Survivors

by Sophie Littlefield

  Cass pushed these thoughts away as she always pushed them away, and walked toward the far end of the Box. At the very back, in neat rows, were the blue-tarped comfort tents and the gray medical building. If there was irony in this arrangement, the prostitutes living next to the healers, it was lost on those who lived in the Box now. The whole compound had sprung up less than a year ago, but in even that short span of time its early days had grown hazy, its history apocryphal. The only man who had been there from the start was Dor and he wasn’t one to talk about the past. Some claimed to have been with him from the beginning, but Cass had her doubts about most of them.

  Besides, the Box was a living organism, its configuration shifting daily with its changing population, tent stakes pulled up, cots overturned, brawls settled quickly by the guards leaving new welts in the earth. An oasis of life in a ruined land, it changed from one week to the next, strangers taking the place of travelers passing through, belongings bartered and trinkets displayed to entice browsers with something to trade.

  Fronting the comfort tents was a well-tended path, edged with smooth stones and planted with patches of baby’s tears that Cass had cultivated in the cold frame Smoke had built for her. The tiny seedlings were sending down roots and starting to spread; after a winter of rains and nourishment drawn into patient, chilly roots, they would spread into gorgeous emerald-green masses this spring. Even though Cass’s mission was somewhat urgent, she paused with her flashlight to examine the plants, on her knees in the soil, passing her palm gently over their fringy tops, testing their narrow stems. She was pleased with what she found, and after a moment she got to her feet, satisfied.

  She looked down at the dirt smudged on the knees of her canvas pants. No worse than the dirt that was already there, since she had worked in the gardens all day. And laundry day was still two days away.

  Cass heard a moan coming through the open door of the medic’s cottage, not that moans in this section were something new. Yellow light spilled from the door and there were other voices, voices she recognized. She knocked once on the aluminum door, then pushed it aside and entered.

  Hastings and Francie sat on stools pulled up on opposite sides of one of the two cots, where the old woman lay with a dingy white sheet pulled up to her chin. Francie, who had been a nurse’s assistant at Oakland Children’s Hospital, insisted on clean-as-possible linens and Dor obliged, paying someone to boil them. Hastings, the orthopedist, didn’t much care; he traded everything he earned for whatever painkillers were on offer. Cass was always surprised he could still be cajoled into coming to work, but that’s what Francie did, she was a cajoler and a nagger and, Cass suspected, a mother figure to Hastings, though an odd one with her storklike limbs and mannish haircut and curt ways.

  “Oh,” Francie said, glancing up quickly and then back to the patch of arm that they were examining. They’d got the old woman out of her clothes and into one of the hospital gowns Francie had scavenged somewhere. “It’s you. I was afraid Sam was back.”

  “Won’t let us alone,” Hastings grumbled. He seemed sober tonight, his hands steady as he squeezed and prodded gently. “Nothing’s broken, anyway. Someone took care of this old girl until recently. You get the story out of the kid?”

  “Not yet,” Cass said. “Not really.” Because what was the story, at its heart: anyone could tell the basics-that the two had been alone in that house, that they had run out of food and water, that the boy had been forced to choose between leaving her side to look for more and staying in that broken place watching the days cycle past through the window, dawns and sunsets and his grandmother weakening and her slipping away from him.

  The rest of the story-who had his family been, Before; did he play with his sister in a yard, did they have a dog, did his father take him fishing, could he skip a stone across a pond or slide into home or finish his homework in a neat hand-what could it help, now? Still, she supposed she also wanted to know it, if he would tell. But for now she came for news of his grandmother, in case he should demand it sometime in the night.

  A bucket at the end of the bed held dirty water, rags bobbing on top, evidence that they’d attempted a sponge bath. The woman’s hair, though, was sodden with grease and flecked with bits of unidentifiable matter, matted to her head.

  “You get her name?” Cass asked, getting a folding chair from its place along the wall. She helped, sometimes, if Hastings was too wasted, holding down limbs for setting and hands for stitching. She set the chair close to the bed.

  “Nana,” Hastings snapped. “Unless you can get that kid to tell you more.”

  “You should bring him in, too, you know,” Francie reminded her. “I’ve seen twelve cases of ringworm in the last week. I wouldn’t be surprised. And I should look at his teeth, all of that.”

  “You sound like you plan on us keepin’ him,” Hastings said.

  “He’s not a pet.”

  Hastings shrugged.

  “I’ll bring him tomorrow,” Cass promised. “Once Smoke and I get him fed and calmed down a little. Is that okay?”

  Francie peered at her over her glasses, eyebrows raised, lips pursed, looking for a moment like a stern librarian, albeit one who was liberally inked with Aftertime tattoos, names of her lost twisted in a fanciful script along with trailing stems and leaves and the occasional rosebud up and down her arms and shoulders and across her collarbones. She reached a long, carefully manicured finger to the old woman’s forehead and tapped gently. The woman didn’t respond. Her head lolled on her neck as though no muscles at all surrounded it, and her face was as the boy had described: lax and drooping on one side. Cass closed one eye, trying to block off the frozen half of the old woman’s face, searching for clues in the other half as to what the woman once looked like, imagining a trip to the hairdresser for a wash and set, a lacy cardigan. Pink lipstick and a purse with a tortoiseshell handle. But even in the good half of the woman’s face, she could not make out who she used to be.

  “If Beatriz makes it that long, you can try,” Hastings muttered as he gently untied the faded cotton gown so he could continue his exam.

  “Beatriz?”

  “Her idea,” Hastings said gruffly, jabbing a finger in Francie’s direction.

  Francie shrugged, unperturbed. “Only until we find out her real one.”

  Back in the tent, Smoke and Feo had returned. The boy sat gingerly on the edge of their bed, very straight, as if holding his breath. His long hair had been washed and hung in a dripping, glossy sheet, but he didn’t bother to wipe away the beads of water that trailed down his face, some settling in his long dark eyelashes before rolling down over his brown cheeks and solemn mouth to fall in his lap. He was dressed in what looked like a woman’s sweat suit and Cass made a mental note to tell the guys to find him something else-something a boy would like. At least the clothes were clean.

  Smoke was turned away, lining up the things on their shelf. In the plastic box Cass saw that there was an extra toothbrush, a child’s stubby purple one. She and Smoke and nearly everyone else in the Box had switched to the ones cut from woody kaysev stems; people said they did a better job even than real toothbrushes.

  The toothbrush was a special gift, something to remind the boy of Before, which had presumably been a better time for him. So, too, was the privacy Smoke gave him, pretending indifference as he tended to his housekeeping. Feo’s hungry eyes roved over the homey inside of the tent with its treasure trove of books and pictures cut from magazines and Ruthie’s toys, the silver candlesticks and the pretty rug and the stained-glass panels, the home they had made together. The family they had made together, a mother and daughter and the man who found them after they thought every good thing was gone.

  Cass averted her own eyes, turned away and adjusted Ruthie’s covers. She recognized the longing in the boy’s eyes and, like Smoke, she turned away, to give him privacy to enjoy a tiny sliver of something nice.

  A thick layer of quilts for padding and a blue comforter borrowed from
Coral Anne, a pillow with a flannel case decorated with pine trees and bears. The boy slept on the rug and seemed happy to do so. He said nothing when Cass and Smoke bid him good-night, curled into a ball whose shape, underneath the covers, seemed impossibly small. Cass watched him for a moment before blowing out the candle, Smoke’s breathing already deep and even against her back, where he lay with his arms around her, holding her to his chest.

  They lay like that still, in the first light of morning, when Cass woke momentarily to see that the boy had edged closer to their bed. He had the comforter twisted around himself, and one hand rested outflung where it could touch the edge of the quilt that hung down from their bed. It was an awkward position, but as Cass watched him, he slept on without moving, without a twitch or a sigh.

  “Where is she?” was the first thing the boy asked, sitting up with the twisted covers at his waist. His hair had dried in shiny waves and Cass had to suppress a smile to think how women used to struggle so mightily to get theirs to look like that. Ruthie stirred at the sound of his voice, but didn’t wake. It was still early, maybe six or six-thirty; Smoke had brought her a cup of coffee before leaving for the alley outside the west end, where he and some of the other guards practiced a brutal training regimen.

  Cass set aside the paperback she had been reading, marking her place with a postcard that had fallen out of an old issue of InStyle. Two Years for the Price of One, it read in bold, presumptive letters.

  “Good morning,” she said softly. “You want to know where your grandmother is?”

  “Yeah.” He was working at the clump of covers, trying to get his legs untangled. He looked like he was ready to bolt, and Cass knelt down on the floor next to him and placed her hand gently on the covers.

  “Let me help?” She made it a question, and for a moment the boy froze, staring at her hand on the blue fabric, where she had taken care not to touch him, even through the comforter. After a moment he relaxed a little and Cass tugged and pulled and the comforter came free.

  “You’ll be cold,” Cass said, and got a fleece-lined flannel shirt of Smoke’s from the bar hung from the roof support that served as a closet. They had nice hangers, sturdy wooden ones with gold-tone hooks that had come home from a raid, a present for Cass, a little joke between them-Smoke brought her silly luxuries, things it would have never occurred to her to buy for herself Before, even if she could have afforded them. “This will be much too large,” she added, holding it out for the boy to put his arms into the sleeves, “but I think we can make it work for now, and I know that Smoke won’t mind a bit.”

  The boy looked dubious but he was already shivering in the morning chill so he allowed Cass to guide the shirt onto his thin body, buttoning the front and rolling up the sleeves. If Feo was sent away today, at least he would have this in addition to the sweater, a gift from someone who wished she could have done more.

  “Now, as for your grandmother, they’re taking good care of her. We have a couple good doctors here-” only a little lie “-and medicine.” That was a worse lie, because Cass was pretty sure that none of the things they had in their stores could help what was wrong with the old woman. “But she needs to rest. A little later, I’ll go over there and find out when the doctors say we can visit.”

  The boy considered this, his brow knitting and his deep brown eyes darkening further. He rocked forward, his elbows on his knees, and after a moment he sighed and looked Cass in the eye. “Okay. Can we eat now?”

  Cass had watched with silent amusement as Feo worked his way through two bowls of what had become the Box’s standard breakfast fare, for those who could afford it-a rough cereal of dried kaysev beans, mixed with shredded wheat to extend it. One of the cooks had spooned some honey on top, winking at Cass.

  They sat at the far end of one of the tables in the dining area, the buzz of the merchants and customers just getting started at this time of day. The others gave them their space, nodding or waving, but staying well away. By now everyone would know all there was to know about the boy, but they seemed to sense that he was skittish and shy. And there were those who preferred to be left alone with their hangovers, those who had lost their taste for hope.

  “Still hungry?” Cass asked, nibbling at her kaysev cake and drinking the coffee that was now lukewarm.

  Feo nodded, not looking up from his bowl, and Cass went to get him another.

  When she came back he was gone.

  They had managed to squeeze quite a lot into the Box, despite the fact that it was no larger than a football field and a half, an entire little town with commerce and public facilities and even a jail and an outdoor church. Nightly rental cots lined the fence near the front gate. Merchants sold food and drugs and alcohol and all manner of scavenged and raided merchandise out of stands cobbled together from dismantled buildings. In the center, a public area for dining and socializing had been decorated with plastic flags and pretty things-mirrors, silk flowers, children’s toys-hung from lines strung between the skeletons of trees. But the place was still a box, literally; a walled-off square with only one way out.

  Cass didn’t panic, because where would Feo go? There was no way for him to escape into the dangers outside. Another irony: he couldn’t escape, but he could be forced out by their policies…

  Still, Cass walked the paths between the tents and merchant stands, and the worn trail around the perimeter, with haste searching for a glimpse of him. She went first to the medic cottage, where Francie met her at the door with a frown-“She’s no better and probably worse”-so Cass told her that Feo might turn up and to be on the lookout.

  Then she started crisscrossing the Box at random.

  She found him on the stoop of the large prefab storage shed that Sam and George had made into their sleeping quarters and party room. They called it the “officers’ quarters” and it was where the guards did much of their drinking. Beds and personal space took up the back, and the rest was lined with shelves holding improvised weapons and a table with half a dozen chairs in the middle. An ornate antique painted-metal candelabrum hung over the table, which was speckled with wax that had dripped down. There was an ongoing poker game, a minifridge that was hooked up to a generator whenever the raiders brought back beer, and a library of skin magazines and Car and Drivers and Stephen King novels.

  Sam and George were an odd pair-Sam young and quiet and almost obsessively neat, his bunk made up every morning, his clothes hung on hangers from pegs, and George fifteen years older and content to live in malodorous squalor-but they got along. This morning George was nowhere to be seen, probably off training in that damn alleyway, too.

  Feo sat hunched on one side of the step, Smoke’s shirt newly rimed with dirt at the hem. He was drinking from a plastic bottle of cranberry-juice cocktail. With a straw, as unlikely a sight as any. Sam sprawled next to him, wearing his wraparound ski sunglasses and a ghost of a smile, in cowboy boots and jeans. When he saw Cass, he sat up straight and gave her a mock salute.

  “Mornin’, Cass.”

  “Good morning.”

  “He only got one eye,” Feo said with hushed awe. His mouth was ringed with sticky pink. “He showed me.”

  “That’s right,” Sam said, tapping the frayed patch beneath his pricey sunglasses, the patch that he never took off. Sam had lost an eye in the Yemen Rice War, likely treated by a field surgeon low on supplies and backup, like everything else in that fiasco of a war. Cass had never seen their handiwork, and the fact that Sam had showed the boy struck her as extraordinary. “I told him you got to watch where you’re goin’ around here, be careful not to walk into any knife-throwing competitions.”

  “I could throw a knife,” Feo said. “I bet I could.”

  “Yeah, buddy, I bet you could.” Sam took off his sunglasses and looked meaningfully at Cass. “I thought I’d give Feo a tour of the place here in a while.”

  Cass saw how it was-it was written as plain as a sign in front of her face. The boy wanted a big brother, a favorite uncle, h
ell, maybe even a father. His instincts took him straight to Sam.

  And Sam bloomed with the attention. It was almost heartbreaking to see, the way his good eye was bright with purpose, the barely concealed excitement under his facade of detachment and casual brio.

  Cass had long felt that he-the youngest of the guards and the most introspective-was vulnerable. He still wore his unspoken losses on the outside, in his quietly deliberate way, as though it hurt him merely to move through life. He’s gone from fighting for a country that no longer existed to fighting for his existence. She’d worried about him turning to drugs like so many people did, in an attempt to erase the pain of loss and grief.

  Which made it all the harder to say what needed to be said.

  “Maybe, after Feo’s all settled in somewhere nice, he could come back for a visit with you guys,” she said carefully.

  Sam dropped his gaze to the ground, chastened. He accepted the rebuke. They both knew that Dor’s rules were absolute. He was not a heartless leader, and Cass recognized that making the hardest choices was part of what made him a great one. Children had no place in what went on here. Someday soon, when Ruthie was a little older, there would be a reckoning even for her and Smoke.