Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

Sammi had a duffel on wheels, the sort of thing she would never have been caught dead with Before. It looked like something her dad took back when he traveled for business, back before he went through the mother of all midlife crises. Back then, her dad had the start of a beer gut, a stupid haircut that he put gel on, and he wore golf shirts with logos from all these different country clubs even though he never had time to play golf.

Hell, Valerie wouldn’t even recognize him. Which was weird. Sammi would have figured someone like Valerie would have liked the old version of her dad a lot more than what he was like now. Sure, he was a lot more buff these days, but then again everyone was at least kind of cut, everyone who survived, anyway.

Valerie and her dad…Sammi could just see them the way they would have been a year or two ago. Valerie probably would look about the same, with her stupid skirts that hit her at the least flattering possible place on her leg, her sensible shoes and her headbands. She had good hair, it was true, and a great figure, but she did her best to hide it all. Her dad never would have asked her out. Although…the truth was that Sammi had never seen any of the women her dad dated, other than her Spanish teacher. All she had to go on was her mom’s commentary on the subject, and her mom was pretty bitter.

And Cass-Cass would never have looked at her dad before. Cass was so…what was the word, anyway? Sammi used to think she could be really nice, when you were alone with her. She could make you think she was listening, really listening, and not condescending. But maybe all that was was her lame attempt to make Sammi like her because she had a thing for her dad all along.

Except…back when they first met, Cass was with Smoke. She was still with Smoke, wasn’t she? Supposed to be, anyway.

Sammi clenched the stack of underwear in her hand. She had given up trying to talk to Kyra, and was packing for her. Her own bag was ready, and she’d jammed lightweight stuff as far down as she could, leaving room for whatever she could scavenge from the storehouse. Those idiots had better have it open-Sammi wasn’t about to count on the whole commie sharing system to make sure she got what she needed. You could see how fast that was breaking down-she’d heard them all arguing earlier. But what could you expect?

Back in honors English, they’d read this book by a guy whose motto was “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” Sammi figured you might as well make it twenty. Luddy and Cheddar and those guys, they were what, twenty-five, twenty-seven, and they were all fuckups. Before, they would probably have been homeless or living in communes or something. Hell, they’d probably be the first ones to get picked off by Beaters when the shit hit the fan. They’d be throwing their stupid Frisbee around at the back of the pack and bam! that would be it.

Well, Sammi wasn’t going to let anything like that happen to her. She’d already survived one full-on attack-right before Cass and her dad showed up in Colima, she’d escaped on her own, and she’d nearly made it, too, only a nest of the things had woken up and sniffed her out. But she’d nailed a few of them with this piece of wood she’d yanked off a porch-it had nails sticking out of the end. It was the perfect weapon-she still remembered how it felt making contact with their stupid zombie heads. Somehow both hard and soft, like a melon split open. She was sure she had killed at least one, and maybe more.

Sammi realized she was holding Kyra’s clothes so tightly that her hands had gone white. And she was starting to shake, too. Right now, thinking about the zombies, remembering the sounds they made and Cass screaming her name as she came running-yeah, so she’d come to help her, driven that truck of hers straight into a Beater nightmare when she could have just hit the road and never come back, okay, Cass had done at least that for her-right now she was about ten times more afraid than she’d been that night. Which didn’t make any sense at all.

And she wanted her dad.

And…she really, really wanted her mom. But her mom was dead.

“Kyra!” Sammi snapped, a lot meaner than she meant to.

Kyra turned her slightly unfocused dark eyes her way. “What…” she mumbled, but at least she stopped rocking.

“I’ve got your underwear, your leggings, your thermal shirt. What else do you want?” She held up a couple of T-shirts, emblazoned with band logos.

Kyra bit her lip, twisting it around, and Sammi felt a little reassured because it was an expression that went back as far as she had known Kyra. “Hothouse Shears,” she said.

“Okay,” Sammi said, hiding her relief. “I could have guessed. That and Stacy Faith, that’s all you ever wear.”

“That’s all that fits, ” Kyra said, and lumbered off the bed. “I’m getting fucking huge. ”

She peered into her pack, a black one with silver-and-gray trim.

“I can trade if you want,” Sammi said. “Mine’s probably easier, with the wheels and all.”

Kyra shrugged. “I think they’re gonna let me ride. At least part of the time, me and the other knocked-up girls.”

Other than Jasmine, that club included Leslie and Roan, both of whom had been impregnated at the Rebuilders’ baby farm and escaped with Sammi when her dad and Cass came for her. They were cool and all, but since they were almost ten years older than Sammi and Kyra and Sage, it wasn’t like they all hung out or whatever. Leslie and Roan shared a place at the north end of the island and they’d told Kyra she could live with them after her baby came, which pissed Sammi off because there were extra rooms at the House for Wayward Girls and if they all helped out, how hard would it be to raise the kid right here themselves?

But now that they were leaving New Eden, who knew what was going to happen. Poor Kyra-being pregnant for this trip was going to seriously suck. For one thing, Kyra still threw up sometimes, not near as bad as a while ago, but bad enough that she had days where she’d just lie around and moan. And she got these weird cramps that were supposedly kind of like labor, but not really real labor, which was a good thing because Sammi was not interested in being any kind of emergency midwife.

Although, if push came to shove, she’d do it. She’d do anything for her best friends. They were her family now.

“Girls!”

Zihna hurried into the room, her face flushed and her T-shirt damp with sweat under the arms. Sammi felt a twinge of guilt-she’d been so busy trying to get Kyra moving that she hadn’t even offered to help Zihna and Red. Speaking of which, where had they been? After the Beaters finally went home, everyone kind of split up and went off to prepare for the evacuation. Dana made some sort of pronouncement, but no one was really listening-it was pretty clear what had to happen. How hard was it to understand what the priorities were? Anyone who stuck around the island tomorrow was going to be treated to the world’s most terrifying swimming lesson, and then end up served for dinner.

Zihna stood with her hands on her hips and scanned the room quickly. “Okay, I’m going to go get Sage and then I want you two to come wait with me. You can sleep down there, by the water, but I want us all to be ready to move when the time comes.”

“Where’s Red?” Kyra asked.

“He had a little personal errand,” Zihna said.

Suddenly the room lit up with a flash of searing white light.

“What the hell!” Kyra knocked over the glass of water on her bedside table, and the wet stain spread out into an amorphous shape on the carpet.

“Flares,” said Zihna. “Sorry. I was just about to tell you about that. They’re trying to alert any nearby shelters.”