Rebirth Part 8

"Ruthie! How did you-" Cass took the bowl from her daughter and was rewarded with a smile. And not just her usual tentative, uncertain smile but something closer to a grin, her loose front tooth giving her a rakish look. "Did you see the sugar bowl inside before?"

Ruthie nodded and pulled herself back up onto the bench. Cass hadn't noticed the bowl. She hadn't thought that Ruthie had noticed much of anything; she'd been so sleepy. And she was surprised her daughter would even know what such a bowl was-except, of course-this bowl was similar to Mim's, and Ruthie had been with Mim and Byrn during those terrible months when Cass was struggling her way back to sobriety. Long enough for her to see Mim put sugar in her coffee dozens of times, two carefully measured spoonfuls stirred precisely three clockwise turns. It was a habit Cass had once loved to watch when she herself was a little girl.

"Well...aren't you clever," Cass said. She spooned sugar into each of their bowls, swirling it in and testing the temperature of the back of the spoon before handing it back to Ruthie. "Mmm, that looks so good. Aren't we lucky today?"

Ruthie took a bite and smiled. "Mmm."

Cass froze. It wasn't a word-not really. Just a sound. Ruthie hadn't even opened her mouth to make it. But it was a sound nevertheless. Progress. Change. She wanted to throw her arms around Ruthie, pick her up and swing her in a circle. She wanted to celebrate, to kiss her and tickle her and make her laugh. But that was too much.

She had to let Ruthie come back at her own pace, and not make her self-conscious. Self-consciousness-that thing that kills the real self. At first she had clung tightly to Cass whenever she was awake, but gradually she'd become bolder. In recent weeks she'd been happy to stay with Coral Anne and occasionally played with Feo when the older boy was willing to entertain her for a few hours. Cass's instinct was to let it lie. But as Ruthie ate her oatmeal, Cass's spirits lifted.

When she gathered the dishes and they headed back inside, there, watching them through the kitchen window, was Dor.

18.

THE MORNING SKY WAS THICK WITH CLOUDS, but there was no moisture in the air. The wind buffeted the Jeep on the two-lane road. Dor kept his speed to thirty, even though the road was clear as far as she could see.

Ruthie twisted in her seat as they drove away, watching the little house recede into the distance. She'd remained mute while Cass washed her with the warm water, brushed her teeth and combed her hair and dressed her in clean underwear and yesterday's clothes. Cass washed herself as well as she could, carrying the hot water around the corner of the house and stripping naked on the dead lawn, trying to wipe away every trace of what they'd done the night before while she held her blade in her free hand. Outdoors, away from the Box, she was never without a weapon, and she felt almost unbearably exposed as the cold morning air reached her body. She used deodorant, a rare indulgence, since she owned only one tube and tried to make it last. After she dressed, she went through the dresser in the room in which she and Ruthie slept, taking turtlenecks and too-big nylon underwear, as well as three pairs of neatly rolled knee socks.

"After we cross Leverett Canyon Road, Colima's only another twenty miles," Dor said after a while. "That last stretch might be tough. It's an old road, mostly just local traffic since they built the highway. Not sure what we're gonna find." He'd been drinking from a plastic bottle of water, and he offered it to her. Cass looked at his hand holding the bottle, the black lines of his tattoo curling down onto the broad flat plane below his wrist.

She didn't want to take from him, didn't want to accept any kindness from him.

They passed the occasional ranch or farmhouse, but none appeared to be inhabited. Even a couple of months ago, a few squatters were still trying to tough it out alone in their homes, boarding themselves inside and venturing out only to raid at night, trying to avoid the Beaters. For most, it was a losing proposition. Nearly all the easy pickings had been scoured from those houses and stores that weren't infested with Beaters. Water, canned food, medicine; shoes and warm clothes; toiletries and gasoline and propane-all of these were nearly impossible to find. Kaysev alone couldn't make a subsistence life out here sustainable. Waste had to be disposed of. Water still needed to be boiled. Some squatters eventually gave up and made the journey to the nearest shelter, but there were recent rumors that some shelters were beginning to turn travelers away in an effort to conserve resources. Those who spent too many days on the road were guaranteed to be attacked; there were simply too many Beaters and they were increasingly desperate and hungry. The lucky ones made it to the Box or to a shelter that would still accept them; others grew despondent and chose a quick death-drowning, hanging, a leap from a bridge or building.

Or else they joined the Rebuilders.

"What the fuck," Dor murmured softly, interrupting Cass's thoughts.

Far up the road, casting stubby shadows on the blacktop under the late-morning sun, two women stood in the road. They stood close together, one of them pointing-at them, at the land beyond the road, it was hard to tell. The other had a rifle. Cass's heart sank-if this was a Rebuilder checkpoint then all their attempts to arrive unannounced had been wasted. They'd wanted to hide the car to avoid suspicion.

Dor took his foot off the gas and coasted. When they were a hundred feet away, he braked to a stop. The women turned toward the Jeep and Cass got a better look at them, one middle-aged, the other a bit younger. Both wore their thick hair cut blunt at their shoulders; their jeans and coats were mannish and utilitarian. Sisters? Cass thought she saw a similarity in their soft jaw lines, in their slack mouths. They didn't wear the military surplus favored by the Rebuilders, didn't have the rigid, coiled stance of their leaders.

"Wonder what they're up to," Dor said softly. He had his gun in his hand-Cass hadn't even seen him draw it. "Stay here. I'll check this out."

"We could just try to drive around them," Cass said. The earth at the edge of the field was flat and unbroken; it would be easy enough to go off the road. Besides, Dor's caution gave her a bad feeling.

The whole situation felt strange. There was a good-size farmhouse set back a few hundred yards from the road, its paint flaking and some of the windows broken. The front door was open, the interior of the house a black cavern. None of the outbuildings-a large steel shed, a leaning barn, a separate garage-were large or secure enough to make for good shelter, and none had the sort of large opening favored by Beaters.

"The Jeep can handle the field, can't it?" Cass pressed.

"Terrain's not the problem."

"What," she whispered.

"I don't know. Ambush, maybe. I'm leaving the keys. I probably don't have to tell you this, but anything happens to me, you just floor it-head back to the Box. Straight back."

Cass felt the familiar anxiety flood her. After yesterday, she wasn't ready for this, for him to walk away from her again. "There's not-"

But he opened the door and stepped out before she could complete her thought, slamming it shut without a backward glance. Cass watched him walk toward the women, the gun loose at his side, stopping ten, then a couple of yards short of them. One of the women took a faltering step toward him, scratching at her forearm. The other followed, stumbling and reaching toward him, dropping the rifle to the ground, not even looking down as it bounced and a shard of plastic or wood broke off its stock.

Dor started backing away. Then he turned and bolted back toward the Jeep.

He made it in seconds and threw himself into the driver's seat, nearly flooding the engine, tires screeching on the payment as he floored the gas. The pair hesitated only a moment before following, their tentative steps increasing speed.

"What were they-"

"Hang on!" he yelled. Cass clutched the console, her heart hammering. As the Jeep swerved abreast of the two women, she saw that their clothes were soiled and their hair was knotted. They looked as though they'd been beaten, their faces bruised and torn. "Lean back!"

Dor reached across Cass with his gun hand, firing twice before she could react, and the women spun and crumpled to the ground. He accelerated and the car stopped fishtailing and the road rumbled beneath them. Ruthie sniffled in the stunned silence.

"What did you do that for?" Cass demanded.

"They'd turned," Dor said, reholstering his gun awkwardly. "They were infected."

"What?"

It had been a long time, months even, since Cass had seen someone in the early stages of the fever. But yes, it had been there-the eerie flat eyes, the scabbed flesh, the scratching at the arms. "You're sure?"

"Come on, Cass. Middle of the day? Out there in the road? They had bite marks up and down their arms. They were talking nonsense."

"You...got them both."

Like a movie-the Jeep careening, Dor's finger on the trigger inches from her face, taking the second shot before the first fully registered.

"If they'd been any further along, one bullet wouldn't have been enough to take them down like that."

Cass turned to check on Ruthie. Her eyes were wide and frightened, and Cass caressed her face, making soothing sounds and calling her "darling," promising her it would be all right.

"Why did you bother?" she finally asked. They could have just driven past, saved the two bullets.

"We might come back this way and I didn't want to deal with them twice. And there could have been uninfected in one of those buildings. Not likely, but you never know...and also I liked it. It felt good."

His words chilled her. Cass had never killed, not even a Beater.

"You're just saying that."

"No." Dor kept his eyes on the road, but he put his hand on her thigh. The touch was a fresh shock, his fingers strong and insistent through the fabric of her pants. He moved his hand slowly upward, trailing heat along her skin. Then, just as abruptly, he took it back. "I don't just say things to hear myself talk, Cass. That's a lesson right there, one you might want to take to heart. I also don't do things I didn't set out to do and I don't appreciate..."

He didn't finish his sentence but he didn't have to. Cass knew what she was being accused of and she felt the blood rush to her face. "I liked it," he finally said, his voice harsh, and for a moment she thought he meant the night before. "Know what I like best, Cass? That fraction of a second between when I pull the trigger and that little bit of metal slamming into their flesh. All that-rot and disease and evil. I like knowing I'm gonna put a fucking hole in it. It's satisfying as shit when they drop, don't get me wrong, and really I'm doing them a favor. I've killed fifty of 'em at least and I hope I kill a hell of a lot more before I'm dead. But I get off on the anticipation. Okay?"

Cass clung tightly to the frame of the door she couldn't open until he told her it was time. She was at Dor's mercy and she had put herself there on purpose, her and Ruthie. She had no choice but to listen to him, to hear the words that twisted inside her.

"Okay," she whispered.

"You still want to believe you can come out of this whole. You want to believe you're the same person you were the day the first missile hit. You're not. You're not. You can pretend every fucking second until you're dead and you will have wasted all those seconds and all those days because there's no God for you to demand a refund from. There's nothing except this dried-up fucking husk of a planet and the poor bastards still left on it. You want me to be sorry, but I didn't make the world this way and I'm not going to apologize for scratching out a life, any way I can."

His anger and his bitterness felt like they might consume her. She knew he was hopped up on adrenaline and fury, but there was more to his rage, a fundamental belief that everything was lost except the next hardscrabble moment and the next. But he was wrong. Dor was wrong, wrong in his hate and his ferocity. Not everything was wasted, not everything was doomed.

Ruthie was proof. The birds. The clouds, too. But also the tiny kaysev seedlings-they were proof. She'd watered them one last time yesterday, in her little greenhouse, cupping a hand around them to keep the precious water drops from blowing adrift in the wind. They were the bright, pale, leaf-green of spring itself, and she imagined them thirsting for the sun, plunging their roots into the soil that Dor had given up on and finding sustenance deep down.

But Cass was no poster child for hope and Dor was right about that, at least; nearly all of it had been beaten out of her long ago. But not by the Siege. Not by the Beaters and the famine and the demolished earth and the endless river of death. No, Cass had already survived worse and that worse thing had marked her before she was even grown, and she'd reached adulthood stunted and damaged but like a tree that grows around a lightning scar, she had surrounded the hurt with the hardest part of herself and pressed on.

"No," she whispered. "There's more than you see. More than you know."

That was all either of them said until Colima loomed in the distance, a medieval desert-shadow town whose flags and turrets drifted and swam in the dusty heat.

19.

THERE WERE NO TURRETS AND THERE WERE NO flags, of course. Those were an illusion of the heat rising from the blacktop and of the sun slanting in her eyes. Colima was composed not of castles and moats, but of 1980s era concrete-and-glass architecture-but near the entrance was its one nod to traditional architecture, a graceful stone building with crenellations and towers, and it was that building that stood out against the sky. The Rebuilders were in the midst of encircling the campus with a brick wall. Along the unfinished side, workers pushed wheelbarrows and scaled platforms.

Cass handed Dor's binoculars back to him, a lightweight matte-black pair that must have cost him dearly. They were crouched next to a billboard that had fallen from its supports and lay resting against the poles, propped up in a way that suggested someone had used it as a temporary shelter. With the Jeep parked behind it, the sign made an effective place to stop and rest unseen.

"There's so many of them."

Dor wiped the lenses of the binoculars with the hem of his shirt. "Recruiting's probably a lot easier these days. Guy comes to your door and points a gun at you and tells you come with him and you'll get fed and he'll give you a safe place to sleep at night, you probably don't mind the gun so much. Freedom's a luxury most folks can't afford anymore."

What about the Box? Cass wanted to ask, but knew that what Dor offered wasn't truly freedom. Once travelers traded away their goods for a high or a bender or sex, there was little in the way of value or sustenance to be had.

But at least they were free to leave, and Dor didn't advertise by gunpoint.

"Want a look?" Dor said softly. Ruthie had left off playing with her little plastic figurines and crept silently next to him. The day had grown unusually warm and Cass had taken off Ruthie's heavy coat. She reached for the glasses, but Dor picked her up and set her on his knee, then held the glasses carefully to her face.

"What do you see?" he asked, his face close to her ear. She didn't answer, but her lips were parted eagerly, and she didn't flinch when Dor gently fiddled with the focus.

"Oh!" Ruthie suddenly exclaimed when the far-off town came into view. She pointed, not taking her face away from the glasses-and Dor smiled, a broad, unselfconscious smile Cass had never seen before. He held the binoculars patiently for her; after a while she put her small hand over his and left it there. When she finally pushed away and scrambled off his knee, she was smiling, too.

She raised her hands to be picked up and Cass held her and spun her in a hip-swinging slow circle. "I love you, Babygirl," she whispered.

"I think we should get going now," Dor said uneasily. He was checking their packs, all traces of his momentary tenderness gone. "That's another mile and a half, easy, and I want to get there in the afternoon. People get sloppy before dinner-maybe we can use that."

"Use it how?"

"Think about it. Afternoons, back in the Box, Charles and them, they're looking ahead to quitting time. Travelers come along and Faye's more likely to give 'em a few extra chits just to get 'em through the door rather than haggling. Now we show up in Colima, we have a story that almost sounds likely...well, they're less likely to ask a lot of questions we can't answer."

"We can answer anything they ask." Cass felt her face go hot. "We just have to keep it simple. We're together, the three of us."

Dor narrowed his eyes. "That's not much of a story. What if they ask for details? We don't really know each other." His voice grew even colder. "We're strangers."

"You didn't ask for this." Cass cut him off before he could say anything else. "I know. You don't have to say it again."

Dor handed her the smaller of the two packs. She slipped it on, feeling her muscles flex and respond to the extra weight. It had been a long time since she'd freewalked, but her work in the gardens kept her limber and strong. She dug rich dirt from the creek banks a few blocks from the Box; she turned her flower beds with a sturdy shovel Three-High had brought back; she carried creek water in heavy buckets. When she had settled her pack, she bent to pick up Ruthie.

But Ruthie skipped out of her way, smiling mischievously.

"Come on, Babygirl," Cass said, trying to be patient as Ruthie ran to Dor and lifted her arms in the air.

Dor picked Ruthie up without hesitation and set her on his shoulders.

"You don't have to do that."

"It's no big deal. She doesn't weigh anything."

Ruthie grinned down at her triumphantly.

"Why don't you wait," she said. "Ruthie can walk for a while anyway. We can take turns-"

"It's nothing," he said.

They walked the straight road and though the late-afternoon breeze was sharp and chill, they quickly settled into a steady pace that warmed Cass. As they went, she thought about what Dor had said-that the burden of carrying her daughter was nothing-and about the way she'd taught herself to choose among the things she knew to be true, to keep only those that would allow her to go on and then banish the rest to a place of forgetting; to consider all the ways she could lie to herself, and choose among those as well; to cherish her carefully chosen lies, to nurture them so they could flourish in the arid landscape of her mind.

Dor carried Ruthie with a straight back and confident stride, but after a while there was perspiration at his brow. From time to time he hitched her up straight when she grew tired and flagged forward. Her little hands seized his hair, pulling hard, but he didn't complain. Cass found herself falling back a few steps so she could watch them, marveling at the easy way her daughter wrapped her arms around Dor's head-a stranger's head-and wondered why she trusted him so easily.

When they were close enough to make out the figures of the guards at the gate, he hitched Ruthie up and turned, waiting for Cass to catch up with him. "So the story-"

"What?" Cass snapped, embarrassed to be caught watching him.

Dor glanced at her curiously, turning his whole body to ensure that Ruthie kept her balance on his shoulders, and Cass almost ran into him. She kept her eyes fixed on the road. Up ahead, the uniformed men stood on either side of an opening in the finished part of the wall, their weapons loose across their chests, the sort of guns soldiers carried in videos Before in ground conflicts everywhere: black and smooth enough to be toys, powerful and deadly enough to bring down entire crowds at a time.

"I thought we should go over the story one more time."

"It's not that complicated," Cass said in exasperation. "I'm an outlier. I ask for Evangeline, I tell them I met her before. That Evangeline invited me to come. That Ruthie and you..."

But it wasn't that easy. That Ruthie is yours. She had to say it, not just now but again when it counted. Evangeline did not know that Cass had a child; she and Smoke had come to the library empty-handed and left with only what the resistance gave them. Now she had to pretend that she was a childless woman traveling with her lover and his daughter. She'd deny Ruthie, and there was no way to make her daughter understand what she had to do, the weight of betrayal heavier because Cass had betrayed her daughter before.

"You can still back out," Dor said, reading her thoughts. But Cass knew that it wasn't true. An hour ago-yes. She could have taken the Jeep that they had left behind the downed billboard, secured Ruthie in the backseat and pulled back onto the road and driven back to the Box. She could have passed the corpses of the fresh Beaters lying in the middle of the road, the house where they'd sheltered the night before, the house where the ruined girl had been chained to the bed. She could have stayed strong through all of that, all the way back to the Box and back to their bed and their tent, for Ruthie.

Now it was too late. They'd be seen and she could not turn around; the Rebuilders would never let her go.

"That Ruthie is yours," Cass said, ignoring him and making her voice hard. "Your child. You lost your wife and we're together now. We want to work. I used to be a florist, Before. You served in the reserves."

"That's right," Dor said, and he didn't give her anything more, he refused to acknowledge how hard it was to say the words. And that was as it had to be. It didn't matter that it was hard. Cass repeated that to herself as they covered the last of the distance to the wall: it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Chapter end