Rebirth

by Sophie Littlefield

  It was everything she ever wanted, so why did she feel so restless? The old A.A. answers were there, right outside her consciousness, asking to be let in-but she didn’t want to try, didn’t want to do the hard work of living with her discomfort and feeling her feelings and all of those words that were just words. Maybe, if the whole world hadn’t gone to shit, if she had time to herself to do anything beyond the daily struggle of just living, if there was even the luxury of a single A.A. meeting to go to-maybe then, she could try to work through the bewildering maze of her own head. But in the Box, there were plenty of addicts but very few people who had any desire to do anything about it; it was hardly the place for practicing the twelve steps.

  Still, she was sober. She hadn’t had a drink in almost a year. Wasn’t that enough? Why didn’t that calm some of the anger?

  She fell silent and Dor didn’t seem to mind one way or another. He gave her shoulder a final squeeze, and folded his arms across his chest. His legs were extended out in front of him and he crossed his ankles at his feet and settled himself lower in the sofa. He looked like he ought to be sitting in front of a fireplace, or a football game on TV.

  He didn’t have the itch. Cass had pretended she’d obliterated the itch the first time she was sober, but that had been a hard lesson…pretending it away just weakened the dam and made room for the tiny rents that allowed it to make its insidious slow way back in. The itch was sneaky; it gained strength from the most unlikely sources. Self-doubt was manna. Shame was its lifeblood.

  And there was the stupid part, the part Cass hated more than anything-the part that she would tell God, if there was a God, was a flaw in His design, unfair, counterintuitive, doomed: the genetic part. She still didn’t want to believe it was true, that she, her body, her family history might have been selected in the genetic lottery to betray herself. Some people just weren’t addicts, didn’t have the potential, couldn’t become one if they tried. Cass had learned to identify them only by learning to identify who they weren’t. She could spot an addict from across a room or a bus or a party, and gradually she figured out who didn’t have the itch.

  Like Dor.

  Cass sighed. This, of all the pointless places for her thoughts to go right now, was probably just about the most pointless. But there were ways to deal with that.

  Of the many insipid-sounding A.A. catchphrases and acronyms, one of the most cloying had to be HALT-Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. If you were any of these, it was a signal to stop, take yourself out of circulation, get what you needed, treat yourself gently, rest. Come back strong.

  And Aftertime, there couldn’t be a bigger joke. Hungry? The bioterrorists had pretty much set the stage for that, and while kaysev kept you alive, it never, ever completely satisfied you. Angry? Fucking kidding me? Lonely…well, Cass could teach a graduate seminar on lonely, on all its shades and flavors. And tired: everyone was tired, all the time. Deep, dreamless sleep had gone the way of hot showers and electric toothbrushes.

  But there were still things she could do, things she should do. Things she had to do, if only for Ruthie. So Cass bit back whatever she had been about to say to Dor, and focused on breathing in and breathing out, and reminded herself to be grateful. For living another day.

  For having her daughter with her.

  For the meal they’d eaten, the sun on her face that afternoon.

  She didn’t feel gratitude, but she knew that pretending was the next best thing. Fake it till you make it. And so she sat, trying to keep her body as still as her mind was unsettled, and faked it.

  Dor seemed comfortable with the silence. He occasionally shifted, recrossing his ankles, rubbing a hand over his stubble or through his hair, but his breathing was deep and regular and he didn’t even seem to have to work at it. They were warm now, sharing the knitted comforter. Dor stretched and yawned, and his thigh touched hers, and she stayed very still, distracted from her thoughts, afraid to pull away lest he notice. But he didn’t seem to notice that their bodies were touching. In fact, he seemed like he might just drift off to sleep.

  For a man who preferred his own company, he seemed remarkably at ease with her. He probably-no, make that definitely-would have preferred to come on this trip by himself, but he had been nothing but accommodating since they left San Pedro. Now, at the end of the day, he seemed as though he had made his peace with everything that had happened, an almost inconceivable notion.

  It was like with the itch. Cass saw it, believed it, but couldn’t understand it. How could he see the things they’d seen today and not be marked by it? How could he not long to numb himself after nearly dying, after seeing what transpired in this house that was so bad? After taking men’s lives? How could he-and God help her, she hated the way the old sayings colored every thought she had, as though A.A. had seeped in and taken over every corner of her brain-just let it be?

  “Back on the road today,” Cass said, her words coming out in a rush. “By the wreck. When you went inside the house. What did you find?”

  Dor’s ink-black eyes shifted very slightly out of focus but otherwise he showed no reaction to her question. “You saw. The food, the medicine, the guns-it was all out pretty much in the open.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Dor shrugged slightly, but he said nothing and didn’t look at her.

  “I want to know about the people,” Cass pressed. “How they were living, what they were doing in there. I heard the shots, you know.”

  “I don’t want to tell you,” Dor said slowly. “It’s not that I think you can’t handle it. So don’t think that. It’s nothing worse than you’ve seen before. But it won’t help you in any way. Why ask me, when this is a chance for you to stay ignorant of one bad thing? Why not take that as a gift?”

  Cass shook her head. “No. I-look at me, Dor, please look at me.” Wrong, wrong. But she couldn’t stop, couldn’t keep the words in. “I need to know everything. I need to feel everything. It’s the only way I can…”

  The only way I can keep fighting the itch.

  But of course, Dor didn’t speak that language and so didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “I can handle it,” she said, changing tactics. “I…insist you tell me. We’re partners, and you need me, and I deserve a full accounting of everything that affects me.”

  After considering her words for a moment Dor finally relented, but he didn’t look happy about it. “There were four of them. The two out front and another man and a woman. The men…were doing all right. The woman, not so much. I did what I had to do. I changed the balance, the way I thought was right. The worst of them are dead, and so help me, that’s all you need to know.”

  “No. Everything.”

  His eyes bored into hers and his expression darkened and smoldered. For a long time she thought he would storm from the room, his body tensed with furious energy, his breath coming ragged and hard, but he stayed, sitting rigid and miserable until he could manage to continue.

  “All right, but I still think it’s a mistake. They were well supplied, not just the food but they had a lot of firewood stacked out back, and they had a little generator, too. They had gas out back in a couple big tubs. Looked like fifty gallons or more. They take it out of the cars that come by, I expect, siphoning it off after they kill everyone and drive the cars out back. You can see from the second floor windows, there’s more farther back in the woods. They’ve been at this for a while, Cass.”

  Her head had started buzzing at the word kill. “How do you know? Maybe they let the people go, told them to head down the road, or they could have driven them farther down themselves, made them get out and-”

  “No.” Dor’s voice was hard. “You wanted to know, so you’re going to know, but I’m not lying to you. Ever.”

  Cass nodded, chastened.

  “They kill them. The one inside told me.”

  “Just like that? He just volunteered that up to you? Because-”

  “He didn’t volunteer anythin
g. After I shot him in the knee. I made him tell me a few things. And then after he told me, I shot him in the head.”

  Cass thought about that. Counted.

  “There were only two shots. What about the woman?”

  “The woman, she wasn’t there by choice.”

  “What do you mean, not by choice?”

  “She was shackled to the bed in one of the bedrooms. They used metal cuffs that were too small and there was, she was bruised and cut, you know, the cuffs cut into her ankles but she had, her toenails were painted. Pink, I could still see the pink nail polish. She was…they took her from one of the cars. Do you understand what I’m telling you? She was young and if they hadn’t beaten her in the face I think she might have been pretty. They killed the ones she was traveling with and they kept her for themselves. They…used her.”

  “Oh my God…”

  “I made him tell me where the key was. To unlock her. It was the last thing he told me before I shot him in the head. I told him if he told me, I would let him go free. They kept the key on a hook by the front door, just like where you’d keep your car keys.”

  The buzzing in Cass’s head grew louder, like flies, dozens of flies. The place behind her eyes hurt. Her mouth felt too dry to talk, but she had to ask.

  “Wait-where is she? Was she hurt? Could she walk?”

  “She’d only been with them a couple of weeks. She’d lost track of the days so I don’t know how long, really, but she still looked reasonably healthy, physically. Cass, I left her plenty of food and medicine and a gun and bullets.”

  “You could have brought her. We could have taken her with us.”

  Dor was already shaking his head angrily. “Damn it, Cass, I knew you’d say that. I knew that’s straight where you would go. What would we do with her? She’d slow us down. She wasn’t right in the head-not anymore. There’s no way we could bring her to the Rebuilders. They wouldn’t want her. They’d be suspicious. That house is sealed tight and she’s armed and she has provisions for months, if she’s careful. Most people have a lot less. A hell of a lot less.”

  Cass knew he was right. Knew it was the only way. And she had a chance. If she was careful, like Dor said, she had a chance.

  Anyone who had survived this far had already proved they were tough. The weak died, it was as simple as that; if they didn’t starve or catch the fever, they simply lost the will to keep trying, and grew careless. They killed themselves and took ridiculous chances and went out of their minds entirely, until everyone who was left was crafty and wily and determined to live.

  Of course they couldn’t take her along. Cass could only guess what shape the woman was in, and it was inconceivable that she would force Ruthie to look upon her brokenness. Cass knew firsthand that another person’s suffering could seep into the vulnerable places in you, and Ruthie had suffered too recently and too much. She still didn’t know exactly what had gone on in the Convent, and while she believed most of it was simply brainwashing and rigorous “educating” in the children’s dorm, the deacons had forbidden the children to speak. Whatever the consequences of disobeying, they were stark enough or painful enough that the lesson had stuck, even now. There had been no marks on Ruthie when Cass rescued her, no injuries; she did not flinch the way Cass suspected a beaten child would. But she was just so silent, and without words how could she tell her mother what she was feeling? Until she was better, until she was all the way back, Cass would take no risks nor bring any more unnecessary fear into her life.

  “All right,” she finally said. “You’re right. What else aren’t you telling me?”

  Dor blinked and Cass knew he had held something back. She knew it anyway, knew it from the way he refused to meet her gaze. And she had to know. Not because she needed the full catalog of horrors that had been committed in the plain cabin, but so that she could keep Dor from thinking of her as weak, so that she could keep him from wanting to protect her. She had to keep their relationship clean; she couldn’t give in to the urge to let him take up even the smallest part of her burden. She had made that mistake with Smoke and she would not make it again with anyone. Smoke had protected her and she had counted on that protection and then he had left and there was nothing she could do to stop him, and because she’d given herself to him, he had taken a part of her with him and left her weaker, unwhole.

  She would not allow that to happen again.

  “You tell me everything,” she whispered fiercely. Her hands had closed around his wrists without her realizing she’d moved, and she was squeezing hard. “Everything. I’ll decide when the telling is done.”

  “It doesn’t need to be this way,” Dor protested. “I’m not trying to keep you in the dark or, you know, prove I’m in charge or whatever. Any kind of power I had, I left it back in the Box. Here we’re equals and you don’t have to fight me to prove it. Okay?”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Cass could feel her face flaming with fury and embarrassment as she let go. “I could shoot you in your sleep or grab the wheel and run us off the road.”

  The old chorus rushed from its hidden place with greedy excitement, provoked by her momentarily loss of control: I could fuck you or hate you or make you want me or make you despise me…but Cass resisted. She would not give in, could not give in. Today was hard but she was strong. The future was hard but she would be stronger.

  “What do you want, Cass?” Dor asked gently, surprising her. Tenderness was the one thing she had not expected of him. “I get the feeling there’s nothing I could give you, nothing I could do for you that would mean anything to you. If you’d just stayed in the Box, I could have made it someone’s full-time job to keep you and Ruthie safe for as long as possible. Why are you with me? Really?”

  But Cass knew that danger well. The way they asked questions and got inside you and made you start to care. And she would have none of it. “Just tell me the rest.”

  Silence stretched between them, but Cass did not look away. A branch scratched against the kitchen window, and somewhere in the house was a sound Cass had not heard in a very long time, the tick of a battery-operated clock. She was warm under the afghan, and she could feel Dor’s heat, even greater than her own, and smell the soap on his skin. The candle had burned down to the last few inches and it sputtered and flickered, light dancing around the wood-paneled walls.

  When Dor finally spoke, there was no emotion in his voice. “They pile the dead fifty yards beyond the house. They don’t even dig trenches. The birds showed up a month ago. They can pick a corpse clean in a matter of minutes. Sometimes there’s as many as half a dozen of them and she’s seen them flying from the south-she thinks that might be where they nest.”

  “The girl told you that.”

  “Yes. She would stare at the mound at night.”

  Cass’s heart felt sick, but she couldn’t stop until it was all out. “And?”

  “There’s a pottery bowl on the kitchen table, with a separation down the middle, like you might serve two different dips in it or something. One half, they use as an ashtray. In the other half are all the wedding rings they took off people.”

  Cass’s vision swam. “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. The girl’s name is Anna. She said when they took her there was already a girl in the room, one who’d been there a few months. One of her arms was broken and she had an infection and she smelled like she was rotting from the inside. She started screaming when she saw Anna and she didn’t stop until they took her out into the backyard and shot her. Then they locked Anna up to the same bed.”

  15

  MONTHS AGO, WHEN THE CITIES WERE BURNING and bodies lay bloated in trenches, Cass had thought she’d seen the worst. She remembered saying those words to herself: at least now I have seen the worst. But every time some other horror came along, something she had not imagined or prepared herself for, and she would think she could not survive it. And then she did. And Dor’s story was the worst yet.

  Cass suspected that thi
s was what determined, more than anything else, who survived and who did not. The ability to live through the moment when you found out you had been wrong once again-that things really could get worse, that suffering came in yet more designs, that survivors’ capacity for ruthlessness or Beaters’ hunger and cunning exceeded what you thought you knew. You could still be surprised, and you could take it.

  People died a thousand different ways-suicide, attacks, poisoning, riots, dehydration, starvation-but Cass came to believe that the real cause of most deaths was giving up. Lose your will and you were likely to leave a shelter door open, or forget to check for blueleaf, or cross paths with marauders-even carelessly cut yourself and die an ignominious death of infection or tetanus. Your body would bloat and rot like any other, and you would never have a gravestone or even a cross to mark the place you fell, but your silent requiem would be a song of despair, of wretchedness.

  What made some people keep fighting while others succumbed? Cass didn’t know. At first, she’d fought for Ruthie. But when she woke in a haze so profound that she barely remembered who she was, there was some other source of determination so fundamental that it might as well have been her very bones, her DNA. She was a fighter and she would not stop being a fighter, even if the one she’d fought hardest against most of her life was herself.

  If anything could make her give up, it would have been losing Smoke-because she had slowly invested him with herself, allowed the protective layer of distrust and anger to crumble until there was a hole wide enough to let him in. She had allowed that to happen, she had slowly accumulated the hundred habits of love, and she had done so foolishly, like a teenager with her first crush.

  Well. She’d never been such a girl, so there was her excuse-by the time she was old enough to have a boyfriend, her stepfather had already taken from her that possibility. His hands on her body had done more than destroy some medieval notion of her innocence, they had erased her ability to believe that someone could love her, to trust herself to be part of a couple, to believe that she could be worthy only for herself, for what was true and essential.