Mother Cora leaned back into the microphone. “I give you the future,” she murmured, her voice amplified to fill the stadium. On cue, the children clasped each other’s hands and lifted them into the air, and they looked like a chain of paper dolls, eerie and silent as stones.
Cass waited for them to pray, or sing, but they did neither. They stood still above the crowd, frightened and unmoving. No, no, no talking, Gloria had warned Cass. You won’t know her. The women in the audience held their collective breath; they were waiting, too, both joy and grief reflected in their faces. Were they remembering other children, other times?
Mother Cora had bought Cass’s lie, that it was children who had healed her. So Mother Cora had no choice but to bring them out now, when she was about to sacrifice Cass. As if reading her thoughts, Cora stepped forward and slipped a cool hand into Cass’s and led her down the stairs to the Beater’s cart. A few of the smaller children started to cry, but they were silent even as tears spilled on their cheeks. They had been trained—or threatened—effectively.
The Beater hung on to the wire sides of the cage, moaning softly and snorting its need and its longing. In daylight, it was clear that there had been no healing at all. It was as torn and scabbed and crazed as any Cass had ever seen, missing several teeth and most of its hair and chunks of its lips. Great patches of black and red filled in where skin had been torn away.
Cora avoided looking at the Beater as she handed Cass off to Hannah, who waited close to the cage’s door. “Blessings on you, Cassandra,” Cora said, before returning to the podium.
“Don’t worry, it probably won’t hurt any more than getting your mouth sewn shut,” Hannah said quietly, so that only Cass could hear her. “And then you get that whole euphoria thing. That’ll be fun, don’t you think? Oh, you must be so excited.”
The gloved and masked attendant who had wheeled out the cage was gone. The Beater had managed to jam an oozing and crusted hand through the bars. Strips of dead skin hung from its arm, and its scabbed lips were pulled back in a furious leer.
The women at the farthest tables scrambled to see what was happening near the stage, mounting chairs and tables to get an unobstructed view. The guards stationed at the periphery of the crowd moved closer.
Hannah seized Cass’s arm. “Ready, Cassandra? I can guess what you must be thinking—this is gonna hurt like hell. And you know, I think you might be right.”
She removed a key from the key chain around her neck. “You understand that I don’t want to get too close, not being the Chosen One. You do the honors, Cassandra—open up, and shut the door behind you. And just so you know, Brenda’s a hell of a shot.”
Cass had only seconds left. She scanned the line of silent children one more time, searching for Ruthie.
I’m coming for you, she thought, and then she took the key from Hannah’s hand.
42
BRENDA HAD SLIPPED ON A MASK AND GLOVES and stepped up to the cage brandishing the shock baton Monica had been stunned with. Stretching out strategically, to be as far away as possible from the thing, she pushed the baton through the bars and jammed it against the creature’s shoulder blades. It twitched and screamed and fell to the floor, spasming in pain.
“Now,” Hannah ordered. Cass fitted the key to the lock with shaking fingers, trying not to look at the form shuddering on the floor of the cart only a few feet away. “Get inside or Brenda will shoot.”
But there was one thing that Hannah couldn’t know. In the split second after Cass slid the key into the cage door’s padlock, she whispered Ruthie’s name, and all the months of longing and guilt and grief twisted into one fine strand and pulled taut inside her. She opened the cage door, put one foot inside, glanced at the wrecked abomination writhing on
the floor and then she did the one thing that even she would never have guessed she was capable of: she prayed, she called out to God and in one word asked His indulgence, asked for one more day one more hour one more minute with her daughter in her arms
please
and she seized Hannah’s wrist and she pulled with everything she had and Hannah grunted and stumbled and she never saw it coming and she tripped and fell and there was Cass, Cass who had willed herself stronger than five women, Cass whose body had spurned and rejected disease, Cass who flung Hannah like a used and dirtied rag into the cage and then slammed the door shut and jammed the padlock back into place and flung the key in a spinning sparkling arc through the gilded sun of Aftertime until it disappeared far down the field, landing in a planter box of golden poppies the likes of which no one ever expected to see again.
The Beater was getting slowly to its hands and feet, foam and spit wetting its screaming mouth, as it crawled toward Hannah.
Cass turned away in time to see Brenda swinging the electric prod through the air toward her, but she dodged out of the way. Before she could recover her balance Cass slammed into her hard and Brenda fell, landing on the baton and screaming as it delivered its jolting energy into her body. Cass stomped on her jerking hand and she screamed harder.
Women shouted and guards fought their way through the crowd toward her, and Cass knew she had only seconds.
She scrambled up on stage, where the children had stopped singing and were clutching their caregivers and each other in fear. Monica leaned against the post, her eyes rolled up in her head, and Cass couldn’t tell if she was even conscious, her mouth swelling into a grotesque clown’s visage. A guard broke through the front of the crowd and Cass steeled herself for the shot but the woman stumbled and went down as the congregation surged around her, all the other women trying to get close enough to see the excitement. A few rows back, those pushing into the aisles surged over each other, trampling the ones who fell. There was a sound of a gunshot and one of the nearest acolytes fell to the ground, a red stain blooming on her shirt.
The children’s caretakers were trying to herd them down the steps but the growing chaos slowed them down, the girls clutching each other in fear. And still none of them made a sound. Cass pushed through the line toward the back of the platform and there she was, the woman who’d carried Ruthie, crouched at the back edge, as though she was about to jump. It was at least a dozen feet down but she looked scared enough to do it—but where was Ruthie?
Cass fell to her knees beside the woman, grabbed her arm, shook her. “Where is she?” she demanded, but the woman fought her, scuttling sideways out of reach. “Where—”
The woman jumped, the sound of a bone breaking followed by screaming and she lay on her side, her leg bent unnaturally. A second woman jumped, narrowly missing the first, though she was luckier; she managed to get to her feet and staggered away, limping.
All through the stadium women panicked. Some crawled under tables. Some crowded the exits to the stands, pushing and shoving to get out. The platform’s stairs were jammed with children, and Cass glimpsed a guard trying to find a shot at her between them. She glimpsed a hand clawing at the bars of the cage, but whether it was Hannah’s or the Beater’s, she was too far away to tell.
Cass crawled behind the line of children, their white dresses making a billowing wall. Two of the oldest girls picked up the younger ones to carry them to safety, and suddenly Cass saw Ruthie crouched down next to Monica, her small hand on Monica’s ruined face as though trying to fix it.
Cass threw herself the last few feet and swept Ruthie into her arms. Monica stirred, her eyes rolling back in her head. “Monica, you have to move!” Cass screamed, hooking her free hand under Monica’s arm. Monica stumbled to her feet and nearly fell again. Cass wrapped an arm around her waist and dragged her toward the stairs. The last of the children, and the one or two adults who had not abandoned them in the melee, were descending the steps, leaving them alone and exposed, Monica stumbling against her as though she was drunk.
Cass scanned the exits, knowing that it would be next to impossible to get there in time, especially as she saw a guard edging around the Beater cage and another sprinting al
ong the edge of the crowd toward her. Cass froze at the top of the stairs. The minute the children were out of the way, the guards would shoot, and she couldn’t risk Ruthie’s life—but she couldn’t leave Monica behind, either.
The air cracked with gunfire and Monica slumped against her. Cass looked down to see a jagged hole in Monica’s throat beginning to fill with blood and knew the impossible decision had been made for her.
She hitched Ruthie up tightly against her as Monica’s body slumped at her feet. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, bending to touch Monica’s cheek, already clammy and lifeless. Then she ran to the back of the platform, hunched low, as the guards fired again and again. On the ground below, the injured woman was curled over her shattered leg, rocking with pain, but Cass didn’t hesitate. She hit the ground at a tuck and rolled twice, shielding Ruthie as well as she could with her body. The turf scratched and burned her skin and she didn’t care, and she came up running.
The move had bought her a mere second or two but she made the most of them, joining the crowds rushing for the edge of the field. Unlike the others, who fought to get to the safety of the corridors, Cass broke away at the last minute and slipped behind the planters lined up along the long side of the field. She pried Ruthie from her neck and pushed her through the bars separating the stands from the field, and then swung herself up, arms burning with the effort, and levered her body between the bars.
Ruthie’s eyes shone with unspilled tears. She raised her arms to be picked up and Cass swung her up and ran, her feet pounding the metal benches as she zigzagged her way up the stands, eyes on the skyboxes, running as fast as she ever had, knowing no one could catch her now.
43
THROUGH THE SKYBOX, INTO THE STAIRWELL, down the stairs, careening off the walls rather than slowing to take the turns, and then she was in the anteroom. She didn’t recognize either of the guards, who gaped at her and reached for their weapons as she burst into the room. The sounds from inside the stadium were muffled here, but she could make out voices and screaming and more gunshots.
“There’s been an accident!” Cass panted, out of breath, her arms aching from carrying Ruthie. “The Beaters got out and it’s chaos in there. You’ve got to let us out, let me get help.”
“What happened?” the guard at the narrow window demanded. She pushed a pair of thick-lensed glasses up on her nose.
“A reckoning,” Cass said. “It went all wrong. This child was hurt, and—”
“She doesn’t look hurt.” The other guard, a leathery-faced woman wearing a thin lavender blouse with heavy black boots, hesitated with her hand on her holstered gun.
“A Beater got her. They shot it like four times. It went down but I think it bit her first. I need to get her some help, in the Box.”
The guards exchanged a glance. The one wearing glasses backed away from Cass.
“What makes you think she’s bit?” the other one demanded. “Is the skin broken?”
“You want to take that chance?” Cass demanded. “I saw it myself—it had its mouth on her. Listen to me, there’s Beaters running around loose in there, you really want to stand around here chatting?”
No one said anything for a moment and Cass held her breath.
If they were true believers—if they shared Mother Cora’s faith—they would never let Cass go. They’d just send Ruthie back to be prayed better. There was no reason for them to believe Cass, a stranger, not even a full-fledged member of the order.
The first guard backed up even farther. “Keep her away from me,” she muttered.
“Just let us leave,” Cass said, edging toward the door. “I’m going now. You can come with me if you want. You might want to think about what’s going to happen if things get worse in there. Across the street, they can still lock that shit out.”
She put her weight against the heavy latch, pushing it open, half expecting one of the guards to stop her. Ruthie’s body was sweaty and hot against her, but she clung tenaciously. The door opened onto a brilliant morning. Cass staggered out onto the sidewalk and stood blinking in the sun. Seconds later she heard the sound of the door being bolted shut behind her.
“Cass!”
A man broke away from a small group of people gathered across the street and raced toward her.
Smoke.
He ran as though he didn’t intend to stop, as though his life depended on it, depended on her—and then he stopped short, seeing that she held Ruthie in her arms. His hands hung useless at his sides. He looked from Cass to Ruthie and back again, eyes wide, breathing hard.
Ruthie clung tight; she still hadn’t made a single sound. She pressed her tear-streaked face against Cass’s neck, and though Cass had barely any feeling left in her arms, and her back burned from the strain, she gripped her precious child even tighter.
“This is my daughter. Ruthie.”
“Ruthie,” Smoke repeated, and her daughter’s name on his lips was, to Cass’s surprise, a sound she had always wanted to hear.
Hearing Smoke say her name, Ruthie twisted in Cass’s arms and peeked out at him curiously, then leaned her head on Cass’s chest and kept on looking at him, long-lashed eyes wide.
“She’s…”
“Bald. I know,” Cass said. “It’ll grow back. They did it to all the kids, symbolized being scoured clean or something.”
“I was going to say ‘beautiful.’ Those eyes…they’re yours.”
Cass shook her head. “That’s just from being an outlier. The pigment doesn’t fade, even after you recover.”
“No, that’s not what I meant. They’re—” Smoke traced a shape in the air, a gently-tilted oval “—big, and turned up at the corners, just like yours. And she has your nose, your chin. Beautiful, like I said.”
“Oh.” Cass felt warmth creep up the back of her neck.
“What the hell is going on in there? It sounds like they’ve started a war—we were about to come in after you.”
“It’s…”
Moments from the past few days flashed through Cass’s mind like pictures in the View-Master her daddy gave her when she was a little girl.
Her first glimpse of the field, greener than any real lawn ever was.
Mother Cora, arms lifted in prayer.
Monica’s wrecked and bleeding mouth.
The girls, shaved and frightened, walking down the aisle like flower girls at a wedding.
The Beater screaming in excitement when Hannah fell into the cage.
Cass shook her head, unable to speak, her whole body starting to shake.
“Let me take her,” Smoke said, and when he held out his arms, sun-gilded and strong, Ruthie regarded him for only a moment before she offered him one perfect small hand and allowed him to fold it in his own.
He lifted her gently and tucked her in the crook of one arm, and she reached for his face and touched it with her fingers. Ruthie was dirty and bald and her dress was torn and one of her shoes was missing and she was the most beautiful thing Cass had ever seen.
Cass’s entire body ached, but when Smoke circled his free arm around her and drew her close, she went without hesitation, she breathed in the smell of him, salt and soap and worry, and when his lips found hers she kissed him thirstily. She kissed him as though he was sustenance, as though he was life itself.
“We shouldn’t,” she whispered against his mouth, but he held her tighter and she pressed herself against him and kissed him again, deeper, harder, hungrier. Her body was exhausted and spent, but somewhere inside, the tiny part that refused to give up woke to his touch.
She had Ruthie. She had Smoke.
It was enough.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The existence of this book is a testament to the tenacity and vision of two people: my agent, Barbara Poelle, who only accepts “no” when it suits her—and my editor Adam Wilson, who gets it and then some. In the moments when the story shines, it’s because of them.
Thanks, too, to the entire Harlequin team, who made me feel welc
ome from day one.
AFTERTIME
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8775-8
Copyright © 2011 by Sophie Littlefield
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Worldwide Library, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book please contact us at [email protected].
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
www.LUNA-Books.com
Aftertime Page 31