The bridge lay far ahead on the twisting trail. It looked out of place here, its man-made symmetry in sharp contrast to the natural beauty carved by the vicissitudes of wind and water and time. On the other side of the bridge, the road disappeared into the forest that grew, as on this side, practically to the edge of the cliff. The developers must have planned to cut down the trees to give access to the views that would have been the star attraction of the resort, but for now they would make a perfect windbreak for the settlement that was located on the cleared land beyond. In the grainy aerial photos, Cass had been able to see the stumps left from when they began work on the resort; it was like a giant had gouged a huge square into the forest, lifting away the trees and leaving the rich land exposed.
It really was a perfect location: remote, and easy to protect. Would-be attackers could be repelled in so many ways, most of them ending with their bodies crushed and broken on the rocks far below.
She found a spot to wait, a loamy patch of earth below a tall tree, and leaned back against it, enjoying the sun on her face. She’d worn an extra fleece tied around her waist, and she pulled it on and reveled in its cozy warmth, breathing in the good clean scents of sap and kaysev. A bug crawled over her hand and she lifted it closer to her face: an iridescent-winged beetle of some sort, searching for tender leaves, itself food for birds, evidence that the earth’s insistent journey back toward life continued apace here in the north.
Cass let her eyes drift shut and daydreamed about the settlement, the home she might make there. She and Suzanne and Ingrid would be the first mothers, but there would be others before long. New babies to join Rosie, new friends for Sammi and the other young people. And the garden she’d have up here! So many things she hadn’t been able to grow farther south. She’d have beds of lettuces and kale and beans and squash, an entire patch of pumpkins, every kind of herb. In one summer she could lay up enough to can, produce a cutting garden, a cold frame to see them through the winter. In two summers she could have fruit on the trees, apples and pears.
Real pies, she thought with a smile, not the bitter ones made from hawthorn berries. And she wanted to try growing grains, give everyone a break from the kaysev flour. Wheat should be possible in this climate, maybe barley. As soon as things were straightened out with the settlement, she and Dor—
Dor. She was thinking of him again; he had become the place her mind went whenever she let it roam, the note to which her heart gave voice when she let her guard down. But that couldn’t be right…could it? Her life was barely back on track again, far from ready to share with anyone else besides Ruthie. She was eighteen days sober, and she needed to get to 180, and then 1,800. She needed to stay sober forever. She had to learn to live with the hurt and damage she’d suffered and the rocky path she walked before and still walked now. She would take one day at a time and be worthy of Ruthie, and this would be enough.
But Dor. Dor, with his ebony eyes and his voice like sandstone, his breath on her neck and his hands tracing that place on her back—
She could not shake him. She couldn’t even pretend to try anymore. Smoke’s return had not eradicated him. Danger and battle and bloodshed and loss had not eradicated him.
And even more shocking: she had lost her shame. She was tired of feeling bad about Valerie. She was tired of second-guessing herself about Sammi. She was even tired of thinking of everyone else’s needs before her own, when what she needed was more of him, more of Dor, without a plan or a pledge.
Cass drank in the sun and dug her fingers into the earth and breathed the good air and allowed herself to wonder if maybe she was more than the sum of her addiction and her sobriety, more than just Ruthie’s mother, if maybe she’d done her penance and suffered enough and deserved something only for herself. Even with the scars and the regrets, some of her spirit remained, and some of it was good, and some of it was worthy, and at least some tiny part of her bid to live came from these depths, from this place that had been there when she was born and hung in there during all the terrible years and survived the addictions and the bad decisions and the self-punishment.
And this part of her, this part that was not mother and that was not pilgrim or penitent or servant, this part wanted Dor. Wanted him savagely.
Smoke had been her lover, her salve, as she had been his.
Dor was her fire. And as long as she lived, she would burn for him.
“Dor…” She spoke his name softly, testing it, tasting it, as though for the first time, erasing for a moment all the history they’d shared, the chaos in which they’d first come together. Her heart raced with the thrill of recognition, and suddenly it was all so clear.
It seemed as though the earth itself trembled in response to Cass’s new knowledge, but then she realized it was the approaching horses pounding the earth with their hooves.
They crashed around the bend in a cloud of dust, Dor in the lead. When he saw Cass he reined in his horse, and Rocket reared and snorted to a stop. The others circled around, Nadir in the rear, and it took a second for Cass to realize that the bundle he had slung over the saddle in front of him was a body.
“Cass, what are you doing?”
“I just came to—”
“There’s no time, get up here with me.” Smoke made room for her in front of him. “We’ve got to get back to the others now.”
Cass stood frozen to the spot, searching their faces. “What? What happened?”
Dor guided his horse forward, in between the others. He leaned down and seized her hand, pulling her up as if she was weightless, and she scrambled onto the horse’s heaving, warm back, sliding into the saddle, pressed close against Dor’s body. She caught Smoke’s expression, his hand slowly falling to his side. He saw. He knew.
“They’re coming,” he said numbly. “Renegades, from the East. Like Nadir was telling us. They picked the same settlement Mayhew did.”
“We have to get there first,” Nadir said grimly.
“We’re going to help defend them?”
Dor wrapped his arms around her and spurred his horse into motion.
“There’s no one to help,” he said into her ear, his breath hot on her neck. “The renegades sent a team ahead. They burned the settlement and killed everyone inside.”
Chapter 46
THE RENEGADES’ ADVANCE team had actually killed all the settlers but one. As the Edenites scrambled to gather their belongings, Dor summoned Sun-hi to examine the woman Nadir carried on his horse. Sun-hi declared that she would probably live. The blow to the head that had knocked her unconscious had saved her; she’d been dragged to the center of the settlement and piled with the other bodies as the four men who attacked them soon after dawn lined up the people eight at a time and shot them, execution-style.
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.
“W
e 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.
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