“Fucker knows what he’s done,” Nyland said, a flush creeping over his face, and Cass realized that it was personal for this one. He had lost something or someone by Smoke.
“Nothing that didn’t need doing.” Smoke bit off the words hard.
The guy stood so fast that Cass didn’t have a chance to react, knocking over the glass of water on the table in front of him, and his fist connecting with Smoke’s face made a sound that was louder than Cass would have thought it ought to be.
But Smoke said nothing. Even when blood dripped from the cut under his eye and onto the table, he barely reacted at all.
20
THEY WERE LED TO SEPARATE OFFICES, AND Cass spent the night in the room with the bed on the floor. She slept fitfully until the door opened and a woman she hadn’t seen before filled the doorway. She was thin and muscular in a hooded jersey and shorts and hiking sandals, and she said very little, her face partially obscured by the hood which she had pulled over her curly brown hair.
“I’m here to take you to the bathroom. Then I will take you to the courtyard, where you will be served a meal. Then you’ll come back here.”
They walked through empty halls toward the back of the library, steps echoing on the tiled floors. Sheer drapes covered the tall windows looking out onto the parking lot. The fabric was not substantial enough to block light, but it prevented Cass from seeing much. Pinned to the fabric were hand-lettered posters with slogans like VIGILANCE: REPORT EVERY SIGHTING and EQUAL SHARES FOR EQUAL WORK and CURFEW MEANS YOU.
The outdoor “bathroom,” located in the shed enclosure where the trash Dumpster had been kept Before, wasn’t very different from when Cass had lived in the library. The makeshift panels separating the men’s and women’s sides had been replaced by sheets of plywood joined by sturdy steel braces, the roof now corrugated metal. A curtain hung from a shower rod lent privacy. The pots they had used before had been replaced by a toilet with a removable insert that could be hauled away to be emptied and cleaned.
Cass’s escort handed her a bowl of water, basic toiletries. “Take ten minutes, I’ll wait.”
Inside was a makeshift shower with a water reservoir operated by a rope pull. Cass undressed, turning her back toward the plywood wall before she took off her shirt, even though she was alone. Then she released the water and shivered as it trickled down onto her body in a cold, uneven trickle. She took as long as she dared, scrubbing her hair and skin with the sliver of soap she’d been given before rinsing with the frigid water from the tank. She dried herself with the stiff, scratchy towel the woman had given her and pulled on her clothes.
She brushed her teeth and spat on the drainage hole, and combed her hair with her fingers. She folded the toiletries up into the damp towel and left them in a plastic basket on a teak bench, and when she emerged from the shower the woman was leaning against the enclosure’s cinder block wall, arms folded across her chest.
But when she stood straight and pushed back her hood, Cass stopped abruptly in her tracks.
It was Elaine. She was wearing the same clothes as the other woman, but her face was unmistakable in the bright light of the new day.
“What—”
“Hush,” Elaine whispered and pulled the hood forward, covering her face. “Walk with me and keep your voice down.”
Cass stared straight ahead and concentrated on keeping her expression neutral as they walked back through the still-quiet building. Elaine pushed open the door to the courtyard and they walked into the sunlight, the smell of kaysev and wild onion drifting on the morning breeze. A paper cup skittered and rolled across the concrete, but otherwise nothing moved.
On an ordinary day, when Cass lived here, there were people in the courtyard all the time. Children chasing each other, adults drying clothes washed in the earliest light of dawn in the creek, or preparing kaysev, or scrubbing dishes in the tubs of water they carried back. Or simply sitting in chairs dragged into the sun, talking. But now the residents rose and slept and bathed and ate on a schedule set by the Rebuilders.
The courtyard’s layout was different, too, arranged for greatest efficiency. Tables had been organized in neat rows with plastic chairs. Plates and bowls and cutlery were stacked on shelves; a tarp had been rigged to cover them, but today, in the good weather, the tarps were rolled up and tied. The fire pit had undergone the biggest transformation of all: it was now a sturdy brick-and-mortar structure that rose a man’s height off the ground, with a chimney twice that tall, and a series of racks and hooks to hold food and pots above the flames.
“We have five minutes,” Elaine said in a low voice, biting off the words. “Exercise time. Walk with me, but don’t look at me. Look at the ground. Keep a steady pace and keep your voice down.”
She led the way along the edge of the courtyard, striding ahead with her hands clenched into fists at her sides, nothing like the easygoing yoga teacher Cass had known before.
“Tell me everything you can about Ruthie. Please, Elaine,” Cass pleaded as she caught up. “I have to know. I have to go get her.”
Elaine glanced at her; Cass saw only the shadow of her features concealed under the hood. “They’re sending you to Colima tomorrow, Cass,” she sighed. “Don’t you understand? And you need to count yourself lucky. Where they’re sending Smoke is way worse.”
“I’ll find a way,” Cass said. “I’ll get away from them—I’ll run—I’ll—”
“That’s suicide,” Elaine interrupted. “Don’t even talk that way.”
“I’ve been on my own for weeks out there. I can do it again. Besides, if I don’t have Ruthie, I don’t have anything.” Cass swallowed down the lump forming in her throat. “I might as well be dead.”
“I said don’t talk that way,” Elaine said angrily. “I’m put ting my ass on the line for you here. Because we were friends. Because—because I thought you were strong. Strong enough. If you’re going to give up there’s no reason for me to be here.”
“Okay, okay,” Cass said hastily. “I’m sorry. Look, just tell me where Ruthie is and I’ll—I’ll be careful. I won’t do anything to get you in trouble. Or any of the others. I promise.”
Elaine walked silently for a few moments before speaking. When she did, her voice was softer, almost tentative. “All right. I’ll tell you what I know. But you have to understand, there’s no guarantee that—there’s just no guarantees.” Cass thought Ruthie—small hand in hers, dimpled knees and cheek so soft she could kiss it a hundred times, a thousand—and pushed the panic away. Pushed it with all her might. “Fine.”
“When we found out the Rebuilders were coming—a scout came first, so we knew—we sent all the girls—every female under sixteen—to the Convent.”
The Convent… Cass remembered the words in Elaine’s hasty scrawl in the bathroom. “What is it—like a church?”
Elaine laughed without humor. “Not like any church you’ve ever seen. Like a cult, I guess. I don’t really know. No one’s been in it. Once you go in, you don’t come out. No one I know about, anyway.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s up in San Pedro,” Elaine said.
San Pedro: not too far from Sykes, where Sammi’s dad was. Maybe fifteen miles to the south. The girl’s heart-shaped face, her wide gold eyes, flashed through Cass’s mind—a promise she should never have made—but she didn’t have time to dwell on the girl now.
“That’s forty miles from here.”
Elaine nodded. “It’s in the old Miners stadium. They’ve taken over the whole damn thing, apparently.”
“Who?”
“These…women. They’re like, I don’t know, fundamentalists, I guess. Sort of Christian…but they have a lot of their own beliefs. Kind of whacked-out is what I hear, into some strange rituals and shit like that.”
“And you sent the children there?” Cass tried and failed to keep the accusation from her voice. “You sent Ruthie?”
“Yes, we did,” Elaine said, turning to face Cass head-on, an
d in a trick of the light, a bright beam from the sun that had just crested the roof of the library, her face was fully illuminated, and Cass saw the network of fine lines around her eyes, the deep groove between her eyebrows. The evidence of the toll the weeks had taken on this woman who had once been her friend. “And you would have, too. Because no matter what they’re doing with the girls at the Convent, what the Rebuilders do is far worse.”
21
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN—” CASS ASKED, THE WORLD falling away from her, the air sucked from her throat. “What were they going to do?”
—to my baby, my darling, the person I’d die for—
“No one knows, Cass. Don’t lose your shit here, no one really knows.” Elaine stared straight ahead, sped up her pace, swung her arms as though she was racing against herself. “But there were rumors.”
“What rumors?”
“Quiet,” Elaine snapped, reaching for Cass’s arm. She dug her sharp fingernails into the soft flesh of her wrist, kept digging until tears sprang to Cass’s eyes and she finally, reluctantly, nodded. “Look, you can’t put too much stock in this. We don’t really know what’s going down in Colima. They keep us in the dark. You know, they have their propaganda….”
“Just tell me.”
“All right. The vaccine they were talking about? You know, against the fever? No one really thinks they can do that. But what they are trying to do is develop a test. To see if you’re immune or not. And people say they’re close.”
“But what does that have to do with the children?”
“They say they’re taking the kids and testing them first. The outliers are going to be raised together down there. Kind of a superresistant colony, get it? They’re going to get the best of everything—food, medicine, whatever it takes. They’re being raised drinking the Rebuilder Kool-Aid.”
“But what happens to the ones who aren’t?”
“No one knows. But it can’t be good, right?”
Cass felt her blood go cold. “What do you mean…”
“Look, Cass, they’re zealots. They use everything, twist everything for their purpose. I think some of them are even glad Before is gone, gives them a chance to reshape the world in their image. I mean, they’re not going to waste an opportunity just because it goes against what regular people think of as unacceptable.”
“What, Elaine? Just say it—”
“The rumor is they’re putting the rest of the kids to work. The ones who are old enough. They’re sending them out on raiding parties, into the buildings first, places an adult can’t or won’t go. They probably have them washing dishes and emptying latrines and carrying water, the things no one else wants to do. The slave labor jobs.”
Cass felt faint with dismay. “But the babies—”
“Who knows, Cass? Infirmary or cradle camp or something. Come on, they’re not going to let them starve. But you can bet they aren’t getting much attention. Probably just enough so they grow up to join the labor pool.”
Cass slowed, her body going numb with the horror of it, but Elaine did not slow down. After a moment Cass had to jog a little to catch up. “You could be wrong.… About all of it. I mean, you yourself said you don’t know.”
“You’re right,” Elaine said. “I could be wrong. You want to take that chance? You think any mother here wanted to take that chance? That’s why we sent the ones away that we could.”
“Their own children…”
“Look, Cass, you haven’t seen the others. You wouldn’t recognize them. You want to know why I got this job? Why I’m a trusted member of the team around here?” The sarcasm in her voice was painful to hear. “Because I didn’t fall apart like some of the others. The parents. Do you want to know how many suicides we’ve had since then? No…you don’t. Trust me, you don’t. The Convent would only take the girls. The families with boys? They…”
She shook her head, went silent. Cass walked beside her, making almost an entire lap, both of them lost to their thoughts.
“The boys went with the Rebuilders,” Cass finally said. “The girls went to the Convent.”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been telling you. And you need to be grateful. Maybe they have to listen to Jesus talk morning, noon and night. Maybe they practice witchcraft or worship phases of the moon. Does it really matter? They’re safe. They’re safe enough for now, Cass, and that’s enough. That’s all we have anymore.”
“But why didn’t the parents go with them? The mothers, at least—if they allow women—”
“The Convent refused,” Elaine said. “Only the children. The Convent takes new acolytes sometimes but only the ones they feel are called. They wouldn’t take the mothers because they said they weren’t called to join, but the girls were still innocents, so they could. Their leader, this woman they have, she makes all these decisions. I don’t know, maybe she reads tea leaves or whatever, but she sent the word down. They took eleven girls. Ruthie was the youngest. The oldest was fifteen.”
Ruthie, given away again…how many times in her short life had she been passed along to strangers? Cass felt the guilt and grief encroaching and gritted her teeth so hard her head pounded. “When did they take them?”
“Almost three weeks ago. After the scout came…they took them the next morning.”
“Who? Can I talk to them?” Maybe she could find out more about the Convent, maybe they could tell her how to get in, who to talk to, how Ruthie had done on the journey, if she was frightened or sad, if someone had been there to take care of her—anything, anything at all. “No, Cass,” Elaine snapped. “Don’t you get what a risk I’m taking just talking to you? I just wanted you to know. The best thing for everyone is for you to go tomorrow. Go down to Colima, be grateful—let them do their experiments and feed you and take care of you, and forget all about Ruthie.”
Her voice broke at the end in a little choked sob, and Cass put a hand on her arm, forcing her to stop. Elaine shrugged it off, yanking her wrist back and rubbing furiously at her eyes.
“What?” Cass demanded. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Elaine mumbled. “Nothing, okay? Only don’t you think—don’t you know—can you really—”
Elaine looked wildly around and then Cass realized that her old friend longed to bolt, to leave Cass standing there, that only a sense of duty and fears about being watched kept her rooted to the spot. She was acting as though…a thought occurred to Cass.
She had been gone two months. Two months was a long time, especially Aftertime. Time enough to grow attached to someone. “You took care of her, didn’t you,” she said softly. “You took care of Ruthie.”
Elaine wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Someone had to. You weren’t here.”
“Oh…Elaine.” Cass said. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I’m—thank you. How can I ever thank you—all that time, and I—if you hadn’t been here for her—I got here as fast as I could. You have to know that.”
“But you weren’t here after it happened.”
“After I was attacked? I know, Elaine, and I—”
“No!” Elaine spat. “No! Not you. You weren’t here for her after she was.”
Dread bloomed in Cass’s gut. Oh, God…no. Not that—
“When she was attacked! God damn it, Cass, don’t pretend you don’t remember!” Elaine spoke in a furious whisper. “I saw you watching! I saw you screaming when it happened. The whole time, when they were dragging you off—you were screaming her name and—”
“I don’t remember!” Cass said, half pleading, half begging. “I don’t!”
Elaine made a sound in her throat, a gasp of choked fury. “How many people are going to suffer for you? How many, Cass?”
“What do you mean?”
Elaine looked at her for a long moment, the anger slowly draining from her face, leaving her pale and tired looking.
“What do you mean?” Cass repeated, whispering. Trembling, she let go of Elaine’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” Elaine said after a moment
. She had resumed the same stoic look that had apparently gotten her through the turbulent weeks past. “I shouldn’t have—I know you’ve suffered, too. I was out of line.”
She started walking again, trudging more slowly than before. Cass kept pace, as they made a second pass around the courtyard.
“Please, just tell me,” she begged. “I swear to you I don’t remember anything after—after I saw them coming, after the first one got to me. I remember throwing myself on top of Ruthie—”
Because the Beaters had been loping and lurching, colliding with each other, tripping over each other in their mad rush to reach her. And she had covered Ruthie as well as she could, pushing her down, wishing she could send Ruthie into the ground where she could be cradled and protected by the earth itself.
Elaine sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Well, you…they got to you and…took you. Four of them.”
Cass nodded. By then, the Beaters had worked out a system. They didn’t fall upon their victims in the street anymore; they took them back to their nests, where they could devour them in peace. Four Beaters: each took a person’s arm or leg and then they hauled their victim away, taking care to keep their quarry from dragging on the ground, oblivious to their screams.
“And then?”
“There were two left. And then Bobby came running out.”
Bobby? Cass racked her brain, trying to remember. Elaine at the door with a group of women, talking in the sunshine. But Bobby? Had he been there?
“He heard you screaming. He ran out of the library,” Elaine went on. “You wouldn’t stop screaming Ruthie’s name and he ran to you. Everyone was yelling at him…but it was like he didn’t hear them, like he didn’t care. He was almost all the way to where you were when you…”
“I what? I what?”
“You were being dragged, but you were holding on to Ruthie and you screamed at him to take her.”
Cass widened her eyes, incredulous. “But that means…”
“He did. He got her,” Elaine said quietly. “He fought hard. He got between them and Ruthie, even though they were…they bit him. He held them off long enough for us to come and get her. Barbara and me. We waited until they were focused on him and then we ran and got her.”
Aftertime Page 16