Rebirth

by Sophie Littlefield

  But Dor handled her differently. Dor did not treat her as if she were breakable; he was easy with her. Of course, he had experience. Sammi had been little once.

  Cass tried to imagine Dor with Sammi, long ago. She guessed he was far from a perfect father, given his brooding intensity, the long hours he now spent locked in his trailer and his need for seclusion. But he was more than she had ever been able to provide for Ruthie, who could never know her father because Cass had no idea who he was. Just one of the many drunk-blurred strangers from one of the stumble-home nights of those dark days. Not father material-certainly not father material; he wasn’t even real to Cass, who knew intellectually that he probably wasn’t even alive anymore, and couldn’t bring herself to care.

  She wondered what Dor had been like back then, when Sammi was little. The tattoos, the earrings, the hardcore training regimen that left him hard-muscled and lean-these were all things acquired Aftertime, as was his facility with weapons and combat. That much she knew from Smoke. But from watching him she had learned more: he adapted to his surroundings with ease, if not passion. He was sensitive to the smallest changes in supply, in demand. He applied this to the commerce of human temperament as well as to goods and services. Running the Box required nimble reflexes, unflinching readiness, cruel precision. Shows of strength and, occasionally, violence.

  Before, Dor had made his living on the internet and Cass wondered if Dor had once looked like every other Silicon Valley bean shuffler, soft in the middle and pale from too many indoor hours. It wasn’t an image easily reconciled with the man she walked beside now.

  After a couple of blocks Cass saw a light ahead, a flashlight casting a cone of dirty yellow onto the pavement. When they drew closer she saw that it was Joe, Smoke’s sparring partner, and that behind him was a Jeep Wrangler, canvas missing, roll bars rusty. It was far from new and it was not clean, and it had a long dent creasing the driver’s side, but it had not been there the last time Cass passed this street corner and she knew it was to be their ride to Colima.

  A car. She drew a little closer to Dor, her boots crushing gravel. When was the last time she’d ridden in a car? Smoke and she had taken a motorcycle the forty miles from Silva to San Pedro, but before that it had been since the Siege. Even before the holiday biostrikes, riots had broken out in cities all across America; driving anywhere close to the center of towns, or past utilities or government buildings had been a calculated risk. The last of the long-haul truckers to attempt their routes found themselves hijacked by the desperate, organized highway pirates and sometimes just by bands of suburban dads made bold by their numbers and their children’s complaints of hunger. So the long-haul truckers became hoarders. Schools had mostly closed before then anyway; there were no soccer games for the soccer moms to drive to. Store shelves were sparse; bands stopped touring; movie theaters had nothing new to show and mall parking lots were empty.

  Once buildings started burning, and the bodies of unlucky elected officials were found nailed to city halls and hung from highway overpasses, the network of roads and highways was stricken with the kind of chaos it was impossible to recover from. Some tried to flee the cities; others packed everything they could into their cars and tried to get to urban centers, where they figured the food stores would be distributed by…someone. The result was gridlock, accidents, blocked roads; gas stations ran out of fuel; drivers shot each other; cars were jacked by roving bands of teenagers. Things stopped moving.

  “No car seat,” Dor said, swinging Ruthie to the ground. “Sorry.” He took off his pack, opened the passenger door and set it on the floor under the backseat, then held out his hand for Cass’s. She handed it over and circled the Jeep, peering into the cargo area.

  There was a cardboard box, labeled Dole Certified Organic Bananas, butting up against six one-gallon jugs filled with water and three two-gallon drums. Probably gasoline. Inside the box were plastic bags of food: roasted kaysev beans and hard cakes, cold fried rabbit, fringe-topped celery root from her own garden, harvested before its time and nestled in rags. She felt her face grow warm; Dor must have picked it in the predawn hours; it was undisturbed the day before when she made a last check on the garden.

  She crouched low to speak to Ruthie. “We’re going to ride with Dor in this car.” She smoothed a curl of hair off Ruthie’s forehead. “I don’t know if you remember about riding in cars.”

  Ruthie nodded, her expression careful. Cass had owned a small white Toyota so old that the finish had gone dull, but she had made sure that Ruthie’s car seat was settled and strapped firmly into place everywhere they went. Mim and Byrn favored heavy American sedans in dark colors. These were the cars that Ruthie had ridden in Before.

  “This is a Jeep,” Cass said. “It’s a little different. The roof is off so you can…so we can feel the wind as we drive. But it’s very safe. Dor is going to drive us very safely.”

  Ruthie put a hand on the handle of the door.

  “You’re ready to go?”

  Ruthie nodded solemnly and when Cass opened the door for her, she scrambled up into the backseat. She found the seat belt and tugged at it, holding out the buckle for Cass, who stretched it across her tiny body and fastened it.

  “Don’t worry,” Dor said, as they got into the front. Cass buckled her own seat belt, the motion so familiar and yet so strange now. The interior of the Jeep was stark, the cover ripped off the glove box, the steering wheel wrapped in duct tape. The radio was missing, too, leaving a gaping hole in the console. The Jeep had undoubtedly been chosen because it was rugged and would perform well off road, but it was short on comforts.

  Joe, who had been standing nearby and watching with arms crossed over his chest, raised his hand in a small salute. “See you in a couple of days.”

  “Right.” Dor turned the key and the Jeep coughed into life, the acrid smell of doctored gas wafting through the air. Almost since the moment kaysev appeared, people had been making ethanol out of it, and it had become common for those who had any gasoline at all to cut it with the homebrewed stuff. It smelled noxious and didn’t often work, but after a few hiccups the Jeep started moving, slowly at first as they left the Box and the stadium and then all of Silva behind and then it was almost like driving Before.

  Cass twisted in her seat to make sure that Ruthie was secure in her seat belt and saw the ghost of a smile on her lips as she played with a Top Dog sticker stuck inside a rear window. Then, leaning back in the passenger seat and closing her eyes, she felt the road rumble under their wheels and the air rush past her face and after a while she let herself pretend she was sixteen again, riding in her friend Taylor’s car with the top down. And they were headed back from a concert in Stockton late at night, pleasantly high and sleepy and still believing that there was no way every year ahead wouldn’t be better than the one before.

  12

  THEY’D DRIVEN ONLY HALF AN HOUR OR SO, Dor taking it slow, when he cursed softly under his breath. Cass’s eyes flew open and she saw the dawn was breaking, a pale pink crack in the sky.

  “What-”

  “Shhh. Ruthie’s sleeping,” Dor murmured. Cass looked and Ruthie had indeed drifted off, slumped forward against the seat belt, her hair falling in her face. “It’s just that there’s a block up ahead.”

  Cass looked and sure enough, far ahead on the road, the car’s headlights illuminated an SUV turned sideways and jammed up against a pair of smaller cars that had collided. On one side of the road the skeletons of pines shot up jagged against the murky sky; on the other side a cabin was set far back from the road down a dirt drive, the only building Cass could see in either direction.

  “What road are we on?”

  “Jack Born. It’s the old canyon road from before they built the highway. Wanted to stay far clear of 161 and Matts Valley Road. The Rebuilders watch the bigger routes into Colima. I’d like to come into town with as little fanfare as possible.”

  “How do you know they aren’t out here, too?”

&nbs
p; Dor shook his head. “No. I send Joe down to Colima once a week or so to check. He’s like the Box ambassador. He loads up on enough shit to keep them happy, takes ’em a crate or two of whatever we have too much of, call it a land tax. Nothing formal, just a handshake deal to keep them from coming knocking at our doors.”

  “What, like a bribe?”

  Dor looked grim. “I don’t know. You want to call it that, I guess that works. Price of doing business. It was also my way to keep from ever having to go face-to-face with them. Ever since I started the Box I figured I ought to keep a low profile, let someone else be the public face. Now I’m glad I did, because no one down there has any idea what I look like.”

  “So Joe drives this route?”

  “No, never this far, anyway. He goes straight down 161, but while he’s down there he takes a drive around the area a bit, checks out where they have people stationed. Joe’s good, Cass…he won’t tell me what he was in Santa Rita for, and I don’t want to know, but he’s smart and he’s loyal. In fact, this is his Jeep.”

  Cass thought about Joe, a quiet, soft-spoken man with dark eyes and dark skin whose racial makeup was difficult to fathom. Joe had been teaching Smoke obscure Chinese martial art techniques, and though he was not a large or powerful-looking man, Smoke swore Joe could take him down any day of the week. Mostly, the man kept to himself. Cass saw him drinking at Rocket’s sometimes, and once in a while he sat with Smoke for a round or two, rarely with anyone else.

  “I didn’t know.”

  Dor laughed without humor. “That’s the point, sweetheart. Got to pick someone discreet. I mean, he finds an issue, we get it taken care of. No one’s the wiser. We keep the roads into San Pedro cleared, we keep the Beaters relatively under control in the neighborhood, patrol it tight. And rumor gets around, the Box is the place to go for the good stuff. Joe makes sure it stays that way-get it?”

  “So if there’s, I don’t know, a problem, a nest you overlooked…”

  “Yeah, but it’s more than that. Joe looks out for anything that tells a story,” Dor said. “For instance. Lance and Nina? Came up here on that three-wheeler a while back?”

  “What about them?” Cass tried to remember the few conversations they’d had, came up with nothing memorable. They’d traded the three-wheeler and the contents of Lance’s father’s gun cabinet and moved in.

  “Told me about a bridge out a few miles out of San Pedro on the road into Tailorville. So I have Joe go and take a look. The bridge is out, yeah, just like they said. Now, that could be a problem for us. A perception problem, anyway.”

  It took Cass a moment and then she got it. “Because that’s the only way into town. Anyone past there-”

  “Sure as hell no one’s driving in or out, and haven’t for months. Place is dead. So Tailorville doesn’t exist anymore,” Dor confirmed. “Not in a way anyone wants to think about, anyway. So we have a little talk with Lance and Nina. Make it worth their while to keep quiet. And no one has to go to bed at night worried about a ghost town full of Beaters a couple miles up the road.”

  Spin control, Cass thought, amazed that such a concept could reroot so quickly after the cataclysms. She looked back at Ruthie. Maybe spin was the enduring human trait, allowing survival.

  “Let me go first, okay? Just give me a minute and then I’ll hook up the chains and we’ll get this hauled. Cheap Chinese tin cans, shouldn’t take long.”

  Cass watched him walk away, pistol in one hand, the other on his belt. Cass had seen his blade before, a wicked curve-handled hunting knife with a gut hook that he kept in a worn leather sheath.

  Ruthie, stirring in the backseat, made a soft smacking sound with her lips, a holdover from when she was a baby and used to wake hungry for her bottle. It was a habit Cass loved, to watch when Ruthie was deep asleep, her soft lips working at nothing. But then Ruthie moaned softly and Cass’s heart skipped in panic. In the gray morning light Ruthie’s face looked flushed and nearly translucent, her fine hair splayed against the rough fabric of the backseat. She writhed against the seat belt and moaned again and then as Cass reached for her, her eyes flew open and she looked at nothing and said, “Hat.”

  Cass licked her dry lips and settled her hand on Ruthie’s hot cheek, suddenly certain that Ruthie’s word was a warning, a portent of the worst and most terrifying sort. As soon as Ruthie spoke, it was over and she collapsed back against the seat and slipped immediately back into sleep, her face serene, her outburst forgotten. But now it was Cass whose skin was clammy with fear.

  She had no idea what “hat” meant. But as she looked from Ruthie to Dor, twenty feet off, making his cautious way to the wreck, unafraid yet suddenly so vulnerable, Cass wanted to stop him. Something was wrong, and Ruthie knew.

  She couldn’t leave Ruthie, defenseless and alone in the Jeep, could she?

  But whatever threatened Dor, threatened them all.

  Barely thinking about what she was doing, she threw open the door and stumbled out onto the pavement, screaming Dor’s name. He turned to her in surprise and seemed to freeze as a figure flashed between the smashed-up cars and careened and rolled. There was a shot, loud on the still morning air, and Dor lurched sideways and Cass was sure he was hit until he rolled on the ground and came up in a crouch and returned fire, his aim steady and sure, and the figure jerked and seemed to rise up into the air before falling down sprawled at the edge of the wreck, his flung forearm spasming and fingers quivering.

  Someone was yelling her name and Cass was running to Dor but he was doing an awkward crab-walk backward and he grabbed her hand and pulled her down with him and she thought what if he’s hit what if he’s going to die and oh God he’s going to leave me and Ruthie alone and the panic in her heart was enough to move her to action.

  She stood and seized his arm and tried to drag him to his feet, but he was stronger and he pulled her down on top of him and she felt her knee connect with his gut and she heard the sound he made. And still he clutched her and rolled on top of her and pushed her to the ground while he stood and she thought in despair oh god don’t let him die now let me go I have to help Ruthie but he was screaming in her ear and she tried to understand but he was screaming, screaming-

  “Stay here! I’ll get her!”

  When she finally understood, she stopped resisting and he was up and sprinting back toward the wreck in seconds. No, no, she thought, that one might not be the only one, that one lying still with its skull split on the pavement. And then she realized that’s why he’d run, and she ran after him, because if he failed then there was no hope for any of them.

  Cass yanked at her gun and it was stuck in its holster, why hadn’t she practiced this, she’d gone with Smoke to shoot a dozen times but she never thought it would be like this, her hands slick and shaking. But she had to do better she had to do this for Ruthie and then the gun was out, it was in her hand. There were only yards between her and the broken glass the twisted metal of the wreck, and her heart pumped with adrenaline and her legs flew and even so, somehow she had time to consider the cabin, not much of a cabin but someone’s shelter nonetheless because-Look there, from the chimney, a thin wisp of smoke drifted out

  – they lived here, these squatters who lay in wait and watched for travelers coming down the road, they burrowed rodentlike into the wreck and came out only to kill and take their spoils. All of this flashed through Cass’s mind as she ran, but Dor was already ducking behind the smashed sedan as there rose up the second, the one Ruthie foresaw, the one with a watch cap pulled low over a knobby head, ears protruding sharp smirk smirking he was wearing a red cap a red hat on his hateful greedy head and he sighted down the barrel and lined up the shot he thought he had time for, the anticipation brought him pleasure that vibrated through his trigger finger you could see the way he loved the gun loved the bullet but in the end he didn’t get to shoot because Cass squeezed first and the bullet glanced off his arm and his shot went wild and then Dor stepped up and finished him off.

  1
3

  CASS HUDDLED IN THE BACKSEAT TREMBLING and shaking, Ruthie unbuckled and gathered in her arms. She wished the Jeep had locks and a roof and shatterproof glass. She wished it was made of steel, of concrete. She wished they had never come. She wished they were back in the Box, in their bed, watching the sky slowly turn blue up above them through the window flaps and who fucking cared about the rest.

  Ruthie rubbed her face against Cass’s shirt. Her skin was hot from sleep despite the chill of the morning air, and then she looked up with a question in her eyes. And Cass realized that once again it was not her place to wish but instead to make everything as right as she could.

  “We just had to stop here for a minute, sweet pea,” she said, shifting Ruthie in her arms so that she could not see the wreck in the road ahead. Or the corpse with the outflung broken bloody arm, or the other body, with a hat, slumped over the hood of a car as though trying to embrace it. “Dor went inside to get something and he’ll be back in a minute and then we’ll get going again.”

  She looked carefully at the roadside, the soft rocky shoulder, the kaysev drifts and the fallen limbs and branches. The Jeep was made for off-roading; a few stones or branches shouldn’t jeopardize its axles or undercarriage or gas tank. They could survive being shaken up. Now she was grateful they’d taken this worn and uncomfortable vehicle and vowed not to mind the scratchy seat, the blowing wind and noise.

  Ruthie sat up in her lap and stretched to see past Cass’s shoulder, searching for Dor. Cass looked, too. The cabin was silent and foreboding, its porch railing listing and shattered, one window boarded with scrap wood. A pair of kitchen chairs sat on the uneven porch floor and it was all too easy to imagine the dead men sitting there waiting, watching, perhaps with binoculars to see down the relatively unobstructed stretch of road on which they’d approached. They’d been traveling down mountain, and the pines at this elevation were thin and sparse, and even before they died they would have provided little shade.