Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

Dana looked up from his task, his face puffy and pale. He evidently hadn’t slept well, and his expression was petulant. “So you’re just getting a taste of what we’ve been dealing with,” he muttered. Cass couldn’t help thinking that what New Eden had been dealing with was, largely, keeping its head in the sand and going soft, that until now they’d been well fed and comfortable.

“Maybe so,” Mayhew said coldly. “But we’ve been sending patrols north, too. That’s where we’re headed. Beaters can’t tolerate the cold and neither can blueleaf. We’ve got a plan. And a destination. Now, look. We never meant to come barging in on you and take over. But if our two groups pool our resources, our intelligence, we stand a lot better chance of finding a place where we can build a real community, somewhere that we can actually thrive, where we’re not looking over our shoulders every second of the day.”

“How far north are we talking?” Phil Booth demanded.

“Word is if we get up into the Cascade range, both threats drop off significantly.”

“Jesus. How far exactly? How many days on the road?”

Mayhew’s expression didn’t so much falter as harden, but when he spoke his voice was calm and even encouraging. “I won’t lie to you. This is going to be a few hard weeks. But think about the alternatives, my friends. We try to shelter anywhere around here, we’re into the same problems you’ve already been up against.”

Silence. People stole glances at each other, shuffled their feet, fidgeted with their things. Cass watched Dor, his arms folded across his chest, his jaw set. His gaze bored into hers and he did not look away.

Then a woman near the front of the crowd raised her hand. It was one of Collette’s do-gooder friends, Cass didn’t remember her name. She was still soft through the middle, fleshy and wan, somehow.

“The Beaters, the way they learned to swim,” she said breathlessly. “Everything was fine until a few days ago when they decided to try to get in the water and then it was like they all decided to jump in the water all at once. If they can learn that, what else are they gonna do next?”

“They’ve got their own language now!” a man called from the back of the crowd.

“That’s ridiculous,” Dor snapped, raising his head and uncrossing his arms, craning his neck to see who’d spoken. “There’s absolutely no indication of that, and spreading rumors isn’t going to help. You people need to calm down.”

“It’s okay, Dor, I’ve got this,” Mayhew said calmly. “Everyone’s just a little on edge.”

Sure, Cass figured darkly, watching your friends die horribly might put anyone “a little on edge.” And yet people seemed to find Mayhew soothing.

He stopped clear of taking any sort of vote, and Cass wondered if it was because he wasn’t confident he had the majority convinced yet. As they set out into the morning, she saw the subtle shifts in the company people were keeping.

Dana walked alone, kicking stones and occasionally talking to himself. Shannon tried to talk to him when they stopped for lunch near a murky pond, taking the opportunity to boil water to refill all of their reserves. Cass overheard a little of their conversation as she took Ruthie and Twyla looking for pretty rocks in the field next to the pond.

“…don’t know who he thinks he is,” Dana was saying angrily.

Cass glanced back at them a few times while she and the girls strolled; she saw Shannon gesturing, pleading maybe, before finally giving up and going to join the others.

Cass had volunteered to watch the girls to give Suzanne a break, but the truth was she needed a little time to herself. No. The truth was that she was fighting an urge for a drink. Not that there was one to be had, but the unsettled feeling left over from Mayhew’s little speech had spiraled into a full-on tangle of worries, the sort that usually found her deep in the night.

Days tended to be easier. Last time she quit drinking, Cass filled them with work, with running, with caring for Ruthie. And she could usually stave off a craving by throwing herself into arduous physical work. Digging stones from a field. Weeding between rows. Anything at all to drown out the anxiety.

On the road was different. She had no sense of control. She moved when the group moved, stopped when they stopped. Everyone else seemed to be content knowing only that they were headed “north,” but the uncertainty of the future only added to her anxiety.

She walked, head down, with her hands in her pockets, reciting the litany of phrases she’d picked up in her long-ago meetings, inane little sayings that did nothing to boost her confidence in herself but sometimes, occasionally, could pull her back into that feeling of thin hope, that she really might be able to get through this, that she really could survive without a drink.

If God brings me to it, He will bring me through it

I am not failing as long as I am trying

She heard, in her whispered words, dozens of other voices. Since the end of everything she had seen no one from the meetings. Not one of them. They were all probably dead. What would they have chosen, Cass wondered, if they knew how few days they had left-to keep coming back, or to go on a bender the likes of which no one had ever seen? Would they have drunk themselves to death?

She had the start of a headache, a faint breathlessness. Nothing too terrible. And food would help. She could get through this, she could-

Cass looked around. They’d walked to the far edge of the field-strawberries, it looked like, the long-dead plants choked now by kaysev-and there was a worn split-rail fence that might have been pretty if the vines twined around the wood weren’t all brittle and brown. But though Cass turned around, a complete circle, she did not see the girls.

“Ruthie!” she called, her voice hoarse. “Twyla!”

Oh God, she hadn’t been watching, hadn’t been listening, she’d been lost inside her own head, her own cravings. For a second Cass was frozen in terror and mortification, eyes darting everywhere, gathering her breath to scream-

And then she heard their voices, bright peals of laughter spilling from behind a tractor that had been abandoned in the field. A second later Twyla’s head popped up on the bench, followed by Ruthie’s.

“Mama!” Ruthie called. “Look, we’re farmers!”

Cass forced a smile, her stomach seized with adrenaline and fear. She felt like she would throw up again, but that couldn’t happen, not here, not in this moment of the girls’ delight.

“Oh, look at you two!” she called through a smile she dredged up from her paltry heart. “Show me how you grow your crops!”

And she hastened toward the girls, fixing her gaze on their sweet faces. If she couldn’t beat her cravings, then she’d just have to outrun them, keep running toward the next right thing and the next.

That night she had thought to speak to Smoke, to confess how bad she’d gotten. He would be disappointed in her, but he would be compassionate, too. Smoke was like that; he wouldn’t let her suffer alone. And she was willing now to trade a little of her dignity for a few moments of his comfort.

But as they set up camp for the night in a feed and supply store, after first clearing out several long-abandoned Beater nests and searching the much-looted supply shelves for anything useful, Cass could not get a moment alone with Smoke.

His limp was far more pronounced in the afternoons, after the day of exertion had taken its toll. His face was slightly ashen and she knew he was in pain. And yet he wouldn’t take a break. He helped Davis and Bart-and Valerie, Cass couldn’t help noticing with an uneasy feeling-to feed and water the horses, and then he and Mayhew and Terrence and a couple other guys made a tour of the other buildings in the town while there was still daylight, looking for anything useful. They made a decent raiding party, well armed and cautious; they came back with a few tools and several armloads of firewood. Terrence had found someone’s rainy-day stash in a canister. He shook it out upside down on the fire once they got the kindling going, and dozens of bills fluttered down and caught flame, the kids laughing at the spectacle.