AfterAge (26 page)

He grabbed a can of soup that looked free of rust stains or punctures and a box of Ritz crackers. Outside it was damned cold and heavily overcast, but still better than the store, with its smell of rot and crumbling sense of claustrophobia. Lake Street and its overhead grid of train trestles cast too many shadows, even in the daytime, and after a minute C.J. moved on, the hope that he'd find the girl finally starting to fade. He circled the convoluted Dubuffet sculpture that graced the patterned sidewalk at the main doors to the State of Illinois Center, then spotted the granite wall that rimmed the entrance to the Daley Center's underground garage across the street. He settled there, a good twenty feet above the entrance, where he could see the Picasso and the plaza through the glass walls around the lobby of the Daley Center. Directly in front of him was the fountain, dry and filled with bits of trash. He still remembered a third-grade field trip where his teacher had shown them the plaza and the building when the name had just been changed from its former title of Civic Center. C.J. pried the can open and sniffed it, then ate and hoped for the best. One of these days he and the rest of the underground would probably end up with food poisoning when the stuff started to go bad. Most of the jars and cans had burst over the winter; only the denser items with less water, like beef stew, canned meat, or thick soup, were left. C.J. figured they'd end up existing on mixes of dried soup and lake water.
If
they made it.

When he was through with his lunch, C.J. gathered his trash, stuffed it in the empty cracker box, and thought briefly about leaving it on the wall in the hope that someone would see it and know that there were still people in the city who lived and ate what they'd been meant to, then he looked up at the dark glass of the Daley Center and changed his mind. What if by leaving this sign of life he endangered someone's hiding place? He couldn't risk it. He leapt off the wall and took a step to regain his balance when someone behind him spoke.

"Hi."

C.J. whirled and brought the crossbow to firing position with deadly speed; beneath his finger the trigger was only a fraction of an inch away from killing as his heart slamdanced in his chest. The practice and danger of the past months showed in his skill; even with his pulse thundering his aim was steady.

The girl never flinched. "My name is Jo," she said.

"Joe?" he said stupidly. He was acutely aware of everything: the sound of the wind turning the corner of the County Building from the west, a scrap of paper scuttling along the street in its wake like a half-crazed squirrel, the rise and fall of the girl's chest beneath the prominent bones of her shoulders. Somewhere to his left a sparrow twittered. "That's a boy's name."
Flash thought for the day
, he thought disdainfully.

"It's short for Jovina." She raised a hand and pointed south; C.J. watched her finger float upward, then jerked and stared at her suspiciously, wondering if she was hypnotizing him. Most of the upper half of her dress was ripped away; the rest fell in burned tatters. She didn't seem to notice that one of her breasts, pale and hardly developed, could be seen through the ruined material, nor did the thirty-five-degree temperature seem to bother her. "I live in St. Peter's," she said.

"I've been in there," he said flatly. "It's empty."

She smiled then, and the sight made C.J. think he was going a little crazy, because he'd just met her, only thirty seconds ago, and she was standing here half-naked and weird, yet he was thinking already that she might be okay. "You were there a couple of weeks ago," she said calmly. "I watched you."

"But why didn't you say something?" His cool facade fell away and he looked at the girl in astonishment. How could someone see
him
without him knowing it?

"It wasn't time yet." She turned and C.J. found himself staring at a mass of impossibly long white hair that was nearly indistinguishable from the pallid flesh of her back.

"Can you come with me?" she asked. "There's someone I'd like you to meet. She can't stay with me forever."

"Who can't stay with you forever?" Score another intelligent question, he thought.
Christ
.

"Her name is Louise." Jo's eyes found his and for an instant he sort of got . . .
lost
in them, like fading out or locking into a light stupor when you were tired. Only he wasn't staring into space, he was staring into
Jo
, and when he came back a moment later, he knew without a doubt that he had to do whatever she said. It wasn't a matter of trust at all; it was . . .

The
future
.

He lowered the crossbow.

"Lead on."

REVELATION 12:16

And the earth helped the woman. . . .

~ * ~

Amazing
, Louise thought.
Un . . . believable
.

Sitting on the front steps of St. Peter's and waiting for Jo to return, Louise ignored the cold and held up her hands, turning both front and back, flexing each finger and enjoying the feel of the wind between each digit. It was, indeed, a miracle that they were healed, but this went even further—every single scar or blemish that had ever been present on her hands was totally
gone
.

The cold had seeped through her clothes and Louise hoisted herself up and went back inside, still peering at the side of her right hand. Before her fall onto the street grating, she'd had a twisted, inch-long scar there, caused by shattering the glass door in the foyer of her building with the heel of her hand the summer she was eleven. Now the scar was missing, and even her fingernails, always so cracked and bitten, were smooth and healthy—long, too, grown to manicure length past her fingertips. As she settled onto the front pew, voices drifted in from the vestibule and Louise glanced up. The sound was so fitting that for an instant she didn't pay any attention, then she realized it was voices, and not just Jo. She jumped to her feet, then stopped uncertainly as she heard Jo tell someone to follow her in.

"Good morning!" Jo called. "How do you feel?"

"Fine." Louise cupped a hand around her mouth to help carry her voice. "Where've you been?" The question was automatic as Jo led another person up the aisle and Louise strained to see. "Who's that?"

"His name is . . ." Jo glanced at the man walking next to her.

"C.J.," he said as he and Jo stopped in front of her. "That's what everyone calls me."

"Hi." Louise couldn't think of anything else to say. "This is Louise," Jo told C.J. "She came in the day before yesterday."

C.J. shifted his gaze back to her and Louise saw that his eyes were a discomforting golden tan. She tried to smile and knew immediately that it was more of a sick grimace than anything else. For the first time in a year she wondered what she looked like, and she couldn't stop her fingers from smoothing her hair. She'd started using her hunting knife months ago to hack off chunks of it, impatient with the care it needed just to keep it neat. Now her thoughts touched regretfully on the memory of four-inch locks of hair floating to the floor on a bright, long-ago afternoon. Her face—was it even
clean
? She was mortified; her eyes, an unremarkable shade of vague blue, were the only thing left.
Big damned deal
, she thought miserably.

Oh yes—and her brand-new hands.

C.J. cleared his throat uncomfortably and looked away, his eyes instinctively searching the darker areas of the church nave before returning to Jo. Louise blushed and realized that Jo had lost most of the neckline and front of her dress, and half her childishly formed chest was in full sight. C.J., however, regarded her with an almost clinical interest, much as a boy would watch a small and interesting pale frog. "So," he finally said. He slipped a medieval-looking contraption from his shoulders and placed it carefully on one of the pews. "You've only been here two days?"

Louise nodded and swallowed her nervousness. "Yeah."

"Where'd you come from?" He leaned against the side of one of the benches and folded his arms. "Were you with anyone else?"

Louise shook her head. "No, just me and Beau.”

"Beau?"

Louise couldn't wait any longer. "Jo, what
happened
to you?"

Jo looked at her strangely, then made only a semiconcerned effort to pull her dress together. Louise's mouth dropped open when she saw that Jo's hands, so terribly mutilated last night, were as white and unblemished as her own. "Your hands—"

"I think I'll go change," Jo interrupted. Her voice was muffled and sleepy-sounding. “And splash some water on my face." She smiled sweetly. "You guys get to know each other."

Louise quickly scanned the aisle. "Beau—“

"—is in the back," Jo said calmly. "I guess he's tired, too."

"Who's Beau?" C.J. asked again.

Louise had taken her gaze off Jo for only an instant, but the white-haired girl was gone. In another moment Louise heard a door close somewhere in the northern end of the church. C.J. was still waiting, his eyes like some bizarre pair of sparkling yellow stones. "My dog," Louise finally managed. "Beau is my dog."

"You have a dog? Wow." He sounded impressed. "That must've been a trick. Were you always by yourself?"

This time she answered his repeated question with a nod. "Were you?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes." Again he looked briefly at the dark rear of the church; it was a habit Louise understood well. "But . . ." He hesitated.

"But what?"

"There are . . . a few others now," he finished at last.

Louise's tense expression spread into pleasure. "Well, that's great! How many? And where are they? I was starting to think I was the only one left before yesterday, because I hadn't seen anyone else in so long, you know—" She stumbled slightly over the last word and stopped. She was babbling and he was staring at her like she had two heads. And why not? Her face turned scarlet.
Where did I get off thinking I was the only person with brains enough to survive?
She choked back the sudden urge to cry and closed her mouth.

C.J. grinned abruptly and the smile lit up his face and made him look like an impish little boy. "Hey, don't stop now—you're on a roll!" He glanced around the dim interior, lit only by the richly colored but feeble glow from the stained glass overhead. "Let's get out of here. I'm sure it's holy and all that, but I just don't like dark places." Louise followed him outside without speaking, then was shocked to feel the drop in the temperature in only the last quarter hour. She threw a worried glance at the sky.

"It's going to snow soon."

C.J. jumped at the sound of Jo's voice floating from just inside the door to the church, and Louise dredged up enough courage to touch the sleeve of his jacket reassuringly. The only
living
thing she'd touched for the longest time was Beau. "She's always doing that," she told him. "I think she likes to surprise people."

"Person could get killed that way," he muttered.

Louise thought of the dangerous-looking weapon inside and wondered just how badly Jo had startled him earlier in the day. "Not her," Louise said.

C.J.'s eyebrows lifted and Louise shrugged. She might sound as odd as Jo acted, but she believed every word. Jo rejoined them, wearing a white dress that except for the sleeves was the same as the ruined one. Her porcelain-tinted skin glowed when she lifted her face and breathed deeply of a swirl of frigid wind sweeping the thick sheet of her hair. She turned back to them, her gray eyes a strange reflection of the tightly layered clouds. "We have to get you back to Water Tower."

For the first time, C.J.'s iron composure cracked. "How did you know about that?" he demanded. "Who else knows?"

"I know a lot of things." Jo's soft voice was reassuring. “And only Louise knows—now. You're quite safe.” Watching Jo, Louise had the queer notion that the younger girl's eyes changed to a darker, brooding gray that had nothing to do with the snow clouds overhead, like some kind of optical chameleon. It was scary and Louise's belly gave a single, dreadful twist. "Let's go," Jo said. "I'll walk with you, but I cart stay when we get there."

"Why not?" Louise asked nervously. She was distinctly aware that she could be an uninvited intruder into C.J.'s life. He'd never invited her to Water Tower Place. What if—

"Of course you can," C.J. interrupted Louise's jumbled thoughts. "What're you going to do, hike all the way back? By the time we get there, it might be dark. No way."

Jo shrugged. "Then let's not waste time. Why don't you tell Louise about your . . . what would you call them? Family?"

"Whatever."

Louise bristled at C.J.'s snappish response but Jo didn’t appear to notice. "Get Beau and your things," she told Louise. "You won’t be coming back."

"I won't?" Confused again, Louise glanced at C.J., but he only stared crossly at Jo. A flicker of irritation stirred, warring with uncertainty and the sensation of homelessness she'd had ever since leaving the north side; had he and Jo planned this without even asking her? "Suppose they don’t want any more people?" Louise plunged on. "Or—"

"There's room," C.J. said. His tone made it clear that he thought her questions were yet another waste of time.

"I don’t want to impose," Louise continued stubbornly. She felt like the unwanted relative during the holidays. "I can take care of myself and I don't have to stay with Jo to do it." Louise was getting angry and embarrassed. What was happening here anyway? One minute Jo was saving her life and performing miracles, the next she was kicking Louise out on her butt.