Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

A sharp exclamation above her-Sun-hi, out of breath, clutching her jacket front closed. She cursed in Korean before crouching down and switching to English.

“Smoke is awake?”

He mumbled something, his chin slumped to his chest. Sun-hi reached for his wrist, Cass getting out of the way for her. She used her thumb to pull up one of his eyelids and shone her flashlight at his face. That got her a groan of protest.

“This is amazing,” Sun-hi said. “He walked here by himself?”

“I think so.”

“I don’t know how he could-well, it does not matter now. He picked a bad moment for waking up. I have to get all patients ready for evacuation. Steve, you bring him now.”

Steve and a raider named Brandt crouched down to pick the prone form up in a fireman’s hold, linking arms to support him. Smoke’s head lolled the other way.

“Is he going to be okay?” Cass asked. “Is he going to wake up again?”

“I don’t know how this is happening,” Sun-hi said. “I am very amazed. But right now I must figure out cars, pack supplies. You come with me, Steve. We will get ready together.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve said.

“We will take him back to the hospital, Cass,” Sun-hi promised. “Take very good care of him. Now you go get ready too.”

Cass put her hand gently on Smoke’s face, his beard soft under her hand. Someone had kept it neatly trimmed. It should have been her.

Smoke was silent as they carried him away, Sun-hi striding purposefully ahead of them toward the hospital. Smoke owed Sun-hi his life, Cass had no doubt. And Cass owed Sun-hi too. And Zihna. And all the volunteers who’d fed and bathed him, held his hand and read to him, talked to him despite the fact that he’d been trapped in his mind as his body mended.

This should be her happiest day, the one she’d longed for, dreamed of and finally despaired of. And instead of holding him, whispering the thousand things she’d saved up to tell him, she and everyone else had to try to survive a horror that lay waiting to overrun them come the morning.

Aftertime had taken so much from her, and now it threatened to take this miracle, as well.

As Sun-hi’s little group disappeared around the back of the building, Cass headed for the doors of the community center, now thrown wide open with dozens of people milling about inside. She would get Ruthie, pack their things, get back to the hospital, make sure Smoke had a place in one of the cars, and then-once everything was in order-she would finally return to keeping the vigil she had forsaken.

She wouldn’t let the world take this one from her.

Sammi had organized the little kids to play a version of Duck, Duck, Goose. Twyla and Ruthie and Dane ran in a circle around Sammi and Dirk, who sat scowling at the floor, old enough to know that something was terribly wrong, but not old enough to understand what.

When Sammi looked up and saw Cass, there was a moment when her resentment and anger didn’t have time to catch up, a second where she looked like a little girl again herself, frightened and vulnerable. Then the mask came down; she narrowed her eyes and got to her feet.

“Sammi!” Ruthie giggled and smacked her. “Goose! Goose!”

Ruthie hadn’t noticed Cass yet. Her skin was rosy from the exertion of the game, and she threw herself at Sammi and grabbed her hands, wanting to play some more. She looked so happy. In recent weeks she had come out of her shell-laughed louder, chattered more excitedly, played more creatively. She was doing so well here-and now she would be uprooted again.

It couldn’t be helped; it was the only way to save them all. Of course, not all of them would make it on the road to…wherever better. How many would die tomorrow? How many the day after that? How many of them would be alive in a week, a month…a year?

Cass forced herself to stay focused. It never helped to think about the future like that-she knew better; everyone knew better.

“Babygirl,” she said, and Ruthie spun around and ran to her, laughing, arms lifted to be picked up. Cass swept her up in her arms and spun with the momentum, her little girl’s legs sailing through the air.

“So, can I go now?” Sammi’s voice dripped with sarcasm, her face curled into a sneer.

“Sammi…”

“ What? Don’t you have to, like, figure out which guy you’re gonna hook up with later?”

“Sammi, this is serious. All I want for you-all anyone wants for you-is to keep you safe. Your dad-”

“Dad’s already been here. I told him to fuck off.”

Only the faintest quiver of Sammi’s lower lip gave her away. It broke Cass’s heart to see how hard she was working to preserve her anger.

“At least let’s figure out what you should bring-”

“I’ve got that covered. I’m with Kyra and Sage, we’re gonna share.”

Cass sighed. If she pressed any further, she risked alienating Sammi entirely, or drawing her focus away from the important tasks at hand. “Okay. I know you girls are smart. You’ve got packs? How about that jogger stroller, can you pack some things in that?”

Sammi rolled her eyes and picked up Dane, who’d fallen at her feet in a fit of giggles. “Tell you what, Cass, why don’t you let me focus on my life and you can go back to screwing up your own, okay?”

IT HAD ALL started so well and gone so wrong.

The other women in the Mothers’ House were welcoming at first. They gave Cass jars of wildflowers, cakes decorated with thin kaysev-syrup icing, books and toys and blankets and stuffed animals and good cheer. They made her tea and sat with her, clucking over the scrapes and bruises she’d sustained in the Rebuilder battle just before she got there. All of them had jobs. Ingrid and Suzanne both worked in the laundry, Jasmine-at that time already six months pregnant-was in the storehouse, assisting Dana with disbursement. They were happy to have another person to work into the child care rotation. In the evenings, coming back from meals, there was laughter and sometimes singing and when the little ones were asleep they gathered in the living room and talked by the light of a single candle.

And then, one day, one bad day that Cass wished she could do over, she rose in the morning and began down the stairs only to overhear a conversation between Ingrid and Jasmine.

“All I’m saying is, a child doesn’t get that way by herself,” Jasmine said, in her faint East Coast accent.

“Wait until your own child starts sassing you and then see what you think,” Suzanne-unflappable Suzanne, always willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt-said mildly.

“But I mean, it’s like Ruthie’s afraid half the time. Twyla talks, like, four times as much as she does.”

“Some kids are just quieter than others, Jazzy,” Suzanne said patiently. “And Cass and she have been through a lot. Even kids need time to process things.”

“But look at Dirk and Dane. I mean, they lost their dad, like, one day he was there and the next day he was facedown in the front yard, shot by the neighbor, for heaven’s sake. That’s traumatic, right? Right?”

There was a pause, a small silence in which the coil of anxiety inside Cass pulled taut. The silence meant that Suzanne-sweet Suzanne, humming-without-knowing-she-was-doing-it Suzanne-had doubts.

“I don’t mean she’s a bad mother,” Jasmine said. “Only, you know, she’s so protective. Overprotective. She never lets that child out of her sight. She even drags her along to go see that poor man in the hospital. I mean, tell me that’s not traumatizing, right? I heard his eyes were gouged out.”

“Oh, Christ, Jazzy, that’s not true,” Suzanne protested. “Go see him yourself, if you want. I was over there getting some cream for Twyla’s rash, I saw him, he’s not that bad.”