Aftertime

on the paper until Cass nodded again.

When she reached for the pencil, Elaine didn’t stop her. Cass wrote with a trembling hand, her fingers slick on the pencil.

RUTHIE??

Elaine looked at the paper, and then at Cass for a long moment-too long.

And Cass knew, even before Elaine shook her head.

Cass felt her knees start to go weak, her heart constricting with a sharp ache. A cry escaped her lips, a truncated sound of grief, and Elaine reached for her before she could fall. Cass didn’t resist, couldn’t resist, her vision fluttering, and when Elaine pressed her face close and whispered in her ear she almost didn’t hear.

“She’s alive. Get your shit together or you won’t be able to help her.”

Cass staggered back, adrenaline surging through her body. She clawed at her shorn hair, ground the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, took a breath. Where, she mouthed, but Elaine looked away.

“Your shirt, please. Turn out the pockets.”

Cass started unbuttoning the shirt, a dozen thoughts racing through her head. Ruthie alive-but not here. The library taken over by Rebuilders. People taking up arms, not against the Beaters, but against one another. Smoke, involved in things she didn’t understand.

She took off the shirt, turning out the pockets as Elaine had asked. There had to be a way to find out more. She handed over the shirt and reached for the pencil again, but Elaine stopped her.

“Come on,” she said briskly. “Quit wasting time. Get the rest of your clothes off.”

But she started to write again, and Cass stripped off her pants as she worked.

“Okay, socks, too, and hand me your shoes.”

Cass did as she was told, then hesitated. “Can I keep my…” She pointed at her underwear; she already felt almost unbearably exposed.

Elaine nodded. “Yes, but take your undershirt off. You can keep your bra on.”

So she was going to have to reveal herself, her wounds. Well, they wouldn’t be any surprise to Elaine: she had been there on the last day, she’d seen it all, even the part Cass couldn’t remember. Elaine and a woman named Barbara had been chatting inside the open door that day when Cass and Ruthie went down the path-only a little way down the path!-to enjoy the spring sunshine. Elaine and Barbara had screamed when the Beaters appeared out of nowhere…

Maybe Elaine could tell her what happened, after Cass’s memories went blank. Slowly, she lifted the shirt over her head. And then she turned, letting Elaine see.

She heard Elaine gasp, and then silence. After a moment she turned back around. Elaine stared at her with wide eyes, her face gone pale. She picked up the piece of paper and handed it over, then turned her attention to the rest of Cass’s clothes, busied herself going through them, searching the seams and pockets.

RUTHIE WAS SAVED BUT WE SENT HER TO THE CONVENT WHEN THE REBUILDERS CAME WITH THE REST OF THE GIRLS

I WILL TRY TO KEEP YOU SAFE BUT YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME

Cass read the words twice, a third time. Ruthie was saved. Ruthie was saved.

But there were more questions, so many more questions. She held out her hand for the pencil, but Elaine shook her head and handed her clothes back, taking the piece of paper from Cass.

“Okay, get dressed,” she said.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” Cass asked, as Elaine tore the paper in half, then in half again and again.

“Same as every other newcomer,” Elaine says. “You’ll be processed.”

In moments she had a pile of tiny shreds. She scooped them carefully into her hands, and dropped them into a toilet that was clogged with debris floating in murky water.

As Elaine led her from the bathroom, Cass remembered the sound of a toilet’s flush, a homely sound that she had heard a million times in her life, but would never hear again.

18

THEY LET THEM STAY, BUT ONLY AFTER THE tribunal.

Cass followed Elaine through empty halls past the conference room, and Cass glimpsed lists and maps and machine diagrams tacked on the walls where there had once been children’s drawings. She saw Smoke sitting at the large conference table next to a heavyset man in a camo-printed shirt; Elaine saw where Cass was looking and nodded briskly. “That’s Skiv,” she said. “He’ll make your case. He’ll advocate for you.”

Cass wanted to ask what the hell they needed an advocate for, and how a total stranger could possibly do the job, but she was caught off guard by the transformation of the conference room. When she lived here, they had pushed the table against a wall, moved the chairs to the edges, and used the center of the room as a play area for the children, a place where parents could relax and share child care. Now the windows had been partially covered, only the top third exposed to let light in the room, and the furniture had been centered in the room once again. One end of the table had been set up with pads of paper and pens and a coffee cup arranged with military precision. Smoke and the man named Skiv sat at the other end. Smoke’s hands were out of sight, under the table, and Cass wondered if they were bound.

Elaine led her to one of the small windowless offices down the hall from the conference room. “Take a good look around,” she said, “because when I lock the door you won’t have any light.”

“You’re locking me in?”

“It’s the procedure,” Elaine said. “Don’t worry. It’s standard. Everyone who comes here from outside, even if they’re known to someone here, they have to stay in these rooms until they figure out what to do with them.”

“What to do with them?”

“Whether they can stay…whether they support the Rebuilders.” She shook her head, a very small motion that held a warning.

“What exactly are the Rebuilders?” she demanded in a fierce whisper.

“Hasn’t Smoke told you? He’s, like…” The look that passed over Elaine’s face was part incredulity and part admiration, but she frowned and glared into the sparsely furnished room. “His actions against the Rebuilders are well-known.”

She wasn’t going to give Cass any information. It seemed unlikely, but maybe others were listening, even here. Cass entered the small room and did as Elaine told her, looking around and trying to memorize the room’s features. A mattress on the carpeted floor, made up with relatively clean linens and a pillow. A bucket. A plastic jug of water pushed into a far corner, where she wouldn’t trip over it and spill it. The walls were bare, but there were holes in the drywall where pictures or bulletin boards had once hung, and Cass had a flash-memory of a cheerful space decorated with pictures of a laughing family, a dog with a Frisbee, a plaque decorated with flowers and the words Blessed Are the Poor In Spirit.

“It’s like I never lived here at all,” she said softly, touching a gash in the drywall where something had been ripped free.

Elaine handed back her pack. “I kept the can opener, and your blades,” she said. “But you’ll get them back when you leave, assuming…well, you know.”

She left the room, and while Cass waited for the click of the lock and the light to disappear, she wondered what her alternatives were. It sounded like being released, sent out to fend for themselves, was the best she and Smoke could hope for. But first, she had to find out what, and where, this Convent was.

She turned it over in her mind, trying to remember if there was anything in the mountains that could be called a convent. There were churches, a Catholic elementary school…and why would they have sent the girls away? What threat did the Rebuilders pose for children?

There were too many questions. Cass needed to talk to Smoke. Maybe he knew what Elaine was talking about.