Horizon (03) (10 page)

The canoe came closer. Only a matter of inches, but closer.

“This is taking too long,” Dor muttered. Cass looked where he was looking, saw Glynnis pat her jacket frantically for more ammo, knew she wasn’t finding it. Saw John using his paddle less accurately now, his arms shivering—they had to be in excruciating pain, his muscles in revolt.

Roger cried out, a guttural, almost inhuman sound of desperation. He flung out his arm on the water and stroked. Again and again, he drew himself painfully against the drag of the water, and he came closer.

“You can do it,” the crowd screamed.

“Roger! Roger!”

“Come on, just a little farther!”

When he was ten yards out, people threw themselves into the water, half a dozen of them, women and men, some of them linking arms. They splashed and yelped at the cold and hands grasped the canoe and others cradled Roger, who seemed to slip into unconsciousness, his eyes rolling back in his head, and Cass knew she could not spend one more moment worrying about him—she had to give all her attention to the canoe, which was being handed along the row of people in the water. It was dragged up on the shore, tugged onto the hard-packed mud.

“Get in, get in, Cass—I’ll push us off.”

She didn’t hesitate, but stepped nimbly over the prow, feeling the canoe bottom grind against the silty bank, then steadying herself as it listed sharply. Dor’s strong hands gripped the edges to steady it, and then others did too.

There was shouting from the path. Hank and Dana ran toward them, Dana looking as though he was about to have a stroke, his face beet-red and his fine hair waving in the breeze.

They were carrying the boxes of ammunition, half a dozen guns. Dor released the canoe and ran to meet them, taking armfuls of weapons. He was back in seconds, but the panicked swell of cries from the crowd told Cass they were running out of time.

Across the river, emboldened now that Glynnis had stopped shooting, more of the Beaters were taking to the river. Fifteen of them, maybe, in twos and threes, they waded and shuffled and stumbled into the water, plunged forward, went under, came up gasping and shrieking. John and Glynnis had retreated ten feet or so, but the crush of Beaters in the water made their craft look impossibly vulnerable.

Dor swung his body into the canoe and jammed his oar into the shallow water, pushing them away from the shore. A dozen hands seized the canoe walls and when they were free of the land it felt for a second as if they were weightless, suspended in air, in nothing—and then the current found them and tugged and Dor dipped his oar into the water and they were off.

Their speed belied the fact that Dor was far more powerful than John. His navigation skills were not as precise, but he was heading them straight for the other shore and Cass knew that accuracy was not his goal.

“Get the .22—that one,” he yelled. “That ditty bag, it’s got the shells. When I pull up close, get them in their canoe but, Cass—make sure you don’t miss. We only get one shot.”

She carefully reached for the weapons, aware of how easy it would be to tip over; if they did, all was lost. But the canoe glided on. Closer, she could make out individual Beaters’ cries, and then John, talking steadily, intently, slurring; she caught the words “hold on” and “brave” and saw that Glynnis’s head was bowed and her eyes closed, as though she was praying.

So focused was John that when Dor shouted his name he startled, glancing wildly around, his eyes going wide when he saw them. Utter, loose-limbed exhaustion radiated from his body, and steam rose off his back. He stared dumbly at Dor.

“We’re coming in,” Dor yelled. “We’ve got the shells. A hundred, hundred-fifty rounds. And the .22, I don’t know what there is in the way of ammo. Enough to make this a fair fight, anyway.”

Cass held the ditty bag, felt its weight in her hands. Past John and Glynnis, she saw a Beater sink into the water up to its chin and ears, like a beaver or an otter. It churned the water in front of it and then she realized that its feet were not touching the bottom, it was keeping itself afloat—swimming—and it was coming closer.

“Oh, God,” she said softly.

“I see it,” Dor muttered through gritted teeth. “Don’t say anything until you get this shit safely in their boat. I mean it, Cass. Knowing can’t help them.”

If Cass alerted John and Glynnis of the approaching Beater, they might panic—rock the canoe too far, miss when Cass tossed the weapons—and then they wouldn’t stand a chance against it, that’s what Dor was saying. Cass nodded grimly.

“Be ready, be ready,” she whispered, and her eyes locked on Glynnis’s. Five yards, three—it was like softball, twenty years ago when she played on the U-12 team, waiting in the dugout for her team to bat.

And then the canoes pulled even. Cass held the bag aloft with trembling hands, and Glynnis reached; her hands closed on the bag, tugged, and then she had it, and Cass seized the .22 and held it out by the barrel, and Glynnis took that too, and then it was only a matter of the extra magazines, and Cass lifted them from the bottom of the boat and—

“What the hell!” John roared, turning, as the Beater caught up with the canoe and slapped at it with desperate hands. It was close enough that Cass could see that it was recently turned. Only the hair along its hairline had been pulled out of its scalp, and its face was still recognizable, barely bruised or lacerated, the face of a young man. The fresh wounds on its forearms were very much like those she’d found on herself when she woke in the field.

She shivered with the realization that she could be among this throng, or one like it, if she hadn’t recovered from the fever. She could be one of these single-minded things, throwing itself into the water, driven by flesh hunger. Who knew what things she had done—

Her attention jerked back with the thudding sound of John bringing an oar blade down on the Beater’s head, but by the second blow the thing had already slipped below the surface, and the oar slapped harmlessly on the water, splashing him and Glynnis instead.

The canoe was slammed from the bottom, the Beater trying to claw its way back to the surface. It popped up a second later, its wet, greasy head dripping cold water, its hands paddling air.

Then its scrabbling fingers found the lip of the canoe and gave a yank.

Glynnis screamed, and an answering roar came from the far shore, all the people of New Eden helpless to do anything but watch. Cass cried out, too, but no sound came from her; her throat was sealed with terror, her body frozen.

The gun fell from her shaking hands. It hit the water with a little splash and was gone, heavy metal sinking indifferently into the depths.

Oh my god

oh my god

oh my god

“Oh my God,” Cass gasped, watching the gun disappear.

She had failed. She had allowed the old fears to drift up from the place where she had banished them, and the fears had made her clumsy. She had failed John and Glynnis and she had failed Dor and the pain of her failure burst through her body—

“It doesn’t matter!” Dor shouted at her, his hand reaching for hers. His touch was warm, even in the frigid air he was warm, all determination and life, and she responded, snapped back to attention and forced herself to forget about the lost gun.

John slammed the butt of the oar’s handle directly onto the thing’s disfigured hand, over and over, so hard that the canoe shuddered and the air was filled with the sickening sound of bones splintering. And still it hung on. Miraculously, the canoe had not dipped below the water’s surface, though it rocked dangerously back and forth as the Beater hauled and tugged.

The water behind it churned and boiled, rounded shapes rising above the water. Heads. More of them—three or four more had swum nearly to the boat.

An explosion split the air only inches away and Cass snapped her head around. Glynnis was crouched in the boat; she must have pressed the muzzle of her gun directly to the Beater’s head because its blood covered the side of the canoe, her pants, the seat, everything—and its skull as it slipped below the surface for the last time was cratered and broken. Another shot. Another, and another, and Glynnis barely paused, even when brain matter slapped wetly against the hull, even when another of the infected hooked a bony hand over the side like the first one and when John smashed it with the heavy oar, a skinned and crusted finger splitting off into the boat. More and more, and then the shots ceased and there was silence—sudden, shocking silence and the smell of the shooting acrid in Cass’s nostrils. She coughed, almost delicately, touching her mouth as though assuring herself that she had survived the shoot-out, that she still lived.

“You go down, we’ll go upriver,” Dor yelled, already dipping his oar in the water to pull them against the current. John only nodded, exhausted, and laid his oar across his knees and bowed his head, a few seconds’ respite while they drifted downstream. Glynnis didn’t stop; she dug in the ditty bag and lined up her extra shells on the metal bench.

There was no more time to worry about them. “Get me in closer,” Cass urged Dor. “I’m not that good.” She might be able to hit a target from where they were, but she might not, and there were too many of them.

“You’re no good to anyone if they get to us,” Dor said, but he arced the craft around and headed to the shore.

“So don’t get me
that
close. Get me, you know, medium close.”

Cass was sure she saw his lips curve, only for a second. Dear God, he’d smiled. In the midst of this madness, wearing the blood of Beaters, she’d made a joke, unconsciously, and he’d found a reason to be amused.

Dor was strong when no one else was. Dor burned bright with life, with vitality, even when people and hopes—when the world itself—disintegrated around him.

Cass reached for him, touched her fingers to his wrist. He looked at her questioningly.

“God be with us,” she said.

For a moment he just looked back at her, his eyes shining the blue of Ceylon sapphires. “I don’t believe in God,” he said, barely more than a whisper.

“Then believe in me.”

They weren’t the words she meant to say. Weren’t words she was aware of thinking. But suddenly they were the plea that powered what she could do next, that gave her the strength and the courage to brace herself with a knee jammed against the cold metal canoe wall, to hold the gun in two hands the way her daddy taught her, to line up the Beater’s throat in the sights and to pull the trigger—

A starburst of blood and the beast shuddered for a second and then crumpled to the muddy bank, but Cass was already lining up her next shot and her next. Some she missed. Most she hit. Her arm went numb from the recoil and she had to stop and reload, and Dor said things to her and she held on to the sound of his voice even though somehow she’d lost the ability to comprehend what words came out and her teeth rattled and clacked against each other and still she kept shooting.

Dor kept them to the shore, going down the line of Beaters assembled there, and when they reached the huddled end it seemed that the crowd had thinned. Cass rested her gun against her knee, feeling her muscles stretched taut and painfully cramped, and twisted in her seat.

Beyond the scattered bodies, she could see the rest retreating, limping away in twos and threes, a whole line of them at the downstream end, where John and Glynnis’s canoe turned lazily in the water.

This, too, was terrifying, however. A retreat was evidence of forethought amid their insatiable drive, of consensual thinking, of responding to events. No doubt the Beaters had learned things tonight that would change their strategy tomorrow when they returned—a fact Cass was certain of. They’d be back as soon as daylight allowed.

“We’re heading to shore.”

John’s voice, weakened and hollow, reached them as though over a divide far greater than the water. Cass watched him dip his oar into the water, painfully, slowly; and then their own canoe turned and headed for home, Dor’s strokes sure and strong, undiminished by the effort he had made.

The effort
they
had made, together. A team.

Cass had only worked like this with one other man in her life, and that was Smoke. Only once before had she been completely united in purpose as she had been with Dor tonight, each protecting the other, each reading the other’s thoughts, the sum of them stronger than they could ever be on their own. With Dor, there was a hyperawareness of each other’s bodies, almost an anticipation of their movements, creating a total economy of motion. Nothing wasted, working to each other’s strengths.

The shore loomed solid and welcoming, lined with the people of New Eden, all of them shouting and crying and hugging each other. And then the crowd thinned slightly and Cass saw a figure limping slowly across the yard, all alone, hobbled over a stick, pain evident in every step.

She was vaguely aware of the people calling her name as the canoe was dragged up onto the bank, the warmth of Dor’s hand on hers as he helped her up, the solid ground beneath her numb feet.

She was aware of all these things, but they were not real and they were not true, not the way the man walking toward her as though he might die on the journey—the way he was real and true.

Smoke saw her, and his eyes found hers and held on and all the other sounds disappeared and all the other people disappeared and all there was was her and him and he lifted his hand, he held it out to her and then he fell, crashing down on the hard-packed earth of the island that he had never walked in all the time since he arrived in New Eden, all the time between sleeping and waking and every lost moment that lay between.