Rebirth

He didn’t have the itch. Cass had pretended she’d obliterated the itch the first time she was sober, but that had been a hard lesson…pretending it away just weakened the dam and made room for the tiny rents that allowed it to make its insidious slow way back in. The itch was sneaky; it gained strength from the most unlikely sources. Self- doubt was manna. Shame was its lifeblood.

And there was the stupid part, the part Cass hated more than anything-the part that she would tell God, if there was a God, was a flaw in His design, unfair, counterintuitive, doomed: the genetic part. She still didn’t want to believe it was true, that she, her body, her family history might have been selected in the genetic lottery to betray herself. Some people just weren’t addicts, didn’t have the potential, couldn’t become one if they tried. Cass had learned to identify them only by learning to identify who they weren’t. She could spot an addict from across a room or a bus or a party, and gradually she figured out who didn’t have the itch.

Like Dor.

Cass sighed. This, of all the pointless places for her thoughts to go right now, was probably just about the most pointless. But there were ways to deal with that.

Of the many insipid-sounding A.A. catchphrases and acronyms, one of the most cloying had to be HALT-Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. If you were any of these, it was a signal to stop, take yourself out of circulation, get what you needed, treat yourself gently, rest. Come back strong.

And Aftertime, there couldn’t be a bigger joke. Hungry? The bioterrorists had pretty much set the stage for that, and while kaysev kept you alive, it never, ever completely satisfied you. Angry? Fucking kidding me? Lonely…well, Cass could teach a graduate seminar on lonely, on all its shades and flavors. And tired: everyone was tired, all the time. Deep, dreamless sleep had gone the way of hot showers and electric toothbrushes.

But there were still things she could do, things she should do. Things she had to do, if only for Ruthie. So Cass bit back whatever she had been about to say to Dor, and focused on breathing in and breathing out, and reminded herself to be grateful. For living another day.

For having her daughter with her.

For the meal they’d eaten, the sun on her face that afternoon.

She didn’t feel gratitude, but she knew that pretending was the next best thing. Fake it till you make it. And so she sat, trying to keep her body as still as her mind was unsettled, and faked it.

Dor seemed comfortable with the silence. He occasionally shifted, recrossing his ankles, rubbing a hand over his stubble or through his hair, but his breathing was deep and regular and he didn’t even seem to have to work at it. They were warm now, sharing the knitted comforter. Dor stretched and yawned, and his thigh touched hers, and she stayed very still, distracted from her thoughts, afraid to pull away lest he notice. But he didn’t seem to notice that their bodies were touching. In fact, he seemed like he might just drift off to sleep.

For a man who preferred his own company, he seemed remarkably at ease with her. He probably-no, make that definitely-would have preferred to come on this trip by himself, but he had been nothing but accommodating since they left San Pedro. Now, at the end of the day, he seemed as though he had made his peace with everything that had happened, an almost inconceivable notion.

It was like with the itch. Cass saw it, believed it, but couldn’t understand it. How could he see the things they’d seen today and not be marked by it? How could he not long to numb himself after nearly dying, after seeing what transpired in this house that was so bad? After taking men’s lives? How could he-and God help her, she hated the way the old sayings colored every thought she had, as though A.A. had seeped in and taken over every corner of her brain-just let it be?

“Back on the road today,” Cass said, her words coming out in a rush. “By the wreck. When you went inside the house. What did you find?”

Dor’s ink-black eyes shifted very slightly out of focus but otherwise he showed no reaction to her question. “You saw. The food, the medicine, the guns-it was all out pretty much in the open.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Dor shrugged slightly, but he said nothing and didn’t look at her.

“I want to know about the people,” Cass pressed. “How they were living, what they were doing in there. I heard the shots, you know.”

“I don’t want to tell you,” Dor said slowly. “It’s not that I think you can’t handle it. So don’t think that. It’s nothing worse than you’ve seen before. But it won’t help you in any way. Why ask me, when this is a chance for you to stay ignorant of one bad thing? Why not take that as a gift?”

Cass shook her head. “No. I-look at me, Dor, please look at me.” Wrong, wrong. But she couldn’t stop, couldn’t keep the words in. “I need to know everything. I need to feel everything. It’s the only way I can…”

The only way I can keep fighting the itch.

But of course, Dor didn’t speak that language and so didn’t know what she was talking about.

“I can handle it,” she said, changing tactics. “I…insist you tell me. We’re partners, and you need me, and I deserve a full accounting of everything that affects me.”

After considering her words for a moment Dor finally relented, but he didn’t look happy about it. “There were four of them. The two out front and another man and a woman. The men…were doing all right. The woman, not so much. I did what I had to do. I changed the balance, the way I thought was right. The worst of them are dead, and so help me, that’s all you need to know.”

“No. Everything.”

His eyes bored into hers and his expression darkened and smoldered. For a long time she thought he would storm from the room, his body tensed with furious energy, his breath coming ragged and hard, but he stayed, sitting rigid and miserable until he could manage to continue.

“All right, but I still think it’s a mistake. They were well supplied, not just the food but they had a lot of firewood stacked out back, and they had a little generator, too. They had gas out back in a couple big tubs. Looked like fifty gallons or more. They take it out of the cars that come by, I expect, siphoning it off after they kill everyone and drive the cars out back. You can see from the second floor windows, there’s more farther back in the woods. They’ve been at this for a while, Cass.”

Her head had started buzzing at the word kill. “How do you know? Maybe they let the people go, told them to head down the road, or they could have driven them farther down themselves, made them get out and-”

“No.” Dor’s voice was hard. “You wanted to know, so you’re going to know, but I’m not lying to you. Ever.”

Cass nodded, chastened.

“They kill them. The one inside told me.”

“Just like that? He just volunteered that up to you? Because-”

“He didn’t volunteer anything. After I shot him in the knee. I made him tell me a few things. And then after he told me, I shot him in the head.”

Cass thought about that. Counted.

“There were only two shots. What about the woman?”

“The woman, she wasn’t there by choice.”

“What do you mean, not by choice?”

“She was shackled to the bed in one of the bedrooms. They used metal cuffs that were too small and there was, she was bruised and cut, you know, the cuffs cut into her ankles but she had, her toenails were painted. Pink, I could still see the pink nail polish. She was…they took her from one of the cars. Do you understand what I’m telling you? She was young and if they hadn’t beaten her in the face I think she might have been pretty. They killed the ones she was traveling with and they kept her for themselves. They…used her.”

“Oh my God…”

“I made him tell me where the key was. To unlock her. It was the last thing he told me before I shot him in the head. I told him if he told me, I would let him go free. They kept the key on a hook by the front door, just like where you’d keep your car keys.”

The buzzing in Cass’s head grew louder, like flies, dozens of flies. The place behind her eyes hurt. Her mouth felt too dry to talk, but she had to ask.

“Wait-where is she? Was she hurt? Could she walk?”