Hereafter

by C. K. Crigger

  “Me?” He shrugged. “This and that. I’m a go-to kind of guy. I do stuff nobody else wants to do.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as scout a little, fight a little, help out where I’m needed.”

  Lily decided this meant Nate was either a small cog in the O’Quinn wheel, or an outrageously important one. And it didn’t look like he meant to tell her. Her next question struck closer to home.

  “What are Cross-ups, exactly?” She met his eyes, dark and fathomless in the moonlit room. “It sounds like an accusation, an abomination, when you people call me that.”

  He sighed. “Because Cross-ups, taken as a whole, aren’t a real nice bunch. Maybe, somewhere, there are good people among them. Around these parts…well, we haven’t seen any.” He blinked. “You might even put them in the same stew as witch woman.”

  Lily’s breath caught. “But what are they? Why are they? And why do your people think I’m one?”

  “How many people did you know…before…who could throw around missiles made of fire?”

  She couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him the truth.None, of course. None.

  But he knew. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “As to what they are? People who came back with the ability to do…” he hesitated, “. . . things no human being should be able to do. Just like you.”

  Sick, Lily couldn’t meet his eyes. Yes, like her. Even to jiggling a lock open. “How many of us are there?” she asked at last, voice shaking.

  He rose, leaving her feeling even more chilled as he walked around the tiny room. He seemed restless. Caged. “Around here? There’ve been four or five. Only two now. Well, three, with you. You’re the first I’ve heard of for at least a generation.” He smiled briefly. “Cross-ups have a habit of killing each other off.”

  “I see.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. Not yet. As for the other part of your question,why Cross-ups came into to being, as far as I’ve ever heard, nobody knows. The Event stopped the clock, Lily. Some things quit, other things started. That’s the only answer I have.”

  “Not very helpful.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  Standing to make herself appear taller, stronger, she felt her lips tremble and fiercely clamped her back teeth together. “I may be what you say, Nate. A Cross-up. But I’m not a bad person. I believe in law and order and justice and in taking care of people. It’s my job.”

  “Yeah? Maybe. Today, anyhow.” His jaw clenched. “In a year or two, when you’ve got a feel for your power, who’s to say?”

  In the room beyond them, they both heard the night nurse, Bren, stir, rise from her kitchen cot, and walk into the bathroom. Nate, without speaking further, slipped from the room noiseless as a cat. Even Lily couldn’t make out his footsteps down the hall, although she was aware when the outer down latched behind him.

  She sank down on her bed gripping the quilt around her for warmth, more disheartened than ever. Even so, Nate’s visit had been an unexpected act of kindness. Unless, of course, it had been a simple scouting expedition. Did she fall under thethis-and-that designation?

  Chapter 14

  Standing at the head of a welcoming committee, Neila watched the line of heavy wagons and strings of pack animals wend their way across the meadow to the compound. A guard seemed to be pointing out the irregular burn spots in the grass where a little more than a week ago there’d been a battle.

  In only a few days, word had gotten around the countryside that the clan was in winter residence. A code of drumbeats here, a flash of heliograph there, a system of messengers both on foot and riding horseback spread the news.

  The decisive victory that had cleaned out such a huge and dangerous nest of Mags was, naturally, the most welcome news. It made the area safer, if not risk free, and as expected, traders were already taking advantage of the situation. Those approaching the compound now was the first company of the season, arriving at the west end of Frying Pan Lake.

  They were, Neila saw, shading her eyes against an errant sunbeam, escorted by a squad of mercenary guards riding alongside merchandise-laden wagons. Early in braving the risks of the trail, they’d received a boisterous greeting and a prompt invitation from the outer circle watchers to approach headquarters. More than one of the trader’s guards came from the Bell/O’Quinn clan, so for some it was like a family reunion.

  Neila’s own anticipation grew as a few of the people became identifiable.

  Of course, after the long summer in the mountains, everyone needed to shop. Clothing had worn thin, pretties gone out of style, imported foodstuffs grown scarce. Neila had a list as long as Sliver’s tail of supplies necessary to see their people safely through the winter.

  “Hey, sis! Neila. Hello!” An ebullient cry drew Neila’s attention to the slim woman heading up a string of dozen horses, each laden with covered packs swaying three feet above their withers. A small child sat in front of the woman, and Neila’s heart caught with joy. She hadn’t seen her sister Pauline since last year this time, when the child had barely gained his feet.

  “Pauline! I’m so glad to see you. Are you well?”

  A nudge from Dark Bill Shandy, Kira’s father, reminded her of her duty, and she called to the leaders, “Dismount, all of you. Selkirk O’Qinn, leader of the clan bids you welcome to Kettle Creek Ranch. We’ve cleared the dance floor in the big barn for a display area. Tables have been set up, curtains hung for dressing rooms.” Spotting the education representative she smiled warmly. “You’ve brought my order of reading materials, haven’t you? School is about to start.”

  His thumbs up relieved her of one concern.

  A big man, his arms and shoulders heavily muscled and shown to advantage on this occasion by his coatless state, gave her a salute and a wink as he rode by. Even as he directed the wagons toward the barn, his eyes never left her.

  Pike. Neila’s breath caught and she shivered with anticipation at what she saw in his face. He’d proved a thoughtful lover last year and his heated gaze indicated he hadn’t forgotten her.

  She pulled her attention back to her sister. “I hope you’ve brought the medical books and supplies I ordered. We’re running short on antibiotics.”

  “Got’em.” Pauline dismounted and ground-hitched her nag. “But I warn you, they’re more expensive than ever.”

  “Stuff goes up every year,” Dark Bill muttered under his breath. “Damn traders want everything we’ve got.” Strutting with importance, he stalked off to assign traders a display space in the barn.

  Amid the cacophony of excited animals, yammering people, and the clatter of packs dropping to the ground, Neila embraced her sister, baby Alonzo and all. He was Pauline’s third living child, lucky, lucky woman.

  “Are the girls with you?” she asked. “Can you stay and visit a while this year?” Tenderly, she patted Alonzo’s pink cheeks. “How you’ve grown, little man.”

  Oh, how she wished Pike would plant a cousin for Alonzo, a brother for Harmon, inher belly this year. If she had her way, it wouldn’t be for wont of trying.

  Pauline laughed, thrusting the child toward her. “I wish. Regretfully, we’ll have to move on with the caravan. I hope you can corral this one while we’re here, Sis. He’s off and running the second his feet touch the ground. And yes, the girls are here somewhere. With Jinx, I think.” Jinx was Pauline’s husband, of the Trader Nordman clan. “Or they may be with Pike’s family,” she added, looking around.

  Neila froze. “Pike’s family?” She choked on the words, though her sister appeared not to notice.

  “Yeah. His mother, his son, and a younger brother are with him. I thought you two got together last year, Neila. Didn’t he tell you about his family then?” Pauline grinned knowingly. “I guess you were too busy doing other things to spend time talking.”

  A son. Neila barely heard the rest of Pauline’s teasing; the part about how Pike had been the first to sign on to the caravan when he heard it was headed this way.

 
; Stiff with the resentment surging through her, Neila caught sight of Lily Turnbow,the Cross-up, standing near the artifact shed by herself, her face quite expressionless as she watched the trader’s arrival. What with anger warring with the cutting disappointment of Pauline’s revelation that Pike was married, Neila’s voice was sharp as she called to Lily over Alonzo’s head, breath stirring his mop of black O’Quinn hair.

  “You. What are you doing out here? Get inside and stay there.” She headed purposefully toward Lily, Alonzo still in her arms.

  The Turnbow woman had been sick—or so she claimed—ever since she realized she lived by some freakish accident of time, or space, or something. Nobody really knew the why of her presence. While she wasn’t the only Cross-up person the clan knew about, she was the most recent one by far, and the only one ever to appear in O’Quinn territory. Cross-ups had always been more likely to emerge where there’d once been big cities, in zones that had escaped the fires, if not the quakes of the Event. And then the overwhelming variety of diseases, the resultant mass die-off, and the following mutations.

  Nate, and to a lesser degree Selkirk, had had a hard time convincing Lily this was all real. Stupid woman. She didn’t want to believe the evidence of her own being.

  Conveniently for everyone, since Bannion had finally turned her loose, she spent a lot of time in the artifacts shed, looking through the few remaining diaries and journals chronicling the years after the Event. Neila never had made it through all of them. Too depressing by far, and she much too busy trying to save the lives of her people in the here and now.

  Lily had told her yesterday she should’ve studied them, adding, “Maybe then you wouldn’t always be trying to reinvent old technology. After all, it wouldn’t have failed if it’d been practical in this time.”

  Neila had come close to slapping the sour bitch.

  But now, to all appearances caught up in the excitement of the trader’s arrival, Lily stood her ground as Neila stomped toward her. The rest of the clan gave her wide berth, swirling around the Cross-up woman as if she wasn’t there. They were foolish, too, Neila admitted, as well as frightened by the thought of irking the woman and causing her to produce a fireball aimed at one of them. They’d been warned not to tell the traders about her, but to leave making her introduction to Selkirk and Bannion when the time was right. If ever.

  She snorted. Fat chance of that. Neila was willing to wager the news had already spread. This kind of news was damn hard to contain. And now, with a strange woman standing in plain sight, questions would soon surface.

  Neila took Lily’s arm in a firm grip, turning her. “We decided you’d stay out of sight. If there’s anything we don’t need it’s a dozen strangers knocking on our gates wanting a look at you. Then the Techs will show up, and the Cits and the Cross-ups beholden to them. Your presence alone is enough to start a war.”

  Neila’s low-voiced, though heated rebuke didn’t visibly affect Lily. She shook her arm loose as if twitching off flies. “You and your brothers or cousins or whatever they are decided. Nobody discussed it with me. I do agree not to give any details, but I need to meet these people, see where they stand in this whacked out world for myself.”

  “Youneedto do as you’re told.”

  Lily lifted a single eyebrow. “Really? Are you going to force me into a show of strength? Well,” there was another of those seemingly careless shrugs, “there’s a nice audience, which I’d say is to my advantage.” She flicked her fingers suggestively.

  Alonzo stared in bewilderment at his aunt before his face puckered and he began crying.

  “You’re pinching the kid,” Lily said, and to Neila’s intense mortification, she was right. The baby whimpered, saying, “Owie.”

  Neila hadn’t known he could talk. She was surprised when the Cross-up woman turned a crooked grin on the baby and said, “Hey, squirt, you’re a pretty cute kid, aren’t you?”

  Tears immediately stopping, the baby grinned back and held out his arms, wanting Lily to take him.

  Automatically, Lily reached for him. “I’m Lily. Who are you?”

  “Lonz…” the baby said.

  “No.” A twinge of fear struck Neila and she twirled Alonzo away, but he squirmed and squirmed until she was forced to set him down. Once again he made a dive for Lily, grabbing her around a leg. Shocking Neila completely, the magician bent and hugged him back before letting him go.

  Neila knew her mouth was gaping open like a pop-eyed fish out of water, but she couldn’t help herself. Was that all for show, or was the Cross-up woman a half-way decent human after all? And then Pauline was there beside her and Alonzo transferred his affection to his mother.

  Pauline stared at Lily in open curiosity. “Looks like Alonzo has taken a liking to you,” she said. “Who are you? Have you married into the clan?”

  It was an explanation for Lily’s presence no one had thought of giving, not that it would’ve served, because Lily, back to her unsmiling self, nodded to Pauline and said, “I’m Lily Turnbow. They—” an encompassing gesture took in headquarters and the people, “say I’m a Cross-up woman, whatever the hell that is, and no, I’m not married.”

  Pauline gasped.

  Neila, if a crossbow had been ready to hand, would cheerfully have sent a bolt right through Lily about then, because Pike, his ears tuned, was leading his first wagon into the barn at that moment. He’d have had to be deaf not to overhear.

  Sure enough, he stopped in mid-stride, staring at the Turnbow woman before turning his gaze on her. “Neila?” he said.

  “Damn you,” she told Lily. “Ignorant troublemaking interloper. You’re going to get us all killed.”

  She didn’t appreciate her sister pointing out her face was flaming red with fury and that she was like to give herself a heart attack.

  ***

  Whoever had set up the archives, Lily discovered, had been systematic enough to file notebooks according to date—in the early years, anyway. Along about 2025 the order had gone to pot and it took another twenty –five for anyone to make a new attempt. Or so she surmised from the misfilings and omissions during those years. Documents filed in the last ten were most precise. Trouble is, the quantity and quality of the documents had fallen off rather drastically. As a matter of fact, all the volumes, regular school issue notebooks, were on the slim side.

  Sitting in a dangerously rickety chair, over the past couple days Lily had spent hours pouring over the notebooks. One by one, she laid them out on the small desk. She found the photo someone, Neila, probably, had haphazardly replaced in the first notebook. The quality of the photo was rapidly deteriorating, she noticed. Soon there’d be nothing left to tie her to these people.

  Except for the two notebooks on a separate shelf, found yesterday. They made her smile. Someone, Ginger probably, had kept excellent records of the Kettle Creek Ranch stud. It started off with fewer animals than Lily remembered around the barns and corrals. Two stallions, one she remembered as on ornery S.O.B., the other a tough, though smallish quarter horse. Only seven mares had survived the Event. One of them was Heathen, and it was her foals that eventually became the basis of the ranch’s continued existence.

  When Ginger turned sixteen, as the only remaining Poundstone, she hooked up with young Nate Bell, who’d also lived through the cataclysm. Certain paragraphs in the record led Lily to believe Nate had fought tooth and toenail—literally—to keep the girl alive in those post-apocalyptic days. Eventually, Seamus O’Quinn and his wife had wandered in from the north and the two couple’s linked together for protection. Gradually, Lily read, a few other survivors joined them. Armand Quick Water, for one. Lily supposed he must have been Nate Quick’s ancestor. In the fourth book she found her guess was correct.

  Anyway, the union grew over the years. The blended families fought off everyone who wanted what they had. The stud grew. The Mags, mutants of undetermined origin, flourished even as the regular population struggled with a low birth rate.

  Technology
died without the means in people, material, or common knowledge to retain it. People reverted to a 19th Century type society—and they were the lucky ones. Only in the last ten or fifteen years had any sort of widespread commerce, like the traveling Trader clan in the compound now, begun.

  Lily finished the final volume, sat back and rubbed her burning eyes. The little artifact shed was dark with only the weak flickering of an oil lamp. Absently, a flip of her fingers sent a small light hovering above the desk.

  The door swung open, allowing her a glimpse of the frenetically busy yard where traders and clansfolk talked and bartered. Nate strode in. When he saw her, he halted and let the saddlebag he carried over his shoulder clump to the floor.

  “I wondered if you’d find your way here,” he said after a moment.

  “Mr. Bell let me have a key.” If a defensive note crept into her voice, Lily couldn’t help it. In plain fact she was still smarting from Neila’s earlier animosity and had come in here to hide. Not that her own deliberate provocation toward the healer had her chest swelling with pride. What had gotten into her? As much as she hated to admit it, she needed these people on her side. And Nate, it occurred to her, had saved her life. At the least, she owed him civility.

  “Didn’t figure you broke in,” Nate was saying. “Learning anything?”

  She nodded. “This and that, all of it sad.”

  “I guess, to you. To us, it’s just life. We don’t think about the old days much. Except me. Kind of turns my crank.”

  The expression made Lily smile.

  Nate picked up his saddlebag, putting it on the desktop as Lily got up to shove the current notebook back on the proper shelf. He cast a glance at the fireball spinning overhead. “Handy,” he said.

  “At times.”

  “You’re apt to be interested in what I’ve got here.” Nate patted the saddlebag.

  She leaned closer to the desk. “What is it?”

  With a flourish, he reached into the bag and pulled out not one, but three books, hardcovers, all in fairly decent condition except for what seemed to be a blood splatter on one. The blood, while dry, looked quite fresh.