Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

Cass turned away from him so he couldn’t see her face, caressing Ruthie’s cheek, kissing her silky hair.

“Go,” Zihna urged her, adamantly. “You too, Red. Cass, we’ll be fine.”

“Zihna!” Sammi burst through the press of bodies, dragging Sage. “You have to talk to her, she won’t stay in the car-oh my God, Smoke, it’s really you, I can’t believe it-”

Ahead, another of the Beaters’ frantic cries, and another. Gunshots and human screams mixed in with the other sounds in the field ahead. The sun breached the horizon, momentarily blinding all with the first rays of the day. People jostled each other in an effort to see or to flee. Several ran backward, dropping their suitcases, headed back toward the island.

“That sounds like more’n a handful of ’em,” Red said grimly. “God be with you, Cassie girl.”

Cass threw one last look at them-Zihna and Red, the girls, Smoke and Ruthie-and then she ran.

She caught up with Dor and they dodged scattered and abandoned belongings. The cars had pulled bumper to bumper, making a barrier, and the drivers were out of the cars, yelling to each other.

“What now?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Dor shot back, frustration in his voice. “There’s no coordination, nothing-”

He stopped abruptly as they came around the side of the cars. There, lying in a thatch of kaysev, were three dead Beaters. A man stood a few paces away, holding his arm and trembling.

“He’s bit! He’s bit!” a woman was wailing.

A dozen paces away, there was a commotion surrounding more dead Beaters lying on the ground. One of the creatures remained on his feet, lurching toward a wiry man, maybe Nathan, Cass couldn’t tell. The man dodged close and jabbed and even from far away Cass could see the spray of blood from its neck. It walked, stiff-legged, in a semicircle before falling to the ground, the blood petering out while it twitched.

That was the last of them that Cass could see; all the Beaters lay dead or dying. There were shouts from the crowd, triumphant cheers. People began pouring around the cars now that it was safe.

The woman who had been wailing latched onto Dor. “He tried, he tried to kill them but that one, it bit him.”

“You’re sure?” Dor said. He seized her hand and dragged her away from the man.

“I saw, I saw it, on the arm, the arm,” the woman babbled, and Cass saw the bleeding puncture down near his wrist bone. He was still staring at his wound, at the blood dripping onto the ground, his expression a mixture of disbelief and horror.

Dor shot him.

He moved so quickly that Cass didn’t even see him reach for his gun and certainly didn’t see him aim. The man stumbled back and a hole appeared in his forehead so neat and round it looked as though it had been made by a giant paper punch. The woman’s screams turned incoherent and she pounded at Dor with her fists, but he pushed her gently away and others came forward, and led her away from the body.

“What are you armed with?” Dor demanded.

“My blade,” Cass said. “And I have a spare. There are guns on the trailer, Red didn’t think-”

“Red is not in charge,” Dor said angrily. “You got that, Cass? You don’t follow Red.”

“I don’t follow anyone, ” Cass snapped, staring into Dor’s flashing ebony eyes. But it wasn’t exactly what she meant to say-she’d followed Dor into the canoe, hadn’t she, with barely a thought; they found their rhythm immediately, the canoe rock-steady as he rowed and she fired, and again at the bridge.

“You’ll follow me now,” Dor growled. He put a hand behind her neck and pulled her closer, making her falter so she had to grab his arm for balance. “This isn’t about you and me right now. We can sort that out later. This is about there being too damn few people who know what they’re doing and too many sitting ducks who are going to die if we don’t do this right. Now, I’ve got Nathan and Steve and Brandt covering the other end. You and I will take this end. We’ll get Glynnis out in the front and everyone else will drop back. You got that?”

Cass nodded. It made sense, better than anything she could come up with, at least while his hand was heavy on her neck, his face inches away, his eyes reflecting the battleground behind her.

“Now take these,” he demanded, releasing her only after he put a gun and extra rounds in her hands.

Up ahead the others were silhouetted against the rising sun, leading the Edenites across the field.

But then she looked again. It was wrong, all wrong. They were coming closer, not moving away. Their gait was ragged, jerking.

At least two dozen of the beasts, and behind them Cass could see more, stumbling toward them in groups that split and re-formed as they heaved against each other and thrashed their arms and howled.

Gasps quickly turned to screams as the rest of the crowd saw them too. Dor stepped out in front, and fired into the sky.

“Everyone! Listen to me. If you are armed and you know how to use your weapon, come to the front. Keep the children, the old folks, to the back. Stay put. No one goes back to the island. It’s not safe there anymore.”

For a moment there was panic and then, incredibly, the crowd began to follow his orders. Cass spotted Zihna and Red on either side of the trailer, pushing it to the back, and Smoke, standing in front of the stroller, protecting Ruthie with his body. He had a gun in his hand, one of Red’s, no doubt.

“Deal with the ones who come to you,” Dor shouted to her. “Don’t worry about the rest. I’ve got it.”

Cass readied herself, crouching down, weighing the gun in her hands, getting used to the broad grip. The extra magazines, jammed under her belt, were high-capacity-at least a dozen rounds each. That gave her thirty shots, give or take, assuming she survived to reload, assuming she was steady enough. She wished she hadn’t allowed herself to become complacent with the rest of them. All those mornings when Dor went out alone on North Island, doing his target practice and running sprints, working with the set of barbells he kept under a tarp-she should have been there too. She’d heard the way people made fun of him, calling him Rambo, but they talked in whispers about her too, and it meant nothing, less than nothing.

She had allowed their judgment to matter. It was the mistake she seemed doomed to make over and over, and once she let their criticism in it became way too easy to go the rest of the distance, to become the thing they accused her of.

But it wasn’t who she really was. It wasn’t. Here on this field of death, Cass seized on the lesson she’d forgotten in the past few months: she was who she made of herself, and no other. She breathed deep and forced herself to exhale slowly, feeling the steel warm to her touch, and vowed to survive.

Dor fired and a gangly, thin Beater who’d sprinted ahead of the others suddenly jerked and staggered backward, right into the path of another, who fell sideways, screaming.

A trio of them ran straight toward her. The crowd had dropped back, scattering in confusion, and she was alone in the open field, the target of their focus and their desperation. She crouched lower, putting one knee to the ground, waiting. Fire too soon and she’d waste a valuable bullet and risk scattering them. The moment they split up they became ten times more dangerous.

She counted in her mind, mouthing the syllables silently. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three…

Down the line shots were fired, screams and yelps erupting from the Beaters who were hit. But Cass did not dare take her eyes off her targets.

Closer, closer, and Cass could see the bare swinging breast that hung out of the open shirt one of them wore. It had no hair left on its scarred, filthy scalp. Its mouth yawed in a lipless leer and one of its eyes had been ruined, the socket red and pulped, bone protruding from the edges.