Aftertime (9 page)

Smoke relaxed slightly. “I’ve had…a run-in with them myself. Don’t much care for their philosophy, but I don’t know that I’ve got what it takes to live like this, on my own, either.”

“You might say I’m not much of a joiner,” Lyle said as he settled his own large body onto the remaining chair and started going through the box. “I might be a stupid son of a bitch trying to tough it out here on my own. Me and Travers, he’s just as stubborn as me. And them Beaters getting smarter, our odds ain’t great. Only been a week or so they’ve started doing what you might call a regular patrol through here.”

Lyle took out a folded plastic bag and carefully opened it, shaking out a half-smoked, tight-rolled joint. “I been saving this sweet little blunt for a special occasion, ain’t a whole lot more where it came from, least until I figure out how to smoke me some kaysev, if you know what I mean. I’d be honored if you’d finish it up with me.”

“I…not for me,” Cass said quickly.

Lyle nodded and sparked up a lighter, a cheap plastic Bic he took from the box. “I got a little bit of Johnnie Black up there on the shelf, too, if you’re interested.”

“No, thanks. I’m, uh… I’m an alcoholic.”

There was an awkward silence, while Cass kept her features as still as she could. It was not the first time she’d made such an admission, not by a long shot. But it was the first in Aftertime. There’d been drinking in the library; for some, the days were a lot easier to take through a haze of inebriation, a notion Cass understood all too well. But Bobby had put a stop to that; he designated the men’s bathroom as a place people could go if they wanted to get drunk, there and nowhere else, and it was a testament to his power over all of them that everyone cooperated.

Cass had found the men’s bathroom easy to resist. She’d never been much of a social drinker anyway. She had liked to numb herself in solitude.

“No worries, little sister,” Lyle said softly. “I can put this away if that’s easier.”

“No, no—you go ahead.”

He hesitated, his gaze traveling to the scars on her arm. He sighed and reached out to touch them, so gently that his callused fingertips tickled. “You’ve had a rough road,” he said softly, and Cass realized that Lyle thought she’d made the scars herself.

Cass resisted the urge to hide them, to jam her hands under her legs. Instead she gestured to the box and forced a smile. “It’s fine, really. Come on, someone around here might as well get a buzz on.”

“Well, okay, if you insist. But just say the word…”

He took a deep draw on the joint, squeezing it delicately between his large, stubby finger and thumb, and held the smoke in, concentrating with his eyes shut and a look of intense pleasure on his lined face.

“That’s the ticket,” he finally said, and passed it along to Smoke.

Smoke took a hit before passing it back. “Not sure I know how to thank you for the hospitality.”

“No problem. Mind telling me what has y’all out on the streets, anyway? Ain’t any water in this block, and the raiders—no offense—but the raiders usually seem a little better organized than you two.”

Cass glanced at Smoke; he returned her gaze with concern but didn’t speak. He was leaving it up to her.

She considered not telling. Twenty-four hours ago, no one knew her story. The only people who knew about Ruthie were the others at the library, and even they didn’t know the full story, since she’d only had her daughter back for a day before the attack. Besides, there was no way to know how many of the people who were there that day were even still alive.

But what would it hurt, now, to tell the truth? The old shame that had weighed so heavily was gone now, vanished along with everything else familiar from Before. She, like all the other citizens, had been given a fresh start. True, it came at a terrible price, and there was no way to know how long they had remaining, but Cass had wasted enough in her lifetime. Or lifetimes.

She wasn’t going to waste any more opportunities. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The chair rocked slightly with the motion.

“I’m looking for my daughter.”

“
ARE YOU, NOW?” LYLE ENCOURAGED HER WITH
a smile as he and Smoke passed the joint back and forth. “You have a little one?”

“She’s almost three. Her name is Ruthie. She was at the library when I was…when I had to leave.”

Lyle narrowed his eyes and waited, but Cass forced herself to take a breath and let it out slowly. Lyle probably thought she’d done something reckless while she was drunk, gotten expelled from the library. Well, let him think it. The truth would only make things worse—how likely was he to let her stay, if he knew what she was hiding under her shirt? If he knew what she had been? If he were to start imagining the things she couldn’t remember doing?

“And you think your little girl’s here in town?”

Cass nodded. “We were sheltering at the library. It was two months ago. Do you ever get over there?”

“Not so much inside the place. If I see raiding parties out, I’ll go along and lend a hand. Once in a while they’ve checked up on me and Travers over there, a few other stubborn assholes like us who insist on squatting. But I haven’t heard of any kids, really. And I’m sorry, I’m not sure I would have remembered if they were talking about it—I don’t know the first thing about kids.”

Cass tried to cover her disappointment. “That’s okay. I’ll know soon enough.”

Lyle nodded. “You’re welcome to stay with me as long as you want. I reckon you’re anxious to get moving again, especially now that you’re so close, but I’m guessing the rat bastards are going to be hanging around for a while, anyway. Usually they just fuck around during the day, but now and then, like tonight, a few of ’em’ll show up trying to trick me into coming out.”

“You think they’ve evolved that much…awareness?” Smoke said, waving away the joint, which was burned almost all the way down.

Lyle took a last big puff and stubbed the spent butt out on a jar lid before he answered. “Tough to say. They don’t seem any smarter than before. If anything they’ve lost all their, you know, whadda you want to call it, their language skills. You know how they used to say little odds and ends, almost make you think like they had something going on upstairs?”

He tapped his head for emphasis, a long coil of his brown hair springing out of the elastic.

“Yes…a few words at a time, little phrases…” Smoke said.

“Yeah, that. Well, they aren’t doing much of that anymore. Now it’s all this wailing and snorting and shit, like they’re a bunch of rutting pigs. Only pigs are probably a damn sight smarter than they are.”

“But their habits—” Smoke said carefully.

“They still look like a bunch of fucked-up retards on the dance floor when they walk, and you still see them doing all kinds of freaky shit like they’re trying to remember what it was like to be human. Like I saw this one out there with a doll, taking her dress off and putting it on again. Course then it pulled the doll’s hair out. Or just the other day, here comes a couple of ’em with a wheelbarrow. I’m not shit-tin’ you, they’ve got this thing loaded up with a bunch of bricks and a watering can and I don’t know what else kind of crap…and they’re trying to wheel it down the street, only they ain’t got any balance and it’s just dumpin’ shit out and then they stop and try to put it back in. Best entertainment I’ve had for weeks, I’ll tell ya, watching those two assclowns. Finally they just left the whole mess next door in my old neighbor Bess’s yard, right in the flower beds. Oh, that old bitch woulda loved
that,
I’ll tell you.”

Lyle chuckled, a deep satisfied sound that amazed Cass. He genuinely seemed amused by what was just one more chronicle of how horrifying the world had become. Cass wondered how he did it…surely a little weed wasn’t the only answer. If it
was,
she’d happily light up.

If she thought drinking would help, she’d go right back to it.

Only she knew better. Drinking had taken away her pain, for a while. But it hadn’t given her anything back but emptiness. And if she ever wanted emptiness that badly again, she’d just kill herself, hang herself from a light fixture in an abandoned house or slide a blade into the soft flesh of her wrist. It wasn’t like she’d be the first.

“But you said they’re stalking you, here,” Smoke said. “Like they keep track of which houses have squatters. They’re not just responding to catching a scent or seeing movement through the glass or…”

“Oh, for sure. Ain’t any doubt about that.”

“That’s no good,” Smoke said heavily.

“Hell, no, it ain’t. It’s fucked, is what it is.”

“So they’ve got some sort of memory. And planning. I mean even if it’s just rudimentary.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. It’s like they’re all in on it, figuring out how they can work together. They’ll do anything if there’s a chance they can bring down a live citizen. They’ll bang their heads into a wall until they’re dead, long as the wall gives way even a little bit. And after one does it, the rest figure out if you bang on the wall long enough it’ll break, and then next time it’s all of ’em bangin’ their heads. They’re fuckin’ unstoppable.”

“Yeah, that’s a bit newish, but still different from, you know, waiting for you to come out.”

Lyle shrugged. “I figure waiting around probably feels about like head-banging to them. Sometimes I go up to the window upstairs and holler at them just to watch them get all pissed off. They’ll throw themselves at the house for a while, climb on top of each other trying to get to the top windows—the lower ones are all boarded up now. One time I pushed a dresser out the window on one of ’em, broke its skull clean in half.” He chuckled. “Good times…’Course I had to drag it away later myself.”

“How do you…” Cass gestured around the basement. The shelves were well stocked with supplies: cans and boxes of food, paper towels and toilet paper. “I mean, what do you, um—”

“What do I do all day?” Lyle chuckled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. “Fair question. Well, I go out every single day. I don’t aim to let the fuckers keep me cooped up. I mean, I ain’t crazy, I usually go right after nightfall or right before dawn, you hardly ever see one of ’em out then. It’s about four blocks to the Horseshoe, so that’s a big feature of my day, ’cause I take four or five jugs with me.”

The Horseshoe was a branch of the Stanislaus River that wound through town. A walking path had been laid several years back, and young mothers with strollers brought stale bread for their kids to feed the ducks, Before. Cass had taken Ruthie there when she was a baby.

“So what else,” Lyle continued, ticking his activities off on his thick fingers. “Well, I go poking around in folks’ sheds and garages and whatnot, see if I can find anything useful. And I been digging a new latrine…over in Bess’s backyard, in fact. Dug it right next to those fuckin’ roses she was so damn nuts over. If I had a nickel for every time she came over here to bitch and moan about my tree dropping plums on her rosebushes…and she had a yappy little dog, too, but luckily she took it with her when she moved on down to the library. Though I suppose someone’s made dogburgers out of it by now.”

Cass exchanged a glance with Smoke. When she’d been at the library, there had been a no-pets policy. Bobby had been firm on that; resources were to go to humans. Anyone who didn’t like it could try their luck living on their own, outside, with their dog or cat.

Bess had undoubtedly given up her dog in exchange for safety; everyone did. Some of the most hard-core people thought that all animals brought to the library ought to be relinquished for food, but in that regard Bobby showed one of his infrequent moments of public compassion. He himself would offer to take the pet to the edge of town, where dogs could join the feral pack sometimes seen scavenging there, and cats could climb the shredded bark of dead eucalyptus.

“Were you married…? I mean, were you living alone during the Siege?” Cass asked, fascinated.

“No, luckily my last wife took on out of here a couple of years ago, back when you could still buy a bag of flour for under ten bucks. Better for her, I imagine. She hooked up with this guy from Sacramento, had a boat dealership up that way, I expect he was able to set her up pretty well, maybe take care of her during…everything. Hope so, anyway.”

For the first time a troubled look crossed his face, a flicker of sadness. “I
was
fond of that one,” he added softly.

Smoke shook his head, smiling. “Well, my hat’s off to you, keeping yourself busy. I can think of worse ways to spend the apocalypse.”

“This ain’t the apocalypse, buddy, we already done
lived
through that,” Lyle exclaimed, smacking Smoke on the shoulder and bellowing out a laugh. “We’re the
survivors,
man. You got to remember that. Don’t know how much longer we’ll be around, but every day I walk outside and I give those hell-creatures a big fuck you and I figure I’m still ahead.”

“You know what some people say,” Smoke said, his voice oddly hollow. “Stamp out the blueleaf, we can end this in one generation. I haven’t seen any sign of it since late June. It can’t survive the heat.”

“
I’ve
seen it,” Cass said. “Not nearly as much as…before, and it’s kind of dry and there’s dead leaves on the plants, but it’s out there.”

Smoke stared at her, his brows knit, his expression opaque. It was almost as though he was trying to decide if she was lying.

“If it’s out there, it won’t be for long,” he finally said. “They were invented in a lab. Kaysev’s thriving, blueleaf isn’t—what that says to me is the blueleaf’s not going to stand up to evolution.”

“Careful, friend,” Lyle said gently. “You’re back into theories now, and ain’t any knowing when it comes to theories. You’ll drive yourself crazy, you go down that path.”

“All I’m saying is, you make shit in laboratories, it’s probably pretty easy to get it wrong. People aren’t God.”

“Or else the blueleaf will develop a resistance,” Cass said. She didn’t like the edge in Smoke’s voice. It made him seem more vulnerable. “Evolve into a new strain, a stronger one. A super-blueleaf.”

“Super-blueleaf?” Smoke repeated, his voice laced with sarcasm. “That a technical term?”

Cass pressed her lips together, stung. This was a side of Smoke she hadn’t seen before, an unkind side.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I’m sorry, Cass, I didn’t mean that. I just…I don’t know, I didn’t think first.”

Cass waited only a second before she nodded, biting her lip. Maybe he was right, maybe the blueleaf was already dying out.

Blue Means Trouble
. That was the frantic cry that went up around town, even before anyone understood the full horror of the disease. In the first weeks after the smaller, blue-tinged plants appeared among the sturdier kaysev, a quarter of the town’s remaining population died, dark bile bubbling at their lips as they went into convulsions. The old and sick and very young had to be buried in trenches; the last of the fuel that hadn’t already been raided went to powering the earth-moving equipment, and nearly every healthy young person helped out with the task.

Then they found out what else the blue leaves did to you.

Blue Means Trouble
. The children who survived learned to run screaming for an adult when they saw the distinctive leaves with their slightly feathered edges; the adults learned to gather and burn the plants. The blueleaf strain was susceptible to the sun and heat, unlike its stronger cousin; by late May it had begun to die off on its own, unable to tolerate the Sierra summer climate.

“You’re right,” Lyle nodded. “Nobody’s seen a one of them things since summer ’round here. But how do we know they’re not thriving up north? Even if it can’t root down south now, what’s to prevent it from adapting, like Cass here says? The government’s been up to some crazy shit—you can’t tell me kaysev’s not a whole new branch of botany or whatever the fuck science it is. You can make a plant like that, you can make a fucking variation for every climate.”

“But nobody would—no sane person would eat the blueleaf now,” Cass protested. She was something of an expert on self-destruction, and in A.A. she’d seen just about every variety of desperation, but surely no one would choose the Beater’s fate on purpose.

Lyle shrugged. “That’s not the only way it’s spread.”

“Anyone who’s attacked now ends up dead in forty-eight hours,” Smoke said, almost angrily. “It’s not like early days.”

Early days, when the Beaters would occasionally attack their quarry in the streets, they could be overpowered—shot or cut or bludgeoned, if not to death at least into submission—and the victims brought home with a few bites, only to start to go feverish hours later. Soon the Beaters changed their tactics and started carrying their victims back to their nests.

“You’re sure about that?” Lyle asked. “What if they get close, but you get away? Maybe you got a scratch or two, but you think you’re okay. You going to be willing to wait and wonder?”

“It’s only spread through saliva,” Smoke said. “A scratch can’t hurt you. And their blood can’t infect you.”

“You gonna stake your life on it? Only, it wouldn’t be your life, now would it…it’s everyone who gets left behind. Lemme show you something.”

He dug into his pocket and showed them his open palm, on which they could see a small brown pill. “Potassium cyanide,” he said matter-of-factly. “Got it from a buddy of mine was in the service, he picked ’em up overseas somewhere. Gave one to Travers across the street. If the Beaters get too close to me someday, I’ll pop this sucker—I’ll be out of my mind before those fuckers get their teeth in me, dead quick enough to spoil their party.”

“That’s noble, I guess,” Smoke said, in a tone that clearly said otherwise.

“Hey, I never claimed to have all the answers,” Lyle said, holding up his hands in surrender. “But if there’s even a chance I could end up being a carrier or something, if there’s Beater blood messing up my DNA, I’d rather be dead than accidentally spit on someone. I mean, I’ve heard the same things you have. About the spit being the only way. But let me ask you something, how exactly can anyone be sure since there hasn’t been any research done since long before the first Beater took its first bite?”