Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

In the other canoe Neal struggled to keep the prow pointed at the opposite shore. Parker, one of the younger security guys, knelt clumsily in the front trying to reload, but the craft’s rocking made it difficult.

“Goddamn it,” a low voice said next to Cass.

Dor. She turned to him instinctively, resisting throwing herself into his arms, suddenly flooded with the fear and tension that had reemerged with these things. She couldn’t give in to the urge, not here, not after what had happened with Sammi and Jay.

“What’s happening?”

“What’s happening is, this is what we get for not training more people on the watercraft,” Dor snapped. “Look at that. Look at that. They’re likely to drown themselves before they get a shot off. Maybe even lose a rifle or two. I told them-” He bit off his words and fell silent, anger radiating off his tense, rigid body.

“Do you know how to handle a canoe?”

“Yeah. Me and Nathan-we’ve taken them out half a dozen times. I mean, I’m nowhere near what John can do, but I could for damn sure keep the fucking boat pointed in the right direction. Fuck. ”

“Where’s Nathan now?”

“Went out this morning, after I decided to stay back and look for Sammi. I doubt he even knows what’s happening, because he was going to try going down toward Clifton. I told him not to go alone, but…”

But Nathan was another renegade, just like Dor.

He’d mentioned Sammi. Cass looked back at Ruthie for a second. “Did she find you? Or Valerie?”

“Yeah, yeah, I talked to Val. Sammi’s over in the community center with the other kids. Earl’s told them to stay put there until we get this under control.”

So Sammi was safe for the moment, at least. By Dor’s grim expression, Cass had to assume the reunion hadn’t gone well. Which wasn’t surprising.

“But why are Neal and Parker even out there? I mean, the Beaters are bound to wander off eventually. They always do.” Even as she said it, Cass realized that what she meant was that they always had -there was a difference.

“Cass. They’re only shooting the ones that get in the water. Trying to conserve ammo.”

Dor pointed down the river, and only then did Cass notice the gray lumps being carried downstream, drifting lazily in gentle spins in the current. They looked like logs, or bags of trash, but they were dead Beaters.

The ones that get in the water…

“You mean they’re trying to swim.” Not a question-Cass suddenly knew it beyond a doubt. She’d seen one try for the first time only this morning, but that didn’t mean that they hadn’t been working up to it for a while. They were gifted mimics, for beasts that seemed insensate much of the time; they often echoed each other’s movements and sounds. At times it seemed like they made a game of it, a primitive Simon Says, but when one considered that this was how they learned, it was both awesome and terrifying.

“Yeah. And some of them are coming too damn close. And they’re watching each other. See? They’re trying to figure out how to stay afloat. The ones Glynnis and Parker took out, they were paddling like dogs-nothing pretty and with a lot of wasted motion, lots of splashing, but you can bet the rest of them noticed that they managed to stay above water for a few seconds before they went down.”

Just then a barking wail went up. At the far right edge of the crowd of Beaters, past Neal’s canoe, a knot of them pushed forward, the momentum of their bodies propelling a stocky one into the water. It was recently turned, with a nearly full head of dark hair and most of its face intact. A woman’s face, Cass could guess, through the leering and the pus and excited babbling.

A final shove sent it stumbling into the water, where it wobbled and abruptly sat down. It screamed high and shrill when the water rose up to its armpits, and splashed with its hands, making wide arcs. In the canoe, Parker was trying to aim over Neal’s shoulder as he dug deep into the current, forcing the canoe around. He fired, and one of the Beaters on the shore squawked and pitched forward, facedown into the muddy bank, the others tripping over it and stepping on its limbs.

For a moment, Cass had a vision of the torn bodies clogging the river, a peninsula of broken flesh permitting them to cross to her and Ruthie.

The one in the water had rolled onto its front and began splashing its way toward the canoe. The water went farther up its body until it went under, only the top of its head visible, black curls floating, and after a moment it came up sputtering and coughing. It flailed and slapped at the water and went under a few times, but then it seemed to establish a rhythm-an inefficient and clumsy one for sure, but enough to keep it from drowning.

Yelling, from the people in the boats and the people onshore, competed with the Beaters’ cries. Parker fired again, but the shot went wide, cutting the water harmlessly, and the Beater bobbed and splashed closer. Neal twisted his body in the canoe, trying to get out of the way. Parker shouted something that Cass couldn’t make out over the din of the crowd, but as he turned back around and aimed at the paddling Beater-it was a can’t-miss-shot, only ten feet-Neal plunged the paddle deep into the water and spun the canoe.

He’d exerted too much force, and the canoe dipped far to the left. Parker’s shot missed, unbelievably, landing somewhere in the inky water, and as Neal tried to correct, the canoe lurched the other way and the two men scrambled for balance and Cass sucked in her breath and swore she could feel it too when the canoe went over and both of them were dumped into the icy water.

Screaming rent the air as John turned his own canoe toward the upended one. Glynnis took a knee and fired without seeming to aim at all and there was a burst of blood from the swimming Beater, the side of its head shredded and running with crimson. The crowd called to the men in the water to hurry, hurry, hurry-

– and then there was a splashing commotion in the water that took Cass away to long ago with her dad, when he took her fishing on Lake Don Pedro. He’d borrowed a friend’s gear, and they didn’t catch a thing all day, but as the sun climbed in the sky and Cass got sleepy and leaned against her dad, her tummy full of peanut-butter sandwiches, her dad’s flannel shirt smelling pleasantly of coffee and tobacco, a bird had swooped down to the water and hooked its talons into a sizable fish. But the prey was too large to be carried off so easily. The bird screamed and fought the mute, desperate fish. They flailed for their lives, the water frothed by the fish’s body slapping the surface of the lake and the bird’s wings beating at it, and they spun and fought until their bodies blurred together, and Cass hid her face in her father’s shirt and cried until it was all over, until the bird finally gave up and flew limp-winged away and the fish sank to the depths, torn up but free to die-

It seized Parker and sank its teeth into his neck. Parker screamed and fought, but the bleeding creature held tight.

Glynnis shot Parker first. A neat hole appeared in his forehead and he went still. When she fired again, the Beater stopped flailing, but it never let go, and the pair sank below the water locked in their deadly embrace.

There was a shocked silence. Only Glynnis’s voice never stopped as she yelled at John to turn around.

“This is a goddamn train wreck,” Dor muttered. “Cass, we’ve got to take out the boat. I’ll row, you shoot.”

“I can’t,” Cass said, horrified. “I have Ruthie.”

“Leave her with the others. It won’t be for long. It’s already getting dark.”

“Dor…” Panic sparked pain behind her eyes. How could she tell him, how they all hated her, how no one trusted her? Who would be willing to help her now?