Rebirth

Would she be able to tell? Would it be obvious? Cass thought it probably would-everyone had become connoisseurs of death since the Siege. At first it was just the fever; one learned that when the sheen evaporated and the flush deepened, when the skin went from rosy to grayish-crimson, that the coughing was close behind and the final hours of demented mumbling were imminent.

Later, when the streets were empty except for Beaters, when there were no hospitals and doctors had no tools or medications to practice with, they learned about other kinds of death. In the library, Cass had watched a man die in anguish from a burst appendix; his writhing grew so terrible that Bobby had finally put the man over his strong shoulders and taken him outside the gates; when he returned alone no one asked questions. Later a pregnant woman arrived, carried by two men; her labor had begun in the house where they’d been squatting, and when she failed to deliver in the first twenty-four hours they brought her to the shelter; she was almost unconscious when she arrived; the men’s coats were slick with her blood, and she died after only a few weak cries, sodden with more blood than Cass had ever seen, even after all this time.

During the riots people were trampled and beaten, and Cass saw blood on the streets whenever she went out. A human body, crushed and dragged, could leave a stain far greater than you’d ever imagine. Was that what had happened to Smoke? Had his blood been spread across the cracked concrete of a road, or the dried thatch of kaysev in a field?

Her need to see him spurred her along and she followed Ralston outside into the cold air. He wrapped an arm around her before they’d gone three steps, and she caught the odor of his breath, stale and faintly tinged with chewing tobacco.

“You must be cold.”

Cass laughed. “Not really, not now.”

“What are you really after? I can get you some pop bottle crank. Maybe hollies. I can’t get you into the medical supplies, though, honey, not even with this.” He held up his wrist; even in the moonlight, augmented by the occasional spotlight at the entrances to campus buildings, she could make out the black smudge.

“I’m not…that’s not what I want,” she said.

“Yeah? Don’t tell me you really do have a headache, darlin’, cause that’s gonna cut into our fun.” He laughed at his own attempt at humor. “That’s what you had in mind, right? A little fun? Listen, I can get us into a party, a few people I know. Real discreet. They know how to-”

“I need to get in the basement of the Tapp Clinic,” Cass interrupted, slipping her hand into his waistband. “Where the prisoners are. I need to see one of them. That’s what I really want. I’m willing to…show my appreciation.”

“Hold on a minute.” Ralston stopped, gripped her arm hard above the elbow. They were behind the building, in between a couple of aluminum storage sheds sided by sharp-branched dead bushes. Above, the moon emerged from blowing wisps of clouds and glinted off his hungry eyes. “Are you out of your fucking mind? If there’s a detail summons while we’re over there, how’m I gonna know? I can’t miss again-”

“Your friend can come get you,” Cass said silkily. “He could be there in two minutes. He’ll do it, if you tell him to. Nothing’s going to happen in two minutes.”

“But the basement’s guarded.”

“Where we just were is guarded.” Cass knew she needed to play this just right, and she made her voice go lower. This was the trick-blow out most of your breath, speak on the dregs. A whisper with a promise. “Look, I just need to see my friend for a minute. Nothing illegal, I promise. Just to make sure it’s really him in there, okay? You can make that happen for me, right?”

“Not unless I cash in every chip I’ve got. Do you know how many-”

Cass stepped in closer and reached down, her fingers finding him and squeezing before he knew what was happening. A vulnerability they never thought of until too late.

He was hard already, harder instantly beneath her hand. Good. She traced a fingernail along the taut fabric of his pants, and leaned in to whisper in his ear. She darted her tongue out as she spoke so that it just brushed lightly against the inside of his ear, and he moaned before she got the first three words out. “I know what I’m doing.”

He seized her hips and ground against her, backing her up against the shed. The metal was shockingly cold even through her coat.

“Show me.”

“I can do things you’ll remember,” she said, for the moment letting him crouch and buck against her. Distaste eddied in her mind, but she focused on Smoke, on the reason she was here, and made herself go outside herself, let herself drift up until she was outside of her body, looking down. From that vantage point, somewhere in the thin winter night, drifting above the unlovely blocky sheds, the dead landscaping, she saw Ralston hump and heave, and considered something that she hadn’t thought about in a long time:

Sex was ridiculous, nothing more than homely rutting. The expression of the basest of instincts, twitching and spasming, hormones unleashed and sloshing through the body’s systems. A cock, a cunt-God’s joke, a jigsaw puzzle simple enough that even the dumbest beasts could figure it out. The lengths that people went to to organize and ornament it… Every species, the males mounting and holding fast with claws and paws and flippers and, when those failed, with teeth-blood and pain and yowling and violence were just part of the process. The system was gamed against the females, who fought and cried out as they were fucked and impregnated and then left to stagger off to dens and warrens and shitty apartments, bruised and savaged, reminded of the terrible imbalance of nature’s arrangement.

That other, that lovely, that desperately beautiful thing, it had been a lie, a fantasy. A trick of her imagination, a leftover illusion from some fairy-tale place she’d gone to escape the horrors of her adolescence. No matter that it had seemed real with Smoke.

“Slow down, cowboy,” she whispered against his neck. “You’re going to get there too quick. Let me take you there nice and slow.”

“Aw, shit,” he moaned, but he did what she commanded, going still, shuddering against her. “Are you a pro?”

The words didn’t carry the sting they might once have. Hell, maybe she had been, sort of, though it wasn’t money that changed hands back then. Cass had traded in desperation and forgetting. And she had given good value, at least on those occasions when she didn’t pass out.

No danger of passing out tonight.

“I’m just really good at what I do,” she whispered. Then she lifted one foot to the other shed, pressed her boot against the side-then the other. The sheds were far enough apart that she had to arch her back to wrap her legs around his waist, but she knew that the move had its appeal, for some, anyway. She held the position, undulating slowly against him, her muscles straining and her arms quivering with the effort. Long enough. Just long enough. “Let me give you a taste now. Then take me where I want to go, and we’ll come back and finish.”

Ralston could barely contain his excitement. He seized her ass and squeezed, and she knew it was an effort for him not to plunge against her again. “Go down on me now,” he panted. “Then later I take you however I want.”

“Yeah,” Cass moaned, feigning anticipation. “I want to suck you now. I want to swallow your cock-”

“Up the ass,” he interrupted, and she knew he wasn’t even hearing her; she was indifferent, it made no difference to her. “If I want. Whatever I want. You got to do whatever I want.”

“You take me to see him and I will.” Cass cupped him in her hand and squeezed, hard enough to get his attention. “If you don’t, I’ll never give you a second look. I’ll go back and do your friend and he’ll tell you all about it. You hear me?”

“God, no,” Ralston moaned, planting his face in her shoulder and raising his hands in supplication. “I’ll get you there. I’ll get you in, I swear. Whatever you want. I just need to tell King where we’re going.”

That was all she needed to hear. Cass lowered her feet to the floor and slid down to her knees, the metal cold against her back.

29

A DIFFERENT GUARD IN THE BASEMENT NOW, just one for the overnight shift-a muscular, short fiftyish man