Rebirth (37 page)

He had tried to talk to her about what she would do if he wasn’t back by the time the campus began fully waking up. He wanted her to leave Smoke there, to take Ruthie and turn herself in. But Cass knew they were past that stage.

The first thing she heard was the grinding of gears. It sounded like a lighter version of the dump trucks that used to drive past a house her mother had once rented. Before she met Byrn and was still scraping to get by. The house was located near a quarry, and in the afternoons the trucks would drive by, loaded down with rough limestone, switching into first gear when they hit the hill at the corner of Creasy Springs Road. Before she identified the sound she felt it reverberating up through her body. Smoke must have felt it too, even in the depths of his unconsciousness, because he rolled to his side and his eyelids fluttered. So intent was Cass on making sure Smoke was all right that she didn’t actually see the vehicle until it rounded the corner and approached along the service road.

It was a FedEx truck, the logo still painted on the sides, its back cargo area open, its doors missing. Only the running lights were on and Cass wasn’t certain it was Dor until he parked and jumped down from the open driver’s seat. And even then it took a moment, because he was wearing the fatigue pants and khaki shirt of the Rebuilders, a black baseball cap pulled low above his eyes.

“In the back,” he said. “Hurry.” Without waiting for a response he picked Smoke up, not gently. Cass wanted to tell him to take care, but she was too afraid. She carried Ruthie to the cargo area and clambered inside, boosting Ruthie up to the waist-high floor first. Flattened cardboard boxes lined the floor, an improvement over the hard metal on which she’d ridden two nights earlier. Bungee cords dangled from the walls, and dust and broken bricks cluttered the corners. Whatever they’d been using it to haul had left the floor and walls dented and creased, and the rope net someone had rigged across the back opening had torn free and lay in useless coils.

After settling Smoke on the floor of the truck, Dor paused before jumping down to the ground. “I’m driving straight there,” he said sharply. “If I have any trouble with the guard, I’m going to have to shoot. I can’t risk him warning the dorm that we’re coming.”

“What about the darts?”

“I only have two left. Here.” Dor reached into his pocket and handed them to her. They were like small syringes with synthetic feathering at one end. “You have your gun, but use these if you can, first. Just jam them in.”

“Why? Why won’t you take them?”

He looked into her eyes, searching for something. “You haven’t killed anyone yet,” he said softly. “I have. It won’t cost me nearly as much to do it again.”

Dor had changed. Something was missing, some light had left him. He was no less determined to free Sammi—if anything he seemed more amped than ever. But his eyes no longer held the promise of hope.

Cass slipped the darts into her socks as the truck began to move, the only place she had to stash them. As the tires hit potholes, Smoke cried out in pain. A good thing, because it meant that he was still aware, if only dimly, of his body.

The smell of exhaust was strong in the truck, and Cass coughed; she was coughing the first few times Ruthie spoke so it took her a while to realize that her daughter’s voice wasn’t just in her imagination. “Mama.”

Cass looked down to see Ruthie had got up on her knees and was holding on to her arm for support, her face only inches away.

“Ruthie, what—? Ruthie,” Cass said, breath caught in her throat. She didn’t want to make a fuss, to draw attention; she had worked so hard to convince Ruthie that it didn’t matter if she talked, that she could heal at her own pace.

“Is Smoke okay?”

Ruthie’s face was tight with worry, her wide eyes sad, her rosebud lips pursed in concern.

“Oh, baby…”

It had never occurred to her to tell Ruthie what had happened to Smoke. Ruthie had been napping when he left, when Cass said her angry last words to him. She had not been with Cass when she made her bargain with Dor. Cass had tried to make the trip to Colima sound like an adventure, and she had taken care to say that Smoke was on an adventure of his own, but at the time Ruthie hadn’t seemed too worried about him.

And there had been Dor—Dor who was so good with children, who played with her and roughhoused with her, Dor who carried her on his shoulders as though she were as light as a butterfly. Smoke and Ruthie had spent many hours together, but they were quiet hours, walking slowly around the Box or reading together. With a burst of guilt Cass remembered the dozens of times she had wished Smoke had been easier around Ruthie, that he had taken more readily to a parental role. Even his kisses seemed awkward, his arms stiff when he held her.

But now, looking into her daughter’s worried face, she saw how wrong she had been. Ruthie had been damaged, had lost part of herself in her time in the Convent. Smoke had come to them without any knowledge of children, without knowing how to be with her. Together, they started slowly and moved forward hesitantly. But now that she was remembering Cass realized how often she saw them together, not talking, doing little more than sitting. Healing.

She gathered Ruthie into her lap. “Babygirl,” she whispered. “We are going to do our very best to make sure that he gets better. Smoke is hurt, but we are going to help him.”

Ruthie held on.

Moments later the truck ground to a stop.

He thought about checking, just checking one more time. To make sure they were all right. Cass, Ruthie…even Smoke, though there was a darkness to that thought; sure, Dor was glad Smoke had pulled through, more than glad, but things were different now in a dozen different ways.

No. He wasn’t going there now, because all that mattered in this moment was finding Sammi. And it turned out to be a damn good thing he didn’t go to the back of the truck. When he got out and started toward the building, the guard was waiting for him.

“Who are you?” she said, squinting in the dawn light. Her hand rested on her belt, on the holster of a weapon. “I don’t know you.”

“Name’s Wentworth. I’ve come out to take a look at the generator cells.”

“What? No one said anything—no one’s mentioned a service call.”

Please, lady, don’t make this a thing.
Dor had only his blade or his gun at this point, and he couldn’t risk her alerting anyone else that he was there. “I was supposed to get here last night, but we had a problem at Tapp and I couldn’t get away until just now.”

She looked even warier as she stepped back. “Look, I don’t mean to be a pain about this, but let me just get—”

She stopped abruptly, her eyes going wide, before she sank to the ground, teetering on her knees before falling forward on the drive. Dor, acting on instinct, caught her before her face hit.

Cass stepped from behind her. “I used a dart.”

“What the hell are you doing out of the truck?”

“I saw her come out. I knew she wasn’t going to believe you….”

“I could have taken care of her.”

“Yeah, by killing her. This way there’s one less.”

He couldn’t argue with that, though he wanted to, wanted to argue with everything Cass said. Since he’d come across her—moments from being violated, Cass who always seemed stronger than everything and everyone, vulnerable like that—he could barely contain his need to protect her, to lock her up tight and take her away from here. It was like those days back in the Box when he saw her wandering across the street to her herb garden, when he held his breath until she was safe again behind the chain-link on the other side. Well, he would protect her now, just as soon as he got Sammi; he’d get them all out of here, back where they belonged. He fingered the silver box in his pocket, his insurance: inside was one of the most volatile explosives ever created, one of the prizes in his extensive arsenal. The second the gel met the powder, it would take out half a city block. He’d been so tempted to use it on the fetid basement of the Tapp Clinic, to blow up not just the two dead men but to obliterate the entire place, every remnant and memory of what had happened. But there’d been others there, innocents, so he’d swallowed back his rage.

He understood Smoke’s quest. If he hadn’t needed to come for Sammi, he would have joined Smoke in hunting down the people responsible for the library raid. He would have been happy to pull the trigger.

“Go back with Smoke and Ruthie,” he said roughly. “That’s enough risk for tonight. I’ll be back before you know it, and I’ll need you to be ready to go.”

She didn’t go right away. She stood shivering, with her arms crossed across her chest, in her thin nightgown. “Take this,” he said, pulling off his own parka.

“No, I can’t,” she said, but when he tossed it to her she caught it.

And because he couldn’t stand to watch her put on the coat that was still warm from his body, he stalked past her and into the building, refusing to turn around. “It’ll just slow me down anyway.”

33

IT WAS TAKING TOO LONG.

Cass had gone back into the truck like Dor ordered her. Smoke’s chills had subsided; her coat seemed to be keeping him warm. Ruthie sat cross-legged at his side, watching him with a serious expression on her face. Cass stared out the back of the truck; the sky was lightening at the horizon, but no one had come or gone from the building. Nearby, the guard’s unconscious body lay in a landscaping bed behind a hedge of dead oleanders.

For the first time in many months, Cass wished for a watch. It seemed like it had been half an hour, but what if it had only been a few minutes? Dor’s plan had been simple enough; he was going to take the first guard or attendant he could find, threaten them into cooperation, and demand to be taken to Sammi. The rooms in the dorm where she and Dor had spent the night were unlocked. But would they lock the girls in here, to deter them from trying to escape?

But what if Sammi wasn’t here? What if they’d already taken her for… Cass shuddered, not wanting to think about the procedure, the violation of a body, in its own way just as horrific as what had nearly been done to her earlier tonight. Sammi was still a child; Cass had not been a child for decades.

If they had taken Sammi to the Tapp Clinic, maybe she was there on the upper floors, resting, recuperating, being tested. Or maybe she was here, but Dor couldn’t find her; maybe he was going from room to room, taking greater and greater risks.

Cass thought about driving away, leaving Dor here to fend for himself. It was the second time in their journey that she had considered abandoning him. The keys were in the ignition. She knew the way across campus to the incomplete section of wall, and she could easily drive out and be on the road in minutes. Sure, they might come after her; once they discovered the dead men in the clinic basement, Smoke’s empty cot. There could be a bounty on her head as there had been on his. But with a head start, she could be back up to the Box by the time anyone had a chance to catch up. Suddenly all the reasons not to go back didn’t seem so insurmountable. There was gas in the truck, she was armed, she wouldn’t stop until she saw the welcoming lights along the chain-link fence. Even if they sent a team, a dozen Rebuilders, Dor’s people would defeat them handily.

Dor’s people. Dor.

She couldn’t just leave him here. He would never have left her behind.

She looked at Ruthie, so serious, so concerned. “Babygirl, let’s get Smoke into the front of the truck, where it’s nicer,” she said. “Then you can take good care of him for a few minutes while I go help Dor. You can do that for me, can’t you?”

Ruthie nodded gravely and placed her hand on Smoke’s arm, as though she was comforting him.

It was hard work, half carrying, half dragging Smoke off the bed of the truck, and up into the cab, Ruthie continuing to want to touch him the whole way. He woke, moaning, from the pain, and for a few moments he seemed to fight her, as though he didn’t recognize her. But by the time she got him to the open passenger door he had stopped struggling and looked at her through heavy-lidded eyes. “You look…like her,” he muttered, and when she gathered all her strength and tried to lift him onto the running board, up into the cab, he sighed and dragged himself inside, collapsing onto the seat.

Ruthie crawled up beside him and knelt on the floor, resuming her vigil. Cass brushed a kiss on her cheek and had started to close the passenger door, when Ruthie gave her a small smile.

“I’ll help him, Mama.”

34

WHEN SAMMI WOKE AND SAW THE FAINTEST pink of dawn through the window, it took her a moment to remember where she was and how she came to be there.

And then it took only one more moment for Sammi to come to a decision.

Last night she’d been numb. Shocked. Too much had happened. The truth kept getting revealed a little at a time, all through the terrible day, as the Rebuilders’ true nature slowly came into focus. They were evil, even the ones who didn’t carry guns or set fires. Some things were even worse than just killing people. They wiped out everyone you cared about and then they led you away, and expected you to just go along with them and do their things. They pretended this place was normal, pretended this was like some big happy town—but behind closed doors all kinds of horrors were waiting. They made girls pregnant—Sammi didn’t even want to think about how—and kept them in this place, and who knew what came after that? It was sure to be awful, and now that Sammi had finally gotten some rest, she suddenly knew that she wasn’t going to accept this fate without a fight.

All the pieces were in place—she was a girl whose fears had been burned away by one loss after another, in a place where they counted on fear to keep people down—so she wasn’t worried about how this journey would end, exactly. She would live or she would die, and she didn’t much care which.

But the Rebuilders needed to know that they couldn’t just throw people away like they didn’t matter. That people were more than nothing. Her mother’s life had ended with the soundless arc of a sharpened blade, no more than a seeping pool of blood on the earth. Jed lost his life in the blink of an eye, as did his brothers. And Mrs. Levenson, and countless others, and the Rebuilders would just go on killing and killing until people stood up to them, and Sammi figured she might as well be one of the ones who fought.