After (37 page)

When Smith asks if they've seen anyone else, the five hem and haw, and eventually it comes out that there's another small group—three men, no women—holed up in the next town. There's no real animosity between the two groups, but each would rather stick to their own.

Then Bill—the Guthrie spokesperson—goes silent. Eva's eyes have gone wide, sharp, fixed on something off at the edge of the little clearing. Silent, she rises from the bench.

A face is peering from the shadows, the person there nearly hidden behind the red and green foliage of a scruffy laurel hedge. Two of the Guthrie men jump up, rush to flank the hidden onlooker. Bill plants his squat, muscular body in Eva's path, halting her.

“Please,” Eva says, her voice wet and choked, “couldn't I just talk to her? No one here will hurt her. I promise.”

He doesn't seem to see her. Hear her. He stays still and solid as a wall, eyes fixed on Smith.

“Please. Bill.” Eva's gold-and-amber irises are bright, glimmering. Her hand shakes a little as she touches his arm, her smile wavering. “I haven't spoken to another woman. Not for years.”

Smith steps up behind Eva, puts his hands on her shaking shoulders.

“It's true. Our little Hope is hardly more than a child, and hasn't spoken a word.”

Smith gives Bill a smile; warm, utterly disarming. “As you can see, it would mean a lot to Eva, if you'd allow her a few moments with the lady.”

Bill scrutinizes—not Eva—Smith with his blue-gray eyes, cloudy, veiled.

“This one can go over there,” he says, pointing a stubby index finger toward the laurel hedge, “if she's that eager.”

Behind enemy lines.

“I thought this was neutral territory.” Smith touches the picnic table. “We're all safe here, aren't we?”

“I'll go over there,” Eva says to Bill, “but could we have some space? It'd be nice to be able to talk, just us girls.”

“Yeah. Okay,” Bill says, still looking at Smith.

Bill signals the two men flanking the woman by the hedge. They come forward, half way to the picnic table.

“Stay where I can see you,” Smith says, quiet, firm.

Eva walks off, between and beyond the two Guthrie men, toward the woman.

She's pale and blue-eyed, her blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Her hands fumble at each other as she stares at the approaching stranger. Eva's mouth spreads in a wide smile, then fades, and she throws her arms around the woman. They hug. Then part.

“They say there's two of you. Two women,” the blond says, looking Eva up and down.

“Me, and Hope. And here?”

“Just me.”

“You haven't seen anyone else?” Eva asks.

“The other woman shoots a glance toward the men. “There's another group. In the next town. No women there, though.”

“What about you?” Eva asks in a quiet voice.

“I'm not their hostage. Is that what you mean?”

Eva nods.

“It's easier, sticking with them. Safer.”

“Safer,” Eva echoes. “But not safe?”

The woman shrugs and looks down. “I'm Karen,” she says a second later, changing the subject and meeting Eva's eyes again.

“Eva.” She smiles, her gold eyes swimming in unspilled tears.

“It's you two women,” Karen says, “and how many men?”

“Eighteen.”

Karen pales. Shakes her head. “And you both—“ she whispers. “All of them?

Or?”

Eva smiles. A true, easy smile. “No.”

“No?”

“None of them touch Hope. She's barely a woman. And I've...well, no one's forced me. There've been tense times. Hard times. But I feel safe. I'm happy.”

“Happy?” Karen sounds incredulous.

“Karen.” Eva strokes the woman's arm. “While we're alone, I want to tell you something.”

“What?” Karen's voice, her expression suggest there can only be bad things to tell.

“We're going to invite you—all of you—to come back with us. To the base. It's not perfect there. The people aren't perfect. But my life is my own. Hope's is hers. If you wanted to come, it would be the same for you. You wouldn't have to pay for your safety with sex. I just wanted you to know. It'd be hard, saying that in front of them.”

“Yeah,” Karen laughs, mirthless.

“Will you be able to talk with them there? Anything you want to tell me? Ask me while it's just us?”

Karen shrugs and looks down at the ground, but in a quiet voice she asks, “They really don't make you do anything with them?”

When Eva and Karen move toward the table, the two Guthrie men shielding her from Smith and the other soldiers cut her off, hold her back.

“She's not allowed to participate?” Eva asks.

“What are you doing, Karen?” the younger one, with dark kinky hair and big brown eyes asks.

“I want to hear what they have to say.”

“You were gonna stay out of sight, remember? Make it easy for us to keep you safe.”

“Well, now I want to talk to them. So let go.”

He gives no sign of doing so. His jaw and his grip just seem to tighten.

“I know it feels risky,” Eva says. “It feels that way for us, too. You saw the four of us drive up in a truck. That we're alone. For all we know, there are another ten or twenty of you laying low, waiting to ambush us. But we think it's worth the risk, trusting you. It doesn't make sense, all of us keeping to our isolated little groups.”

Now Bill and the other Guthrie men are circling around Karen and Eva. Smith, Diego and Evan are up and taut, but they hang back.

“You just get over there with your men,” Bill says, his face just two or three inches from Eva's. “And all of you stay away from her.”

Eva looks at Karen. Karen stays silent. Watching the Guthrie men.

Eva says, “All we want is for all of us to sit down and talk. None of us wants to make Karen—or any of you—do anything she doesn't want to do.”

“I'll tell you just once more. Get back to your men. 'Cause we're taking Karen home now. And unless you mean to come along home with us, Miss, you need to get out of our way.”

“Bill.” Karen finally speaks up. “I want to sit down with them. Hear what they have to say.”

“You do, do you? Haven't you put yourself, put all of us in enough danger already?”

“Come on,” Karen coaxes. “Let's go in, where it's safe. I trust Eva. They're not going to cause us any trouble.”

“Fine. But don't expect us to risk our necks if things go hairy, not after your little stunt.”

On that note of hospitality, the whole entourage makes its way to a small hotel on the main street of the modest downtown—hardly more than three blocks of little shops, a diner and a Mexican restaurant, and a little library—all deserted. Lifeless.

In the dining room—built to accommodate more guests than all the survivors of Guthrie put together, much like the mess hall at the base—the Guthries treat their visitors to cold fried chicken from the coop they have out back, and beer. During the meal, they mostly make small talk. What they have plenty of, what they miss. What they think caused the dying, what they imagine is going on in L.A. and New York—not a soul left—those were key targets, carefully decimated; only the little piss-ant towns got away with a handful of survivors)—what's going on where survivors are hiding out, grouping together, eking out some kind of existence.

Only when conversation and full bellies and mugs of beer have soothed tensions does Smith broach them with their invitation.

“Our hope is to build up a real town. A community.”

“At the base? Doesn't sound like much of a place for that. This is a real town.

With homes.”

“Yes. But we're quite secure. I gather that's one of your graver worries, here. But the base, as you can imagine, is well armed. Not just handguns and rifles, which I'm sure you have here. And the base itself is designed to be defended. Anywhere else, a group where there are families, women, from what you've said, we'd risk being alluring and vulnerable to those slave-traders.”

“Even so, I don't know who would want to go there to live under some kind of martial law. To be ruled by a bunch of soldiers.”

Smith smiles, humor sparking in his hazel eyes. “No,” he says, “I don't imagine anyone would be excited by that prospect. Unless they were desperate.”

There's a quiet moment, Bill locked in Smith's sharp gaze.

“We're doing all right, here,” Bill comes back, blustery again.

“So far, so good,” Smith says, still smiling. “But it seems to me that you're not the one with the most to lose.” He turns his gaze, his smile on Karen. “But in any case, I've had quite enough of being a military dictator. We have a sort of constitution, and the whole group has a say in instituting the laws, and all of us are held to them. If you decide to join us, you'll have the same rights I have.”

“And you'll have the same rights I have?” Bill retorts.

“I don't want to misunderstand you, Bill, so you'd better clarify.”

“He wants to know if you'll consider yourself entitled to Karen,” Eva says.

“Certainly not,” Smith says, his voice soft, his eyes locked on Karen's. “No one is entitled to another person. Though everyone is free to give themselves to whomever they wish.”

“That's a pretty kind of morality you're building your great society on,” Bill growls.

Karen's eyebrows go up and she snickers, but without looking at Bill, or anyone else. Then, after a moment of tense silence Karen asks, “What would we have to do?”

“What do you mean?” Smith asks her.

“I mean, like, for work? Or to earn our keep.”

“Honestly, there isn't so much to do, as things are now. There's a rotation for the various duties. A week of field work, tending the corn and vegetable gardens; a week of laundry and K.P.; small administrative tasks, and the like. If we do manage to get a lot of others to come and join us, we'll have construction projects, refitting barracks to function more like apartments, things like that.”

“And where would I—we—sleep? What sort of accommodations?” Karen wants to know.

“Well, we'd work that out together, depending on how many of you decided to come, and what sort of arrangement you'd want. We have dorm-style rooms with multiple beds, or we could easily set everyone up with rooms of their own. There's a lot of flexibility. Only a few of our buildings are even in use, now.”

“Jesus!” Bill is smiling, but his eyes have gone red, and he glares at Karen as he talks at her through gritted teeth. “You actually thinking about going off with them?”

Karen hangs her head and shrugs her shoulders.

“What's the matter? Five men not enough for you?” he spits.

“Maybe five is too many,” Eva intervenes, her calm making his sputtering rage even more ridiculous.

“Karen, if you believe those military boys are going to take you under their protective wing for nothing, you're going to have an ugly surprise.” When Karen lifts her head to look at Bill, her cheeks are streaked with tears. “How many did you say you were?” he asks Smith.

“All together we're twenty-one. Eighteen are men.”

“And how many of those eighteen men have fucked you?” he says, finally addressing Eva.

“All of them,” she says simply, without bravado. “Well, all of them who wanted.”

Bill laughs, an ugly, retaliatory laugh. “Ha! You see? Not such a pretty bargain now, is it?”

Eva meets Karen's eyes. “I want to be honest with you. I don't want to pretend I landed in some utopia, there. Lure you with some fairy tale.” She exchanges a glance with Smith, who gives her a bolstering nod. “It was hard, bad for me, when they first found me.”

“I made it hard for her,” Smith says, meeting Karen's startled glance.

“But,” Eva goes on, “No one's raped me. And things are good, genuinely happy for me, now. I go to the men because I want to. No one will expect that of you, Karen.”

“So, if we go, if I go, the only thing I have to do is my share of work?”

“And adhere to the laws, like any society,” Smith adds. “Don't worry, it's not a cult, or some fiefdom where we charge you three fourths of what you grow, in taxes.”

“You're really thinking about it,” Bill seethes. “You really wanna go there. Go and live with twenty soldiers, like that little whore.”

“Don't you dare, Bill.” Smith's voice is so soft, it's just audible, even though they're all gathered close around the table. He looks like he might claw the man apart with nothing but his gaze. “Don't you dare to try to make Eva's courage, her kindness, ugly.”

“It's all right,” Eva says, touching Smith's arm but fixing Bill in her gaze. “Bill's just scared. He and these other men have kept Karen prisoner all this time, using her fear of an even worse fate to keep her cooperative. Is that right, Bill? And now, he's trying to shame her into staying here, as their personal comfort woman. The hypocrisy is so pathetic, it's almost funny.”

Bill looks at Smith. “You'd better make that little bitch shut up.”

Smith rises from his chair. Calm, with a trace of amusement turning up one corner of his mouth, he says to the group at large, “Well, it seems our welcome here has worn thin, so we'll be going. Any of you who'd like to come with us is welcome. Even you, Bill. Though I'll warn you that you'll find yourself without many friends at the base, if you keep up that tone.”

Eva takes Karen's hands in hers. “Come with us.”

Karen looks sideways at Bill, and sits, hunched and silent for a while, but finally she nods her head.

“You ungrateful bitch! All we've done for you, risking our goddamned lives, after the beating Joey and Bret took, you think you're just gonna go traipsing off with a pack of strangers? You're stayin' right where you are.”

Through gritted teeth Karen spits out, “I don't owe you a goddamned thing. None of you! You took your pay for your troubles. Pay, and then some!”

Eva touches Karen's shoulder. “I'll come with you, if you want to pack some things.”

“Well, anyone else coming?” Smith asks the Guthrie men as Eva and Karen disappear into the lobby, and their steps reverberate overhead as they climb the stairs.

“You really asking us? After all this?” Joey says.

“None of us are innocent,” Smith says. “I have no interest in punishing anyone for past sins. I only expect that from here on, everyone work in earnest to treat each other with respect and kindness. And understand that attacks, coercion of any kind will be punished. Don't come imagining you can get away with the sorts of things that have been going on, here.”