Rebirth

by Sophie Littlefield

Dor nodded. The disease was transmitted through saliva, not blood. You could touch the blood, even drink it, as some of the Order had done, and there was no chance of infection. But a bite-even a graze-led to the appearance of symptoms within a few hours. And for everyone but outliers, the disease was irreversible.

  “What if they’re immune, though?”

  Kaufman shook his head. “It’s too risky. I mean, it’s only one in a couple hundred. The odds of finding one who’s already starting to turn-well, it’s just not worth the risk.”

  Cass felt her face go hot. So Kaufman didn’t know about her, didn’t know she was an outlier, or that she’d been one of the ones who turned.

  “So what exactly do they do?” Dor asked, interrupting her thoughts. “To the infected?”

  Kaufman winced, his mouth tugging down at the corners. “Ah, hell. I guess it’s the most fair thing for everyone, given the circumstances, but…well, they rotate it among the security details. Anyone with firearms training. It’s a firing squad. Out in the PAC courtyard. You know, the old Performing Arts Center…they use it for assemblies and… Things.”

  Firing squad. The words buzzed in her mind, forming an image of a blindfolded prisoner shackled to a post. Cass had seen so much, but it was the horrors that “decent” humans inflicted on each other that never failed to shock.

  “Yeah, they just bring a dozen or so rifles from the armory, enough for whoever shows up. Only two are ever loaded. They tie the, you know, the infected person up and get it done.”

  “Jesus,” Dor said. “So it’s what, voluntary…?”

  “Hell, no, I wouldn’t exactly say that. You don’t show up, you damn well better have a good excuse. I mean, there’s a few things that qualify, like if you’re on security, if you’re in the clinic, something like that. But a situation like what we have here-hell, we don’t really need two on staff here at Ellis. It’s mostly so one of us can be in the john or whatever-yeah, it wouldn’t look good.”

  Dor thought for a moment, wiping one big hand across his face. “What would happen? Something like that, you don’t show up for your shift?”

  “Man, I would not want to be that guy,” Kaufman said. “In theory, there’s this whole review system in place, a whole escalating scale of consequences, but way things are right now-how you have to, like, shortcut the theoretical-let’s just say they don’t hardly ever get to the finer points of justice, know what I’m saying? Most times you fuck up, you’re gonna end up in the detention camp. I mean, something like this, you’d get work detail. I don’t know, maybe you’d get a couple shifts with the diggers or something. But if you screw up too often and end up being tagged a problem-and they start forgetting to check on you? Leave you in there for too long, maybe with the general population? Let’s just say it’s not a place I’d want to be.”

  After that, Kaufman turned the conversation to other, easier topics: TV shows they missed, a memorable Giants game from the last season anyone played. Cass tuned out the words and just let the conversation flow around her, savoring the tone, normal in a way nothing was normal anymore. She got Ruthie settled in one of the beds, the sheets stiff but clean, smelling vaguely of lye or some other harsh chemical.

  Before, when the power started to flicker differently from the way rolling brownouts normally did, sputtering for a moment or two before going out entirely, Cass sensed a terrifying loss coming, a return of the fear she’d been keeping at bay. It wasn’t unfamiliar, and Cass knew that the way to handle it was to keep breathing, in, out, in…out…until it passed.

  Humans had a visceral fear of the dark-all of them, from the smallest toddler to the frailest senior citizen. If Cass had ever doubted that the fear was inherent, those first hours without electricity-literally among the darkest of her life, as the power failed for the last time in the predawn hours back in March-made the point. Electricity and power had been weakening for days, and there had been an uptick in the riots, a surge in the senseless destruction wreaked by the roving bands of angry and restless citizens.

  But when the lights went out forever, there was a brief and reverent silence when Cass felt as though the soul of the city had been sucked out. It had literally felt as though everyone who was still alive stopped breathing for a moment-and then the first cry carried out on the wind, grief-struck meaningless keening that was more intense than anything she’d heard. It was joined by another and another and another, until the street outside her trailer echoed with a terrible symphony of devastation.

  Moment for moment, there was nothing more horrific than the Beaters, of course. And perhaps nothing more poignant than fever death, watching someone you loved slip into a luminous delirium, clutching and babbling, hot-skinned and gorgeous in their last hours, before death saved them from the ignominy of turning. But of all the abominations, the loss of power felt most like the loss of civilization.

  There had been little pockets of power since then. Those who owned generators-if they were able to protect them from marauders and looters who would kill for as little as a case of bottled water or a tank of propane-consumed their foul-smelling noisy power in furtive bursts. And of course there were batteries, for a while. Some people jealously hoarded their batteries for emergencies, for flashlights and radios they were convinced would start broadcasting safety instructions again someday, somehow-and others used them up quickly, bingelike, playing music and games and movies on their big or tiny screens. Devices that turned human energy into power-shake flashlights and bicycle generators and the like-were suddenly coveted above nearly everything else.

  But here in Colima it was almost as though the power had never gone all the way out. A grid was up and running. Its source was still the temporal and noisy generators, but the idea that Evangeline had planted-turbine and solar power, unlimited! Freely available even in the punished and thwarted new atmosphere!-was intoxicating. Cass wondered how long the novelty would last; people here seemed to have quickly readjusted to the idea of power, to an expectation of its availability. Society absorbed what was available with something approaching indifference. The same people who thought they would never again hear a song on the radio likely now barely registered the loudspeaker system, the space heater in the corner of the room.

  It was a little like sobriety. That was the notion that had come to Cass as she’d pretended not to watch and listen to the men talking, fussing with Ruthie and trying to get her to finish eating. The first days of sobriety were a novelty. Hard, but oddly thrilling. You flirted with the idea, telling yourself that it didn’t matter, that you didn’t really need to be there, lumped in with the others, the real addicts. And yet you heard the voices, one day at a time one day at a time onedayatatime, whispering in your mind. You got through the day outside yourself, surprised. Is that me, seriously? Not going to the fridge? Not getting out the bottle? Is that me putting on my pajamas as though I were anyone else, as though I am really not going to have anything before bed? Is this me lying here in this room in the dark, my heart beating so fast I can’t keep up listening to it, as though I could fall asleep and dream like anybody else?

  Is this me in this same bed in the morning? Did I really not drink last night? The sheer wonder of that realization is enough to get you through the strange and terrifying morning, when you do not stir whiskey into your coffee, when you do not pretend you left your purse in the car so you can have a quick nip.

  And that evening. And the next night. And so on until it’s not new anymore, until sobriety isn’t a surprise but an obligation, a dreary habit. Until you don’t so much congratulate yourself as wonder if this is really any better.

  So it must have been for the new Rebuilder recruits. Power. Light, heat. Not like Before, of course-those times had faded like a distant dream-but more or less predictably, and more or less on demand. A thrill, a luxury-safety! Yes, it must feel like safety, that first day.

  And the next day, it’s barely diminished. The day after that, if you are a believer, perhaps you are still thanking your god
…but maybe the next day you reach for the switch and bathe the room in light and you forget to be quite as grateful. And before long it’s just another habit of your new life. Switch, the light comes on…switch, it goes off. You grow complacent.

  But for tonight, at least, Cass let herself feel grateful. The temperature was still chilly enough that Ruthie’s nose was ice-cold when Cass bent to kiss it, though she was warm under the stack of blankets, sleeping deeply. Cass accepted the maroon parka Kaufman offered her from a stash in a closet, and she would have drawn her chair near the space heater in the center of the room, under the single light fixture, if Kaufman hadn’t gotten there first, settling into a folding chair with an old Vince Flynn thriller. Cass didn’t feel like making conversation, so she sat on the edge of Ruthie’s bed, absently rubbing her back through all the blankets. Malena hadn’t left her son’s side. It appeared that he would spend the night in the chair, rather than one of the beds; Cass could hear her murmuring to him softly from time to time.

  Dor seemed restless, pacing the room, picking up objects and putting them down, looking out the windows into the darkness. When Lester returned, he was in the kitchen alcove, drinking a glass of water that he poured from a large plastic pitcher. He set down the glass and Cass watched him tense. Without a weapon, he seemed at a loss. His hand went to his hip where he carried his gun and, finding it missing, he made a fist and thumped it lightly against the counter.

  “Back so soon,” Kaufman said in a playful falsetto, putting down his book. “How was your evening, darling?”

  “Ah, fuck you, dear,” Lester retorted. Both of them seemed to be making an effort at cheer. Lester closed and locked the door carefully behind him, and then stood for a moment blinking in the pool of light and scanning the room. “Everybody accounted for?”

  “Yeah, we’re all happy campers here. Got the hatches battened down and so forth. Fact I was just trying to decide between the Macallan 12 and the 15,” Kaufman added sarcastically.

  “Yeah? I’d take the 12 any day. Anyone pays more for three more years in the cask’s just throwing money away, you ask me.”

  “Hey,” Kaufman said, “you think they’re still making that shit over there? I mean that’s some pretty primitive work, you know? Burning peat and all? I seen this picture of this scotch factory or distillery or whatever they call it, they got like these scythe things? Old dudes wearing waders and tromping around the countryside. Hell, it’s a perfect industry for Aftertime. Got nothing but time to let that shit ferment over a peat fire. Nothing but time, Aftertime. What do they make it out of, anyway? Do you know, MacAlister?”

  Dor pushed himself off the counter and wandered closer to the other men. Lester helped himself to a chair, his posture ramrod straight and his eyes roving restlessly over the floor. Kaufman looked worried. Cass guessed he was trying to take his friend’s mind off the things he’d just seen and done. The execution…the rifles, no one knowing which carried bullets and which blanks. The body slumping forward in death.

  The unlucky ones who had to haul it away, a bag over its head to guard against exposure to any post-mortem fluids. Would there be graves here in Colima? Trenches? Pyres? Some other method?

  “Barley, I think,” Dor said.

  “You Scottish? Ain’t that your people make that stuff?”

  “My mother was Afghani. My dad was Irish. Came here in ’88. Only drink my mom knew how to make was Nestlé Quik, and my Dad was a Bud man.”

  That got an appreciative chuckle from Kaufman, but Lester barely reacted.

  “Well,” Kaufman said, stretching out in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head. “I got first shift. Lester, you might as well see if you can catch a little sleep, since you actually worked tonight. Nothing much happens around here, folks, and the morning alarm comes early, so you might want to go ahead and get some rest yourselves. Besides, they turn the lights off at ten.”

  Dor cast a questioning look Cass’s way. It was the moment she had been dreading. They were pretending to be a couple. Dor had laid their things at the foot of one of the double beds next to Ruthie. And now he slipped an arm around her waist. Cass stiffened at his touch, but there was nothing to do but yield to the pressure of his hand at her waist and let him lead her to the bed. When he sat on the mattress and removed his shoes, she hesitated only a moment and then did the same.

  He pulled the sheets and blankets back for her, an elaborate show of courtesy that reminded her of this 1940s movie, this comedy with Barbara Stanwyck in Connecticut. All that was missing were a pair of pinstriped pajamas for him and a sheer peignoir for her, a thought so ludicrous that it almost made Cass smile. Dor, with his black eyes and corded muscle and twining tattoos, would look absurd in Brooks Brothers; he was at home in his ancient jeans frayed at the seams.

  After she clambered awkwardly under the covers, he followed with exaggerated care, staying on his side. For a large man he was remarkably deliberate in his movements, and she could sense him making himself compact, crossing his arms across his chest and his legs at the ankles. In moments his breathing grew regular and deep. She doubted he was sleeping, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he had gone to some disciplined corner of his mind, practicing breathing exercises maybe, a ritual emptying of the mind. Maybe something he’d learned from Faye or Three-High-or, just as likely, from Joe, who was rumored to have spent five years in maximum security at the Santa Rita jail.

  Cass’s own breath was shallow and jagged, reflecting the turmoil barely below the surface. Cass had never been good at containing her emotions, her wild bursts of fear and despair and fury and loneliness. As a child she had no means to displace the hot emotion that coursed through her, that controlled her mind and body. Alcohol had taken care of that, for a while, with its gift of numbness, of release.

  Now, she had a few skills and a lot of practice under her belt. She had all the A.A. sayings and practices and slogans, a secret cache of tricks that had gotten her through many despairing nights. She tried them now, remembering the soothing words with her face turned away from Dor.

  It wasn’t enough. Cass lay awake, eyes as unblinking and wide as though they’d been propped open with toothpicks, heart racing and fears dancing in the corners of her mind, waiting for her vigilance to flag. The fears meant to rule her, to own her.

  But Ruthie’s soft sleep sounds were a comfort, an anchor. Ruthie shifted and sighed, and Cass reached between the beds and touched her daughter’s downy hair and her soft cheek and that gave her the strength to beat the fears back a while longer.

  Before long the lights blinked out, and not long after that Kaufman left his post in the dark at the table and Cass could hear him settling himself on one of the beds near the door, not far from Lester, who was snoring gently. After a while she heard snuffling coming from that side of the room. It took her a few moments to understand that what she was hearing were muffled sobs, the sound of a grown man crying into his pillow, hating his tears but unable to hold them back. When the sobs turned to soft, regular grunting a little later, when the man found release in a whispered throat-catching moan, Cass was even more certain it was Lester. That was the last release left, in the end, wasn’t it? A way to know that you were still human, that you still had a heart, the release that bathed your pain in beautiful colors, if only for a moment, before bringing you gently back to yourself, emptied and ready to rest.

  She blessed the poor man and wished him peace, even though she didn’t know the words herself.

  After that, though, she was able to doze in fits and starts, her mind slipping back and forth between reality and the shadowed landscape of dreams. Deep in the night, she woke to a murmuring voice; it took her a moment to realize it was Malena, crooning to her boy. Even though the darkness was complete Cass knew that the woman would be holding her son close, cradling his failing body like an infant in her arms, that she was singing the songs she’d sung him when he was a baby and was offering her soul for a moment’s comfort for him, the only gift she
had left to give. Cass squeezed her eyes shut against the sound. It was too much for her to bear, another woman’s anguish.

  Let Ruthie live, she prayed, and then she felt her face go hot with mortification because she knew she’d trade the boy’s life twice over-a dozen times, a thousand times, countless lives she would trade, children loved by mothers just like her-she would trade all of that if Ruthie could live.

  God, please don’t hate me.

  Or hate me, if You must, but let her live.

  Cass knew that God understood her well, because He had crafted the crevices in her soul that picked up stain and edges as it fell. He knew the terrible thoughts she had and He knew she deserved nothing, that she was the unworthiest of souls. And yet He had brought her this far. She had traveled to the edge over and over again, and each time He had picked her up and carried her back.

  Deep in the night, Cass felt both the greatest clarity and the greatest confusion about God. During the day she doubted His existence. Aftertime was inhospitable to faith, with its mixed signals of decay and renewal, its cruel hardships and paltry rewards.

  But alone, at night, Cass caught glimpses of Him. She felt sure He existed and He made all this, everything and everyone. Only His purpose remained unknowable. Did He let Cass live because He hated her? Or because He loved her?

  23

  CASS EVENTUALLY DRIFTED INTO SLEEP AGAIN with this question on her mind and dreamed of a tree with no leaves that bore bitter hard-shelled nuts. The nuts fell to the ground and broke open, revealing withered and blackened meats. In the dream Cass fed them to Ruthie, one after another, growing more and more frantic as her daughter weakened and starved.

  Dor’s hand was on her hip when she woke from this dream, sweating and anguished. “Hush,” he whispered, but he did not take his hand away.

  “Was I…?”

  “Crying. I didn’t want you to wake the others.”

  She waited for him to say something comforting, that it would be all right, that she could go back to sleep now. He didn’t. His hand covered the roundest part of her hip, his thumb resting lightly on the hip bone. He was no longer at the edge of the bed. He was too close. Inches away. She could feel his heat. She could smell his smell.