Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

Cass shot that one first.

She hit its shoulder and cursed as it fell to the ground screaming and immediately started trying to crawl. A poor shot, nonfatal, but at least one of the others tripped over it, and Cass was able to get a clean shot at its dropping head, which opened like a rose.

The final one crowed, waving its arms wildly, and Cass waited until it was only a few yards away. She pulled the trigger and the gun jerked in her hand but did not shoot.

Oh God oh God it had misfired-who knew where Dor had found this gun, if this had been the Box it would have been cleaned and maintained but no This was New Eden land of peace and prosperity and complacency and the Beater was coming closer. Cass fired again and this time the gun responded and the bullet went a little bit wide but it took a good chunk out of the thing’s skull.

It wobbled on its feet, close enough that had it still been human Cass could have had a conversation with it. Spinning, grinning, lipless mouth opening in a slow-mo scream; reaching for Cass as if it wanted to make a point, caress her cheek, fix a button. Cass wavered and wondered if the next second would bring its fetid teeth closing on her skin.

No no no

She’d beaten them before, somehow. She had to beat them again. Rage uncoiled inside her and she clenched her teeth and adjusted her position, distributing her weight better. She didn’t trust this gun, didn’t know how many bullets remained. And at this range she couldn’t miss again. She switched the gun to her left hand and grabbed for her blade. That, at least, was as comfortable as it had ever been; Cass kept it sharpened because she used it for all kinds of tasks in the garden. Now she held it tightly and when the Beater was only a few feet away, she dodged around it, reached out for its neck from behind, and cut straight and deep across its throat.

She had killed them this way before, not often. A human throat was surprisingly tough to cut through, cartilage and muscle and arteries knotted densely. And a Beater had been human once. It might chew its skin off, it might lose digits and eyes and chunks of flesh but underneath its gory exterior it was still wrought of the same innards, and she threw herself into the motion and did not hold back, and the Beater’s last cry was severed along with its windpipe as it landed face-first on the ground.

The first one that had fallen was crawling toward her, its useless arm bleeding from the shoulder wound. It was making gasping, panting sounds and these, too, ended abruptly when Cass stepped on its shoulders and repeated the swipe of the blade, this time leaving the side of its neck half-severed. It gurgled and jerked as it died and Cass left it and went looking for Dor.

He’d left his own trail of dead behind him, two of them mounded together as though they were embracing, others splayed awkwardly alone. He was standing in the brilliant glow of the rising sun, arms loose at his side, and for a moment Cass thought he was praying-but when he lifted his gun and jammed a fresh magazine onto it, she knew she was mistaken.

There must be more.

She covered her eyes with her hand and squinted. Something sprinted into view, and Dor took a shot but missed, and the thing ran between them. It was heading into the crowd, yammering as it ran, hands flapping.

Why hadn’t it attacked them? Beaters always went for the closest prey. It was gospel that the people in front were most likely to die, so raiding parties always put their weakest members in the back. But this Beater had ignored them to go after the others. Had it figured out that Cass and Dor were its greatest threat? That the weakest, most vulnerable targets were the people in the midst of the crowd?

Where Ruthie was, where Smoke was

“Up ahead! Cass! There’s more ahead!”

But Cass plunged through the crowd after the rogue Beater instead. She could not let it reach Ruthie, could not take that risk. People screamed and knocked each other over trying to get out of the way, but by the time she caught up with it, it had seized the pink sleeve of a puffy coat, wasn’t that Mrs. Prince-there was her dull gray hair that she’d valiantly tried to pin-curl for so long until she finally gave up one day and had Tildy cut it all off in a pixie that suited her surprisingly well, but the Beater knocked her over as easily as if she’d been a bowling pin and fell upon her and when Cass grabbed its hair, because it still had a greasy topknot of the stuff, studded with chaff and greasy in her hand, she saw that its mouth was sodden with Mrs. Prince’s blood and the poor woman was gasping through a hole torn from her throat.

Cass stabbed at the Beater with her blade, slicing through the soft skin under its jaw, bringing her arm down again and again until its head nearly came away in her hand, and only then did she finally stagger away from the scene of carnage.

The Edenites continued to retreat in every direction-the worst thing they could do, inciting the Beaters to ever-greater excitement. She didn’t see Red or Zihna, Smoke, any of them, and she couldn’t waste time searching. She ran back toward the abandoned cars, the Beaters streaming past the paltry barrier they made. There were so many. Where had they all come from, where had they been hiding? A couple dozen more at least, and more dead on the ground. To the right, she saw Brandt being set on by a clot of the things, saw the gun fall from his hand as they slammed his body to the earth in their favorite technique and then each seizing a limb, an arm or a leg, and then dragging him away, back the way they’d come. Ordinarily they went back to their nests, but there were no buildings here, only open fields dotted with shrubs and clumps of trees. There was a leaning ranch house far in the distance to the east, but the Beaters did not head that way. Maybe they meant only to get their prey out of sight, to hide in the tall grass to feast. No matter what, Brandt was lost, his screams fading as they dragged him away.

Others approached. Too many. It was impossible.

Cass tried to choose among her targets, a pair that were making an end run around the panel van, bypassing her to get at those behind her, and a knot of four or five that jostled each other as they ran.

She could not stop them all. She would die here. Cass wondered if she could shoot herself at the last minute, if she could be disciplined enough to kill as many as she could and save that last bullet for herself. Rage surged through her but rage would not be enough, it could not make her faster or more accurate.

But she had to try. She focused on a squat, limping one, steadied herself, and was about to fire when it suddenly jerked and fell. And then the one next to it spun, its head burst in a cloud of blood.

Who had shot? Not Dor, who was fifty feet ahead, crouched over a fallen Beater, finishing it with his blade.

The ground pounded under her feet and a blurred form approached, moving faster than any human or Beater.

A man on a horse, galloping toward them from the east.

As it grew closer Cass saw that it was a brown horse with a white diamond on its muzzle, its lips bared in furious effort as its rider dug into its flanks, urging it faster, leaning slightly out of the saddle as he fired again. And there were others-three other horsemen riding directly into the battle. The blinding rising sun had obscured their approach, but who were they? Cass had not seen a horse since early in the Siege and the bioagent that killed the cattle and made mass slaughterhouses everywhere. But these were healthy-looking specimens, large and powerful, their hooves pounding the dry, cold earth.

The Beaters seemed confused, catching the scent of the humans on the horses, torn between them and the prey on land. Cass heard the sound of an engine and saw that someone had gotten back into the pickup and was heading straight for the Beaters. The undercarriage and wheel wells were red with gore from running over corpses. It came too close to one of the horses, spooking it, and it reared up on its back legs. For a moment the rider looked as though he would be thrown from the saddle, but then the horse settled and braced stiff-limbed with its ears flattened, until the rider spurred it on again.