Aftertime (17 page)

Already, she found that she had memorized the way they fit together. As they roared through the murky evening, the bike’s headlight tracing a golden path along the road, she imagined that they blended together into one dim shape in the descending dark.

THE REST OF THE TRIP TOOK LESS TIME THAN
they expected. Someone had come along before them and cleared the way.

The fire had burned its way down-mountain, and the road wound through acres of forest studded with the blackened skeletons of trees. Everywhere, there were soft-fringed little evergreen seedlings, even occasionally in the cracks in the road where ordinarily only kaysev grew.

On a straight, gentle incline, Smoke slowed, coming to a stop with the bike balanced against his foot on the ground, and gestured toward the bank at the side of the road. Downed tree limbs and sections of trunk had been pushed out of the way. The trunk was massive, at least three feet across, a tree that had been uprooted during the fire and fallen across the road.

“Power saw,” Smoke said, pointing at a cylindrical section eight or ten feet long. “See the marks. And look at the road—they used a front loader or something.”

Cass squinted in the last of the evening light. Sure enough, there were broad, arcing scrapes in the pavement, sawdust and dirt and chipped asphalt dragged in broad swaths.

“But that could have been from ages ago.” Back when all the gas stations were shutting down and people were killing each other to siphon fuel from abandoned cars. As the Siege dragged on there were fewer and fewer cars on the road each day, as though the automobiles themselves were falling to a plague, until the very few people who still had gas were too afraid to drive because of the desperate gangs that swarmed cars and dragged drivers out to be beaten and left for dead in the streets.

Smoke shook his head. “Look at that. You can smell it. That’s a fresh cut.”

He was right, of course. The air carried a pleasant scent of pine, a smell that reminded Cass of Christmas, a holiday that she imagined no longer existed. For a moment she felt a surge of excitement.

“Maybe they’re close by,” she said. “Maybe we’ll catch up to them. If they have gas, cars, a tractor or whatever—”

“Cass, I’d lay odds it’s the Rebuilders. They’re the only ones capable of something like this, anymore. At least on this side of the border.”

Cass was silent a moment, absorbing his words. “You believe that? What Evangeline said…about the Rockies? You really think they’ve cut us off?”

“I don’t know. That’s where I’d do it, though. I mean, if I was trying to keep them out—quarantine—yeah, it’s the only place that makes sense. Start up north, Canadian border ought to be plenty far enough, no way Beaters have spread up through Oregon into Washington or Idaho yet, and besides, it’ll be getting cold up there in a month or so. I’d build a blockade down all the way to where the Colorado River empties into the Gulf.”

“With
what?
” Cass demanded.

“I don’t know, but people are resourceful. I mean, the Chinese were able to build a wall seven hundred years BC, and all they had was what they could dig up out of the ground, mostly rocks and dirt and existing mountain ridges. And I don’t need to tell you that there’s probably a hell of a lot of unemployed and very motivated guys ready to work out East, especially if they understand what’s going on over here.”

“What you said, back at Lyle’s…about that guy from UCSF? The scientist? How he didn’t think the Beaters could live up north?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, Cass. I mean, it made sense to me, but look how they’re evolving. If they can figure out complex strategies, learn from their mistakes, refine their attacks, what are the odds that they can’t figure out how to put on a fucking coat?”

Cass wondered. It was true that the Beaters were evolving, that their hunger was driving them to adapt to their circumstances—but they were still so primitive in their responses. They couldn’t walk ten feet without tripping and stumbling over each other, but they hadn’t learned to put any distance between them when they went out roving. They were like children in their frustration, raging and screaming in impotent fury when they were denied. When they were hurt they were hypnotized by the sight of their own blood, so deeply fascinated that you could come close enough to fire at them point-blank before they remembered you were a threat.

One thing was sure: if a border had been built, retreating east was no longer a possibility once she found Ruthie. And to the south were the Rebuilders. Cass thought of Evangeline, of her cruel beauty, of the effortless power she wielded over the people in the conference room. She had no trouble believing that Evangeline was capable of using her for research—and other things she couldn’t even imagine.

“What’s to stop them from coming after us?” she asked. “If they have the means to do something like this.”

“They didn’t know about the motorcycle. They don’t know about the resistance—well, I’m sure they’re aware that not everyone welcomes their presence at the library, but from what Herkim told me, they don’t know who’s acting and who’s just grumbling. They won’t know who helped us escape, and they’ll be forced to assume we’re out wandering around town. My guess is they’ll send out a party, check with squatters, sweep town and when they don’t find us, figure we were either taken, or…or I guess, maybe that we got incredibly lucky and made it out of town on foot.”

Smoke eased the motorcycle forward, weaving carefully between the bark and twigs and dirt clods left by whoever had cleared the road. When they’d passed the last of it, he increased their speed, but kept it slower than they’d been going before, about twenty-five miles an hour. Night had nearly descended, and the motorcycle’s headlight lit up an eerie landscape of the black nightmare outlines of stripped and downed trees against a purple-gray sky. The occasional abandoned or wrecked car loomed like a hunkering ogre, the beam glinting off metal and glass. Maybe it was Cass’s imagination, but it seemed to her that Smoke sped past these cars as though he couldn’t get away from them fast enough, before easing back in the long uninterrupted stretches of empty pavement. Cass held tight to his waist, unable to relax her grip, afraid they’d hit something, afraid she’d fall, afraid of everything she couldn’t see in the shadows of the forest.

The roar of the bike’s motor was the loudest sound Cass had heard in a long while—if you didn’t count screaming. She had grown accustomed to silence Aftertime. Once you took out the sound of traffic and the buzz of streetlights and televisions blaring through open windows and fire engines and police sirens cutting through the night, and even the soft hum of everyday electronics, it was possible to hear what lay beneath—the sigh of the wind, the murmur of water flowing in a creek, the calls of the birds that survived and the rustling of species starting their return to the underbrush. In her days of walking, Cass had retuned her ears to these subtle sounds, and now the whine of the motor cutting through the night stillness was nearly unbearable, winding her nerves tight and keeping her fear simmering.

The odds of encountering Beaters along this unpopulated stretch of road were slim. Cass held on to that thought and let it calm her as she watched the ribbon of road flashing silver in front of them, Smoke following the center line. The air rushing past was cold, and she snuggled into Smoke’s shirt, pressing her cheek against the warm fabric. After a while she allowed her eyelids to drift slowly closed, and breathed deeply of the night. Kaysev and mountain sage and cool earth. Cass thought she could ride like this for a long, long time, clinging to the illusion of safety, grateful for someone else taking responsibility for the future.

Smoke’s soft exclamation put her on instant alert. She sat up straight and blinked at lights in the distance, a glow highlighting a massive dark structure. They had arrived at the edge of San Pedro, and the black shadows of houses and mailboxes and cars lined the side of the silent road. Gravel skittering under their tires, they narrowly avoided the corpse of a large dog lying stiff and mangled in the middle of the road, and Smoke corrected by swerving onto the shoulder, cursing under his breath. When the bike was righted, Cass was left with adrenaline surging through her body, and she had to force herself not to dig her fingers into Smoke’s waist.

The stadium was lit from behind by a hazy glow. The effect was that of a ghost ship on a night ocean, as though it had been conjured by her desperation. It was even bigger than she remembered, and the memory of walking up the curving ramps with her father all those years ago danced at the edge of her heart, trying to get in, but she pushed it back.

That long-ago day, it had been bright with banners and advertisements and the big digital scoreboard, the bright red and silver—Miners’ team colors—worn by the players and fans. Now, the once-colorful edifice, like her memories of that day, was washed out and dull.

When they drew closer, Cass saw that someone was moving around the edges of the stadium, and she felt a combination of excitement and dread in her gut. They weren’t moving like Beaters. Whoever it was—friend or foe—it was a citizen.

Smoke slowed again, and they came to a stop several blocks away from the stadium. A warehouse of some sort hugged a sprawling, fenced lot to their right; on the left were apartment buildings, low-slung brick six-flats with their first-floor windows broken out. The abandoned buildings could easily house Beater nests, especially the warehouse, which probably had loading bays on the back side of the building.

Cass pressed closer to Smoke. “Shouldn’t we keep moving?”

She could sense the tension in Smoke’s body.

“I know,” he muttered. “Only…I just wish I knew what was ahead. I don’t like that they’ve got people outside like that. Makes me think they’re armed, and I’d kind of like to know what their agenda is ahead of time. Here, let me have the pack, okay?”

Cass slid it off her shoulders, feeling the pain in her shoulders where the straps had cut into her flesh. The pack was too large for her—a man’s pack.

Smoke dug inside and handed her a water bottle. “Thirsty?”

Suddenly, she was. She twisted off the cap and drank deep, barely even minding the silty, earthy taste. Creek water: you could never boil the taste out of it. She let a little dribble down her chin, down her throat, wetting the collar of her shirt, before holding the bottle out to Smoke.

And saw that he was holding the gun, weighing it loosely in his hand. He ejected the spent magazine and rooted in the pack for a fresh one. “Sometimes I guess it pays to be famous. Infamous,” he corrected himself.

“So where do you think they got them?”

“There’s stashes,” he said evasively. “I know of a few that the resistance set up. Not all by any means. I don’t know how strong they are in the library, how many people…but it’s got to be pretty organized. Our friend Herkim back there kept this one under wraps. Bet he’s got a few more, too. Probably off-site…a house, a hole, doesn’t take much, and for now at least the Rebuilders can’t keep track of everyone’s comings and goings during the day. Though I’m sure that’s next.”

He laughed, a sound so utterly without humor that Cass flinched.

“Were you with them from the start?” she asked. “The…resistance?”

“Wasn’t really anything to be ‘with,’ just those of us who thought it was fucked up that a few assholes wanted to tell everyone else what to do. I mean, a power grab seemed like an especially bad idea when everything else was still going to hell. Way I saw it, maybe everyone ought to just pitch in and work together until the dust settled, know what I mean?”

Cass thought about Bobby, his easy leadership, the way everyone had turned to him, almost hungry for direction, for someone to tell them what to do. “Sometimes someone needs to take charge,” she said softly, hoping her voice didn’t betray the ache in her heart left by Bobby’s death. “Someone just has to pick a direction and go, or it’s chaos.”

“I used to think that,” Smoke said grimly. “Until I saw firsthand what happens when the guy with the power heads off in the wrong direction. And everyone follows along, like a bunch of lemmings throwing themselves over the cliff. I won’t be a part of that. Not
ever
again.”

There was a hardness in Smoke’s voice that surprised Cass, and under her hands his muscles tensed. He revved the engine, and she could feel the vibrations traveling up through her body, and the combination of the reverberations and being so close to Smoke stirred her emotions in another direction entirely. There were so many things she didn’t know about him—not just what he had done, who he had battled and even killed, but who he had been Before. There was a current of darkness running through him, a dangerous determination that she didn’t understand. It made her afraid. She didn’t know how far he would go when he was committed, but she sensed it was all the way, that he would go hell-bent in whatever direction he chose.

Right now, he had chosen to go with her. To protect her. And Cass felt herself pulled, almost irresistibly, toward the safety he offered. It was so tempting to ignore the questions nagging at the edges of her mind. The fact that the things she didn’t know about him far outweighed the things she did.

“So…” she said, watching him turn the gun over in his hands. “You’re sure you know how to use that?”

“Yeah…I’m not saying I’m a crack shot, and I panicked back there. But I can probably take care of anything that gets in our way between here and the Convent. Trick’s going to be shooting before we get shot, if it comes down to it…”

“You think there’s…? What are you worried about, freewalkers, Rebuilders, the Convent—who?”

Smoke shook his head. “I don’t know. Nobody was real clear back there. Herkim says he doesn’t think the Rebuilders have had much luck getting into the Convent, so he thinks they’ve sort of written it off, for now. They’re picking off the easy targets at this point, and maybe later they’ll come back when they’ve taken over all the little shelters and the squatters. But he also said the Convent hasn’t exactly been very friendly to the resistance, either. They keep to themselves, no allegiance except their own, that kind of shit.”

Which was why they had sent the children there, Cass hoped. Maybe they were neutral. Like Switzerland. The little bud of hope that she kept safe and hidden inside threatened to unfurl, and it was too soon, too dangerous for that. “The women in there…are
they
armed? Are they dangerous?”