Sophie Littlefield: Rebirth

There were still entire neighborhoods waiting to be raided, but people were getting nervous. Beaters, disease, toxic waste, depression and anxiety-all these things stopped even the heartiest at times. Some of the raiders had begun refusing to go out at all, just one of the many things Cass knew Dor and Smoke discussed.

“Hey, any kid stuff in the haul?” Cass asked, thinking of Ruthie, her tight shoes.

“Yeah, but older,” Faye said. “You know, like that tween stuff. All the sparkly shit on the jeans. Hold on to it for Ruthie. She’ll love it in a few years.”

There was a sudden, awkward silence; it was an unwritten rule that you never talked about the future. Especially because it wasn’t clear how much longer Ruthie would be welcome in the Box. Dor had made an exception to his no-kids policy for her, and another for Feo, but his continued beneficence was a gamble. “Or, you know, get Gary to take in the seams for now,” Faye added.

“It’s the shoes, mostly,” Cass clarified. “I’d just like to get her some sneakers. Boots, too. I don’t care if they’re boys’, either. Keep your eye out?”

“You know we do, Cassie,” Three-High said kindly. Some of them, mostly the men, had taken to calling her Cassie. Cass didn’t like it, but she also didn’t want to tell them to stop. They meant well. “We’ll find her something in plenty of time. Gonna find her a sled, too, little snowsuit.”

“Thanks,” Cass said softly. “But Dor…so the last you saw him was…”

“Not since morning,” Faye said. “We see him, though, we’ll let him know you’re lookin’ for him, okay?”

It was the best she could do. Cass thanked them and wandered back toward her tent. Maybe Smoke would return before dinner; maybe he’d changed his mind. Maybe he was looking for her even now.

SHE TOOK THE LONG WAY, SUDDENLY IN NO MOOD to talk to anyone else, weaving along the back of the tents where people hung their washing. When a slender shadow flashed in front of her from between two tents, her heart skipped, startled.

“I seen you comin’.”

Feo had slipped from a space so narrow that it could not possibly have sheltered him, so it was as though he appeared from thin air, but that was how he always moved through the compound. In one hand he held a sticky, damp candy wrapper; his mouth was ringed with blue powder. She’d barely noticed him earlier, so intent was she on finding Dor; now, she looked him over more carefully. He was dressed in a hoodie meant for a much larger child. The sleeves completely covered his free hand and the hem hung halfway to his knees. Across the front was a design of skulls and flowers, a sword piercing the skull’s empty eye sockets. Feo’s sweats were pink and his sneakers had been slit at the toes to make more room; Ruthie wasn’t the only child who needed new shoes for winter.

But his hair had been cut with care, the front grazing his eye in a stylishly asymmetric slant, the back shaved up with a design of stripes. “You’ve been to see Vincent, haven’t you?” Cass said, dredging up a smile for Feo, the best she could do.

“He done this for me. All I had to do was dust off his stuff,” Feo said proudly, running blue-tinged fingers through his thick black bangs.

Cass nodded. “It looks great.”

Feo pointed behind him, along the perimeter of the Box where the chain-link fence topped with razor wire stretched the length of two city blocks. “I seen Dor, too. He went out the back. He’s smoking.”

Cass caught her breath, careful not to let her anxiety show. She would bet Feo had been waiting for her, not wanting to share even this small confidence in front of the others. He did not often speak when people were gathered, though she’d managed to coax half a dozen conversations from him in private.

“Thanks,” she said softly, feathering his hair lightly with her fingertips. Experience had taught her that Feo could only bear the smallest of intimacies yet. He allowed the men to roughhouse with him, squirming and laughing in their arms, but she glimpsed him lurking where women gathered, the look of longing in his eyes painful to see. It would take time, that was all. At least, that was the story she told herself.

“Thanks, Feo,” she repeated. “Smoking’s bad.”

She knew she wasn’t the only one who told him that. Funny how protective they were of the boy, what with men even hiding their bottles and cigarettes when Feo was around. He flashed her a quick smile before he dashed back between the tents and disappeared.

The path around the inside perimeter of the fence was well-worn, the earth hard packed and smooth. Newcomers often walked it deep in the night when they had trouble sleeping, and the strung-out and far-gone paced like fevered wraiths at all hours of the day. Mealtimes were the only times that the path emptied, and Cass encountered no one else as she hurried in the direction the boy had pointed.

The break in the fence, hidden behind a thicket of dead snowberry shrubs at the back of the Box, wasn’t exactly a secret-but only the permanent residents of the Box knew about it, and only the most fit could use it. It was Beater-proof-the break was only in the razor wire, where two sections had come loose at a joint, leaving the ends to hang down, and it was only a couple feet wide. Climbing the chain-link was more trouble than it was worth, even for someone as strong as Dor, when you could walk to the front gate in a matter of minutes.

Unless you weren’t in the mood to talk to anyone. She didn’t know Dor well but she recognized in him, one loner to another, the need for silence enough to hear yourself think.

Cass reached the break and considered for a moment. Across the street, the storefronts facing the Box had long ago been stripped of anything useful, their windows shattered and the glass swept away. Dor insisted that the streets directly abutting the Box be kept clean; trash pickup was among the new recruits’ jobs, and despite their grumbling there was a sense of pride among the maintenance staff.

She knew where Dor would go. Smoke had shared this confidence with her. In their long talks into the night, he told her about the men and women he worked with, their habits, small details of their lives. He admired Cass’s ability to see through people to the emotions underneath. Cass didn’t ever tell him that sometimes she wished she could stop; he relied on her to be his divining rod, his translator.

Smoke was bewildered by Dor’s habit of wandering so far off-site unarmed, but Cass thought she understood. Solitude was as short in supply as medicine or fresh produce, but for some, just as desperately missed. Time to oneself-even when it came with great risk-somehow made it possible to sort through your tangled thoughts, to remember who you used to be, Before. And to understand who you had become Aftertime. In the din and commotion of the Box, Cass sometimes felt that she would slowly fade, edges first, until she was lost.

Two blocks in, where the stores gave way to apartments and small houses, a yellow brick building ringed a small courtyard with overturned benches and dead gardens. A studio apartment on the second floor looked west toward the mountains and the setting sun, and it was here that Dor came to sit occasionally, in a chair pulled up to the window. It wasn’t safe-there was no exit if Beaters found their way up the stairs, save a drop out the window to the ground, one that Beaters wouldn’t hesitate to follow.

Cass might have regretted disturbing his peace-if she had any choice, and if it were anyone else. Instead, she scrambled up and over the fence, the wire cutting painfully into her palms and the impact of jumping to the ground jarring her legs. She jogged down the street, scanning for flashes of movement as she went. She had her blade at hand-she never went anywhere without it-but it would do little good if she encountered more than one.