Aftertime

by Sophie Littlefield

  “What do you mean?”

  “Close your eyes for a moment,” Lily said. “You will do much more work in the days ahead, with teachers who are far more gifted than I. But I just want to share with you a glimpse of what lies ahead. The beauty of forgiveness, the glory of letting go of all that is hurting you-the hatred, the sorrow, the regret, the anger-most of all the anger, which is like a poison inside you-letting it all flow away. That is the work that we do here, in the Order.”

  Cass let her eyes drift shut. Despite herself, she felt herself responding to Lily’s gentle voice, to the soothing rhythms of her words. She had a lovely voice; Cass wondered if she sang. Probably. All these religious types did, didn’t they?

  “That’s it…now breathe with me. In…out. In…and hold…and now, very very slowly, breathe out for one, two, three…good, Cassandra. Very good. Let’s do that again, together.”

  Cass let Lily lead her through the breathing exercise. She was really very good, much better than Elaine, who had tried something similar in the impromptu yoga group she started in the library. Better than the physical therapist who attended Cass’s A.A. meetings from time to time and came over once or twice with gifts of tea and gingersnaps.

  Cass had rejected the help offered by that woman, and Elaine, too. She’d always been aware of their agendas, their desire to lead her through their own personal programs. And Cass could not follow. She’d been made a rebel by all the years of trusting the wrong people, and she couldn’t let go enough to trust Elaine, and while all the others in the library lay on their backs and stretched their arms over their heads and practiced the Three Kinds of Breathing with great zeal, Cass faked it and felt her sadness coil all the tighter in her chest.

  But Lily was different. Lily’s voice was gilded with hope and delight, and it was so tempting to think that such a thing might be possible for Cass, too, if she just followed along…if she let go of the torments that held her back…if she opened herself to forgiveness.

  Of course it was all ridiculous, all part of the brainwashing, but would it really hurt anything if she played along, if she took this time to rest and relax? It had been such a hard journey, she had been on alert for so long, her body had been through so much.

  “Just relax, Cassandra, lean back in the chair and let your hands rest loosely at your sides…that’s right and now in again and hold…”

  Cass breathed and she listened and she felt her mind loosen and settle like a bowl of batter that had been stirred. It was like sleeping except she could still hear Lily’s soft words, like dreaming except the images in her mind were real things, memories of nice things. Ruthie, tucked under the bright quilt she found at a secondhand shop. A stray cat the neighbor took in, who grew sleek and fat-how Ruthie loved to pet that cat! Ruthie the day Cass took her back from Byrn, the dimples when Ruthie smiled and laughed and hugged her tightly around her neck.

  Ruthie with the dandelions, the little yellow blossom under her chin.

  The memory slanted in, surprising Cass. Dandelions…yes. There had been dandelions growing in the scorched lawn of the library. They had all been amazed the day the first one popped up, followed by another and another, pushing their tough stalks through the matted dead grass, defiant in the June sun, returning from exile. Cass had picked them and put them in jars and coffee mugs and still there were more, her own flower garden, and the morning after she brought Ruthie back, they went outside to see. The sun was up and it was safe and Bobby had dragged a PlaySkool plastic kitchen home with the raiding party the night before and they were setting it up in the courtyard. They’d seen a sandbox, shaped like a turtle, and they were planning to go back for it.

  When you looked close at a dandelion you could almost believe the Siege had never happened. Hold it up to your face, inhale the sweet-bitter fragrance, watch clouds drift through the spiky leaves. Brush the soft petals against your face, and you were back Before, in the world you once knew.

  Ruthie found a patch and squealed with delight. She began picking them, small hands tugging with determination, petals dropping to the ground, but no matter. Pull up all the flowers-tomorrow there might be no flowers at all.

  Cass squatted next to Ruthie, her hands flat on the brick sidewalk. The bricks were cold against her palms, but the contrast with the morning sun beating hot against her back was delicious, and Cass closed her eyes and concentrated. With Ruthie back, she wouldn’t feel so dead anymore. Maybe her senses would wake up again, maybe she would be able to taste and smell and hear the world around her again.

  Cass concentrated on the sun on her back and the brick under her hands and listened to Ruthie’s laughter and thought that later they might join the other families in the conference room that had been converted to a playroom, that the companionship that had eluded her so far might be possible now. Maybe she would take her turn reading to the children, playing hide-and-seek in the stacks, folding origami from paper torn from books. There would be conversation and laughter while the little ones napped. She would hold Bobby’s hand when the dinner dishes were done and together they would tuck Ruthie in to sleep at night.

  The thought was so tempting that at first Cass didn’t realize that anything was wrong. The sounds didn’t penetrate her mind, occupied as it was with happier places. And as for the reverberations under her hands, the thud of footsteps approaching-Cass had gotten sloppy. The caution she had honed so fine lay buried under joy of possibility, of having her baby back.

  But then there was a frantic yell from the door, where the morning-shift guards had been standing and enjoying the sun.

  Run-

  They screamed at her but she had to get to Ruthie, Ruthie had wandered to the edge of the lawn, where the circular drive met the book drop, she had found a clump of yellow blooms, she was watching the Beaters with wide eyes, she didn’t budge, she didn’t know to be afraid, and Cass had to get her and she threw herself through the air running racing screaming but it was like slow motion like a movie she wasn’t fast enough-

  And somewhere in Cass’s mind she knew this was only a memory only a memory and she tried to say “no” tried to push it back, stuff it down, cover it over, bury it deep deep down in her heart where it couldn’t come out but there was Ruthie in the sun, there was Ruthie with her fistful of dandelions, her baby her precious-

  And Cass screamed and screamed but no sound came out because she wasn’t real anymore she was trapped on the inside with the memories and this time no one could help her as the terrible day came back with all its sharp sounds and flashing colors and settled into her senses and played across the wide wide screen of her mind and showed her how she had failed, failed, failed.

  34

  SHE WAS SCREAMING, THE PEOPLE AT THE DOOR were screaming, the Beaters were snorting and wailing-the world burst with sounds of rage and terror as she ran for Ruthie.

  The cold brick and hot sun forgotten, she saw the Beaters stumble-run toward her down the street, over the curb, across the library lawn. Four of them or five; it was hard to tell as they crowded and pushed each other like hungry puppies, slapping and shoving and making their strange excited voracious sounds, and their greedy eyes locked onto Ruthie, who stood small and alone with the bunch of dandelions in her hand, breeze riffling a curl of hair around her chin.

  Closer closer lungs tearing arms reaching Cass threw her self on top of her daughter, flung her small body into the dirt and pressed herself on top. Ruthie’s heartbeat, rapid as a trapped rabbit’s, fluttered against Cass’s chest as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to make herself big, enormous, wide enough to cover Ruthie so they’d never find her.

  And then.

  The way the earth beneath them trembled with the footfalls of the Beaters. The heavy thud of a boot tripping on her legs and then an infuriated scream as the Beater went down, falling on Cass’s calves, hurting her with its weight. The smell-God, the smell, obscene in its bloom of foul rot.

  A Beater’s hand closed on her forearm and Cass jerked it
away, seeing only the chewed fingers, the torn and missing nails, the crusted black blood and the oily pink of the most recent wounds on its wrist and forearm. The hand was grotesque, bone showing in a couple of places, a finger hanging loose and useless-but the grip was surprisingly strong and Cass could not free herself.

  “Someone help! Get Ruthie!” she screamed. She couldn’t see anyone, because the library was behind her, her only opportunity for escape a dozen yards away. And even then she knew there was no chance for her at all because the Beaters were upon her with their miscalibrated eyes and their lusting feverish mouths. Their hands scrabbled at her. She had expected ripping and tearing and pain but they closed their festering hands on her with singular purpose-they would not feed here, they would not take their first bite until they had her back in their nest.

  Then they would lay her out on her stomach and kneel on her limbs while they feasted.

  But Cass did not allow that thought to overtake her yet. She squeezed her eyes shut and kept screaming for the others to come for Ruthie and fought to make her body large, larger. She imagined that she was a great weight that would press down on her baby even while the Beaters tugged her and tried to rip apart her grip.

  But she couldn’t keep them away with her will. She felt her hold on Ruthie float away as they pulled her in four different directions. Panic made her stronger and she fought hard and Ruthie wriggled and cried out in fright and Cass’s tears ran salty in her mouth. Cass opened her eyes and looked frantically for something, anything, that would help, and saw only the scattered yellow petals of the dandelions Ruthie had dropped, already curling in the sun in the dead grass.

  And then-Bobby’s shoes. How had she forgotten this? Bobby’s shoes, an incongruously flashy pair of Nikes, silver appliquéd on black. Bobby favored army surplus but he’d loved these shoes, lifted from a routed and wrecked sporting goods shop, nothing he’d ever wear Before, but they appealed to his irrepressible sense of irony and he’d laced them with glittering silver shoelaces and teased Cass that they made him stronger and faster-an Aftertime superhero.

  Bobby’s Nikes were in front of her and Cass sucked air and screamed Ruthie’s name one last time, Take Ruthie, help Ruthie, let them have me and she saw the shoes hesitate for only a second and then she knew that he knew she was right.

  The Beater who held her forearm in his grip was suddenly torn away. Bobby kicked at it and went for the next one, but Cass felt herself being dragged by the pair that held her feet. Their voices crescendoed, a mad, incoherent cacophony chorded through with fury, and her body bumped along the ground, but Bobby had bought himself a few seconds.

  The Beaters who were dragging her away let her fall to the ground at the edge of the lawn and then each seized a hand and a foot. She was lifted roughly, her spine scraping against the curb, and as the Beaters carried her away she craned her neck and saw Bobby with Ruthie in his arms, running to the door where others waited with blades ready, the Beaters in lurching, determined pursuit.

  She watched helplessly as Bobby raced for the door and threw himself at the entrance, never letting go of Ruthie, who looked so small in his arms. Cass could not see her face, only her blue shoes and white socks and small fist still holding one wilted dandelion. Bobby’s shoes flashed in the sun and then he was inside and Maynard, that was his name, the guard with the shaved head-Maynard’s arm swung wide and one of the Beaters went down in a spray of arterial blood and the doors shut with a clang and Ruthie was gone and Ruthie was safe and inside the library and outside the doors were one bleeding Beater distracted by its own blood and one who pounded its body against the door as though it could bend the steel if it tried hard enough.

  Ruthie was saved. Ruthie was saved. A prayer, a deal done-it took all the energy Cass had left and she stopped fighting. She lifted her voice to the God she long ago stopped daring to trust. Hold her safe in Your arms. Love her for me.

  So that was done, and she closed her eyes and prayed for death and knew that instead she was headed for something far worse.

  35

  PAIN, AND A VOICE. PAIN ABOVE HER EYE, SHARP as the jagged edge of awake-and a voice she knew.

  “Cassandra, please, don’t fight me, just let me-”

  Cass rolled and her shin struck something hard and sharp. The pain made her squeeze her eyes shut and she pressed at her temples. She was lying on the floor, on carpet. The air smelled like dust. She patted around her, found the legs of furniture, opened her eyes and saw a frightened face, a woman kneeling close, hair hanging in her face. Sister Lily.

  “Cassandra, you hit your head when you went down. I just want to help you get back up to the chair. I’ve got some cool water, I’d like you to take a drink now. The heat-”

  “It wasn’t the heat,” Cass said. The words wobbled in her mouth. She tasted blood and touched her lip with her tongue. She’d bit her lip when she hit the table. “I was…remembering.”

  She let Lily take her hand and help her up, a moment of dizziness passing when she settled back into the chair. The light outside seemed to have faded. Afternoon was passing by.

  “That happens sometimes,” Lily said. She poured from a pitcher and put a glass in Cass’s hand, folded her fingers around it so it wouldn’t slip from her grip.

  Cass drank. Lily talked, Cass listened, she drank more. The water didn’t go down easily; her throat felt tight, her gut uneasy. Ghosts of images skittered around her mind like trash on a windy day-Ruthie’s eyes wide with wonder, the Beaters’ grasping scabby hands, the silver swoosh on Bobby’s Nikes. It was as though, now that it had been loosed, the past had slipped through the crack Lily made with her kind words and her breathing exercises and now the seal was broken for good.

  “…a tight schedule, what with dinner…”

  Their wretched hands closed on her shins, her arms. Sebaceous, oozing flesh touching hers, wiry tendons closed tight as she was lifted, Bobby clutching Ruthie tight and running, running, running away, never knowing she’d already been infected.

  “…tour of our home, just a quick one…”

  Had he watched as she was carried off, had he handed Ruthie to the others and looked down at his own torn skin and bitten flesh? Had his heart broken as he realized what he would become, as he did what must be done, chasing his own death down the path that once wound through agapan-thus and lantana and birches along the river?

  “Cassandra? Come on now, honey, let’s get up.”

  Cass allowed Lily to help her gently from the chair. Lily was nice. And this was better; this would help her stop thinking, stop remembering.

  “Let’s get up,” she echoed softly, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth.

  “That’s right. You’re going to feel better soon. You probably need some food, something to settle your stomach. How long has it been since you had a good meal?”

  She continued talking without waiting for an answer, ushering Cass out of her office and past the stairwell the guards used, down the empty corridor that wound around and around the stadium. Cass watched the concrete walls go by. When they entered the stands, blinking in the late-afternoon sun, she looked down onto the field and half expected to see the Miners there, warming up in the afternoon sun.

  The fake turf was still verdant, and the field markings were still present in places. But in what had once been the outfield, an enclosure as big as a suburban ranch house had been erected, white tent fabric stretched to make a roof over walls built from two-by-fours and plywood and steel braces.

  At the other end of the field, dozens of tables were lined up in neat rows along with a variety of chairs-folding chairs, plastic outdoor chairs, a few aluminum chairs from patio sets. Walls of wire shelving, the kind used for garage storage, had been joined to make a larder. Women in long sleeved shirts and skirts that reached their ankles worked alone and in pairs, setting out dishes and stirring pots over cooking fires.

  An entire long side of the field was lined with planters constructed from wood and filled with soil and,
astonishingly, overflowing with a variety of plants. From far away, Cass couldn’t tell what they all were, but brightly colored flowers tumbled from the planters under small trees and hardy-looking shrubs. And-could those be pole beans? And squash, or melons, their tendrilous vines overhanging the planters and trailing on the ground.

  The Order was cultivating plants she hadn’t seen since Before. Like the evergreen seedlings she and Smoke saw along the side of the road, these plants sprang from seeds and spores that had somehow survived the Siege.

  Maybe the earth truly did want to be reborn.

  Cass followed Lily down the stairs between the stands. Her legs still trembled, and she stepped slowly and carefully, afraid of falling again. Lily slowed her own pace to match, giving Cass an encouraging smile and touching her arm to steady her.

  They passed small groups of women huddled together in the seats. “Praying,” Lily explained. “There’s not much else the stands are good for, other than exercise.”

  She pointed to an unenthusiastic queue trudging slowly up the steps a dozen yards away. The women wore drab beige and gray clothes. Their leader was dressed in pale lavender. When they reached the top they turned and started down again.

  Before, Cass occasionally ended her weekend desert runs in the high school stadium, sprinting up and down the stands, enjoying the way her footfalls caused the metal benches to shudder and creak. It felt dangerous, and once when she fell she gashed her shin badly, but there was something irresistible about hurtling up and down the stands until the breath burned in her throat, until her heartbeat was so strong she could feel it in every part of her body, and when she finally collapsed, lying on one of the sun-warmed metal benches and staring up at the sky, she had the rare satisfaction of being utterly spent.

  If it wasn’t joy, it was as close as Cass ever got.

  Once they were on the field, Lily led Cass toward the tables. The turf felt nice under her feet, springy and resilient, and as they drew nearer, she could smell the food being cooked and hear the conversation of the women. They worked at wooden counters propped on metal legs, chopping kaysev and what looked like new potatoes, sliding them into pots of water that others carried to a hearth above a crackling fire. Two women skinned a jackrabbit together, chatting as they peeled the pelt away from the meat, their knives flashing in the sun. Cass looked away, but not before she’d seen them lift the organs from the animal’s body.