Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

The thought made him smile. He and his lovely woman-they had a few surprises in them yet. But still, they were both in their late fifties. Roaming like a bunch of nomads with no camel probably wasn’t AMA-sanctioned exercise in their case.

But it would be what it would be. He had Zihna, he had Cass, he had his granddaughter-a granddaughter! How the word could still bring him fresh, amazed, pure joy-and, though perhaps more problematic, he had a fallen hero of the Resistance. A resistance to a Rebuilder movement that no longer existed, but still.

Red had taken a little nap earlier, but at the first sign of dawn, Zihna woke him. Smoke and Cass were napping on the trailer with the little girl between them. They’d moved the trailer to the space between the house and the detached garage, which was hidden from the path by a lattice covered with dead vines. If Craig and the rest came back-or anyone else, for that matter-their hiding place was far from perfect, but it beat waiting in the garage like lame ducks.

Zihna’d handed him a glass of water and reminded him to drink it all, and then she settled into the lawn chair he’d dragged in for her and immediately went to sleep with her hands folded over her stomach. It was one of her gifts, this ability to control her breathing and her worries; she’d been working on it since she started teaching yoga all the way back in the nineties.

Red was not nearly as good at serenity. He could feel his heart accelerating with anxiety as the sky started to lighten.

It wasn’t long before he heard the rumble of the first car. The rest followed, until the earth thrummed with the rhythm of the engines. Half a dozen vehicles, when you’d heard so few for so long, suddenly sounded like a busy interstate. Red was on his feet in seconds, remembering a motel he once crashed in for a few weeks in San Diego that backed up to the highway; night and day the earth reverberated with the traffic going by. It used to help him sleep, as a matter of fact, and when he moved on he missed it-but now the sound filled him with dread.

“Time to wake the women,” a low voice said behind him. Red turned quickly and realized that he’d momentarily forgotten about their cargo, his daughter’s injured lover. In the faint light of dawn, he found the man making his way to his feet painfully, slowly. But with his jaw-clenching determination, he did not look much like a victim today. He did not intend to be counted out.

Well. That was interesting.

“Yes, indeed, friend,” Red answered, offering a hand to help Smoke. He was not surprised when it was ignored. So he was not to be the only dog in this race, after all.

Red allowed himself the smallest of smiles. He’d had hundreds of friends through the years, though besides Carmy he couldn’t name a single one who stuck or who he missed when the road beckoned and he moved on. Aftertime had brought all kinds of interesting times Red’s way, forcing him to acknowledge things he’d fully expected to go to his grave without knowing.

He’d fully expected to protect these women all by himself. They’d hate the notion-Zihna would, at any rate, and he suspected that his daughter would too-and insist up and down that they could protect themselves just fine. But Red took his late-life transformation seriously and he was damn well going to be a man and take care of his own or go down trying.

He’d never anticipated that he’d have company. Surprisingly, the notion didn’t leave him completely cold.

He hid his smile and clapped Smoke on the shoulder-carefully, since the guy was still looking a little tender.

“Let’s get this show on the road.”

CASS KNEW THAT Red-that her father -was right to wait, but it was damn hard to watch the procession go over the bridge, the vehicles in front followed by the walkers, dozens of people dragging suitcases and pushing shopping carts and baggage carts and in one case a wheelbarrow, carrying packs and gym bags and tote bags, and not feel the terrifying loneliness of being left behind. Ever since she arrived in New Eden, that bridge had been the symbol of safety, with the sturdy metal gate at the water’s edge, its round-the-clock double staffing of armed guards. Seeing the gate open wide, the guard chairs empty, it chilled her. When the last of the pedestrians-Steve, that wasn’t surprising, as well as a few other people who’d volunteered to form the rear guard behind the slowest walkers-had gone a hundred yards down the road toward Hollis, Red said softly, “Okay, now.”

But before they could go more than a few feet Red stopped her.

“Wait,” he whispered urgently, looking back toward the community center.

Cass saw it too, two lean figures racing from the wide-open French doors, across the yard, toward the bridge. One was Owen Mason, a hawk-faced man around thirty who raided occasionally and worked at a few other jobs on the island, none of them with much skill or attention; and wasn’t that-it looked like one of the boys Sammi ran around with. As she watched, they caught up with the stragglers and melted into the back of the crowd. No one seemed to notice.

What had they been up to? If it had only been the boys, Cass might have thought they were saying goodbye to Phillip. Throughout the night people had been leaving things outside the quarantine house, magazines and mugs and T-shirts and dried flowers, a heartbreaking if macabre shrine to the feverish boy inside, who was probably incoherent by now, dementia taking over his brain as he picked at his skin and scalp. Sammi’s friends were good kids, and all of them had been friends with Phillip. But Owen…she’d gotten a bad feeling about him from the start, and avoided him as much as she could. He was just…creepy.

A shout from the front of the crowd interrupted her thoughts. It was repeated, voices joining in, and in seconds it had gone from alarm to panic.

Beaters. It had to be.

They’d waited too long. The council had been wasting time, figuring that it was too dark to travel safely, and undoubtedly that was true-even if they’d used precious battery power they could not have safely covered any ground in such a large group in the darkness. But apparently, on this day, the dimmest glow of dawn was enough for the Beaters.

“What do we do?” Cass asked, hollow with fear. To the rear of the crowd, they were safe, perhaps, for a little longer. But they had Smoke. There was no way that he was ready to stand and fight-even if he could defend himself as well as anyone as long as he had a gun.

“We can’t stay here.” Red spoke quickly, firmly. “Anyone on this island is as good as dead, because there’s no way to keep them from swimming across now.”

“All right. Let’s go.” Zihna didn’t hesitate. She pushed Ruthie’s stroller with surprising speed, and Cass followed. The trailer moved easily and it was not at all difficult to pull across flat ground.

“Let me help,” Smoke protested. In the early morning, after several hours’ rest, he seemed more recovered than last night. He was sitting up in the trailer, surrounded by the cans and water bottles they’d packed, in a pile of mussed blankets.

Cass put her hands on his shoulders. “Hush now. Close your eyes. Rest. Please, Smoke, please just trust me this time. We can talk about it later.”

“Go, go,” Red urged.

They caught up with the group by the time they reached the bridge. But there was a problem: the people running back across in the other direction, back onto the island-June, Karen and then Collette, the ringleader of their little group, her hands raised to cover her ears as though she could protect herself by shutting out the screaming. They raced past, heading for the community center, and others followed.