Aftertime (8 page)

A SHRILL, WHISTLING WAIL, NOT LOUD. IT WAS
coming from the direction of a wood-shingled Cape Cod on the right side of the street, where the stick-puzzle forms of dead jasmine shrubs stood sentry in front of a lawn choked with kaysev. Cass searched wildly for the source of the sound, but saw only a limp and torn cardboard box blown by the wind against a car that had been driven up to the porch, its bumper resting on the paint-flaked wood. As she squinted she saw that a form hung from the half-open car door, but it was still and unnaturally bent, and even in the moonlight Cass could see the white of its skull through skin that had rotted away. An old kill, or a heart attack, a fever death, even an accident—Cass barely gave it a thought as the wailing grew louder. Then there was another sound, from the opposite direction, and Cass whipped her head back to the left and saw something that seized her with terror.

A pair of them. One had been a woman, Cass could see, because her shirt wasn’t buttoned and her large breasts swung free as she lurched toward them. She had no hair left, and her mouth was a ruined crusted slash where she had chewed her own lips to shreds. The other one might have been a woman or a man, impossible to tell from its too-large jeans and down vest trimmed with matted fur.

Both waved their hands, wobbling almost comically as they stumbled closer. Cass felt a scream rising in her own throat and tried to swallow it back, but she couldn’t help a terrified whimper.

Smoke’s hand on her arm tightened until it hurt. “Quiet,” he whispered. “They’re tracking us by smell and sound only.”

“We’ve got to run,” Cass whispered back. They were too close. On the right, the Beater whose moaning had first caught their attention appeared around the corner of the house. It lurched into the yard, knocking into a dead Japanese maple. The branches caught on its clothes and its wailing grew louder as it flailed at the tree, trying to disentangle a branch that had gotten hooked on its jacket.

“If we run, they will, too,” Smoke said. “They’ll hear our footsteps, feel the vibrations in the ground. We can’t—”

“Over here!” a hoarse voice bellowed from a couple of houses down the street. “I’m putting a ladder out the window, you got fifteen seconds and then I’m pulling it back up!”

Smoke grabbed her hand and they ran. Cass looked wildly for the source of the voice, and saw something glint in the moonlight. There was a clattering of metal on wood and she spotted what was indeed a ladder flipping out the second-story window of a brick two-story several houses down on the left.

Behind them the wailing grew louder and she could hear feet slapping against pavement like pounds of meat. The monsters were faster than she would have imagined; it was rare to see them go at a full run. They always seemed so unwieldy in their bodies, as though the disease had taken away their coordination, the connection between mind and muscles.

From deeper in the neighborhood Cass heard the answering wails of Beaters awakened by the hunters’ frenzy. They would crawl blindly from their holes to join the chase, stepping on each other, tripping and lashing out in their fury. They’d slow each other down at first, but nothing would keep them away once blood was spilled, and their momentum would eventually be overwhelming.

“Hurry!” the voice yelled unnecessarily, and as they crossed the yard, Cass felt Smoke’s hand at her back giving her a hard shove so that she nearly plowed into the ladder dangling against the side of the house.

“Go,” Smoke urged, and Cass seized the ladder’s frame and pulled herself up to the first rung, feeling the burn of the effort in the muscles of her arms, the adrenaline surge through her body. But the Beaters’ huffing and moaning was close, so close, and as she shimmied her feet onto the bottom rung and hauled herself up, she couldn’t help turning to look.

She nearly fell when she saw the half-naked womanthing with its breasts slapping against its chest as it stumble-ran blindly toward them, its mouth wide with fury, its night-blind eyes looking at nothing, its arms stretched out in front, grasping at empty air. Its companion stumbled on the curb and fell flat on the ground, facedown in the dead sod, and screamed with rage as it struggled to its feet. Coming fast from the other direction was the Beater who’d been lurking across the street; it was headed straight for a car that was parked in the house’s driveway, pumping its fists in time with its steps.

Down the street came more of them, loping and staggering and waving their hands blindly in front of their sightless eyes as they followed the sounds of the others, greedily sniffing the air for the scent.

“Don’t look!” Smoke yelled, shoving at her feet to urge her higher, and Cass sucked in her breath and climbed, hand over hand as fast as she could, but not before she saw that the first Beater was going to reach Smoke before he could follow her up the ladder, and the scream kept winding up in her chest. She could not watch them take him. She
would
not watch them take him. Especially because it was her fault, because he had—

She heard a grunt and a dull thud as strong hands grabbed hers and yanked, causing her to lose her footing on the ladder, but she realized after a moment it didn’t matter because she was being pulled through the window, the top rung of the ladder scraping painfully against her ribs and hipbones, and she twisted desperately in her rescuer’s grip because even though she couldn’t bear to see Smoke taken she
had
to watch because it was her fault and it would never have happened without her and she could do very little in this life, this ruined and fucked-up life, but she
would
pay what she owed, and right now she owed Smoke witness to his last moments.

But Smoke was on the ladder.

Smoke was on the ladder and he was climbing fast, skipping rungs, big hands grabbing hard, and behind him the first Beater was sprawled on the ground below the ladder, scrabbling to right itself like a beetle on its back, as its companion tripped and fell on top of it.

Cass hit the floor and rolled and a second later Smoke landed beside her and a large dark shadowy form of a man hauled the ladder clumsily back through the window. She had to duck out of the way as the ladder’s full length was dragged into the room and dropped on the floor with a heavy clatter, and then the man put his hands to the window sash and slammed it down so hard the panes shook, and even then they could still hear the furious moaning of the Beaters below them.

“That’ll fry their bacon,” the man said with a ghost of a chuckle.

Cass turned frantically to Smoke, her pulse still rocketing, and put a hand to his chest, feeling the heat of his body through his cotton shirt. “You were—they almost—”

“They
didn’t,
” Smoke said, covering her hand with his own and pressing it against him for a brief second before he deliberately separated himself from her grasp. “That’s what matters.”

“I’ve had so many close calls I guess I don’t even hardly count anymore,” the big man said. There was a trace of the South in his voice, the rasp of someone who hadn’t spoken in a while—but there was energy and humor, too. Whoever their savior was, he was not a beaten man. “I think I musta got some sorta guardian angel in here with me or something.”

“You saved us,” Smoke said.

“Ah, it was a slow night, didn’t have anything better to do. Hell, they’re
all
slow nights, you know what I mean? I’m Lyle. Welcome to my place.”

“I’m Smoke. This is Cass.”

“Why don’t y’all come on down with me to the basement. Seein’ as it’s a special night and all, I might break out the good stuff.”

He was already lumbering through the door into a hall-way. Cass looked around the room; in the faint moonlight from the window, she saw the sort of simple furnishings that looked like they might have been there for several generations: a simple wood-post bed, dresser, upholstered chair. The outline of pictures on the walls. A mirror over the dresser casting a ghostly reflection.

“You’ll want to hold on to the rail,” Lyle called over his shoulder. “I’ve cleared out all the rugs and whatnot, so’s I could get around better at night, but it wouldn’t do to go breakin’ your neck after you just escaped them critters.”

“Funny guy,” Smoke muttered as they followed him down the stairs. Cass held tight to the rail, placing her feet on each step with care. She’d traveled at night for weeks now, but there had usually been enough moon or starlight that she could walk with a reasonable measure of confidence. Occasionally she’d trip over some unseen root or rock, but she was fit and nimble and hadn’t suffered anything worse than bruises and a cut or two.

Here, though, inside the house, the dark was absolute except for the thinnest slivers of moonlight between the boards on the windows. As they descended to the first floor, there was no stray light at all. Cass guessed Lyle had pulled the drapes tight—she’d do the same, if it was her, to avoid seeing the Beaters when they came shuffling around.

“Down the hall here,” Lyle said. “And then there’s the basement stairs to the right. Watch out, they ain’t got risers. You don’t want to go poking a foot through and breaking your ankle. Come on in and shut the door behind you and I’ll spark up a light.”

Cass followed behind Smoke, slipping her hand into his back pocket. The gesture felt too intimate, almost presumptuous, but she needed to hold on to something. She could feel his warmth through the denim. With her free hand she felt along the wall, brushing her fingers against wallpaper, a door frame, the entrance to the basement stairs.

She was the last onto the landing, and she closed the door tight behind them. Lyle snapped on a flashlight and Cass blinked against the sudden pool of thin light that illuminated rickety wooden stairs, an unfinished basement, and Lyle himself at the bottom, busying himself at a card table loaded with supplies. His face was obscured by a length of thick brown hair collected into a loose ponytail at his neck. As she made her way down the rest of the stairs he looked up and she saw a face with a full beard and kind eyes set in a network of wrinkles that made his smile look almost mischievous.

He set the flashlight upright on the table so it pointed up at the ceiling, filling the room with a ghostly light that cast crazy shadows on the unfinished concrete walls. He held out a hand, first to Smoke, who shook it without hesitation, and then to Cass. She was surprised at how careful his touch was, how soft his palm.

“Now this ain’t exactly the Ritz,” Lyle said, “but I got it set up comfy enough, I guess. Ain’t any light can get out of here and these walls are twelve inches thick so those nasty fuckers won’t give us any trouble tonight. When they can’t smell you, they just wander off like the dumbasses they are.”

He dragged an old upholstered rocker closer to the light and then went to a makeshift storage unit constructed of plywood and concrete blocks and pushed objects around, talking the whole time.

“Cass, honey, you sit yourself down in the nice chair. Us fellas can sit our asses on the fold-ups. I know they’re back here somewhere…my wife used to have this place organized like the fuckin’ Library of Congress or something. Probably would of alphabetized it if I let her…”

Cass considered refusing their host’s chair, but it looked so comfortable and she was still shaking so badly from their narrow escape that she collapsed into it gratefully. It smelled of aftershave and tobacco, and the well-worn cushions sank under her tired body.

“Okay, here we go,” Lyle said, coming back with a pair of folding metal chairs. “Sorry, Smoke, buddy, I’d go up to the kitchen for a couple of nicer chairs but I don’t see no sense getting our friends out there all riled up again.”

“They can hear you through the walls up there?” Cass asked.

“No, ma’am, I don’t think so, but you see, they know I’m in here. Me and Travers across the street—why, ever since they figured out we were here it’s just about been driving them nuts. They come around every day, whole mobs of ’em, wander back and forth between our places, moaning and carrying on like a bunch of horny teenagers going on a panty raid. Oh. Excuse me, Cass, I don’t mean to be crude, it’s just been a while since I’ve had any need of, uh, whadda you wanna call it,
social skills
.” He laughed, a rich, booming sound, and reached for a Tupperware box on a nearby shelf.

“It’s okay,” Cass said. “I don’t mind.”

Smoke took the seat next to her, lowering himself with care. Cass had noticed that all his motions were deliberate. He struck her as a careful man, one who did little without forethought. She wondered if that was a result of the work he’d done Before, or if he had always been that way.

“So they’ve been coming around for a while?” Smoke asked. “You been here the whole time?”

“Yes, sir, I hunkered down when the shit hit the fan and I ain’t moved. Got nothing against folks who want to band together, but I guess you can say I’m a natural loner. Them Rebuilders—you heard about them?—I got no need to get myself bossed around, you know?”

Smoke’s expression tightened. “How do you know we’re not Rebuilders?”

Lyle barked out a laugh. “No offense, boss, but Rebuilders don’t go out without some serious firepower. They ain’t fearless…they’re just well armed. You were a Rebuilder, you woulda shot those fuckers and then held me up for good measure.”

“Shooting wouldn’t have done much good, not even if I was a better shot than I am—there must have been a dozen of them closing in on us.”

A Beater could be felled by a bullet, but only if the shooter was using a heavy gauge and nailed the brain or the spine. Hit anywhere else, even in the heart or the gut—shots that would take down a citizen—a Beater could keep going for crucial seconds, even minutes, as it took its time bleeding out. Even a dying Beater would keep trying to claw its way toward a potential victim until its last breath left its body.

“Those Rebuilders train all day long,” Lyle said. “A lot of ’em could hit my left nut from across town with one eye shut. But I take your point.”