Rebirth Part 5

There-beyond the cabin, partially covered with a screen of tree limbs-she saw the junkyard of cars driven off the road and abandoned. Too many would have raised suspicion, would make a driver wonder what could have happened for so many to give up hope right here. The pile extended back several hundred feet, vehicles parked haphazardly. Lazily. It wouldn't have been that hard to drive them farther into the woods, a half a mile past the cabin, even a quarter mile, find a swale or a dip in the earth and leave them to rust and molder there for mice to nest in and birds to perch on and snakes to slither under.

Wait. A sound. A crack-oh God, another-were they loud enough to be gunshots? But what else could they be? But they didn't exactly sound right, not like the shooting practice that took place a couple mornings a week down near the Box, didn't sound-sharp enough, somehow, they were muffled, there was no echo. But what if Dor was hit? What if someone had been waiting for him and shot him-but if they were going to kill him wouldn't they have done it right away, the minute he came in the house? They could have been watching from the window, watching him walk toward the house, waiting for him on the other side of the door...

Cass peered anxiously at Ruthie's face, but her daughter's expression showed only puzzlement, maybe boredom, or sleepiness perhaps. She yawned and rested her face against Cass's chest and Cass thought, That's it then, I can't leave her here alone to check it out, and she wondered if she should just get in the front seat and turn the key in the ignition and go. Cass's heart was pounding so hard with fear that she was amazed Ruthie didn't mind. Would Ruthie fuss if Cass buckled her in the backseat and got out, even for a second? But what if Dor wasn't hit, what if he had done the shooting, or if he'd shot someone who shot him back-maybe he was hurt, right now, lying on the floor in agony-or maybe he wasn't even hurt that badly but he needed her help to get back out. She listened, as hard as she could, but there was nothing, just the skittering of a dead leaf now and then across the pavement.

Cass waited in an agony of indecision. She should settle Ruthie in and just make a run for it, thirty seconds tops, long enough to just see what had happened, nothing more. She didn't owe Dor anything beyond that, she reminded herself-he'd said as much, and he wouldn't want her to risk their safety if he was down. If he was dead-she made herself think the word.

But when she finally convinced herself to go, and tried to lift Ruthie off her lap, Ruthie wrapped her arms tight around Cass's neck and held on.

"Don't go," she whispered against Cass's skin, so softly Cass almost didn't hear it.

She froze. She settled Ruthie back onto her lap-slowly, carefully. She waited, but her daughter did not speak again. They held each other, and the leaves skittered and the wispy smoke curled out of the chimney and the dead men lay in their sticky puddles of blood. And Cass wondered if she had imagined her little girl's voice.

After what seemed like a long time, a figure came out onto the porch, and terror seized Cass as she realized she could not make it to the driver's seat in time now and she wondered if her indecision would be their death. But it was only Dor. He had a duffel bag in one hand, a plastic sack in the other, and as he approached the Jeep he gave Cass the skeleton of a smile.

He set the duffel in the back with the other things and got in the driver's side and set the plastic sack on the console between the seats and then he sat for a moment without speaking, staring forward and breathing deep. Ruthie relaxed, releasing Cass from the viselike embrace. Cass readjusted Ruthie's seat belt and kissed her soft cheek, her fingers shaking as they traced the curve of her daughter's cheek.

Cass got out of the backseat, shut the door gently and opened the passenger door, feeling almost unbearably vulnerable outside the car. She could never be fearless when Ruthie was only a few feet away-but once she was inside again, she saw how shaken Dor looked. Cass knew then that the sounds were indeed gunshots, and that he had probably killed someone, maybe two people, and she didn't know how it felt to kill and wondered if she should offer comfort, if that was her role now, as well...but surely Dor had killed many more before and took his comfort from his own, unknowable sources. Her efforts would be awkward and unwelcome. Cass was a mother and she knew everything there was to know about her daughter, but she was not easy with other people. She observed from a distance, she read their emotions and divined their stories, but it was a strange truth that the ones she wanted most to know sometimes remained mysterious and remote.

But still.

"What...?" she said, not knowing how to ask.

"They'd laid in quite a few supplies," Dor said quietly. "Look, I didn't want to bounce Ruthie around if we didn't have to, but...hang on."

He started the car and it crept forward slowly, over the edge of the road onto the dirt, bumping and lurching. Ruthie shut her eyes, her small body absorbing the turbulent ride, Cass steadying her with a hand pressing her against the seat. They passed the wreck and Cass saw how still the bodies were, a bug of some sort flitting around the one on the ground with interest.

Then there was a sound, a stirring of the air, and a large black shape flapped past her face, only inches away, clumsy and fast and tumbling in the air, and settled on the body with a fluttering of its enormous, ragged ebony wings. The sound it made was not what you would expect from such a huge creature, it was a throat-rasping high-pitched frantic cry that split the air around Cass and she threw her arms over the seat, reaching for Ruthie whose mouth was open in a silent scream but her eyes were still shut tight thank God she still had her eyes shut because the next thing that happened, as Cass pressed her hands to her daughter's face and told her that everything was going to be all right it was going to be just fine, a second bird settled with a thrashing of feathers on the body of the hat-man on the car's hood and began to tear at his flesh with its large hooked beak. Cass knew she should look away but she did not. She watched the birds' frenzy, watched the body shudder and shake as it was molested and devoured, and then there were more, two more black flapping shapes flying in from places unknown and landing on the carcasses with joy and fury and hunger.

Soon the grisly scene was out of sight behind them. Cass kept watch out the back of the Jeep until they turned a curve in the road and the wreck disappeared and for a while she stared at the scrubby pine skeletons and red-dirt shoulders and crushed run-over pinecones in the road, all receding into the distance as Dor drove. Finally she realized she was pressing too hard on Ruthie's face and immediately she turned the touch into a caress, and she said, "It's all right now, Ruthie, you can open your eyes," and it was a moment before Ruthie did, blinking in the sun. "It's all right," Cass repeated.

"Look in the bag. There's a juice box," Dor said, and Cass took the plastic bag from between the seats and there were not only juice boxes, but Fig Newtons. Opening the packages took a while, Cass inhaling the near-forgotten scent while her shaking fingers worked clumsily, and though her mouth watered she did not take anything for herself. Dor also refused. She broke the cookies one by one, giving Ruthie the sticky halves. She held the sharp-pointed straw to Ruthie's lips and watch her drink and wondered if her daughter remembered drinking from such boxes Before, long ago, the juice dribbling down her inexpert mouth. She'd nearly mastered drinking from the straw right before the Family Services people came, her chubby hands holding the plasticized boxes with such care, her eyes widening with surprise every time the wiggling straw got away from her. Now she did fine, drinking deeply with an expression of wonder on her face. For months she'd had only the tea Cass made from her herb garden, and boiled and filtered water.

After a while, the cookies were gone and Cass cleaned Ruthie up as well as she could from the front seat and put the wrapper and empty box back in the plastic bag. It was heavy and she looked through the contents: half a dozen more packages of cookies, a large pouch of turkey jerky, several more juices. Two cans of beef broth and cans of corn, mushrooms and chili; pears and fruit cocktail and crushed pineapple.

"Wow," she said quietly.

"Best stuff's in back. Medicine, all kinds, I didn't have time to look through it. Over the counter and prescriptions-probably twenty of those. They had it all in one place, made it easy for me."

He was silent for a moment. "A couple of guns, too. They're in the back. And ammo. I thought about taking the ones off those guys..."

Cass shivered. She was glad Dor had not touched the bodies again.

"What were those things?" she whispered.

"I've seen them before, just one other time. They're...I guess they're like vultures. Carrion birds. They feed on the dead."

"I've never seen any bird like that."

"No, I know. I mean a vulture's large, bigger than most people think. But those..."

Cass thought about the great flapping wings, the lurching flight. There was nothing lovely about the birds. They looked damaged, malformed, sick-but they were also quick and determined and by the time the grisly scene had disappeared around the bend, the birds had managed to pierce and tear the bodies and their crowing beaks were covered in blood, testament to the strength of their jaws and talons.

"Where did you see one before?"

Dor looked indecisive, as though he wasn't sure that telling her was a good idea. "Yesterday. In town...in a nest. Looked like a recent Beater kill."

"Just one?"

"No, three. They must travel in flocks."

"But what does it mean that they showed up now? All this time, all these months..."

Dor shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they've been here all along but we're just in the migration path now. Maybe they've, I don't know, evolved-but that takes centuries, yeah, hell, I don't know. New species? Eat a Beater kill, get that shit in the bloodstream, there's no telling what'll happen."

"Ruthie knew," Cass said quietly. "Yesterday. When she was napping. She said-I mean she was still asleep, she was talking in her sleep and she said, 'bird.'"

"I thought she didn't talk."

"She doesn't." Cass felt exasperation but it was as much for herself as for Dor; she was talking about Ruthie as though she was not sitting a few feet away. She doubted that Ruthie could hear their conversation over the wind rushing through the car, but still, it didn't feel right. "Not on purpose. But this was while she was sleeping. It was... I don't think she has any memory of it, like a nightmare."

"And she said bird. And you think that means the ones back there?"

"What else would it mean?"

"I don't know...anything. A memory, a book, a toy. A plastic fucking bathtub duck-"

"It's not the only thing she's said," Cass interrupted. "When you first got out of the car to see about the wreck? She didn't wake up, but she said 'hat.'"

"Hat? She said- What does that mean?"

"The second guy. He was wearing that red hat, that red wool hat on his head. He came out from behind the car after you shot the first guy and there it was."

Dor was silent for a moment, considering. "I would call that a cap. Not a hat."

"She's barely three. She doesn't know a lot of words. That's not the point."

"So you're saying she has...premonitions? That it? Of danger?"

"I don't know. I think...well, you know how I'm different, since I was attacked? How I heal faster, and my hair grows like crazy, and my fingernails. It's like everything is, I don't know. Like it's magnified somehow. So why couldn't it be like that for Ruthie? Except not just the physical part, but like...the sixth sense?"

"You believe in that shit?"

Cass colored. "I'm not saying I believe in, you know, psychics and all that. But haven't you ever just...known something? Something that there was no way you would know, or you know before it happens."

She sensed Dor's skepticism, but he remained silent.

"Well, I have. I think it's real. As real as anything else that's happened. And with Ruthie, it just started happening, yesterday and then again just now. She's seeing things, knowing things. I don't know if it's anything that's upsetting to her, or just scary images or...what."

Cass hated the idea of these dark ciphers visiting Ruthie as she slept, robbing her of what little peace she still had. Already she was a different little girl than the one she'd known before the zealots got her, more cautious, less exuberant, so that Cass's longing to rewind the intervening time was agonizing whenever she let herself think about what had changed. Would the nightmares take more of her joy away? Was it possible she'd misunderstood, that Ruthie's words had no connection to the things that were happening, and that Cass herself was just searching for a way for her little girl to take her place in the world again?

"Tell you what, don't get ahead of yourself," Dor said. "Like you said. She's just a little girl."

They rode in silence, the needle hovering well under thirty. Occasionally Dor drove off the road to get around an obstruction. Each wrecked and abandoned car they passed provoked a new sensation of dread, a catch of the breath amid a frantic search for fleeting figures hiding in backseats and crouching behind bumpers...but they were just wrecks, sun-heated and disintegrating, staged tableaus of twisted, rusting metal and smashed glass.

At last they reached the bottom of the long descent from the mountains, the scrub pine thinning to clusters of bent and knobby oaks in the foothills, then shrub-pocked swells and finally flat fields of dormant kaysev with the occasional weedy star thistle or tocalote poking through. Ahead stretched the road, straight and shimmering in the afternoon sun. Dor pulled off in a field so they could share some jerky and dried apricots and a bottle of water, take a bathroom break and stretch. He had planned for a two-day trip; even though he went a little faster on the straightaways, there were occasional wrecks to be cleared and obstacles to drive around, and their progress was slow.

Taking Ruthie a dozen yards from the Jeep so they could pee, Cass realized she felt more exposed from Dor's proximity than from the danger of being out in the open. During her days of wandering, when her disorientation slowly sloughed off like a snake's skin as she made her way back to civilization, she had urinated in the open and on logs with practically no self-consciousness at all. She'd been filthy, smelling like an animal, her hair knotted and her nails broken; she ate wads of kaysev leaves and wiped her mouth on her arm. Cass wasn't sure what she had been then, but it was something both more and less than human. Now she turned her back toward the Jeep, felt her skin burn with embarrassment when she pulled her pants down and finished as quickly as she could.

After that, their drive resumed, as did the silence. There were no Beaters, but near a cattle ranch whose grazing land grew thick with kaysev, they saw a chilling sight: a motorcycle overturned at the side of the road, and next to it two bodies, obviously Beater victims. They'd been there for a while, long enough for scavengers-perhaps the monstrous black birds-to pick the bones nearly clean. The bodies lay face up, their pants around their ankles, their shirts and underclothes ripped and abandoned nearby.

The Beaters had probably nested in the nearby ranch house or outbuildings. How they'd managed to waylay these travelers was anyone's guess, but that they'd feasted here, rather than carrying the bodies back to their nest, was surprising. Early in their evolution, when the first fever victims passed through the skin-picking phase, after they'd pulled the hair from their own scalps and chewed the flesh of their own arms and moved on to craving the living flesh of other bodies, they were largely inept. They attacked alone, fighting each other for victims, and feasted upon the bodies where they fell, nearly maddened by their hunger for flesh. It had been much easier, then, for bystanders to drag the Beaters off the victims, shooting or beating them, though in nearly every case the victim was already infected by saliva. Citizens eventually learned that once someone was attacked the best course for all involved was a quick and humane shot to the head.

The Beaters also learned. By early summer they were banding together in small groups and dragging their prey away so they could feast in peace. Soon after that, they started sheltering together, and it wasn't long before they learned to seek out locations where they were hidden from passersby but could get out quickly to attack; they favored storefronts and other buildings where the glass had shattered, where there was a single way in and out.

Get enough armed people together and you could overwhelm and destroy a nest of even several dozen Beaters. But few were willing to risk up-close contact since the disease was saliva-borne, meaning that not only bites but spit in an eye or wound could also infect. A simple gunshot or blow to the head was not a reliable means of debilitating them in the short term: though they might eventually collapse and die, their attenuated strength and surging adrenaline meant that rage would propel them forward for some brutal minutes yet. And everyone feared inciting a swarm of the cracked, bloody things.

It was these memories-this new common knowledge-that flitted through Cass's mind, even as she tried to doze, her arm slung over the back of the seat so that she could hold Ruthie's warm hand. She tried concentrating on the passing scenery, but her mind kept going back to the terrible days after everything fell apart and the survivors began to realize that no one was going to come and make things right. It had been worse, then, when it was still possible to forget occasionally-when you'd wake up and, for a moment, imagine you smelled coffee or that you heard the rumble of the recycling truck and the shouts of children on the way to school.

It had been a long time since the waking nightmare gave her even a day of peace. Traveling with a man who despised her, headed away from the trouble she knew and toward the trouble she didn't-that was not likely to change.

When the sun slipped down to touch the mountains behind them, Dor finally spoke. "We're more than halfway. Somewhere short of Glover, I think, but I don't want to get too close to town. Hopefully all the local critters are already on the move."

"You mean you think they've all gone toward the towns?"

"That, or heading south...if that's really happening." He sounded doubtful. The day had been warm, and Cass herself wondered if the cold nights alone would be enough to stir the Beaters' instincts, if indeed self-preservation spurred them to find a better climate. Even the coldest days in California's central valley rarely got below freezing, hardly a threat if they managed to take even a few simple measures to stay warm. What was to prevent the Beaters from burrowing into their nests together to share body heat and deciding that was enough?

When they saw a ranch house set up on a gentle slope a half mile away, Dor turned down the drive. He drove slowly, tires crunching against the gravel, and as they got closer Cass saw the swing still suspended from the branches of an old oak in the front yard, the hand-painted sign in the shape of a tractor that read The Vosses. Dor parked on the concrete pad near the garage and told her to stay put while he checked around. Cass tensed at the thought of being alone with Ruthie, even for a moment, but there was nothing for it. She took her blade from her belt, and made Ruthie lie down in the backseat so that she would be invisible to anyone approaching the car.

But all around them were treeless fields, save for the oak and a stand of what must have been some sort of ornamental specimen-magnolia, perhaps-leafless and barren, and a pair of old fruit trees which were covered, incongruously for the season, with pale green shoots. That captured Cass's attention for a second and she had a vague thought that if they lived until morning, she would have to come outside and examine them.

They were surrounded by grazing fields. Cattle ranches dotted the Sierra foothills on the other side, west of the mountains, when she had grown up. Stock herds of cows grazed their way on a rotation of the fields, gentle skittish beasts that produced new crops of calves every summer for Cass to admire on her runs out into the country. Now there was no evidence of the animals. They'd been felled early in the bioterror attacks-second only to pigs-so many and so quickly that troops had been diverted and later conscripted to haul and torch the carcasses. There were huge burn sites throughout California: smoke hung over the huge feedlot operations along I-5 for weeks as the meat burned. The barking of the dogs over the smell was never-ending. Until, eventually, it was truckloads of dogs and deer that joined the cattle-and, finally, the two-legged dead.

After a tense few minutes Dor was back, coming through the garage door which he had hauled up by hand.

"Drive it in here," he called, and Cass slid awkwardly over the console to the driver's seat. She turned the key in the ignition, a strange sensation after such a long time, and put her foot on the gas pedal. She checked the gauge: three-quarters full. Drove slowly up into the garage and turned it off again, Dor already pulling the steel door back down. The garage smelled slightly of rot, though it wasn't overwhelming. Dor had his flashlight on, and while Cass unbuckled Ruthie from the back, he got a few things from the cargo area.

Inside, the house was cold but surprisingly tidy. The garage opened onto a kitchen whose cabinets hung open and empty-raiders had been here. A few Splenda packets spilled onto the counter and there were bottles of soy sauce and vinegar, sticky and nearly empty, but otherwise the food was all gone. Dishes were still stacked neatly, coffee cups hung from hooks and good crystal goblets were lined up with care on a bed of paper toweling. The rot smell was stronger at the refrigerator but there was nothing to be done about that; everyone knew never to crack a refrigerator door anymore. Someday nothing would remain inside but dried-up crumbs, but until then the fear of refrigerators was up there with basement doors.

Dor set the supplies down on the kitchen table: a bottle of water, a tight-wrapped square of spongy kaysev curd, a Tupperware container of almonds. One of the cans of fruit cocktail from the farmhouse. As he went systematically through the drawers and lower cabinets, an unshakable habit for anyone who'd served on a raiding party, Cass and Ruthie wandered through the house.

In the den an enormous television took up most of one wall; shelves on either side held houseplants that had dried to husks long ago, as well as trophies and photos in frames. Cass turned on her own hand-crank flashlight and saw that the trophies were from an adult softball league and most of the photographs were of several towheaded children. Grandchildren, Cass guessed. This didn't feel like a house where little ones had lived. There were no toys on the floor, no high chairs in the kitchen.

There was a plaid sofa with knitted afghans folded neatly over the arms, a basket on the coffee table filled with skeins of blue and white yarn. A newspaper, neatly refolded, with a coffee cup skimmed with mold on top.

The living room was comfortable and ordinary, but Cass noticed that one of the armchairs had been dragged down the hall to block the last door. A raiders's trick: when they found something too awful to abide looking, they blocked doors with furniture, a simple courtesy to those who came after. But the drag marks on the carpet were fresh-it was Dor, then, who was trying to protect her and Ruthie.

"We can use the guest bedroom tonight," Dor said. "First door on the right. Bathroom's on the left."

Cass glanced back at the chair blocking what was apparently the master bedroom door, wondering what Dor was shielding her from seeing. It could be any of half a dozen familiar scenarios. The couple who lived here might have overdosed in their bed, that was the favorite for anyone who'd had the foresight to stockpile medication. Or the husband might have shot the wife and then turned the gun on himself. For those with no gun or drugs, things were messier; most people did a poor job of cutting their own wrists and took forever to die, leaving their beds soaked a bright red that slowly dried to dirt brown and earthen black if you found them much later.

There were other ways, and Cass knew she hadn't seen them all. Perhaps Dor had seen more. Perhaps he'd seen enough that the horror in the bedroom didn't bother him, but she doubted it.

14.

"DON'T GO PAST THE CHAIR," SHE SAID GENTLY to Ruthie, and Ruthie nodded solemnly, never letting go of Cass's hand. "We'll see what this room is like, okay?" The guest room was blessedly unexceptional. They were not the first to squat here; the linens had been stripped from the bed, though a few pillows and a puffy comforter had been left behind. The mattress was fairly clean and Cass spread out a few towels she found in the bathroom. The closet had been gone through, as well; anything useful, like coats and synthetic tops and pants had been taken, leaving wool skirts and ruffled blouses and tailored jackets, the off-season wardrobe of a churchgoing woman in her sixties. On the shelf above the clothing were photo boxes with neat labels: Family Christmas 20102013. Caymans Summer '14. Jeanelle, Grades 1-5. The lady of the house had been old-fashioned, still printing copies of photos on reacetate; Cass hoped her memories brought the woman some comfort at the end, long after most people had lost all their photos with the blink of computers turning off for the last time.

They ate by the light of a candle that Dor found in one of the drawers and afterward Cass read to Ruthie from an old issue of Redbook she found in the den. Ruthie loved recipes with their pictures of dishes that could never again be prepared, and Cass had built a small collection of cookbooks back in their tent in the Box. She turned the pages to an article about berry desserts and read about the strawberry shortcakes and blueberry pie and raspberry-peach cobbler, and Ruthie traced her fingertip over the glossy mounds of whipped cream and the buttery crumbs in wonder.

"Do you remember Mim's pies?" Cass asked, a lump in her throat catching her off guard. The one thing Mim did better than anyone else, a thrilling exception to her indifference to housekeeping and even the general inadequacy of her mothering, was pies. Her pastry crust was the flakiest and most tender anywhere. Cass's favorite had been her key lime, and once a year on Cass's birthday Mim would grate the limes and squeeze them by hand and separate the eggs and flute the edges of the crust and set the pies out on the counter to cool and every year they were the most delicious thing Cass had ever tasted, right up until the year Byrn moved in and Mim forgot Cass's birthday entirely.

But Ruthie only nodded solemnly. It wasn't Cass's habit to ask her daughter about the time she spent with Mim and Byrn, who had convinced the state people to forcibly remove Ruthie from Cass's trailer when she relapsed. Those were days of shame and agony as she fought her way back to sobriety again, the hardest thing she had ever done.

"Did you like the apples?" Cass asked, forcing a smile, trying to cover up the tremor in her voice and hating that the old memories could still hurt so much. "With cinnamon and nutmeg?"

More nodding. After a few more recipe images, Cass gathered Ruthie into a hug and set the magazine aside and carried her to bed, tucking her under the puffy comforter. Ruthie held on to her hand tightly, but it wasn't more than a couple of minutes before she was asleep, and Cass kissed her forehead and went back out into the living room.

Dor had cleared the remains of their meal and was stretched out on the sofa reading an old issue of Forbes, his long legs crossed in front of him, a pair of reading glasses on his nose. The sight made her smile-this was a different man, a far more vulnerable man, from the one who brooded in the solitary apartment as the sun set on the Box. But Dor caught her looking, and yanked off his glasses and stuffed them in a pocket.

"I put water out back," he said. "Your toothbrush and stuff's there, too."

Cass took her time, skimping on the toothpaste to make it last and brushing out her hair, slathering the lanolin on her lips as well as she could and rubbing it into her hands. The smell wasn't great but the California winter was dry and her skin was thirsty. She shivered in the cold, dampening a rag with the water Dor had left for her and rubbing it all over her face, feeling the grit from the open-air journey digging into her skin. She squatted around the corner to urinate, scanning the black road for movement, even in the silence of night unable to shake the feeling that things were lurking out in the fields, on the road. Waiting. She knew this was why they'd put the Jeep in the garage and drawn the drapes before lighting the candle: anyone-Beater or citizen-who passed by here would see nothing out of the ordinary. There wasn't another building for half a mile; the odds of Beaters or squatters anywhere near were practically nonexistent.

Inside Dor wrinkled his nose. "You smell like a sheep shearer."

Cass smiled. "You should be so lucky-that would mean there were sheep left, and we could make them into mutton burgers."

"I never liked mutton."

"Bet you would now."

"I suppose I would." Dor nodded. "Nice big slab with American cheese melted all over it, one of those sesame seed buns, some iceberg lettuce and a big slice of tomato."

"Stop it. That's obscene," Cass said. "But maybe some fries-"

"Fresh cut, with the skin still on 'em."

"I like the ones that get stuck in the fry basket and go through twice-you know, extra crispy, almost burned?"

"Nice. Here, come sit where I've got it warmed up."

Chapter end