slid the last few feet, stumbling and almost falling. “There was a crowd of Beaters this morning, on the west shore. Your dad saw them when he headed out this morning with Nathan and he’s been looking everywhere for you.”
“Not everywhere,” Sammi mumbled, even as Valerie’s words—a crowd of them—sank in.
“What’s that, honey?” Valerie’s hand—Sammi couldn’t help focusing on her nails, perfectly oval and clean—settled on her shoulder, and Sammi resisted shrugging it off.
“I just said, I’m surprised Dad didn’t find me, I would think Kyra and Sage’s room wouldn’t be all that hard to find.”
“But we did look there, first thing!”
“Well—I was there.” Sammi made a halfhearted effort to keep the defiance out of her voice, but hadn’t she and her dad talked about it—she’d asked him point-blank, So Valerie’s, like, my new stepmom now? This was weeks ago, when Valerie had returned a stack of Sammi’s clothes, mended and pressed and smelling, somehow, faintly of lavender.
No one can replace your mom, he had replied, as if he knew that Sammi was remembering her mom doing laundry back in their house in the mountains, singing while she folded clothes in the sunny laundry room.
Valerie was better at laundry—her mom tended to mix red things in with the whites, turning everything pink—and somehow that just made it all the worse.
“But Zihna said she hadn’t seen you,” Valerie said, twisting her hands together.
“So what’s the big deal anyway? There’s Beaters on the shore every day.”
“Oh, Sammi…you don’t understand. It was more than there’ve ever been before. Steve said he counted more than thirty before Glynnis and John started shooting.”
“Thirty?” Sammi was taken aback. A crowd…by that she thought they meant eight or ten. The most that anyone had ever seen before was, like, nine, and that was two separate groups, one that came from the direction of Oakton and the other from straight across the field, dragging what turned out to be a split and rotting garden hose behind them. But thirty…Sammi had never heard of that many being in one place at one time, though she probably could have imagined it in the denser cities’ ruins. “Where did they come from?”
“No one knows. It was so early…no one saw them coming. Glynnis and John managed to kill eight of them, and the rest ran. Nathan took off after them in the car, and he and Steve killed another seven. They’d wanted to see which direction they came from, but the Beaters just—they just panicked, I guess like they would, and ran in every direction.”
“Dad didn’t go with Nathan, did he?”
“Of course not,” Valerie said, eyes widening. “He hasn’t done anything but look for you since they were spotted. He’s down on Garden Island now, going row by row.”
Guilt made Sammi blush. She should have known—but her dad loved going out with Nathan, and she could picture it—Nathan white-knuckle driving, her dad half out the window with that big Glock of his, like it was some kind of jackass safari.
Her dad was such an idiot. Acting like it was all some sort of game, the way he went out driving around, looking for gas, blowing up cars. And he had the nerve to accuse her of being irresponsible.
Her irritation was back in a flash. “Well, I guess you can tell him I’m fine,” she said, pushing past Valerie, taking the incline nimbly. Sucks to be old, she resisted saying, knowing Valerie would struggle even more getting back up the bank than coming down—and knowing she was a real bitch for not staying and helping, especially since Valerie had devoted her morning to searching for her. “I’m gonna head back to the trailer and take a nap.”
“But, Sammi—”
“Look, I’ll talk to you later, okay? We were up late, I’m wrecked.” Sammi yawned and didn’t bother to cover her mouth.
“No, what I wanted to say…look, they found blueleaf. They don’t think anyone ate it, the plants were young, but there’s an alert.” Her worried face sagged. “There’s a buddy-up, right after breakfast.”
As if on cue, the breakfast bell chimed, two soulful tones carried on the mist. Sammi loved that bell possibly more than anything else about New Eden, the way it sounded like it had once hung in a beautiful old cathedral, the way it made the air still and silent and echo-y for a few seconds after it stopped ringing.
“Fuck…”
“I know they’re a pain,” Valerie said, not even commenting on Sammi’s language, which made Sammi want to say it again, or worse. Sometimes she wondered what it would take to get a reaction out of Valerie. Of course the woman was only nice to her because she was dating her dad—if she wasn’t, she would have snapped a long time ago, given Sammi the lecture she probably deserved. Sammi took advantage of her, but honestly, how could she not? How could anyone stand Valerie’s fakey niceness? “We could go together, though…if you want. I mean, once we get there, I’d—”
“You’re with Mrs. Kristobal,” Sammi interrupted. “Right?”
Valerie nodded. “But it won’t take long. You and Cindy can finish up quick and we can eat together. Your dad’ll come back, I’m sure of it—we agreed he’d come back every half hour to check in. Oh, Sammi, he’ll be so glad to see you. He’ll be so incredibly relieved. Maybe, just to make him feel better, you and I could try to stay away from the banks until we get this all sorted out. Keep to the middle of the island, with everyone else. What do you think—shall we make a pact?”
Valerie was trying so hard to give her a brave smile that Sammi gave up and held out her hand to help her scramble up the muddy bank. Valerie took it gratefully, blinking against the sun, which had risen high enough in the sky to warm their faces.
“Good idea,” Sammi muttered, wondering what Valerie would have to say if she knew that not even twelve hours ago her dad had been out on the dock, practically in the water as he buried his face in Cass Dollar’s tits.
Chapter 10
CASS KNEW IT was no accident that breakfast consisted solely of day-old pone, a thick bread made in skillets over the fire from a kaysev-flour batter sizzled in rabbit fat. No fresh kaysev would be served until it had all been checked—in the daylight—a couple more times. This was mere paranoia—the odds of finding more blueleaf were incredibly low. Only the passage of time would get everyone comfortable again, would lull them back into a state of calm.
After most had eaten and before anyone could leave, Dana got up on the porch of the community center and clapped his hands for quiet. Buddy-ups always began this way, with Dana listing the early signs of the disease in his droning voice: the fever, often accompanied by a darkening of the skin and a sheen of perspiration; the dizziness that was traced with euphoria; the sensitivity to light; and the disorientation. He would go on to remind everyone that the old and young were especially vulnerable, things everyone already knew, and then he would lead them in the buddying.
Today, Cass felt people stealing glances at her—with apprehension, judgment, doubt?—and quickly looking away as they found their partners and lined up. Cass stayed rooted to the spot. She knew that Karen would come to her. She was efficient that way, one of Collette’s best volunteers, a spry sixty-plus woman who liked to say she was a “doer.”
There was good-natured grumbling that the vigilance committee, headed by Dana and Neal, had made a special effort to create as many odd couples as they could, putting people together who didn’t ordinarily seek each other out, who didn’t especially like each other. No one said it, but Cass guessed that everyone believed the same thing—that the vigilance committee figured you’d be more likely to turn in a suspicious case if you didn’t like them that much in the first place. Much lip service was given to the promise that “potentials,” as they called the symptomatic, would be treated very well, escorted to the comfortable house that