Sophie Littlefield - Rebirth

Cass handed Dor’s binoculars back to him, a lightweight matte-black pair that must have cost him dearly. They were crouched next to a billboard that had fallen from its supports and lay resting against the poles, propped up in a way that suggested someone had used it as a temporary shelter. With the Jeep parked behind it, the sign made an effective place to stop and rest unseen.

“There’s so many of them.”

Dor wiped the lenses of the binoculars with the hem of his shirt. “Recruiting’s probably a lot easier these days. Guy comes to your door and points a gun at you and tells you come with him and you’ll get fed and he’ll give you a safe place to sleep at night, you probably don’t mind the gun so much. Freedom’s a luxury most folks can’t afford anymore.”

What about the Box? Cass wanted to ask, but knew that what Dor offered wasn’t truly freedom. Once travelers traded away their goods for a high or a bender or sex, there was little in the way of value or sustenance to be had.

But at least they were free to leave, and Dor didn’t advertise by gunpoint.

“Want a look?” Dor said softly. Ruthie had left off playing with her little plastic figurines and crept silently next to him. The day had grown unusually warm and Cass had taken off Ruthie’s heavy coat. She reached for the glasses, but Dor picked her up and set her on his knee, then held the glasses carefully to her face.

“What do you see?” he asked, his face close to her ear. She didn’t answer, but her lips were parted eagerly, and she didn’t flinch when Dor gently fiddled with the focus.

“Oh!” Ruthie suddenly exclaimed when the far-off town came into view. She pointed, not taking her face away from the glasses-and Dor smiled, a broad, unselfconscious smile Cass had never seen before. He held the binoculars patiently for her; after a while she put her small hand over his and left it there. When she finally pushed away and scrambled off his knee, she was smiling, too.

She raised her hands to be picked up and Cass held her and spun her in a hip-swinging slow circle. “I love you, Babygirl,” she whispered.

“I think we should get going now,” Dor said uneasily. He was checking their packs, all traces of his momentary tenderness gone. “That’s another mile and a half, easy, and I want to get there in the afternoon. People get sloppy before dinner-maybe we can use that.”

“Use it how?”

“Think about it. Afternoons, back in the Box, Charles and them, they’re looking ahead to quitting time. Travelers come along and Faye’s more likely to give ’em a few extra chits just to get ’em through the door rather than haggling. Now we show up in Colima, we have a story that almost sounds likely…well, they’re less likely to ask a lot of questions we can’t answer.”

“We can answer anything they ask.” Cass felt her face go hot. “We just have to keep it simple. We’re together, the three of us.”

Dor narrowed his eyes. “That’s not much of a story. What if they ask for details? We don’t really know each other.” His voice grew even colder. “We’re strangers.”

“You didn’t ask for this.” Cass cut him off before he could say anything else. “I know . You don’t have to say it again.”

Dor handed her the smaller of the two packs. She slipped it on, feeling her muscles flex and respond to the extra weight. It had been a long time since she’d freewalked, but her work in the gardens kept her limber and strong. She dug rich dirt from the creek banks a few blocks from the Box; she turned her flower beds with a sturdy shovel Three-High had brought back; she carried creek water in heavy buckets. When she had settled her pack, she bent to pick up Ruthie.

But Ruthie skipped out of her way, smiling mischievously.

“Come on, Babygirl,” Cass said, trying to be patient as Ruthie ran to Dor and lifted her arms in the air.

Dor picked Ruthie up without hesitation and set her on his shoulders.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s no big deal. She doesn’t weigh anything.”

Ruthie grinned down at her triumphantly.

“Why don’t you wait,” she said. “Ruthie can walk for a while anyway. We can take turns-”

“It’s nothing,” he said.

They walked the straight road and though the late-afternoon breeze was sharp and chill, they quickly settled into a steady pace that warmed Cass. As they went, she thought about what Dor had said-that the burden of carrying her daughter was nothing-and about the way she’d taught herself to choose among the things she knew to be true, to keep only those that would allow her to go on and then banish the rest to a place of forgetting; to consider all the ways she could lie to herself, and choose among those as well; to cherish her carefully chosen lies, to nurture them so they could flourish in the arid landscape of her mind.

Dor carried Ruthie with a straight back and confident stride, but after a while there was perspiration at his brow. From time to time he hitched her up straight when she grew tired and flagged forward. Her little hands seized his hair, pulling hard, but he didn’t complain. Cass found herself falling back a few steps so she could watch them, marveling at the easy way her daughter wrapped her arms around Dor’s head-a stranger’s head-and wondered why she trusted him so easily.

When they were close enough to make out the figures of the guards at the gate, he hitched Ruthie up and turned, waiting for Cass to catch up with him. “So the story-”

“What?” Cass snapped, embarrassed to be caught watching him.

Dor glanced at her curiously, turning his whole body to ensure that Ruthie kept her balance on his shoulders, and Cass almost ran into him. She kept her eyes fixed on the road. Up ahead, the uniformed men stood on either side of an opening in the finished part of the wall, their weapons loose across their chests, the sort of guns soldiers carried in videos Before in ground conflicts everywhere: black and smooth enough to be toys, powerful and deadly enough to bring down entire crowds at a time.

“I thought we should go over the story one more time.”

“It’s not that complicated,” Cass said in exasperation. “I’m an outlier. I ask for Evangeline, I tell them I met her before. That Evangeline invited me to come. That Ruthie and you…”

But it wasn’t that easy. That Ruthie is yours. She had to say it, not just now but again when it counted. Evangeline did not know that Cass had a child; she and Smoke had come to the library empty-handed and left with only what the resistance gave them. Now she had to pretend that she was a childless woman traveling with her lover and his daughter. She’d deny Ruthie, and there was no way to make her daughter understand what she had to do, the weight of betrayal heavier because Cass had betrayed her daughter before.

“You can still back out,” Dor said, reading her thoughts. But Cass knew that it wasn’t true. An hour ago-yes. She could have taken the Jeep that they had left behind the downed billboard, secured Ruthie in the backseat and pulled back onto the road and driven back to the Box. She could have passed the corpses of the fresh Beaters lying in the middle of the road, the house where they’d sheltered the night before, the house where the ruined girl had been chained to the bed. She could have stayed strong through all of that, all the way back to the Box and back to their bed and their tent, for Ruthie.

Now it was too late. They’d be seen and she could not turn around; the Rebuilders would never let her go.

“That Ruthie is yours,” Cass said, ignoring him and making her voice hard. “Your child. You lost your wife and we’re together now. We want to work. I used to be a florist, Before. You served in the reserves.”