Rebirth (34 page)

His head rolled back and he tried to raise his one arm, but it lay at a wrong angle and only twitched before falling back. Broken. The other arm, the one with the ruined fingers, was bound in dirty rags; blood had soaked through the knotted fabric and Cass saw that flies were settling and swarming around it. She realized the flies were the source of the buzzing that she’d thought was only in her head.

“Zhao got ’im,” Jimbo muttered. “Pretended he was down and when this asshole was done with Boone he went to drag the body—he’d already got Calder stowed, don’t know what he was fixin’ to do with ’em—anyway he holstered up and Zhao shot him clean through the shoulder. Missed the bone and came out the other side. Lorenzo was trying to get off a shot but he’d been lying on his gun hand, it’d gone numb, is what he said.”

Ralston made a grunt of disbelief. “Lorenzo’s a douche. He just made a shitty shot, is all.”

“Yeah, maybe. But he’s the douche who brought Smoke back here along with Calder and Boone’s bodies.”

“You proud of your boy?” Ralston demanded, crouching down next to Cass and nudging her shoulder. “Proud of him torturing an unarmed man?”

Cass said nothing, focused on Smoke. As gently as she could she pried his eye open, saw that the eyeball was rolled up in his head. Whatever sounds he made were from deep within his semiconscious state, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

“I’m here,” she whispered, and bent to kiss his cracked and torn mouth. She tasted his blood, felt her tears splash on his wounds.

“That’s foul,” Ralston said. “Don’t put your mouth on that, not when you owe me the next hour. I don’t want none a his nasty.”

They didn’t know, and Cass forgave that comment even as her fingers traced lightly on his shirt, looking for the wound, the bullet’s exit. They didn’t know what Smoke had been avenging. They’d heard only one account, riddled with inaccuracies and outright lies. They didn’t know that the Rebuilders Smoke killed had lined up the residents of the library, shot the older men one by one before moving on to every resident who dared to object. She remembered Nora, her nervous quick movements, her badly cut hair, the way it fell around her face, making her gaunt cheekbones look somehow elegant. Her sad black-brown eyes.

And Sammi’s mother, the first and only time Cass ever saw her, when she dragged Sammi in from the fields to the safety of the school shelter. The way Jessica had fallen to her knees when she saw that her daughter was safe, the wildness in her expression that spoke of frantic worry.

The two women had been ordinary. A mother, an aunt, but they had stood up to the Rebuilders and for that they had been executed, their bodies draped in a heap in the center of the school, left to burn and burn and burn.

Cass doubted the story Jimbo told, that Smoke had continued shooting a downed man, but thinking about the fire, she realized that perhaps she would have done the same if she had been there.

She found the torn place in the shirt, slipped a finger through the hole and searched for the wound in Smoke’s shoulder. His skin was impossibly hot; infection must have set in. There. It was a jagged hole, but not too large.

Why couldn’t it be Smoke who had her immunity? Cass supposed that if she was the one shot, her body would immediately start healing. It happened with cuts, even deep ones. There would be no infection, and the severed nerves and vessels would eventually knit back together. But not Smoke. He was nothing special at all. He had never been a soldier, never worn a uniform, had only learned to sharpshoot, to run with a heavy pack and scale obstacles and make strategy on the fly when he started working for Dor.

Had Dor taught him brutality, too? She’d seen Smoke, on the mornings she followed him, her jacket’s hood pulled up all the way for warmth. She’d watched him practice the chopping fist motions that Joe taught him for hand-to-hand fighting; watched him run up and down the steps of an apartment building until he was drenched in sweat, his calves trembling and his lungs fighting for air. Smoke had worked so hard to make himself dangerous. Was it all for this? All so that he could fight against an enemy so powerful that it barely flinched before replacing its fallen?

Would Smoke’s actions mean anything at all? Death was cheap; the world would not miss a few more men in the prime of their lives.

“When did he get here?” Cass asked.

“Two nights ago,” Jimbo said. “The recruiting party spent the night up at Emerson Gap, they were heading up to Silverton. There’s a group up at the old MegaBass Pro Shops, that big one they built back in like ’14 or ’15, something like that…bought a wakeboard there once.” He spat off into the darkness, spittle falling on Cass’s exposed neck. “Don’t know how this asshole knew to look for them there, but he was waiting. He was up in a tree the whole time, waited until they made camp and rushed them after dark.”

Dor
. Dor had told Smoke where to look. Three nights ago when Smoke left on the motorcycle Dor gave him, armed with weapons from Dor’s private arsenal, Dor had told him exactly where he could find the Rebuilder party.

Was that why Dor let him go so easy? Why he tried to put Cass’s fears to rest? Was it because he really believed Smoke had a chance? Or because he didn’t want her running after him? Cass’s anger at Dor grew; it was one man against at least four. The element of surprise was good, that was true; without it, Smoke would not have been able to take out even the two he did. But how could Dor have expected him to win? All the target practice in the world, all the jogging and weights couldn’t prepare him for his first actual battle, and he’d gone in alone.

“Why?” she whispered, lowering herself as gently as she could against Smoke’s body. He had slipped back into unconsciousness, and she felt only his weak heartbeat in response. Why had he thought he could do this? But she already knew the answer—he’d never intended to live; he only meant to take out as many of them as he could before he died.

Would he be satisfied now to know that he’d killed two? It didn’t seem like much of a trade for one’s own life.

She forced herself to stand, letting her hand linger on Smoke’s unhurt shoulder for a moment. She faced Jimbo and hugged herself in the cold.

“I need you to make him live,” she said quietly. “Medicine, antibiotics, whatever you have. I’ll do anything for you. Anything.”

Ralston sputtered a protest, something about the next hour, and she placed a hand on his arm to quiet him. “I remember our bargain,” she said steadily, before turning her focus back to Jimbo. He was watching her carefully, his wiry gray eyebrows knit together.

“I’m an outlier,” she said, waiting to make sure he understood. “I’ll have certain privileges. Freedoms. I’ll be able to come and go…to come to you. As long as you keep him alive, you can have…”

She shrugged off her coat, letting it hang at her elbows, and for the second time that night she strained against the thin fabric of the nightgown, hoping the light from his small flashlight would illuminate the shape of her breasts, of her taut stomach, her hips. She cupped one breast, lifting it for his appraisal. “You can have anything you want,” she finished, and then she couldn’t help looking to reassure herself that Smoke was still unconscious, because even though she could give herself away, could give away every last cell of her body, every wracked corner of her soul, he could never know. This would be her gift to him: he would never know that his life was what she bought with her trade.

“You’d like that,” Ralston said, and for one confusing moment Cass mistook his tone for jealousy, for anger that she was so quick to offer what she’d just given him, down on her knees on the cold ground, but when he seized her wrist and twisted it so that she had to bend double, Cass realized that she had made two important misjudgments:

First, she’d forgotten that—just like in the Box—the most important positions were given to those who’d done the security jobs Before: the cops and Marines and highway patrol, the prison guards and gangbangers. The hard men.

And second, that even a man who thrusts against you with the strangled cry of an adolescent, who shudders as he spills his seed inside you, unmindful of his momentary vulnerability, his shaft already going soft between your teeth, will forget all that when he believes he’s been wronged.

“You can see your murderer boyfriend all you want in detention—if he lives that long,” Ralston spat.

“I never stood against the Rebuilders,” Cass protested, but already they were leading her down the hall, forcing her to go too quickly, so that she stumbled and nearly fell, her arms yanked cruelly as they pulled her along, and when they passed the staircase and continued into a little room, a closet where brooms and supplies were stored, Cass knew with horrifying certainty that they meant to deliver her their version of justice—and that she’d brought it on herself.

But she’d done worse. And she’d no doubt do worse again.

30

DOR RUBBED THE METAL BOX, RUNNING HIS thumb over the smooth silvery surface, before slipping it back in his pocket. He sat on the edge of the bed Cass had left. Ruthie, sensing his closeness in her sleep, had rolled closer to him and hooked her small hand over his leg.

Ruthie was an odd child in some ways, cautious and easily spooked, but at times Dor caught glimpses of the mischievous spirit hidden within her. Subdued, maybe, but not quashed. At times it seemed that even Cass could not detect the sly little grin that flashed across Ruthie’s pretty features when she had played some tiny trick for her own amusement, some clever gesture just because she could. A mother, tasked with protecting her child from birth, exhausted from the dangers and heartaches, could easily miss such moments.

Not long ago, Dor had come across Ruthie in the Box with Feo, playing a game they’d invented that involved Feo standing on a gentle berm where Cass had planted pine seedlings. The boy stood patiently, whistling. The object of the game seemed to be for him to pretend he was all alone and for Ruthie to try to sneak up on him. There was something desperately sweet about the boy—tough and disrespectful to most adults, his face generally wary and mistrustful—whistling with his hands in his pockets until Ruthie, over and over, came charging at him from behind the little trees, slamming her little body into him, and every time he acted as though she had taken him completely by surprise and fell to the ground. They rolled together, Feo yelling in pretend terror, Ruthie shaking with her soundless laughter, until she disentangled herself and went running off to hide again.

Dor figured Ruthie would be fine. After all, he’d been through fourteen years with Sammi; fourteen years of heart-stopping terrors and humbling corrections, the usual drill for a first-time parent. He’d overprotected, sure, but at least he’d been wise enough to let Sammi go when she needed to test herself. That was something Jessica had not been able to do. Jessica smothered—she was a great mother, at times, but now Dor could only pray that some of his lessons had taken root, that Sammi understood she had the strength inside her to face whatever was happening to her.

Tomorrow he would find her. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know where. But he would find her.

Tonight he had to find Cass.

He knew something had gone wrong. Sensed it the way he observed coming changes in the weather, the moods of his people or the stores coming in for trade. Dor was so finely attuned to the energy around him that it was painful at times. That was why he lived apart, in the trailer that was little more than a tin prison; it was better than being in the midst of all those lives being lived around him. The static could be almost unbearable on days when he was weakened by a lack of rest or a too-strenuous workout—all those people, their tempers and desires and jealousies on display for anyone who looked.

Well, for people like him, anyway. And he’d sensed the change in Cass immediately. He just didn’t know what it was. Still didn’t. But in the time she’d been gone in the afternoon and come back, something had changed. Something at the Tapp Clinic had stripped her of her fragile strength, hardened and wounded her.

Dor scooped Ruthie up in his arms. She was so light, hardly a burden at all. He hated bringing her. She should stay and sleep, but it wasn’t safe yet; he didn’t know who to trust. That had always been his strength, choosing those he could trust. But now he had only himself. So Ruthie would come.

It would be awkward and it would increase the danger for both of them. But what other option did he have? Waiting it out, waiting for Cass to come back, might be the smartest thing to do; after all, he was here for Sammi. Venturing out would require him to use resources that were meant for her. He would risk showing his hand, alerting the Rebuilders that he wasn’t who he pretended to be. In the worst case, he would endanger his own mission, and his chances to get Sammi back.

Nothing mattered more than his daughter. He would trade any living soul for her without hesitation—even Cass’s, if it ever came to that.

But leaving Cass to an uncertain fate was not an option, either. He had always told Sammi that she had to stand up for the things that mattered. And Cass, despite their awkward relationship, despite the things they had done—or maybe because of them—mattered.

There was no other way. He put the silver box back in his pocket, careful to make sure it was properly closed first, protecting the soft rubbery ball with its cells of gel and powder separated by the thinnest membrane. He shifted Ruthie so that he could hold her in one arm. In the other he held one of the darts he’d smuggled in the hidden pocket along with the silver box. And he set out down the darkened hall.

The way the tree had grown, struggling for purchase on the slope behind the fence that marked the far end of the park, made a perfect saddle in which Cass could sit with her legs dangling above the creek. The creek was dry in all but the few rainy months of spring, dotted with stones submerged in cracked earth, tall dead weeds, jackrabbit warrens. It wasn’t much to look at, certainly not compared to the park, which the developers had situated at the end of the broad avenue that ran through the neighborhood, so that you could see it from the entrance and the mouth of every cul-de-sac. They’d made it nice, nice enough to justify the prices they charged for what were just glorified tri-level tract homes.