Aftertime

“Don’t say it,” Cass interrupted, resisting the urge to clap her hands over her ears. She couldn’t bear to hear the word, to hear the accusation, again. “Please. Look, why don’t I just leave now.”

“No one said anything about that,” Smoke said tiredly. “You’re safe here. Everyone’s just on edge. It’s been hard. Shit, no one needs to tell you that.”

For a moment no one spoke. Cass could feel Nora’s anger clogging the air still.

“All I want to know is how she’s managed not to be attacked,” she said, addressing Smoke alone. “Walking alone as long as she says she has-how does that happen?”

Cass glared back. “I’ve been lucky, I guess.”

“Lucky,” Nora repeated, spitting out the word as though it was poison.

“Listen to me. My daughter was there,” Cass snapped. “In the library. The second time we were attacked. We were outside. She wanted…to be outside.”

What Ruthie had really wanted was to pick dandelions, one of the few plants to survive the Siege. Cass had taught her to hold the blooms under her chin, so that the yellow reflected off her pale creamy skin. Oh, look, you must be made of butter, she teased Ruthie, peppering her sweet face with kisses. And then Ruthie would laugh and laugh and tickle Cass’s chin with bunches of dandelions wilting in her chubby little hands.

Ruthie wanted to pick dandelions, and they were hard to find at dusk, so it was barely twilight when Cass led her outside to the little patch of dead lawn in front of the library, after she looked carefully in every direction.

But not carefully enough. Because the Beaters were learning. And they had learned to hide. They hid behind a panel truck on two flat tires that had been abandoned half a block away…and they waited. And then they moved faster than Cass thought possible, awkward loping strides accompanied by their gurgling breathless moans, and Cass grabbed for Ruthie, who was tracing the path of a caterpillar with a stick and thought it was a game and danced out of the way and darted into the last glorious rays of sun as it slipped down the horizon-

The challenge drained from Nora’s face. “Don’t,” she begged.

Smoke placed a work-roughened hand over Nora’s and didn’t look at Cass.

“Nora,” he said heavily. “She, uh…her nephew. She was watching him.”

“I was supposed to be watching him,” Nora said hollowly. She pulled her hand away and stood, knocking over her chair. She backed out of the room, brushing against the coffeepot on the counter. It fell to the ground, shattering and splashing hot coffee, but she just turned and bolted down the hall.

“She’s…” Smoke said, watching her go. Then he turned back to Cass. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Cass said, but the truth was that she did need it. Not the apology-but the way his voice softened when he spoke to her and the way his eyes narrowed with concern when he looked at her, taking in what had happened to her poor body and not turning away.

That. Most of all she needed that, the not turning away.

“Something did happen to me,” she found herself saying, the words tumbling out as though a trapdoor had been opened inside her. “Something bad.”

Telling was crazy. Telling could get her thrown out of here. Or worse. But Smoke looked at her as though he saw her, saw the real her, and she wanted to hold on to that, wanted him to know the truth and still see her.

The kindness he’d already shown her should have been enough. Settle for that, she willed herself. Settle for good enough.

But Cass could never leave well enough alone. She didn’t know how. She wanted someone-one other human being-to know what had happened, and not turn away.

“Your daughter,” Smoke said softly. “Was she taken?”

“No,” Cass said. “But I was.”

05

SMOKE HELPED HER CUT HER HAIR.

He handed her the scissors, a pair of office shears that were too bulky and too dull to do a good job, even if she had a mirror, even if she knew what she was doing. He’d said it would give her less to explain to the others. Cass knew he was right. Still, when she made the first cut, the sight of her filthy and matted hair falling to the floor caused her to suck in her breath.

Her hair had been her best feature, once. Long and thick and shiny, dark blond burnished with gold, curving inward where it lay across her collarbones. She refused to cry as the hair fell away, but when she had cut as far as she could reach, and Smoke closed his large hand gently over hers and took the scissors away, she squeezed her eyes shut and mourned the loss of the last faint reminder of her beauty as he carefully trimmed the back.

Afterward, he gathered her hair with his hands and hap-hazardly piled it in a file box while Cass got control of herself. He carefully avoided looking her in the face and Cass knew that she was hard to look at, an ugly, hard-worn thing. She demanded that he take her to the library that night, and he agreed once Cass made it clear that she was going with or without him.

He tried to talk her into waiting a few days, when the full moon had waned. The Beaters had become bolder, he warned her, coming out on moonlit nights as well as mornings and early evenings. Gone were the days when they only ventured out in the middle of the day.

But Cass didn’t care. She’d been out every night since she woke up; she wasn’t going to stop now, not when she was so close to Ruthie.

Smoke took her to the cafeteria, which they had set up as a community room with toys and activities for the kids, and chairs and sofas arranged for conversation. Makeshift shelves held kitchen implements and plates and cups. Blankets and clothing were folded and stacked. There were rows of paperbacks, vases of the few surviving wildflowers. Board games and puzzles were set out on tables and two separate card games were in full swing.

Eight or nine kids-toddlers up to six-or seven-year-olds-played on carpet scraps arranged on the floor at one end of the cafeteria. Sammi was watching them, along with a boy about her age.

Smoke led Cass into the large open space, and the adults’ conversations died. People set down their playing cards, the baskets of clothes they had been folding, the kaysev they had been separating and cleaning and preparing. They regarded Cass with open curiosity and, in some cases, suspicion and fear and hostility.

Sammi’s mother was in a group of women who had been chatting as they washed and dried dishes. There was a tub of soapy water, another of clear, no doubt creek water that had been boiled. Cass had seen the blackened fire pit in the courtyard, the hearth built of rebar and steel beams and that fireproof plastic weave.

“This is Cass,” Smoke said into the silence. “She’s a citizen, just like us.”

“She’s not like us,” Sammi’s mother said, setting down her washrag. Her voice shook. “She tried to-”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Sammi said. She put down the bucket of toys she’d been holding. A pretend zoo was laid out on the floor, and she and the boy had been helping the younger kids stack wooden blocks to make cages.

“It’s not okay,” her mother hissed, but she stayed where she was. One of the other women laid a hand on her arm and said something that Cass couldn’t hear.

“She only did what she had to,” Sammi added, glaring at her mother defiantly. “Besides, if you didn’t keep me cooped up in here like I was in jail-”

“Don’t, Sammi,” the boy said quietly. “Not now.”

“I’d rather take my chances out there,” Sammi said, pointing out the window at the street that ran alongside the building, beyond the iron fence. Cass saw abandoned cars, some with graffiti painted on the side. Several had crashed into each other, by accident or on purpose, crushed metal and broken glass surrounding doors that no one had bothered to close.

Then she saw something else, something that struck white-hot fear in her heart. In the yard of a squat brick bun-galow across the street, a small clump of Beaters shuffled around a kiddie pool they’d managed to drag from some where. One was trying to sit in it. Two others were trying to turn it over. Another stood close to the house, staring into a large picture window and absently tugging at its ears.

She wasn’t the only one to spot them. A few sharp gasps, a collective wave of fear that ran through the