“I think he’s a fake,” Kyra muttered. Booth-Phil Booth, formerly a high-school teacher from Sonora-had supposedly made a study of the Beaters before finding his way to New Eden. He told stories of experiments he’d conducted with a couple of other academics, one of them on the epidemiology staff at a hospital there. The only problem was that depending on the night and who was listening, his stories tended to shift. Often, he was featured as the guy who heroically stepped in when things went horribly wrong.
Which was a little hard to swallow given the fact that Booth was a hundred-ten soaking wet, pale and practically hairless, more of a geek than a hero. Also, there was the problem of Booth’s missing colleagues; depending on the story they’d either died in a huge battle-from which Booth alone emerged unscathed-or gone to the west and north, the three of them having made a pact to spread their findings to whatever civilization they stumbled across.
“But why are they trying to get the other shelters involved?”
Zihna spoke carefully, which was her habit when any of them was upset. She wasn’t the huggy sort. Though old enough to be a grandmother, she was hardly a grandmotherly kind of woman. She showed her concern mostly in the way she took the time to think first and avoided saying anything that could be misconstrued. “I believe there was some hope that other communities…where they might have avoided the attention of Beaters in these large numbers…might see the signal and come help.”
“Help with what? Help us fold our underwear?” Fear was making Sammi sarcastic, and she wished she could stop yelling, but there was only one person who could calm her down fast anymore, now that Jed was gone, and that was her dad. She was still furious with him, but he’d always had a way of talking to her that made things seem like they would work out.
Zihna paled. The girls had lit half a dozen candles from their stockpile, enough to illuminate the entire room, and in the light of the candles you could see every wrinkle, every valley on the woman’s face. At other times, Sammi thought Zihna pretty for an older lady; she wore her hair long and loose and smiled a lot, not in a fakey way like Collette Portescue and the rest of those uptight bitches.
But tonight Zihna just looked old.
“Help us with the, uh, departure. We can’t leave until there’s enough light for us to see where we’re going, but hopefully still before the Beaters are up and out. But we’re bound to run into them soon after that. All it’s going to take is stumbling on a nest of them, and they’ll start up their hollering and get the others all riled up. I think that- the thought of some of the council was that if some folks came from Hollis or Oakton, they could give us a sort of escort until we got out to the truly uninhabited land. Once we get there, we can handle the occasional pack ourselves. It’s only the first few miles that have everyone worried.”
“Wow, was there, like, a whole meeting or something we missed?” Sammi asked, gathering a handful of cosmetics and jamming them into an old plastic zip-around tote that had once been a Clinique gift with purchase.
A third flare went off and Sammi dropped the tote, spilling tiny tubes and bottles onto the floor. A round eyeshadow rolled across the carpet and bumped into Kyra’s leg. “Shit,” she whispered. “Fucking shitballs with lint.”
But she looked like she was about to cry. Sammi crab walked over to her and pulled her into a hug on the carpet, realizing too late she was sitting on the water spot. Oh, well. That probably wasn’t the worst thing that was going to happen today. Or tonight or tomorrow or whatever it was.
“What time is it, anyway?” she asked Zihna.
Zihna, who wore a watch all the time, an old-fashioned one with tiny delicate hands that pointed to the numerals, squinted at her wrist. “Nearly three. Three hours until dawn. Think you girls can catch a little sleep once you get down to the shore? I promise, we won’t leave without you.”
“Are you sure? I mean, don’t you want one of us to keep you company or take turns or something?”
“Aw, no, honey,” Zihna said. “Red and me, we’ve got it covered. We’re a team, right? I mean…Sammi, you know we want you if you want to join us.”
Sammi realized what she was half asking: if she planned to walk with her dad-or stay with Zihna and Red and her friends.
“A team,” she repeated quickly, before she could change her mind.
Chapter 21
CASS HAD THE foresight to go back for the stroller, hoping she’d get to it before Suzanne or Ingrid and then feeling guilty about the thought. The stroller was exactly where she’d left it earlier in the evening, abandoned in the middle of the yard, and Cass realized how lucky she was that no one had taken it. It would make a great little cart, for someone who wanted to transport food, belongings, anything at all-up to seventy pounds, according to the government label engraved on the side, something she’d never given much thought to before because Ruthie didn’t weigh a fraction of that.
Ruthie had settled down after the encounter with Red, a lot more than Cass anyway, whose nerves were still jangling.
She was in a state of shock and denial, but there would be plenty of time to sort it all out on the journey. More than enough time.
Out of nowhere, Cass thought of a picture book a babysitter had once given Ruthie-a children’s Bible, illustrated with watercolors in pale, weak colors. Moses crossing the Red Sea looked more like Moses wading through a forest of camellia blooms, his placid smile making him and the Israelites all appear stoned. Still, Ruthie had loved the story and liked to point to the people in the pictures and try to repeat the names Cass read to her.
And now her dad, Red whoever-the-fuck he was calling himself these days, wanted to come and lead them to a promised land. Hell, he wanted to be her dad again all of a sudden. But it was too late for that, too late by a long shot. And if Cass had to make some harsh decisions to protect Ruthie the way Mim ought to have protected her, well, so be it-she had fought harder for less. Twenty years was a long time, and her father was a stranger to her, and she would not trust her daughter with him. All she had to do now was keep saying no, and she figured she could more than handle that.
She settled Ruthie into the stroller after wiping the chilly dew from its interior with her bare hands, then wiping her hands on her pants. Her pants were not clean, her laundry day was Tuesday; if the Beaters had waited a few more days to come fuck with them at least Cass would have started the odyssey with clean pants. Oh well.
Cass pushed the stroller toward the hospital, trying to narrow and focus her thoughts. If Smoke had made it out of the hospital building, all the way up the path to the yard, halfway down to the water-then surely she could convince the council that he was healing quickly enough to justify bringing him along. She would be responsible for him. All they needed was one seat in one of the cars, Cass would walk alongside, she would push Ruthie and carry their belongings and it would all work out fine.
But when she got to the hospital it was dark. She parked the stroller, behind a rain barrel, and picked Ruthie up before she went inside, but she knew the minute she set foot in the place that it was deserted. And sure enough- there, in the light coming through the windows, the light of the hundreds of candles and flashlights being squandered tonight-there was Smoke’s empty bed, the covers clumsily folded, the pillow on top.
Cass went into the other room. There-in that narrow bed with the crayon drawings that Ruthie and Twyla and Dane had made, pinned up on the walls behind the headboard-there was where Charles had suffered through his waning and finally unconscious days.
Cass would be hard-pressed to denounce the men who dragged him to the southern end of Garden Island and did what needed to be done. In fact, maybe it was a heroic act, stopping his suffering a little prematurely so he did not have to endure one more horror.
But not for a body on the mend, like Smoke. Sun-hi must have found passage for him, must have gotten him down to the vehicles somehow. She and Ruthie would ask around, find out where they were, maybe even get a little sleep before dawn; perhaps they could pass the night in the car with him, or barring that, at least they could bed down close by and be there at his side when the group rolled out at sunrise.
