Sophie Littlefield - Rebirth

Dor cupped her chin with his free hand. “Cass. Look at me.”

So she did. She looked at him as though for the very first time, into his black eyes, the hard planes of his face. This was a man she’d used and who had used her. She’d blamed him for things that were not his fault and sought from him things that were not his to give. She’d clung to him and run with him, and tonight she’d nearly ended his journey before he got Sammi back.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears pooling in her eyes. She wanted to say she should never have come, but that too would be a lie; she had to be with Smoke, and Smoke was here.

It was Smoke who should never have left, but she finally understood that without seeking vengeance Smoke would have withered and died from within. He had been willing to trade his life for those that burned the library, and he had succeeded.

Perhaps he was ready to die. Perhaps, in his brief lucid moments, he even planned to die.

I dreamed you were here.

It might have been his dying dream, but Cass intended to prove him wrong.

“We’ll all get out,” she said to Dor, but this promise was meant for Smoke.

CASS DOUBTED DOR KNEW THAT THE PLACE HE’D left them had once been a wisteria arbor.

Now the vines were little more than sticks. Their leaves had fallen and their delicate branches snapped. It wasn’t ideal cover, but it had the advantage of being close to the Tapp Clinic, down a service road at the edge of the wide campus lawn. Dor had propped Smoke up so that his head rested on a swell in the recently landscaped earth that somehow made her think of Gloria’s grave mound.

As Dor slipped away into the predawn, Cass sat cross-legged and held Ruthie in her lap and took Smoke’s hand, hot with fever, into her own and thought about all the dead in the world, how there could never be enough memorials, enough trees planted, enough marble stones to stand for everyone. Time passed.

Far off to the east, the first faint glow of morning appeared at the horizon, and the stars began to dim. Cass thought about the fact that these were the same stars that studded the sky over the world Before; they would continue to shine whether the world renewed itself or failed. They were the same stars that witnessed her birth and the ones that would shine on the night of her death, whether it was this day or one many years from now, and in theses thoughts she found comfort.

They were wedged in a narrow space between the wall of a classroom building and the latticed arbor twined with dead vines, sitting on a bed of landscaping bark. Few sounds reached them in their hiding spot-a machine starting up somewhere several buildings away, the crunch of gravel underfoot as people passed by across the lawn once or twice, guards doing their security detail.

Once the wall was completed, there would be little reason for guards to roam the campus. Only the highest levels of the Rebuilders were armed. The rest-the newcomers, the workers, the baby makers and children-were powerless, incapable of revolt or even posing an inconvenience. Already, as the community was still being built, it relied on order: schedules and timetables and hierarchies, weights and measures and zero tolerance in judgments. Cass didn’t doubt that, for many, this was welcome. For every person who chafed under the Rebuilder rule, there were probably several more who were so grateful for the shelter, the promise of safety, that any tradeoffs they made in terms of personal freedom seemed like a bargain.

Even, she thought with a shudder, the baby farm. As horrified as she was by the prospect of human eggs being systematically harvested, fertilized and implanted, she could imagine that for some women the trade-off might feel like a reasonable one. And there was no doubt that the first-generation outliers, even though they were little more than glorified breeding machines, would enjoy freedoms and benefits that others would not.

Cass brushed Smoke’s hair, damp against his fevered skin, away from his face. She had adjusted his filthy dressings as well as she could, retying the torn bandages and wiping away as much grit and dried blood as she could. Now that they were outdoors he began to shiver. She took off her own jacket and covered him with it. She wore only the nightgown, her underwear ripped and abandoned back in the closet, but she was warm enough, overheated by exertion and adrenaline.

Smoke hadn’t woken from his fever coma, but occasionally he muttered pieces of words and once she thought she heard him say her name.

More time passed. Ruthie fidgeted, half asleep, too.

Cass tried not to focus on how long Dor was taking. His plan had been a simple one: break into the motor pool much as he had broken into the Tapp Clinic, using the darts if possible, the guns if not. Once he’d secured a vehicle, he would come back for them and then they would go together to break Sammi out.

He had tried to talk to her about what she would do if he wasn’t back by the time the campus began fully waking up. He wanted her to leave Smoke there, to take Ruthie and turn herself in. But Cass knew they were past that stage.

The first thing she heard was the grinding of gears. It sounded like a lighter version of the dump trucks that used to drive past a house her mother had once rented. Before she met Byrn and was still scraping to get by. The house was located near a quarry, and in the afternoons the trucks would drive by, loaded down with rough limestone, switching into first gear when they hit the hill at the corner of Creasy Springs Road. Before she identified the sound she felt it reverberating up through her body. Smoke must have felt it too, even in the depths of his unconsciousness, because he rolled to his side and his eyelids fluttered. So intent was Cass on making sure Smoke was all right that she didn’t actually see the vehicle until it rounded the corner and approached along the service road.

It was a FedEx truck, the logo still painted on the sides, its back cargo area open, its doors missing. Only the running lights were on and Cass wasn’t certain it was Dor until he parked and jumped down from the open driver’s seat. And even then it took a moment, because he was wearing the fatigue pants and khaki shirt of the Rebuilders, a black baseball cap pulled low above his eyes.

“In the back,” he said. “Hurry.” Without waiting for a response he picked Smoke up, not gently. Cass wanted to tell him to take care, but she was too afraid. She carried Ruthie to the cargo area and clambered inside, boosting Ruthie up to the waist-high floor first. Flattened cardboard boxes lined the floor, an improvement over the hard metal on which she’d ridden two nights earlier. Bungee cords dangled from the walls, and dust and broken bricks cluttered the corners. Whatever they’d been using it to haul had left the floor and walls dented and creased, and the rope net someone had rigged across the back opening had torn free and lay in useless coils.

After settling Smoke on the floor of the truck, Dor paused before jumping down to the ground. “I’m driving straight there,” he said sharply. “If I have any trouble with the guard, I’m going to have to shoot. I can’t risk him warning the dorm that we’re coming.”

“What about the darts?”

“I only have two left. Here.” Dor reached into his pocket and handed them to her. They were like small syringes with synthetic feathering at one end. “You have your gun, but use these if you can, first. Just jam them in.”

“Why? Why won’t you take them?”

He looked into her eyes, searching for something. “You haven’t killed anyone yet,” he said softly. “I have. It won’t cost me nearly as much to do it again.”

Dor had changed. Something was missing, some light had left him. He was no less determined to free Sammi-if anything he seemed more amped than ever. But his eyes no longer held the promise of hope.