Rebirth

by Sophie Littlefield

  Evangeline continued on as though nothing had interrupted the silence of the hallways.

  “In here,” Evangeline announced at last, and ushered them through a door to a small waiting room. The upholstered chairs and coffee table were from every waiting room Cass had ever been in-all that was missing were the magazines. A bored-looking soldier in fatigues and ankle-high boots watched with his arms folded across his chest as four wasted, thin, exhausted-looking adults in dirty clothes slumped in chairs.

  The smell of unwashed bodies filled Cass’s nostrils and she coughed and struggled not to gag, and then felt ashamed of herself: she herself had smelled worse not long ago, waking in a field with no memory. These people had struggled as she had; more, in fact, since they lacked the supercharged immunity the Beater attack had left her with. They’d been freewalking, on the run from Beaters and maybe from Rebuilders, as well. Whatever the case, they didn’t look like they had it in them to go much farther.

  Evangeline led them past the refugees without sparing them a glance. Beyond the waiting room was a warren of tiny offices. Through open doors Cass saw medical equipment, examination tables and cabinets of supplies. In several rooms, ravaged-looking patients were having their blood drawn by men and women in scrubs and masks.

  “Don’t worry, you’re getting star treatment,” Evangeline said sarcastically. Cass could tell it galled her to have to extend any special privileges to her. The woman still despised her, even more than before. “Pilar keeps her room clean. We only use it for those who, shall we say, do not pose a risk of contamination from the most common complaints.”

  The last office was larger than the rest. A middle-aged woman sat behind a desk reviewing a stack of hand-drawn graphs and charts, reading glasses low on her nose. When she saw Evangeline she removed the glasses and let them hang from a silver chain and smiled tightly.

  “So this is our newest outlier. How delightful. I understand that Mary’s cleared her schedule.”

  “No doubt slaughtering the fatted calf,” Evangeline said with barely concealed contempt. “This is Dr. Pilar Grelo.”

  “Well, let’s do you first then,” Pilar said, reaching in her drawer for a pair of latex gloves. Evangeline raised her eyebrows. “Yes, yes, I’m still using them. I didn’t get this far just to contract hepatitis or HIV. I consider gloves a perk of seniority.”

  Cass got into the chair as directed and laid her arm out on the platform. “Finger, please.”

  She swabbed Cass’s finger, and the strong scent of alcohol filled the room. Ruthie, still in Dor’s arms, wrinkled her nose and frowned.

  The sharp lancet poke was quick and sure. Pilar squeezed Cass’s finger and a bright, large drop of red blood appeared. She held a glass pipette to it and it was sucked away into the tube; then she tapped it onto a slide.

  “Old-school,” she said apologetically, as she centered a tiny square of glass on top. “It’s the ultimate recycle and reuse around here-you’re getting the finest in 1960s technology.”

  The blood bloomed under the glass into a red splotch, and in Dor’s arms, Ruthie began to tremble. She turned her face against Dor’s chest and held on to his shirt with her little fists. It was the blood, Cass realized.

  “How fast can-” Dor started to ask.

  “Results tomorrow.” Pilar gave her a brief, chilly smile. “Pulling out all the stops for you.”

  Cass pinched her finger under the wisp of gauze Pilar had given her, the cotton pristine, unmarred by even a tiny amount of blood. She wished Ruthie would look at her now, that she could see the healing, that it would comfort her to see that the bleeding had stopped. The skin smarted, but she could sense her body responding already, healing the tiny cut. In seconds the wound would be invisible.

  The Beater attack should have killed her, but instead it had strengthened her. The strips of flesh torn and gnawed from her back, the blood she’d lost, the exposure-she should have died an agonizingly slow death. Instead, her body had recovered and morphed into something stronger. Cass didn’t know if it was an urban legend or not, but she’d definitely heard that the human body regenerates itself every seven years; in her case she felt as though she had been reborn in the time she was out of her mind, the days she could not remember before she woke, lying in the field. The ragged tears on her back had skimmed over, her body generating new flesh to cover the wounds. Her hair, pulled from its roots and shorn, had come back glossier and stronger. Her fingernails grew so fast Cass had to trim them every couple of days. The enamel on her teeth seemed stronger, her eyelashes thicker, her muscles more supple and flexible.

  Pilar watched her squeeze the gauze to her fingertip, peering over her glasses. “So what have you been doing for birth control?” She spoke loudly, snapping Cass’s attention from her daughter.

  Cass reddened. Back in the Box, she and Smoke had used condoms whenever they were available. Raiders had brought back birth control pills from time to time, and Cass had considered the idea of stockpiling them, but she didn’t want to mix brands or risk running out and in the end, she abandoned the idea. They’d taken chances sometimes when their stock was running low or her cycle lined up, or they were trying to be quiet and not wake Ruthie.

  Near the end, when the tent in the Box was starting to feel more like a home than anywhere Cass had lived before, the chances Smoke and she took together hadn’t felt so much like chances…and the idea of a baby with him hadn’t seemed like the worst idea she’d ever had, back then.

  “Different things,” she said stiffly. She was aware of Dor watching her. Certainly there had been no discussion of precautions last night. She’d forced herself on him without considering the fact that she might conceive. But it felt impossible that the cursed and rageful thing they had done could result in anything more than release and regret.

  “Conception does seem to be the one thing outliers are not very good at,” Pilar murmured, tapping a finger thoughtfully against the bridge of her nose. “We’re studying that, of course. There is some discussion of the elevated temperature of the body…but you aren’t here to talk about that. We will supply you with prophylactics until we find out the results of your test. Now, if you would…”

  This last she directed at Dor, who pulled Ruthie off his chest with reluctance and handed her to Cass. He reached across the desk, offering his finger to be stuck as Pilar selected a new lancet from a plastic box. Cass snuggled Ruthie into her lap and murmured softly against her hair, feeling her daughter’s heartbeat through her warm scalp.

  Dor barely seemed to notice the lancet piercing his finger, and swiped at the beaded blood as though it were an annoying gnat. Cass thought of his scars, the one on his forehead and the deep and fissured ones on his chest, which she’d seen in the light of last night’s flickering candle. Dor had been wounded grievously, and Cass wondered at the tolerance to pain he must have built up-and what it would take to hurt him.

  “The child,” Pilar said, preparing a third slide.

  “Do you have to test her?” Cass asked, as Ruthie wound her arms tightly around her neck and began to tremble again. Ruthie was stoic in the face of pain; a scraped knee or bumped shin never made her cry. But the sight of the blood had definitely spooked her.

  “It’s a simple test,” Pilar said calmly. “You yourself know it barely hurts at all. Hold her tightly please. It’s better if she doesn’t watch.”

  Better if she doesn’t watch. The words echoed bitterly in Cass’s mind. What would truly have been better would have been for Ruthie never to have been indoctrinated at the Convent, for her head never to have been shaved, her voice silenced with those of all the other little girls. For her never to have been forced to drink the blood of the Beaters in that sadistic ritual. Cass held Ruthie with her face against her neck and murmured softly to her, nonsense words, trying not to react when Ruthie’s small body jerked and fought. Dor wrapped his hands around Ruthie’s legs and held them still. When Pilar jabbed the lancet, Ruthie flailed with surprising strength, an
d she missed.

  “Damn it,” Pilar muttered.

  Evangeline stepped away from the wall, where she had been watching the proceedings. “Hold her,” she growled, “or I will.”

  Ruthie began to make a sound that chilled Cass. It was a scream, compressed and flattened into a thin, chilling wail, worse than if her daughter had yelled at the top of her lungs. Her face reddened and her eyes squeezed shut, her lashes dotted with unspilled tears, and she fought as though her life depended on it. Cass held on, her heart breaking, but as Pilar took aim again she knew that it would go worse for Ruthie if she continued to resist, and she held her as tight as she could.

  Pilar jabbed the sharp point into Ruthie’s skin with force, and blood beaded and spilled. Ruthie’s eyes flew open and when she saw the blood her wail bloomed into a terrified, other worldly shriek. She stopped only to get her breath and then she screamed again and again, an eerie banshee rupture, as Pilar fumbled with the glass slide and the tube of blood, muttering all the while. When it was done, Cass wiped Ruthie’s finger on her own shirt, then wrapped her fingers around it tightly.

  “All done,” she crooned, whispering and rocking Ruthie. “All better. All better. All better.”

  Pilar busied herself at her desk, turning her back on them, arranging the samples on a tray, making notes on a lined pad. Dor’s and Cass’s eyes met and he shook his head worriedly. All remained in this diorama of the aftermath of the screaming for a minute before Ruthie flailed one last time and went limp in Cass’s arms, her wails winding down into snuffles.

  “That’s it, then, until we get the results,” Pilar said, turning back to them with a tight smile. “Let’s finish checking you out so we can get you over to Ellis. There’s not much more we can do until we get the results back.”

  When Evangeline opened the office door, Cass heard crying coming from one of the other offices. Passing by the open door, joggling Ruthie to comfort her, she saw a haggard woman weeping while a man in scrubs stood over her and snipped away her hair, down to a quarter of an inch.

  “Lice,” Evangeline explained, grimacing with disgust. “We check everyone for parasites but these people…they’re in rough shape. Hell, they’ve probably got worms and scabies and crabs, too. No sense tracking that all over the place.”

  After taking them to an adjoining office, Evangeline took her leave, promising to see them later. Her discomfort in the place was evident. The woman who checked them over was far more gentle than what they had witnessed with the other newcomers. She parted their hair with a fine metal comb, working under a window where the afternoon light was strongest, and looked in their mouths and under their arms. She kept up a steady stream of conversation, asking them questions about the trip, about Ruthie, chatting about the cafeteria and what was for dinner. “My girlfriend works over there and she told me they got some of that government cheese,” she shared as she finished checking Cass. “How that stuff can survive a summer in a warehouse, I have no idea, but they’re making some sort of kaysev mac and cheese. Do you like spaghetti, Ruthie, honey?”

  Ruthie had calmed down and even seemed to have forgotten her anxiety about the blood. She almost seemed to be considering answering the woman, smiling shyly and peeking out from under her long, luxurious lashes. Cass gave the woman a grateful look. She had been ready to hate everyone, but aside from Evangeline with her frightening eyes and angry rhetoric, the people here seemed not much worse than people anywhere. Again the troubling thought floated through her mind that this might not be the worst place in the world to make a home.

  “You do like spaghetti, don’t you, noodle-girl?” Cass said, wiggling her fingers, and Ruthie laughed, her shoulders shaking soundlessly.

  “Okay, your turn, noodle,” the woman said, dropping her comb in a tall bottle of antiseptic. “Looks like someone’s already given you a pretty haircut.”

  She reached for Ruthie’s pale blond hair, finally long enough that it no longer stuck up like an overgrown crew cut-but when she touched the strands Ruthie ducked and made a tiny mewling sound. It took Cass a second to react-she’d been lulled by the warmth of her momentary happiness but gathered Ruthie in a tight hug as the little girl wrapped her arms around her neck and held on tight. The woman held up her hands defensively.

  “I’m sorry,” Cass said. “She, um, she had a…something happened.”

  The woman nodded and her irritation softened. Something happened-the catchall explanation Aftertime. Who was left who hadn’t been wounded, who hadn’t suffered some kind of trauma? Children’s feelings were so close to the surface; they had fewer memories of Before, fewer years to learn to hide their feelings.

  Only, Cass didn’t know what exactly had happened to Ruthie to make her so skittish about her hair. Since she was rescued from the Convent, Ruthie was as affectionate as ever with Cass, wanting to be held more than ever before, crawling up on her lap, lifting her arms to be picked up. At night she often stumble-crawled from her small bed to theirs, making her way up and under the covers without ever waking. She liked to be hugged and tickled and snuggled, but she hated to have her hair combed, and once in a while she covered her head with her hands and shut her eyes and looked so sorrowful that it broke Cass’s heart.

  She knew they had shaved Ruthie’s head in the Convent, but she didn’t know why. Punishment? Religious ritual? While she kept up a one-way conversation with her daughter all day long, pretending that it didn’t bother her at all when Ruthie didn’t answer, she never talked about the Convent other than to kneel down in front of Ruthie at least once a week and remind her that she could tell her mama anything, anytime, that she would never ever be in trouble for the things she told. It was a lesson from a book she had once owned, something pressed in her hands by a well-meaning woman in A.A. the week after Cass had finally talked about what her stepfather had done to her. The book was called It’s Okay To Tell and it was supposed to teach you how to deal with children who had been victims of abuse.

  Offering the book was breaking the rules-in A.A. you were never supposed to give advice and Cass was pretty sure that the book was just another form of advice. Cass thought the advice rule was stupid-after all, what was the point of coming to meetings if no one was allowed to tell you what you were doing wrong? The woman was a fortyish, bloated blonde who seemed entirely without color, from her bloodless lips to her pale, cloudy eyes to her mud-colored clothing. She had pressed the book in Cass’s hands and then held her gaze a moment too long, and Cass started to get uneasy. The woman wanted something from Cass, something Cass didn’t know how to give-to be understood, to have someone acknowledge how she’d been hurt, to offload even a little of her pain. They stood that way for a second, each of them holding one end of the book, until Cass mumbled her thanks and yanked it from the woman’s hands and bolted from the building.

  She’d driven to a grocery store that was open all night and parked under the streetlights and read the first chapter. She couldn’t put the woman’s hungry expression out of her mind. When she couldn’t stand to read any more, she opened the door of her car and leaned out, her hair brushing the ground, and slid the book behind the front tire. She closed her door and backed over the book, then drove ahead and back over it a second time, before driving home with her hands shaking on the wheel, not understanding what had happened. She never went back to that meeting.

  But she remembered that first chapter. “Silence is toxic,” was the title. It talked about shame and “interrupting the message,” and so all this time later she knelt before Ruthie and said it was okay to tell, that her mother would always listen and never judge, that she was the most beautiful and loved little girl in the world, perfect in her mother’s and-she felt only a little selfconscious about saying it-in God’s eyes, as well.

  “Well, you’re all done here,” the woman said now, bringing Cass back to the moment. “I don’t need to check her. I don’t want to upset her, poor thing. I can see you’re clean as whistles, all three of you.”

  S
he summoned Pace, who led them back outside. More hallways, more doors, out in the air again; it took a moment for Cass to get oriented. The wall was visible here and there between the buildings; from a distance it looked pretty, even quaint, as though ivy might grow up its sides, as though kids might lose softballs over the top.

  Some people said the Beaters were getting smarter all the time. What would happen if they found a way to get over the wall? There had been evidence of cooperation among them over the summer-hunting in groups, for instance. A single Beater could be overwhelmed, beaten, even killed with a relatively low risk of infection, but three or four were another matter entirely. They had been smart enough to figure that out. What if their next leap forward was to drag things-pallets, wheelbarrows, crates-over to the edge of the wall until they could scale it?

  Except that this wall wasn’t meant simply to keep the Beaters out. It also kept the people inside.

  Past the old bookstore-there were still pennants and T-shirts and plastic mugs in the display windows, though sun-bleached-toward a pair of low-slung, pebble-walled buildings, among the older ones on campus, built fifty years earlier when they favored odd angles and small windows. Wheelchair ramps led up to the door of each building. Someone had spray painted words on each building, an inexpert job with paint drips along the bottom of the blocky letters. Infirmary was written on the side of the building on the left. Pace led the way up the ramp of the other building, which was labeled Ellis.

  “I suppose it’s a little sentimental,” he said. “Ellis Island and all that. Mary can be…what’s the word. Grandiose? Well, you’ll see. She’ll probably come by tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Who?”

  “Mary Vane. You know. She’s in charge.”

  Cass had heard about her back at the library; Smoke and the other guards passed along rumors about her, bits picked up from travelers, from the few who’d encountered the Rebuilders and not been recruited. She was supposed to be some sort of brilliant scientist, a visionary. People said she had worked for the government, or a drug company, or that she taught at the university. A few said she’d been serving time. Really, no one knew for sure.