Survivors (4 page)

Feo must have bolted again when the commotion started. As Cass followed the crowd away from the fence she saw Sam tackle him, lifting him as though he weighed nothing and holding him tightly in his arms.

Cass caught up with Sam while the crowd surged past, on their way back to wherever they’d come from. The boy was trembling in Sam’s arms.

“Did he see?” she asked quietly.

“Yes, unfortunately. And Cass…he knew that guy. Before.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. When he saw the Beaters go after him, he started yelling
‘tío, tío’
—I think that means ‘uncle.’”

“Aw, shit,” Cass whispered.

“Nanaaaaa,” the boy wailed, his voice muffled by Sam’s shirt.

After trying in vain to get him calmed down, Cass and Sam decided there was nothing for it but to take him to the clinic to see the old woman. When they arrived, Smoke and Three-High were standing outside, talking with Dor. Smoke was the first to see them coming and he jogged over to her and held her and understood how great her fear had been, and he whispered over and over that he was all right, everything would be all right.

When she pulled back and looked into his face she knew the truth. “You had to end him, didn’t you.”

“He’d been bitten.”

“Did you do it, or Three-High?”

Smoke looked away, and that was her answer. Smoke was strong that way—he knew that death was a mercy for an infected citizen, that otherwise the fever would begin within hours, and the victim would twitch and babble and pick at his own skin and his flesh hunger would grow. And so Smoke gave the gift of death: swift and sure.

Cass nodded, tears stinging her eyes. But there would be time later to wonder how much another death had cost Smoke, whether it played upon his soul and poisoned his dreams. For now, there were the living to be tended.

She entered the cottage, the others following close behind. Feo knelt next to his grandmother’s bed, sobbing quietly. Sam crouched next to him, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Francie stood at the head of the bed, her arms folded, her face tired. When she saw Cass, she frowned and shook her head, and Cass knew the old woman was dead.

He’d lost everything, then. The last family he would ever know had died today.

Cass couldn’t bear it. She turned on Dor, her face tight with anguish, trying to find the right words. But Smoke put a hand around hers and stepped between them.

“The guy…the one outside the fence—that was his uncle,” he said quietly.

Dor nodded heavily, as though the worst news had lost the power to surprise him. For a moment, silhouetted in the sunlight streaming through the door, he looked all too human, his shoulders sagging and his hands hanging useless at his sides. “The boy can stay,” he said, and then left without another word.

Cass watched him go, her heart quickening, the possibilities flashing through her mind. But as they knelt on the bare wood floor, Feo burrowed into Sam’s arms, and Sam—barely more than a boy himself—held on.

So that’s how it was to be. In that moment the small idea that had been taking shape in Cass’s mind—her and Smoke and
two
children, a growing family—shifted and faded. Feo needed things she could not give. In Sam, the boy found something familiar, something he could hold on to. Who could say why—every citizen Aftertime had been altered by their own losses, their own devastations.

Smoke and Cass left quietly, hand in hand. Outside it was shaping up to be another warm autumn day. The air was fragrant with the smell of kaysev cakes frying on a griddle and they walked hand in hand back to the tent. Ruthie would wake soon, and they would take her to the clearing for breakfast, and it would be all right.

Later, Cass and Ruthie would go to the gardens to pick mint leaves. They would boil water and make a big batch of tea in the plastic pitcher, and Cass would add a few spoonfuls from her precious stash of sugar. They would carry the tea down to the officers’ quarters, and it would be a gift for mourning and new beginnings both.

If you enjoyed “Survivors” check out the Aftertime Novels:

AFTERTIME—March 2011

REBIRTH—August 2011

HORIZON—February 2012

Available at Harlequin.com

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ISBN: 978-1-4592-0776-9

Survivors

Copyright © 2011 by Sophie Littlefield

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