Aftertime

down the street, only they ain’t got any balance and it’s just dumpin’ shit out and then they stop and try to put it back in. Best entertainment I’ve had for weeks, I’ll tell ya, watching those two assclowns. Finally they just left the whole mess next door in my old neighbor Bess’s yard, right in the flower beds. Oh, that old bitch woulda loved that, I’ll tell you.”

Lyle chuckled, a deep satisfied sound that amazed Cass. He genuinely seemed amused by what was just one more chronicle of how horrifying the world had become. Cass wondered how he did it…surely a little weed wasn’t the only answer. If it was, she’d happily light up.

If she thought drinking would help, she’d go right back to it.

Only she knew better. Drinking had taken away her pain, for a while. But it hadn’t given her anything back but emptiness. And if she ever wanted emptiness that badly again, she’d just kill herself, hang herself from a light fixture in an abandoned house or slide a blade into the soft flesh of her wrist. It wasn’t like she’d be the first.

“But you said they’re stalking you, here,” Smoke said. “Like they keep track of which houses have squatters. They’re not just responding to catching a scent or seeing movement through the glass or…”

“Oh, for sure. Ain’t any doubt about that.”

“That’s no good,” Smoke said heavily.

“Hell, no, it ain’t. It’s fucked, is what it is.”

“So they’ve got some sort of memory. And planning. I mean even if it’s just rudimentary.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. It’s like they’re all in on it, figuring out how they can work together. They’ll do anything if there’s a chance they can bring down a live citizen. They’ll bang their heads into a wall until they’re dead, long as the wall gives way even a little bit. And after one does it, the rest figure out if you bang on the wall long enough it’ll break, and then next time it’s all of ’em bangin’ their heads. They’re fuckin’ unstoppable.”

“Yeah, that’s a bit newish, but still different from, you know, waiting for you to come out.”

Lyle shrugged. “I figure waiting around probably feels about like head-banging to them. Sometimes I go up to the window upstairs and holler at them just to watch them get all pissed off. They’ll throw themselves at the house for a while, climb on top of each other trying to get to the top windows-the lower ones are all boarded up now. One time I pushed a dresser out the window on one of ’em, broke its skull clean in half.” He chuckled. “Good times…’Course I had to drag it away later myself.”

“How do you…” Cass gestured around the basement. The shelves were well stocked with supplies: cans and boxes of food, paper towels and toilet paper. “I mean, what do you, um-”

“What do I do all day?” Lyle chuckled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. “Fair question. Well, I go out every single day. I don’t aim to let the fuckers keep me cooped up. I mean, I ain’t crazy, I usually go right after nightfall or right before dawn, you hardly ever see one of ’em out then. It’s about four blocks to the Horseshoe, so that’s a big feature of my day, ’cause I take four or five jugs with me.”

The Horseshoe was a branch of the Stanislaus River that wound through town. A walking path had been laid several years back, and young mothers with strollers brought stale bread for their kids to feed the ducks, Before. Cass had taken Ruthie there when she was a baby.

“So what else,” Lyle continued, ticking his activities off on his thick fingers. “Well, I go poking around in folks’ sheds and garages and whatnot, see if I can find anything useful. And I been digging a new latrine…over in Bess’s backyard, in fact. Dug it right next to those fuckin’ roses she was so damn nuts over. If I had a nickel for every time she came over here to bitch and moan about my tree dropping plums on her rosebushes…and she had a yappy little dog, too, but luckily she took it with her when she moved on down to the library. Though I suppose someone’s made dogburgers out of it by now.”

Cass exchanged a glance with Smoke. When she’d been at the library, there had been a no-pets policy. Bobby had been firm on that; resources were to go to humans. Anyone who didn’t like it could try their luck living on their own, outside, with their dog or cat.

Bess had undoubtedly given up her dog in exchange for safety; everyone did. Some of the most hard-core people thought that all animals brought to the library ought to be relinquished for food, but in that regard Bobby showed one of his infrequent moments of public compassion. He himself would offer to take the pet to the edge of town, where dogs could join the feral pack sometimes seen scavenging there, and cats could climb the shredded bark of dead eucalyptus.

“Were you married…? I mean, were you living alone during the Siege?” Cass asked, fascinated.

“No, luckily my last wife took on out of here a couple of years ago, back when you could still buy a bag of flour for under ten bucks. Better for her, I imagine. She hooked up with this guy from Sacramento, had a boat dealership up that way, I expect he was able to set her up pretty well, maybe take care of her during…everything. Hope so, anyway.”

For the first time a troubled look crossed his face, a flicker of sadness. “I was fond of that one,” he added softly.

Smoke shook his head, smiling. “Well, my hat’s off to you, keeping yourself busy. I can think of worse ways to spend the apocalypse.”

“This ain’t the apocalypse, buddy, we already done lived through that,” Lyle exclaimed, smacking Smoke on the shoulder and bellowing out a laugh. “We’re the survivors, man. You got to remember that. Don’t know how much longer we’ll be around, but every day I walk outside and I give those hell-creatures a big fuck you and I figure I’m still ahead.”

“You know what some people say,” Smoke said, his voice oddly hollow. “Stamp out the blueleaf, we can end this in one generation. I haven’t seen any sign of it since late June. It can’t survive the heat.”

“I’ve seen it,” Cass said. “Not nearly as much as…before, and it’s kind of dry and there’s dead leaves on the plants, but it’s out there.”

Smoke stared at her, his brows knit, his expression opaque. It was almost as though he was trying to decide if she was lying.

“If it’s out there, it won’t be for long,” he finally said. “They were invented in a lab. Kaysev’s thriving, blueleaf isn’t-what that says to me is the blueleaf’s not going to stand up to evolution.”

“Careful, friend,” Lyle said gently. “You’re back into theories now, and ain’t any knowing when it comes to theories. You’ll drive yourself crazy, you go down that path.”

“All I’m saying is, you make shit in laboratories, it’s probably pretty easy to get it wrong. People aren’t God.”

“Or else the blueleaf will develop a resistance,” Cass said. She didn’t like the edge in Smoke’s voice. It made him seem more vulnerable. “Evolve into a new strain, a stronger one. A super-blueleaf.”

“Super-blueleaf?” Smoke repeated, his voice laced with sarcasm. “That a technical term?”

Cass pressed her lips together, stung. This was a side of Smoke she hadn’t seen before, an unkind side.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I’m sorry, Cass, I didn’t mean that. I just…I don’t know, I didn’t think first.”

Cass waited only a second before she nodded, biting her lip. Maybe he was right, maybe the blueleaf was already dying out.

Blue Means Trouble. That was the frantic cry that went up around town, even before anyone understood the full horror of the disease. In the first weeks after the smaller, blue-tinged plants appeared among the sturdier kaysev, a quarter of the town’s remaining population died, dark bile bubbling at their lips as they went into convulsions. The old and sick and very young had to be buried in trenches; the last of the fuel that hadn’t already been raided went to powering the earth-moving equipment, and nearly every healthy young person helped out with the task.

Then they found out what else the blue leaves did to you.

Blue Means Trouble. The children who survived learned to run screaming for an adult when they saw the distinctive leaves with their slightly feathered edges; the adults learned to gather and burn the plants. The blueleaf strain was susceptible to the sun and heat, unlike its stronger cousin; by late May it had begun to die off on its own, unable to tolerate the Sierra summer climate.

“You’re right,” Lyle nodded. “Nobody’s seen a one of them things since summer ’round here. But how do we know they’re not thriving up north? Even if it can’t root down south now, what’s to prevent it from adapting, like Cass here says? The government’s been up to some crazy shit-you can’t tell me kaysev’s not a whole new branch of botany or whatever the fuck science it is. You can make a plant like that, you can make a fucking variation for every climate.”