Rebirth

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Oh, baby…”

  It had never occurred to her to tell Ruthie what had happened to Smoke. Ruthie had been napping when he left, when Cass said her angry last words to him. She had not been with Cass when she made her bargain with Dor. Cass had tried to make the trip to Colima sound like an adventure, and she had taken care to say that Smoke was on an adventure of his own, but at the time Ruthie hadn’t seemed too worried about him.

  And there had been Dor-Dor who was so good with children, who played with her and roughhoused with her, Dor who carried her on his shoulders as though she were as light as a butterfly. Smoke and Ruthie had spent many hours together, but they were quiet hours, walking slowly around the Box or reading together. With a burst of guilt Cass remembered the dozens of times she had wished Smoke had been easier around Ruthie, that he had taken more readily to a parental role. Even his kisses seemed awkward, his arms stiff when he held her.

  But now, looking into her daughter’s worried face, she saw how wrong she had been. Ruthie had been damaged, had lost part of herself in her time in the Convent. Smoke had come to them without any knowledge of children, without knowing how to be with her. Together, they started slowly and moved forward hesitantly. But now that she was remembering Cass realized how often she saw them together, not talking, doing little more than sitting. Healing.

  She gathered Ruthie into her lap. “Babygirl,” she whispered. “We are going to do our very best to make sure that he gets better. Smoke is hurt, but we are going to help him.”

  Ruthie held on.

  Moments later the truck ground to a stop.

  He thought about checking, just checking one more time. To make sure they were all right. Cass, Ruthie…even Smoke, though there was a darkness to that thought; sure, Dor was glad Smoke had pulled through, more than glad, but things were different now in a dozen different ways.

  No. He wasn’t going there now, because all that mattered in this moment was finding Sammi. And it turned out to be a damn good thing he didn’t go to the back of the truck. When he got out and started toward the building, the guard was waiting for him.

  “Who are you?” she said, squinting in the dawn light. Her hand rested on her belt, on the holster of a weapon. “I don’t know you.”

  “Name’s Wentworth. I’ve come out to take a look at the generator cells.”

  “What? No one said anything-no one’s mentioned a service call.”

  Please, lady, don’t make this a thing. Dor had only his blade or his gun at this point, and he couldn’t risk her alerting anyone else that he was there. “I was supposed to get here last night, but we had a problem at Tapp and I couldn’t get away until just now.”

  She looked even warier as she stepped back. “Look, I don’t mean to be a pain about this, but let me just get-”

  She stopped abruptly, her eyes going wide, before she sank to the ground, teetering on her knees before falling forward on the drive. Dor, acting on instinct, caught her before her face hit.

  Cass stepped from behind her. “I used a dart.”

  “What the hell are you doing out of the truck?”

  “I saw her come out. I knew she wasn’t going to believe you…”

  “I could have taken care of her.”

  “Yeah, by killing her. This way there’s one less.”

  He couldn’t argue with that, though he wanted to, wanted to argue with everything Cass said. Since he’d come across her-moments from being violated, Cass who always seemed stronger than everything and everyone, vulnerable like that-he could barely contain his need to protect her, to lock her up tight and take her away from here. It was like those days back in the Box when he saw her wandering across the street to her herb garden, when he held his breath until she was safe again behind the chain-link on the other side. Well, he would protect her now, just as soon as he got Sammi; he’d get them all out of here, back where they belonged. He fingered the silver box in his pocket, his insurance: inside was one of the most volatile explosives ever created, one of the prizes in his extensive arsenal. The second the gel met the powder, it would take out half a city block. He’d been so tempted to use it on the fetid basement of the Tapp Clinic, to blow up not just the two dead men but to obliterate the entire place, every remnant and memory of what had happened. But there’d been others there, innocents, so he’d swallowed back his rage.

  He understood Smoke’s quest. If he hadn’t needed to come for Sammi, he would have joined Smoke in hunting down the people responsible for the library raid. He would have been happy to pull the trigger.

  “Go back with Smoke and Ruthie,” he said roughly. “That’s enough risk for tonight. I’ll be back before you know it, and I’ll need you to be ready to go.”

  She didn’t go right away. She stood shivering, with her arms crossed across her chest, in her thin nightgown. “Take this,” he said, pulling off his own parka.

  “No, I can’t,” she said, but when he tossed it to her she caught it.

  And because he couldn’t stand to watch her put on the coat that was still warm from his body, he stalked past her and into the building, refusing to turn around. “It’ll just slow me down anyway.”

  33

  IT WAS TAKING TOO LONG.

  Cass had gone back into the truck like Dor ordered her. Smoke’s chills had subsided; her coat seemed to be keeping him warm. Ruthie sat cross-legged at his side, watching him with a serious expression on her face. Cass stared out the back of the truck; the sky was lightening at the horizon, but no one had come or gone from the building. Nearby, the guard’s unconscious body lay in a landscaping bed behind a hedge of dead oleanders.

  For the first time in many months, Cass wished for a watch. It seemed like it had been half an hour, but what if it had only been a few minutes? Dor’s plan had been simple enough; he was going to take the first guard or attendant he could find, threaten them into cooperation, and demand to be taken to Sammi. The rooms in the dorm where she and Dor had spent the night were unlocked. But would they lock the girls in here, to deter them from trying to escape?

  But what if Sammi wasn’t here? What if they’d already taken her for… Cass shuddered, not wanting to think about the procedure, the violation of a body, in its own way just as horrific as what had nearly been done to her earlier tonight. Sammi was still a child; Cass had not been a child for decades.

  If they had taken Sammi to the Tapp Clinic, maybe she was there on the upper floors, resting, recuperating, being tested. Or maybe she was here, but Dor couldn’t find her; maybe he was going from room to room, taking greater and greater risks.

  Cass thought about driving away, leaving Dor here to fend for himself. It was the second time in their journey that she had considered abandoning him. The keys were in the ignition. She knew the way across campus to the incomplete section of wall, and she could easily drive out and be on the road in minutes. Sure, they might come after her; once they discovered the dead men in the clinic basement, Smoke’s empty cot. There could be a bounty on her head as there had been on his. But with a head start, she could be back up to the Box by the time anyone had a chance to catch up. Suddenly all the reasons not to go back didn’t seem so insurmountable. There was gas in the truck, she was armed, she wouldn’t stop until she saw the welcoming lights along the chain-link fence. Even if they sent a team, a dozen Rebuilders, Dor’s people would defeat them handily.

  Dor’s people. Dor.

  She couldn’t just leave him here. He would never have left her behind.

  She looked at Ruthie, so serious, so concerned. “Babygirl, let’s get Smoke into the front of the truck, where it’s nicer,” she said. “Then you can take good care of him for a few minutes while I go help Dor. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

  Ruthie nodded gravely and placed her hand on Smoke’s arm, as though she was comforting him.

  It was hard work, half carrying, half dragging Smoke off the bed of the truck, and up into the cab, Ruthie continuing to want to touch him the whole way. He wok
e, moaning, from the pain, and for a few moments he seemed to fight her, as though he didn’t recognize her. But by the time she got him to the open passenger door he had stopped struggling and looked at her through heavy-lidded eyes. “You look…like her,” he muttered, and when she gathered all her strength and tried to lift him onto the running board, up into the cab, he sighed and dragged himself inside, collapsing onto the seat.

  Ruthie crawled up beside him and knelt on the floor, resuming her vigil. Cass brushed a kiss on her cheek and had started to close the passenger door, when Ruthie gave her a small smile.

  “I’ll help him, Mama.”

  34

  WHEN SAMMI WOKE AND SAW THE FAINTEST pink of dawn through the window, it took her a moment to remember where she was and how she came to be there.

  And then it took only one more moment for Sammi to come to a decision.

  Last night she’d been numb. Shocked. Too much had happened. The truth kept getting revealed a little at a time, all through the terrible day, as the Rebuilders’ true nature slowly came into focus. They were evil, even the ones who didn’t carry guns or set fires. Some things were even worse than just killing people. They wiped out everyone you cared about and then they led you away, and expected you to just go along with them and do their things. They pretended this place was normal, pretended this was like some big happy town-but behind closed doors all kinds of horrors were waiting. They made girls pregnant-Sammi didn’t even want to think about how-and kept them in this place, and who knew what came after that? It was sure to be awful, and now that Sammi had finally gotten some rest, she suddenly knew that she wasn’t going to accept this fate without a fight.

  All the pieces were in place-she was a girl whose fears had been burned away by one loss after another, in a place where they counted on fear to keep people down-so she wasn’t worried about how this journey would end, exactly. She would live or she would die, and she didn’t much care which.

  But the Rebuilders needed to know that they couldn’t just throw people away like they didn’t matter. That people were more than nothing. Her mother’s life had ended with the soundless arc of a sharpened blade, no more than a seeping pool of blood on the earth. Jed lost his life in the blink of an eye, as did his brothers. And Mrs. Levenson, and countless others, and the Rebuilders would just go on killing and killing until people stood up to them, and Sammi figured she might as well be one of the ones who fought.

  So when the faint pink appeared in the sky outside their narrow window, Sammi pushed back her blankets and put her feet on the cold floor. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the dawn and squatted over the big plastic bowl.

  “It gets easier.”

  Roan’s voice startled her and Sammi saw that she was sitting up in bed, hugging herself. “What does?”

  “Peeing like that. I refused to do it the first month I was here. I thought I could out-stubborn them, you know? But the thing is, when you’re pregnant it’s a lot harder to hold it. Now? I pee like three times a night.”

  Sammi stared at her silhouette in the darkened room. “How pregnant are you?”

  Roan laughed, somehow managing to make it sound sad. “You don’t ask someone how pregnant they are. You say, how far along are you?”

  “Oh.”

  “They say I’m six weeks. I guess they’d know.”

  Sammi wasn’t sure how to say what came next. “Uh…how did you, I mean, you weren’t pregnant when you got here…were you?”

  Roan frowned. “Didn’t Mrs. Henderson tell you?”

  “Tell me what? I mean, she hardly said anything to me. I got here in the middle of the night and I think she just wanted to go to bed. She acted all pissed off that she had to take care of me.”

  “God, what a bitch,” Roan sighed. “Okay, so you might as well hear it from me, right? You’re here to breed. They’re going to impregnate you with outlier sperm so you can have an immune baby. Then when the baby comes they take it. They give it to one of the higher-up families to raise, and when they get the new outlier neighborhood finished, all the kids are going to grow up over there.” Roan’s voice was dull, as though the desperation of her situation had sucked the life from her.

  Sammi’s throat felt dry as Roan’s words rang in her mind.

  Breed. Impregnate. Immune baby…they take it.

  “Wait, you don’t get to, you know, take care of it? Yourself?”

  Roan laughed, a short, bitter sound that disappeared into silence. “We’re just the baby factory,” she said softly. “At least we don’t have to work. I mean, they feed us pretty well, it’s safe here…and they do it in vitro, you know? I mean, it’s not like you have to, umm…”

  When her voice trailed off, Sammi felt like she should say something, like she should offer something in exchange for Roan’s attempt to reassure her. “I’m…sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Roan said, hugging herself and looking away, and Sammi saw the way she wrapped her arms around her stomach, and somehow that was the saddest part.

  “Look-Roan, I’m leaving here, right now, before things get-I mean, I don’t know anyone here, I don’t have any attachments, I think I might as well try.” Sammi could feel her face flush, the embarrassment of talking to someone who was practically a stranger, even if she felt like someone Sammi could be friends with. “But if you wanted, you could come too, you know?”

  Roan made a sound in her throat, a skeptical dry sound. “Thanks. But I’m kind of stuck here. I mean, they’ve been giving me actual prenatal vitamins. They got maternity clothes and baby clothes. Where else am I going to get those? And besides, if anything goes wrong with…you know, the birth or whatever, there’s doctors here to take care of the baby.”

  Sammi stared at her roommate, taking advantage of the darkness to shield her curiosity, realizing that Roan couldn’t help loving the child growing inside her.

  “Yeah,” she said, trying not to think of her own mother, of Jed’s mother, the way they died with their children’s names on their lips.

  “Look, if you’re really going to go, at least let me help. You won’t get farther than the elevator by yourself. All the guards are armed.”

  Sammi’s determination faltered. “I saw the one on this floor and the one in the lobby. The one downstairs looked like we woke her up when they brought me in. I’m fast,” she added-she held a pair of records, the 200 and the 400, and track wasn’t even her main sport, she’d only done it as a favor to the coach, who also happened to be her government teacher, and who always said she’d never seen a girl with as much grit per square inch as Sammi. That was the kind of thing that made all the girls roll their eyes, but did she ever wish Coach Hansen was here now.

  “Fast is good,” Roan said, and Sammi could see the flash of her white teeth, even in the dark. “But it won’t help much if they shoot you. What you need is for them to be paying attention to something else. There’s one sure way to get them off their feet. Let me help, and I can make it so no one notices you, and give you a chance to get out of the building.”

  Sammi hesitated. “But would it get you in trouble?”

  Roan waved away her concern. “No, not what I’m thinking of. In fact everyone will probably be glad for a little excitement. It’s so fucking boring around here, nothing ever happens. But listen, where are you going to go when you get out?”

  “Anywhere,” Sammi said with conviction, “as long as I don’t spend one more day here. With them.” She felt her body shiver as she spat the word, and realized that she was made of hate now, that some of the goodness inside her had been replaced when they took everyone she loved from her, one by one. But that was okay, because the hate canceled out her old softness, too.

  “You’re kidding, Sammi. You’ll never last out there past the wall.”

  “I used to go out by myself all the time,” Sammi said, remembering those thrilling nights when the raiders at the school let her tag along, the silver of the moon, the smell of night mixing with the sounds of their boots on
glass on the streets, the calls of the birds that were starting to return.

  “You’re braver than me,” Roan muttered, shaking her head.

  “Besides, I won’t be going far. All’s I need is to get to that neighborhood by the water tower.” She could see it clearly from their window: on the other side of the wall, where they were still building it and the gaps were barred by nothing more than plywood barriers, past a couple of strip malls and flat-roofed commercial buildings, was a neighborhood of little run-down ranches, the kind that students probably used to live in, with couches on the porch and bikes chained to the railing. She’d find the right one, the one she could be safe in, until she figured out what to do next. And if not-well, better to die out there, than live in here.

  “A couple of people have tried, before,” Roan said quietly. “At least, that’s the rumor.”

  “Yeah…? And?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? I mean, it’s not like they come up here and give us reports. A lot of people think the guards found them and killed them, but maybe…”

  Maybe. That was enough to hang her hopes on, such as they were-the thinnest strands, next to nothing, all she had left. Yeah. Sammi would take maybe.

  “Okay. Tell me what to do.”

  Five minutes later Roan led her down the hallway, toward the guard desk at the edge of what they called the recreation room even though all they had for recreation were a few ragged copies of What To Expect When You’re Expecting and Chinese checkers and People magazines read so many times that they were held together with tape. Roan’s heart pounded as she forced herself not to turn around to check on Sammi, to make sure she was keeping to the shadowed spaces in front of each door, staying a few paces back. There were only a few lightbulbs for the whole hall and Roan was counting on the darkness to help keep Sammi hidden.

  Mrs. Wight had been sleeping, she could tell, because there was a crease on her face where she must have been resting her head on her arm. When she saw Roan she pushed a hand through her graying hair and frowned.