Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

The crowd had stalled on the other side of the bridge, people shifting around inside it strangely so that it was like a living organism, ebbing and flowing across the road, spilling over onto the land on either side. A cardboard box lay crushed, bright-colored fabric spilled out, the sleeve of a shirt flung out as if an invisible arm was pointing the way. Cass scanned the scene for Dor, for Sammi, but saw neither, and then she heard the cries above the din of the crowd.

There were five of them, standing together on the other side of the road, past the drainage ditch and the cattle fencing. They must have come across ragged land rather than by the pathway-and worse, they must have been making their way entirely by memory, instinct, smell, because in this light they would be essentially blind, only able to detect the most basic shapes. Judging by how the things clutched at each other and stumbled, they might have been seeing almost nothing at all.

Suddenly there was a deafening explosion behind the citizens on the bridge, followed by a second, smaller blast.

Cass spun around to see the community center in flames, the top of it blown clear off, debris swirling in a red-orange cloud. Behind it, the quarantine house was nothing but a pile of burning rubble. Someone staggered out the front of the community center and collapsed on the porch, hair on fire. The screaming grew even louder, the terrified crowd caught between the ruination of the island and the Beaters ahead.

“What the hell was that?” Cass demanded.

“Holy…who would have done such a thing?” Zihna said. “And how-where would they get the…”

“There were explosives in the storehouse,” Red said grimly. “Someone must have gotten into them, after it was unlocked last night.”

“But why? What’s the point of-anyone in there was doomed anyway.”

Maybe this was a more compassionate death, Cass thought, at least for Phillip. But if Owen had been involved, she somehow didn’t think compassion was what drove him.

Yet there wasn’t time to worry about it. The Beaters had paused at the first flash of the explosions, but now they were staggering forward again, testing the air with their outstretched hands.

“They must be able to hear our voices, or the rumble of the cars,” Red said.

“They’ve probably been here all night. After they all took off, what do you want to bet some of them came back? Too chicken to come all the way to the water but…”

“Why doesn’t someone shoot them?” Cass cried, but it looked like none of the people close to the Beaters were armed.

An escalating roar came from the front of the crowd, and then two vehicles-the old dented Accord and a motorcycle-hurtled straight for the things. The motorcycle gained speed incredibly fast, and when it reached the edge of the ditch the driver leaned forward and lifted off the seat a few inches. Cass’s breath caught as she watched the bike shudder and jerk on impact but after a split second the rider miraculously righted the bike-

black hair flashing silver

– and oh my God it was Dor, it was Dor on the bike and he was headed straight for the clump of Beaters-

And Cass was running, running through the edge of the crowd, knocking into people-why was everyone just standing there letting him do this crazy thing?-and then there was an earthshaking crash because the car following seconds behind Dor hit the ditch and couldn’t make the jump, its front bumper smashed into the earth, and she saw it crumple, saw the hood accordion against the berm what the hell had the driver been thinking and who would have even taken such a crazy chance-

Cass ran past the smoking wreck, a burning smell coming off it, engine whining like no engine should and then going silent, a pop, another, a small defeated dying sound. And the windshield was red. It was splintered and red and what was that oh God, against the glass, inside the car, that thing that was someone’s head no matter how many times you saw the many ways a person could die you never got used to it, not ever-

But Cass was not fast enough to catch Dor and he circled once and came back at the Beaters, who were moving at full sprinting speed now, at full speed himself and smashed into them and two went flying and one went down and one, somehow, got latched onto the bike and dragged and the bike tipped and hovered, defying gravity, before it slow-mo wobbled and fell and by then Cass was there.

How had her blade come to be in her hand, it was her nature now, as running had become her nature in the days when she thought everything had been taken from her but she didn’t know the half of it, the days when she first found comfort in the tarry punishing blacktop of a summer afternoon. Sweat and ravaged lungs and legs pushed past their limit. And now she was a machine of a different sort, one who could wield a blade that had become like another arm, slash it down on the Beater who was crawling on top of Dor, watch the man who’d held her only days ago as he was sprayed with the blood of the monster and heave the thing off of him and step on its skull as she leaped to the next one.

Behind her there was screaming but where were they, where was help? The closest ones backed away and ran, good God they were running, didn’t they know they couldn’t outrun this? They had to kill them, kill them all because a Beater would never stop. The cunning hesitation of moments ago, when they shuffled and snorted and bided their time, that was all over now as their instincts kicked in. Kill them or be killed. Kill them or be eaten.

Dor rolled to his knees and swung his arm up and he took his shot before Cass could find the killing cut and its skull exploded, brains chucking on the ground like a spilled snow cone. And then she was being hauled roughly up by the armpit, Dor yelling to your right and with their backs against each other they stood in the field of gore waiting for the attack and finally, finally someone else joined in the fight, two more shots from the crowd and Dor took the last one down with the gun barrel pressed to its throat as it reached for him, hands scrabbling, humming-keening, like a lover reaching for him, and it never took its eyes off him even as it slowly dropped to its knees, a hole in its throat, its head finally toppling forward onto its chest as the rest of it sank to the earth.

“Are you hurt?”

His hands on her arms hurt, his grip was iron. Cass shook her head, then did the mental checklist-none of them had been close enough to bite her. The blood alone could not infect; the pathogens were in the saliva. It didn’t matter anyway, in her case, because she was an outlier. But Dor…

Already he was stripping out of his coat, his shirt, his body steaming in the morning chill. The sun had inched higher in the sky, and his burnished skin glowed rosy. Cass saw the fine hairs that trailed to his navel, the smooth planes of his chest bisected by two scars; she knew the map of his body like a town she’d lived in forever and she did not look away. She knew they all watched but she did not look away.

She was pushed roughly aside. “I’ll check him.”

Dana. Of course it was Dana. Though where the hell had he been during the fight, that’s what Cass wanted to know, as the crowd pressed forward, stopping at the edge of the rusted and ruined cattle fence. Some stood in the ditch. Many crowded around the busted car and then a gasp went up as a small man opened the door and pulled the body from the dashboard so they could see who had died, who among them had been brave enough to fight.

Dor, grimacing, put up his hands and turned slowly for Dana’s inspection. There were no marks on him, no new ones, anyway. Dor was blessed, if you could say that; he’d been in a dozen Beater attacks and survived them all. He nodded curtly at Dana and started getting dressed; Dana took off at a half jog to the car.