Cass nodded and smiled as though Lily’s words made sense, wondering if she really believed what she was saying.
Cass was intimately familiar with the many faces of denial, from the first whispers that allow you to shade the truth a complexion that suited you, to the most desperate and fantastic depths in which you traded your sanity for a version of reality that allowed you to continue to exist another day.
But contentment, even serenity, was not a state she associated with any place on the spectrum.
“Now, why don’t you tell me what you’ve heard about the Order,” Lily prompted, sitting in the chair behind the desk and taking a yellow pad and pen from a drawer.
“I heard this was a good place when you think you can’t go on anymore,” Cass said tremulously. Then she told the rest of her careful lie, one she had built from pieces of the truth. “I lived with my mother, when I was growing up. And…my stepfather.”
Just saying the hated word caused a bit of the anguish that simmered deep inside to break off and lodge in her heart. She felt her face color with shame and grief, and blinked hard so she wouldn’t cry.
This was why Cass had chosen this story; she knew she couldn’t tell it without the pain coming to the surface. She wouldn’t have to fool anyone—her desolation was real. And real was the thing she would trade to get inside, no matter what it cost her.
“Yes?” Lily said softly.
“My stepfather was not a good man,” Cass continued, her voice quavering. “He was also…inappropriate. With me.”
“I’m very, very sorry to hear that.”
“Yes. He—” Cass broke off and Lily reached into the desk, coming up with a box of tissues—a practically new box of real tissues, which she slid across the desk. Cass gratefully took one and dabbed at her eyes. “I suppose you can guess. Anyway, I was estranged from them, but they lived in the same town as I did. After the Siege, I heard through friends that my mother had the fever.”
“Oh, Cassandra…again, I am so sorry,” Lily said, and for a moment Cass was drawn into her sympathy, tempted to tell her all about Mim, about her birdlike hands and diet of coffee and melba toast, her vanity about her size-six figure and the high heels she wore until the very end, even if she was just going to get the mail. About the padded bras she gave Cass for her eleventh birthday; about the way the bedroom door sounded when she slammed it shut the night Cass tried to tell her about what Byrn had done to her.
Instead she told the lies she had prepared.
“I loved my mother so much. When she was dying…and she was so hot, it was as though she was on fire from the inside. She couldn’t bear to have anything touching her skin and so she lay on the floor, on the tile, and when I tried to give her water she just—she couldn’t keep it down. And she was muttering all the time…she never slept, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t tell what she was saying and…”
Cass peeked out from her lowered lashes to see how her story was going over. In truth, she had taken the details from a woman she met in the library; Cass had listened while the woman told the story of her mother’s death in her arms, how she’d held her until finally the unbearable heat left her wasted body. Cass’s own mother had refused to see her, even when she was dying of the fever.
But Lily reached across the table and squeezed Cass’s hand gently. “Right now, it is natural that you are hurting, that you are questioning God’s decision to take your mother from you,” she said. “But others have found comfort through a deeper understanding of His will and His ways. You can find that comfort in faith, too, Cassandra. Do you believe me?”
Cass fluttered her lashes. “I…don’t know.”
“So many of us have lost loved ones to the fever, to hunger, to senseless violence, to the Beaters. The loss is real, of course. But the anger it causes is not. You think you are angry at God for taking your mother, right?”
Cass nodded. She didn’t say that she was no longer the person she used to be before Byrn came along. He changed her forever when he intercepted her on her way to the bathroom one night after she’d stayed up too late studying for a biology test. He’d traded her trust for a few cheap thrills, pretending that his hands on the thin fabric of her nightgown had been in her imagination, forcing her to scab over her pain with self-doubt. Until it happened the next time. And the time after that.
That person—the old Cass—truly was dead. And the new Cass was angry. And no new-age faith-hawker was going to take her rage away. But Cass took those thoughts and carefully folded them, once, twice, until they fit back into the place where she kept them hidden away. Their energy, though, she summoned to feed this lie.
“What if I told you that you can learn to trade your anger for forgiveness?” Lily asked. “For peace? For healing?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes. I know it’s hard to accept at first.” Here it comes, Cass thought, the hard sell. “At first there were only a few of us, women just like you, Cassandra. We were all hurting. We had all lost someone. We found our way here, and we prayed without ceasing. Faith was our only reward, but what a glorious reward it was. Mother Cora founded the Order in this place in the end days of the Siege, when all the nations of the earth were at war with each other, and she prayed until she was exhausted and then slept only long enough to get up and do it again. Her first acolytes were women who were also looking for answers through faith, and they began to pray with her, and that allowed her to divide the work of her prayer into shifts. Now—” Lily swept her hand in an arc toward the interior of the stadium “—now there are dozens of us praying at every moment of the day. And that’s not all.”
The enthusiasm in her voice was too bright, too brittle. The pitch was well-practiced, and Cass could understand how easily a woman weakened by grief and fear could fall for it, but underneath Lily’s pious words, the pieces didn’t fit together. Cass focused on Lily’s mouth, her bowed, pale lips. “What else?”
“Tell me, Cassandra, is there room in your heart to forgive?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“There is a lesson in the Bible, one of my favorites—and also one of the simplest. In it, we learn that our Lord expects us to take the traveler into our home, the sinner to our bosom.” She tapped her fingernails on the desk as she recited: “I say to you, what you have done to one of these least ones, you have done to Me.”
Cass knew the passage well, from a long-ago game in church camp. The disinterested counselors made the girls form two lines, linking hands over their heads to form a tunnel through which they took turns running while everyone sang words like I accept you as you are and There is no bridge we can’t cross together. Cass remembered the game because one of the older girls had tripped her, sticking out her foot as Cass ran through. Then she pretended to help her up, whispering, God hates dirty skanks like you.
The likelihood of God’s affection for her was one of the subjects Cass took pains to avoid, but Lily seemed to be waiting for her to say something. “I know that one.”
“Yes, yes, it’s a beautiful lesson. But now I would like you to let your mind disconnect from what you have learned in the past,” Lily encouraged. “Be open to what you will hear and see in the days to come. Be open to miracles—true miracles.”
“What do you mean?”
“Close your eyes for a moment,” Lily said. “You will do much more work in the days ahead, with teachers who are far more gifted than I. But I just want to share with you a glimpse of what lies ahead. The beauty of forgiveness, the glory of letting go of all that is hurting you—the hatred, the sorrow, the regret, the anger—most of all the anger, which is like a poison inside you—letting it all flow away. That is the work that we do here, in the Order.”
Cass let her eyes drift shut. Despite herself, she felt herself responding to Lily’s gentle voice, to the soothing rhythms of her words. She had a lovely voice; Cass wondered if she sang. Probably. All these religious types did, didn’t they?
“That’s it…now breat
he with me. In…out. In…and hold…and now, very very slowly, breathe out for one, two, three…good, Cassandra. Very good. Let’s do that again, together.”
Cass let Lily lead her through the breathing exercise. She was really very good, much better than Elaine, who had tried something similar in the impromptu yoga group she started in the library. Better than the physical therapist who attended Cass’s A.A. meetings from time to time and came over once or twice with gifts of tea and gingersnaps.
Cass had rejected the help offered by that woman, and Elaine, too. She’d always been aware of their agendas, their desire to lead her through their own personal programs. And Cass could not follow. She’d been made a rebel by all the years of trusting the wrong people, and she couldn’t let go enough to trust Elaine, and while all the others in the library lay on their backs and stretched their arms over their heads and practiced the Three Kinds of Breathing with great zeal, Cass faked it and felt her sadness coil all the tighter in her chest.
But Lily was different. Lily’s voice was gilded with hope and delight, and it was so tempting to think that such a thing might be possible for Cass, too, if she just followed along…if she let go of the torments that held her back…if she opened herself to forgiveness.
Of course it was all ridiculous, all part of the brainwashing, but would it really hurt anything if she played along, if she took this time to rest and relax? It had been such a hard journey, she had been on alert for so long, her body had been through so much.
“Just relax, Cassandra, lean back in the chair and let your hands rest loosely at your sides…that’s right and now in again and hold…”
Cass breathed and she listened and she felt her mind loosen and settle like a bowl of batter that had been stirred. It was like sleeping except she could still hear Lily’s soft words, like dreaming except the images in her mind were real things, memories of nice things. Ruthie, tucked under the bright quilt she found at a secondhand shop. A stray cat the neighbor took in, who grew sleek and fat—how Ruthie loved to pet that cat! Ruthie the day Cass took her back from Byrn, the dimples when Ruthie smiled and laughed and hugged her tightly around her neck.
Ruthie with the dandelions, the little yellow blossom under her chin.
The memory slanted in, surprising Cass. Dandelions…yes. There had been dandelions growing in the scorched lawn of the library. They had all been amazed the day the first one popped up, followed by another and another, pushing their tough stalks through the matted dead grass, defiant in the June sun, returning from exile. Cass had picked them and put them in jars and coffee mugs and still there were more, her own flower garden, and the morning after she brought Ruthie back, they went outside to see. The sun was up and it was safe and Bobby had dragged a PlaySkool plastic kitchen home with the raiding party the night before and they were setting it up in the courtyard. They’d seen a sandbox, shaped like a turtle, and they were planning to go back for it.
When you looked close at a dandelion you could almost believe the Siege had never happened. Hold it up to your face, inhale the sweet-bitter fragrance, watch clouds drift through the spiky leaves. Brush the soft petals against your face, and you were back Before, in the world you once knew.
Ruthie found a patch and squealed with delight. She began picking them, small hands tugging with determination, petals dropping to the ground, but no matter. Pull up all the flowers—tomorrow there might be no flowers at all.
Cass squatted next to Ruthie, her hands flat on the brick sidewalk. The bricks were cold against her palms, but the contrast with the morning sun beating hot against her back was delicious, and Cass closed her eyes and concentrated. With Ruthie back, she wouldn’t feel so dead anymore. Maybe her senses would wake up again, maybe she would be able to taste and smell and hear the world around her again.
Cass concentrated on the sun on her back and the brick under her hands and listened to Ruthie’s laughter and thought that later they might join the other families in the conference room that had been converted to a playroom, that the companionship that had eluded her so far might be possible now. Maybe she would take her turn reading to the children, playing hide-and-seek in the stacks, folding origami from paper torn from books. There would be conversation and laughter while the little ones napped. She would hold Bobby’s hand when the dinner dishes were done and together they would tuck Ruthie in to sleep at night.
The thought was so tempting that at first Cass didn’t realize that anything was wrong. The sounds didn’t penetrate her mind, occupied as it was with happier places. And as for the reverberations under her hands, the thud of footsteps approaching—Cass had gotten sloppy. The caution she had honed so fine lay buried under joy of possibility, of having her baby back.
But then there was a frantic yell from the door, where the morning-shift guards had been standing and enjoying the sun.
Run—
They screamed at her but she had to get to Ruthie, Ruthie had wandered to the edge of the lawn, where the circular drive met the book drop, she had found a clump of yellow blooms, she was watching the Beaters with wide eyes, she didn’t budge, she didn’t know to be afraid, and Cass had to get her and she threw herself through the air running racing screaming but it was like slow motion like a movie she wasn’t fast enough—
And somewhere in Cass’s mind she knew this was only a memory only a memory and she tried to say “no” tried to push it back, stuff it down, cover it over, bury it deep deep down in her heart where it couldn’t come out but there was Ruthie in the sun, there was Ruthie with her fistful of dandelions, her baby her precious—
And Cass screamed and screamed but no sound came out because she wasn’t real anymore she was trapped on the inside with the memories and this time no one could help her as the terrible day came back with all its sharp sounds and flashing colors and settled into her senses and played across the wide wide screen of her mind and showed her how she had failed, failed, failed.
34
SHE WAS SCREAMING, THE PEOPLE AT THE DOOR were screaming, the Beaters were snorting and wailing—the world burst with sounds of rage and terror as she ran for Ruthie.
The cold brick and hot sun forgotten, she saw the Beaters stumble-run toward her down the street, over the curb, across the library lawn. Four of them or five; it was hard to tell as they crowded and pushed each other like hungry puppies, slapping and shoving and making their strange excited voracious sounds, and their greedy eyes locked onto Ruthie, who stood small and alone with the bunch of dandelions in her hand, breeze riffling a curl of hair around her chin.
Closer closer lungs tearing arms reaching Cass threw her self on top of her daughter, flung her small body into the dirt and pressed herself on top. Ruthie’s heartbeat, rapid as a trapped rabbit’s, fluttered against Cass’s chest as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to make herself big, enormous, wide enough to cover Ruthie so they’d never find her.
And then.
The way the earth beneath them trembled with the footfalls of the Beaters. The heavy thud of a boot tripping on her legs and then an infuriated scream as the Beater went down, falling on Cass’s calves, hurting her with its weight. The smell—God, the smell, obscene in its bloom of foul rot.
A Beater’s hand closed on her forearm and Cass jerked it away, seeing only the chewed fingers, the torn and missing nails, the crusted black blood and the oily pink of the most recent wounds on its wrist and forearm. The hand was grotesque, bone showing in a couple of places, a finger hanging loose and useless—but the grip was surprisingly strong and Cass could not free herself.
“Someone help! Get Ruthie!” she screamed. She couldn’t see anyone, because the library was behind her, her only opportunity for escape a dozen yards away. And even then she knew there was no chance for her at all because the Beaters were upon her with their miscalibrated eyes and their lusting feverish mouths. Their hands scrabbled at her. She had expected ripping and tearing and pain but they closed their festering hands on her with singular purpose—they would n
ot feed here, they would not take their first bite until they had her back in their nest.
Then they would lay her out on her stomach and kneel on her limbs while they feasted.
But Cass did not allow that thought to overtake her yet. She squeezed her eyes shut and kept screaming for the others to come for Ruthie and fought to make her body large, larger. She imagined that she was a great weight that would press down on her baby even while the Beaters tugged her and tried to rip apart her grip.
But she couldn’t keep them away with her will. She felt her hold on Ruthie float away as they pulled her in four different directions. Panic made her stronger and she fought hard and Ruthie wriggled and cried out in fright and Cass’s tears ran salty in her mouth. Cass opened her eyes and looked frantically for something, anything, that would help, and saw only the scattered yellow petals of the dandelions Ruthie had dropped, already curling in the sun in the dead grass.
And then—Bobby’s shoes. How had she forgotten this? Bobby’s shoes, an incongruously flashy pair of Nikes, silver appliquéd on black. Bobby favored army surplus but he’d loved these shoes, lifted from a routed and wrecked sporting goods shop, nothing he’d ever wear Before, but they appealed to his irrepressible sense of irony and he’d laced them with glittering silver shoelaces and teased Cass that they made him stronger and faster—an Aftertime superhero.
Bobby’s Nikes were in front of her and Cass sucked air and screamed Ruthie’s name one last time, Take Ruthie, help Ruthie, let them have me and she saw the shoes hesitate for only a second and then she knew that he knew she was right.
The Beater who held her forearm in his grip was suddenly torn away. Bobby kicked at it and went for the next one, but Cass felt herself being dragged by the pair that held her feet. Their voices crescendoed, a mad, incoherent cacophony chorded through with fury, and her body bumped along the ground, but Bobby had bought himself a few seconds.
The Beaters who were dragging her away let her fall to the ground at the edge of the lawn and then each seized a hand and a foot. She was lifted roughly, her spine scraping against the curb, and as the Beaters carried her away she craned her neck and saw Bobby with Ruthie in his arms, running to the door where others waited with blades ready, the Beaters in lurching, determined pursuit.
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