Horizon

by Sophie Littlefield

  The woman moaned when Sun-hi probed the wound on her scalp, and winced when she wrapped it in bandages made from a torn shirt. “Janet almost got away,” she said listlessly. “She made it to the trees before they got her.”

  Smoke and Nadir stood on the porch of the sturdiest cabin and Smoke whistled for attention. He described the horror that lay up the trail, the mismatched battle they faced.

  “I know who these men are,” Nadir said, barely controlling the anger in his voice. “They were trouble back home. There are stories of things they have done, bad things. I do not know who they have convinced to come with them here, if they recruited others like themselves, but we must plan for the worst. They have already killed dozens of innocent people. They will not hesitate to kill more of them.”

  “We could turn around,” Smoke said. “We could retreat down the mountain, reach our cars and be safely out of the area by the time these people arrive. We could keep looking for shelter elsewhere....

  “But we will not do that.”

  He waited a moment for his words to sink in, for everyone to grasp the scenario he painted. Cass knew she was seeing evidence of the talent that had made him such a good coach, his conviction and charisma.

  “We will not retreat,” he repeated, and there was silence among the gathering. Everyone was riveted. “If we do not take this settlement for our home, odds are we won’t survive the spring. We’ve lost half our number so far, and conditions here are nearly intolerable for those who aren’t prepared. Yes, we will be living off the hard work of the slaughtered—at first. But I am not afraid to tell you that it is better for us to seize the spoils than for them to fall to murderers.

  “Might does not make right, my friends.” Smoke paused again and searched the crowd, making eye contact with each of them. When he got to Cass he lingered for a moment, and the look they exchanged was tinged with a wistful sort of pain that she knew would only be cured by the passage of time.

  And then he moved on. “But sometimes, the right can be mighty. We are in the right here. I have not known you long, but I think I have known you well. I’ve fought beside you, grieved with you, and now I have the audacity to hope with you.”

  The applause started with a single pair of hands, echoing across the camp. Cass was surprised to see that it was Valerie. She had not returned to her headbands and her tentative smiles. She stood apart in her black clothes and her dark glasses and slick-backed hair, and a scowl so fierce Cass didn’t doubt she was looking forward to a fight.

  When the applause died down, Smoke outlined the plan, such as it was. Get there first. Dig in deep. Shoot like hell and hold nothing back.

  If the Edenites were disappointed with this bare-bones strategy, they didn’t let on. The procession set out, grim-faced and silent. The Easterners led the horses at the front. Steve and Fat Mike carried Dane and Dirk, and Twyla squeezed into the jogger stroller with Ruthie, Red and Zihna pushing it up the incline. Ingrid strapped Rosie to her chest in a papoose Valerie had rigged from a blanket.

  Cass waited to take her place in the procession. People filed past until finally it was just her and Dor. She fell in step next to him, but they’d only gone a few feet when Sammi came racing back down the trail.

  She was out of breath, unslinging her backpack and digging around inside it.

  “Don’t say anything, Dad, because I don’t want to hear it. Only I thought you should have this.”

  Cass knew the taped-together package of plastic bricks and wires was the real thing because of the way Dor’s face went utterly white.

  “Where in the name of everything holy did you get this, Sammi?”

  Sammi’s face looked like it was going to crumple. “I said don’t—”

  “You don’t want to talk about it? That would be fine if you were late coming home from the movies, but this—shit, Sammi, this could have killed us all. There’s enough here to blow up this entire camp.”

  “This was Owen’s,” Cass said. “Wasn’t it, Sammi?”

  For a second Sammi looked confused, and then her eyes met Cass’s and cleared. Cass had no doubt Sammi had gotten the explosives from Colton, but whatever poor decisions the boy had made in the past, Cass felt that the time for punishing him for them was over.

  “Yes,” the girl said shyly.

  “But how—” Cass knew it was fear that raised Dor’s voice—not for the dangers ahead, but fear for his daughter, for the fact that she’d been ferrying this terrible load in her backpack. But Sammi would only hear the anger, and the fragile peace between them was not strong enough yet to withstand such a test.

  “It’s not the time,” she said, taking Dor’s arm. “Look at me. Please.”

  He did. She saw the indigo sparks in his narrowed eyes, the scars that started at his hairline and bisected an eyebrow. The fine lines that had appeared at his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

  “Sammi did the right thing,” she said softly. “She was brave, and strong, and you are so lucky to have her.”

  “All of that is true, and I wasn’t saying—”

  “So thank her.”

  Dor frowned at her for a moment, then turned back to his daughter.

  “You’re—” He stopped, his voice cracking. “You’re my world, Sammi, I couldn’t stand if anything happened to you. Thank you for bringing this to me.”

  “Oh—Dad.” Now she did cry, fat tears rolling down her cheeks and splashing to the ground.

  “Go, go. Find your friends, and stay with them. Stay with them, no matter what, Sammi, you promise me?”

  “I promise,” she mumbled, and kissed him on the cheek before dashing back up the trail after the others.

  “For God’s sake, put that thing away,” Cass said, and she held his pack for him while he settled it into the outermost compartment. Then set it down and grabbed her hand, pulling her close. He circled his arms around her waist, but his touch was not gentle.

  “Cass.” His voice was low and rough and he made her name sound like a threat. “You’re…”

  He shook his head, and Cass understood that words eluded him, because her own thoughts were in disarray. Declarations of love were not for them. Gentle endearments would never pass between them. There would be no private names, no anniversaries. He would not sing her love songs or write her letters, and she would not be his helpmate, she would never wear his ring.

  But they would continue to find each other as long as the fire burned within them, and Cass knew the fire was at the very heart of her, that it would not dim until her life was at its end.

  “You’re mine,” he said, and then he kissed her, hard. His hands slid down to pull her against him and she felt her body respond, the heat inside her unfurling as she returned his kiss.

  It was over in seconds. It was not the time—and yet it was always the time, and as they headed up the trail, late-afternoon sun filtering through the trees to dapple everything with enchantment, Cass wondered how she could have ever not known.

  Chapter 47

  THEY RESTED AT the same clearing where Cass had stopped earlier. Ingrid nursed Rosie, while the children played tag and Bart watered the horses.

  When they started out again, the broad plain was a welcome change from the steep climb. The sound of the waterfall grew louder as they drew closer, and the air was chilly with mist. The cold seeped into their clothes, and by the time they reached the bridge they were thoroughly damp and miserable.

  But the bridge itself was nothing short of miraculous. It had never endured automobile traffic, since the roads from the highway to the resort had never been built. The asphalt here was smooth and pristine, the yellow striping fresh. Other than bird guano and the litter of workmen’s lunches from long ago, nothing sullied the
surface.

  Kalyan gave a whoop when he set foot on the bridge, and the mood brightened perceptibly. There, on the other side, was their future. They were so close now that it was tempting to forget the battle they would have to fight to keep it.

  Smoke and Dor and Nadir had decided their best bet was to travel past the cleared space through the thick forest to the steep face of the mountain, and make camp there for the night. Only those who were armed—a dozen of them—would spend the night in the settlement, hiding behind the framed structures, ready to defend their claim to it when the renegades came back in the morning. Depending on how many were in the renegades’ party, they would either capture them, kill them or fight them. In the event that there were enough of the enemy to prevail, even after being ambushed, then at least the other Edenites would have a chance to escape down the mountain, circling back along the path that bisected the falls. There was no guarantee the falls were passable, though the snowmelt had barely begun; that was a chance they would have to take.

  The bridge was almost a quarter-mile long, according to Mayhew’s notes, and as they walked Cass alternated between staring over the edge at the breathtaking drop to the boulder-strewn river rushing below, and the falls. As they drew closer the falls’ force and volume seemed to grow and Cass became increasingly doubtful about whether anyone could find solid enough footing behind the wall of water to cross to the other side—especially a person carrying a child.

  She did not share these fears. The crowd had fallen silent except for the gentle snorting of the horses and the sound of their hooves; the children rested in the arms of those carrying them. Sammi and her friends held hands near the front, all of them except for Shane, who walked by himself off to the side. The girls tossed the occasional pebble into the chasm beneath them, but otherwise they were silent and serious.

  When they had nearly reached the other side, a sharp crack sounded all around them, bouncing off the canyon walls and echoing back. Then there was another, and another—a bullet flying a few feet from the crowd, and people screamed and ran for shelter along the bridge’s sides, where a small overhang on the waist-high concrete walls offered almost no protection.

  “Where are they shooting from?” Nadir demanded, frantically sighting along the forest in front of them, which was dense and dark in the late afternoon. There was nobody there, but another shot was followed by screaming, and Tanner Mobley fell to the ground with a bloody hole ripped in his side.

  “Cass, look,” Dor muttered, and she turned to look back the way they’d come.

  There, emerging from the clearing on the other side, were men. A dozen of them, eighteen, twenty, wearing camouflage and hunting jackets, all of them armed. They were racing toward the bridge, and a couple of them with long-distance scopes were shooting as they ran. Tanner moaned and spasmed as more bullets struck the walls of the bridge.

  Cass felt her entire body go cold with terror. If the Edenites continued ahead onto the point, they would draw the battle into the settlement. Running might delay the inevitable, but the fact was that they were mostly unarmed, weighed down with children and pregnant women.

  If those who were armed took up positions at the edge of the forest, sheltered by trees, they could pick off their attackers as they approached. Cass had no doubt that between her and Smoke and Dor and the others, they would manage to kill a few of them. But what then? They had only the ammunition that they carried, and most of them were barely adequate shots. Even if they took out half their attackers, that left ten more who would make it into the clearing where the rest of the Edenites would be waiting like sitting ducks. The inescapable truth was the Edenites were insufficiently armed, unskilled and mostly untrained—mothers with children, teenagers, ordinary citizens with the perplexing luck to have survived more than most.

  By contrast, the men racing toward them looked as though they had been training for survival, as though they were handpicked to kill: deadly, fit, lean and determined. Their shouts carried across the expanse of bridge, guttural cries, terrifyingly close.

  Dor was unshouldering his backpack. He lowered it gently to the ground, then knelt and started unzipping it. “Smoke. Cass. Nadir. Take everyone with you—now. Go.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He pulled out the brick of plastic explosive and set it on the ground with great care. He looked up at Cass and for a second he went still, his eyes wide with emotion.

  Then he looked away. “Go, damn it, Cass, get the fuck out of here.”

  “You heard him,” Smoke said. “It’s the only way, Cass. Go.”

  Nadir was already gone, shouting ahead to the others, who were running as fast as they could, some of them already off the bridge, scrambling up onto the grassy bank of the point. He ran behind them, shouting encouragement, urging them to go faster. More bullets flew around them, and ahead, a bright bloom of red appeared on a woman’s back and she went stiff, falling slowly to the ground on her face. The terrified screaming crescendoed.

  “Come on,” Smoke yelled. It was only the three of them on the bridge now, Dor working frantically at the mass of wires and the pale doughy bricks. Cass looked beyond him, searched out Red and Zihna, Ruthie in her father’s arms. There were the kids, Sammi and the rest of them, and the young mothers.

  The seeds of a new community.

  “No,” she said, the decision made before she even considered the alternative. She would not leave him. She would not leave Dor. “You go. Go on ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Go, Cass, I don’t need you,” Dor muttered, but the wires slipped from his fingers and he cursed. Frantically he picked them up again, pressing the ends between his finger and thumb.

  “Cass—” Smoke’s voice broke. “Goddamn it. I’ll stay here with him. We’ve got it taken care of. Please, for the love of God, just get the hell off this bridge.”

  The men’s eyes met and Cass knew they had come to an unspoken agreement, that they were both willing to sacrifice themselves for her, for the others, for the future.

  “Leads came out of the igniter,” Dor said tightly, and Smoke nodded and took hold of the loose piece. Dor twisted something and pulled, the two of them anticipating each other’s moves. “Hold that—here. Steady…”

  “No!” she shouted, because without them…without Dor…there was no future for her. “No, look, I can—”

  More shots, and Cass looked up to see that the men were terrifyingly close, close enough to make out the red logos on their jackets, the muzzles of their guns. She dropped to the concrete, saw that the wires were back in place, but the minute Smoke took his hand away they slipped out again. Someone had to hold them in place.

  Smoke made a sound next to her, a soft exhalation, and when she looked into his face it had gone completely pale. “Cass,” he whispered. “Please.”

  Something warm dripped onto her hand, and she looked down and saw the blood, an enormous round splotch on the back of her hand, slowly dripping down through her fingers. No. She looked back up at his face and saw how his eyelids fluttered, how his mouth was twisted in pain.

  Smoke, whose face she’d first seen on the broken pavement of a school parking lot in Silva. She’d been broken, stinking, terrified, a thing of need, driven only to find her daughter. But Smoke had lov
ed her. He had helped her save Ruthie, but he had also loved her back to life, his great gift to her, and if in the end it had not been enough, it was not his fault, he had given her more than he gave anyone in this world, more than he could ever give himself, and she would never forget.

  Tears filled her eyes even as Dor cursed and wrapped the wires tightly around Smoke’s fingers and then gently pushed the ends back into place. He knew. He knew. “Hang on, buddy,” he said softly, and Smoke nodded, and then his eyes closed and Cass knew he was beyond speech, but still his grip held. He held on.

  “Oh God, oh no,” Cass sobbed, and she kissed his face, his eyelids, his lips, and then Dor pushed her and she got to her feet, already running, her legs moving like they’d never moved before, Dor right behind her, pushing her still, his hand at her back, making her faster, getting her there, saving her, and all the while she whispered Smoke’s name and remembered that she had loved him once and would always love him for what he’d given her, for the gift of loving her first.

  Cass’s muscles burned and her lungs screamed and then it came, then it came—

  The explosion was all sound and blast and then a great shuddering quake below her feet, heat at her back and grit pounded against her neck, her wrists, her face. But the end of the bridge was still too far away. They were not going to make it, Cass saw the truth reflected in the horrified faces of the people waiting, she heard the ripping steel and crumpling asphalt behind her, the screams of their pursuers, the blast of debris hurled against the rock walls of the canyon.

  And then the ground shifted beneath her as the bridge split and canted toward earth. The sound was deafening, the sound of hell itself, the air swallowed by the echoing blast, and she fell, her knees cracking against the concrete.