Aftertime

She could respect Smoke’s desire for privacy. She knew well the need to keep to the shadows. So why did she want so much to know more?

11

THE ROAD INTO SILVA WOUND THROUGH MOSTLY unbuilt land, its cracked edges sloping into a rocky outcrop ping at the edge of the forest. The dead trees could not maintain their grip on the earth where the road carved its path, and their black roots bore clots of earth like hungry tumors. Pinecones from forgotten seasons lay crushed by cars that had long since stopped running.

They walked in silence.

Before, this land was shaded no matter what the season, the evergreens thick against the sky. Then the toxins had blanketed the land, and the trees shed their needles and withered in defeat, their xylem choked and strangled, their bark black and peeling. The sun bore down on the ravaged earth during the day; at night, as now, even the moonlight reached all the way to the earth, covering everything with a frisson of silver.

Here and there a cabin was set back among the few remaining trees, mostly hunting cabins built decades ago, before the Sierras were discovered by city types looking for vacation homes with easier drives than Tahoe. In some, curtains hung neatly in the windows, cheery ruffles and valences hinting at brisk, no-nonsense women with feather dusters and oil soap. In others, the panes were broken, and window boxes hung askew, spilling dirt and dead flowers to the indifferent ground.

When they rounded a bend and Cass saw the familiar glass shop that shared a parking lot with a fireplace and hot tub store, her pulse quickened. Now she knew exactly where she was. Around the next bend, small frame houses would give way to larger ones. And then the strip mall with the KFC and the Orchard Supply Hardware. Another half mile took you to the city offices, including the old town hall with the basement where Cass had attended hundreds of A.A. meetings.

A few blocks from that was the library.

Suddenly Cass wasn’t sure she was ready.

“You know where you are now,” Smoke said. “You all right?”

She swallowed hard, staring across the parking lot at the ruined businesses. There were cars in the lot, but their tires had been slashed, their windshields bashed in. It was shocking, the way nearly everything had ended up in ruins during the final weeks of the Siege. Some said America had been lucky: while the country struggled with outages and dwindling resources, Canberra reported they’d run out of potable water and Seoul’s citizens lay sightless and bleeding from their ears in the streets, victims of a last plague attack that no one bothered to claim. And still, across the U.S., citizens raged and rampaged. Brooklyn saw twelve thousand die in the East Water Riots. The senselessness of it amazed Cass-how a car that was of no use to anyone now that fuel was impossible to find was attacked and ravaged until it was a heap of steel and fiberglass, every part of it assaulted and broken.

But equally surprising was the care people took in other ways, the attention they gave the smallest or most unimportant details, gestures made all the more poignant because of the unlikelihood that anyone would ever appreciate them.

The glass shop’s windows were gone, the interior open to the elements, and even in the near darkness Cass could see desks overturned, computers lying on the floor. But next door, Groat Fireplace and Spa was shuttered up tight, the blinds drawn in the front door, the patio table and chairs stacked and covered.

And there was the neat pyramid of smooth stones piled in front of the door.

No one knew how the stone piles started, but before long everyone knew what they meant: there were dead inside. Bodies that had been left because of panic about contamination, or because they had reached a stage of decomposition that made it hard to move them easily, or simply because there wasn’t time-and now, with the threat of attack weighing heavy on every raiding party, there was never time-when citizens entered a house and found the dead, the piles of stones were a respectful gesture as well as giving notice to others who might come along. If the unlikely day ever came when it was possible to clear the buildings, to give the deceased a proper burial, then the stones could be returned to the fields and creeks and flower beds they came from.

Next to the pile of stones was a second form, difficult to make out in the moonlight. “What is that…?” Cass said, pointing.

“Oh, that-a pot, I think.”

“What, like a cooking pot?”

“Yes…I guess you didn’t- It’s a new thing, a way to tell people that there’s nothing left inside worth taking. No food, no provisions. The raiders started doing that as a way to show people when a house had been emptied of anything useful. It caught on fast.”

“But why a pot?”

Smoke shrugged. “Why anything? Why not a shoe or a lamp or…you know how it is. Nobody knows how these things start. Maybe a pot because it symbolizes a kitchen and food, and it’s mostly food that you want in a raid. Well, food and medicine I guess. Maybe just because they’re sturdy and will hold up to the elements. Does it matter?”

“So that means…someone’s been in there, looking for stuff. You guys?”

“I don’t know. Us, or the fire station people, or even some of the squatters.”

“Squatters?”

“It’s what they’re-what everyone’s calling people who stayed in houses.”

“Even if it was their own houses?”

“Yeah, I know, but that’s what they call them. Not in a shelter, you’re squatting.”

They passed the little clump of buildings and reached another bend in the road. Around the corner the road sloped down again and widened, sidewalks lining the street where the ranchers and foursquare houses were lined up neatly.

“Are there squatters here?” Cass asked, her stomach turning with unease. “In these houses?”

“Last time I came this way, yes, there were,” Smoke said. “We’ve mostly been going over toward Terryville when we go raiding. There’s a group sheltering there in the mall, but they’ve had a hard time with security. Our location’s good, I think-not so many Beaters since they like to stay in towns. The school’s just rural enough that we don’t see as many of them. At least, not until very recently.”

“Do you know which houses have people in them?” Cass asked.

Smoke looked along the row. They were walking in the middle of the street, their steps echoing slightly. “I wish I could tell you. Obviously, not the ones with the stone piles. And not like that.” He pointed at a house whose garage door had been crumpled inward by a pickup truck that was still parked there at an odd angle, back tires digging into the front lawn. A big picture window had been shattered and furniture and lamps were strewn across the front porch.

“Maybe…there,” he said, pointing at a square brick house that looked relatively unscathed, drapes drawn tight in all the windows.

Cass wondered if there were people inside, sleeping with blades next to the bed, guarding against attack, waiting for the sound of scratching at the door and windows, the moaning and frantic whining when a Beater caught the scent. She wondered what kind of person would prefer living with all that fear and uncertainty rather than sharing it with others in a shelter.

But Cass knew the answer. She knew exactly what kind of person would make such a choice- she would. Before Ruthie, before she had something she loved enough to keep on living, she would have dealt with evil by standing firm and alone against it. Even if-especially if- she knew it was a losing proposition, one that was sure to get her killed.

Cass wondered where the Beaters were nesting these days. Before she was taken, they had favored places that were open to the air but sheltered, like carports and stores with the front windows broken out. They slept a lot; it had seemed that they slept as much as half the day away, not that they ever seemed to achieve a very deep sleep.

There was a group from the library who spied on them at night. Miranda, before she was taken, had gone along