Aftertime

by Sophie Littlefield

  “You’ll have two days to rest before you join the others for daily chores and study,” Lily had said when she showed them to Cass. “Mother Cora likes for newcomers to spend time in reflection. And reading these.”

  There were hundreds of pages, single-spaced. “Who wrote all of this?”

  “The founders. Mother Cora did a lot of it.” Lily looked uncomfortable. “You can, you know, skim some of the parts. You’ll take your meals here until you’re done. Just try to think of it as room service.”

  On the table next to the pages was a plate holding a thin, flat seeded kaysev cake and six almonds, and a tall glass of clear water. Cass put the glass to her lips and drank slowly, feeling the water wash down her throat, lukewarm but clean, the best she’d tasted Aftertime.

  She ate her breakfast and washed herself as well as she could. After that, there was nothing left to do but pick up the pages.

  WELCOME, SEEKER

  DOCTRINE OF THE ORDER

  Cass read the first page three times before giving up. The words refused to come together in her mind, the paragraphs swimming before her eyes.

  Somewhere, not far away, the children of the Order were being cared for. Fed and clothed and sheltered and kept safe. That was more than Cass had ever accomplished. Much more than she’d managed already, and she’d only had Ruthie back in her care for a single day-a day in which she’d let her be bitten, infected, and nearly taken. A day that had caused her girl untold pain as she turned, then reverted, then healed in that small library room.

  Cass tossed the pages on the table and lay back in her bed, pulling the sheet up over her head. Her breath fouled the air under the sheet, and she pulled her arms and legs in tight and made herself as compact as she could. She squeezed her eyes shut and wondered if, in here, her prayers might actually work.

  The prayer she would say, if she allowed herself, was the old one, and for that reason Cass knew it was a bad idea. It was the prayer from when she drank. On mornings like this, in beds not dissimilar, Cass breathed her own stink and reviled her own body and prayed only for God to let her forget-the things she had done, the things she had lost, the things she would do tonight. It was not a prayer of hope.

  Someone would come, eventually. She had managed to sleep through the other neophytes washing and dressing and preparing for their day, but she would not be so lucky again. She would be expected to study, to eat, to make conversation. Cass had come here with hope and something even better-with thoughts of Ruthie dancing like diamonds in her mind, never far from her thoughts. But that was gone now. Yesterday, as Lily’s kind voice stirred the silt from her memories, she had remembered.

  And remembering stole her resolve. Cass wanted to be Ruthie’s savior, but she was the one who had forsaken her.

  She wanted to be Ruthie’s everything, but she deserved nothing.

  Cass pressed her face to the mattress and felt her tears hot against the cotton. She pressed harder, harder, until she couldn’t breathe, and wished she could stay that way until the last of her life left her.

  But her body was a traitor, and as she willed the air from her lungs and her mind went black at the edges, she knew that eventually it would seize deep drafts of air to sustain life, a gift she no longer wanted.

  38

  IN THE END, OF COURSE, SHE BREATHED. SHE stared at the pages and ate the food an acolyte brought for lunch, and slept and woke, and when the others came back at the end of the day she listened to their talk and answered when they spoke to her.

  Monica offered her a gift, a single sleeping pill wrapped in a page torn from a magazine printed back when there were still celebrities to gossip about. Cass thanked her and turned her down, but she wondered how many times she would say no before she said yes.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” she said instead, fanning out the typed pages.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Monica sat cross-legged on her bed. She was wearing faded pajama pants printed with penguins on skis, and a white tank top, and her hair was pulled back from her face with a wide band. Her thin brown shoulders and the bangs that slipped out of the hair band made her look like a teenager, though she’d told Cass she was twenty-two. “It’s not like they test you on it or anything. It’s just all of Mother Cora’s crazy ideas.”

  “Did you read it all?”

  Monica laughed. “Nobody reads the whole thing. Lily just tells Cora that you read it after a couple of days.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then nothing, really. You get to be a neophyte. Big thrill.”

  “Monica…why are you here, if you don’t believe any of it?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t believe any of it. I believe the basics. Know what I was doing, Before?”

  “What?”

  Monica glanced around the room. Some of the women were already in bed, others were reading by the light of the industrial fixtures mounted in the corners of the room. No one paid any attention. “I haven’t told this to anyone but Adele, but I was going to go to divinity school. Down at Fuller. I wanted to be a minister. I mean not like right away but…someday. I was saving up.”

  Cass remembered herself at twenty-two. The account she started at the bank, where she was going to put away money for landscape design school. The single deposit she made-and the day not long after, when she took it out to buy a leather skirt.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get to go,” she said softly.

  “Yeah. Well.” Monica smiled and yawned. “Here I am, anyway. I like most of the people here. Even a lot of the ordained aren’t so bad. And three meals a day and a bed sure beats living on the outside. It’s just-I don’t like it when people think they have all the answers, you know? Especially when they make them up and then want to make you believe the same crazy things.”

  Early in the evening of the second day, there was a knock at the dormitory’s single door. A key turned in the lock. Cass expected an acolyte bringing her dinner, but it was a gray-haired deacon in a ruby blouse.

  She gave Cass a smile that didn’t reach all the way to her eyes. “I’m Hannah. Sister Lily tells me that you have finished studying the Doctrine. Tonight you will join us for dinner, and afterward I will give you your new clothes. Congratulations, Cassandra.”

  Following Hannah down onto the field, Cass realized how little she had moved during the two days she’d spent confined to the dorm. Her legs felt tight, her heartbeat sluggish. It had been days since she’d ended her solo journey at the school, months since she ran flat-out through the Sierra foothills.

  She needed to decide whether to make the effort to live, or let her ennui spread through her body until it atrophied and withered, but even the idea of making a decision sounded like too much effort. Already she wanted to return to her bed and just go back to sleep.

  Hannah led her to the neophyte table, where Monica and Adele had saved her a seat near them. “I’ll return for you later,” she said. “There’s something special planned after dinner, but I’ll be back after that.”

  Monica waited until she was out of earshot. “Oh goody, maybe there’s going to be fireworks. Or Jell-O shots.”

  Adele sighed. “You know darn well what it is, Monica. Come on, don’t ruin it for everyone else.”

  Cass got through the meal as she had got through the past two days. She answered when spoken to, and forced herself to lift her fork to her lips until most of her meal was gone, all the while concentrating on keeping her mind as blank as she could. The night settled in as the servers cleared dishes and poured weak kaysev tea, and Mother Cora ascended the platform and took her place at the podium.

  “Tonight we have something special to celebrate,” she said. “There has been further progress with Sister Ivy. She is responding to our prayers!”

  On cue, the doors to the enclosure at the other end of the field groaned open, and a large, wheeled cart rolled slowly onto the field, its top half a cage with a dark figure inside. In the rapidly descending night, Cass couldn’t make out any
of its features.

  But the creature made a sound. At first it sounded like an engine turning over without success, an escalating whine that ended in clattering coughs before it started up again. Cass listened, goose bumps rising along her arms, knowing exactly what she was hearing: the call of a Beater, frustrated, hungry and lusting for flesh.

  Sister Ivy.

  39

  “SISTERS-” MOTHER CORA’S VOICE RANG OUT like a pristine bell “-prepare to bless the fallen. We have prayed for Sister Ivy, and she is beginning to recover. Our faith is healing her!”

  The cart rolled slowly toward the tables, stopping in the cleared space between the tables and the podium. The light from the strings of tiny bulbs did little to illuminate the Beater. It was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of loose pants, even shoes, and it pulled at the bars of the cart and its cries carried clearly through the stadium.

  Cass remembered Faye saying that the Order paid Dor to capture Beaters. But she had never imagined this was their purpose: to pray over them, to…heal them? Unless this thing, too, was an outlier, like her…was that possible?

  “Is it really getting better?” Cass whispered.

  “Of course not,” Monica whispered back. “Get real. They just drag them out here every so often and say they’re getting better so everyone keeps praying. I mean, you think it’s an accident they do this after dark?”

  “Hush,” Adele scolded. “Just leave Cass alone, Monica. You don’t want to get her in trouble on her first night as a neophyte.”

  “Really? You’re not going to tell her?” Monica demanded. “Just like no one told me? Come on, Adele, we talked about this, you said-”

  “That was before you got in trouble twice,” Adele hissed. “You don’t have room for any more mistakes.”

  “Prepare for the blessing,” Mother Cora commanded. Servers emerged from the pantries bearing trays with rows of tiny cups. In the flickering light from the larder, Cass saw that the cups bore ruby-red wine. They were barely bigger than a thimble, like dolls’ cups.

  “Not this,” Monica muttered. “Not again, it’s not right-”

  “Shut up,” the woman next to Adele whispered furiously. “I’m not taking punishment because of you anymore, Monica. Just buck up and get through it like the rest of us.”

  “If you hate it so much here, leave,” another woman added, mouth pulled down in anger. “Mother Cora’s healing them. All you’re doing is getting in the way.”

  The servers spread out among the tables, setting a tiny cup in front of each woman. The moans of the Beater quieted, but it paced in its cage, shaking the bars. The effort of ignoring the sounds appeared to be too much for some of the women, who pressed their hands over their ears and squeezed their eyes shut.

  When everyone had been served, the servers retreated with the last of the cups. Everyone watched Mother Cora expectantly. Her face bore the placidity of the devout, a serene smile tilting up the corners of her thin lips.

  “Prepare to drink,” she commanded, and the women moved as one, lifting their cups as though for a toast. Cass held the tiny cup between a finger and thumb, surprised that it was chilled.

  “And so we pray,” Mother Cora continued, and the voices of hundreds of women filled the stadium. Cass glanced at Monica and saw that she alone did not join in, a look of disgust and anger on her face.

  Dear Lord, it is our duty and salvation, always and everywhere to give You thanks for Your sacrifice.

  For our blood is Your blood, imbued with the healing spirit of life.

  In Your name we bless the fallen, in Your house we welcome them.

  By drinking we proclaim Your greatness and implore you to make us whole.

  “And so we drink,” Mother Cora said.

  Two hundred hands brought two hundred tiny cups to waiting lips, and Cass followed suit. But as the cold plastic touched her lips, Monica suddenly set her cup down hard on the table, splashing the wine.

  “Don’t.”

  The single word carried on the still night. Hundreds of eyes turned their way. A guard posted at the edge of the tables turned, searching for the voice of dissent. Cass tossed back her wine in a single gulp, hoping to distract her, and it was on her lips to say something, anything, so she wouldn’t notice the spreading red stain in front of Monica-

  But the taste in her mouth was wrong, it was all wrong, it was metallic and harsh and familiar and unfamiliar. She felt her stomach heave and turned to spit on the ground but she caught sight of the deacon’s angry expression and forced herself to swallow instead, swallowing down bile and the bitter filth she’d drunk.

  Angry whispers erupted at their table.

  “Monica, what did you-”

  “All you had to-”

  “This time you’ve-”

  But it was too late. Guards were headed for their table; the first was already dragging Monica from her chair; Monica, who struggled, her expression both defiant and terrified. “Don’t let them make you, Cass. It’s their blood. The Beaters’ blood. It isn’t blessed, it isn’t anything-”

  Before Cass could absorb her words, the other guards reached Monica, yanking her arms behind her. She kicked at the table, crockery falling to the ground and shattering. Adele rose halfway out of her chair.

  “Don’t, Adele,” Monica cried as she was dragged from the table. “Don’t get in trouble for me. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  One of the guards hit her on the side of the head with something-a stick, a club, Cass couldn’t tell in the dark-and Monica’s words were abruptly cut off, her head lolling forward.

  All around the table, women averted their eyes, refusing to watch as Monica was dragged away, toward one of the dugouts. Cora began to pray again and in a moment other voices joined in, until everyone was chanting and the servers began to spread out among the tables, collecting the cups.

  Adele sank slowly down into her chair, her face pale in the flickering light. “Where are they taking her?” Cass whispered. “Is she going to be all right?”

  Adele didn’t answer. Her lips quivered, and she stared straight ahead, but in a moment her eyes drifted closed and she began to chant along softly with the others.

  Near Cass was a glass with a few inches of tea left in it. She reached for it and drank deep, wished for another. She wanted to kneel in the dirt and push her fingers down her throat until she vomited up not just the blood but everything she’d eaten, not just tonight but since waking in the field. Every drop of water, every kaysev leaf, the food Smoke had shared in the school, the hoarded delicacies in the Box. She wanted to purge and purge until everything was gone, including her memories, not just of Ruthie but of Smoke and the way he’d touched her, of Monica’s thin brown shoulders and ready smile, of the Beater in the cage and the tiny cups of blood.

  The women gathered in this stadium had all drunk blood. Blood from a Beater, blood that ran through the veins of a being that was no longer human, no matter what they taught here in the Convent. Cass had seen the creatures feast; had seen the ravaged flesh of the Beater outside Lyle’s house, jerking and twitching in death spasms as the last of its blood spilled into the earth.

  But only Monica had protested, only Monica had rebelled, and she was immediately silenced. The ranks had closed behind her, as though she never existed. How long had it taken for the women to become inured to the horror, Cass wondered. How long until the liquid that passed their lips was no more evocative than communal wine?

  How long until they believed?

  Mother Cora let silence hang in the air at the conclusion of the prayer. In the cage, even the Beater was still, lying in a heap on the floor of the cart, one hand wrapped around the bars of the cage. Perhaps it had been drugged, so as to appear to be calmed by prayer. Slowly, Cora brought her elegant arms down to her sides, and then she smiled serenely out at the crowd. “This concludes our blessing. The Lord’s grace be upon all of you, sisters, and good night.”

  Cass felt herself beginning to shake as the Be
ater cart was wheeled back into the enclosure and women began to rise from the tables, conversation starting up again as though nothing had happened.

  “It’s going to be all right.” Adele leaned in close and whispered. “I’m going to tell them Monica didn’t mean it, she wasn’t feeling well. I’ll tell them I told her not to drink. I’ll tell them it was my fault. I don’t have any warnings yet, I can afford one.”

  One of the other neophytes paused in front of Cass and gave her an unconvincing smile. “It’s really hard at first. I mean…for all of us. But you’ll get used to it. I promise.”

  “And even if that doesn’t work, the worst they’ll give her is solitary time,” Adele continued, as though she hadn’t heard. “Last time they put her in for a couple hours. If they’re mad enough they might make her stay there overnight.”

  Before Cass could respond, she felt a hand on her arm and turned to see Sister Hannah. “Ready, Cassandra? We need to get you your new clothes before you go back to the dorm.”

  Cass touched Adele’s shoulder as she followed Hannah away, but Adele seemed not to notice, her lips moving soundlessly as she calculated what she could trade for Monica’s punishment.

  Hannah led Cass to an office near Lily’s and set her lantern on a desk, where it cast long shadows around the room. She opened a metal cabinet that contained a stack of folded white clothes, selected a skirt and shirt, and shook out the wrinkles before handing them to Cass.

  When she reached for them, Hannah held on.

  “As you know, neophytes dress only in white. You will receive a fresh change of clothes twice a week. I will take your old things.” She let her gaze travel slowly down Cass’s body. “What size are you…a four? Six?”

  Cass tugged at the clothes, stiff from being line dried, and finally Hannah let go. “I’m not sure, anymore. Where can I change?” she asked as neutrally as she could, trying to keep the panic from her voice.