Cass tried to cover her disappointment. “That’s okay. I’ll know soon enough.”
Lyle nodded. “You’re welcome to stay with me as long as you want. I reckon you’re anxious to get moving again, especially now that you’re so close, but I’m guessing the rat bastards are going to be hanging around for a while, anyway. Usually they just fuck around during the day, but now and then, like tonight, a few of ’em’ll show up trying to trick me into coming out.”
“You think they’ve evolved that much…awareness?” Smoke said, waving away the joint, which was burned almost all the way down.
Lyle took a last big puff and stubbed the spent butt out on a jar lid before he answered. “Tough to say. They don’t seem any smarter than before. If anything they’ve lost all their, you know, whadda you want to call it, their language skills. You know how they used to say little odds and ends, almost make you think like they had something going on upstairs?”
He tapped his head for emphasis, a long coil of his brown hair springing out of the elastic.
“Yes…a few words at a time, little phrases…” Smoke said.
“Yeah, that. Well, they aren’t doing much of that anymore. Now it’s all this wailing and snorting and shit, like they’re a bunch of rutting pigs. Only pigs are probably a damn sight smarter than they are.”
“But their habits—” Smoke said carefully.
“They still look like a bunch of fucked-up retards on the dance floor when they walk, and you still see them doing all kinds of freaky shit like they’re trying to remember what it was like to be human. Like I saw this one out there with a doll, taking her dress off and putting it on again. Course then it pulled the doll’s hair out. Or just the other day, here comes a couple of ’em with a wheelbarrow. I’m not shit-tin’ you, they’ve got this thing loaded up with a bunch of bricks and a watering can and I don’t know what else kind of crap…and they’re trying to wheel it down the street, only they ain’t got any balance and it’s just dumpin’ shit out and then they stop and try to put it back in. Best entertainment I’ve had for weeks, I’ll tell ya, watching those two assclowns. Finally they just left the whole mess next door in my old neighbor Bess’s yard, right in the flower beds. Oh, that old bitch woulda loved that, I’ll tell you.”
Lyle chuckled, a deep satisfied sound that amazed Cass. He genuinely seemed amused by what was just one more chronicle of how horrifying the world had become. Cass wondered how he did it…surely a little weed wasn’t the only answer. If it was, she’d happily light up.
If she thought drinking would help, she’d go right back to it.
Only she knew better. Drinking had taken away her pain, for a while. But it hadn’t given her anything back but emptiness. And if she ever wanted emptiness that badly again, she’d just kill herself, hang herself from a light fixture in an abandoned house or slide a blade into the soft flesh of her wrist. It wasn’t like she’d be the first.
“But you said they’re stalking you, here,” Smoke said. “Like they keep track of which houses have squatters. They’re not just responding to catching a scent or seeing movement through the glass or…”
“Oh, for sure. Ain’t any doubt about that.”
“That’s no good,” Smoke said heavily.
“Hell, no, it ain’t. It’s fucked, is what it is.”
“So they’ve got some sort of memory. And planning. I mean even if it’s just rudimentary.”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that. It’s like they’re all in on it, figuring out how they can work together. They’ll do anything if there’s a chance they can bring down a live citizen. They’ll bang their heads into a wall until they’re dead, long as the wall gives way even a little bit. And after one does it, the rest figure out if you bang on the wall long enough it’ll break, and then next time it’s all of ’em bangin’ their heads. They’re fuckin’ unstoppable.”
“Yeah, that’s a bit newish, but still different from, you know, waiting for you to come out.”
Lyle shrugged. “I figure waiting around probably feels about like head-banging to them. Sometimes I go up to the window upstairs and holler at them just to watch them get all pissed off. They’ll throw themselves at the house for a while, climb on top of each other trying to get to the top windows—the lower ones are all boarded up now. One time I pushed a dresser out the window on one of ’em, broke its skull clean in half.” He chuckled. “Good times…’Course I had to drag it away later myself.”
“How do you…” Cass gestured around the basement. The shelves were well stocked with supplies: cans and boxes of food, paper towels and toilet paper. “I mean, what do you, um—”
“What do I do all day?” Lyle chuckled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. “Fair question. Well, I go out every single day. I don’t aim to let the fuckers keep me cooped up. I mean, I ain’t crazy, I usually go right after nightfall or right before dawn, you hardly ever see one of ’em out then. It’s about four blocks to the Horseshoe, so that’s a big feature of my day, ’cause I take four or five jugs with me.”
The Horseshoe was a branch of the Stanislaus River that wound through town. A walking path had been laid several years back, and young mothers with strollers brought stale bread for their kids to feed the ducks, Before. Cass had taken Ruthie there when she was a baby.
“So what else,” Lyle continued, ticking his activities off on his thick fingers. “Well, I go poking around in folks’ sheds and garages and whatnot, see if I can find anything useful. And I been digging a new latrine…over in Bess’s backyard, in fact. Dug it right next to those fuckin’ roses she was so damn nuts over. If I had a nickel for every time she came over here to bitch and moan about my tree dropping plums on her rosebushes…and she had a yappy little dog, too, but luckily she took it with her when she moved on down to the library. Though I suppose someone’s made dogburgers out of it by now.”
Cass exchanged a glance with Smoke. When she’d been at the library, there had been a no-pets policy. Bobby had been firm on that; resources were to go to humans. Anyone who didn’t like it could try their luck living on their own, outside, with their dog or cat.
Bess had undoubtedly given up her dog in exchange for safety; everyone did. Some of the most hard-core people thought that all animals brought to the library ought to be relinquished for food, but in that regard Bobby showed one of his infrequent moments of public compassion. He himself would offer to take the pet to the edge of town, where dogs could join the feral pack sometimes seen scavenging there, and cats could climb the shredded bark of dead eucalyptus.
“Were you married…? I mean, were you living alone during the Siege?” Cass asked, fascinated.
“No, luckily my last wife took on out of here a couple of years ago, back when you could still buy a bag of flour for under ten bucks. Better for her, I imagine. She hooked up with this guy from Sacramento, had a boat dealership up that way, I expect he was able to set her up pretty well, maybe take care of her during…everything. Hope so, anyway.”
For the first time a troubled look crossed his face, a flicker of sadness. “I was fond of that one,” he added softly.
Smoke shook his head, smiling. “Well, my hat’s off to you, keeping yourself busy. I can think of worse ways to spend the apocalypse.”
“This ain’t the apocalypse, buddy, we already done lived through that,” Lyle exclaimed, smacking Smoke on the shoulder and bellowing out a laugh. “We’re the survivors, man. You got to remember that. Don’t know how much longer we’ll be around, but every day I walk outside and I give those hell-creatures a big fuck you and I figure I’m still ahead.”
“You know what some people say,” Smoke said, his voice oddly hollow. “Stamp out the blueleaf, we can end this in one generation. I haven’t seen any sign of it since late June. It can’t survive the heat.”
“I’ve seen it,” Cass said. “Not nearly as much as…before, and it’s kind of dry and there’s dead leaves on the plants, but it’s out there.”
Smoke star
ed at her, his brows knit, his expression opaque. It was almost as though he was trying to decide if she was lying.
“If it’s out there, it won’t be for long,” he finally said. “They were invented in a lab. Kaysev’s thriving, blueleaf isn’t—what that says to me is the blueleaf’s not going to stand up to evolution.”
“Careful, friend,” Lyle said gently. “You’re back into theories now, and ain’t any knowing when it comes to theories. You’ll drive yourself crazy, you go down that path.”
“All I’m saying is, you make shit in laboratories, it’s probably pretty easy to get it wrong. People aren’t God.”
“Or else the blueleaf will develop a resistance,” Cass said. She didn’t like the edge in Smoke’s voice. It made him seem more vulnerable. “Evolve into a new strain, a stronger one. A super-blueleaf.”
“Super-blueleaf?” Smoke repeated, his voice laced with sarcasm. “That a technical term?”
Cass pressed her lips together, stung. This was a side of Smoke she hadn’t seen before, an unkind side.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I’m sorry, Cass, I didn’t mean that. I just…I don’t know, I didn’t think first.”
Cass waited only a second before she nodded, biting her lip. Maybe he was right, maybe the blueleaf was already dying out.
Blue Means Trouble. That was the frantic cry that went up around town, even before anyone understood the full horror of the disease. In the first weeks after the smaller, blue-tinged plants appeared among the sturdier kaysev, a quarter of the town’s remaining population died, dark bile bubbling at their lips as they went into convulsions. The old and sick and very young had to be buried in trenches; the last of the fuel that hadn’t already been raided went to powering the earth-moving equipment, and nearly every healthy young person helped out with the task.
Then they found out what else the blue leaves did to you.
Blue Means Trouble. The children who survived learned to run screaming for an adult when they saw the distinctive leaves with their slightly feathered edges; the adults learned to gather and burn the plants. The blueleaf strain was susceptible to the sun and heat, unlike its stronger cousin; by late May it had begun to die off on its own, unable to tolerate the Sierra summer climate.
“You’re right,” Lyle nodded. “Nobody’s seen a one of them things since summer ’round here. But how do we know they’re not thriving up north? Even if it can’t root down south now, what’s to prevent it from adapting, like Cass here says? The government’s been up to some crazy shit—you can’t tell me kaysev’s not a whole new branch of botany or whatever the fuck science it is. You can make a plant like that, you can make a fucking variation for every climate.”
“But nobody would—no sane person would eat the blueleaf now,” Cass protested. She was something of an expert on self-destruction, and in A.A. she’d seen just about every variety of desperation, but surely no one would choose the Beater’s fate on purpose.
Lyle shrugged. “That’s not the only way it’s spread.”
“Anyone who’s attacked now ends up dead in forty-eight hours,” Smoke said, almost angrily. “It’s not like early days.”
Early days, when the Beaters would occasionally attack their quarry in the streets, they could be overpowered—shot or cut or bludgeoned, if not to death at least into submission—and the victims brought home with a few bites, only to start to go feverish hours later. Soon the Beaters changed their tactics and started carrying their victims back to their nests.
“You’re sure about that?” Lyle asked. “What if they get close, but you get away? Maybe you got a scratch or two, but you think you’re okay. You going to be willing to wait and wonder?”
“It’s only spread through saliva,” Smoke said. “A scratch can’t hurt you. And their blood can’t infect you.”
“You gonna stake your life on it? Only, it wouldn’t be your life, now would it…it’s everyone who gets left behind. Lemme show you something.”
He dug into his pocket and showed them his open palm, on which they could see a small brown pill. “Potassium cyanide,” he said matter-of-factly. “Got it from a buddy of mine was in the service, he picked ’em up overseas somewhere. Gave one to Travers across the street. If the Beaters get too close to me someday, I’ll pop this sucker—I’ll be out of my mind before those fuckers get their teeth in me, dead quick enough to spoil their party.”
“That’s noble, I guess,” Smoke said, in a tone that clearly said otherwise.
“Hey, I never claimed to have all the answers,” Lyle said, holding up his hands in surrender. “But if there’s even a chance I could end up being a carrier or something, if there’s Beater blood messing up my DNA, I’d rather be dead than accidentally spit on someone. I mean, I’ve heard the same things you have. About the spit being the only way. But let me ask you something, how exactly can anyone be sure since there hasn’t been any research done since long before the first Beater took its first bite?”
No one spoke for a moment, and then Lyle dropped his hands and gave a crooked smile. “Aw, don’t listen to me. I’m just a dumbass making the best of it out here in the trenches. I didn’t mean to pick any fights, either. Truth is, I’m glad for the company. Don’t know about you, but I believe I’ll turn in for a while. I hardly ever sleep a night through anymore, but I get a few hours now, then a few hours in the afternoon… Anyway, let me show you where you can bunk up.”
He was already on his feet, closing the cover on his stash and setting the Tupperware box on a shelf next to a box marked Christmas Decorations.
What he’d said… Cass reeled from the horror of the possibility that she carried within her the seeds of the disease, that she could infect others. But she would know, her body would tell her. She had become a scholar of her own body, fine-tuned to its needs, the cycle of craving and release and addiction and recovery. She knew exactly when her period was coming, when a tendril of pain would bloom into a full-blown headache, when a twinge signaled a simple muscle pull and when it was something more serious.
If the poison was within her she’d know.
Wouldn’t she?
14
SMOKE OFFERED CASS HIS HAND, AND SHE allowed him to help her out of the old chair. They followed Lyle up the basement stairs. At the landing he turned and said regretfully, “I think we’d better leave the light here. I don’t like to get ’em riled up at night. They keep thumpin’ and scratchin’ at the walls if they see lights on in here, makes it hard to sleep.”
He set the flashlight on the landing and led them back down the first floor hall, up the steps to the second floor, where moonlight seeped through the windows.
“This is me,” Lyle said, pointing to the room they’d come through earlier, when he rescued them. “Y’all take the guest room there. It’s got a nice queen bed.”
“Oh, we’re not—” Cass said, realizing he meant for them to sleep together. Then she shut her mouth, embarrassed. There were only two rooms, separated by a small bathroom.
“I’ll take the floor,” Smoke said.
“I didn’t mean to make assumptions, but you got a shot at a bed here, why not take it?” Lyle said. “Might as well get a good night’s rest when you can.”
“It’s all right,” Cass said. “I mean, we can share. It’s just…”
Just nothing, just a man and woman, exhausted from fear and adrenaline. No doubt they’d be out the minute they hit the bed. There was nothing suggestive or sexual about it.
Aftertime was about needs. Basic necessities. Social conventions had long since disappeared. Two people could share a pail of water, or a can of peas, or a bed and it meant nothing more than survival—another day or hour or minute on a planet that had grown increasingly inhospitable.
“There’s a bucket in the bathroom,” Lyle said. “I wish I could offer you better. I clean it out every day, though, and I keep a stack of clean rags in there. I wash ’em down at the creek. I’ve never been the best housekeeper, but I guess
it’ll do.”
“Thank you,” Smoke said. “Seriously, man. I’m sorry I got a little testy with you back there—”
Lyle held up a hand to stop him. “No worries, my friend. I reckon all our nerves are shot to hell. I’m honored to have you. Y’all take first shift in the john if you want—I’ll be up for a while.”
Cass went first. After, she rested her hands on the sink and gazed at the mirror. She could see very little in the moonlight—but it was the first time she’d seen her reflection at all.
Her face was smooth, unmarked. Her lips were dry and chapped, but there were no signs that she’d chewed them. She felt a faint stirring of hope—maybe she’d recovered before she got really bad. Before…she’d had a chance to do anything reprehensible.
She touched her cheeks with her fingertips, tentatively. She was lucky not to have been bitten there. Whatever it was—whoever it was—who rescued her from the Beaters’ feeding frenzy, they had been quick. There hadn’t been time for the Beaters to consume anything more than the strips of flesh from her back.
Cass’s hands went automatically to the small of her back, the wounds she could reach. Near her tailbone was a raw patch where, as far as she could tell, a section of skin about four inches long had been ripped away. When she first woke, her exploring fingers touched something wet and the pain was unbearable, and it had been days before she could stand to touch herself again.
The Beaters loved only flesh. Skin. They did not eat muscle or sinew or bone, and they chewed sections of flesh free and then peeled them away, their jaw strength magnified by the disease and by their furious hunger. For that reason the wounds they made tended to be elongated, shreds and strips peeled away. Of course, when they were done it didn’t matter, since they feasted until little was left. Skinned, but otherwise intact, their victims were left alive and in agony, their deaths hours or days away. They died in the throes of the fever, but at least they never lived long enough to turn into monsters.
Aftertime Page 10
