Cass wondered. It was true that the Beaters were evolving, that their hunger was driving them to adapt to their circumstances-but they were still so primitive in their responses. They couldn’t walk ten feet without tripping and stumbling over each other, but they hadn’t learned to put any distance between them when they went out roving. They were like children in their frustration, raging and screaming in impotent fury when they were denied. When they were hurt they were hypnotized by the sight of their own blood, so deeply fascinated that you could come close enough to fire at them point-blank before they remembered you were a threat.
One thing was sure: if a border had been built, retreating east was no longer a possibility once she found Ruthie. And to the south were the Rebuilders. Cass thought of Evangeline, of her cruel beauty, of the effortless power she wielded over the people in the conference room. She had no trouble believing that Evangeline was capable of using her for research-and other things she couldn’t even imagine.
“What’s to stop them from coming after us?” she asked. “If they have the means to do something like this.”
“They didn’t know about the motorcycle. They don’t know about the resistance-well, I’m sure they’re aware that not everyone welcomes their presence at the library, but from what Herkim told me, they don’t know who’s acting and who’s just grumbling. They won’t know who helped us escape, and they’ll be forced to assume we’re out wandering around town. My guess is they’ll send out a party, check with squatters, sweep town and when they don’t find us, figure we were either taken, or…or I guess, maybe that we got incredibly lucky and made it out of town on foot.”
Smoke eased the motorcycle forward, weaving carefully between the bark and twigs and dirt clods left by whoever had cleared the road. When they’d passed the last of it, he increased their speed, but kept it slower than they’d been going before, about twenty-five miles an hour. Night had nearly descended, and the motorcycle’s headlight lit up an eerie landscape of the black nightmare outlines of stripped and downed trees against a purple-gray sky. The occasional abandoned or wrecked car loomed like a hunkering ogre, the beam glinting off metal and glass. Maybe it was Cass’s imagination, but it seemed to her that Smoke sped past these cars as though he couldn’t get away from them fast enough, before easing back in the long uninterrupted stretches of empty pavement. Cass held tight to his waist, unable to relax her grip, afraid they’d hit something, afraid she’d fall, afraid of everything she couldn’t see in the shadows of the forest.
The roar of the bike’s motor was the loudest sound Cass had heard in a long while-if you didn’t count screaming. She had grown accustomed to silence Aftertime. Once you took out the sound of traffic and the buzz of streetlights and televisions blaring through open windows and fire engines and police sirens cutting through the night, and even the soft hum of everyday electronics, it was possible to hear what lay beneath-the sigh of the wind, the murmur of water flowing in a creek, the calls of the birds that survived and the rustling of species starting their return to the underbrush. In her days of walking, Cass had retuned her ears to these subtle sounds, and now the whine of the motor cutting through the night stillness was nearly unbearable, winding her nerves tight and keeping her fear simmering.
The odds of encountering Beaters along this unpopulated stretch of road were slim. Cass held on to that thought and let it calm her as she watched the ribbon of road flashing silver in front of them, Smoke following the center line. The air rushing past was cold, and she snuggled into Smoke’s shirt, pressing her cheek against the warm fabric. After a while she allowed her eyelids to drift slowly closed, and breathed deeply of the night. Kaysev and mountain sage and cool earth. Cass thought she could ride like this for a long, long time, clinging to the illusion of safety, grateful for someone else taking responsibility for the future.
Smoke’s soft exclamation put her on instant alert. She sat up straight and blinked at lights in the distance, a glow highlighting a massive dark structure. They had arrived at the edge of San Pedro, and the black shadows of houses and mailboxes and cars lined the side of the silent road. Gravel skittering under their tires, they narrowly avoided the corpse of a large dog lying stiff and mangled in the middle of the road, and Smoke corrected by swerving onto the shoulder, cursing under his breath. When the bike was righted, Cass was left with adrenaline surging through her body, and she had to force herself not to dig her fingers into Smoke’s waist.
The stadium was lit from behind by a hazy glow. The effect was that of a ghost ship on a night ocean, as though it had been conjured by her desperation. It was even bigger than she remembered, and the memory of walking up the curving ramps with her father all those years ago danced at the edge of her heart, trying to get in, but she pushed it back.
That long-ago day, it had been bright with banners and advertisements and the big digital scoreboard, the bright red and silver-Miners’ team colors-worn by the players and fans. Now, the once-colorful edifice, like her memories of that day, was washed out and dull.
When they drew closer, Cass saw that someone was moving around the edges of the stadium, and she felt a combination of excitement and dread in her gut. They weren’t moving like Beaters. Whoever it was-friend or foe-it was a citizen.
Smoke slowed again, and they came to a stop several blocks away from the stadium. A warehouse of some sort hugged a sprawling, fenced lot to their right; on the left were apartment buildings, low-slung brick six-flats with their first-floor windows broken out. The abandoned buildings could easily house Beater nests, especially the warehouse, which probably had loading bays on the back side of the building.
Cass pressed closer to Smoke. “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”
She could sense the tension in Smoke’s body.
“I know,” he muttered. “Only…I just wish I knew what was ahead. I don’t like that they’ve got people outside like that. Makes me think they’re armed, and I’d kind of like to know what their agenda is ahead of time. Here, let me have the pack, okay?”
Cass slid it off her shoulders, feeling the pain in her shoulders where the straps had cut into her flesh. The pack was too large for her-a man’s pack.
Smoke dug inside and handed her a water bottle. “Thirsty?”
Suddenly, she was. She twisted off the cap and drank deep, barely even minding the silty, earthy taste. Creek water: you could never boil the taste out of it. She let a little dribble down her chin, down her throat, wetting the collar of her shirt, before holding the bottle out to Smoke.
And saw that he was holding the gun, weighing it loosely in his hand. He ejected the spent magazine and rooted in the pack for a fresh one. “Sometimes I guess it pays to be famous. Infamous,” he corrected himself.
“So where do you think they got them?”
“There’s stashes,” he said evasively. “I know of a few that the resistance set up. Not all by any means. I don’t know how strong they are in the library, how many people…but it’s got to be pretty organized. Our friend Herkim back there kept this one under wraps. Bet he’s got a few more, too. Probably off-site…a house, a hole, doesn’t take much, and for now at least the Rebuilders can’t keep track of everyone’s comings and goings during the day. Though I’m sure that’s next.”
He laughed, a sound so utterly without humor that Cass flinched.
“Were you with them from the start?” she asked. “The…resistance?”
“Wasn’t really anything to be ‘with,’ just those of us who thought it was fucked up that a few assholes wanted to tell everyone else what to do. I mean, a power grab seemed like an especially bad idea when everything else was still going to hell. Way I saw it, maybe everyone ought to just pitch in and work together until the dust settled, know what I mean?”
Cass thought about Bobby, his easy leadership, the way everyone had turned to him, almost hungry for direction, for someone to tell them what to do. “Sometimes someone needs to take charge,” she said softly, hoping her voice didn’t betra
y the ache in her heart left by Bobby’s death. “Someone just has to pick a direction and go, or it’s chaos.”
“I used to think that,” Smoke said grimly. “Until I saw firsthand what happens when the guy with the power heads off in the wrong direction. And everyone follows along, like a bunch of lemmings throwing themselves over the cliff. I won’t be a part of that. Not ever again.”
There was a hardness in Smoke’s voice that surprised Cass, and under her hands his muscles tensed. He revved the engine, and she could feel the vibrations traveling up through her body, and the combination of the reverberations and being so close to Smoke stirred her emotions in another direction entirely. There were so many things she didn’t know about him-not just what he had done, who he had battled and even killed, but who he had been Before. There was a current of darkness running through him, a dangerous determination that she didn’t understand. It made her afraid. She didn’t know how far he would go when he was committed, but she sensed it was all the way, that he would go hell-bent in whatever direction he chose.
Right now, he had chosen to go with her. To protect her. And Cass felt herself pulled, almost irresistibly, toward the safety he offered. It was so tempting to ignore the questions nagging at the edges of her mind. The fact that the things she didn’t know about him far outweighed the things she did.
“So…” she said, watching him turn the gun over in his hands. “You’re sure you know how to use that?”
“Yeah…I’m not saying I’m a crack shot, and I panicked back there. But I can probably take care of anything that gets in our way between here and the Convent. Trick’s going to be shooting before we get shot, if it comes down to it…”
“You think there’s…? What are you worried about, freewalkers, Rebuilders, the Convent-who?”
Smoke shook his head. “I don’t know. Nobody was real clear back there. Herkim says he doesn’t think the Rebuilders have had much luck getting into the Convent, so he thinks they’ve sort of written it off, for now. They’re picking off the easy targets at this point, and maybe later they’ll come back when they’ve taken over all the little shelters and the squatters. But he also said the Convent hasn’t exactly been very friendly to the resistance, either. They keep to themselves, no allegiance except their own, that kind of shit.”
Which was why they had sent the children there, Cass hoped. Maybe they were neutral. Like Switzerland. The little bud of hope that she kept safe and hidden inside threatened to unfurl, and it was too soon, too dangerous for that. “The women in there…are they armed? Are they dangerous?”
But Smoke was moving again, keeping to the center of the street, following a path straight toward the entrance. “We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to chat back there but I got the impression these ones here are a bunch of zealots, you know, like a cult. They think the Siege was the start of the End Times or whatever. You know, the same people who blame every bioattack on Islamic extremists. Probably crazy but harmless, at least to us.”
As they came closer the stadium loomed larger until it towered above them, stretching out several city blocks in either direction. They passed a parking lot with cars still parked in a semblance of order, the guard shack splintered and toppled.
Smoke eased off on the gas when they were a few hundred feet away. “Look there,” he said, pointing to an alcove to the left. “That doesn’t look good.”
Cass had to search for a moment to see what he was pointing at.
A figure, dressed in loose pants and shirt, holding an all-business gun, a semiautomatic, the kind that said “gang” and “mercenary” and “drug runner” to Cass, images from a hundred stupid late-night movies. Her heart lurched and she instinctively clutched Smoke tighter.
He reached very slowly and deliberately for the keys and turned off the engine. “I don’t believe I’ll be wanting to challenge that,” he said softly. “You get off first. Put your hands out so he can see you don’t have anything. I’ll follow.”
Cass did as Smoke suggested, taking her time, holding her arms out like she was trying to balance on a narrow path. She sensed Smoke behind her and then he was at her side, protecting her as always.
“We’re unarmed,” Smoke called out.
“Rebuilder?” the voice answered, and Cass was startled to hear that it was a woman. The figure stepped closer and Cass could see that she was tall and broadly built and that she moved with confidence.
“No,” Smoke snapped. “No fucking way.”
“You won’t mind if I don’t take your word for it. Lie on the ground, facedown, arms out. Just so you know, if I shoot, I won’t bother worrying whether you make it through or not. I’m going to search your girlfriend first and unless you want to clean her off the ground I advise you stay very, very still.”
I’m not his girlfriend, Cass thought as she lay down on cold pavement for the second time in a few days. Unlike the parking lot in front of the school, the concrete here smelled of stale beer and rot. But also unlike that day, the hands that searched her worked quickly and efficiently, a pressure not ungentle, moving so fast along her body that there wasn’t time for Cass to register much more than surprise.
When the woman finished with her she showed Cass the blade she had taken from her pocket-and Lyle’s crystal suncatcher, glinting in the moonlight.
26
CASS HAD FORGOTTEN, AND SHE CAUGHT HER breath in dismay. “That’s nothing,” she said, hoping Smoke couldn’t identify the little trinket. “Good luck charm.”
The woman didn’t reply, but slipped it into a pocket of her vest. “Fine,” she muttered before moving on to Smoke. Cass wasn’t sure if she meant it was all right to get up, so she just turned her head to watch, in time to see the guard take the gun from Smoke’s pocket.
“Unarmed?” she said incredulously. “What the fuck is this, then?” She slipped the gun into another vest pocket and finished the search, coming up with the spare magazine and another blade, which disappeared into the pocket, as well.
“Okay, time to go see the wizard,” she said, leaning over the bike and taking out the keys. “What’s your name, asshole?”
“Smoke. This is Cass.”
“Okay, you walk the bike. Go in front of me. You-” she gestured at Cass with the gun “-behind him. I’ll be right here, don’t worry about that, just keep going.”
She slid the unopened backpack onto her shoulders and Smoke touched her arm briefly before starting to push the bike by the handlebars.
The guard walked behind them. Their footsteps made an echo on the quiet, dark streets. In the shadows of the stadium, the souvenir stands and bathrooms were mere ruins, leaning on their frames. Ahead were streets, restaurants, bars, a fire station. More parking. Beyond that, apartment buildings and houses.
Cass flashed again on the day she had been here with her dad, the shouts of the scalpers and men spilling out of a tavern, another haggard man selling t-shirts and ball caps and pennants. Her dad bought her a little red teddy bear with a white shirt with “Miners” printed in sparkling silver script, and she clutched it close, aware that she was too old for a teddy bear, but loving it anyway.
When they rounded the side of the stadium, a vast fenced lot appeared ahead, lit up with strings of lights and the occasional bright spotlight. Cass drew in her breath at the sight. How were they powering all those lights? What was this place?
“Clear,” the woman behind her yelled and from the darkness under the stadium a man called back.
“Who you got?”
“Couple of sheep. When are you off?”
“Two,” the man replied. Cass saw him then, standing with his legs slightly apart, a gun like the other guard’s slung across his torso. “Rockets?”
“Yeah, I guess. I’m covering for Baldy, pulled a double.”
The man grunted and they passed by. So there were guards ringing the entire stadium, Cass guessed. But a man? Did this mean that they had been wrong? Were men in the Convent, and if so, what if it wasn’t a cul
t at all? Not that men couldn’t be in cults, but the tone of these two-joking, irreverent, undeniably tough-didn’t strike Cass as steeped in religious zealotry.
And what were they guarding against, anyway? She’d seen no signs of Beaters, no evidence of nests or recent kills. The Convent itself was quiet.
They approached the fenced lot, Cass blinking in the lights. Chain link stretched ten, a dozen feet high, razor wire twisted along the top, an entire block lit up. And tents-tents! People milling about, sitting around a fire, clustered near a makeshift bar, drinking.
“Don’t slow down,” the guard said behind them. “Plenty of time to look around when you get in.”
“What is that?” Cass asked.
“That’s civilization, sweetheart.”
“Are the people in there prisoners?” Smoke demanded.
The guard laughed shortly. “Ain’t anyone a prisoner,” she said. “It’s just the little place we call home. No charge to come on in, and you can buy just about anything you want, for a price. There’s people who have more or less than others, that’s about it. Dor’s got the most, so it’s his thing. You’ll meet him soon enough.”
Cass wasn’t sure she had heard right. “Did you say Dor?” she demanded.
“Yeah, Dor MacFall. Sounds made-up, right? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”
Dor MacFall. Cass’s mind was suddenly full of the image of Sammi, that day before she left, hope and longing etched on her pretty young features. Find my dad, she’d said. All I want is for him to know I’m okay.
“What is he, a-a-” Mayor of this little squatters’ town?
But the guard was done talking. When they approached an opening in the fence, a complicated gate was opened by a heavy, broad-faced woman with hair so short Cass thought it must have been buzzed with a razor. The guard ignored them and made small talk with the large woman and a second guard, a lanky man with long sandy hair. She emptied the items she’d confiscated from her pockets and handed them over along with the backpack and the gun. The man set them on a long bare table then sat down and started sorting through the contents of the pack. “See you at Rockets,” she said as she turned to go, not bothering with goodbyes for Cass and Smoke.
Aftertime Page 19
