Rebirth

“You’re leaving, too,” Cass said, realization dawning on her. “You’re going to Colima. You’re going to look for Sammi.”

Of course-she should have known it from the moment Smoke told her what happened at the library. Cass herself had risked everything to find Ruthie, so why did the notion of Dor doing the same for his daughter fill her with such bleak hopelessness? And when Dor nodded, jaw set hard, it seemed as though the air got even colder.

“You won’t be alone. Cass, I’ll tell Faye. I’ll tell Charles. They’ll look after you. I’ll send word if I can, and so will Smoke. We’ll both be back…you need to have more faith in him. He beat them once already-there’s no reason he can’t do it again. He’s well armed and well trained.”

“Your training,” Cass said bitterly. “Your guns.”

As if that made Dor responsible.

A disproportionate number of the citizens who’d survived this long had done so because they had a strong desire for self-preservation along with the skills to back it up. Skills that came from time spent in law enforcement, or in the service or jail or a gang. Dor’s forces were all ex-something-ex-cop, ex-Marine, ex-Norteno…all except for Smoke.

Smoke had told Cass only that he’d been an executive coach Before, and didn’t elaborate in the months they’d been together, always deflecting her questions, turning the conversation elsewhere. Cass hadn’t pushed; she wasn’t ready to tell him everything about her own past, so she hardly felt entitled to demand the same from him.

Smoke’s background may have been inauspicious for survival, much less commanding Box security, but he had some penchant for enduring-plus the legend of the rock slide, which was enough to earn the respect of the others. He’d been a decent shot before joining their ranks; now he was excellent. He’d been fit; now he was hard-muscled and lean. When Smoke slipped out of the tent before dawn to shoot at cans or practice strikes with Joe or put his body through ever-harder workouts, Cass tried to tell herself, He is doing this for us, for our little family, and ignore the fact that he was turning from someone she hadn’t known long into someone she didn’t know well.

“Look, Cass.” Dor looked as though he was going to reach for her again and Cass shrank away from him. “He asked me not to say anything. He’s leaving tonight. He’s… He didn’t want to have to say goodbye.”

Cass made a sound in her throat. Smoke wouldn’t do that, wouldn’t leave without telling her-would he? Smoke, who’d grown more silent with every passing week, whose mind drifted a thousand miles away. Who reached for her less and less often in the night.

“He didn’t want to hurt you more than he had to. I don’t-if he…he just didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Well, it’s a little late for that, isn’t it? He knew damn well he was hurting me-us-he just wasn’t brave enough to stick around and watch.”

She didn’t bother to mask her bitterness, biting her lip hard to keep her angry tears from spilling. She expected Dor to turn away from her, that having tried to mollify her, he would consider his duty done and return his attentions to his own problems, his own imminent journey.

But Dor did not look away, and Cass, whose despair made her want to hit and kick and scream, forced herself instead to think of Ruthie. She thought of her baby and took deep breaths and dug her fingers into her palms until it hurt, until she could speak without her voice breaking.

“It’s time to go back,” she said.

Dor scanned the distant hills, the streets to the right and left. They both listened; there were no moans, no faint cries, no snuffling or snorting. Only the wind, dispirited and damp, made its way down the street, identified by the signpost at the corner of the sidewalk as Oleander Lane. The sign still stood, all that was left of the oleanders that had died the first time a missile containing a biological agent microencapsulated on a warhead built on specs stolen from at least three separate countries came hurtling into the airspace above California at thirteen hundred miles per hour and struck a patch of earth in the central valley, taking out every edible crop for hundreds of miles and quite a few more that were good for nothing but looking pretty.

Even though Dor had warned her that Smoke was leaving, the stillness of the tent reached into Cass’s throat and stole her breath so that she had to grab the edge of the dresser to keep from collapsing. The evidence of Smoke’s absence was subtle but, for one who knew this small space as well as she did, unmistakable. His pack was missing from the bedpost there. His coat-there. He kept his shoes, both the boots and the lightweight hikers, lined up under the foot of the bed, but only the hikers remained.

The photograph of the three of them-the Polaroid Smoke had bought with four cans of chili-was missing from its frame. Cass stared at the frame, an ornate gilt one from a raid-it now held only the stock image of two random dark-haired little girls, laughing as they went down a slide.

Smoke hadn’t even bothered to take the old picture out. The little girls who were long gone now, dead from fever or starvation. Or perhaps they had been victims of the Beaters, their flesh flensed from their bones, left to rot in some garden or forgotten back room. Or the evil of humanity in cold times reached up and took them. Suddenly she was so angry she had to hurt something, had to break something, if only to release a little of the fury from her body. Smoke had left Cass a picture of loss, a reminder of the anonymous grief all around. She picked up the frame-heavy, expensive-and threw it on the ground. But it bounced on the soft rug and didn’t break, so she seized the heavy pewter cup from the table and slammed it into the frame’s glass, splintering and breaking and crushing, sending the shards flying. Cass brought the cup down again and again until she’d smashed dents in the wood and bloodied her fingers, and then she lay down with her face in the carpet and sobbed. She didn’t bother to muffle the sound; people cried here every day. Crying was nothing to anyone who might hear. Her pain was nothing to them. She cried until her throat was raw and her eyes swollen and then she lay still, and when she lifted her head the tent was nearly dark and she lit a candle and spent a long time picking bits of glass from the rug before she left to collect Ruthie from Coral Anne, to fetch her baby because it was going to be just the two of them again in the world, alone for always.

But the morning awoke in her a new resolve. Without Smoke, she had to focus on Ruthie, on creating the best possible world for her daughter from the ruins she’d been given to work with. With Smoke beside her, Cass had been able to make a home of the Box, a family from its battered and motley residents. But now that he was gone, the place’s shortcomings were stark and untenable. The atmosphere of desperation, the leering old men and twitchy hopped-up scavengers. The fact that the only other child here was a shadow-boy, a damaged, elusive little hustler. How much longer would they be welcome here?

Ruthie stirred against her, dream-restless. Cass lay still, reluctant to disturb Ruthie as her resolve took shape. There was no joy to it; her purpose was doleful and raw, but it was better than being empty.

She waited for Ruthie to wake up, considering her new intention, watching the sun color the sky pale blue through the tent’s open window. Yesterday’s bone-deep chill was a memory, practically an impossibility. She was warm under blankets, Ruthie even warmer, her sweet face pressed against the soft cotton of Cass’s sleep shirt. She thought about her plan and it took shape and grew until it seemed to Cass impossible that any other would do.

Ruthie woke and smiled when she discovered that she was in her mama’s bed. She had not spoken again since yesterday’s dream, and Cass wondered if she might have imagined it. But no: Ruthie had said bird. Cass doubted she meant the sparrows that pecked for bits in the dining area. The little brown birds were unremarkable, but other species were coming back. Maybe Ruthie had spotted a redbird or a hawk-something more noteworthy, anyway, than the flock of tiny scavengers.

“Good morning, sugar-sweet,” Cass whispered and covered Ruthie’s forehead and nose with kisses while her daughter laughed without making a sound, her shoulders shaking.

Then it was a matter of choosing their warmest, sturdiest clothes before the two of them went to find Dor to tell him they were going with him.

08

“I MEAN TO GO ALONE,” HE SAID. CASS HAD FOUND him in his trailer, sitting at his desk with a steaming