Читать книгу Aftertime - Sophie Littlefield - Страница 15

CASS DRESSED IN THE CLOTHES SONJA BROUGHT. The fabric was stiff from line drying and rasped against her scabs, even through the damp tank top, but Cass was so accustomed to the dull ache that she barely noticed.

Her wounds hurt almost unbearably when she first woke, but before long she was left with a dull, constant sensation that was as much numbness as pain. The disease, which had boosted her immunity before retreating, had clearly changed her sensitivity to pain, as well. Something to be grateful for.

The clothes smelled faintly of lavender. A soft jersey shirt that had belonged to another woman. Hiking pants that were new or nearly new, maybe nabbed from one of Silva’s several outdoorsman shops when the looting turned to general panic and then mass stockpiling.

The greatest luxury was a new pair of socks. Sammi had brought these to her in the small office where Cass had retreated to wait, after the bath. It was part of a warren of tiny rooms behind the old reception area, and Cass guessed it had once belonged to an administrator, a vice-principal or part-time nurse. There was no window, only a desk that had been pushed against the wall, a couple of chairs, an expanse of industrial carpeting still littered with staples and eraser dust and tiny paper circles from a hole punch. The detritus of human activity Before. The sight brought back a memory of the sound of a vacuum cleaner, and Cass realized she was moving her arm back and forth in the obsolete appliance’s once-familiar arc with a sense of longing. Even when she sat in the chair with her hands pressed tightly between her knees and her eyes closed, her mind was filled with a memory of the task, and it was almost like a forbidden thrill to envision making long, slow paths on the carpet, feeling the handle vibrate in her hand, the debris disappearing into the vacuum.

After a while, Sammi came, unannounced and furtive. The socks were rolled up and hidden in her pocket, the tags still attached. Men’s hiking socks, pale gray with an orange stripe knit into the band at the top. Sammi handed them over and shook her head impatiently when Cass protested that she couldn’t accept them.

“They’re for you. Besides, you can do something for me. If you ever get to Sykes, and if you meet my dad, tell him I’m okay,” she said. “His name is Dor. Doran MacFall.”

“Sammi … as soon as I get my daughter, I’m going to go to the safest place I can find. I’m sorry, but I can’t promise—”

“I’m not asking for a promise,” Sammi interrupted, impatiently. “Only, no one knows what’s going to happen anymore. No one knows the future. And maybe you’ll see him. I mean … you got this far, didn’t you? You were attacked, you got infected, you’re the only person I’ve ever seen who got better.”

Fear sluiced through Cass’s veins. “Sammi, I never really said—” she began, her mouth dry.

Sammi shrugged, but she held on to Cass’s gaze. “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. But your skin … I mean, that’s the way it starts. That and your eyes. They’re way too bright. Most people just don’t want to remember that anymore. I mean, now that they just kill anyone they suspect might be infected.”

“Wait—what?”

“Yeah, if someone’s even suspected, they’re shot. There’s like a special store of bullets for it and everything. They have these elections for who has to do it. Winner loses and has to kill the dude. Kids aren’t supposed to know,” Sammi added, shrugging, as if the absurdity of such a rule eluded her.

Back at the library, before Cass was attacked, those who were suspected of infection were rare enough—there was so little blueleaf left, and no one ate it on purpose—that Bobby ordered that they be kept in the old operations room, among the silent heating and air-conditioning equipment, until their future was clear. Other diseases brought on fever, after all, so you didn’t want to kill everyone. In the end, only one actual infected—a silent and red-faced old man who wore canvas coveralls—had stayed there during Cass’s time at the library. Even when he began pulling his hair out, tearing the skin of his scalp—even when his pupils had shrunk down so far that he couldn’t see Bobby and another man coming the day they hit him on the head and dragged him to the edge of town and left him there—even then he refused to admit he was infected. The old man’s speech had become a bit slurred, and that was the last of it for him.

“But …” Cass swallowed hard. “My arms … like you said.” It came out in a hoarse whisper as she covered the shiny, thin scars with her hands, unable to look.

“Yeah, but you act normal. You’re not feverish and you don’t talk crazy. Once they figured out that you weren’t going to kill me, you know, when you started talking and all—you know how sometimes people only see what they want to see?”

Cass nodded, thinking—but you still see. Maybe it was because Sammi was young. And maybe it was more than that.

Sammi gave her a little grin. “Look, you’re really not so bad. You did fix your hair, kinda—and your scars are almost gone. What you really need?”

Cass smiled, moved despite herself that the girl was trying to cheer her up. “Yeah?”

“Eyeliner. Really thick, you know?” She tugged her lower lid down to show Cass where she’d apply it. Then she hesitated. “They say there’s others,” she finally said. “That got better. I mean it’s just a rumor, this one time a raiding party went down toward Everett. But, yeah, maybe you’re not the only one.”

Cass felt her heart speed up, a prickling of hope radiating along her nerves. Others.

“Survivors?” she asked. “Who were … attacked, who started to turn? And came back?”

Sammi shrugged, didn’t meet her eyes. “It was just a rumor. My mom says it’s just people being confused by those fake Beaters. I mean no one here’s seen it or anything, and most people think it’s like, what do you call that? When people make up stories and they get passed around—”

“Urban myth,” Cass said, trying to cover her disappointment.

“Yeah, that. As far as anyone here knows, no one’s ever come back before. So they don’t believe in it. But I do. I can tell you’re different. And it’s not just that … you’ve been on your own and they haven’t gotten to you. Most people would be dead already, so that means you’re lucky, too.”

“But I don’t—”

“I’d go with you,” the girl pushed on, and Cass had the sense she’d practiced this speech in advance. “I’m not scared. Only Mom doesn’t have anyone else now. I need to be here for her. But you’re going to make it—I know you are. And you don’t even have to go looking for my dad, just only if you happen to meet him somewhere. He’s, like, six feet three and … “

And then, suddenly, just like that, she faltered. Her courage evaporated in a mist of sniffles and her smooth-skinned face collapsed in on itself. She looked like she was about to bolt, and without thinking, Cass reached for her.

Sammi didn’t so much lean as fall into the hug and Cass wrapped her arms around the girl, all elbows and slender limbs, and held tight.

“I’m sorry,” Sammi snuffled against the crook of Cass’s neck, but she didn’t let go.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Cass said softly, and then she said something else, a dangerous thing that she didn’t plan and immediately wondered if she would regret. “I’ll find your dad. I’ll find him and I’ll tell him you’re all right.”

“Oh, thank you … thank you,” Sammi said. “Um … Cass? Could you … you know, if you do find my dad? I was wondering if you could tell him something for me.”

“You want me to give him a message?”

“Yeah. I mean, he’ll know what it means.” She bit her lip and looked away. “Just tell him that I never forget, I never miss a night. And I never will.”