Aftertime (18 page)

But Smoke was moving again, keeping to the center of the street, following a path straight toward the entrance. “We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to chat back there but I got the impression these ones here are a bunch of zealots, you know, like a cult. They think the Siege was the start of the End Times or whatever. You know, the same people who blame every bioattack on Islamic extremists. Probably crazy but harmless, at least to us.”

As they came closer the stadium loomed larger until it towered above them, stretching out several city blocks in either direction. They passed a parking lot with cars still parked in a semblance of order, the guard shack splintered and toppled.

Smoke eased off on the gas when they were a few hundred feet away. “Look there,” he said, pointing to an alcove to the left. “That doesn’t look good.”

Cass had to search for a moment to see what he was pointing at.

A figure, dressed in loose pants and shirt, holding an all-business gun, a semiautomatic, the kind that said “gang” and “mercenary” and “drug runner” to Cass, images from a hundred stupid late-night movies. Her heart lurched and she instinctively clutched Smoke tighter.

He reached very slowly and deliberately for the keys and turned off the engine. “I don’t believe I’ll be wanting to challenge
that,
” he said softly. “You get off first. Put your hands out so he can see you don’t have anything. I’ll follow.”

Cass did as Smoke suggested, taking her time, holding her arms out like she was trying to balance on a narrow path. She sensed Smoke behind her and then he was at her side, protecting her as always.

“We’re unarmed,” Smoke called out.

“Rebuilder?” the voice answered, and Cass was startled to hear that it was a woman. The figure stepped closer and Cass could see that she was tall and broadly built and that she moved with confidence.

“No,” Smoke snapped. “No fucking way.”

“You won’t mind if I don’t take your word for it. Lie on the ground, facedown, arms out. Just so you know, if I shoot, I won’t bother worrying whether you make it through or not. I’m going to search your girlfriend first and unless you want to clean her off the ground I advise you stay very, very still.”

I’m not his girlfriend,
Cass thought as she lay down on cold pavement for the second time in a few days. Unlike the parking lot in front of the school, the concrete here smelled of stale beer and rot. But also unlike that day, the hands that searched her worked quickly and efficiently, a pressure not ungentle, moving so fast along her body that there wasn’t time for Cass to register much more than surprise.

When the woman finished with her she showed Cass the blade she had taken from her pocket—and Lyle’s crystal suncatcher, glinting in the moonlight.

CASS HAD FORGOTTEN, AND SHE CAUGHT HER
breath in dismay. “That’s nothing,” she said, hoping Smoke couldn’t identify the little trinket. “Good luck charm.”

The woman didn’t reply, but slipped it into a pocket of her vest. “Fine,” she muttered before moving on to Smoke. Cass wasn’t sure if she meant it was all right to get up, so she just turned her head to watch, in time to see the guard take the gun from Smoke’s pocket.

“Un
armed?
” she said incredulously. “What the fuck is this, then?” She slipped the gun into another vest pocket and finished the search, coming up with the spare magazine and another blade, which disappeared into the pocket, as well.

“Okay, time to go see the wizard,” she said, leaning over the bike and taking out the keys. “What’s your name, asshole?”

“Smoke. This is Cass.”

“Okay, you walk the bike. Go in front of me. You—” she gestured at Cass with the gun “—behind him. I’ll be right here, don’t worry about that, just keep going.”

She slid the unopened backpack onto her shoulders and Smoke touched her arm briefly before starting to push the bike by the handlebars.

The guard walked behind them. Their footsteps made an echo on the quiet, dark streets. In the shadows of the stadium, the souvenir stands and bathrooms were mere ruins, leaning on their frames. Ahead were streets, restaurants, bars, a fire station. More parking. Beyond that, apartment buildings and houses.

Cass flashed again on the day she had been here with her dad, the shouts of the scalpers and men spilling out of a tavern, another haggard man selling t-shirts and ball caps and pennants. Her dad bought her a little red teddy bear with a white shirt with “Miners” printed in sparkling silver script, and she clutched it close, aware that she was too old for a teddy bear, but loving it anyway.

When they rounded the side of the stadium, a vast fenced lot appeared ahead, lit up with strings of lights and the occasional bright spotlight. Cass drew in her breath at the sight. How were they powering all those lights? What
was
this place?

“Clear,” the woman behind her yelled and from the darkness under the stadium a man called back.

“Who you got?”

“Couple of sheep. When are you off?”

“Two,” the man replied. Cass saw him then, standing with his legs slightly apart, a gun like the other guard’s slung across his torso. “Rockets?”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m covering for Baldy, pulled a double.”

The man grunted and they passed by. So there were guards ringing the entire stadium, Cass guessed. But a man? Did this mean that they had been wrong? Were men in the Convent, and if so, what if it wasn’t a cult at all? Not that men couldn’t be in cults, but the tone of these two—joking, irreverent, undeniably tough—didn’t strike Cass as steeped in religious zealotry.

And what were they guarding against, anyway? She’d seen no signs of Beaters, no evidence of nests or recent kills. The Convent itself was quiet.

They approached the fenced lot, Cass blinking in the lights. Chain link stretched ten, a dozen feet high, razor wire twisted along the top, an entire block lit up. And tents—tents! People milling about, sitting around a fire, clustered near a makeshift bar, drinking.

“Don’t slow down,” the guard said behind them. “Plenty of time to look around when you get in.”

“What is that?” Cass asked.

“That’s civilization, sweetheart.”

“Are the people in there prisoners?” Smoke demanded.

The guard laughed shortly. “Ain’t anyone a prisoner,” she said. “It’s just the little place we call home. No charge to come on in, and you can buy just about anything you want, for a price. There’s people who have more or less than others, that’s about it. Dor’s got the most, so it’s his thing. You’ll meet him soon enough.”

Cass wasn’t sure she had heard right. “Did you say
Dor?
” she demanded.

“Yeah, Dor MacFall. Sounds made-up, right? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”

Dor MacFall.
Cass’s mind was suddenly full of the image of Sammi, that day before she left, hope and longing etched on her pretty young features.
Find my dad
, she’d said.
All I want is for him to know I’m okay
.

“What is he, a—a—” Mayor of this little squatters’ town?

But the guard was done talking. When they approached an opening in the fence, a complicated gate was opened by a heavy, broad-faced woman with hair so short Cass thought it must have been buzzed with a razor. The guard ignored them and made small talk with the large woman and a second guard, a lanky man with long sandy hair. She emptied the items she’d confiscated from her pockets and handed them over along with the backpack and the gun. The man set them on a long bare table then sat down and started sorting through the contents of the pack. “See you at Rockets,” she said as she turned to go, not bothering with goodbyes for Cass and Smoke.

“I’m Faye. Park that over here,” the new guard said as she motioned them in. Smoke pushed the bike into a corner of the encampment where a small rider tractor was parked next to a half-dozen bicycles. “Y’all set here a minute while we inventory all this.”

“I’m going to need some assurance I’ll be getting that back,” Smoke said as he and Cass took seats on a long low picnic bench.

Faye didn’t even look up from her task.

“Did you know him?” Cass asked Smoke. “Dor MacFall? Sammi’s dad?”

Smoke shook his head. “They split up before it got really bad. He moved out back before they cut off the power. But that little girl never stopped talking about him. She made me promise if I ever saw him I’d tell him she was all right.”

“She made me promise the same thing.”

“Yeah, well…guess now we’ll have the chance.”

“What are the odds? I mean, she said he was in Sykes—”

“Sykes probably doesn’t exist anymore,” Smoke said. “Not in any meaningful way. Anyone with any brains would have got the hell out. Town that small, you’re not going to be able to get enough folks together to set up much of a defense.”

“Yes, but why here?”

“Why not here?” Smoke shrugged. “Once he heard about the Convent…he’s a sharp guy, he saw an opportunity, he jumped on it. Knew there’d be a lot of traffic through here, so he built himself a combination general store and strip club and KOA campground, is what it looks like. With a hell of a security detail.”

“Sammi said he was a businessman—”

“That what she said?” Smoke laughed without humor. “You know what his business was? Internet marketing. But not the kind the FTC approved of—you know what I’m saying? The Siege was probably the best thing to happen to MacFall—from what his ex told me, they were closing in on him. He was looking at a few years in prison.”

“And now he’s like the kingpin around here,” Cass said bitterly, even though she knew her disgust was only partly for the man who Sammi idolized. It had taken her two decades to realize that Silver Dollar Haverford was really never going to come back and be the father she’d needed him to be. “Still, seems like a coincidence that we’d run into him.”

“I don’t know.… It’s a small world now, Cass.”

Faye had lined up their items: water bottles, kaysev cakes, a pair of blades. She whistled when she saw the packets of Tylenol and two Balance Bars, and separated them out. “You know how it works, right?”

“Uh, no,” Smoke said. “We’re new around here. Which you might have gathered when we drove up on that thing.”

If Faye caught the irony in his voice, she didn’t let on. Instead she wrote something on a legal pad.

“Seriously,” Cass tried. “All we know is that the Convent—well, we don’t know anything, except that I’m looking for—”

She stopped herself. She had been about to say that she was looking for her daughter, for Ruthie. But caution seemed like a good idea, and instead she said, “Someone,” and left it at that.

“Someone in the Convent or out here?” the man said in a pleasant enough voice. He offered his hand, and it was warm and strong. “I’m George, by the way.”

“Inside, I think.”

He frowned. “Well, good luck with that. For now, the first thing I got to tell you is that you’re safe here. From Beaters, anyway.”

Cass looked at the chain-link fence doubtfully. George followed her line of vision and shook his head. “No, I mean, there’s no Beaters in town anymore.”

“You killed them
all?
”

“Killed or captured.” He pointed to the Convent. “They contract with MacFall to have it done.”

“Why the hell would anyone want to capture one of those things?” Smoke demanded.

“You’d have to talk to him,” George shrugged. “He keeps his business pretty close to the vest, though.”

“You’re saying he trades with the women in the Convent?” Cass asked.

“Yeah. There’s a few hundred of ’em in there, and they got power, gas, stores, weapons. And crazy-ass determination. That’s something you can’t buy.”

“A few
hundred,
” Smoke repeated. “In there?”

“Once they started the Convent, women just started showing up from all over. I thought that’s why you were here,” he said, pointing to Cass. “To join up.”

“To join the Convent?”

“To join the
Order
.”

“Okay, how about you save that for later, Georgie,” Faye said, drawing a decisive line down the center of the page. “We got business to do.”

“What do you mean?”

She gave Cass a shrewd, clear-eyed gaze. “Trading. That is, if you want to trade. If you want to turn around and walk back out, minus that Ruger, you’re free to do so. ’Course, we wouldn’t guarantee your safety.”

“You’re taking my gun,” Smoke said.

“Not taking it. Trading for it. Or, for a small fee, holding it for you. Until such time as you come and get it back. There’s no arms allowed in here, except guards. Of course, you’d be compensated.”

“With what?” Cass asked.

“Changes all the time. Today, we got kerosene…we got baby formula, Ritalin, Vicodin.”

Cass looked around more carefully. A cluster of teenagers stood in a corner passing a bottle, a few of them kicking a hackysack back and forth. One of them had an arm wrapped in bandages and held in a sling. The job looked surprisingly professional. When the boy dived for the beanbag, Cass saw that he also had a scabbed bruise on his leg, probably just the result of some ordinary misadventure. But where had they found a doctor, much less supplies, to patch him up?

In a stand of pepper trees—still thriving, from the looks of it, though inexpertly pruned—a man was lying in a hammock suspended from the branches, reading out loud from a book by the light of a headlamp mounted on a baseball cap. Below him on the ground, several people sat cross-legged or leaning into each other, listening.

The smell of kaysev being fried with onions drifted past on the air, and Cass spotted the source—a grill set up over coals, an aproned man flipping patties in the air and expertly catching them. People clustered around chatting, waiting for the food to be ready.

It was like a carnival and a camping trip all rolled up in one, and Cass realized it had been a long time since she had seen people having fun like this. Something was out of place, something besides the shouts and laughter, and Cass struggled to place it, and then suddenly she got it. Music—not loud, far-off on the opposite corner, past a row of tents: an old Red Hot Chili Peppers song that her parents used to like.

“That’s— You use batteries to play
music?
” she demanded, incredulous. It seemed so indulgent, so incredibly wasteful. When batteries began to run low in the library, Bobby had made a list of acceptable uses: lights for emergencies at night; to run the humidifier in the playroom when one of the little boys started having asthma attacks; for a pair of walkie-talkies the raiders used, before they quit working.

“Generator, actually,” George said, and Cass identified the other sound, the steady low rumble.

“You can give ’em a tour in a minute,” Faye said to George, suppressing a yawn, “if they decide to stay. But first lemme tell y’all what kind of deal I can do for you today.”