Aftertime

She removed a key from the key chain around her neck. “You understand that I don’t want to get too close, not being the Chosen One. You do the honors, Cassandra-open up, and shut the door behind you. And just so you know, Brenda’s a hell of a shot.”

Cass had only seconds left. She scanned the line of silent children one more time, searching for Ruthie.

I’m coming for you, she thought, and then she took the key from Hannah’s hand.

42

BRENDA HAD SLIPPED ON A MASK AND GLOVES and stepped up to the cage brandishing the shock baton Monica had been stunned with. Stretching out strategically, to be as far away as possible from the thing, she pushed the baton through the bars and jammed it against the creature’s shoulder blades. It twitched and screamed and fell to the floor, spasming in pain.

“Now,” Hannah ordered. Cass fitted the key to the lock with shaking fingers, trying not to look at the form shuddering on the floor of the cart only a few feet away. “Get inside or Brenda will shoot.”

But there was one thing that Hannah couldn’t know. In the split second after Cass slid the key into the cage door’s padlock, she whispered Ruthie’s name, and all the months of longing and guilt and grief twisted into one fine strand and pulled taut inside her. She opened the cage door, put one foot inside, glanced at the wrecked abomination writhing on the floor and then she did the one thing that even she would never have guessed she was capable of: she prayed, she called out to God and in one word asked His indulgence, asked for one more day one more hour one more minute with her daughter in her arms

please

and she seized Hannah’s wrist and she pulled with everything she had and Hannah grunted and stumbled and she never saw it coming and she tripped and fell and there was Cass, Cass who had willed herself stronger than five women, Cass whose body had spurned and rejected disease, Cass who flung Hannah like a used and dirtied rag into the cage and then slammed the door shut and jammed the padlock back into place and flung the key in a spinning sparkling arc through the gilded sun of Aftertime until it disappeared far down the field, landing in a planter box of golden poppies the likes of which no one ever expected to see again.

The Beater was getting slowly to its hands and feet, foam and spit wetting its screaming mouth, as it crawled toward Hannah.

Cass turned away in time to see Brenda swinging the electric prod through the air toward her, but she dodged out of the way. Before she could recover her balance Cass slammed into her hard and Brenda fell, landing on the baton and screaming as it delivered its jolting energy into her body. Cass stomped on her jerking hand and she screamed harder.

Women shouted and guards fought their way through the crowd toward her, and Cass knew she had only seconds.

She scrambled up on stage, where the children had stopped singing and were clutching their caregivers and each other in fear. Monica leaned against the post, her eyes rolled up in her head, and Cass couldn’t tell if she was even conscious, her mouth swelling into a grotesque clown’s visage. A guard broke through the front of the crowd and Cass steeled herself for the shot but the woman stumbled and went down as the congregation surged around her, all the other women trying to get close enough to see the excitement. A few rows back, those pushing into the aisles surged over each other, trampling the ones who fell. There was a sound of a gunshot and one of the nearest acolytes fell to the ground, a red stain blooming on her shirt.

The children’s caretakers were trying to herd them down the steps but the growing chaos slowed them down, the girls clutching each other in fear. And still none of them made a sound. Cass pushed through the line toward the back of the platform and there she was, the woman who’d carried Ruthie, crouched at the back edge, as though she was about to jump. It was at least a dozen feet down but she looked scared enough to do it-but where was Ruthie?

Cass fell to her knees beside the woman, grabbed her arm, shook her. “Where is she?” she demanded, but the woman fought her, scuttling sideways out of reach. “Where-”

The woman jumped, the sound of a bone breaking followed by screaming and she lay on her side, her leg bent unnaturally. A second woman jumped, narrowly missing the first, though she was luckier; she managed to get to her feet and staggered away, limping.

All through the stadium women panicked. Some crawled under tables. Some crowded the exits to the stands, pushing and shoving to get out. The platform’s stairs were jammed with children, and Cass glimpsed a guard trying to find a shot at her between them. She glimpsed a hand clawing at the bars of the cage, but whether it was Hannah’s or the Beater’s, she was too far away to tell.

Cass crawled behind the line of children, their white dresses making a billowing wall. Two of the oldest girls picked up the younger ones to carry them to safety, and suddenly Cass saw Ruthie crouched down next to Monica, her small hand on Monica’s ruined face as though trying to fix it.

Cass threw herself the last few feet and swept Ruthie into her arms. Monica stirred, her eyes rolling back in her head. “Monica, you have to move!” Cass screamed, hooking her free hand under Monica’s arm. Monica stumbled to her feet and nearly fell again. Cass wrapped an arm around her waist and dragged her toward the stairs. The last of the children, and the one or two adults who had not abandoned them in the melee, were descending the steps, leaving them alone and exposed, Monica stumbling against her as though she was drunk.

Cass scanned the exits, knowing that it would be next to impossible to get there in time, especially as she saw a guard edging around the Beater cage and another sprinting along the edge of the crowd toward her. Cass froze at the top of the stairs. The minute the children were out of the way, the guards would shoot, and she couldn’t risk Ruthie’s life-but she couldn’t leave Monica behind, either.

The air cracked with gunfire and Monica slumped against her. Cass looked down to see a jagged hole in Monica’s throat beginning to fill with blood and knew the impossible decision had been made for her.

She hitched Ruthie up tightly against her as Monica’s body slumped at her feet. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, bending to touch Monica’s cheek, already clammy and lifeless. Then she ran to the back of the platform, hunched low, as the guards fired again and again. On the ground below, the injured woman was curled over her shattered leg, rocking with pain, but Cass didn’t hesitate. She hit the ground at a tuck and rolled twice, shielding Ruthie as well as she could with her body. The turf scratched and burned her skin and she didn’t care, and she came up running.

The move had bought her a mere second or two but she made the most of them, joining the crowds rushing for the edge of the field. Unlike the others, who fought to get to the safety of the corridors, Cass broke away at the last minute and slipped behind the planters lined up along the long side of the field. She pried Ruthie from her neck and pushed her through the bars separating the stands from the field, and then swung herself up, arms burning with the effort, and levered her body between the bars.

Ruthie’s eyes shone with unspilled tears. She raised her arms to be picked up and Cass swung her up and ran, her feet pounding the metal benches as she zigzagged her way up the stands, eyes on the skyboxes, running as fast as she ever had, knowing no one could catch her now.

43

THROUGH THE SKYBOX, INTO THE STAIRWELL, down the stairs, careening off the walls rather than slowing to take the turns, and then she was in the anteroom. She didn’t recognize either of the guards, who gaped at her and reached for their weapons as she burst into the room. The sounds from inside the stadium were muffled here, but she could make out voices and screaming and more gunshots.

“There’s been an accident!” Cass panted, out of breath, her arms aching from carrying Ruthie. “The Beaters got