“But nobody would-no sane person would eat the blueleaf now,” Cass protested. She was something of an expert on self-destruction, and in A.A. she’d seen just about every variety of desperation, but surely no one would choose the Beater’s fate on purpose.
Lyle shrugged. “That’s not the only way it’s spread.”
“Anyone who’s attacked now ends up dead in forty-eight hours,” Smoke said, almost angrily. “It’s not like early days.”
Early days, when the Beaters would occasionally attack their quarry in the streets, they could be overpowered-shot or cut or bludgeoned, if not to death at least into submission-and the victims brought home with a few bites, only to start to go feverish hours later. Soon the Beaters changed their tactics and started carrying their victims back to their nests.
“You’re sure about that?” Lyle asked. “What if they get close, but you get away? Maybe you got a scratch or two, but you think you’re okay. You going to be willing to wait and wonder?”
“It’s only spread through saliva,” Smoke said. “A scratch can’t hurt you. And their blood can’t infect you.”
“You gonna stake your life on it? Only, it wouldn’t be your life, now would it…it’s everyone who gets left behind. Lemme show you something.”
He dug into his pocket and showed them his open palm, on which they could see a small brown pill. “Potassium cyanide,” he said matter-of-factly. “Got it from a buddy of mine was in the service, he picked ’em up overseas somewhere. Gave one to Travers across the street. If the Beaters get too close to me someday, I’ll pop this sucker-I’ll be out of my mind before those fuckers get their teeth in me, dead quick enough to spoil their party.”
“That’s noble, I guess,” Smoke said, in a tone that clearly said otherwise.
“Hey, I never claimed to have all the answers,” Lyle said, holding up his hands in surrender. “But if there’s even a chance I could end up being a carrier or something, if there’s Beater blood messing up my DNA, I’d rather be dead than accidentally spit on someone. I mean, I’ve heard the same things you have. About the spit being the only way. But let me ask you something, how exactly can anyone be sure since there hasn’t been any research done since long before the first Beater took its first bite?”
No one spoke for a moment, and then Lyle dropped his hands and gave a crooked smile. “Aw, don’t listen to me. I’m just a dumbass making the best of it out here in the trenches. I didn’t mean to pick any fights, either. Truth is, I’m glad for the company. Don’t know about you, but I believe I’ll turn in for a while. I hardly ever sleep a night through anymore, but I get a few hours now, then a few hours in the afternoon… Anyway, let me show you where you can bunk up.”
He was already on his feet, closing the cover on his stash and setting the Tupperware box on a shelf next to a box marked Christmas Decorations.
What he’d said… Cass reeled from the horror of the possibility that she carried within her the seeds of the disease, that she could infect others. But she would know, her body would tell her. She had become a scholar of her own body, fine-tuned to its needs, the cycle of craving and release and addiction and recovery. She knew exactly when her period was coming, when a tendril of pain would bloom into a full-blown headache, when a twinge signaled a simple muscle pull and when it was something more serious.
If the poison was within her she’d know.
Wouldn’t she?
14
SMOKE OFFERED CASS HIS HAND, AND SHE allowed him to help her out of the old chair. They followed Lyle up the basement stairs. At the landing he turned and said regretfully, “I think we’d better leave the light here. I don’t like to get ’em riled up at night. They keep thumpin’ and scratchin’ at the walls if they see lights on in here, makes it hard to sleep.”
He set the flashlight on the landing and led them back down the first floor hall, up the steps to the second floor, where moonlight seeped through the windows.
“This is me,” Lyle said, pointing to the room they’d come through earlier, when he rescued them. “Y’all take the guest room there. It’s got a nice queen bed.”
“Oh, we’re not-” Cass said, realizing he meant for them to sleep together. Then she shut her mouth, embarrassed. There were only two rooms, separated by a small bathroom.
“I’ll take the floor,” Smoke said.
“I didn’t mean to make assumptions, but you got a shot at a bed here, why not take it?” Lyle said. “Might as well get a good night’s rest when you can.”
“It’s all right,” Cass said. “I mean, we can share. It’s just…”
Just nothing, just a man and woman, exhausted from fear and adrenaline. No doubt they’d be out the minute they hit the bed. There was nothing suggestive or sexual about it.
Aftertime was about needs. Basic necessities. Social conventions had long since disappeared. Two people could share a pail of water, or a can of peas, or a bed and it meant nothing more than survival-another day or hour or minute on a planet that had grown increasingly inhospitable.
“There’s a bucket in the bathroom,” Lyle said. “I wish I could offer you better. I clean it out every day, though, and I keep a stack of clean rags in there. I wash ’em down at the creek. I’ve never been the best housekeeper, but I guess it’ll do.”
“Thank you,” Smoke said. “Seriously, man. I’m sorry I got a little testy with you back there-”
Lyle held up a hand to stop him. “No worries, my friend. I reckon all our nerves are shot to hell. I’m honored to have you. Y’all take first shift in the john if you want-I’ll be up for a while.”
Cass went first. After, she rested her hands on the sink and gazed at the mirror. She could see very little in the moonlight-but it was the first time she’d seen her reflection at all.
Her face was smooth, unmarked. Her lips were dry and chapped, but there were no signs that she’d chewed them. She felt a faint stirring of hope-maybe she’d recovered before she got really bad. Before…she’d had a chance to do anything reprehensible.
She touched her cheeks with her fingertips, tentatively. She was lucky not to have been bitten there. Whatever it was-
Cass’s hands went automatically to the small of her back, the wounds she could reach. Near her tailbone was a raw patch where, as far as she could tell, a section of skin about four inches long had been ripped away. When she first woke, her exploring fingers touched something wet and the pain was unbearable, and it had been days before she could stand to touch herself again.
The Beaters loved only flesh. Skin. They did not eat muscle or sinew or bone, and they chewed sections of flesh free and then peeled them away, their jaw strength magnified by the disease and by their furious hunger. For that reason the wounds they made tended to be elongated, shreds and strips peeled away. Of course, when they were done it didn’t matter, since they feasted until little was left. Skinned, but otherwise intact, their victims were left alive and in agony, their deaths hours or days away. They died in the throes of the fever, but at least they never lived long enough to turn into monsters.
But Cass’s attackers had presumably been interrupted. How, and by whom, she had no idea. Still, she was grateful that the Beaters had time to tear only a half-dozen holes in her back, from the base of her spine to her shoulder blades.
She pulled her shirt over her shoulders and slowly turned until she could see her back in the mirror, dreading her reflection, but the wounds weren’t the festering and oozing things she feared they would be. They were healing, regrowing flesh where it had been taken. In the mirror they seemed to glisten, pale layers of skin filming over the red and raw underlayers.
Cass realized she had been holding her breath and turned back, pulling on her shirt as she exhaled slowly. Her hair, soft from its recent shampoo, stuck out in jagged clumps where Smoke had sheared it off, but at least it didn’t look like she’d pulled it out herself. She looked a little like a punk rocker from thirty years earlier-her mother’s time,
