Now she listened to her dad talking and tried to find in his voice the man she most missed. But this was more like the dad he used to be before he moved out. He used to order her mom around, not in an asshole way but in a way like he was just used to being in charge. It wasn’t like her mom put up with it anyway; she always did whatever she wanted. Maybe that was what finally broke them up, they both had “boss” personalities. He used to tell Sammi what to do all the time too, but, back then, she mostly didn’t mind because he liked to spend time with her and they had their own things they did, just the two of them, like watching reality shows together and yelling at the TV, or going out for Gizmos Garlic Fries whenever they got a craving.
“Sure, sure,” he was telling the Patels, one of those rare intact fairy-tale couples from Before who clung all the more firmly to each other in the face of all the dangers around them. “I know you want to take all your family stuff. But you’re really going to have to pare it down. See if you can get it into just this one suitcase here, the one with the wheels, and I’ll be back in a while to see how you’re doing.”
And then he was on to the next group.
Sammi hadn’t seen Cass at all tonight, since she came to get Ruthie. She hadn’t come down to the shore with piles of bags, like almost everyone else on the island. For a second Sammi wondered: the decision she’d made, to tell Mr. Swarmer about her drinking—
All she’d wanted…what had she wanted, anyway? At the time it had seemed pretty clear. Cass was drinking, everyone knew it—well, maybe not everybody, but the other women in the Mothers’ House for sure knew about it because Jasmine had told Roan, and Roan told Kyra, and Kyra told them. In the Mothers’ House they weren’t happy about it, not by a long stretch, and supposedly they’d had a come-to-Jesus meeting where they told Cass if she ever drank while she was watching the kids she was not only out of the babysitting rotation but out of the house too. Somehow they all seemed to believe Cass only drank late at night. But that wasn’t very likely, was it? Addicts were…well, the only ones Sammi knew, maybe they weren’t addicts, technically, meaning by whatever rules or whatever these things were determined, but the girls at school who were stoners and pill poppers and the ones who brought vodka to school in water bottles?—they were for sure doing it during the day, despite Grosbeck Academy’s zero-tolerance policy, and despite those letters they sent home assuring all the parents they had the best record on drug use of any private girls’ school in Central California, which was a blatant lie, but then again that was part of what her parents used to pay Grosbeck twenty-five thousand bucks a year for, was to be lied to and feel good about it. They all wanted to believe it so they wouldn’t have to acknowledge that they were too busy or didn’t care enough to pay attention to their kids themselves.
And that’s what was going on here too, right? The other mothers didn’t want to lose Cass because they needed her to babysit. Jasmine would join in eventually, she was going to have the kid any day now, but she’d been on bed rest for weeks because she was so old and Sun-hi thought she shouldn’t move around much. And after the baby came she’d be too busy to watch all the other kids for a while.
So they didn’t want to lose Cass, so that meant someone else had to be responsible and step up and say something because it was just plain dangerous for her to be left with the kids. Which was why Sammi had gone to Mr. Swarmer.
Only.
If she’d really wanted to punish her, Sammi would have told Dana, not Mr. Swarmer. Underneath his whole “nobody’s in charge here” thing, Dana totally thought he was in charge. He was always ordering people around and pretending he had the council behind him. Or maybe he did, but Sammi would bet he did a lot of behind-the-scenes ass-kissing and favor-trading and threatening to get his way.
And Dana was such a Goody Two-shoes. If he knew about Cass, he’d probably make an example of her, publicly humiliate her, like he did when they found Mitchell Keller stealing the box of cocoa mix off the raider cart. Dana had suggested public stocks. And while the council had voted that down, they had given the thumbs-up to the reparations chair. Mitchell had to sit there for two days, with a sign he’d written saying what he’d done and how he was sorry, and he wasn’t allowed to say anything until the two days were done and then Dana made a big deal about forgiving him in a big speech up on the steps of the community center.
All over a box of cocoa mix. What would they do for something as serious as what Sammi told Mr. Swarmer?
Because she hadn’t exactly said that Cass never drank on the job. She said she didn’t know. Which was true, sort of, but really, Sammi knew Cass would never do anything to endanger a child. Especially Ruthie. No one could say that Cass didn’t love her daughter, and even though Sammi was angrier than ever, if that was possible, about Cass and her dad, she was starting to feel a little guilty—okay, a lot guilty—about telling Mr. Swarmer that she “didn’t know” what time of day Cass drank or who she got it from.
At least she hadn’t told them the other thing. About how Cass and Ruthie had been infected. Sammi couldn’t bring herself to spread that, knowing what she knew—the immunity was super-rare but if you were immune, you weren’t a danger to anyone. There were people in New Eden who’d completely freak if they knew, idiots who’d probably want Cass gone, just because she’d been sick in the past. And even angry, Sammi knew that going that far would be wrong.
Besides, if her dad found out she’d talked to Mr. Swarmer, he’d probably be furious. He could be such a bastard but he was kind of rigid about right and wrong, at least his version of right and wrong. He’d be all over her about lying, even though he’d been lying to Valerie all along—one look at her tearstained, puffy face when she came by earlier with her friends made it clear she’d had no idea about Cass. But what went on between adults, that way, was a private matter. The council would probably all disapprove—and given what a bunch of tight-ass losers they were, she guessed they’d disapprove a lot—but there was nothing they could actually do about it.
Besides…if Sammi told people about that, then her dad would be implicated too. And Sammi wasn’t ready to take that step. She hated him, true, but he was all the family she had left, and he’d do anything for her, to keep her safe. She couldn’t let go of that right now. Maybe if Jed was still around…but no. Jed was dead.
So she couldn’t bring herself to hurt her dad, and she had a ready-made way to hurt Cass, and that was what she had done, and at first it had felt really good, to imagine Cass getting her wrists slapped, having everyone spying on her all the time to make sure she wasn’t drinking, and if they were watching Cass like a hawk then she’d sure have a hard time sneaking out to meet her dad, right, which was a win for everyone....
Except Sammi was starting to think she’d made a mistake. A big one.
Half an hour ago Ingrid and Suzanne had come by with Jasmine between them and Twyla holding Dane’s and Dirk’s hands, and Elsa had been with them and they were talking about a car. A car for the moms with little kids, and Jasmine, who was ready to pop. So that was what, three adults and three kids, which was a full car right there.
And no one said anything about Cass and Ruthie. Which meant they weren’t getting a ride, even though they had every bit as much of a right as the others—or they would have, anyway, if Sammi hadn’t started a rumor that might not even be all the way true.
And that still wasn’t any big deal because Sammi knew, deep down inside, that come morning it was going to be basically everyone for themselves. Sure, there’d be a lot of talk about sticking together, and the smartest people would figure out ways to stay in groups, while it suited them, but in the end they’d all have to fend for themselves. Everyone would be so focused on saving their own asses there wouldn’t be much left over for taking care of anyone else. People would get left, abandoned. Discarded. But at least in that regard, Cass was in better shape than most. Despite her drinking thing she was strong and fit and brave and healthy.
But then there was Ru
thie…
Ruthie wasn’t like other little kids. She spooked kind of easy, and then she went quiet, really quiet, like she thought if she played invisible the problem would go away. In the community center earlier tonight, when Cass left to help her dad, Ruthie wrapped her arms so tight around Sammi’s neck that she was almost strangling her. She put her little face against Sammi’s and made a tiny little whimpering sound. Ruthie was not strong, not the way you had to be to get through what lay ahead. And she was only three. Three.
What if the thing that Sammi had done had condemned both of them? What if it was her fault that they wouldn’t get to ride tomorrow, safe inside a car, protected by all that steel and—as long as the gas held out—able to outrun the Beaters?
Down by her feet, Kyra turned over and sighed unconsciously. Sammi couldn’t believe anyone could sleep through this, and Sage was leaning all her weight against Sammi, and if she didn’t move soon both of Sammi’s legs were going to go to sleep. Carefully, slowly, she eased Sage off her and scooted down next to Kyra. Still neither of them woke up.
Sammi wanted to walk, to shake out her legs and work off some of this excess energy. The boys were down helping pile things up and load the vehicles; she wished she was with them. Helping out, keeping her mind off things. Or maybe going for a walk with Colton, one last trip around the island, just to say goodbye—although Colton had been acting weird for a few weeks, hanging around with Shane and that creeper Owen Mason, the guy who grew weed and taught them how to roll. Owen liked to get high, but he liked fires even more—the only useful thing he ever did was to tend the bonfires whenever there was a celebration. There were rumors that he liked fires too much. That he’d set the brush fires up on North Island.
Owen was the kind of guy who—and Sammi knew it was wrong even to think it—you wouldn’t mind if he’d died in the Siege. The kind of guy who made everyone nervous, even if he held a certain kind of fascination, at least for Colton and the other boys, with his personal stash of drug paraphernalia and weird martial-arts weapons and who knew what else.
Sammi hadn’t seen the boys at all since Phillip got locked up, come to think of it. And it made her uneasy, wondering if they were with Owen.
But she didn’t want to leave Sage and Kyra alone. She felt responsible. This was new, and Sammi wasn’t sure she liked it—feeling accountable for people. Her friends…and Ruthie, and Cass. It had been so much easier back when nobody expected much from her at all, when she was just an ordinary kid who was bratty to her parents and maybe a little spoiled, who loved soccer and listening to music and painting her nails and shopping, who wasn’t responsible for anything but keeping curfew and getting her homework done, and half the time she didn’t even manage that, but it never mattered back then.
Now it mattered, the things she did mattered. Or maybe they didn’t. In a couple of hours the sun would rise and they would all set out. It would be their last day on earth or it wouldn’t, and Sammi had watched enough people die to know that none of it was in her control anyway.
Sammi looked around one last time at everyone rushing around in the dark. She sighed and let her eyelids flutter closed, and thought about Jed, about the way they used to stay up talking until they were so tired they fell asleep in the middle of their sentences. After a few minutes she stretched out her legs to get more comfortable, and snuggled a little closer to Sage.
Just resting. Just for a few minutes.
It had been Zihna’s idea to wait until they heard the sound of engines turning over, of the procession starting out. This way, they’d avoid any more of the others’ logistical arguments on the way off the island. By then, presumably, everything would have been worked out—who was riding with whom, who was going to be left behind.
There was the matter of the two dead. Cass had told Red only that they had been trying to drown Smoke. Red was mystified about how an injured, unarmed man could kill two healthy ones, but Cass was not in a mood to talk. In fact, that was the last thing she’d said to him after they’d agreed that Smoke would ride with Ruthie on the trailer and the other three would take turns pulling it.
Red was a little concerned about that. He was in a lot better shape than he looked. He might not be able to erase the effects on his face from all those years on the road, but his body had certainly benefited from several years of his abstemious new life. No drinking or smoking even before the Siege, and the construction work he’d picked up to supplement his income had hardened him. On the island he kept busy. He and Zihna did yoga together, and she could make him break a sweat practicing the most innocuous-looking poses.
The thought made him smile. He and his lovely woman—they had a few surprises in them yet. But still, they were both in their late fifties. Roaming like a bunch of nomads with no camel probably wasn’t AMA-sanctioned exercise in their case.
But it would be what it would be. He had Zihna, he had Cass, he had his granddaughter—a granddaughter! How the word could still bring him fresh, amazed, pure joy—and, though perhaps more problematic, he had a fallen hero of the Resistance. A resistance to a Rebuilder movement that no longer existed, but still.
Red had taken a little nap earlier, but at the first sign of dawn, Zihna woke him. Smoke and Cass were napping on the trailer with the little girl between them. They’d moved the trailer to the space between the house and the detached garage, which was hidden from the path by a lattice covered with dead vines. If Craig and the rest came back—or anyone else, for that matter—their hiding place was far from perfect, but it beat waiting in the garage like lame ducks.
Zihna’d handed him a glass of water and reminded him to drink it all, and then she settled into the lawn chair he’d dragged in for her and immediately went to sleep with her hands folded over her stomach. It was one of her gifts, this ability to control her breathing and her worries; she’d been working on it since she started teaching yoga all the way back in the nineties.
Red was not nearly as good at serenity. He could feel his heart accelerating with anxiety as the sky started to lighten.
It wasn’t long before he heard the rumble of the first car. The rest followed, until the earth thrummed with the rhythm of the engines. Half a dozen vehicles, when you’d heard so few for so long, suddenly sounded like a busy interstate. Red was on his feet in seconds, remembering a motel he once crashed in for a few weeks in San Diego that backed up to the highway; night and day the earth reverberated with the traffic going by. It used to help him sleep, as a matter of fact, and when he moved on he missed it—but now the sound filled him with dread.
“Time to wake the women,” a low voice said behind him. Red turned quickly and realized that he’d momentarily forgotten about their cargo, his daughter’s injured lover. In the faint light of dawn, he found the man making his way to his feet painfully, slowly. But with his jaw-clenching determination, he did not look much like a victim today. He did not intend to be counted out.
Well. That was interesting.
“Yes, indeed, friend,” Red answered, offering a hand to help Smoke. He was not surprised when it was ignored. So he was not to be the only dog in this race, after all.
Red allowed himself the smallest of smiles. He’d had hundreds of friends through the years, though besides Carmy he couldn’t name a single one who stuck or who he missed when the road beckoned and he moved on. Aftertime had brought all kinds of interesting times Red’s way, forcing him to acknowledge things he’d fully expected to go to his grave without knowing.
He’d fully expected to protect these women all by himself. They’d hate the notion—Zihna would, at any rate, and he suspected that his daughter would too—and insist up and down that they could protect themselves just fine. But Red took his late-life transformation seriously and he was damn well going to be a man and take care of his own or go down trying.
He’d never anticipated that he’d have company. Surprisingly, the notion didn’t leave him completely cold.
He hid his smile and clapped Smoke on the sh
oulder—carefully, since the guy was still looking a little tender.
“Let’s get this show on the road.”
Chapter 24
CASS KNEW THAT Red—that her father—was right to wait, but it was damn hard to watch the procession go over the bridge, the vehicles in front followed by the walkers, dozens of people dragging suitcases and pushing shopping carts and baggage carts and in one case a wheelbarrow, carrying packs and gym bags and tote bags, and not feel the terrifying loneliness of being left behind. Ever since she arrived in New Eden, that bridge had been the symbol of safety, with the sturdy metal gate at the water’s edge, its round-the-clock double staffing of armed guards. Seeing the gate open wide, the guard chairs empty, it chilled her. When the last of the pedestrians—Steve, that wasn’t surprising, as well as a few other people who’d volunteered to form the rear guard behind the slowest walkers—had gone a hundred yards down the road toward Hollis, Red said softly, “Okay, now.”
But before they could go more than a few feet Red stopped her.
“Wait,” he whispered urgently, looking back toward the community center.
Cass saw it too, two lean figures racing from the wide-open French doors, across the yard, toward the bridge. One was Owen Mason, a hawk-faced man around thirty who raided occasionally and worked at a few other jobs on the island, none of them with much skill or attention; and wasn’t that—it looked like one of the boys Sammi ran around with. As she watched, they caught up with the stragglers and melted into the back of the crowd. No one seemed to notice.
What had they been up to? If it had only been the boys, Cass might have thought they were saying goodbye to Phillip. Throughout the night people had been leaving things outside the quarantine house, magazines and mugs and T-shirts and dried flowers, a heartbreaking if macabre shrine to the feverish boy inside, who was probably incoherent by now, dementia taking over his brain as he picked at his skin and scalp. Sammi’s friends were good kids, and all of them had been friends with Phillip. But Owen…she’d gotten a bad feeling about him from the start, and avoided him as much as she could. He was just…creepy.
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