Rebirth

by Sophie Littlefield

  It had been a long time since the waking nightmare gave her even a day of peace. Traveling with a man who despised her, headed away from the trouble she knew and toward the trouble she didn’t-that was not likely to change.

  When the sun slipped down to touch the mountains behind them, Dor finally spoke. “We’re more than halfway. Somewhere short of Glover, I think, but I don’t want to get too close to town. Hopefully all the local critters are already on the move.”

  “You mean you think they’ve all gone toward the towns?”

  “That, or heading south…if that’s really happening.” He sounded doubtful. The day had been warm, and Cass herself wondered if the cold nights alone would be enough to stir the Beaters’ instincts, if indeed self-preservation spurred them to find a better climate. Even the coldest days in California’s central valley rarely got below freezing, hardly a threat if they managed to take even a few simple measures to stay warm. What was to prevent the Beaters from burrowing into their nests together to share body heat and deciding that was enough?

  When they saw a ranch house set up on a gentle slope a half mile away, Dor turned down the drive. He drove slowly, tires crunching against the gravel, and as they got closer Cass saw the swing still suspended from the branches of an old oak in the front yard, the hand-painted sign in the shape of a tractor that read The Vosses. Dor parked on the concrete pad near the garage and told her to stay put while he checked around. Cass tensed at the thought of being alone with Ruthie, even for a moment, but there was nothing for it. She took her blade from her belt, and made Ruthie lie down in the backseat so that she would be invisible to anyone approaching the car.

  But all around them were treeless fields, save for the oak and a stand of what must have been some sort of ornamental specimen-magnolia, perhaps-leafless and barren, and a pair of old fruit trees which were covered, incongruously for the season, with pale green shoots. That captured Cass’s attention for a second and she had a vague thought that if they lived until morning, she would have to come outside and examine them.

  They were surrounded by grazing fields. Cattle ranches dotted the Sierra foothills on the other side, west of the mountains, when she had grown up. Stock herds of cows grazed their way on a rotation of the fields, gentle skittish beasts that produced new crops of calves every summer for Cass to admire on her runs out into the country. Now there was no evidence of the animals. They’d been felled early in the bioterror attacks-second only to pigs-so many and so quickly that troops had been diverted and later conscripted to haul and torch the carcasses. There were huge burn sites throughout California: smoke hung over the huge feedlot operations along I-5 for weeks as the meat burned. The barking of the dogs over the smell was never-ending. Until, eventually, it was truckloads of dogs and deer that joined the cattle-and, finally, the two-legged dead.

  After a tense few minutes Dor was back, coming through the garage door which he had hauled up by hand.

  “Drive it in here,” he called, and Cass slid awkwardly over the console to the driver’s seat. She turned the key in the ignition, a strange sensation after such a long time, and put her foot on the gas pedal. She checked the gauge: three-quarters full. Drove slowly up into the garage and turned it off again, Dor already pulling the steel door back down. The garage smelled slightly of rot, though it wasn’t overwhelming. Dor had his flashlight on, and while Cass unbuckled Ruthie from the back, he got a few things from the cargo area.

  Inside, the house was cold but surprisingly tidy. The garage opened onto a kitchen whose cabinets hung open and empty-raiders had been here. A few Splenda packets spilled onto the counter and there were bottles of soy sauce and vinegar, sticky and nearly empty, but otherwise the food was all gone. Dishes were still stacked neatly, coffee cups hung from hooks and good crystal goblets were lined up with care on a bed of paper toweling. The rot smell was stronger at the refrigerator but there was nothing to be done about that; everyone knew never to crack a refrigerator door anymore. Someday nothing would remain inside but dried-up crumbs, but until then the fear of refrigerators was up there with basement doors.

  Dor set the supplies down on the kitchen table: a bottle of water, a tight-wrapped square of spongy kaysev curd, a Tupperware container of almonds. One of the cans of fruit cocktail from the farmhouse. As he went systematically through the drawers and lower cabinets, an unshakable habit for anyone who’d served on a raiding party, Cass and Ruthie wandered through the house.

  In the den an enormous television took up most of one wall; shelves on either side held houseplants that had dried to husks long ago, as well as trophies and photos in frames. Cass turned on her own hand-crank flashlight and saw that the trophies were from an adult softball league and most of the photographs were of several towheaded children. Grandchildren, Cass guessed. This didn’t feel like a house where little ones had lived. There were no toys on the floor, no high chairs in the kitchen.

  There was a plaid sofa with knitted afghans folded neatly over the arms, a basket on the coffee table filled with skeins of blue and white yarn. A newspaper, neatly refolded, with a coffee cup skimmed with mold on top.

  The living room was comfortable and ordinary, but Cass noticed that one of the armchairs had been dragged down the hall to block the last door. A raiders’s trick: when they found something too awful to abide looking, they blocked doors with furniture, a simple courtesy to those who came after. But the drag marks on the carpet were fresh-it was Dor, then, who was trying to protect her and Ruthie.

  “We can use the guest bedroom tonight,” Dor said. “First door on the right. Bathroom’s on the left.”

  Cass glanced back at the chair blocking what was apparently the master bedroom door, wondering what Dor was shielding her from seeing. It could be any of half a dozen familiar scenarios. The couple who lived here might have overdosed in their bed, that was the favorite for anyone who’d had the foresight to stockpile medication. Or the husband might have shot the wife and then turned the gun on himself. For those with no gun or drugs, things were messier; most people did a poor job of cutting their own wrists and took forever to die, leaving their beds soaked a bright red that slowly dried to dirt brown and earthen black if you found them much later.

  There were other ways, and Cass knew she hadn’t seen them all. Perhaps Dor had seen more. Perhaps he’d seen enough that the horror in the bedroom didn’t bother him, but she doubted it.

  14

  “DON’T GO PAST THE CHAIR,” SHE SAID GENTLY to Ruthie, and Ruthie nodded solemnly, never letting go of Cass’s hand. “We’ll see what this room is like, okay?” The guest room was blessedly unexceptional. They were not the first to squat here; the linens had been stripped from the bed, though a few pillows and a puffy comforter had been left behind. The mattress was fairly clean and Cass spread out a few towels she found in the bathroom. The closet had been gone through, as well; anything useful, like coats and synthetic tops and pants had been taken, leaving wool skirts and ruffled blouses and tailored jackets, the off-season wardrobe of a churchgoing woman in her sixties. On the shelf above the clothing were photo boxes with neat labels: Family Christmas 2010-2013. Caymans Summer ’14. Jeanelle, Grades 1-5. The lady of the house had been old-fashioned, still printing copies of photos on reacetate; Cass hoped her memories brought the woman some comfort at the end, long after most people had lost all their photos with the blink of computers turning off for the last time.

  They ate by the light of a candle that Dor found in one of the drawers and afterward Cass read to Ruthie from an old issue of Redbook she found in the den. Ruthie loved recipes with their pictures of dishes that could never again be prepared, and Cass had built a small collection of cookbooks back in their tent in the Box. She turned the pages to an article about berry desserts and read about the strawberry shortcakes and blueberry pie and raspberry-peach cobbler, and Ruthie traced her fingertip over the glossy mounds of whipped cream and the buttery crumbs in wonder.

  “Do you remember Mim’s pies?” Cas
s asked, a lump in her throat catching her off guard. The one thing Mim did better than anyone else, a thrilling exception to her indifference to housekeeping and even the general inadequacy of her mothering, was pies. Her pastry crust was the flakiest and most tender anywhere. Cass’s favorite had been her key lime, and once a year on Cass’s birthday Mim would grate the limes and squeeze them by hand and separate the eggs and flute the edges of the crust and set the pies out on the counter to cool and every year they were the most delicious thing Cass had ever tasted, right up until the year Byrn moved in and Mim forgot Cass’s birthday entirely.

  But Ruthie only nodded solemnly. It wasn’t Cass’s habit to ask her daughter about the time she spent with Mim and Byrn, who had convinced the state people to forcibly remove Ruthie from Cass’s trailer when she relapsed. Those were days of shame and agony as she fought her way back to sobriety again, the hardest thing she had ever done.

  “Did you like the apples?” Cass asked, forcing a smile, trying to cover up the tremor in her voice and hating that the old memories could still hurt so much. “With cinnamon and nutmeg?”

  More nodding. After a few more recipe images, Cass gathered Ruthie into a hug and set the magazine aside and carried her to bed, tucking her under the puffy comforter. Ruthie held on to her hand tightly, but it wasn’t more than a couple of minutes before she was asleep, and Cass kissed her forehead and went back out into the living room.

  Dor had cleared the remains of their meal and was stretched out on the sofa reading an old issue of Forbes, his long legs crossed in front of him, a pair of reading glasses on his nose. The sight made her smile-this was a different man, a far more vulnerable man, from the one who brooded in the solitary apartment as the sun set on the Box. But Dor caught her looking, and yanked off his glasses and stuffed them in a pocket.

  “I put water out back,” he said. “Your toothbrush and stuff’s there, too.”

  Cass took her time, skimping on the toothpaste to make it last and brushing out her hair, slathering the lanolin on her lips as well as she could and rubbing it into her hands. The smell wasn’t great but the California winter was dry and her skin was thirsty. She shivered in the cold, dampening a rag with the water Dor had left for her and rubbing it all over her face, feeling the grit from the open-air journey digging into her skin. She squatted around the corner to urinate, scanning the black road for movement, even in the silence of night unable to shake the feeling that things were lurking out in the fields, on the road. Waiting. She knew this was why they’d put the Jeep in the garage and drawn the drapes before lighting the candle: anyone-Beater or citizen-who passed by here would see nothing out of the ordinary. There wasn’t another building for half a mile; the odds of Beaters or squatters anywhere near were practically nonexistent.

  Inside Dor wrinkled his nose. “You smell like a sheep shearer.”

  Cass smiled. “You should be so lucky-that would mean there were sheep left, and we could make them into mutton burgers.”

  “I never liked mutton.”

  “Bet you would now.”

  “I suppose I would.” Dor nodded. “Nice big slab with American cheese melted all over it, one of those sesame seed buns, some iceberg lettuce and a big slice of tomato.”

  “Stop it. That’s obscene,” Cass said. “But maybe some fries-”

  “Fresh cut, with the skin still on ’em.”

  “I like the ones that get stuck in the fry basket and go through twice-you know, extra crispy, almost burned?”

  “Nice. Here, come sit where I’ve got it warmed up.”

  Cass hesitated. The sofa was a short one, almost a love seat, and there was barely room for her to sit next to Dor without touching. He’d unfolded the afghans and spread them over his lap, and he held up the ends, and it looked warm and inviting.

  “I was just going to go to bed with Ruthie. You don’t mind…?”

  “The couch? No. I mean, I don’t fit on the couch but the floor’s fine. I’ve slept on worse. But seriously, come sit a minute-I’m not tired yet.”

  Cass went to sit beside him.

  She’d seen the interior of his trailer. It was crammed full, his desk and a couple of chairs sharing the space with file cabinets and a printer stand, power cords snaking out the window. There was too much furniture even before Dor moved his cot in: bookshelves and an old-fashioned wooden coat rack and a basin with a china sink that was rigged to drain through a pipe in the floor onto the gravel yard below. There was a space heater, but Cass didn’t think Dor ever used it. A shaving mirror hung on a nail.

  Dor also had a tent, one as large as the one she shared with Smoke, and she knew from interrogating Smoke that it was there that Dor kept his clothes and even more books and his tools and collection of sports equipment: two sets of golf clubs, lacrosse sticks, and a couple of soccer balls. He changed clothes in his tent and showered in the communal showers. But at some point during the summer, he had begun sleeping in the trailer, and Cass didn’t know why. The cot wasn’t even one of the nice ones; it was FEMA surplus, like the ones near the front of the Box, the ones reserved for drunks and people who had nothing left to trade.

  It was a lot to leave behind-but Cass knew that possessions meant little to Dor. He might spend his days overseeing a center of commerce, but in the end it was the trading, not what was traded, that mattered to him. And with Sammi in danger, even that ceased to hold him. He’d left the Box behind with barely a thought, and deep down Cass knew he would not return there. If they survived this adventure, his restless spirit would propel him to the next new thing, another empire, another lonely world for him to oversee.

  “Smoke will be back, you know,” Dor said suddenly, as though reading her mind. “When he told you he’d be back, he meant it. The only thing that will stop him is if he gets killed.”

  “I know that. But what are the odds? It’s just him against everyone, every Rebuilder out there from here down to Colima. It’s hundreds of square miles. They’re all going to be looking for him, and by the time he finds those guys they’ll probably have gotten themselves killed some other way. But there will be more to take their place.”

  “Cass. You don’t understand. I have more…information than you realize. People inside the Rebuilders who talk, for a price. About where they go. Their routes, their plans. Smoke knows all of this, and he’ll be able to find the ones he’s looking for. They’re not just raiding randomly, you know.”

  “So, great, so he’ll find the guys who set the school on fire-he’s still outgunned.”

  “Not necessarily, Cass. He’s got the best weapons I could give him, enough ammo to do this ten times over and the element of surprise. Things go well, he’ll take ’em out clean, get home before we do. Look, I don’t take sides, but on this one I’m with Smoke and I’ve done everything I can to get him back safe.”

  “And you think you can trust your spies? What’s to prevent them from turning around and double-crossing him? For all you know they’re just waiting for him-”

  “Yeah, Cass, there’s a risk.” Dor, usually unprovokable, cut her off angrily. “But you ought to know by now that I pay well.”

  “Fanatics don’t care about-”

  “These aren’t fanatics. Just opportunists. Like me. People who recognize that there’s not really much difference between the people on the outside of the gate and inside.”

  “Not much difference? I can’t believe you’re saying that-not after they took your daughter. Killed the mother of your child and a lot of other innocent people.”

  “I hate what they did,” Dor said, “and I’m going to get Sammi back, no matter what I have to do. I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be a pacifist. Or an idealist, for that matter. I’ll kill them if need be. I’m not naïve enough to think that there’s going to be peace in this new society or new world or whatever the fuck we have now.”

  “It’s not idealism to-I mean there’s right and there’s wrong and-”

  Cass was so caught up in the argum
ent that when Dor’s hand settled lightly on her shoulder she jumped. Then she was embarrassed, and tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, but she was sitting on a cramped sofa in a house that had never been hers, with a man who was not her lover, talking about the violence that they might have to commit. She felt like she might cry, and hated that most of all.

  “There’s not enough to go around anymore, Cass,” Dor said, his voice gentler. “That’s the bottom line. One way or another, the population’s going to come down to what the earth can support.”

  “That’s not true,” Cass protested-even though she suspected it was. “Three-quarters of the people in California are already gone, dead. With kaysev there’s enough food for everyone who’s left. If people would cooperate-share skills, share the rest of the resources-there would be enough for everyone. It’s just when people start trying to profit from other people’s misfortune that it all goes wrong.”

  “Is that meant to be a dig against me? Because I run a business? Let me tell you, Cass, if I wasn’t bustin’ my ass to coordinate supply with need, things would be a hell of a lot worse for everyone than they already are.”

  Cass started to argue and then she stopped herself. Because he was right, at least a little.

  Most of her anger, Cass knew, was not at Dor, even though it was easy to blame him. Much easier than admitting that much of her rage had nowhere at all to settle, that it was years’ worth of stored anger at people who were long gone, at herself, at circumstances that had been forced on her, at-messes she’d made and hadn’t had the strength to clean up. She’d earned this fury every time Byrn let his eyes linger on her body, every time his furtive hands found her in the dark; she’d stoked it with each man to pass through her doors and back out again; cherished and honed it when Ruthie had been ripped from her, when every scar was laid open at once.

  This was a dangerous road to take, and one she had found was drawing her more and more in recent weeks. Until now, until the library burned and Smoke left her, things had started to feel settled. She had started to believe she might be able to have the family she’d never dreamed she could have.