Aftertime

There was the story he told about the air force pilots. She still didn’t think he was telling the whole truth. So…maybe he was a liar, or maybe he was just keeping parts of the truth to himself.

But he was brave. Or more precisely, he had a lack of concern for himself, and an abundance of concern for others. He had been the first to come at her when she and Sammi approached the school, and it had been his body crushing hers when he took her down. His arms had been hard-muscled. Despite her strength and fitness, she was smaller by several inches and thirty or forty pounds. He could have hurt her easily.

But he hadn’t even bruised her.

“What about Nora?” Cass found herself asking. “His…girlfriend?”

Gail made an exhalation of air through her teeth. “Is that the impression you got? Well, they’re…I don’t know what you’d call it.”

“They met here,” Nance said. “Nora, when she showed up she was a mess. Kept to herself. Wouldn’t let anyone close at first, after her nephew…once he was taken. Smoke got her talking again.”

“I mean I’m pretty sure they’re doing the nasty,” Gail said, flashing a grin that didn’t make it to her eyes. “Smoke’s hot, and there’s lots of women wouldn’t mind a little of that.”

Cass felt heat rising in her face. That wasn’t what she’d meant-not sex. Just the way they had been around each other, it suggested a relationship beyond the bond of people sheltering together in close quarters, and she’d been-

What, exactly? Curious? Envious, the voice inside her suggested. She didn’t like that answer, but it had the ring of truth. To have someone else to go through this with-what would that be like? To have someone to tell your fears to- your wishes-your regrets?

“People are funny,” Nance mused. “Some people, Aftertime, it’s like they’re dead inside, like they were already taken even though their bodies are still here. And other people just…I don’t know, it’s like they light up. Not in a good way, necessarily, mind you. But more like some sort of crazy energy that they rely on just to keep them going.”

“Yeah,” Gail agreed. “Some people get all manic. There’s been all kinds of hookups, you go looking for a flashlight or something and open a door and there’s people on the floor like, well, you know. And then next time you turn around they’re doing it with someone else.”

“Remember Scott and Meena…?” Nance said, and then the two of them were doubled over with laughter. Cass couldn’t help smiling along, their mirth was so infectious.

“What’s so funny?” Sonja had returned, carrying a stack of folded clothes, which she held out to Cass. “I had to guess at sizes, but I was trying for practical. Here, I’ll take your towels, I’m on wash tomorrow anyway.”

Cass accepted the clothes. She hesitated, embarrassed, before handing over the sodden towel and the washcloth, dingy from scrubbing the dirt from her skin. “I don’t want you to have to-”

“Don’t worry about her,” Nance said affectionately, tossing Sonja her own towels. “She’s a shitty laundress. She needs the practice.”

“Well, if I had something to work with besides creek water-”

“Yeah, yeah, cry me a river,” Gail laughed. “Sonja here was a designer at Nike, Before. She had like a million- dollar budget. A staff and a fancy office, and this chore stuff has been really hard for her.”

“Oh, right,” Sonja said, giving her a good-natured shove. “I had my own latte machine and a Jacuzzi in my bathroom. And a dozen male interns to go down on me under my desk during lunch, too.”

“Good times,” Nance said as they made their way back toward the building, relaxed and laughing, the sun sinking toward the tree line in a pool of molten orange.

Cass hung back, watching. She’d never had women friends. Never known what to say, how to breach the boundaries. But now, as she prepared to go into the unknown again, she suddenly wished she’d tried harder.

09

CASS DRESSED IN THE CLOTHES SONJA BROUGHT. The fabric was stiff from line drying and rasped against her scabs, even through the damp tank top, but Cass was so accustomed to the dull ache that she barely noticed.

Her wounds hurt almost unbearably when she first woke, but before long she was left with a dull, constant sensation that was as much numbness as pain. The disease, which had boosted her immunity before retreating, had clearly changed her sensitivity to pain, as well. Something to be grateful for.

The clothes smelled faintly of lavender. A soft jersey shirt that had belonged to another woman. Hiking pants that were new or nearly new, maybe nabbed from one of Silva’s several outdoorsman shops when the looting turned to general panic and then mass stockpiling.

The greatest luxury was a new pair of socks. Sammi had brought these to her in the small office where Cass had retreated to wait, after the bath. It was part of a warren of tiny rooms behind the old reception area, and Cass guessed it had once belonged to an administrator, a vice-principal or part-time nurse. There was no window, only a desk that had been pushed against the wall, a couple of chairs, an expanse of industrial carpeting still littered with staples and eraser dust and tiny paper circles from a hole punch. The detritus of human activity Before. The sight brought back a memory of the sound of a vacuum cleaner, and Cass realized she was moving her arm back and forth in the obsolete appliance’s once-familiar arc with a sense of longing. Even when she sat in the chair with her hands pressed tightly between her knees and her eyes closed, her mind was filled with a memory of the task, and it was almost like a forbidden thrill to envision making long, slow paths on the carpet, feeling the handle vibrate in her hand, the debris disappearing into the vacuum.

After a while, Sammi came, unannounced and furtive. The socks were rolled up and hidden in her pocket, the tags still attached. Men’s hiking socks, pale gray with an orange stripe knit into the band at the top. Sammi handed them over and shook her head impatiently when Cass protested that she couldn’t accept them.

“They’re for you. Besides, you can do something for me. If you ever get to Sykes, and if you meet my dad, tell him I’m okay,” she said. “His name is Dor. Doran MacFall.”

“Sammi…as soon as I get my daughter, I’m going to go to the safest place I can find. I’m sorry, but I can’t promise-”

“I’m not asking for a promise,” Sammi interrupted, impatiently. “Only, no one knows what’s going to happen anymore. No one knows the future. And maybe you’ll see him. I mean…you got this far, didn’t you? You were attacked, you got infected, you’re the only person I’ve ever seen who got better.”

Fear sluiced through Cass’s veins. “Sammi, I never really said-” she began, her mouth dry.

Sammi shrugged, but she held on to Cass’s gaze. “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. But your skin…I mean, that’s the way it starts. That and your eyes. They’re way too bright. Most people just don’t want to remember that anymore. I mean, now that they just kill anyone they suspect might be infected.”

“Wait-what?”

“Yeah, if someone’s even suspected, they’re shot. There’s like a special store of bullets for it and everything. They have these elections for who has to do it. Winner loses and has to kill the dude. Kids aren’t supposed to know,” Sammi added, shrugging, as if the absurdity of such a rule eluded her.

Back at the library, before Cass was attacked, those who were suspected of infection were rare enough-there was so little blueleaf left, and no one ate it on purpose-that Bobby ordered that they be kept in the old operations room, among the silent heating and air-conditioning equipment, until their future was clear. Other diseases brought on fever, after all, so you didn’t want to kill everyone. In the end, only one actual infected-a silent and red-faced old man who wore canvas coveralls-had stayed there during Cass’s time at the library. Even when he began pulling his hair out, tearing the skin of his scalp-even when his pupils had shrunk down so far that he couldn’t see Bobby and another man coming the day they hit him on the head and dragged him to the edge of town and left him there-even then he refused to admit he was infected. The old man’s speech had become a bit slurred, and that was the last of it for him.

“But…” Cass swallowed hard. “My arms…like you said.” It came out in a hoarse whisper as she covered the shiny, thin scars with her hands, unable to look.

“Yeah, but you act normal. You’re not feverish and you don’t talk crazy. Once they