On the opposite shore were Beaters, dozens of them. How they’d managed to assemble so quickly since Cass was last outside—only a couple of hours ago when she took the little ones for a walk over to the drying house to watch Corryn and Chevelle lay out the metal pans of hardtack—she had no idea. Now they lined the bank for a hundred yards in either direction, and from the distance, if you squinted, they could be spectators at a game, shoppers at a department store, except for their jerking, awkward movements.
Cass nervously ran her fingers over the sun-browned skin of her forearms, a habit left over from when her arms were covered with ragged scars. But her torn skin had scabbed over and fully healed from her time as…one of them. Early on after recovering, the fear of what she might have done—whether she’d joined a pack of the things, whether she’d hunted or even, God help her, feasted—continually worked on her mind, and her touch on the wounds brought the pain that she needed to distract herself. These days—mostly—she kept those fears at bay. But looking at the things, separated only by the river, the old terror nagged at her.
And now she had a new concern, a fresh terror: that Sammi, her fury stoked by what she’d seen, would tell the others that Cass and Ruthie had survived infection. It was dangerous information, sure to stir up distrust and anger in the community. But how far would the girl go to punish Cass?
Beyond the ragtag crowd, in the fields studded with drifts of kaysev, more approached in groups of three and four and in some cases more. Cass could only guess where they had come from—there were more than could be accounted for from the usual nesting spots the raiders had mapped in the area. Were the wretched creatures somehow responding to a signal that citizens could not pick up on, an instinctual awakening that drew them inexorably here in this moment?
Since the early days of the fever, when the first Beaters cast off their humanity to follow their terrible hungers, they had been drawn to population centers. They preferred towns to farmland, cities to towns. Of course, at first many people believed that safety could be found in the most densely populated areas, so they set out for urban settings. In the heightened security of the new century, every high-rise featured antiterrorism barricades and could function as their own ecosystems for a short period. Most had backup power sources and filtration systems that could sustain citizens at least a few weeks while they modified the buildings to serve as shelters for the new, grim reality.
The terrible fallacy of this assumption emerged slowly. Last summer, citizens flocked to the cities by whatever means available—by the carload when gas could be found and the streets were clear, on foot when not. Through an unseasonably warm and sun-dappled autumn, those who stayed outside the city limits wondered if they’d made the wrong choice. But as time went on, the other citizens never returned, and the cities remained dark.
And so one conclusion was generally drawn by those outside: the fever thrived in the population centers, infection spreading geometrically among those who lived close together, until the skyline became a treacherous maw teeming with hungry Beaters.
Dor, crafty and careful inside the Box, probably sent his patrols to get a visual confirmation of this, Cass suspected. He’d never said as much, but that would be like him—he would want to know himself, but not wish to inflict debilitating proof of the world’s end on others, if he could avoid it.
Though Dor kept his own counsel, others did not. January had brought a few refugees from what Sacramento had become. Their stories confirmed that the cities were lost, taken over by swarms of maddened Beaters nesting in office buildings, in shops, in public housing and luxury town houses. Restaurants and museums and parking garages were full of them.
The Beaters were not above feeding on each other, though they didn’t seem to like it. Of late, refugees passing by New Eden reported that the creatures had begun to starve inside the cities, imparting to listeners the most horrifying tableau of gaunt, bony Beaters in the later stages of the disease, kneeling over recently fallen others, feeding on their slack and waxy skin, before seeming to lose interest, and lying down next to them to die. There was not enough to feed even these voracious, implacable monsters.
Had the Beaters finally sucked all the sustenance out of the cities, and returned to the countryside to hunt? If so, New Eden would be a ready target with its seventy-some citizens living out in the open, where they could easily be observed and smelled and heard.
All that separated them was the perfect barrier of the river.
No one had ever expected the Beaters to learn to cross it. As a shocked murmur went up from the crowd, Cass knew that she wasn’t the only one thinking that if they somehow took to the water, New Eden would be lost.
There was another gunshot, and another. Cass pressed forward, pushing the stroller through the crowd, muttering apologies. When she got near the front of the throng she wheeled the stroller around so that it was behind her, and elbowed her way through.
Two canoes floated in the current halfway between island and shore. It was too far across the wide, rapidly flowing expanse of water on this side of the island to reliably hit a Beater from the shore, even with a deer rifle, which was why they patrolled from the middle of the river. John steadied one canoe expertly, paddle skimming the surface, while Glynnis sighted down her shotgun. She alone of the security staff preferred to use a shotgun; she’d learned to hunt with her father and, until last year, had gone up to Canada every year when the season opened. Now she hunted Beaters.
In the other canoe Neal struggled to keep the prow pointed at the opposite shore. Parker, one of the younger security guys, knelt clumsily in the front trying to reload, but the craft’s rocking made it difficult.
“Goddamn it,” a low voice said next to Cass.
Dor. She turned to him instinctively, resisting throwing herself into his arms, suddenly flooded with the fear and tension that had reemerged with these things. She couldn’t give in to the urge, not here, not after what had happened with Sammi and Jay.
“What’s happening?”
“What’s happening is, this is what we get for not training more people on the watercraft,” Dor snapped. “Look at that. Look at that. They’re likely to drown themselves before they get a shot off. Maybe even lose a rifle or two. I told them—” He bit off his words and fell silent, anger radiating off his tense, rigid body.
“Do you know how to handle a canoe?”
“Yeah. Me and Nathan—we’ve taken them out half a dozen times. I mean, I’m nowhere near what John can do, but I could for damn sure keep the fucking boat pointed in the right direction. Fuck.”
“Where’s Nathan now?”
“Went out this morning, after I decided to stay back and look for Sammi. I doubt he even knows what’s happening, because he was going to try going down toward Clifton. I told him not to go alone, but…”
But Nathan was another renegade, just like Dor.
He’d mentioned Sammi. Cass looked back at Ruthie for a second. “Did she find you? Or Valerie?”
“Yeah, yeah, I talked to Val. Sammi’s over in the community center with the other kids. Earl’s told them to stay put there until we get this under control.”
So Sammi was safe for the moment, at least. By Dor’s grim expression, Cass had to assume the reunion hadn’t gone well. Which wasn’t surprising.
“But why are Neal and Parker even out there? I mean, the Beaters are bound to wander off eventually. They always do.” Even as she said it, Cass realized that what she meant was that they always had—there was a difference.
“Cass. They’re only shooting the ones that get in the water. Trying to conserve ammo.”
Dor pointed down the river, and only then did Cass notice the gray lumps being carried downstream, drifting lazily in gentle spins in the current. They looked like logs, or bags of trash, but they were dead Beaters.
The ones that get in the water…
“You mean they’re trying to swim.” Not a question—Cass suddenly knew it beyond a doubt. She’d see
n one try for the first time only this morning, but that didn’t mean that they hadn’t been working up to it for a while. They were gifted mimics, for beasts that seemed insensate much of the time; they often echoed each other’s movements and sounds. At times it seemed like they made a game of it, a primitive Simon Says, but when one considered that this was how they learned, it was both awesome and terrifying.
“Yeah. And some of them are coming too damn close. And they’re watching each other. See? They’re trying to figure out how to stay afloat. The ones Glynnis and Parker took out, they were paddling like dogs—nothing pretty and with a lot of wasted motion, lots of splashing, but you can bet the rest of them noticed that they managed to stay above water for a few seconds before they went down.”
Just then a barking wail went up. At the far right edge of the crowd of Beaters, past Neal’s canoe, a knot of them pushed forward, the momentum of their bodies propelling a stocky one into the water. It was recently turned, with a nearly full head of dark hair and most of its face intact. A woman’s face, Cass could guess, through the leering and the pus and excited babbling.
A final shove sent it stumbling into the water, where it wobbled and abruptly sat down. It screamed high and shrill when the water rose up to its armpits, and splashed with its hands, making wide arcs. In the canoe, Parker was trying to aim over Neal’s shoulder as he dug deep into the current, forcing the canoe around. He fired, and one of the Beaters on the shore squawked and pitched forward, facedown into the muddy bank, the others tripping over it and stepping on its limbs.
For a moment, Cass had a vision of the torn bodies clogging the river, a peninsula of broken flesh permitting them to cross to her and Ruthie.
The one in the water had rolled onto its front and began splashing its way toward the canoe. The water went farther up its body until it went under, only the top of its head visible, black curls floating, and after a moment it came up sputtering and coughing. It flailed and slapped at the water and went under a few times, but then it seemed to establish a rhythm—an inefficient and clumsy one for sure, but enough to keep it from drowning.
Yelling, from the people in the boats and the people onshore, competed with the Beaters’ cries. Parker fired again, but the shot went wide, cutting the water harmlessly, and the Beater bobbed and splashed closer. Neal twisted his body in the canoe, trying to get out of the way. Parker shouted something that Cass couldn’t make out over the din of the crowd, but as he turned back around and aimed at the paddling Beater—it was a can’t-miss-shot, only ten feet—Neal plunged the paddle deep into the water and spun the canoe.
He’d exerted too much force, and the canoe dipped far to the left. Parker’s shot missed, unbelievably, landing somewhere in the inky water, and as Neal tried to correct, the canoe lurched the other way and the two men scrambled for balance and Cass sucked in her breath and swore she could feel it too when the canoe went over and both of them were dumped into the icy water.
Screaming rent the air as John turned his own canoe toward the upended one. Glynnis took a knee and fired without seeming to aim at all and there was a burst of blood from the swimming Beater, the side of its head shredded and running with crimson. The crowd called to the men in the water to hurry, hurry, hurry—
—and then there was a splashing commotion in the water that took Cass away to long ago with her dad, when he took her fishing on Lake Don Pedro. He’d borrowed a friend’s gear, and they didn’t catch a thing all day, but as the sun climbed in the sky and Cass got sleepy and leaned against her dad, her tummy full of peanut-butter sandwiches, her dad’s flannel shirt smelling pleasantly of coffee and tobacco, a bird had swooped down to the water and hooked its talons into a sizable fish. But the prey was too large to be carried off so easily. The bird screamed and fought the mute, desperate fish. They flailed for their lives, the water frothed by the fish’s body slapping the surface of the lake and the bird’s wings beating at it, and they spun and fought until their bodies blurred together, and Cass hid her face in her father’s shirt and cried until it was all over, until the bird finally gave up and flew limp-winged away and the fish sank to the depths, torn up but free to die—
It seized Parker and sank its teeth into his neck. Parker screamed and fought, but the bleeding creature held tight.
Glynnis shot Parker first. A neat hole appeared in his forehead and he went still. When she fired again, the Beater stopped flailing, but it never let go, and the pair sank below the water locked in their deadly embrace.
There was a shocked silence. Only Glynnis’s voice never stopped as she yelled at John to turn around.
“This is a goddamn train wreck,” Dor muttered. “Cass, we’ve got to take out the boat. I’ll row, you shoot.”
“I can’t,” Cass said, horrified. “I have Ruthie.”
“Leave her with the others. It won’t be for long. It’s already getting dark.”
“Dor…” Panic sparked pain behind her eyes. How could she tell him, how they all hated her, how no one trusted her? Who would be willing to help her now?
But as he looked deeply into her eyes, whatever he was about to say died on his lips. Somehow, he understood—not the specifics, but the shape of her fear.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Then leave her with Sammi. Tell her I said she should watch Ruthie until we get back. She’s just inside the hall. I’ll go grab my gun and meet you right back here in a few minutes.”
“But—someone else, can’t you get someone else?”
“Cass!” His voice exploded, so loud and desperate that people turned to stare at him. “There isn’t anyone else. I don’t know who can handle a boat and I’m not willing to take chances right now. If we don’t act fast, those things might get bold and try to swarm… And…who else is going to shoot with me?”
Dor was a rogue, a renegade, and he knew it, knew how he had squandered the others’ trust to pursue his own hell-bent pastimes. In that moment Cass finally understood how ill suited he was to New Eden, how much he must hate the collaborative government, the council with its endless deliberations, the constant hedging and search for concordance—it must have been torture for Dor to try to find his place here. No wonder he left the islands when he could, no wonder he took the brute-force jobs that left his mind free to stew and boil.
Dana, Harris, Neal—none of them liked Dor, none of them had ever asked him to serve on a committee or take part in a planning session. They were content for him to do the menial labor that kept him occupied and uninvolved.
It was true. None of them would shoot with Dor—because none of them would take direction from him.
“Go,” Dor said, and then he bent in close and brushed his lips against hers—once, and then a second time. He lingered, and it was not so much a kiss as a demand, a promise, an acknowledging of the need they never spoke of, and his mouth on hers was hot and hard and bruising.
Cass broke away and rushed toward the hall, pushing the stroller in front of her. It jounced over a root and Ruthie woke and began to wail, and Cass pulled her from the stroller, abandoning the thing in the middle of the yard, and ran the rest of the way.
She was putting her daughter in danger once again, trusting her to someone else’s care once again. What kind of mother set her child aside to go on a suicide mission? Cass—Cass was that kind of mother. She’d risked Ruthie for the bottle, she’d risked her for a moment’s pleasure in the sun, for stolen moments of desperate passion, and now she was risking her to plunge headlong into a mission that was bound to get her and Dor killed, a mission no one was asking her to undertake, on behalf of a community of people who hated her. If by some miracle she saved anyone, they would never thank her.
But she had no choice. Because if she did nothing, again, then she didn’t deserve to be anyone’s mother, anyone’s guardian. Not in these times. Not in what the world had become.
Chapter 15
INSIDE THE HALL she blinked and paused, her eyes adjusting to the dim interior. There—near the window, al
l of them, clustered on the long couches. The boys in the front, the girls huddled behind them.
“Sammi!”
Cass called her name, already running toward her. When the girl turned Cass saw not the hatred she expected, not the bitterness and rejection—but pure terror. It was written on all of their young faces, and Cass knew that they had seen: the swimming, and the upending of the canoe, Parker going down and the Beater and Glynnis’s two killing shots.
“Please, I need you to take care of Ruthie,” she said, out of breath. “Just for a little while. Your dad and me, we have to help.” She kissed Ruthie—both cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids.
“Mama,” Ruthie whimpered.
“Mama needs to go help Dor. You stay with Sammi and be a good girl, hear? And I’ll be right back, I promise. I promise.”
“Should we come?” one of the boys said—Kalyan, the reckless one. “Do they need us?”
“Right now they need you to stay here,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Someone will come. Soon. To tell you what’s going on.”
Sammi held her hands out for Ruthie, who snuggled into her arms as Cass turned away and ran.
She passed the stroller in the yard, pitched sideways with one wheel lodged in a divot in the earth. She’s fine, she’s fine she’s fine she’s fine, she told herself. Sammi would keep her safe. Sammi might hate Cass, but no one could hate Ruthie, no one could hate her beautiful baby girl. Ruthie was innocent, Ruthie had never hurt anyone, it was just her terrible bad luck to be born into this world, this time. And no matter if Sammi told everyone in the world that Cass had suffered the fever and somehow gotten better, she knew now that the girl would never reveal that Ruthie had, too.
The crowd near the shore had grown—it looked like every Edenite was there. Cass scanned the crowd and found Dor near the front. He held the Glock against his leg, and in his other hand was a gun Cass didn’t recognize, a small steel semiauto.
She hadn’t fired a gun since coming to the Delta. The last time had been during their escape from the Rebuilders, and her last kill had been a citizen, not a Beater, something only Dor and Sammi and the girls they’d rescued from Colima knew, something she had hoped to put behind her and never, ever let Ruthie find out.
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