Aftertime

by Sophie Littlefield

  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 stared 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?<
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  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.

  But Cass’s attackers had presumably been interrupted. How, and by whom, she had no idea. Still, she was grateful that the Beaters had time to tear only a half-dozen holes in her back, from the base of her spine to her shoulder blades.

  She pulled her shirt over her shoulders and slowly turned until she could see her back in the mirror, dreading her reflection, but the wounds weren’t the festering and oozing things she feared they would be. They were healing, regrowing flesh where it had been taken. In the mirror they seemed to glisten, pale layers of skin filming over the red and raw underlayers.

  Cass realized she had been holding her breath and turned back, pulling on her shirt as she exhaled slowly. Her hair, soft from its recent shampoo, stuck out in jagged clumps where Smoke had sheared it off, but at least it didn’t look like she’d pulled it out herself. She looked a little like a punk rocker from thirty years earlier-her mother’s time, when women used to cut their hair short and spike it. She thought of wetting it down to tame it and her hands went automatically to the faucet and turned the handle before she remembered the futility of the gesture. Water had not run in these pipes in months.

  As the Siege worsened, it eventually became clear that not only did the government not have the ability to repel the relentless bioterrorist attacks-they were never going to be able to identify with certainty who had unleashed them. The toxins were manufactured in Japan, Russia, even Finland, outsourced across a thousand corporate shells, but terrorist groups in Greece and Sri Lanka and Colombia and Somalia took credit along with the usual suspects. As every major food crop was decimated and livestock lay rotting in stinking shallow graves, people’s fears morphed into a terrible fury. Rioting, roving bands of citizens stormed every municipal and government office and the very people who were trying desperately to hold on to order were either dragged out and beaten, or ran for their lives. One by one, substations on the power grid flickered out; water stopped running through the municipal pipes; cell towers went dark. And still, everyone kept making mistakes, forgetting that the light switches no longer turned on lights, that faucets wouldn’t deliver water, that phones wouldn’t ring or connect anyone, that stoplights would never guide them and toilets would never flush. It took a while, but eventually everyone adapted. The things from Before-the hydrants and lamp poles and public restrooms-gradually, they became just another part of the landscape, unnoticed and untouched.

  And yet here she was, hands turning the cold knobs, expecting water to fill the basin. Cass closed her eyes and focused on the sensation; she could almost feel the water rushing over her fingers. She imagined water arcing from a drinking fountain, remembered how it felt pooling in her mouth, cold against her tongue. She remembered a garden hose on a hot day, testing the water dribbling out of it and waiting until the sun-heated water ran cool before putting a thumb over the nozzle and making a rainbow-dappled spray for Ruthie to run through. Droplets sparkled like a thousand tiny crystals in the sun.

  Anguish seized Cass-not just a longing for another time, but a sense that she herself was lost, that her exile from the rest of the world had left her without a place to return to. She was missing two months of her life, and during that time, the world had moved on without her. The Beaters had evolved. Citizens had evolved, too. The shelters were full of survivors who made homes inside the schools and libraries and supermarkets and churches. In the time since she was taken, they had shared meals and made friends. They’d buried their dead and given birth and made love. They’d cried and grieved and laughed and created new memories.

  And she had not been there.

  Cass was alone, like she had always been alone, since the day her father walked out the door and her mother hardened and changed into someone else. The bad decisions she made in high school only grew more desperate as she pushed everyone away. She piled failure onto disappointment until there was no path back. Eventually her friendships atrophied and disintegrated and the only people in her life were the people she drank with or fucked.

  For a brief, shining time there was Ruthie. Ruthie brought Cass back to life, Ruthie helped her start to be a person again. Until that dark moment when she stumbled, when her darkness re
ached up for her and pulled her down again, and maybe Mim and Byrn were right-maybe they had to take Ruthie away from her, maybe they had no choice because Cass didn’t deserve her.

  Cass ground her knuckles hard against the porcelain of the sink until her bones ached. She’d finally gotten Ruthie back, only to fail her again. She’d had her daughter less than one day before she carelessly let the danger in. She’d almost let her daughter die a horrible death.

  A sound came from her throat, a strangled whimper.

  There was a knocking on the door, and then it swung open and Smoke was there. “Are you all right? Cass?”

  His hand hovered in the air, as though he was afraid to touch her, and he said her name again.

  “Cass?”

  Slowly, she raised her face to the mirror and this time when she looked at herself there was a sparkle of tears in the moonlight, and Cass realized that she was crying for the first time since the day the social workers had come for Ruthie.

  She stared at her ghostly reflection in disbelief, and it was only when Smoke took her by the shoulders and turned her toward him, when he reached a gentle hand toward her face to brush away her tears, that she shoved him.

  “No.”

  Immediately he put his hands in the air and backed up into the door. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

  “You don’t understand. It’s-it’s what Lyle said. I could be a…” She swallowed, hard. “A carrier. You know, I could have it in me, the disease. It could be in my tears.”

  Smoke shook his head. “No, Cass. No. I don’t believe that. And even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be your tears. Just your saliva.”

  “You don’t know that. That’s just a rumor.”

  “Not for sure, maybe, but there’s a guy at the school, came out from UCSF in the early days of the Siege. One of the last ones to make it before the roads got all fucked up. He was a researcher, in infectious disease. He knew his shit, Cass. And he said it’s like with rabies. You get it from being bitten, from an infected animal’s saliva, and even if there’s traces of the virus in other body systems it’s not enough to cause infection. He said they tested one of them. One of the Beaters. Before they lost power in the lab. They didn’t get very far, but the abnormalities or whatever were in the saliva, and they found traces in the spinal fluid and internal organs but at such a low level that it wasn’t enough to pass on the disease.”