But already her fingertips thrummed and twitched to touch the cold steel, her palm was ready to wrap around the grip. I am a killer, Cass thought, and the thought made her neither happy nor sad. Only ready.
Dor was standing near the edge, talking to Neal, who had made it back to the shore. Someone had given him a blanket and he was standing wrapped in it and shivering, his lips blue. The overturned canoe hadn’t traveled far downstream, and Cass saw the reason for this small stroke of luck—it had snagged on a tree that had fallen on the opposite bank, but the current tugged at it and there was no telling how long it would hold.
There were other boats—half a dozen skiffs and aluminum rowboats, all stored on the other side of the island. In typical New Eden fashion, they were secured and cleaned and well maintained and hardly ever used. Everyone used the one-lane bridge—well tended and even better guarded—if they wanted to get to the mainland. Besides, there was little sport to be had from floating downstream or fighting the current on the way back.
Glynnis and John preferred the canoes to the other craft for their maneuverability, and the two of them had been able to handle the mostly unnecessary duty of shore patrol by themselves. When they weren’t working, the canoes were simply stored on the grassy banks. Having two had seemed like a great backup plan, but the second had never been needed until now.
A woman took Neal’s arm and led him away, talking to him softly.
“I need someone to swim out and get the canoe,” Dor said, his deep voice carrying over the crowd. “We’ll need both of them.”
Everyone stared at him, making way for Cass to pass, and she joined him at his side. She began strapping on the hip holster he’d brought.
There was murmuring, and then voices—angry voices—began to be heard.
“Why don’t you swim out?”
“Someone’s gone for the rowboats.”
“How’d you get those weapons?”
“I said, I need someone to swim out. Whoever goes will be too cold and exhausted to also paddle effectively after,” Dor yelled, silencing them. “Before we lose more people—look out there. Do you see? They’re still coming.”
Cass turned, along with the crowd—it was true. The Beaters had to number close to a hundred now, their milling and jostling making it hard to count. The sun had sunk nearly to the horizon, illuminating them from behind, outlining their ghastly silhouettes. Glynnis and John were upstream, picking off a clump that had ventured ankle-deep into the water. All along the shoreline now, dead Beaters bobbed, gently bumping up against the bank. In several places the mud was red with blood.
Directly across from them, a Beater had gone down, but was not yet dead. Glynnis must have missed the spinal shot, and it twitched and spasmed. Two of its closest companions grabbed its hands and legs and dragged it up onto the bank, up the incline, depositing it on dry land, while others looked on. For a moment Cass thought she was seeing some sort of new ritual, honoring the fallen, but then several of them bent over the dying thing and began to bite it, tearing off shreds of skin and crowing the way they always did when they ate. Blood poured from the downed body and it twitched harder.
They were usually unenthusiastic about feeding on each other once finally dead, but something about the death throes apparently made the prospect more appealing, and it was not uncommon to see them devouring their wounded.
“Oh, God,” someone said nearby.
“I’m gonna throw up.”
“This is ridiculous. They can’t keep this up forever.”
Cass didn’t know if the speaker meant the Edenites or the Beaters, but she knew that Dor was losing them. They wouldn’t listen to him. They held him in contempt. And things were only getting worse here.
“Please!” she yelled. “Please, someone, get the canoe. I’d do it, but Dor needs me to shoot.”
“Getting in that water’ll kill you,” a woman said. “It’s got to be forty degrees. Do you know how long—”
“I know!” Cass turned on her, furious. “I know it. It’s a risk. But do you just want to stand here and wait for them to come get us? Look, Neal made it. He didn’t have to go as far, it’s true, and we need a strong swimmer.”
“You go,” an angry female voice said. “I’ll shoot. I’ll go with Dor.”
Everyone turned to see who spoke.
It was Valerie. Incredibly, since the voice sounded nothing like hers. She stood off to the side of the crowd, her face knotted in fury, her hair released from its band, tumbling around her shoulders. She’d forsaken her Pendleton jacket and skirt for a pair of tight black pants and a man’s coat, and her hands were bare, clenched into fists.
“Do you even know how to shoot?” someone demanded.
“How hard can it be?” she screamed. Her eyes drilled into Cass, glinting with fury, and Cass noticed for the first time that Valerie was actually quite beautiful, with her dark features and pale skin, her arched brows and long neck. “If she can do it, I can.”
“This is not the time,” Dor said, his voice hard. He had lowered his tone but in the hush of the shocked assembly, it carried just fine.
“Roger. You go.” Dor turned his back on Valerie, and Cass, who’d been watching the other woman, saw her deflate, saw the fight leave her when she realized her desperate gamble had failed. Valerie had been willing to sacrifice everything—her life, his, the lives of everyone in New Eden—just to force him to acknowledge her, to claim her and love her.
But there was no more time for that.
Roger Taugher was staring at the canoe, trying to gauge whether he could make it. He was in his twenties, strong, a former soccer player who often led pickup games in the yard and entertained the little kids with tricks with the ball. Ruthie adored him.
He started to tug off his jacket and kicked off his boots.
“You’ll freeze!” the young woman next to him protested.
“Clothes’ll just slow him down,” Dor said. “Everyone else, give him room. The minute he gets back with the canoe, you all take him to get warm—Cass and I will head out.”
“I’m almost out of ammo!” Glynnis called, as they paddled toward a group that was splashing farther downriver.
“Dana. Go to the storehouse, bring back the box of 12-gauge shells. Glynnis uses the Browning, but she’s good with a handgun too so bring one. Don’t forget extra ammo for that. Take someone with you—Hank, you go.”
Hank nodded, but Dana hesitated, staring at Dor with a mixture of contempt and anger. “Look, Dor, we need to consider—you can’t just—”
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing, Dana? If I let you all take charge you’ll still be deliberating while the rest of us are being dragged off. Now, are you going to go or do I need to take the keys off you myself?”
For a moment it seemed like Dana was going to refuse. But he looked around the assembled crowd, and seemed to sense what Cass did, what the rest of them did—a turning of the tide of sympathies. She knew that few people liked either of them, herself or Dor, especially after Sammi’s revelation and Valerie’s outburst.
But they also knew that Dor could lead them.
Roger was down to his long underwear, and he threw himself into the river and came up already stroking powerfully toward the canoe. This was the easy part, since the current was in his favor. A gasp went up from the crowd, which turned to watch him.
“Get the shit, Dana,” Earl said. “I’d go myself but I’m too slow.”
Hank clapped a hand on Dana’s shoulder, and they took off at a brisk jog toward the sheds.
“Earl, can you coordinate getting the other boats?” Dor ticked off on his hand. “Get the Bronco from the shed, hook it up to the trailer. Sharon, Elsa, can you give him a hand?”
The two women who ran the auto shop nodded.
“Drive right across the yard, don’t bother to take the road. Don’t forget oars. When Dana and Hank get back—” Dor searched the crowd, his gaze falling on Harris, the quietest member of the council. “Ha
rris. You need to take charge of arming people. Okay? You can do that? Good candidates would be Terrence, Shel, Fat Mike. Do not give a weapon to anyone without experience. Do you hear me? That’s important. It’s worse to have them in the wrong hands than to leave them unarmed.”
Harris nodded. “I got it.”
“Good. I doubt you’ll be able to get all that coordinated by dusk, and with any luck they’ll be gone by then. But this isn’t wasted, because we’re going to be ready in the morning. And I have a feeling we’ll need to be.”
Roger reached the canoe, and was struggling with the branch. Sharon and Elsa ran in the direction of the auto garage. Harris moved among the crowd, assembling his shooters.
Everyone else focused on Roger. He got the canoe unhooked with little trouble, but as soon as he started dragging it back toward shore, it was clear that he was in trouble. He sidestroked with only one hand free, kicking hard against the current. But the canoe dragged in the water and slowed him down.
“Go, Roger,” a man said near Cass. Another man repeated it, and then they were all saying it, quietly.
Though the struggling man could not possibly hear them, Cass felt their energy, their frantic hope. The sun slipped a little lower in the sky and orange brilliance shone along the horizon, the last gasp of the day. In an hour the sky would be velvety dark blue, and the Beaters would not be able to see. Their tiny pupils, altered by the fever so that they were no longer able to expand, would not let in enough light for them to make out rough shapes, much less details. If they could hold off this wave until then…
Roger paused, his hand on the lip of the canoe, and treaded water for a moment. Cass saw him gasping for breath. For a moment he went still, and was it her imagination or was he sinking down, down, under the water—
“Damn it,” his girlfriend exclaimed. “Do something, don’t you see he can’t make it, someone do something, save him!”
Cass wasn’t the only one to turn to Dor. He was deliberating, his jaw pulsing the way it always did when he focused on a problem.
“You could send someone else in for him.”
“And lose two men?” Dor answered quietly; their conversation was not meant for anyone else to hear. Valerie was as good as forgotten in the moment, and Cass saw that she knew it, her face blanched the shade of parchment. Defeat contorted her fine, frail beauty, and she turned away.
“Roger’s our best swimmer,” Dor continued, reaching for Cass’s hand. She didn’t think he was even aware of touching her, and in that moment she understood she was his mooring, the source of his steady courage. “No one else could have gotten as far as he has.”
No one else could bring him back in—that’s what he was saying. Around him the voices had turned imploring—Roger, go, you can do it—but when his girlfriend screamed his name again, he finally shook the water from his eyes and resumed his weak strokes.
The canoe came closer. Only a matter of inches, but closer.
“This is taking too long,” Dor muttered. Cass looked where he was looking, saw Glynnis pat her jacket frantically for more ammo, knew she wasn’t finding it. Saw John using his paddle less accurately now, his arms shivering—they had to be in excruciating pain, his muscles in revolt.
Roger cried out, a guttural, almost inhuman sound of desperation. He flung out his arm on the water and stroked. Again and again, he drew himself painfully against the drag of the water, and he came closer.
“You can do it,” the crowd screamed.
“Roger! Roger!”
“Come on, just a little farther!”
When he was ten yards out, people threw themselves into the water, half a dozen of them, women and men, some of them linking arms. They splashed and yelped at the cold and hands grasped the canoe and others cradled Roger, who seemed to slip into unconsciousness, his eyes rolling back in his head, and Cass knew she could not spend one more moment worrying about him—she had to give all her attention to the canoe, which was being handed along the row of people in the water. It was dragged up on the shore, tugged onto the hard-packed mud.
“Get in, get in, Cass—I’ll push us off.”
She didn’t hesitate, but stepped nimbly over the prow, feeling the canoe bottom grind against the silty bank, then steadying herself as it listed sharply. Dor’s strong hands gripped the edges to steady it, and then others did too.
There was shouting from the path. Hank and Dana ran toward them, Dana looking as though he was about to have a stroke, his face beet-red and his fine hair waving in the breeze.
They were carrying the boxes of ammunition, half a dozen guns. Dor released the canoe and ran to meet them, taking armfuls of weapons. He was back in seconds, but the panicked swell of cries from the crowd told Cass they were running out of time.
Across the river, emboldened now that Glynnis had stopped shooting, more of the Beaters were taking to the river. Fifteen of them, maybe, in twos and threes, they waded and shuffled and stumbled into the water, plunged forward, went under, came up gasping and shrieking. John and Glynnis had retreated ten feet or so, but the crush of Beaters in the water made their craft look impossibly vulnerable.
Dor swung his body into the canoe and jammed his oar into the shallow water, pushing them away from the shore. A dozen hands seized the canoe walls and when they were free of the land it felt for a second as if they were weightless, suspended in air, in nothing—and then the current found them and tugged and Dor dipped his oar into the water and they were off.
Their speed belied the fact that Dor was far more powerful than John. His navigation skills were not as precise, but he was heading them straight for the other shore and Cass knew that accuracy was not his goal.
“Get the .22—that one,” he yelled. “That ditty bag, it’s got the shells. When I pull up close, get them in their canoe but, Cass—make sure you don’t miss. We only get one shot.”
She carefully reached for the weapons, aware of how easy it would be to tip over; if they did, all was lost. But the canoe glided on. Closer, she could make out individual Beaters’ cries, and then John, talking steadily, intently, slurring; she caught the words “hold on” and “brave” and saw that Glynnis’s head was bowed and her eyes closed, as though she was praying.
So focused was John that when Dor shouted his name he startled, glancing wildly around, his eyes going wide when he saw them. Utter, loose-limbed exhaustion radiated from his body, and steam rose off his back. He stared dumbly at Dor.
“We’re coming in,” Dor yelled. “We’ve got the shells. A hundred, hundred-fifty rounds. And the .22, I don’t know what there is in the way of ammo. Enough to make this a fair fight, anyway.”
Cass held the ditty bag, felt its weight in her hands. Past John and Glynnis, she saw a Beater sink into the water up to its chin and ears, like a beaver or an otter. It churned the water in front of it and then she realized that its feet were not touching the bottom, it was keeping itself afloat—swimming—and it was coming closer.
“Oh, God,” she said softly.
“I see it,” Dor muttered through gritted teeth. “Don’t say anything until you get this shit safely in their boat. I mean it, Cass. Knowing can’t help them.”
If Cass alerted John and Glynnis of the approaching Beater, they might panic—rock the canoe too far, miss when Cass tossed the weapons—and then they wouldn’t stand a chance against it, that’s what Dor was saying. Cass nodded grimly.
“Be ready, be ready,” she whispered, and her eyes locked on Glynnis’s. Five yards, three—it was like softball, twenty years ago when she played on the U-12 team, waiting in the dugout for her team to bat.
And then the canoes pulled even. Cass held the bag aloft with trembling hands, and Glynnis reached; her hands closed on the bag, tugged, and then she had it, and Cass seized the .22 and held it out by the barrel, and Glynnis took that too, and then it was only a matter of the extra magazines, and Cass lifted them from the bottom of the boat and—
“What the hell!” John roared, turni
ng, as the Beater caught up with the canoe and slapped at it with desperate hands. It was close enough that Cass could see that it was recently turned. Only the hair along its hairline had been pulled out of its scalp, and its face was still recognizable, barely bruised or lacerated, the face of a young man. The fresh wounds on its forearms were very much like those she’d found on herself when she woke in the field.
She shivered with the realization that she could be among this throng, or one like it, if she hadn’t recovered from the fever. She could be one of these single-minded things, throwing itself into the water, driven by flesh hunger. Who knew what things she had done—
Her attention jerked back with the thudding sound of John bringing an oar blade down on the Beater’s head, but by the second blow the thing had already slipped below the surface, and the oar slapped harmlessly on the water, splashing him and Glynnis instead.
The canoe was slammed from the bottom, the Beater trying to claw its way back to the surface. It popped up a second later, its wet, greasy head dripping cold water, its hands paddling air.
Then its scrabbling fingers found the lip of the canoe and gave a yank.
Glynnis screamed, and an answering roar came from the far shore, all the people of New Eden helpless to do anything but watch. Cass cried out, too, but no sound came from her; her throat was sealed with terror, her body frozen.
The gun fell from her shaking hands. It hit the water with a little splash and was gone, heavy metal sinking indifferently into the depths.
Oh my god
oh my god
oh my god
“Oh my God,” Cass gasped, watching the gun disappear.
She had failed. She had allowed the old fears to drift up from the place where she had banished them, and the fears had made her clumsy. She had failed John and Glynnis and she had failed Dor and the pain of her failure burst through her body—
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