Not Smoke not Smoke, who’d been out there
She ran to the side of the crowd, dodging stragglers and slow movers, and sprinted past them all. Her lungs screamed for air and her boots pounded the hard-packed dirt, sending shocks through her body, but she reached the front and was among the first to reach the fence. Her momentum drove her into the chain link, and she grabbed the wire in her fists and pulled herself up a few feet to get a clear view down the block.
There. There. Eight of them, their excited crowing filling the air, their hair matted and their skin torn and crusted. They were dressed in rags; one of them had lost most of the skin of one arm and the bones showed through as it dangled uselessly. Another had had its face bashed in, its cheek and jaw a pulped mess, and still it clawed and shrieked.
They were stampeding after a screaming man, one of them having seized the tail of his jacket with a crabbed and bony hand. The man was desperately trying to shrug off the jacket, but either the zipper was stuck or his terror prevented him from unfastening it. As Cass watched, two of the other Beaters threw themselves on him and he went down, and then they were all upon him, trying to get a grip on his arms and legs as he thrashed on the ground. Cass saw blood bloom on his exposed hands as he beat them against the concrete, but it was no use: one of the creatures took his armpits and others each took a foot and they lifted him into the air, as the rest of them pushed and crowed, reaching with greedy hands. They meant to carry him back to their nest to feast, to tear the flesh from his body with their teeth while he was still alive.
It wasn’t Smoke, and despite her horror at the poor man’s fate, Cass sagged in relief. The victim had fair hair cut close, sagging camo pants. Not someone Cass knew. He had to be recently arrived, or a traveler who hoped to become a fellow citizen. He was screaming without cease, his voice distinct from the inhuman cries of the Beaters and their almost lascivious excitement, and then-abruptly-he stopped.
A shot. There had been a shot, and there followed two more, and the Beaters who had been carrying the doomed man dropped him, and one of them fell on top of him and rolled away, dead. Most of the others ran, tripping over each other and loping clumsily around the corner behind an apartment building, splattering blood further down the street. But one stayed behind, his savaged face dark with rage and hunger as he screamed and tugged at the victim’s pant leg, pulling the body along the street a few feet, until finally he too gave up and loped away.
Two men came sprinting from the side-Cass hadn’t noticed them, they must have been crouched along the fence-and this time it was Smoke, and Three-High with his long gray ponytail, and they ran crouched low and ready to shoot again. They reached the man and Smoke lifted him up over his shoulders and Three-High put one more bullet in one of the downed Beaters’ heads and it exploded on the asphalt like a water balloon filled with blood. Someone on the ground behind Cass vomited, and she whispered a guilty prayer of thanks that Smoke had been spared once again and stepped out of the sick woman’s way.
Feo must have bolted again when the commotion started. As Cass followed the crowd away from the fence she saw Sam tackle him, lifting him as though he weighed nothing and holding him tightly in his arms.
Cass caught up with Sam while the crowd surged past, on their way back to wherever they’d come from. The boy was trembling in Sam’s arms.
“Did he see?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, unfortunately. And Cass…he knew that guy. Before.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. When he saw the Beaters go after him, he started yelling ‘tío, tío’-I think that means ‘uncle.’”
“Aw, shit,” Cass whispered.
“Nanaaaaa,” the boy wailed, his voice muffled by Sam’s shirt.
After trying in vain to get him calmed down, Cass and Sam decided there was nothing for it but to take him to the clinic to see the old woman. When they arrived, Smoke and Three-High were standing outside, talking with Dor. Smoke was the first to see them coming and he jogged over to her and held her and understood how great her fear had been, and he whispered over and over that he was all right, everything would be all right.
When she pulled back and looked into his face she knew the truth. “You had to end him, didn’t you.”
“He’d been bitten.”
“Did you do it, or Three-High?”
Smoke looked away, and that was her answer. Smoke was strong that way-he knew that death was a mercy for an infected citizen, that otherwise the fever would begin within hours, and the victim would twitch and babble and pick at his own skin and his flesh hunger would grow. And so Smoke gave the gift of death: swift and sure.
Cass nodded, tears stinging her eyes. But there would be time later to wonder how much another death had cost Smoke, whether it played upon his soul and poisoned his dreams. For now, there were the living to be tended.
She entered the cottage, the others following close behind. Feo knelt next to his grandmother’s bed, sobbing quietly. Sam crouched next to him, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Francie stood at the head of the bed, her arms folded, her face tired. When she saw Cass, she frowned and shook her head, and Cass knew the old woman was dead.
He’d lost everything, then. The last family he would ever know had died today.
Cass couldn’t bear it. She turned on Dor, her face tight with anguish, trying to find the right words. But Smoke put a hand around hers and stepped between them.
“The guy…the one outside the fence-that was his uncle,” he said quietly.
Dor nodded heavily, as though the worst news had lost the power to surprise him. For a moment, silhouetted in the sunlight streaming through the door, he looked all too human, his shoulders sagging and his hands hanging useless at his sides. “The boy can stay,” he said, and then left without another word.
Cass watched him go, her heart quickening, the possibilities flashing through her mind. But as they knelt on the bare wood floor, Feo burrowed into Sam’s arms, and Sam-barely more than a boy himself-held on.
So that’s how it was to be. In that moment the small idea that had been taking shape in Cass’s mind-her and Smoke and two children, a growing family-shifted and faded. Feo needed things she could not give. In Sam, the boy found something familiar, something he could hold on to. Who could say why-every citizen Aftertime had been altered by their own losses, their own devastations.
Smoke and Cass left quietly, hand in hand. Outside it was shaping up to be another warm autumn day. The air was fragrant with the smell of kaysev cakes frying on a griddle and they walked hand in hand back to the tent. Ruthie would wake soon, and they would take her to the clearing for breakfast, and it would be all right.
Later, Cass and Ruthie would go to the gardens to pick mint leaves. They would boil water and make a big batch of tea in the plastic pitcher, and Cass would add a few spoonfuls from her precious stash of sugar. They would carry the tea down to the officers’ quarters, and it would be a gift for mourning and new beginnings both.
Sophie Littlefield
SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD grew up in rural Missouri and attended college in Indiana. She worked in technology before having children, and was lucky enough to stay home with them while they were growing up. She writes mysteries and thrillers for kids and adults, and lives in Northern California.