Survivors

Cass averted her own eyes, turned away and adjusted Ruthie’s covers. She recognized the longing in the boy’s eyes and, like Smoke, she turned away, to give him privacy to enjoy a tiny sliver of something nice.

A thick layer of quilts for padding and a blue comforter borrowed from Coral Anne, a pillow with a flannel case decorated with pine trees and bears. The boy slept on the rug and seemed happy to do so. He said nothing when Cass and Smoke bid him good-night, curled into a ball whose shape, underneath the covers, seemed impossibly small. Cass watched him for a moment before blowing out the candle, Smoke’s breathing already deep and even against her back, where he lay with his arms around her, holding her to his chest.

They lay like that still, in the first light of morning, when Cass woke momentarily to see that the boy had edged closer to their bed. He had the comforter twisted around himself, and one hand rested outflung where it could touch the edge of the quilt that hung down from their bed. It was an awkward position, but as Cass watched him, he slept on without moving, without a twitch or a sigh.

“Where is she?” was the first thing the boy asked, sitting up with the twisted covers at his waist. His hair had dried in shiny waves and Cass had to suppress a smile to think how women used to struggle so mightily to get theirs to look like that. Ruthie stirred at the sound of his voice, but didn’t wake. It was still early, maybe six or six- thirty; Smoke had brought her a cup of coffee before leaving for the alley outside the west end, where he and some of the other guards practiced a brutal training regimen.

Cass set aside the paperback she had been reading, marking her place with a postcard that had fallen out of an old issue of InStyle. Two Years for the Price of One, it read in bold, presumptive letters.

“Good morning,” she said softly. “You want to know where your grandmother is?”

“Yeah.” He was working at the clump of covers, trying to get his legs untangled. He looked like he was ready to bolt, and Cass knelt down on the floor next to him and placed her hand gently on the covers.

“Let me help?” She made it a question, and for a moment the boy froze, staring at her hand on the blue fabric, where she had taken care not to touch him, even through the comforter. After a moment he relaxed a little and Cass tugged and pulled and the comforter came free.

“You’ll be cold,” Cass said, and got a fleece-lined flannel shirt of Smoke’s from the bar hung from the roof support that served as a closet. They had nice hangers, sturdy wooden ones with gold-tone hooks that had come home from a raid, a present for Cass, a little joke between them-Smoke brought her silly luxuries, things it would have never occurred to her to buy for herself Before, even if she could have afforded them. “This will be much too large,” she added, holding it out for the boy to put his arms into the sleeves, “but I think we can make it work for now, and I know that Smoke won’t mind a bit.”

The boy looked dubious but he was already shivering in the morning chill so he allowed Cass to guide the shirt onto his thin body, buttoning the front and rolling up the sleeves. If Feo was sent away today, at least he would have this in addition to the sweater, a gift from someone who wished she could have done more.

“Now, as for your grandmother, they’re taking good care of her. We have a couple good doctors here-” only a little lie “-and medicine.” That was a worse lie, because Cass was pretty sure that none of the things they had in their stores could help what was wrong with the old woman. “But she needs to rest. A little later, I’ll go over there and find out when the doctors say we can visit.”

The boy considered this, his brow knitting and his deep brown eyes darkening further. He rocked forward, his elbows on his knees, and after a moment he sighed and looked Cass in the eye. “Okay. Can we eat now?”

Cass had watched with silent amusement as Feo worked his way through two bowls of what had become the Box’s standard breakfast fare, for those who could afford it-a rough cereal of dried kaysev beans, mixed with shredded wheat to extend it. One of the cooks had spooned some honey on top, winking at Cass.

They sat at the far end of one of the tables in the dining area, the buzz of the merchants and customers just getting started at this time of day. The others gave them their space, nodding or waving, but staying well away. By now everyone would know all there was to know about the boy, but they seemed to sense that he was skittish and shy. And there were those who preferred to be left alone with their hangovers, those who had lost their taste for hope.

“Still hungry?” Cass asked, nibbling at her kaysev cake and drinking the coffee that was now lukewarm.

Feo nodded, not looking up from his bowl, and Cass went to get him another.

When she came back he was gone.

They had managed to squeeze quite a lot into the Box, despite the fact that it was no larger than a football field and a half, an entire little town with commerce and public facilities and even a jail and an outdoor church. Nightly rental cots lined the fence near the front gate. Merchants sold food and drugs and alcohol and all manner of scavenged and raided merchandise out of stands cobbled together from dismantled buildings. In the center, a public area for dining and socializing had been decorated with plastic flags and pretty things-mirrors, silk flowers, children’s toys-hung from lines strung between the skeletons of trees. But the place was still a box, literally; a walled-off square with only one way out.

Cass didn’t panic, because where would Feo go? There was no way for him to escape into the dangers outside. Another irony: he couldn’t escape, but he could be forced out by their policies…

Still, Cass walked the paths between the tents and merchant stands, and the worn trail around the perimeter, with haste searching for a glimpse of him. She went first to the medic cottage, where Francie met her at the door with a frown-“She’s no better and probably worse”-so Cass told her that Feo might turn up and to be on the lookout.

Then she started crisscrossing the Box at random.

She found him on the stoop of the large prefab storage shed that Sam and George had made into their sleeping quarters and party room. They called it the “officers’ quarters” and it was where the guards did much of their drinking. Beds and personal space took up the back, and the rest was lined with shelves holding improvised weapons and a table with half a dozen chairs in the middle. An ornate antique painted-metal candelabrum hung over the table, which was speckled with wax that had dripped down. There was an ongoing poker game, a minifridge that was hooked up to a generator whenever the raiders brought back beer, and a library of skin magazines and Car and Drivers and Stephen King novels.

Sam and George were an odd pair-Sam young and quiet and almost obsessively neat, his bunk made up every morning, his clothes hung on hangers from pegs, and George fifteen years older and content to live in malodorous squalor-but they got along. This morning George was nowhere to be seen, probably off training in that damn alleyway, too.

Feo sat hunched on one side of the step, Smoke’s shirt newly rimed with dirt at the hem. He was drinking from a plastic bottle of cranberry-juice cocktail. With a straw, as unlikely a sight as any. Sam sprawled next to him, wearing his wraparound ski sunglasses and a ghost of a smile, in cowboy boots and jeans. When he saw Cass, he sat up straight and gave her a mock salute.

“Mornin’, Cass.”

“Good morning.”

“He only got one eye,” Feo said with hushed awe. His mouth was ringed with sticky pink. “He showed me.”

“That’s right,” Sam said, tapping the frayed patch beneath his pricey sunglasses, the patch that he never took off. Sam had lost an eye in the Yemen Rice War, likely treated by a field surgeon low on supplies and backup, like everything else in that fiasco of a war. Cass had never seen their handiwork, and the fact that Sam had showed the boy struck her as extraordinary. “I told him you got to watch where you’re goin’ around here, be careful not to walk into any knife-throwing competitions.”

“I could throw a knife,” Feo said. “I bet I could.”

“Yeah, buddy, I bet you could.” Sam took off his sunglasses and looked meaningfully at Cass. “I thought I’d give Feo a tour of the place here in a while.”

Cass saw how it was-it was written as plain as a sign in front of her face. The boy wanted a big brother, a favorite uncle, hell, maybe even a father. His instincts took him straight to Sam.

And Sam bloomed with the attention. It was almost heartbreaking to see, the way his good eye was bright with