Horizon (03)

by Sophie Littlefield

  “Back, back!” Dor yelled from three feet away that felt like a thousand, and he and others jammed their blades into the space between the wall and the door and heaved and pulled until it gave a little, just a little and down the mall there was screaming and shooting and Cass could not bear to look so she turned away and found Red and took her daughter back, burrowed her baby’s sweet face into the crook of her neck and kissed her hair and swore it was going to be all right.

  Sunlight and screaming. An earsplitting metal-on-metal groan as the door was pulled away from the frame. Four, five men grunting and sweating with effort, and the metal door bent but did not break. The opening grew until it was a foot, eighteen inches wide, and the crowd roared and pressed forward and they would not be stopped now, but the space was not wide enough for them all to pass through, they would kill each other trying, there was Craig Switzer shoving Mrs. Nguyen out of the way, his hand on her face, mad with fear—

  And then his throat exploded, blood everywhere, his mouth open with surprise, and his hand slipping slowly off poor Mrs. Nguyen.

  “Stand back or I’ll shoot again,” Dor yelled, and the crowd hesitated and backed up just a fraction of an inch, enough to spare the ones suffocating at the front, and the door budged a little more and a little more, until there was room for a person to slip through sideways and Phil Booth forced his way out to the other side before Dor could do a thing about it.

  He cursed and shot at the floor, chipping up a chunk of concrete at the base of the door. “You go when I say you go or you’re dead. Harris. Benny. Go through and man the other side. One of you help the people through and the other keep everyone together. Women first. Kids. Old people. Line up and so help me God you fuck this up I’ll shoot you so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  It was working. The crowd had retreated—just a little farther, but enough—and the women were being helped along, sliding through, crying. Ingrid went with all the children and then Suzanne, and Dor seized Cass’s arm and tried to push her through but she fought him.

  “They’re going to be here in a second,” she shouted, but Dor had been so focused on forcing his way out that he didn’t know, he didn’t know about the four struggling up the stairs, and he’d sent two of the only armed men through the door, and Cass knew he had to stay here to make sure the others got out.

  “Who—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, and then she told a lie, the only way she could make him let her go. “I’m just going to get my dad, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Red was at the end of the line of older people, him and Zihna, and Cass handed him Ruthie and kissed his cheek, and he gave her his gun and whispered that he loved her, her father understood what she was going to do, his eyes were terrified but he took Ruthie and followed Zihna through the crack to the outside—and Cass ran.

  Far ahead, on the bridge, there was fighting and screaming and dying, but that was not Cass’s fight. Behind her the terrified crowd continued its exodus. She was alone, she was the only one left to face the ones coming up the escalator. They were terrible at stairs, they stumbled and lost their balance and that was all that had saved her so far; one had stumbled and was splayed upside down halfway down the metal staircase, but the other three clutched each other in a grunting scrum that had nearly reached the top.

  They spotted her, and the closest one—God, it was impossible to believe it had ever been human, with its gaping mouth-hole and sunken eye sockets and torn-off ears and pulped flesh—it saw her and it screamed, and Cass couldn’t help screaming back as she shot it, the gun jerking in her hands. She did not know this gun, it was her father’s gun, it was unwieldy and old and it was too heavy for her, the report traveling up her arm through her elbow into her shoulder, and her palm slipped as she tried to rack the slide.

  And the thing kept coming. She’d shot it in the chest and it had gone clear through, but too high, too high. A shard of bone protruded and one arm lay limp as it seized at her with the other. No, no, no, it was too late to run, they were too close, she’d fucked it up, it was an easy shot and she’d failed, and then it was on her, its bone-fingers clutching the fabric of her shirt, yanking her toward it, its mouth open and drooling and its rotting brown teeth shiny with saliva. She put her hands on its head and shoved, anything to keep the snapping teeth away, but she was not strong enough. The mouth closed on her forearm even as she fought it, pushing and writhing with all her might, but there was nothing in the world stronger than a Beater’s lust and this one was mad with its hunger for her and she felt the sharp pain as it bit down, saw the blood spurt from her arm as it ripped her flesh.

  Explosions, so close, and the thing fell away from her, rolling back onto the stairs, falling on its companions who shoved it out of their way and kept coming. Then more shots, a staccato burst of them, and their bodies jerked and seized and went limp, and there was Terrence, leaning over the edge with that insane gun of his and one more burst took out the last one and it died upside down on the stairs, staring up at the skylights with empty eyes.

  Cass, sinking to the floor, her hand closing over her wound—she looked up and found that she was staring into the barrel of Bart’s gun.

  “No, no, don’t do it! Don’t shoot her!”

  It was Sammi, racing toward them, her hair flying behind her.

  “Sammi, stay back,” she screamed. Bart’s gun hand was shaking from adrenaline; there was no telling what he’d do in the heat of the moment. “Go to your dad!”

  “No, Bart, don’t, you don’t understand.” Sammi ignored her, her sneakers slapping on the smooth floor of the mall, echoing around the giant space. Behind her was pandemonium, the crowd pushing through the narrow opening, Dor yelling, people screaming. “Cass can’t get the fever, she’s immune.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Bart waved the gun back and forth between Cass and Sammi.

  “Sammi, go, please,” Cass said, her heart caught in her throat as she prayed that Bart would stay calm. “Please just back away. Go outside and we’ll, I’ll—it’s going to be fine, I promise.”

  “No!” Sammi’s voice turned into a wail, and tears glistened in her eyes. “Cass, he doesn’t understand, make him understand. Bart, she got attacked a long time ago and she got better and she can’t get the fever again. She’s, like, immune.”

  Bart stared at her for a long, breathless moment, his eyes narrowed, and for a second—a quivering, hopeful second—she thought he might lower his gun.

  But then, instead, he raised it and pointed it squarely between Cass’s eyes.

  “Look away, little girl,” he muttered.

  Cass heard the click and squeezed her eyes shut and when the shot came she was thinking that she would have done the same.

  Down on all fours, pain searing her forehead, the echo of the sound filled Cass’s ears. Blood poured into her eyes, but she was alive.

  In front of her, Bart was clutching his hand and screaming, and his gun lay on the floor.

  Smoke. Smoke staggered toward them and then his leg gave out and he sank to the floor. His strength had finally run out. He’d used every bit of adrenaline for the fight, and then somehow he’d made it close enough to shoot Bart in the hand to keep him from killing her. Cass put her hand to her scalp, found that the bullet had only grazed her, felt torn flesh but no bone. It was nothing.

  “Sammi,” she said weakly, and the girl knelt down and leaned into her, sobbing, and Cass hugged her hard, feeling her strong heartbeat against her neck.

  “We’ve got to move,” someone yelled, his hand on her shoulder. Cass looked up, blinking. Terrence. He offered her his hand, then withdrew it. “That’s true?” he demanded. “You’re really immune?”

  “She is, damn it,” Smoke said, and with a huge effort forced himself to his feet. “We need to get them out of here.”

  “We all need to get out of here,” Terrence said. He helped Sammi up, supporting her with an arm around her waist, and Sammi leaned agains
t him, still snuffling, wiping at her tearstained cheek.

  Despite the gravity of the situation, Cass felt a stirring of gratitude and hope. The dam between her and Sammi had broken; the girl had let Cass comfort her, embrace her. Sammi could have left Cass for doomed, could have been rid of her forever, but instead she’d tried to save her.

  “Let them go first,” Smoke ordered Terrence, but he looked like he was going to fall again so Cass hooked an arm around him and half dragged him to his feet. Terrence hastened Sammi along toward the exit and Bart followed after him, bleeding a trail of droplets.

  Cass took one last look at the mall. Bodies lay everywhere, blood pooling on the floor and dripping down the escalator. There were undoubtedly more of them, the shelterers who’d made innocent mistakes as they tried to save each other, who’d paid with their souls. Even now they were probably rousing themselves from their delirious fevered slumber, staggering out from their dark corners, from the remains of the shops where they once bought their designer shoes and their thirty-dollar lipsticks and their coffee grinders and cell-phone accessories.

  She and Smoke were the last ones to leave. Dor pushed Bart and Terrence through and then he looked at her, taking in his blood on her shirt, the bite mark on her arm, Smoke nearly unconscious.

  With surprising gentleness he lifted Smoke, dragging him to the opening and handing him off to the men waiting on the other side, who pulled him through. Sunlight hit Cass’s face and she blinked and ducked back into the gloom, just for one minute more, one second more.

  “He saved you,” Dor said quietly. Outside, Cass could hear the shouting and cheers of the Edenites who’d made it, but inside the mall it was stunningly, eerily still.

  Dor put a hand to her cheek, tenderly tracing a path from the superficial bullet wound down to her mouth, brushing her lips with his thumb. “Are you back with him, then? Are you together?”

  His voice was a whisper, his mouth so close. Cass’s body was so numb from terror and exertion she knew that she could collapse right here and sleep for a dozen hours, a thousand years. And even in that state she could feel the electricity between them, the memory of the taste of him seared in her mind. She wanted to kiss him. Wanted to consume him and be consumed by him, to ignite and burn down to ash.

  Instead she had to go on. They both had to go on.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, and then she slipped out the door into the blinding sun.

  Chapter 37

  THAT NIGHT, THERE was a memorial service for everyone who died in the mall. They made a forced march north, five or six miles, along pretty country roads greening with budding kaysev, and the clouds vanished and sun streamed down to earth.

  They stopped at a chicken ranch. The fowl had been among the first casualties of the Siege, laid waste by a bioterror agent believed to have come from North Korea, though it was never proved and remained anybody’s guess. Even after all these months, the place still reeked. Red, who was walking with Cass, asked her if she remembered helping him in the garden, unloading the chicken manure he got for free from a friend who kept a few dozen hens.

  “Chicken shit’s the worst-smelling shit in the world,” Red said. “Oh, sweetheart, you should have seen the look on your little face. What were you, eight? And your mom was so pissed at me…”

  “But everything grew that year,” Cass remembered, smiling. It was becoming a little more okay, talking about things like this with her dad. Everything—every story—was tinged with a little sadness, a little anger over the fact that it had all come to an end when he left. But it still felt right to talk.

  “Yeah, you remember the carnations?”

  Carnations, for her birthday. Every month had a birth flower. January was hers. They’d planted larkspur for her mother and narcissus for her dad. When Ruthie was born, Cass looked it up—the September flower was aster. Nobody really cared about things like birth flowers anymore, but Cass decided that—maybe, if they ever found a place to settle again, if she ever had a garden again, if Red and Zihna wanted to—they could grow a little patch of asters for Ruthie.

  The laying sheds were unusable, layered with desiccated shit and straw, a few chicken carcasses they’d somehow missed collecting and burning. But the ranch house was pretty, an old rambling square wood-sided edifice with a wraparound porch. Whoever had built it had situated it well; the back porch looked out over fields to the mountains miles beyond.

  It was in the field that they had the service. The sun was sinking behind the house when they gathered in its long shadow.

  Shannon had assembled a list of the lost. There were thirty-two names on it, including the two Easterners who’d died—nineteen from the Beaters’ attack in the river and the day of their departure, thirteen more at the mall.

  Sh’rae Bellamy had done the services on New Eden since the Methodist minister died, and she did so now. She opened her Bible to a page that she had marked, and began to read, but she made it through only a few words before she stopped and went very still. She raised her eyes to the mountains in the distance and the evening wind whipped her long cape around her, and the silence was deeper than Cass could remember in a very long time. There was only the wind and the mewling of the baby, the soft sounds of crying from somewhere deep in the gathering.

  After a while Sh’rae found her place and began again. “From the Book of Isaiah,” she repeated.

  “‘Do you not know? Have you not heard?’

  “‘The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.’

  “‘He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.’”

  Chapter 38

  THE EVENING MEAL was a somber affair. There was little conversation as the bedding was laid out in the various rooms of the house. Sentries were chosen, four to a shift—it was not a particularly secure house with its front and back doors, ground-floor windows, screened crawl space below—but no one seemed especially concerned about what might come in the night. After the horrors of the day, perhaps they were numb to fear.

  She found Smoke sitting on the steps of the porch as the sky deepened to indigo, talking to Nadir. There were others on the porch; Red and Zihna sat in rockers with blankets over their laps, and a few people sat alone or in pairs, staring off at the mountains disappearing into the night. Sammi and Colton sat at the far end of the porch, their legs dangling, eating tender young kaysev pods and tossing the beans out into the darkness. It was an evening for reflection. Tomorrow would be another day of travel, and while they would not forget the losses and tragedies of today, they would have to store them carefully and well so that they could go on.

  Cass had hoped to find Smoke alone. She asked awkwardly if she could join them, and sat on the top step, so that they made a triangle. Nadir had set up a small tripod flashlight that illuminated the papers that were spread out between them with a soft yellow glow.

  “You need to hear this,” Smoke said without preamble. “Mayhew lied to us.”

  Nadir winced and shook his head. “We all did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The shelters they’ve built up north? They’re not meant for us. Definitely not meant for anyone from the West.”

  “But what—then who—”

  “There are four new settlements, that much is true,” Nadir said. “Two months ago, the first wave went north. They had the resources to build communities that could sustain three hundred people each for a year or more. Only thirty were in each party, though, enough to build, and stock, and secure the settlements. Men and women, all of them strong and healthy, so that if for some reason the others never made it, they would have the seeds of a new civilization to build on.”

  “It was all decided very democratically,” Smoke said, a trace of contempt in his voice. “They practice concordance in the East.”

  Cass was surprised at his bitterness. “But you’ve always believed in cooperative government. That’s what we did in the library.”

  Smo
ke stared into the space between them, his eyes unfocused. “And what happened to the library? Burned, and everyone dead or worse.”

  “Concordance was not the problem in our community,” Nadir interrupted. “If I may be so bold as to share my opinion. We had a good government, a well-meaning government. The plan was a good one. But when all of these good people went north, who is left behind—the ones who are not so good, yes? The ones who are not so idealistic. Who are thinking maybe about themselves, not about abstract values.”

  “They had a lottery to figure out who would come in the second wave,” Dor explained. “Twelve hundred people, that’s all that would be allowed. Four groups of three hundred, minus the hundred and twenty who went first. That was less than half of the people living in their town.”

  “Mayhew was not chosen,” Nadir said heavily. “Nor was I. Nor Bart, nor Davis.”

  Cass was beginning to understand. “And those who were left behind…”

  “There was an agreement, one we all voted on. The unlucky ones would stay, and deal with what was to come. We had reinforced our shelters, much as you have here. After today I can appreciate how small our efforts were against the threat of the fever. We would have been caught unawares. We would have made mistakes.”

  “It would be just like here,” Smoke said. “Just like the West, all over again. They just knew what they were in for, that was the only difference. They knew what was coming.”

  “The stories we heard, from the border—they did not prepare us, not for what I have seen. I could not imagine…”

  His words hung in the air. Cass understood. Until you’d seen a Beater, they way they moved, their childlike hungers and rages, their sheer determination, you could not imagine the terror.