Horizon

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 seen 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.