Hereafter

by C. K. Crigger

  She fell silent, staring at—or through—the horse as if it weren’t even there. Finally, her forehead drew together as if she were in pain. “And I certainly didn’t ask for…for resurrection.” Her mouth clamped shut and he saw her throat working.

  “The majority of Cross-ups embrace their talent, you know,” he said, guessing at her pain. They stood side-by-side, tension between them like useless static electricity. “After a while, most of them decide they want more from the plain people around them. Demand extra this and extra that. And get it.”

  “Yeah. So I’ve been told. Repeatedly.” She reached out and touched the horse’s rump, her hand looking very small against the massive animal. “This Sleeping Beauty thing… Old fairytale,” she added, at his puzzled look. “Gal slept for a hundred years and awakened at her lover’s kiss.” She shrugged. “No kiss for me, so I have no idea what woke me up. It’s something that shouldn’t be possible. You’ll never know how much I wish it hadn’t happened. My world is gone and I’m not ready for this one. Not strong, not tough, not hard enough. What’s more, I don’t want to be.”

  He forced himself to grin at her as if he thought she was being melodramatic. “I think you’re a whole lot tougher than you know, Lily. You’ll learn fast.” Truth to tell, he wondered about that. She seemed shrunken to him this morning, her hazel eyes dark and shadowed, cheeks hollow, skin pale, listless and without energy. Almost as bad as right after they found her and she’d been so ill with the resurrection sickness.

  “Well,” she said, turning brisk and throwing back her shoulders. “I’ve come to tell you I’ve never driven a team of horses in my life. Worse, I’ve never harnessed a team. Perhaps I should do as Selkirk wanted and leave Screenmaster’s wagon here. I can use the horses as pack animals.” She laughed suddenly, the sound high and mirthless. “One thing in my favor. Since I have no possessions but the clothes I stand up in, it won’t take me long to pack.”

  This earned her a glare. “Don’t you think for one minute Harrison or Jake or I will send you off destitute. We won’t.”

  A faint smile touched her generous mouth, finally turning the corners up. “Thank you. I haven’t said so, Nate, but I appreciate you standing up for me last night and negotiating on my behalf.” Her voice grew softer. “And for taking me at face value.”

  Abruptly, as though the action was beyond his control, Nate wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, cheek to cheek. She roused a wanting in him, a need he’d never felt for any other woman. She resisted for a moment, and he sensed a fear about her, as though she didn’t quite trust him. He tilted her head back with a finger under her chin until she met his eyes.

  “Don’t be afraid of me, Lily,” he said. “I promise I won’t double cross you.”

  “I’m not afraid of you. I believe you’lltry to be straight with me.” Her lips twisted. “You carry a lot of baggage around with you, though. I…” She stopped as a line creased his forehead. “I mean you’ve got a big family to answer to, like it or not. I never had much in the way of close family. After my mom died, just my grandparents and a couple of cousins. But I listened to friends who did. They all say…said…their families are difficult to deal with at times. Families don’t necessarily do what you want. Every person has about six different ideas on any given subject. And they all want you to come down on their side. Sound familiar?”

  His shoulders hunched. Yeah. It did.

  She relaxed and leaned against him. Nate wondered if she liked the way he felt. He enjoyed her body touching his, the way she just seemed to fit. “You should marry me,” he said out of the blue. “Then my people would have to accept you.”

  The vein in her throat visibly jumped and started pulsing faster.

  Oh, Lord! What had he said?

  After a pause that lasted a little longer than it should’ve, Lily forced out a laugh. “Love me, love my dog?”

  He recognized the old quote, but before he could say so, she shook her head. “What if they disowned you, threw you out? Sorry payment for all you’ve done for me. And they’d hate me twice as much, especially Bren, for taking you away from the family. Pretty soon you’d hate me, too.” She shivered and her arms went around his waist. “But I thank you for the offer.”

  Reaching up, she gave him a little peck on the lips, at least that’s how it started out. But when she would’ve drawn away, he caught her with one hand behind her head, holding her steady while he took his time, savoring the touch of her soft lips. Pretty soon he discovered she was pressing closer, her mouth open under his.

  Then, as if she had a sixth sense, Lily jerked away as the barn door opened again. “Hey,” Jacob’s voice floated over to them, “anybody here?”

  Nate drew in a deep, shuddering breath—let it go. Lily, her eyes dark as they searched his face, stepped apart.

  “Here,” he called to Jake. “Did you bring the stuff I asked for?”

  ***

  The butterflies in Lily’s stomach soared into flight as she climbed the steps to the seat of Screenmaster’s wagon. The backs of the three big horses hitched to the camper looked enormous from this perch. What on earth let her ever think she could drive a setup like this?

  But Selkirk O’Quinn was standing at one side of the wide barn doors, with Bannion on the other, both in identical poses of stiffly folded arms and sour expressions, so she knew there’d be no reprieve. Her allotted time was up, and this a “do or die’ situation. Only Nate had an encouraging smile for her. She quivered, thinking of the kiss they’d shared. Already she felt his loss.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said now. “Just take it easy and remember what I taught you.”

  She cleared her throat. “I will. Thanks.” She loosed the reins from where they were wound around the brake lever and threaded them through her fingers per his instructions. Time to go.

  “Hyah, giddy-up,” she said, voice barely rising above a whisper. Even so, the horses understood the message of reins flapping against their backs. They leaned into their collars and started off together at a slow plod.Single tree, double tree, collars, hames. The meaning of the terms, though known to her previously, now seemed a blank inside her head.

  Jake ran beside the wagon. “Don’t forget, Lily,” he called up to her, “you gotta hobble the horses tonight when you stop. And put that string of bells up around your camp. Most of the Mags are afraid of bells, so you’ll have time to wake up if you have to fight them.”

  She flicked him a glance, opened her mouth to ask why Mags were afraid of bells, then decided it didn’t matter. “I won’t forget,” she assured him. “Thanks for everything, Jake.”

  “Anyway, if you don’t smell them from a mile away, the pup will.”

  This remark almost forced her to stop. “Pup?”

  He grinned wide as a friendly jack-o’-lantern. “You’ll see.”

  As her outfit cleared the barn, she saw Fanta waving shyly at her from between the infirmary and another building. As it turned out, Fanta and the girl with the severed hand were sisters, and the family was grateful to Lily for saving the girl’s life. They’d contributed a newish shirt and spare pair of pants, gifts of tangible gratitude, to Lily’s outfit.

  Lily nodded and forced a smile as Rory came to stand by Fanta. He’d lugged in a fifty pound bag of oats for the horses; another family had filled the bin at the end of the wagon with good grass hay.

  Neila, her face set, watched Lily’s passage from the infirmary window, Bren hovering at the healer’s shoulder. No love lost there.

  She was relieved when headquarters finally disappeared behind the crest of the hill overlooking the lake. After an hour, as she came up on what looked to be a well-used turn off, Lily took her first deep breath since starting out and tugged the horses to a halt. Nate had drawn her a map, showing a route passable for the wagon. It wasn’t the same as in the old days, he said. By the time the great die-off ended and population stabilized, the old roads had become impassable for the most part; overgrown in sp
ots, due to lack of use; burned away by fire in others. Only after trade had started up were some cleared and used again, but those were not necessarily the ones she needed now.

  Nate’s forefinger had traced a course for her, zigzagging across country and avoiding the worst of the areas still black and dead, killed by what could not, she realized, have been regular cleansing fire. She stopped at what she believed was the first zig. The new trail had deep ruts, headed southeast and downhill, and carved through a stand of scrub timber whose branches drooped with heavy wet snow, melting now. Dismal, facing the ordeal on her own. Her innards did an earthquake dance.

  “It’s about a hundred miles to your grandfolks’s place,” Nate said, confirming her own guess. “Probably take you ten days or so to get there. That’s if the weather holds.” He looked out at the sky and sniffed the wind. “But it won’t. This storm isn’t finished with us. Look for a foot of snow along about the day after tomorrow. There’ll be plenty of wind. Hole up here.” His forefinger had touched a mark on the map. “You’ll find a sheltered spot. Stay until the storm passes. Give it a couple days, then you should have fine weather. But be on the watch. That’s when the Mags’ll be out.”

  The funny part is, when he said that about the weather, she believed him. That old O’Quinn family mojo everyone denied having at work. All he did was look at the sky and quaff the air, but Nate knew.

  “Phooey on all O’Quinns, Quicks, and Bells,” she muttered to herself now. “Bitch about me being a mage when they’ve got the same damn disease. Bunch of frigging hypocrites.”

  Grousing made her feel a little better as she went over the route again, then, certain this was where she should make her first turn, lifted the reins. A stirring in the wagon behind her halted the motion.

  “What in the world? Who’s there?” The noise had been faint. Most people would never have heard it, but she picked up on a curious little whine. After a brief silence, she heard it again, along with a quick, repetitive thumping sound.

  “Whoa,” she told the horses, wrapping the reins around the brake for a second time. Nate had told her to make the action a habit and she was trying. Crouching, she opened the cubby door behind the seat, which led into the body of the wagon.

  The dark interior made it hard to see. No matter. She smiled. No one here to be offended by the use of one of her tricks. A flick of her fingers provided light until she could touch the wick of a lantern. Once the flame came up, she looked around for the source of the sound. At first she saw nothing to account for it, then, in a space under the cot, she spied movement and the gleam of a bright eye. More telling, a puddle of yellowish liquid spread across the floor.

  “Pup,” Jake had said.

  “Looks like somebody has had an oopsie,” she said conversationally. Entering the camper, she lifted the edge of a ratty quilt and peeked under the cot. “Would that be you?”

  The black-and-white puppy—a miniature Sliver—advanced and licked her face.

  “Oh, ho. An apology?” she asked, and in answer, the pup emerged from his hideout, sat and scratched energetically at an ear with a hind foot. Lily recognized the sound from before. “I hope to God you don’t have fleas. If you do, I’ll probably have to burn the bed.”

  The puppy barked, a baby bark, and instantly, Lily’s heart melted. “That darn Jake. What does he think I’m supposed to do with you? How am I to feed you?”

  Wishing for a big roll of paper towels, she looked around for a rag to clean up the puddle. Upon locating a dirty towel, leftover from Phillip Barnes’ ablutions she supposed, since it was hanging from a rack beside the bowl obviously used as a sink, she mopped the puddle. Stirred by this activity to attack her hand with sharp little teeth, the pup bounced around in the floor’s open space. A collar was buckled around his neck, with a bit of precious paper stuck beneath it. Lily pulled the wrinkled document out and unfolded it.

  Lily, the note said. Hope yu like the dog. He’s Sliver’s

  full bruther, only a few years yunger. Like I told yu, he’ll

  warn about Mags. Harrison put some of the trale rashuns

  he makes for Sliver in a powch, but the pup’ll soon learn

  to hunt his own food. Nate said I should tell yu

  that becuz back in the old days, dogs ate some kind of

  stuff peeple bought in a store for them. He lernd that frum

  a book he fownd in a ruind howse. The powch is in the

  cupboard by the door.

  The note made her smile, and lament the fact that Jacob Felix’s spelling left something to be desired.

  Paper. She underlined an item on her mental list, then a second.Schools and teachers, emphasis on spelling.

  But there was no time to play with the pup. Finding a length of rope in one of the drawers in the commode, she tied it to the pup’s collar.

  “Your first lesson, puppy, is staying on the wagon seat without strangling yourself.” Lifting the little duffer, more solid than she first thought, she took him out, placed him beside her, and admonished him to stay. Then, picking up the reins again, she hollered to the horses and they started their slow, steady pace.

  Dark had gathered under the trees when at last she reached the area Nate had marked on the map for her first camp. Climbing stiffly from the wagon seat while carrying a pup who wiggled to be free, and contending with a leg screaming with pain, she paid Barnes gratitude for his stair to the ground.

  With the pup gamboling around her heels, she unhitched the horses, brushed dirt from their white coats while they lipped up a measure of grain. She affixed the animal’s hobbles, then spent half an hour arranging the lengths of bells. The puppy loved that, barking and growling as she dragged the strings of bells around the wagon, attaching them to hooks Nate and Jacob had screwed into the wood.

  “Always take care of your stock first,” Nate had said, “no matter how tired you are. Then set the bells. Your life may depend on it.”

  By the time she finished, she could barely walk, her leg throbbing as she gathered an armload of firewood. No big deal for that. Fallen limbs littered the ground under the tall fir trees. Nate’s map showed an overhang where, preferring the outdoors for her meal than the dark and stuffy camper interior still smelling of Philip Barnes, she built a fire and warmed stew left from Harrison’s meal last night. The pup dined with her, his belly round and replete, and later, in the wagon, he curled against her in a cocoon of blankets.

  She didn’t sleep that night—no surprise—but lay and listened for the bells, which never rang, while staring into the darkness filling the camper.

  Before dawn, a meager breakfast eaten, Lily hitched the horses and started off along Nate’s planned route. Miles traveled rolled out behind the wagon wheels, the terrain dropped lower, into foothills sketchily covered with sere vegetation. She saw plenty of wild game: flocks of geese squawking as a huge V formation flew overhead; a moose, standing with its head submerged in the shallows of a small lake; chillingly, what appeared to her shocked senses to be an African lion. It paid her or the puppy, who stood with his hackles raised barking a challenge, no mind, its attention on the moose. Frightened, she urged the horses into a jog and drove past the campsite Nate had marked on the map, traveling on until she found a place more open, where the horses had better graze close to the wagon.

  She hobbled the team, set the bells, and turned in. By morning, the storm Nate had predicted arrived.

  Chapter 26

  Philip Barnes’ camper, built on springs lifted from some well-preserved antique car, rocked in the blustery wind. The motion set the bells chiming. Lily started awake at the first sound, heart thudding, her mouth open in a silent scream as she sat up. The pup, curled against her with the tip of his tail covering his nose, opened one eye. He appeared unalarmed.

  The wind. Only the wind. No mutants were hammering to get at her. Lily swallowed. The motion was making her a little seasick.

  “Looks like Nate had the weather pegged,” she informed her companion as the
camper shook again. Outside, the bells pealed. A scatter of fine snow blew under the door at the next gust. The temperature had dropped considerably in the last few hours. Shivering, even though wearing her pants and a shirt, she drew a pair of wool socks over bare feet. The fire in the small stove had gone out, the camper’s interior turned glacial.

  She had no idea of the time. Exhausted from a full day of driving the cumbersome vehicle over the almost obscured remnants of ancient roads, she’d been sleeping hard. Was it the middle of the night now, or morning? Night, she decided. The atmosphere had that feel.

  Scratching a deep layer of frost from a corner of the tiny window above the bed, she peered through the hole. Ambient light reflected off the snow. Everything beyond the horses, which were hobbled only a few feet away, was indistinct, lost in a fog of swirling white. Poor creatures, they stood with hindquarters turned to the wind,. There was nothing she could do for them, at least until daylight.

  Meanwhile, her concern over a possible Mag attack faded. Harrison had told her the mutants stayed inside in weather like this. They wore only bare essentials when it came to clothing—having apparently degenerated until they were more animal than human—and were without the sense to stay warm. The O’Quinns said they found a few thawing corpses every spring, dead of exposure to the elements.

  Lily lay back down with the blankets pulled around her ears as the camper grew more chill. The walls were but thin protection against falling temperatures and the blizzard outside. Afraid to either fall asleep or to start the fire in case the chimney vent plugged and carbon monoxide fumes poisoned her, she shivered through long, lonely hours, listening to the bells. At that, she only knew it was morning because the pup stirred and demanded to go out.

  “Are you kidding?” she asked. “You’ll get lost in this snow.”

  The whine grew more determined.

  “All right, all right, contain yourself a minute, you hear me? I don’t want any more puddles on the floor.”

  Holding the top quilt around her, Lily found a clean pair of the dwarf’s socks, pulling them on over her own in a double layer before thrusting her feet into packer boots. A second shirt went over the one she’d slept in, her coat over all, zipper pulled all the way up. Hat, gloves, something around her neck. Lastly, she found a fifty-foot length of rope.