Rebirth

“Okay, your turn, noodle,” the woman said, dropping her comb in a tall bottle of antiseptic. “Looks like someone’s already given you a pretty haircut.”

She reached for Ruthie’s pale blond hair, finally long enough that it no longer stuck up like an overgrown crew cut-but when she touched the strands Ruthie ducked and made a tiny mewling sound. It took Cass a second to react-she’d been lulled by the warmth of her momentary happiness but gathered Ruthie in a tight hug as the little girl wrapped her arms around her neck and held on tight. The woman held up her hands defensively.

“I’m sorry,” Cass said. “She, um, she had a…something happened.”

The woman nodded and her irritation softened. Something happened-the catchall explanation Aftertime. Who was left who hadn’t been wounded, who hadn’t suffered some kind of trauma? Children’s feelings were so close to the surface; they had fewer memories of Before, fewer years to learn to hide their feelings.

Only, Cass didn’t know what exactly had happened to Ruthie to make her so skittish about her hair. Since she was rescued from the Convent, Ruthie was as affectionate as ever with Cass, wanting to be held more than ever before, crawling up on her lap, lifting her arms to be picked up. At night she often stumble-crawled from her small bed to theirs, making her way up and under the covers without ever waking. She liked to be hugged and tickled and snuggled, but she hated to have her hair combed, and once in a while she covered her head with her hands and shut her eyes and looked so sorrowful that it broke Cass’s heart.

She knew they had shaved Ruthie’s head in the Convent, but she didn’t know why. Punishment? Religious ritual? While she kept up a one-way conversation with her daughter all day long, pretending that it didn’t bother her at all when Ruthie didn’t answer, she never talked about the Convent other than to kneel down in front of Ruthie at least once a week and remind her that she could tell her mama anything, anytime, that she would never ever be in trouble for the things she told. It was a lesson from a book she had once owned, something pressed in her hands by a well-meaning woman in A.A. the week after Cass had finally talked about what her stepfather had done to her. The book was called It’s Okay To Tell and it was supposed to teach you how to deal with children who had been victims of abuse.

Offering the book was breaking the rules-in A.A. you were never supposed to give advice and Cass was pretty sure that the book was just another form of advice. Cass thought the advice rule was stupid-after all, what was the point of coming to meetings if no one was allowed to tell you what you were doing wrong? The woman was a fortyish, bloated blonde who seemed entirely without color, from her bloodless lips to her pale, cloudy eyes to her mud-colored clothing. She had pressed the book in Cass’s hands and then held her gaze a moment too long, and Cass started to get uneasy. The woman wanted something from Cass, something Cass didn’t know how to give-to be understood, to have someone acknowledge how she’d been hurt, to offload even a little of her pain. They stood that way for a second, each of them holding one end of the book, until Cass mumbled her thanks and yanked it from the woman’s hands and bolted from the building.

She’d driven to a grocery store that was open all night and parked under the streetlights and read the first chapter. She couldn’t put the woman’s hungry expression out of her mind. When she couldn’t stand to read any more, she opened the door of her car and leaned out, her hair brushing the ground, and slid the book behind the front tire. She closed her door and backed over the book, then drove ahead and back over it a second time, before driving home with her hands shaking on the wheel, not understanding what had happened. She never went back to that meeting.

But she remembered that first chapter. “Silence is toxic,” was the title. It talked about shame and “interrupting the message,” and so all this time later she knelt before Ruthie and said it was okay to tell, that her mother would always listen and never judge, that she was the most beautiful and loved little girl in the world, perfect in her mother’s and-she felt only a little self-conscious about saying it-in God’s eyes, as well.

“Well, you’re all done here,” the woman said now, bringing Cass back to the moment. “I don’t need to check her. I don’t want to upset her, poor thing. I can see you’re clean as whistles, all three of you.”

She summoned Pace, who led them back outside. More hallways, more doors, out in the air again; it took a moment for Cass to get oriented. The wall was visible here and there between the buildings; from a distance it looked pretty, even quaint, as though ivy might grow up its sides, as though kids might lose softballs over the top.

Some people said the Beaters were getting smarter all the time. What would happen if they found a way to get over the wall? There had been evidence of cooperation among them over the summer-hunting in groups, for instance. A single Beater could be overwhelmed, beaten, even killed with a relatively low risk of infection, but three or four were another matter entirely. They had been smart enough to figure that out. What if their next leap forward was to drag things-pallets, wheelbarrows, crates-over to the edge of the wall until they could scale it?

Except that this wall wasn’t meant simply to keep the Beaters out. It also kept the people inside.

Past the old bookstore-there were still pennants and T-shirts and plastic mugs in the display windows, though sun-bleached-toward a pair of low-slung, pebble-walled buildings, among the older ones on campus, built fifty years earlier when they favored odd angles and small windows. Wheelchair ramps led up to the door of each building. Someone had spray painted words on each building, an inexpert job with paint drips along the bottom of the blocky letters. Infirmary was written on the side of the building on the left. Pace led the way up the ramp of the other building, which was labeled Ellis.

“I suppose it’s a little sentimental,” he said. “Ellis Island and all that. Mary can be…what’s the word. Grandiose? Well, you’ll see. She’ll probably come by tonight or tomorrow.”

“Who?”

“Mary Vane. You know. She’s in charge.”

Cass had heard about her back at the library; Smoke and the other guards passed along rumors about her, bits picked up from travelers, from the few who’d encountered the Rebuilders and not been recruited. She was supposed to be some sort of brilliant scientist, a visionary. People said she had worked for the government, or a drug company, or that she taught at the university. A few said she’d been serving time. Really, no one knew for sure.

“What’s she like?” Cass couldn’t resist asking.

Pace hesitated, his posture stiff. “Extraordinary, of course. A natural leader. Gifted…passionate.”

Euphemisms, Cass figured, trying to guess what he was really saying. It was no surprise that he was giving her the party line.

“Who’s in the infirmary?” Dor asked.

“When people arrive here with conditions that cannot be treated quickly, or if they are contagious, they stay there while their case is considered.”

“So it really is like Ellis Island,” Dor said. “What happens to the ones who don’t pass the test-you throw them overboard? Send them back where they came from, like they used to at the real Ellis?”

“We have a clinic,” Pace said, ignoring his tone. “You’ll be amazed. I mean, of course our hope is that you never need it but they do amazing things there. Full triage and emergency facilities, and they can do certain types of surgeries. They’ve done an appendectomy, a cesarean birth. Set lots of broken bones. If people can be cured, they cure them.”

He opened the door with a key and ushered them in.

Little natural light made its way through the high transom windows, and in the large open room a single floor lamp was lit. Two men sat at a dinette table in the semi gloom. They got to their feet, one nearly knocking over a plastic tumbler, and Cass saw that they were armed, guns and Tasers on their belts.

“Hey, Pace,” the taller one said. “Heard you’d be coming by. We’re ready for ’em.”

“These gentlemen will take good care of you,” Pace said. “Kaufman and Lester, this is Cass Dollar and David MacAlister. They’ll be with you overnight. The young lady’s name is Ruthie.”

“Nice to meet you,” Lester said, giving Ruthie a slight bow and a crooked smile. Cass liked him immediately, then chastised herself for it.

“I’ll be going, then. I’m sure I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The door shut with a resounding click, followed by the sound of a dead bolt sliding home. Pace, locking them in. Cass automatically looked for another door; there it was, through a narrow kitchenette, the bold-lettered Exit sign still in place above. No doubt locked, as well.

“We’re glad to have you folks,” Lester said. “Kind of dull around here today. Sometimes we’re full up and