Rebirth. Sophie Littlefield

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      The peace between the Rebuilders and the Box was uneasy. No one liked it, except possibly Dor, who, as far as Cass could tell, was without loyalties to anyone but himself and his meticulously tracked empire. But everyone realized that the balance was a delicate one, and any provocation would end up with a lot of dead on both sides. The Box was recognized as neutral, and while the Rebuilders no doubt intended to take it someday, for now they would have a hard time outgunning Dor’s arsenal and security force.

      Cass decided to keep the information to herself, at least until she knew what the hell was going on.

      “Maybe we didn’t have whatever he was shopping for,” Three-High said, yawning. “Kinda thin stock these days.”

      Feo, finished with his snack, wriggled off his lap and darted away without a word. It was his way; he was a restless boy, frequently affectionate, but easily bored. No one tried to get him to sit still, especially not his self-appointed guardians, who saw nothing wrong with his prowling and occasional thieving and who had made him a bed in a staff bunkhouse, where they could hear him if he cried out in his sleep.

      “What are you talking about, the shed’s practically full. And we got a shitload of new stuff this morning from those guys from…where was it…Murphy’s?” Faye ticked items off on her fingers: “Tampons and toilet paper. Tea bags, olive oil, a couple dozen of those South Beach bars, liquid soap and detergent, all that shampoo. And an unopened bottle of Kahlúa and a case of Diet Canfield’s and twenty-two bottles of Coors Light.”

      “That stuff tastes like piss,” Three-High said.

      “You’d drink it, though—tell me you wouldn’t.”

      “Hell, yes, I’d drink piss if it got me buzzed.”

      The raiders had recently cleared a house where Beaters had been nesting on the far east side of town, and they’d come back with a good haul, but they’d lost a man in the raid. They missed a Beater who’d been sleeping in a powder room. It was weak and injured, bones showing through its flesh in several places and one foot twisted at an odd angle, and the others had probably left it behind when they moved on. It had taken only one bullet to kill, but not until it had clamped its festering jaw on Don Carson’s ankle.

      It had cost a second bullet to take Don down.

      The raiding was growing more dangerous. When Cass had first arrived in San Pedro in the summer, Dor’s people had cleared the town of nearly all the Beaters. The Order in the Convent paid well enough for live Beaters to use in their rituals that it was more worth Dor’s while to scour the streets for them. But trade with the Order had dried up, and as the weather turned cold, Beaters had begun stumbling their way south, apparently traveling by some instinct unknown to their human brethren. With their preference for more densely populated areas, Beaters were quick to nest once they reached San Pedro, and quick to hunt. Dor still kept the main roads clear, and the guards picked off any who came too close to the Box—but come in on any of the less-traveled paths and you were taking chances. The Beaters had learned to stay away from the stronghold, though they roamed just out of sight. You could sometimes hear their moans and nonsense jabber carried on the winds.

      When they caught someone, you could hear the screaming, human and once-human.

      Recently it seemed like they were getting bolder. Last week Cass had been trudging back from the bathroom shed at the first light of dawn, the Box still silent and asleep, when she heard a shout at the fence. For a second she hesitated, shivering at the chill snaking up under her nightgown, and then she’d loped silently along the fence toward the sound, the tongues of her undone boots flapping.

      She reached the source of the commotion, across from the rental cots near the front of the Box, in time to see the worst of it. George, the guard on third shift, had been backed up against the wall of a two-story brick building that once housed a jewelry shop on the first floor and accountants’ offices on the second. Cass put it together immediately—she knew the guards sometimes smoked in the space where the stone steps met the wall of the building, where an overhang provided protection from rain and the curving staircase blocked the wind. They’d even dragged a chair there, and everyone used it to take breaks between laps around the Box.

      Which was fine, unless you fell asleep.

      George usually didn’t take the third shift. He was covering for Charles, who was laid up with food poisoning puking his guts out, and as the long uneventful night stretched toward dawn he’d taken a break. Maybe he’d just closed his eyes for a moment.

      Long enough for the four Beaters to prowl down the streets and alleys from wherever they’d carved their nest and find their victim practically gift-wrapped, to seize upon their prize with shrieks of delight and hunger before George had time to reach for his gun or even the blade at his belt.

      When Cass arrived, heart pounding in her throat, Faye and Three-High had left their posts at the front gate and run down the block, but it was too late. The first bite was enough to doom George, but the Beaters would not finish him here. After a few slobbering crowing nips they hoisted him between them, each holding an arm or a leg in their scabby festering fingers, to drag him back to their nest where they would feast undisturbed. First they would chew the skin off his back, his buttocks, his calves, kneeling on his arms and legs so he couldn’t move. Then they’d turn him and eat the other side, and as he weakened and his screams grew hoarse, they’d nibble at the harder-to-reach skin of his face, fingers and feet.

      George knew what his fate could be. You could hear it in his screams. As Cass watched—others running toward the commotion, those who were already awake, those who heard the screams through their sleep and bolted out of bed—Faye and Three-High shot at the Beaters. And when George’s screaming abruptly stopped she knew they’d been aiming at him, too.

      There were still entire neighborhoods waiting to be raided, but people were getting nervous. Beaters, disease, toxic waste, depression and anxiety—all these things stopped even the heartiest at times. Some of the raiders had begun refusing to go out at all, just one of the many things Cass knew Dor and Smoke discussed.

      “Hey, any kid stuff in the haul?” Cass asked, thinking of Ruthie, her tight shoes.

      “Yeah, but older,” Faye said. “You know, like that tween stuff. All the sparkly shit on the jeans. Hold on to it for Ruthie. She’ll love it in a few years.”

      There was a sudden, awkward silence; it was an unwritten rule that you never talked about the future. Especially because it wasn’t clear how much longer Ruthie would be welcome in the Box. Dor had made an exception to his no-kids policy for her, and another for Feo, but his continued beneficence was a gamble. “Or, you know, get Gary to take in the seams for now,” Faye added.

      “It’s the shoes, mostly,” Cass clarified. “I’d just like to get her some sneakers. Boots, too. I don’t care if they’re boys’, either. Keep your eye out?”

      “You know we do, Cassie,” Three-High said kindly. Some of them, mostly the men, had taken to calling her Cassie. Cass didn’t like it, but she also didn’t want to tell them to stop. They meant well. “We’ll find her something in plenty of time. Gonna find her a sled, too, little snowsuit.”

      “Thanks,” Cass said softly. “But Dor…so the last you saw him was…”

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