Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

John slammed the butt of the oar’s handle directly onto the thing’s disfigured hand, over and over, so hard that the canoe shuddered and the air was filled with the sickening sound of bones splintering. And still it hung on. Miraculously, the canoe had not dipped below the water’s surface, though it rocked dangerously back and forth as the Beater hauled and tugged.

The water behind it churned and boiled, rounded shapes rising above the water. Heads. More of them-three or four more had swum nearly to the boat.

An explosion split the air only inches away and Cass snapped her head around. Glynnis was crouched in the boat; she must have pressed the muzzle of her gun directly to the Beater’s head because its blood covered the side of the canoe, her pants, the seat, everything-and its skull as it slipped below the surface for the last time was cratered and broken. Another shot. Another, and another, and Glynnis barely paused, even when brain matter slapped wetly against the hull, even when another of the infected hooked a bony hand over the side like the first one and when John smashed it with the heavy oar, a skinned and crusted finger splitting off into the boat. More and more, and then the shots ceased and there was silence-sudden, shocking silence and the smell of the shooting acrid in Cass’s nostrils. She coughed, almost delicately, touching her mouth as though assuring herself that she had survived the shoot-out, that she still lived.

“You go down, we’ll go upriver,” Dor yelled, already dipping his oar in the water to pull them against the current. John only nodded, exhausted, and laid his oar across his knees and bowed his head, a few seconds’ respite while they drifted downstream. Glynnis didn’t stop; she dug in the ditty bag and lined up her extra shells on the metal bench.

There was no more time to worry about them. “Get me in closer,” Cass urged Dor. “I’m not that good.” She might be able to hit a target from where they were, but she might not, and there were too many of them.

“You’re no good to anyone if they get to us,” Dor said, but he arced the craft around and headed to the shore.

“So don’t get me that close. Get me, you know, medium close.”

Cass was sure she saw his lips curve, only for a second. Dear God, he’d smiled. In the midst of this madness, wearing the blood of Beaters, she’d made a joke, unconsciously, and he’d found a reason to be amused.

Dor was strong when no one else was. Dor burned bright with life, with vitality, even when people and hopes-when the world itself-disintegrated around him.

Cass reached for him, touched her fingers to his wrist. He looked at her questioningly.

“God be with us,” she said.

For a moment he just looked back at her, his eyes shining the blue of Ceylon sapphires. “I don’t believe in God,” he said, barely more than a whisper.

“Then believe in me.”

They weren’t the words she meant to say. Weren’t words she was aware of thinking. But suddenly they were the plea that powered what she could do next, that gave her the strength and the courage to brace herself with a knee jammed against the cold metal canoe wall, to hold the gun in two hands the way her daddy taught her, to line up the Beater’s throat in the sights and to pull the trigger-

A starburst of blood and the beast shuddered for a second and then crumpled to the muddy bank, but Cass was already lining up her next shot and her next. Some she missed. Most she hit. Her arm went numb from the recoil and she had to stop and reload, and Dor said things to her and she held on to the sound of his voice even though somehow she’d lost the ability to comprehend what words came out and her teeth rattled and clacked against each other and still she kept shooting.

Dor kept them to the shore, going down the line of Beaters assembled there, and when they reached the huddled end it seemed that the crowd had thinned. Cass rested her gun against her knee, feeling her muscles stretched taut and painfully cramped, and twisted in her seat.

Beyond the scattered bodies, she could see the rest retreating, limping away in twos and threes, a whole line of them at the downstream end, where John and Glynnis’s canoe turned lazily in the water.

This, too, was terrifying, however. A retreat was evidence of forethought amid their insatiable drive, of consensual thinking, of responding to events. No doubt the Beaters had learned things tonight that would change their strategy tomorrow when they returned-a fact Cass was certain of. They’d be back as soon as daylight allowed.

“We’re heading to shore.”

John’s voice, weakened and hollow, reached them as though over a divide far greater than the water. Cass watched him dip his oar into the water, painfully, slowly; and then their own canoe turned and headed for home, Dor’s strokes sure and strong, undiminished by the effort he had made.

The effort they had made, together. A team.

Cass had only worked like this with one other man in her life, and that was Smoke. Only once before had she been completely united in purpose as she had been with Dor tonight, each protecting the other, each reading the other’s thoughts, the sum of them stronger than they could ever be on their own. With Dor, there was a hyperawareness of each other’s bodies, almost an anticipation of their movements, creating a total economy of motion. Nothing wasted, working to each other’s strengths.

The shore loomed solid and welcoming, lined with the people of New Eden, all of them shouting and crying and hugging each other. And then the crowd thinned slightly and Cass saw a figure limping slowly across the yard, all alone, hobbled over a stick, pain evident in every step.

She was vaguely aware of the people calling her name as the canoe was dragged up onto the bank, the warmth of Dor’s hand on hers as he helped her up, the solid ground beneath her numb feet.

She was aware of all these things, but they were not real and they were not true, not the way the man walking toward her as though he might die on the journey-the way he was real and true.

Smoke saw her, and his eyes found hers and held on and all the other sounds disappeared and all the other people disappeared and all there was was her and him and he lifted his hand, he held it out to her and then he fell, crashing down on the hard-packed earth of the island that he had never walked in all the time since he arrived in New Eden, all the time between sleeping and waking and every lost moment that lay between.

Smoke fell.

Cass ran.

HOW COULD SHE have given up on him?

The minute she looked into Smoke’s eyes, saw him trying to say her name as Steve’s strong hands helped him sit up, she knew what a terrible mistake she’d made, leaving him alone in that place, untended, all because of fear.

She hadn’t been strong enough for him.

“Are you…” He was struggling to speak, his vocal cords rusty from a lack of use. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Are you all right, Cass?”

“Me? I’m fine, oh, sweetheart, I’m perfectly fine. But you-I’m so sorry I haven’t been coming-”

“Have they…hurt you?” He pushed weakly against Steve, trying to break free of his grasp.

“No, no, no, no,” she said, realization dawning on her. No one had told him where he was, no one had explained. “Smoke, these are good people. Free people. This isn’t Colima. These aren’t the Rebuilders. This place is called New Eden, and you’ve been recovering here, healing here.”

Smoke’s eyelids fluttered and he started to say something else, but the words were garbled and almost unintelligible as he slumped against Steve.

“Smoke, no-” Cass pressed her hands to his face, his neck, feeling for his pulse.