Aftertime

by Sophie Littlefield

  “So you really were attacked by Beaters,” the girl said. “What happened?”

  Cass winced. Telling Smoke had been hard enough, especially when he asked to see her scars. The look on his face-the horror, the pity-had been almost more than she could bear, but it was worse when he turned away from her. It had taken him a few minutes to get his composure back, and he’d remained cool and distant even when he promised to keep her secret.

  “I was…” Cass started to speak, found that her mouth was too dry. She licked her lips and cleared her throat, wished for water. “I was taken, yes. But, I, I woke up and I was…all right.”

  Sammi didn’t hide her skepticism. “What about those cuts? Did one of them do that to you or did you do it to yourself?”

  Cass had wondered the same thing a thousand times. The wound pattern held clues. The damage was all in places she could reach by herself, and it was safe to say she was the one who’d bitten and chewed herself.

  The wounds on her back were another matter. The Beaters always started with a person’s back, where the large uninterrupted stretch of flesh made their ravenous feeding easiest. Only after they chewed it away did they move to the backs of the legs, the buttocks-and eventually, when they had eaten away all they could, they turned their victim over and started on the front.

  She touched her stubbled hair. “I did this.”

  “So, you were one, for a while at least,” Sammi said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Did you eat the blueleaf?”

  Cass shook her head, but who could say with certainty? When the government dropped kaysev from planes all over the nation, its last act before it ceased to exist, the second strain had somehow gotten mixed in. Everyone had a theory about that: most thought the researchers made some sort of mistake, sending the wrong seed, but some people thought blueleaf had evolved on its own, that mutating cells had been heeding nothing more than the call of evolution. And some saw the hand of God in the appearance of the rogue leaves, whose edges were slightly pocked and tinged faintly blue- His punishment for the profligacy and faithlessness of the last decade.

  The blueleaf took root, an occasional low-growing and stunted patch among the healthy kaysev. At first no one noticed. By the time anyone made the connection, it was too late for the first wave of the infected.

  Detection wasn’t the only problem. The early stage of the disease didn’t hint at what the victim would ultimately become-it hid its curse in a cloak of sensual delirium.

  First came the fever, of course-and that felled thirty percent of the infected, mostly the very young and the old. But if you survived that, you felt so fucking good. Word quickly spread that when the fever leveled off, you experienced a high not unlike ecstasy. Your skin pigmentation deepened, an appealing effect when coupled with the feverish sheen. The irises of your eyes intensified-green turned jade, blue shone brilliant sapphire, brown sparked gold-but your pupils stopped dilating, and without bright light you could barely see.

  You ceased to care, as your mind started to take elaborate journeys on its own. The hallucinations were elaborate and often sexual. There were no terrors or suicidal impulses. You simply lay about, flushed and beautiful, sighing with pleasure.

  For a week or two. Until you started to pick at your skin and pull at your hair. Until your confusion deepened and your speech grew unintelligible, and your blood burned hot and you flayed your own skin and developed a taste for uninfected flesh.

  Cass had spotted a few blueleaf plants here and there as she followed the road up into the foothills. Citizens learned to kill the plant on sight, and they’d managed to drive the wretched thing nearly to extinction only a few months after they first appeared. Cass herself pulled the plants from the ground and trampled them whenever she saw them, even though her body had somehow rebuffed the disease.

  “My mom says blueleaf’s only here. That it’s not in the rest of the country.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s been freewalkers through-some guy who had this ancient radio, like from the 1960s or something? There was something about it that it could get a signal even with all the power dead. And he said he talked to people in other states and they don’t have blueleaf. They have the kaysev but no one’s getting sick.”

  “That’s-that’s not possible. Everyone would leave California if that was true.”

  Sammi shrugged. “That’s what he was trying to do. He was going to walk all the way to Nevada. He just stayed one night. A couple people believed him, they went, too.”

  “Well.” Cass spoke carefully; she knew how fine the line was between hope and fantasy. “It would be nice. Maybe, once they get the Beaters under control…”

  “Yeah. I know it’s a long shot and all. I’m just sayin’.” She looked increasingly embarrassed, twisting her hair around nail-bitten fingers. “But I was just wondering. You know, how you got infected.”

  Cass took a deep breath. “I was attacked. I remember that. I don’t remember what came after, but-well, I’m hoping someone at the library will know.”

  “You think they might still have your little girl there. Your daughter.”

  Cass nodded, unable to speak.

  “I hope they do,” Sammi said fiercely. “My mom, she worries about me like all the time? She and my dad separated back in January and he moved up to Sykes and we don’t know if he, well, you know. I mean the last time we talked to him, he and this guy, this guy who had gas, you know, like a full tank or almost a full tank? My dad was going to have this guy bring him down, only the roads…”

  She stopped talking and swallowed and Cass spotted the hole in her bravery.

  The roads. They’d become nearly impassible in places, as gas ran out and gridlocked intensified, as wrecks piled up and people panicked and abandoned their cars and tried to make it back. A few did. Many others didn’t. And a few just stayed locked inside, terrified, until they starved or someone shot them for their fuel or one of the Beaters happened to remember what it was to open a door, the memory of the mechanical motion released from the recesses of its ruined mind, a small step to feed its larger need.

  A few days before she moved to the library, Cass had watched from her kitchen window as a car tried to navigate the debris-strewn street that ran along the front of the trailer park. Woodbine Avenue had once been one of the busiest streets in town, with two lanes in each direction, so it was a logical choice for someone trying to get through-or out of-town. But Cass hadn’t seen a car in days. No one had gas-and no one had anywhere to go. Rumor had it that the biggest cities had fallen first, and anyone who’d set out for Sacramento or San Francisco hadn’t been seen since.

  But Cass didn’t recognize this car, a blue Camry with a crumpled front bumper. When it slowed to a stop at the site of an accident that had blocked the road for weeks-a semi truck had overturned trying to make the tight turn, causing a pileup that no one had bothered to clear, the drivers abandoning their vehicles to search for shelter-Cass waited for the car to turn around and go back the way it had come.

  For some reason, this driver hesitated.

  In seconds a cluster of the diseased loped out from behind the 7-Eleven across the street, lurching and babbling. Most started trying to climb on top of the car, moaning with hunger and frustration, but one held a large rock in his scabby hand. He beat the rock against the driver side window, persisting even when blood dripped from his arm, cawing excitedly, until the glass finally shattered.

  The Beaters screamed as they dragged the driver, a middle-aged man dressed in a wrinkled button-down shirt and plaid shorts, from the car.

  He screamed louder.

  “Maybe,” Cass started. She had to steel herself for the lie she was about to tell. “Maybe he’s there still. In Sykes. There must be shelters there. Groups of people, like this…”

  Sammi shrugged, an obvious effort to be brave. “Whatever.”

  “I can try to find out, you know. When I get into town.”

  “They won’t know.
No one’s traveling between much anymore. I mean, besides you.”

  “What were you doing outside this morning?” Cass asked gently.

  Sammi looked at her hands; the nails were bitten. “I sneak out sometimes,” she said. “When the raiding parties go out at night. I hate it here, it’s like being in jail. And I always come back before it gets light out.”

  “What about this morning?”

  “I…kind of got turned around.”

  “You were lost,” Cass clarified. “Sammi…you have to know how dangerous it is to be out there alone.”

  “You were alone. How far have you walked, anyway?” Sammi demanded. “Since you, you know, woke up.”

  “Look, Sammi…you can’t tell anyone what I’m telling you. About me being attacked.”

  Sammi nodded solemnly. “I promise.”

  “No, really. You can’t tell anyone.”

  Sammi nodded again.

  “And you have to stop going outside on your own.”

  This time Sammi didn’t react, didn’t meet her eyes.

  “Say it, Sammi, please. I know you don’t like being cooped up here, but just promise me you won’t go out alone.”

  Sammi rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay, I promise.”

  Cass sighed. “I don’t know how far I’ve walked, really. At first I didn’t… It was like I was sleeping and awake at the same time. I didn’t go very far for a while. I was stopping a lot…maybe that was a week. Until I felt right again. And even then…” Cass passed a hand over her eyes, rubbed the skin between her eyebrows. “Even then I didn’t cover a lot of distance. Because of trying to hide when it was light out. You know, to keep watch.”

  And at night, when the moon went behind a cloud, or the stars failed to light the sky, she couldn’t go very far at all, because she couldn’t see. Back in the library, she’d hoarded matches and two good flashlights and a cache of batteries. But she had none of that when she woke up. No pack, no food, no supplies, and she was wearing clothes she’d never seen before.

  How far did she travel every night: maybe a few miles? As close as she could figure it, Cass had started out about thirty-five miles down-mountain, maybe a little more since she had weaved back and forth to avoid going too close to the road. The Beaters didn’t leave the roads when they could help it; they liked to follow an easy path, and their stumbling, awkward gait did not lend itself to obstacles. On uneven terrain they stumbled and fell a lot.

  Still, if they’d caught her scent, a glimpse of her in the woods, nothing would stop them from coming after her, no matter how deep she ran, so she had tried to stay out of sight of the road. And roads eventually ran into towns, which she had to avoid more and more once she noticed, like Smoke had said, that the Beaters were clustering around the population centers of Before.

  One time, a few days after she woke up, she’d been dozing the afternoon away in the skeleton of a live oak tree. It was a hundred yards or so from the road, and upwind, so Cass figured it would be safe enough. Low in the foothills, the trees were sparse to begin with, and most had died; there was little in the way of cover.

  A sound broke nearby and she came awake instantly, her heart racing. She almost fell as she looked around for the source of the sound. Then she spotted the man who had walked directly below the tree, his footfalls cracking on broken branches. He was walking fast, a bulky pack on his shoulders, his gait sure and strong. A loner, Cass guessed, someone who-like Sammi-would rather take his chances outside than live cooped up in a shelter.

  Suddenly there was a second sound. Over on the road.

  Cass had been so focused on the man that she hadn’t seen them approach. Beaters-four of them, stumbling and crying out-and they’d heard him, too.

  Fear turned Cass’s blood cold.

  For a second, the man paused, looking around wildly. His eyes went wide and he began to run, faster than Cass had ever seen a man run. After a few dozen paces he shrugged the pack off his back, and it fell to the ground as the Beaters’ cries escalated into enraged screams. Unburdened, he ran even faster.

  But he wasn’t fast enough.

  It was dumb luck that he ran forward. If he had run perpendicular to the road, the Beaters would have come close enough to Cass’s tree to smell her. As it was, Cass guessed the man stayed ahead of them for a quarter mile before they caught up. She watched the whole time, willing the man forward with her entire being as the beasts knocked into each other and stumbled on the uneven ground and shoved at each other. They were so awkward, so ungainly, but their strength and speed were otherworldly.

  In the end, two of them tripped each other and fell to the ground, snorting and snapping with fury as they beat at one another with clumsy fists.

  But two surged ahead.

  Cass pressed her face into the scratchy trunk of the tree and covered her ears with her hands, but she could hear the man’s terrified screams and the Beaters’ triumphant crowing as they carried their prey back down the road to wherever their nest was.

  Sammi was watching her, light brown eyes wide and speculating. “Smoke’s going to take you, isn’t he?”

  Cass nodded.

  Sammi gave her a fragile shadow of a smile. “He’s good. He’s brave. You know how he got his name?”

  “No.”

  “He was living up at Calvary Episcopal. I mean, not like because it was a church, they were just using the church for shelter.”

  “Yes, I remember, there were people living there when I was at the library.”

  “And the Beaters came and they got one of them. Or, I don’t know, maybe more than one, I’m not sure. Only, they got this one guy’s wife, and he went nuts and tried to burn the place down. With everyone in it, you know, like a group suicide? They had this tank, natural gas or something. And he totally blew it up, you could see it all day, the sky was like black. You know, like…totally dark. He died, but Smoke-well, I don’t know what his name used to be, it was right when we all moved in here.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “It was around the beginning of May. We saw the fire, we saw the sky go dark and all… Well, Smoke got a lot of the people out.”

  “He rescued them?”

  “Yeah, he got this whole family, Jed and-Jed’s that guy who was babysitting with me. He’s sixteen. His parents and his brothers and a bunch of other people, too. Smoke helped them get out. And when they came here his hair was burned but that was all. He smelled like smoke, but he wasn’t burned, and people said it was a miracle. I don’t know if it was really a miracle but…”

  The girl seemed suddenly embarrassed.

  Cass followed a stray impulse and covered the girl’s hand with her own. Sammi’s skin was warm and she could feel her strong pulse at her wrist.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe there’s still room for a miracle or two in the world.”

  “Maybe,” Sammi said. She sounded like she thought Cass was going to need one.

  07

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, SMOKE RETURNED. Sammi was long gone, not wanting to worry her mother any more than she already had. Cass’s heart went out to the girl; she’d once walked the same complicated tightrope of parental loyalty and teenage rebellion, the challenges of school and friends and her father’s absence. Aftertime, everything was turned upside down. Kids, with their more elastic notions of what was real, rebounded and adapted while the adults struggled.

  Except for the ones who lost their families. Aftertime orphans did not fare well. They were responsible for much of the looting and destruction that happened now-the ones who managed to escape predators, whose movements were no longer tracked and monitored. They found each other somehow, their senses tuned to the same frequency of grief and anger, and formed gangs who roamed the streets with breathtaking indifference to the danger, destroying everything in their path-just as everything that they had loved had been destroyed. Cass didn’t doubt that the bands of fake Beaters that Nora had mistaken her for were comprised of kids like these
.

  Sammi had already lost one parent. Cass prayed that the girl’s mother would stay safe.

  Smoke brought plates piled with food and two plastic bottles filled with murky boiled water. There was a salad of kaysev greens dressed with oil and vinegar. There were also three blackened strips of jerky.

  The aroma caused Cass to salivate, and she could practically taste the salty meat. Still, before accepting the plate, she asked: “Why?”

  Smoke didn’t meet her gaze. “They want something in return,” he said. “News…there are a lot of people who won’t make the trip anymore. In the last couple of weeks it’s become a lot more dangerous. There’s been trouble, and not just from the Beaters.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Smoke made a dismissive gesture. “Long story. I’ll tell you about it on the road. But just folks with their own ideas about who ought to be running things.”

  “What, you mean like who’s in charge here?” Cass saw a chance to ask something that she had been wondering. “Who is, anyway? You?”

  “Not me,” Smoke said with finality. “We’re a collective here, we make decisions as a group. But look, like I said, it’s a long story. We’ll have time for it later, but now you should eat.”

  “But…” Cass gestured at the plate. “What kind of stores do you have?”

  Smoke shrugged, but his unconcern wasn’t convincing. “Quite a bit, actually. We still go raiding. Me, some of the others. There are still houses within a mile or two that haven’t been cleared yet. We only do one a night, take five or six of us and go.”

  Cass nodded. She had come across some of these houses herself, even sheltered in them.

  “What about the Wal-Mart?”

  Smoke shook his head. “Beaters got there first. Nested all over it. There’s still a lot of canned food and other stuff in there but we can’t touch it.”