Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

“Ruthie, Babygirl, we’re going exploring,” she said, as she sorted through their clothes, choosing lightweight things that could be layered. Some of Ruthie’s clothes were getting tight; she had hit a growth spurt and had outgrown most of her pants. Her turtlenecks no longer pulled easily over her head. Even her nightgown’s sleeves didn’t cover her wrists.

Her little girl sat cross-legged on the mattress and pouted. “I don’t want to go.”

“Oh, honey, it’ll be an adventure. ” Cass didn’t have the heart to put any energy into the lie. She’d be found out soon enough; horrors awaited around every corner.

“Is Twyla going?”

“Yes, of course. We can walk together.”

Except that Suzanne had told her not to speak to her until she’d cooled down. Don’t call me, I’ll call you, she’d said over a week ago, a faint attempt at humor on a day when humor had no place. By now Ingrid would have told her the latest, and Suzanne was bound to be angrier still.

Cass packed the large-framed pack that she used to haul a day’s worth of water and her tools every day. It was good she’d become accustomed to carrying forty pounds on her back. She could not count on much help on the road and she already needed to ask a very big favor that would exhaust any goodwill she had left.

Into the pack went her meager supplies of soap, aspirin, lanolin and dried rabbit jerky. Then hers and Ruthie’s clothes, with extra coats and scarves wrapped around her bottle of wine. It was about half-full, a fact she did not allow herself to dwell on. The box decorated with the circus bear she left on the shelf, along with the bowl of earrings.

Into Ruthie’s Tinkerbell backpack, a gift from Twyla on her birthday, Cass packed a soft baby blanket that she liked to sleep with, a few stuffed animals and the veterinarian play set. She added a stack of books and then, reconsidering, took out all but two.

“Okay, sugar?” she asked Ruthie, helping her try it on for weight.

“Okay,” Ruthie answered through a yawn.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry, it’s bedtime, isn’t it? And we’ll go to bed soon.”

A lie. Cass would not sleep this night. The entire settlement was leaving at dawn, and she had to make sure that Smoke was with them. How, she did not yet know, and her anxiety over that fact curdled in her stomach.

She descended the stairs with Ruthie, using the flashlight she kept for emergencies. Its beam was still strong, but she had no spare batteries, and she was aware of every second that ticked by.

The house was empty. The women had left without her, just as she feared. She swept the flashlight’s beam over the kitchen table, the counter, the living room-everything as it had been before, about to become part of a ghost town.

She stepped out on the porch and stopped for a moment, caught up short by the scene in front of her. Flashlight beams and candles bobbed along the paths as people hurried about. Someone had built a bonfire in the yard and piled on firewood with abandon. They couldn’t take it with them, so Cass supposed it made sense to burn it. The air was filled with people calling to each other, and along the shore she could make out a growing pile of bags and boxes.

The island’s vehicles were parked in a neat row in front of the bridge, and men were milling around close by. From this distance Cass could not tell who was in the crowd, but she suspected it was the council members and their trusted friends. People connected to them would decide what went and what stayed. Already the mound of belongings at the shore was more than would fit into cargo.

“Cass.”

The deep voice in the darkness startled her. She spun around and pointed her flashlight straight at the speaker, who’d been standing under the overhang next to the house.

It was Red. He winced in the sudden light and held his hands up to his face; they were empty. “Hey, easy there.”

“I was just. Ah, going,” Cass said, backing away from him. In the flickering light she saw how he braced himself against the wall, his muscles stiff from waiting.

“No, wait. Wait, Cassie.”

Cass looked up sharply. No one called her that, not for a very long time. She didn’t like it-it brought back memories of times and places that she couldn’t reclaim even if she wanted to.

“What do you want?”

“To help. Just to help.”

“Help me?” The absurdity of the request made Cass laugh. “And how are you going to do that? You got a key to some underground bunker no one knows about? A ten-year supply of Rice-A-Roni?”

“No, no, nothing like that.” In the light of Cass’s flashlight, which she directed at the ground, Red’s face looked ghostly, his beard obscuring all his features except those soft eyes nested in sun-weathered wrinkles. He lifted a hand and then cut the gesture short. His shoulder drooped. “I wish I-we-could offer more. But, well, I just thought Zihna and I, we could watch the little one. So you-I mean, Smoke’s gonna need you to advocate for him. They’re over there right now…and it looks bad. No way they’re taking all the patients along, and Dana and a couple of the others want to leave them all.”

“What are you talking about?” Cass’s voice went shrill with fear. “Leave who?”

Only, before Red even answered, she knew what he was going to say, and was surprised she hadn’t already thought of it.

Four cars. All that gear. The water. Decisions were going to have to be made, and a full-grown man was a lot of cargo. She knew they wouldn’t necessarily help her, but to leave Smoke, who’d been a hero to so many when the Rebuilders threatened all… But of course: Dor, Smoke, herself-none of them were recognized for what they had been prior to their arrival, for better or worse.

“Oh my God…” she breathed, and the enormity of the truth finally sank all the way in. “Oh no.”

What had she been thinking, that she could save them all? It would be a miracle if she could even make it through the journey with Ruthie. An injured man-barely walking, barely returned from the edge he’d walked with Death. She felt the porch floor tilt underneath her.

Strong hands steadied her as she struggled to hold on to Ruthie. “Let me,” Red said, and he eased Ruthie out of her arms with surprising tenderness, and hitched her up over one shoulder. Her little head lolled in the crook of his neck, her eyelashes fluttering and her sweet mouth in a sleepy pout.

Red put a hand at her elbow to steady her. “Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

Cass took a deep breath. “No, I’m all right. I need-I just need-oh God.” She needed to get to Smoke-but she needed to stay here with Ruthie. She needed to get their things down to the pile and hope there was a chance they might be loaded. Otherwise, it was only a matter of time before the packs became too heavy and they had to start leaving things behind, leaving them at the edge of the road like people did in the impossible early days of the Siege, back when families tried to take everything with them. You’d come across abandoned pillowcases stuffed with silver, paintings, photographs; suitcases bulging with clothes; bicycles and chain saws and radios and clocks and dolls and things that defied logic; vases and puzzles and garden hoses.

Would their things end up like that? And then-a half mile down the road, a mile, two-would they themselves lie down, too?

“Cassie.” Red spoke urgently. “You can’t give up now, girl. Me and Zihna, we talked it over. We have the trailer. We think we can rig it so Smoke can ride. I’ve got Steve helping me out right now. He owes me one. We’ll have to take turns with Ruthie, but I don’t expect that’ll be a problem, not with so many of us. We’ve got the girls-well, Sage, anyway. Can’t be putting too much strain on Kyra, not with her goin’ on her sixth month. And Sammi…well, she’ll come around. You’ll see. She just needs to cool off a little, is all.”