Horizon

by Sophie Littlefield

  “We’ll talk later,” she snapped, forcing herself to look away, and then she took Ruthie out of the swing and walked purposefully past the other women. She gave them a fake smile to cover the fact that she was shaking all over, and went around to the front of the house where they were setting up the evening meal.

  At dinner she sat with Red and Zihna and the girls. Sammi was there, and though she said nothing, she moved over to make room for Cass on the soft patch of kaysev where they were sitting.

  “Won’t Smoke be joining us?” Zihna asked, and Cass followed her gaze and saw that he was sitting with what Cass supposed had emerged as the new leadership. Two of the men from the East were busy with the horses; that left Mayhew and Bart, along with Shannon and Harris and Neal, engrossed in what looked like urgent conversation.

  At the fringe of the group sat Dana, his back to the others, facing Owen, who sat alone twenty feet away. By morning, Owen would be cleared to rejoin the group—the fever never took more than a few hours to take hold, and the physical signs quickly followed. For a moment Cass’s heart constricted at the thought of Phillip, abandoned in the quarantine house, blown into a thousand pieces, dead and disappeared on a deserted island where nothing human remained.

  Still, that was a better fate than the alternative. The slow madness, the feverish twitching. The picking of the skin and pulling of the hair that slowly morphed into an unnatural, unquenchable hunger. The first nip at your own skin, finding it pleasing, the pain was nothing against the need. The hunger, growing and overwhelming, whispering in your ear as the last of your sanity slipped away, stoking the furnace of desire, until you went out into the world, no longer human but a thing of singular purpose: a hunter of flesh.

  Cass had known it.

  She felt her blood warm in horror and shame. This was a place she never let herself go. This was dangerous. But there was Owen…and in his expression was the faintest doubt, wasn’t there? A darkness that weighed on his features, even as he joked with Dana and spit kaysev beans off into the side yard. He was wondering, wasn’t he? Wondering what it would be like? And Cass was the only person here who could tell him.

  Except she couldn’t remember.

  Frustration racked her, stinging her eyes with tears and making her dig her fingers into the dry earth, breaking her nails and scraping her knuckles. Pain helped, pain always helped; it was her last and often her only defense against the burgeoning anxiety. Cass was masterful with pain, having learned early; during the bad days with Byrn, after Cass realized that even her mother would not listen and would not help, she learned to use the pain to control the panic. After…he was done, she would go to the bathroom, and once she’d scrubbed herself raw she would get the nail clippers out and use them to snip away bits of her flesh. Places no one would ever see, the tough skin of her heels, the calluses on her fingers and the soles of her feet. And when that wasn’t enough, she got the X-Acto knife from the garage, and made tiny, delicate, curved designs on her thighs, her sides. So pretty, the way the blood bloomed in the tiniest droplets, the stinging making her bite her lips.

  Why couldn’t she remember?

  The scars on her arms had disappeared completely, the ones on her back, where the Beaters had torn into her, had faded to burnished whorls. One of the hallmarks of the very tiny percentage of the population to recover from the fever—along with the startling bright irises and the elevated body temperature and the speed at which her hair and nails grew—was the hyperefficient healing, and even scars from childhood had virtually disappeared.

  Cass knew with absolute certainty that she’d been attacked, and then recovered. It was everything that happened in between that haunted her. Several weeks were unaccounted for. She’d come to in a field in the foothills, thirty miles down mountain from Silva, in clothes she didn’t remember, her wounds still weeping and excruciatingly painful, her hair pulled from her scalp. In a stranger’s clothes.

  Owen set down the plastic bottle of water from which he’d been drinking, and his gaze landed on her. For a moment he just stared, and then his mouth curved in a slow, calculating, cruel smile. As if he knew what she was thinking, as if he knew what had happened to her.

  As if he knew.

  Cass looked away, face burning. She had been one of them. A Beater. The thought never failed to bring a wave of nausea; usually she was able to force it back with sheer will, but this time her gut rolled and lurched and she knew she was not going to be able to contain herself.

  “Excuse me,” she muttered hoarsely to Zihna and Sammi, who’d been talking across her. She got shakily to her feet and hastened around the corner of the house where the remains of a pergola was twined with dead vines. It wasn’t a very effective screen, but it would have to do.

  Cass knelt on the ground, the thoughts swirling relentlessly along with the pounding of her head and the roiling of her stomach. She’d been a Beater, a devourer of flesh. After she pulled out her own hair and savaged her own skin, she’d hunted. They all did. She would have. She had hunted and if any human quarry had crossed her path she had done what Beaters do, because they were driven by one need. Cass had wished and prayed and offered her soul in the bargain, those nights when she could not avoid facing the thing that had happened to her, if only she had never hurt a person, a man or woman or child, while she was changed.

  But that was stupid and she knew it. Her stomach heaved one last time and Cass brought up bitter bile, gasping and coughing and retching onto the cracked earth. Beaters did one thing. It would have taken some miracle to keep this other her from following its need, and Cass was not a believer in miracles. She had to face the fact that she had committed abominations, that she’d done unnatural things, evil things.

  Cass emptied herself onto the ground while not far away children played and people shared a meal and survivors dared to hope. She was only allowed to be a part of this community because they didn’t know. If they knew what she was, they would most likely banish her. They might even kill her.

  And she wasn’t sure she blamed them.

  When she returned, having wiped her face on her sleeve and chewed a few kaysev leaves plucked from a plant that had rooted along the house’s foundation to cleanse her mouth, Cass returned to the gathering as nonchalantly as she could. Zihna gave her a concerned look but Red was in the middle of a story so Cass just forced a smile and pantomimed that she was fine, then settled back into the group and watched people finish their meal.

  Dor was sitting with a group that included Jasmine and Sun-hi. Jasmine had ridden in the panel van all day, but she looked drained and exhausted, her enormous belly clearly making it difficult to get comfortable on the ground. When Dor dragged over a dusty ottoman for her to lean against, she smiled at him gratefully.

  Dor was incapable of sitting still; he was always on the lookout for things that needed doing. She was watching him rig a footrest from a sofa pillow when voices raised in argument caught her attention.

  “Aw, man, let him,” Luddy said. He was talking to Dana, the sack that had held his dinner dangling from his hand. Luddy and Dana had never gotten along—punk and do-gooder, Cass figured there were probably some sort of father issues going on there—and it looked like Luddy was trying to provoke him, as usual. “Come on, if he had it you’d know by now.”

  Owen looked on, chewing on hardtack. Luddy was right, he looked fine from a distance, and it did seem cruel, leaving him alone at the edge of the group after their long day. Dana said something quietly and shrugged, but now they had the attention of the rest of the group.

  “Come on, are we really gonna sink to this on our first day out?” Luddy demanded.

  Owen got uncertainly to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, stuffing the plastic bag that had held his dinner into his pocket.

  “We need to be consistent enforcing the rules—” Mayhew started
to say, but Dor turned on him.

  “The only we here is you, buddy,” Dor snapped, his hands in tight fists at his sides. “You’ve done all right so far, but I wouldn’t start thinking you’ve got a free ride to go around giving orders.”

  That was apparently all the encouragement Owen needed. He walked toward Dana and was only a couple of steps away when a gunshot blasted and he went down, a hole ripped in his thigh.

  She whipped around to see who’d fired—Smoke, his gun now aimed at Owen’s heart. “Nobody go near him,” he yelled. “Not until we’re sure.”

  “What did you do?” a woman screamed.

  “Stay where you are!”

  “Put that gun away!” Mayhew had drawn too and was aiming at Smoke. It wasn’t an easy shot—too far, too many people in the way.

  “Smoke—” Cass started, but he cut her off, his voice calm.

  “Fine. I’ll go myself. I am going to walk over and check him. I’ll leave my gun here.” He slowly lowered it to the ground, in reach of Cass and away from the children, then stood with his hands in the air. “Shoot me if you want, but I’m telling you, if you don’t know if he’s infected and he’s close enough to touch a citizen, he’s the one you need to shoot.”

  Owen was sitting on the ground whimpering, his hands over his thigh, blood coursing through his fingers. Dana had scuttled back a few steps.

  Mayhew said nothing for a moment and then nodded. There was silence as everyone watched Smoke limp painfully toward the downed man. When he got close enough, he knelt down, slowly, using a hand on the ground to brace himself.

  For a moment the two men stared at each other. Cass knew what Smoke was looking for—the same constricted pupils citizens checked for at the buddy-ups, and the sheen and flush of the skin. If Smoke was wrong, the man was still as good as dead unless the group was willing to give up a cherished spot in one of the vehicles, as well as precious medication. But if he was right—

  Suddenly Owen sprang at Smoke, knocking him over. He pinned Smoke and pounded on his chest with his fist, yelling curses. People screamed as Smoke struggled to hold off the attack. Owen was skinny and now he was also wounded, but Smoke was exhausted from the day on the road, and Cass saw that he was weakening fast.

  Cass snatched up the gun from the ground and ran, stumbling over people and abandoned meals. In the seconds it took her to reach them, Smoke had managed to force Owen off him and had rolled to the side. Owen was snarling and desperately trying to grab Smoke’s kicking legs.

  Cass shot him. She was running when she took the shot and it went wide, hitting his shoulder rather than his head, but he stopped trying to grab Smoke and lay in the dirt, howling and bleeding from both his wounds.

  Mayhew came running, followed by Dor. “Get him still,” Mayhew ordered to no one particular.

  “You think I’m getting close to that?” Dor demanded, and then, contradicting himself, he went within a couple feet of Owen’s writhing body.

  “Stop flailing around, goddamn it,” he yelled.

  Cass’s gun hand shook. If Owen wasn’t infected, then it was the second shot that had doomed him. Hers. There was no way they’d risk transporting a man with two serious wounds, a man who wouldn’t be well enough to work for months, if he recovered at all.

  He didn’t appear to hear them. He was sobbing as he tried to stem the flow of blood from his wounds. Dor toed him in the good leg.

  “Look at me, you bastard, or I’ll kill you right now.”

  That finally got Owen’s attention. “Bitch shot me…” he said, turning his unblinking eyes up at Dor.

  They all saw it—Cass knew by the gasps from the crowd. Owen’s irises were tiny black pinpoints, and though he was staring straight into the setting sun, he didn’t squint at all.

  Cass knew she only had a second. She crouched down as close to Owen as she dared.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” she demanded. “You blew up the island, didn’t you?”

  Owen’s expression turned into a smirk and he looked at Cass defiantly. “We’re all gonna burn, baby, it’s just a matter of when.”

  He barely got the words out before someone shot his face off.

  Chapter 29

  SAMMI SAT ON a little swing that had been hung from a covered arbor that once had plants growing on it, watching the sky go from purple to gray. There were dead spikes on the arbor, probably roses or something. Sammi had seen things like that Before, benches no one sat on, ponds with fountains that no one ever threw pennies in, paths that went nowhere. Just another way for rich people to spend money on nothing.

  She’d been sitting here trying to forget what Owen Mason looked like after he’d been shot, how half of his face looked kind of normal and the other half looked like a steak dipped in barbecue sauce and covered with pink cottage cheese. There was no way she was eating anything ever again, and she kind of wished she could just lie down and sleep and not wake up until the world was normal again.

  “Wondered where you went.” Sammi jumped, but it was only Colton. He’d sneaked up on her—not really, but he never made a lot of noise. He was quiet, and Sammi liked that. Most of the time she loved hanging out with Kyra and Sage, but sometimes she just wanted to not talk.

  That’s what they did for a while. Colton put his arm along the back of the swing, and Sammi leaned into it, and that was nice. There wasn’t anything going on with them, despite what anyone thought. After Jed, Sammi wasn’t…well, it would be a long time before she looked at a boy like that again, if she ever did. And Colton wasn’t like that anyway, he never did anything. Maybe he was gay or something. Which Sammi wouldn’t care if he was, that was cool. But whatever.

  Everything was just so fucked up. Again.

  Tears leaked down her face and she didn’t try to hide them. Colton said, “Oh,” and dug something out of his pocket, a rag or something, and it wasn’t all that clean but it was nice when he dabbed at her face with it.

  “That thing with Owen. Jesus,” he said, shoving the rag back in his pocket.

  “Yeah…I know.”

  “Sammi, listen, I need to tell you about something.”

  She said okay but a little warning went off inside. People didn’t say that unless it was something big, something important. “Well, it can’t be someone else dead, right?” she asked, trying for a joke.

  “No.” He sounded even more serious. “Owen…he was into some really bad stuff.”

  “No shit. He blew up the island. Everybody says so.”

  “Yeah, but…” Colton’s voice trailed off for a minute, and then he took a breath and continued, kind of in a rush. “That wasn’t the first time. He, uh. One time? Shane and me were over at his place. He had, like, a whole drawer full of explosives. Electronic stuff, timers and shit, I don’t even know what all. Like, to make bombs? Seriously, Sammi, he scared the crap out of me. I think he was going to…do something. He was talking about taking out the whole island.”

  “Well, he just about did!”

  “No, I mean, before that. He said he was working on something big enough to destroy the whole place. I didn’t believe him. I got the fuck out of there. But Shane, he stayed. He told me that Owen said there was all this stuff in the storehouse. He was trying to figure out how to get it. And then when the Beaters attacked and we had to leave so fast, he somehow got it all out of there.”

  “Owen did? Or Shane?”

  “Owen. He didn’t have time to rig it up to the thing he was working on, the remote or whatever, but he and Shane…it was them, Sammi. They went back when everyone was on the bridge and they blew up the community center and they blew up the quarantine house. Shane only went along because he felt bad for Phillip, he wanted to put him out of his misery but—but listen, Sammi, you can’t tell anyone. Okay? You can’t tell anyone. N
ow Owen’s dead it doesn’t matter, and Shane, no one would get it, what he was trying to do.”

  Sammi’s skin felt cold all of a sudden. “They blew up Phillip?” she whispered.

  “Only because—I mean, Sammi, Shane said he was thinking about him going crazy in there, losing his mind. He said he’d want someone to do it to him, if it was him in there.”

  “But…” Sammi thought of the last time she saw Phillip, of his hand reaching out through the narrow slot. She couldn’t do it, no matter how much he was suffering. There was no way she could pull the switch or light the fuse or whatever. “Why are you even telling me this?”

  “Because I need a favor.”

  Chapter 30

  IN THE MORNING Cass woke to the clang of shovels hitting dirt. She went out into the mist-thickened dawn, wrapped in a blanket, and watched from the porch as a small band of people dug a shallow grave. Owen’s body lay nearby. They had not wasted so much as a tarp on him, and his corpse, awkwardly arranged and gray-pale in the morning light, stared sightlessly into the sky. Smoke was among their number, and Cass could see the perspiration on his face as he took his turn with the shovel. He should not be exerting himself like that. But who could stop him?

  Dor had been as good as his word, watching over Sammi and some of the other kids upstairs. When they came down the stairs he scowled at Cass. She shrugged, but her indifference didn’t reach inside. It was easy to believe, as he stepped heavily past her and the other mothers, washing their children from a shared tub of water in the house’s mudroom, that he might have stood sentry all night, and she wondered if she were foolish not to take that extra measure of security. His eyes were shrouded and tired, but his body was tense with stored energy. He walked like he was looking for a fight.

  But when he assembled with some of the other new council on the porch as the group loaded up for the journey, he stayed near the back and let Mayhew do the talking. He stared straight ahead, detached and almost indifferent as the Easterners addressed the Edenites.