Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

Where was Ruthie?

A loud rattling came from the direction of the enclosure at the other end of the field and the crowd turned to see the Beater cart emerge, being pulled by a guard whose face was covered by a white mask. Inside, the Beater howled, scrambling and stumbling as the cart rolled unevenly along.

And then, at the back of the crowd, one more figure hurried into view. It was a slender woman with a halo of frizzy brown hair-and a child in her arms. She was frantically smoothing the little girl’s dress into place as she tried to catch up to the others. Cass leaned over the platform as far as she dared, craning to see. The child wore little black shoes buckled over white socks, and she pressed a fist against her mouth as she leaned against the woman’s shoulder.

The same way Ruthie always had.

Ever since she was an infant, Ruthie had never sucked her thumb or a pacifier like other children, but she would press a fist to her mouth to comfort herself. How many times had Cass found her that way in her crib, sleeping sweetly with her hand curled against her sweet rosebud lips?

And there-even with her hair gone-Cass knew the shape of her baby’s head. A thousand times she had run her hand over Ruthie’s head. There were her long eyelashes, dark brown with sun-lightened tips. And there was the faintest reminder of the funny little fold in her pudgy forearm.

As the minder drew closer, the sleepy child yawned, and then she opened her eyes and looked directly at Cass, and in their bright emerald depths Cass saw her baby, her Ruthie, and knew that she had been wrong, so wrong-she would not leave here without her child-she would die before she ever let her go again.

Ruthie’s bright green eyes widened, and she stiffened in the woman’s arms. Then she started to thrash wildly, trying to get down, but the woman only held her tighter. Mother Cora’s smile faltered as she watched the struggle. She covered the microphone and said something to one of the other women on the platform. The adults were guiding the children into a line across the platform, but they stepped aside to create a break in the row, and Ruthie’s attendant hurried past and disappeared behind the others, out of sight. But Cass had seen and she was sure.

Mother Cora leaned back into the microphone. “I give you the future,” she murmured, her voice amplified to fill the stadium. On cue, the children clasped each other’s hands and lifted them into the air, and they looked like a chain of paper dolls, eerie and silent as stones.

Cass waited for them to pray, or sing, but they did neither. They stood still above the crowd, frightened and unmoving. No, no, no talking, Gloria had warned Cass. You won’t know her . The women in the audience held their collective breath; they were waiting, too, both joy and grief reflected in their faces. Were they remembering other children, other times?

Mother Cora had bought Cass’s lie, that it was children who had healed her. So Mother Cora had no choice but to bring them out now, when she was about to sacrifice Cass. As if reading her thoughts, Cora stepped forward and slipped a cool hand into Cass’s and led her down the stairs to the Beater’s cart. A few of the smaller children started to cry, but they were silent even as tears spilled on their cheeks. They had been trained-or threatened-effectively.

The Beater hung on to the wire sides of the cage, moaning softly and snorting its need and its longing. In daylight, it was clear that there had been no healing at all. It was as torn and scabbed and crazed as any Cass had ever seen, missing several teeth and most of its hair and chunks of its lips. Great patches of black and red filled in where skin had been torn away.

Cora avoided looking at the Beater as she handed Cass off to Hannah, who waited close to the cage’s door. “Blessings on you, Cassandra,” Cora said, before returning to the podium.

“Don’t worry, it probably won’t hurt any more than getting your mouth sewn shut,” Hannah said quietly, so that only Cass could hear her. “And then you get that whole euphoria thing. That’ll be fun, don’t you think? Oh, you must be so excited.”

The gloved and masked attendant who had wheeled out the cage was gone. The Beater had managed to jam an oozing and crusted hand through the bars. Strips of dead skin hung from its arm, and its scabbed lips were pulled back in a furious leer.

The women at the farthest tables scrambled to see what was happening near the stage, mounting chairs and tables to get an unobstructed view. The guards stationed at the periphery of the crowd moved closer.

Hannah seized Cass’s arm. “Ready, Cassandra? I can guess what you must be thinking-this is gonna hurt like hell. And you know, I think you might be right.”

She removed a key from the key chain around her neck. “You understand that I don’t want to get too close, not being the Chosen One. You do the honors, Cassandra-open up, and shut the door behind you. And just so you know, Brenda’s a hell of a shot.”

Cass had only seconds left. She scanned the line of silent children one more time, searching for Ruthie.

I’m coming for you, she thought, and then she took the key from Hannah’s hand.

BRENDA HAD SLIPPED ON A MASK AND GLOVES and stepped up to the cage brandishing the shock baton Monica had been stunned with. Stretching out strategically, to be as far away as possible from the thing, she pushed the baton through the bars and jammed it against the creature’s shoulder blades. It twitched and screamed and fell to the floor, spasming in pain.

“Now,” Hannah ordered. Cass fitted the key to the lock with shaking fingers, trying not to look at the form shuddering on the floor of the cart only a few feet away. “Get inside or Brenda will shoot.”

But there was one thing that Hannah couldn’t know. In the split second after Cass slid the key into the cage door’s padlock, she whispered Ruthie’s name, and all the months of longing and guilt and grief twisted into one fine strand and pulled taut inside her. She opened the cage door, put one foot inside, glanced at the wrecked abomination writhing on the floor and then she did the one thing that even she would never have guessed she was capable of: she prayed, she called out to God and in one word asked His indulgence, asked for one more day one more hour one more minute with her daughter in her arms

please

and she seized Hannah’s wrist and she pulled with everything she had and Hannah grunted and stumbled and she never saw it coming and she tripped and fell and there was Cass, Cass who had willed herself stronger than five women, Cass whose body had spurned and rejected disease, Cass who flung Hannah like a used and dirtied rag into the cage and then slammed the door shut and jammed the padlock back into place and flung the key in a spinning sparkling arc through the gilded sun of Aftertime until it disappeared far down the field, landing in a planter box of golden poppies the likes of which no one ever expected to see again.

The Beater was getting slowly to its hands and feet, foam and spit wetting its screaming mouth, as it crawled toward Hannah.

Cass turned away in time to see Brenda swinging the electric prod through the air toward her, but she dodged out of the way. Before she could recover her balance Cass slammed into her hard and Brenda fell, landing on the baton and screaming as it delivered its jolting energy into her body. Cass stomped on her jerking hand and she screamed harder.

Women shouted and guards fought their way through the crowd toward her, and Cass knew she had only seconds.

She scrambled up on stage, where the children had stopped singing and were clutching their caregivers and each other in fear. Monica leaned against the post, her eyes rolled up in her head, and Cass couldn’t tell if she was even conscious, her mouth swelling into a grotesque clown’s visage. A guard broke through the front of the crowd and Cass steeled herself for the shot but the woman stumbled and went down as the congregation surged around her, all the other women trying to get close enough to see the excitement. A few rows back, those pushing into the aisles surged over each other, trampling the ones who fell. There was a sound of a gunshot and one of the nearest acolytes fell to the ground, a red stain blooming on her shirt.