Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

Terrence was silent for a moment, bringing his face closer to the wound.

“I don’t know, I guess-”

“Quarantine,” Mayhew said. “It’s the only way.”

“What do you mean, quarantine? ” Dana demanded. Cass wondered if he was beginning to bristle from ceding away his position of leadership and was now looking for a fight. “You see any, like, locked rooms we can stick him in around here?”

Mayhew stared at him from behind his dark glasses for a moment before answering. Off his horse, he did not seem quite as imposing, but he was still well over six feet tall and at least two hundred twenty or thirty pounds, his hair held in a loose ponytail secured with a bit of leather cord.

“Way we handle it, the man walks ten paces behind. We post one armed man back there with him. Deal is, if he comes closer than the ten paces he gets a warning. Three warnings and he’s shot. Not shot to kill, but in a situation like this, being on the move, I guess you don’t need me to tell you that’s a death sentence anyway.”

There were a few protests from the crowd, a crescendo of voices as the issue was debated. Owen started to object, then appeared to think better of it. He touched his wound, his fingertips coming away bloody, and he stared at them for a moment before wiping them on his pants.

“Come on,” Dana protested. “There’s no need for that. He’ll be glad to stay back, without a guard, won’t you-”

“Mayhew’s right.”

Dor, who had been standing silently off to the side, spoke quietly. He’d regained his composure since Sammi’s outburst, but his eyes were deeply troubled.

“We can’t take any chances,” he continued. “And we’ve got to be a lot more systematic about these things. You have my vote, Mayhew.” His tone implied that his vote did not necessarily carry much respect with it.

Mayhew stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “Look, you-what’s your name?”

“Owen Mason.” He mumbled, but that was nothing new; Cass couldn’t recall a time when Owen met anyone’s eyes when he spoke.

“Owen. You need to understand that there’s nothing personal about this.”

“What the hell, man, I don’t even know you. How could it be personal?”

“I’ll watch him,” Dana said. “Since you’ve decided to take over my job, Mayhew, I guess I might as well make myself useful somewhere. Don’t worry, Owen.”

He walked through the crowd, glaring at his fellow council members. After a moment, Owen followed, taking a wide route around the crowd, already the leper, already the outcast.

“We need to get moving,” Mayhew said. “We need to find shelter well before nightfall so we can set up sentry, get everyone fed.”

“I think we could have figured that out, at least,” Cass muttered.

There was something about Mayhew’s placid confidence that bothered her. Or maybe it was only her age-old issue with authority, her difficulty with following orders. That, if nothing else, had made the QuikGo a perfect job for her; after her boss showed her how to work the cash register, the locks, the lottery machine, she was pretty much on her own. And she liked it that way. The gardening was the same-no one told her how to move from task to task, when to start, when to end her day.

“I’m sure you could have,” Mayhew said easily. “Cass, is it? I don’t suppose you want to ride with me.”

“No, and if someone’s going to ride, we’ve got some older folks, some others who might be a better candidate.”

Mayhew nodded, raising an eyebrow. “Of course, I’m sorry, I should have thought of that. Maybe you could help me figure out who’d be the best to give a breather to.”

Cass nodded, but as the crowd gathered closer and she helped Mayhew sort out rides, she felt everyone’s eyes on her. But she couldn’t help what any of them thought. Not her dad, or Smoke. Or Sammi. Or Valerie. She was like anyone else, trying to make the best of a bad lot of choices.

But as two men watched her from opposite ends of the crowd, she had a feeling her most difficult choice still lay ahead.

Smoke insisted on walking. Cass held his hand, ready to catch him if he stumbled, but he was surprisingly steady.

“Tell me everything,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

She didn’t know if he meant Dor, but she wasn’t willing to go there. And so, instead, she started with the night they’d freed him from the Rebuilder headquarters in Colima.

She told him that she and Dor had killed four people that night, and that other innocent people had died in the fighting. When she described the baby farm, he winced and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “God, Cass,” he whispered. “Did Sammi…”

“She’s fine. We got her out before they-before anything happened. But we brought some of the other girls with us. Pregnant ones. One of them miscarried when she got to New Eden, but the others…one’s due in a couple of months. The others not long after.”

For a moment neither spoke, considering the damage done to those girls, just another new variety of horror.

Cass told him about coming to the island, about the welcome they received in the waning days of the year. About the Mothers’ House, and the House for Wayward Girls; the social committee and the friends Sammi had made. She described Garden Island and the many plants she’d cultivated. She said nothing about Dor, and Smoke didn’t ask.

That was not the only subject Cass stayed away from. She didn’t tell Smoke she was drinking. Besides, she had quit; even if she wanted to, she couldn’t drink now. There was no liquor among the vehicles’ paltry supplies, and she’d abandoned her half-empty bottle at the last minute. So far it wasn’t too bad, but then again the first few days of sobriety were never the worst.

The other two times she’d quit, she’d had to deal with headaches, clammy skin, heart palpitations, even a faint tremor in her hands. But she’d been drinking much more then. On New Eden, she almost always limited herself to just enough to dull her edges, which was sometimes harder than being sober. She could do this. She would do this, and not just because she didn’t have a choice.

The last two times, she’d quit for Ruthie. In the lonely nights on the back step of the Mothers’ House, she thought about quitting so she could gain the approval of the others, for Ingrid and Suzanne and Jasmine. Even last night, she had thought she was quitting for Smoke. But now, as she caught him up to the world he had missed, recounting the details of the night when she and Dor had rescued him from the Rebuilders, she realized something unexpected. She’d done a few things right.

She was far from perfect; she’d faltered once they arrived in New Eden. But she had come a very long way with little help. She’d been strong when the chips were down, and brave when courage was called for. Today she’d spilled Beater blood and lived to tell about it, and tomorrow she would get up and do whatever it took to protect her loved ones.

She would do everything for them except this one thing: this time, she was getting sober for herself.

When she had told Smoke everything she could think of, he was silent. The crowd’s energy was beginning to flag, the scenery changing very little as they traveled north on county roads, but at least they had seen no more Beaters.

“The men I killed,” Smoke finally said. “Have they been missed?”

Cass shrugged. “We’ve already lost more than a dozen people. People seem to have assumed those two were among the ones who ran back with the first wave. I…didn’t correct them.”

Smoke thought about that for a moment, before speaking softly. “Were they good men?”

“No. Getting rid of Charles…and then you…they took that task on themselves because it excited them, I think. No one on the council ordered it.”