn’t want to kill everyone. In the end, only one actual infected—a silent and red-faced old man who wore canvas coveralls—had stayed there during Cass’s time at the library. Even when he began pulling his hair out, tearing the skin of his scalp—even when his pupils had shrunk down so far that he couldn’t see Bobby and another man coming the day they hit him on the head and dragged him to the edge of town and left him there—even then he refused to admit he was infected. The old man’s speech had become a bit slurred, and that was the last of it for him.

“But …” Cass swallowed hard. “My arms … like you said.” It came out in a hoarse whisper as she covered the shiny, thin scars with her hands, unable to look.

“Yeah, but you act normal. You’re not feverish and you don’t talk crazy. Once they figured out that you weren’t going to kill me, you know, when you started talking and all—you know how sometimes people only see what they want to see?”

Cass nodded, thinking—but you still see. Maybe it was because Sammi was young. And maybe it was more than that.

Sammi gave her a little grin. “Look, you’re really not so bad. You did fix your hair, kinda—and your scars are almost gone. What you really need?”

Cass smiled, moved despite herself that the girl was trying to cheer her up. “Yeah?”

“Eyeliner. Really thick, you know?” She tugged her lower lid down to show Cass where she’d apply it. Then she hesitated. “They say there’s others,” she finally said. “That got better. I mean it’s just a rumor, this one time a raiding party went down toward Everett. But, yeah, maybe you’re not the only one.”

Cass felt her heart speed up, a prickling of hope radiating along her nerves. Others.

“Survivors?” she asked. “Who were … attacked, who started to turn? And came back?”

Sammi shrugged, didn’t meet her eyes. “It was just a rumor. My mom says it’s just people being confused by those fake Beaters. I mean no one here’s seen it or anything, and most people think it’s like, what do you call that? When people make up stories and they get passed around—”

“Urban myth,” Cass said, trying to cover her disappointment.

“Yeah, that. As far as anyone here knows, no one’s ever come back before. So they don’t believe in it. But I do. I can tell you’re different. And it’s not just that … you’ve been on your own and they haven’t gotten to you. Most people would be dead already, so that means you’re lucky, too.”

“But I don’t—”

“I’d go with you,” the girl pushed on, and Cass had the sense she’d practiced this speech in advance. “I’m not scared. Only Mom doesn’t have anyone else now. I need to be here for her. But you’re going to make it—I know you are. And you don’t even have to go looking for my dad, just only if you happen to meet him somewhere. He’s, like, six feet three and … “

And then, suddenly, just like that, she faltered. Her courage evaporated in a mist of sniffles and her smooth-skinned face collapsed in on itself. She looked like she was about to bolt, and without thinking, Cass reached for her.

Sammi didn’t so much lean as fall into the hug and Cass wrapped her arms around the girl, all elbows and slender limbs, and held tight.

“I’m sorry,” Sammi snuffled against the crook of Cass’s neck, but she didn’t let go.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Cass said softly, and then she said something else, a dangerous thing that she didn’t plan and immediately wondered if she would regret. “I’ll find your dad. I’ll find him and I’ll tell him you’re all right.”

“Oh, thank you … thank you,” Sammi said. “Um … Cass? Could you … you know, if you do find my dad? I was wondering if you could tell him something for me.”

“You want me to give him a message?”

“Yeah. I mean, he’ll know what it means.” She bit her lip and looked away. “Just tell him that I never forget, I never miss a night. And I never will.”

10

THEY SET OUT IN THE CHARCOAL GRAY OF nightfall, the approaching darkness taking the color from the earth, leaving it a land of black forms and navy sky. Someone had given Cass a backpack, a sturdy model made for day hikers. Inside were a good blade, bottles of water, energy bars, a can of orange segments. She wished she could thank her benefactor, but no one would own up to the gift.

No one came to see them off, either. Cass understood. Despite the lighthearted moments at the bath, and the provisions, in the end they’d chosen to stand with Sammi’s mother, at least publicly. No one but Smoke and Sammi knew she was attacked, and she hoped no one really blamed her for the way she’d brought Sammi back to camp, with a blade at her throat. They must have known by now that she wouldn’t have killed the girl, or maybe they just trusted Smoke’s judgment—and, too, she might well have saved the child, getting her back to shelter before the sun was strong in the sky and the Beaters were out in force.

But Sammi was well loved here. And everyone knew the dangers Cass and Smoke faced. Knew Smoke might not be back. Aftertime, goodbyes had become too hard when each one might be the last.

Behind them the doors closed with a solid thunk and Cass felt a shiver travel up from the base of her spine. Smoke took the lead, walking a few steps ahead. He had changed into hiking boots and a long-sleeved shirt over a t-shirt and set an easy pace.

Just a day earlier, Cass was setting out alone at this hour after spending the daylight hours hiding and trying to get some sleep. Her destination was the same: Silva, or as close as they could get before next sunup. Her urgency was stronger, if anything, for how close she was. But things had changed in her brief stay at the school.

After being around people again for even such a short time, she was reminded of their unpredictability, their vulnerability … their humanity. Human beings were driven by emotions and hungers and drives and there was no telling what they would do in times of stress. Her fellow shelterers had rescued Ruthie that day and Cass prayed that they had cared for her ever since. But now she allowed herself to consider what instead they might have done with her little girl. What they might have told her. Would they have cherished her, held her, read her stories and combed her fine hair? Would they wipe her tears when she cried, or would they have been too busy, too distracted, too indifferent?

Even when Cass woke up to the horror of her ruined flesh, the hair ripped from her scalp, sticky and sore in unfamiliar clothes, she hadn’t been afraid for herself, only for her little girl. She had put her faith in the people who rescued Ruthie to care for her, because she had no other choice. She would gladly have relinquished any chance to see Ruthie again, if only she knew her daughter would always be safe and loved. After all, hadn’t she done so once, already? Every time she raised the bottle to her lips, she had chosen: her addiction over her baby. That was the most painful truth of her recovery, and it was hard not to believe this was her punishment, to be separated from Ruthie without even the knowledge that she was all right. If only there was something to trade, someone to trade with; Cass would rip her soul from her body and hand it to the devil himself, would walk into the gates of hell with her head held high if someone could just take care of Ruthie.

And now that the library lay ahead in the gloom, Cass could no longer prevent herself from wondering if Ruthie might have been ignored, neglected, discarded.

No, no, no—if she didn’t get the thoughts under control she would lose her mind; her breath would come out in a scream that would split the air and alert any night-wandering creatures of their presence.

Cass took two jogging half steps to catch up with Smoke and wrapped her hands around his arms. He turned and held her by the shoulders, searching her face in the moonlight. “What’s wrong?”

Cass could feel her heart pounding in her throat, fast and staccato. She worked her lips but no sound came out.

“Did you see something? Hear something? Cass?”

Cass shook her head and licked her dry lips and managed two syllables. “Ruthie …” And then Smoke’s arms were around her in an embrace that was at once strong and cautious. It wasn’t a bear hug, not as committed as that, but more like he was making of himself a support for her to lean on. She rested her face against his broad chest and squeezed her eyes shut and listened to his slow, strong heartbeat.

“I don’t know if she’s all right,” she said after a while, keeping her eyes closed.

She could feel Smoke nod as he held her a little tighter, his arms drawing her closer against him. “I know,” he whispered. “But we try anyway. Right? We try anyway.”

After a while longer Cass pulled away, embarrassed, blinking away the threat of tears. She did not cry easily, not anymore, so what was happening to her? Was it the women at the bath, the illusion of friendship, was she so hungry for human contact that she had let her guard down so easily?