Free Aftertime by Sophie Littlefield Page B

tiny paper circles from a hole punch. The detritus of human activity Before. The sight brought back a memory of the sound of a vacuum cleaner, and Cass realized she was moving her arm back and forth in the obsolete appliance’s once-familiar arc with a sense of longing. Even when she sat in the chair with her hands pressed tightly between her knees and her eyes closed, her mind was filled with a memory of the task, and it was almost like a forbidden thrill to envision making long, slow paths on the carpet, feeling the handle vibrate in her hand, the debris disappearing into the vacuum.
    After a while, Sammi came, unannounced and furtive. The socks were rolled up and hidden in her pocket, the tags still attached. Men’s hiking socks, pale gray with an orange stripe knit into the band at the top. Sammi handed them over and shook her head impatiently when Cass protested that she couldn’t accept them.
    “They’re for you. Besides, you can do something for me. If you ever get to Sykes, and if you meet my dad, tell him I’m okay,” she said. “His name is Dor. Doran MacFall.”
    “Sammi…as soon as I get my daughter, I’m going to go to the safest place I can find. I’m sorry, but I can’t promise—”
    “I’m not asking for a promise,” Sammi interrupted, impatiently. “Only, no one knows what’s going to happen anymore. No one knows the future. And maybe you’ll see him. I mean…you got this far, didn’t you? You were attacked, you got infected, you’re the only person I’ve ever seen who got better .”
    Fear sluiced through Cass’s veins. “Sammi, I never really said—” she began, her mouth dry.
    Sammi shrugged, but she held on to Cass’s gaze. “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone. But your skin…I mean, that’s the way it starts. That and your eyes. They’re way too bright. Most people just don’t want to remember that anymore. I mean, now that they just kill anyone they suspect might be infected.”
    “Wait—what?”
    “Yeah, if someone’s even suspected, they’re shot. There’s like a special store of bullets for it and everything. They have these elections for who has to do it. Winner loses and has to kill the dude. Kids aren’t supposed to know,” Sammi added, shrugging, as if the absurdity of such a rule eluded her.
    Back at the library, before Cass was attacked, those who were suspected of infection were rare enough—there was so little blueleaf left, and no one ate it on purpose—that Bobby ordered that they be kept in the old operations room, among the silent heating and air-conditioning equipment, until their future was clear. Other diseases brought on fever, after all, so you didn’t want to kill everyone . In the end, only one actual infected—a silent and red-faced old man who wore canvas coveralls—had stayed there during Cass’s time at the library. Even when he began pulling his hair out, tearing the skin of his scalp—even when his pupils had shrunk down so far that he couldn’t see Bobby and another man coming the day they hit him on the head and dragged him to the edge of town and left him there—even then he refused to admit he was infected. The old man’s speech had become a bit slurred, and that was the last of it for him.
    “But…” Cass swallowed hard. “My arms…like you said.” It came out in a hoarse whisper as she covered the shiny, thin scars with her hands, unable to look.
    “Yeah, but you act normal. You’re not feverish and you don’t talk crazy. Once they figured out that you weren’t going to kill me, you know, when you started talking and all—you know how sometimes people only see what they want to see?”
    Cass nodded, thinking— but you still see . Maybe it was because Sammi was young. And maybe it was more than that.
    Sammi gave her a little grin. “Look, you’re really not so bad. You did fix your hair, kinda—and your scars are almost gone. What you really need?”
    Cass smiled, moved despite herself that the girl was