Horizon (03)

by Sophie Littlefield

  “What do we do now?” One of the slacker guys, the ones who had been skateboarding along the edge of the crowd, was tugging on Smoke’s sleeve like he was five years old. Smoke didn’t bother asking him if he was armed. “There’s more of them down there, did you see? Did you? Oh, Jesus, what’re we going to do?”

  “I saw. Look, maybe you can help out here, okay?” Smoke pointed to the entrance lobby, where several people had been knocked down in the panic to reach the doors. One woman had a gash on her forehead and was leaning against the locked door, crying. “How about you see what they need, okay?”

  The boy turned dubiously toward the fallen. “Yeah, I want to help and all but—”

  “Then do it.” Smoke had run out of patience. He scanned the mall in both directions, saw a couple of the Easterners conferring at the junction with the other wing, past half a dozen storefronts. They, at least, were armed. And there. There was Dor, working at the heavy door. Someone had hacked away at the hinge and the thick metal had split, exposing wires from the security system and the mechanical closing mechanism.

  Next to him was Sammi, holding something, a narrow tool of some sort. Her face was pale but as her father worked she remained steady, handing him what he needed from a small leather bag. Smoke recognized that bag—back when he’d been second-in-command in the Box, he remembered Dor carrying his tools with him on his belt. Back then they’d been useful for repairing sections of the chain-link fence that surrounded the Box—or for opening the occasional bottle of beer after a good raid.

  How many mornings had the two men trained together? How many overcast days and chilly dawns had they raided together, watching each other’s backs at each unfamiliar house, each closed door? They’d been as close as two men so stubborn could be Aftertime, sharing confidences and, eventually, trust as the weeks turned into months and they soldiered on together.

  And all that time, Smoke thought Dor didn’t like Cass. She’d told him so herself, described the way he avoided her, never looked her in the eye, found an excuse to leave whenever she arrived at the fire or one of the food-merchant stalls where he’d been passing the time.

  But Smoke had never bothered to wonder why Dor avoided her so studiously. If he had, if he’d paid even a little more attention, it would have been so clear. Dor had loved her. Even then. And though he’d respected Smoke’s claim enough never to allow himself to be tempted, once Smoke left, all bets were off. No: after Smoke had nearly gotten himself killed, after he’d chosen a battle he could not win over a future with Cass. It was what she had been trying to tell him, that last day, when he left without saying goodbye because saying goodbye would have hurt too much, would have stolen his focus—he had chosen.

  And she’d come for him anyway, saved him anyway. But what was left, after that battle, was a broken man, an un-whole man—and who could blame Cass and his old friend for letting down their guard, for giving up resisting, for seeking a little comfort?

  He could. He could blame them, or at least Dor, and if it was wrong he didn’t care, and if it was pointless he didn’t care. He looked on his old friend and felt the burn of betrayal and the stirrings of hatred, and he knew he had to master these emotions or they would all certainly die. Dor, with his dexterity and determination and focus, was their best and possibly only hope for finding a way back out. Smoke would have to fight the Beaters without him. He turned away, forcing the bile of his hatred down, down and thinking only of the challenge of the next moments.

  He had learned the Easterners’ names during the past few days of eavesdropping on their conversations. Mayhew—now dead. Davis was with the group that had pressed to the front—and Smoke saw him now, crouched next to Mayhew’s body, rifling through his blood-soaked shirt. What was he looking for, his weapon? Blade? But all the Easterners were well armed—in fact, he’d admired Nadir’s ebony-handled tactical knife.

  The other two were working at the entrance—Nadir, the most outgoing of the four, the one who chatted with the older folks and made wisecracks with the kids, and the Mack-truck-built Bart. They were kicking at the emergency exit door a few yards from Dor, grim-faced and silent, Bart putting his shoulder into it and making the frame shiver with each assault. It was possible that he’d dent the thing, but nearly inconceivable that he’d break through. And definitely not in time. The mall architects and then its dwellers had made sure of that, locking everyone in with great care.

  The issue came up every time someone wandered out of the Box, drunk or bored or simply looking for a little solitude, and managed to get themselves killed instead. Then there would be calls for securing the exits, for preventing people from leaving. These demands had been put down firmly by Dor: personal liberties were not taken for granted in the Box. But here—in this temple of suburban consumerism, it was not hard to imagine a different outcome.

  Smoke made his choice. He didn’t know any of the group, other than Dor, well enough to be certain who would be best in a fight, but the Easterners were disciplined, at least, and armed. “Nadir. Bart. Come on, we need to deal with these fuckers.”

  The men joined him, the crowd closing in around the doors behind them, and considered the shambling crowd of newly turned, still at the far end of the mall. They moved slowly at this phase of the disease, their languorous quality one of the things that made the early stages deceptively appealing, the thing that caused people to call it “the beautiful death,” like tuberculosis a hundred years earlier.

  They stopped using that term when the suffering advanced to the cannibalistic stages of the disease.

  “They’re all infected, aren’t they?” Bart said, and Smoke saw that he was afraid. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise—who wouldn’t be terrified?—but the Easterners had accumulated, in very short order, a mystique around themselves, one that all the Edenites had bought into. It was so easy to grasp onto anything when you had nothing. Smoke should have known—would have known, if he had been paying attention—that they’d given away their allegiance too fast, that they’d bought into the flimsy illusion the strangers held up, giving too little thought to the dark side they were hiding.

  Because every man had a dark side. Smoke knew this more than anyone, didn’t he?

  “Nadir, you take the front line with me,” Smoke said, motioning them to hurry. “Bart, you next.” He scanned the people nearby for anyone who could help. “Terrence, Shel—you too. Do you have extra ammo?”

  Shel held up her handgun and nodded; her face was pale but her hands were steady. Terrence stepped up without a word. The street-sweeper auto he carried had seemed like a ridiculous affectation to Smoke earlier, but now its bulk and power seemed like a good idea. So what if Terrence was a boy with a man’s weapon? If there was ever a day to become a man, today was it.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Smoke was conscious of his limp, of the trembling that started in his chest and radiated out his arms. He gripped his gun harder and made a fist with his other hand. He knew it was more important to appear strong than to be strong right now. The others would follow his example, a lesson he’d learned over and over in the Box when he trained with the other guards. He’d never been the strongest, the fastest, the most accurate—but he’d been the most determined.

  He had the most to atone for.

  And that was the thing he held in his mind as he led them down the mall walkway. It was another day of atonement and that was all right, and if his body screamed with pain and his thoughts fell away until all that was left was this blood-rimed shadow of the man he’d been, that was all right too. The coward’s way, the easy way, would have been to die back in the stinking concrete basement room where the Rebuilders had taken their vengeance upon him, where they left him to lie on a floor streaked with the blood of others, but Smoke did not die.

  Because he wasn’t done atoning.

  And because of Cass.

  He sought her out in the huddled crowd of Edenites. There—there, she had retreated to the center, with Ruthie in
her arms and her father close by. Red would keep her safe, for now—another man who’d give his life for Cass, and that was all right with Smoke.

  Nadir knew what he was doing. He kept pace with Smoke, though Smoke knew he itched to go faster, and focused on the group ahead.

  “Get ’em in the chute, boss, what do you say?” Nadir said quietly.

  Smoke saw what he meant—if they could get the infected to come across one of the narrow pedestrian bridges that crisscrossed the atrium, they’d be tightly clustered, a better target than they were now. Not yet close enough to catch the Edenites’ scent, they stumbled and wandered in a loose formation along the side of the mall, momentarily distracted by the brilliant flashes of light being spun by some sort of crystal hanging in the display window of a Hot Topic.

  “Good idea.” He turned to the others. “Everyone…we need to get them to come across. I’ll stay on this side with…how about you, Shel? You and me. Then when they’re in the middle, Terrence, Nadir, Bart, you guys get to the other side and we’ll box them in. But you’ll have to be fast because you’re going to have to take the long way, see?”

  He sketched the plan with his finger, pointing out the circuit made by the two pedestrian bridges and the walkways on either side of the mall.

  “Got it,” Shel said. The others nodded their assent.

  “Okay, we’re ready?”

  He was more aware than ever that he was the one slowing them down, and Smoke threw himself into the short journey, holding on to the brass rail overlooking the atrium, and favoring his good leg, letting the other drag a little. The Edenites had stopped screaming, at least, though he could hear the moaning and whimpering from those who’d been trampled and injured. In the relative quiet, the voices of the infected echoed, a trick of the acoustics of the place. The mumbled syllables and nonsense words blended together when there were so many of them, almost losing their oddness; they could have been a polite crowd at an art gallery, a group of suburban parents at a middle-school open house.

  When they reached the far side of the bridge, Smoke took one side of the opening and motioned them to spread out. “Now we make some noise.”

  They started whooping and hollering, and the infected paused and turned their heads. The expressions on their faces were disturbingly, stirringly innocent, a combination of curiosity and good-natured interest, like children at a matinee when the curtains part. Their babble went up a few decibels and they turned gracelessly, bumping into each other and squawking with irritation, shoving at one another.

  A couple of them lumbered toward the bridge, but most of the others, their attention fixed on the Hot Topic display—sunglasses and belt buckles and sequined tops all hung just out of their reach—stayed where they were.

  Without warning Shel ran forward onto the bridge. She whooped and shot at the ceiling, hitting the skylight with a tinkling of glass that rained down not far from them, sparkling as it fell.

  “Come and get me, cocksuckers,” she screamed. “Come on, I know you want me. I’m good, I’m good, I’m sooooo good, you know you want to sink your teeth in me.”

  She danced along, shimmying and waving her arms, dangerously close to the other end. If any of them decided to run for it, she was doomed.

  “Shel, you’re too close!” Smoke yelled, and then Nadir burst past him, sprinting to her, grabbing her free hand and dragging her back.

  Shel fought him, screaming. “No! Let go of me! Come on, I had them!”

  It was their struggle that seemed to make the difference. There was a swell of excited chatter, a few garbled cries of excitement, and the group of infected turned toward the bridge. Several pressed forward onto the ones closest to them, knocking one of them over, a middle-aged woman with a fussy short haircut that was sticking straight up on one side and a necklace of purple beads that bounced against the ground when she fell. An overweight man with his shirt unbuttoned, exposing a hairy, pale stomach, stepped right on her outstretched leg and reached in front of him with grasping hands.

  “Shit,” Terrence breathed at Smoke’s elbow.

  “Keep it together, boy,” he snapped. He was trying to get a shot at the heavy infected, but Shel and Nadir were in the way.

  “Get back here!” Bart screamed. “Nadir, come on!”

  Smoke saw what had scared him: a skinny Beater in a velour tracksuit was pushing her way through the clump, moving more quickly than the rest of them, her mouth open and her tongue waggling.

  Nadir tugged Shel, dragging her backward, and with his free hand he fired. He hit the big man in the chest, slowing him, but not stopping him. Others pressed around him as he wobbled.

  Nadir’s second shot took out the wiry woman seconds before she reached him.

  “Go, go,” Smoke ordered. “Bart, Terrence—you’ll have to take the other side by yourselves.”

  They ran for it. Smoke could hear their footsteps ringing through the great empty cavern of the mall, echoing through all the wasted space that had once cost untold sums of money to heat and cool, Before. All that money, all the shit in these stores, mountains of crap that no one really needed.

  The crowd of Edenites was yelling, a terrified sort of cheering. Smoke hoped they’d have the sense to stay where they were. He heard banging, and prayed Dor was getting closer with the door.

  Two-thirds of the infected were on the bridge now, stepping on and around the bodies of the big guy and the wiry woman.

  “Hold back,” Smoke yelled to Nadir. The worst thing he could do would be to create a blockage on the far side of the bridge; then the things would split off into two groups, get distracted, wander in different directions.

  Nadir seemed to understand. He quit firing and dragged Shel back with him. In seconds they were back on Smoke’s side of the bridge, out of breath, Shel’s eyes red and watery.

  Terrence had made the circuit down the hall and across the bridge and back up the other hallway, Bart right behind him, but they were going too fast. They needed to let all the infected follow the first ones onto the bridge, where they would be sitting ducks.

  “Wait up!” Smoke yelled. Terrence looked over at him and nodded, then stopped, pressing his back against the entrance of a candle shop.

  There was a noise from below.

  A scream and a great clanging from the first floor. Smoke looked over the rail. A coffee shack in the center of the lounge area shuddered, and four figures burst out of the door, knocking over a café table.

  Beaters. Mature ones.

  They must have been nesting inside the little shack. And they were headed for the escalator. The one that would take them straight up to the end of the mall where the Edenites were huddled.

  “Oh, Jesus God,” Shel breathed, and then without pause she shot, over the edge, down into the mall. It was an impossible shot and Smoke grabbed her arm.

  “No,” he yelled into her ear. “Save your ammo. Focus on the ones here. The others will deal with those.”

  It was the only thing they could do. But once the Beaters got up the stairs, there would be nothing to stop them from attacking. Even if Smoke and his companions laid every one of the things on the bridge to waste, it could well be at the cost of losing everyone else.

  But there was nothing else he could do. The roving mass had nearly made its way entirely onto the bridge. Terrence was slinking down the hall toward them, waiting for the stragglers to catch up. Bart was a few paces behind him, looking like he was about to throw up.

  He still had a couple more clips—how many rounds, he wasn’t sure. He’d just stand here and pick off the things that staggered toward him until he ran out, counting on the others to herd them onto the bridge or blast them from the other side.

  A scream rose above the din, singular among all the others because he knew that voice.

  Cass

  Smoke forced himself to stay focused on the scene ahead of him, knowing that if he abandoned his post to go to her now he’d doom them both. And yet every fiber of his being rebelled a
s he lined up his shot.

  Chapter 36

  CASS RAN TO the side and looked down, just in time to see them reach the escalators. Three of them had no hair at all, and one had a few greasy hanks at the back of its head. At least one of them was missing fingers. These Beaters had been infected for a long time, and their bodies were starting to disintegrate. In a month, maybe two, they’d finally die from the sheer punishment they routinely suffered and inflicted on each other—even their hyper immune system couldn’t save them after they lost enough blood and took enough blows to their savaged bodies.

  But until then, they were more dangerous than ever. Hungrier. Faster. Unstoppable.

  She ran back to her father, who was cradling Ruthie, rocking her and singing. “Dad, I’m going to help Dor. Just—just keep her safe.”

  She pushed through the crowd, knowing how ridiculous her words were. There was no way to help. There was no such thing as safe.

  “Where are we at?” she demanded, after forcing her way to Dor’s side. Sammi made room for her, her face white with fear.

  “Last one,” Dor muttered, sparing her a quick glance with his flint-spark eyes. “Got the other two hinges out. Shot off the caps and pried out the pins, but this one’s corroded or something, can’t get it free.”

  His hands were bloody, and the screwdriver he was using to chip away at the blockage slipped from his hands. “Fuck!”

  “Let me.” Cass seized it from him and wiped it on her shirt, leaving his blood streaked on the fabric. “Tell me, show me—”

  And he did, his quiet voice in her ear, speaking slowly, steadily, the way he’d done so many times before when it was just the two of them, when he’d cajoled and urged her to the dark heights where they both sought release. She let everything else fall away until it was just her and him and the thing that must be done, his voice, his lips brushing her ear, her hands and the glinting metal and the greasy mechanism and every bit of her energy focused on the task until suddenly the pin fell to the floor with a clang and then everything, the sounds and the people and the fear came rushing back and she was pushed away from the door as the crowd surged forward.