Free Aftertime by Sophie Littlefield

They’ve started going out a couple at a time, kind of poking around together like they have a plan. We—some of us—we think they’re scouting.”
    A thrill of fear snaked along Cass’s spine, a sensation she had thought was lost to her. After the things she’d seen and suffered, she didn’t think she could be terrified again. “What do you mean?” she demanded.
    “They’re on the lookout for opportunities. For us . They’ve started working on strategy.”
    Whispered: “No.”
    It was impossible. The Beaters were disorganized, stripped of their humanity, reduced to little more than animals motivated by an overwhelming need to feed. The spells of humanlike behavior were nothing but the debris left behind when the soul made a clumsy exit from the shell of a body that remained. To suggest they were evolving the ability to reason, to plan —that was as senseless as suggesting that a flock of ducks could orchestrate a diving attack.
    “We’re not saying they’ve succeeded yet,” Nance said quickly. “I mean it’s not like they get very far before they get distracted or wander off or whatever. But the fact they’re coming out in small groups like that—and they hang out around the edges, across the streets all around the school—it’s got to mean something.”
    “It might just be the evolution of the disease,” Cass ventured, grasping at possibilities. “You know…like, in the whole first population, as it progresses…”
    There had been a lot of discussion of the evolution of the disease, when people first realized that the sick were turning into something else, something far worse. Before anyone called them Beaters, people repeated rumors that their brains were infected with a madness similar to syphilis. But back then, much as nineteenth-century syphilitics suffered from lesions and tumors and dementia before they died, Aftertime, people had initially thought that those who ate the blueleaf would eventually die once the fever escalated.
    “Maybe,” Gail assented, an act of generosity. “Just, I want you to know what you’re up against. Smoke knows.… He’s been watching them.”
    “He takes notes,” Nance added. “He keeps a journal. He used to be a teacher or something.”
    “Well, we don’t know that,” Gail corrected her. “He doesn’t talk about himself much.”
    “He said something about it once,” Nance insisted. “Teaching.”
    Cass toweled off her damp body and thought about the man who had offered to freewalk with her to the library. Four miles of unnecessary risk. The overwhelming impression she got from Smoke was of…depth. Layers. He would not be an easy man to know.
    There was the story he told about the air force pilots. She still didn’t think he was telling the whole truth. So…maybe he was a liar, or maybe he was just keeping parts of the truth to himself.
    But he was brave. Or more precisely, he had a lack of concern for himself, and an abundance of concern for others. He had been the first to come at her when she and Sammi approached the school, and it had been his body crushing hers when he took her down. His arms had been hard-muscled. Despite her strength and fitness, she was smaller by several inches and thirty or forty pounds. He could have hurt her easily.
    But he hadn’t even bruised her.
    “What about Nora?” Cass found herself asking. “His…girlfriend?”
    Gail made an exhalation of air through her teeth. “Is that the impression you got? Well, they’re…I don’t know what you’d call it.”
    “They met here,” Nance said. “Nora, when she showed up she was a mess. Kept to herself. Wouldn’t let anyone close at first, after her nephew…once he was taken. Smoke got her talking again.”
    “I mean I’m pretty sure they’re doing the nasty,” Gail said, flashing a grin that didn’t make it to her eyes. “Smoke’s hot, and there’s lots of women wouldn’t mind a little of that.”
    Cass felt heat rising in her face. That wasn’t