Hereafter

by C. K. Crigger

  Harrison had been watching her. “Lily’s tired, ” he said. “We’ll let her get some sleep. You boys come back in an hour or so and we’ll go to Bannion’s meeting together.”

  But solitude and rest, she discovered, wasn’t actually what he had in mind. Nuh, uh. Five minutes later, having shooed Nate and Jacob from the house, he returned, bearing two cups of strong tea, a bowl of the stew, and a determined expression. In a way, she didn’t mind. Not in view of Bannion’s news…demands…warning…whatever.

  “This secrecy,” he said, settling himself on a wooden kitchen chair that had lost its back, and handing her the dish, “has gone on long enough. Both sides, you and us. I don’t know what Bannion’s thinking about, keeping you in the dark. My opinion, Lily, you deserve answers.”

  At last…if this was for real.

  “Two days ago I would’ve settled for just knowing the history of the last hundred years,” she said. “I wanted a grasp of what my options were for the future.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m not so sure I have any future.” There. She’d set it out baldly, let him know she was aware of which way the rope twisted. She lifted the spoon to her mouth.

  “Wise of you. Let me see if I can explain where Selkirk and Bannion are coming from—” He fell silent, staring down at the gnarled hands resting on his knees as she chewed. “The clan’s experience in dealing with strangers isn’t good, Lily. In the early years, or so we’re told, we tried to help all comers. They had a nasty habit of being untrustworthy. A newly fledged Cross-up, for one, who almost destroyed us. He came to the compound—the Quicks, O’Quinns, and Bells had already joined forces by then—and we took him in. So happens he had an army of Cits waiting to attack when he’d spied out our defenses. Except for Nate and his dad, the Quick family was wiped out. Of course, so was the Cross-up—and the Cits, to the last man.”

  Lily drew in a shaky breath. “I see. Makes the way the clan views me sound almost reasonable.”

  “I’m glad you understand.”

  “It doesn’t make me any happier about the situation.”

  “No. I expect not.”

  “What can I do, Mr. Bell?” Food forgotten for the moment, she sat straighter in her nest of blankets. “I’ve fought on the clan’s side. I’ve been wounded in their service. I’ve even killed a dreaded Cross-up. Is there anything that will win hearts and change minds? All this distrust seems a self-perpetuating state of affairs. Coming and going, fighting and killing. Somebody needs to take a step forward and try to make peace.

  “Not everyone is as suspicious of you as Selkirk and Bannion—”

  “And Neila,” she interrupted.

  Harrison nodded gravely. “And Neila. But keep in mind Selkirk and Bannion have the task of keeping the clan safe. If they falter, the clan suffers, maybe even dies.”

  “So I’m to be a sacrifice, willing or not. A continuance of your isolation.” She pounded the floor with her fist. Down below, the dog barked in alarm.

  “Easy, Sliver,” Harrison called to him, hushing the animal. “And we do take in strangers upon occasion. Jake’s people most recently. The House group, twenty-five years ago. The Shandys about the same. We have strictly avoided becoming in-bred. And Nate makes friends when he goes trekking. Sometimes he brings people in. Sometimes one of us goes out.”

  “But I’m not welcome.” Lily couldn’t help the bitter tinge in her voice.

  “No Cross-ups.”

  Time to change the subject, she thought, unable bear this one any longer. “About the Mags…” Just thinking about them made her ill. “They are—or were—humans, weren’t they? Does anyone know what caused some people to turn into…whatever they are now?”

  “The Mag mutation was just getting into full swing when I was born. Scientists, if we still had any, could probably tell you. For us it’s just guesswork, but we’ve heard various reasons. A worldwide release of chemicals; some kind of plague; cannibalism, among others.” He ticked these items off on his fingers. “None of us know exactly why some people mutated and some passed on the best traits they had. We’ve been too busy trying to stay alive to find out.”

  “What has happened to the rest of the world, Harrison?” This question had been burning Lily and no one she’d asked knew the answer. Bren, the medical aid merely scowled at her and shrugged; Jacob said he didn’t know; Pike, the trader, remarked that in the last ten years a few goods had started arriving from across the big ocean. From a far-off island nation came stuff like a big fruit with a spiny top, which Lily deduced was a pineapple, and real coffee the dark-skinned trader called Kona. And from “Yrp” came bolts of cloth and medicines and metal goods.

  “We don’t know about the wide world. The story passed down from generation to generation is that most of the earth burned. The huge cities, which fared the worst; many of the forests; the grasslands. For ten years it was cold and dark and dry. Only small folds of land survived.” He waved his hand in a circling gesture. “Such as this one. Like I told you, local families gathered together here, fighting off bandits who tried to take it from us. We bred within these families and we stayed clean and protected our resources. To this day, as you can see. On the outside, disease took most who survived the big bang and first fires. Soon there was nothing for them to eat, except each other. But not us.” Well-earned pride shone out of his dark eyes. “Then it got better, the sun came out. Rain and snow watered the land, grass grew again, and trees and food crops. And we became as you see us now.”

  Lily shuddered. Three hundred ten million people in the United States alone. How many had died?No.How many had lived? That was the question. Her grandparents…what about them? She couldn’t absorb the story all at once. She’d known—and yet she hadn’t. With Harrison’s telling, the event became all too real. She closed her eyes.

  “I don’t think I want to hear anymore,” she said. She’d meant to ask about Cross-ups; now she didn’t care.

  Harrison rose to his feet. “No, I don’t suppose you do. But I thought you needed to know what’s out there, beyond our boundaries. In case—”

  She looked up. “In case I get lucky and Bannion and Selkirk decide to banish me instead of killing me?”

  He pursed his lips. “We’ll try not to let that happen. Nate and I.”

  “Try?”

  “Nate won’t let them kill you, and I, though old and not so important to the clan anymore will back him up.” Shrugging, he edged toward the stair. “Finish your stew, then get some sleep, Lily. Regain your strength. I think you’re going to need it.”

  Sleep? After what he’d told her? Never happen, she thought, but when she’d polished off the stew, quite suddenly, strength sapped by her wound, against all odds, she drifted off.

  ***

  In the way people have of sleeping through fire truck sirens and train whistles, then awaken at the slightest footfall, Lily’s eyes snapped open at the click of the outside door latch. The room below was silent except for a slight noise she finally recognized as the dog lapping water.

  She lay still, feeling the empty house around her. Harrison had gone out and she believed she knew where. An innate time sense told her she’d been asleep at least an hour. Bannion’s time limit had come and gone. The meeting. That’s where the guys would be. Where she should be.

  Feeling better, stronger, for the food and the nap, she yawned, stretching her arms overhead before tossing the blanket aside. Her head was clear as she sat up and pulled on her packer boots, deliberately ignoring the recurring ache in her leg.

  Traversing the steep staircase proved a bit of a problem, but she made it without falling, wondering how Nate had ever gotten her up in the first place. The dog waited for her at the bottom step.

  “Hey, Sliver. Hey, boy.” She caressed his perked ears and gave him a friendly pat. Nose twitching at her scent, his tail wagged.

  Conscious of Bannion’s meeting already underway, she took a moment to investigate Harrison’s home, Sliver padding behin
d her. There were only two doors off the main room. One led to a small bedroom, kept spic and span with a well-made bedstead and a beautifully crafted chest of drawers. The other to a bathroom of the approximate size found in most camp trailers. She used the facilities, washing her face and combing tangles from her hair before clubbing it back in a neat ponytail. A glance in Harrison’s shaving mirror showed her face drawn and washed out, looking several years older than the twenty-seven years she claimed. Or technically, one hundred and twenty-seven years.

  And then, although she’d been running on instinct, she poured herself a cup of tepid tea from the kettle keeping warm at the back of the stove, and sat at the table with the dog at her feet.

  So, they, meaning Nate, Harrison, and probably Jake, young as he was, had gone over to the meeting. Meeting! She scoffed at the bland word. Were she to show up, it’d be more like a trial, with her the defendant. Who would be the judge, she wondered. Bannion? Or big, cold-eyed Selkirk, the clan’s headman?

  An inner voice urged procrastination. Let Nate handle his cousins, if he could. Let Harrison, as elder statesman of the clan, speak to his people on her behalf. Lily cast a longing look toward the loft where the pallet, warm from the heat risen from the stove, beckoned. And then, sighing, she set her cup aside, the pottery clicking against the hard wood table, and stood.

  Whatever the meeting—trial—brought, she’d take the verdict first hand. No secondhand news. Better to meet trouble head-on than let it sneak up on you from behind. That’s the kind of woman her grandparents had raised. That’s the kind of woman the Border Patrol had trained her to be.

  Chapter 24

  The dog slipped outside in front of her when Lily opened the door. Met with thumb-size snowflakes flying in her face in dizzying spirals, she stood a moment, acclimating to the cold and wind and utter darkness. A couple hundred yards to the south a single yellow light winked, shining intermittently through the storm,.

  “What about it, Sliver? Is that where I’m supposed to go?”

  Snuffling his nose through the loose snow, Sliver grinned up at her and shook flakes from his fur. Lily took it to mean yes. “Lead the way,” she told him and, as if only waiting for this release, the dog bounded off. Lily followed as quickly as her leg allowed, struggling to keep to the trail he broke.

  Nate had wanted to spare her this meeting, she knew. Likewise Harrison and Jake. For some reason she had gained these three as allies, and the last thing she wanted was for them to be ostracized by their own people. Inadequate reward for their partisanship. If Bannion and Selkirk, with Neila’s agreement, would give her time to heal, she’d leave here willingly. Or, and here honesty got the better of her, maybe not so willingly. This was a dangerous world now for a newby alone. But she’d come to the conclusion this was the only correct solution. The O’Quinns didn’t want a Cross-up in their midst? Fair enough. She had no desire to stay where she wasn’t wanted. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a destination calling to her. She did. The need to see her grandparent’s old home—her old home—drew her in like a fish on a line.

  A blast of wind drove snow against her face as she pushed through a drift, a shiver pulsing in her aching leg. If the O’Quinns banished her right now, how would she survive? She had no resources.

  Alone and surrounded by Mags. A scene right out of one of grandpa’s western novels played in her head. But were the shrieking savages the Mags? Or were they the O’Quinn clan? She suspected she’d find out soon enough.

  Sliver led her straight to headquarters where Nate and she had met Bannion this morning. Even through the heavy door she could hear voices raised in dissension. Brushing a film of snow off a side window, she peeped into an ordinary dining room. As many as a dozen men and women were standing or sitting around a large dining room table. Highlighted by ceiling hung oil lamps, their shadows bounced on the snow-covered porch as periodically one paced across the room. One man waved his arms, looking like a boxer sparring with an invisible opponent.

  She heard Jake’s voice, and although even she couldn’t make out what he said, he was loud enough Sliver growled in distress. It seemed her cue to fling open the door and step inside on a blast of cold and snow.

  The immediate effect was that everyone quit talking. Lily had time to see the appalled look on Jake’s face, and the resigned look on Nate’s. Harrison, if she wasn’t mistaken, actually had a little twinkle in his eye, and it was he who spoke first.

  “You have a sense of the dramatic, Ms. Turnbow. Nicely done. We were just discussing you.”

  Unsure whether to claim this as a compliment or not, Lily nodded. “I believe I’m the guest of honor at this party. The least I could do is show up.”

  “Very clever,” Selkirk said. He sat at the head of the table, a cup of tea and a half-eaten piece of pie in front of him. “What Nate calls a play on words, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Nate, leaning on the back of the wooden kitchen chair in which Jake sat, shrugged. He didn’t appear all that playful to Lily.

  “More a use of irony,” she said, “not that it matters.”

  Bannion glowered from where he stood propped against an elaborate oak mantelpiece. Lily remembered it from the Poundstone’s last remodeling of the house, old even then. With a sense of shock, she realized the place must be almost two hundred years old by now. Ancient in Northwestern terms. The O’Quinns and Bells had taken good care of things, one item in their favor.

  Occupied in memories, she missed Bannion’s sharp question. “I beg your pardon?” she said. “My mind was wandering, thinking of how this place has stayed the same all these years. The last time I was here…”

  A slash of his hand cut her off. “Do you think this is a game, Ms. Turnbow? It’s no game to any of us. I asked where you went after you left the infirmary? I spent an hour looking for you.”

  “Out of concern for me, sheriff?” she asked softly. “How nice. Or did you have a different reason?”

  He never batted an eye. “Both.”

  Hmm. What to say? She wasn’t about to admit to hiding out in Harrison’s house. A thought occurred. “I took Neila’s advice. She mentioned a barn as the proper place for me, so I found a spare stall.”

  “Which barn?” Bannion’s voice was hard. “I searched them all.”

  “Really?” she said coolly. “I guess you weren’t as thorough as you thought. Although, after a day like this, you have plenty of excuse. What difference does it make? I’m here now.”

  Despite her careless fib, he cast a suspicious eye on Harrison who never so much as blinked. She thought she was the only one who noticed Jake’s tiny twitch.

  “So what is it you want of me, Sheriff?” she asked, reclaiming his attention.

  He exchanged a look with his cousin Selkirk, the clan leader. Whispers among the others hinted at disagreement in the ranks of decision makers. She recognized a few, namely Bannion’s own Sergeant Zelnor, and another whom she had supplied with a horse during the great stampede. Neila, thank goodness, had skipped the meeting although, Lily suspected, only because the wounded claimed all her attention. She may have cast a vote in absentia.

  But Lily was tired of pussyfooting around. Almost too weak to stand, she’d brought the question into the open, although her heart sank at the stony stares the others fixed on her.

  She managed a short laugh. “Not to pin a medal on my chest, I see. Not even a ‘well done, Lily. Thanks for helping out.’”

  “Screenmaster and his saiclers wouldn’t have showed up if it weren’t for you,” an older man said. His arm was severed just below the elbow, an old wound, the sleeve neatly pinned back.

  “Maybe, maybe not, Garrett.” Nate spoke out of turn. “Rondo’s prisoner said they’d planned to come in the spring anyway. Said he wished they’d waited.”

  “O’Quinn territory has grown big enough everyone wants a piece of us,” the horseman put in, an ambiguous statement that might have meant anything.

  “Or will try to test our mettle,” S
elkirk agreed unexpectedly. “If Ms.Turnbow was to remain here, we’d have’em coming at us every time we turned around, their forces ever larger.” He pushed his cup away, sloshing liquid over the side. “They’re gonna want her powers to use for themselves. I don’t see any way around it.” His jaw set. “And I won’t stand for it.”

  Lily’s knees shook and she locked them, hoping no one had seen. Like a kitten cornered by coyotes, she dare not show weakness. “That sounds remarkably like a threat, Mr. O’Quinn. You have two choices that I can see.”

  “Do I?” he said, almost whispering. “And what would thosetwo choices be?”

  Lily’s voice dropped to match. “You can either take me into the clan, or…” For a moment, she couldn’t bring herself to say the other.

  “Or?”

  In a corner of her mind she was aware of Jacob saying to Nate, “What does she mean, Nate?” and Nate saying, “Hush,” on a ragged note.

  “Or you can kill me here and now. Or try,” she finished. A collective indrawn breath kept everyone silent, except Jacob, who said, “What?” After a few heartbeats, she went on, “Not that I will take that lying down, mind you. I hope you won’t forget I have a few weapons at my disposal.” There. She’d made herself clear.

  “Yes,” Bannion said. “We’re aware of that. But understand this, Lily. We’re only one family. If you stay, a bigger family, or a warrior cult or another group like the saiclers is going to want your powers. They’re going to come after us—and eventually, win.”

  A man at the far end of the room scooted his chair away from the table with a heavy scraping of legs, then reversed that action. Someone said, “Jesus,” on a prayerful note, and the rest fidgeted and coughed and made restless movements with their hands. Only Lily—and Bannion—were immobile, eyes locked.