Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

Smoke put a gentle hand to her back. “Cass, you’re cleaned up. You look fine. And in the dark, your skin…”

Cass knew what he meant. The wounds along her arm were faded even in the daylight, but in the dark they would go unnoticed.

Smoke ran his hand gently down the side of her face, tilting her chin up so that she would have to look at him. “Are you all right?”

Cass nodded, but she didn’t trust her voice to speak. She led the way to the door, but as she was about to knock it opened.

The woman standing inside held a flashlight.

“Hurry,” she whispered. She stepped out of the way, holding the door open just wide enough for them to pass.

Cass and Smoke slipped inside and the door shut with a heavy thud.

Someone slid a heavy bolt into place. As her eyes adjusted to the flashlight’s glow, Cass saw that four people were gathered in the small vestibule.

One of the men held a gun loosely at his side.

But as she scanned the others she realized that she knew one of them, and her alarm lessened slightly.

“Elaine-it’s me, Cass.”

There was a moment of shocked silence and then a flash of recognition, Elaine’s eyes widening and her lips parting as though she was about to say Cass’s name.

And then she didn’t. Instead, her expression shuttered, but not before Cass thought she saw her shake her head, very slightly, as she raised her arms to cross them in front of her chest.

“Do I know you?” she said.

“Elaine? Don’t you…” Cass’s bewilderment grew into something more, confusion edged with cold fear. She took another look at the other people in the room, their tense posture, their hard expressions. “My name is Elaine,” she said. “Elaine White. Maybe you took one of my yoga classes?”

Her gaze was hard and intent, and Cass hesitated. “Uh…maybe.”

“I used to teach at the Third Street Gym. And I had one over in Terryville on Thursdays and Saturdays. Saturday was such a big class, I never knew everyone’s name. But you look kind of familiar.”

“Yeah,” Cass said, trying to gauge where Elaine was trying to lead her…and why. Elaine had been a yoga teacher, a fact that Cass learned during one of a dozen after-dinner conversations when the two of them had worked together washing and drying dishes and ordering the stores, tasks reserved for those without children. Parents told bedtime stories and tucked their little ones in, even Aftertime, leaving the others to fill the hours before sleep with stories of their past, never talk of the future. She knew that Elaine had recently broken up with her boyfriend, a man who’d left his wife for her, that she’d had to take out a restraining order against him, though he’d disappeared early on in the troubles. That she had to leave a room-sized loom behind when she came to the library, that she missed weaving her blankets and shawls and table runners more than anything from Before. “Saturdays. I took the…uh…”

“Sacred Thread. At ten-thirty.”

“Yes. That one.”

For a moment they regarded each other, Elaine’s mouth compressed in a thin line, Smoke standing close behind Cass-and then the man with the gun stepped forward, gesturing with his free hand at the two of them.

“All of this is very heartwarming,” he said, in the flat voice of a transplanted Midwesterner. “But your little reunion can wait. Arms out, legs apart.”

Cass realized they were going to be searched, and drew in a sharp breath. She’d made it this far, and she couldn’t risk being turned back now, not before she got Ruthie.

“Elaine, I just need-”

“Do what he says,” Elaine snapped, any trace of warmth drained from her voice. “Maybe you were in my class, maybe not. We weren’t friends . So don’t expect me to treat you like we were.”

“But I only wanted-”

“Shut up,” Elaine growled, and in the flickering glow of the bulb in the fixture tacked to the ceiling with builder’s staples, Cass saw her reach for her belt and knew what was coming even before the woman who had once been her friend produced a gun of her own and pointed it at her heart.

FOR A SECOND CASS FELT LIKE THE BREATH HAD been knocked loose from her, like she was plummeting into a black hole.

Smoke took her arm and she tried to jerk it away. She couldn’t let this happen, couldn’t let Elaine force her to reveal herself. From the corner of her eye she saw a man, one of the strangers, draw a blade from his pocket and hold it at the ready. The man with the gun raised it with a steady hand.

“You don’t understand,” she pleaded, even as the others spread out warily in front of her and Smoke. Elaine, with whom she had made blackout curtains from heavy sheets of vinyl and a staple gun, with whom she had shared the last of her imported tea, exchanged a look with the armed man. And Cass realized that any advantage she had from knowing Elaine before was gone. Trust was precious, and easily lost Aftertime.

Then Smoke did something that surprised her. Without letting go of her arm he stepped in front of her, twisting so she had to double over to prevent him from breaking her wrist.

“I’ll vouch for her,” he said, voice steady and strong. “I’m known here. My name is Smoke. I’ll wait if you like-go ask the others.”

“I know you,” the man with the gun said, surprised. “We ›raided together a couple of times. I’m Miles.”

“I remember,” Smoke said. “You cut your hair.”

“Yeah,” Miles said, and he lowered the gun, but not all the way. “Look…things are different now. It’s not the same. It’s…”

Cass sensed the change in Smoke. Already tense, his body stiffened, and he shifted so she was practically hidden behind him, at the same time relaxing the grip he had on her wrist. But he held on, and she let him.

“Rebuilders,” he said heavily. It was not a question. “They’re here.”

Elaine looked at the floor, and Miles’s expression changed. It contained a warning. “There was a vote,” he said meaningfully, and Cass saw how he locked on Smoke, how he emphasized each word.

The other man, the one who held a blade loosely in his fingers, stepped forward and Cass understood that he was the leader. She’d missed it because of the way he’d blended into the shadows, but now she realized he’d been ready all along, had been waiting and watching.

“You’re the one from the rock slide.”

Smoke drew himself up tall, and Cass slipped her arm from his grip. He was protecting her, but she saw now that the threat encompassed him, too. Something was happening that she didn’t understand, but she pressed close to Smoke’s side. If there was aligning to be done, she was committed.

“I was at the rock slide that day,” Smoke said, his voice steel. “If you mean the day two innocent citizens died. Two innocents, and a few assholes with too much power and not enough guts.”

“These are deadly times.”

“They didn’t have to be, not that day. There were no Beaters nearby.”

“Beaters aren’t the only threat around.”

Cass glanced at Elaine, but she wouldn’t meet her eyes. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her and stared at the floor.

“I’m not sure how you can say that, friend,” Smoke said. “Seems to me that people are just trying to get by, live to see tomorrow.”

“So you say. But the way things are going, those days are numbered. Rebuilders have a plan. Somebody’s got to step up. Somebody’s got to be in charge. Otherwise what you got, you got anarchy. And then your couple of dead’s gonna look like a bargain.” He turned his chin and spat on the floor, looked back up with eyes blazing. “People die every day, Smoke-or whatever your name really is. Some of us aren’t so scared we’re just gonna let it happen. You ought to be thanking me and everyone else who’s turning this sorry little camp into a place where you might just live another day.”