Dor searched the crowd, his gaze falling on Harris, the quietest member of the council. “Harris. You need to take charge of arming people. Okay? You can do that? Good candidates would be Terrence, Shel, Fat Mike. Do
Harris nodded. “I got it.”
“Good. I doubt you’ll be able to get all that coordinated by dusk, and with any luck they’ll be gone by then. But this isn’t wasted, because we’re going to be ready in the morning. And I have a feeling we’ll need to be.”
Roger reached the canoe, and was struggling with the branch. Sharon and Elsa ran in the direction of the auto garage. Harris moved among the crowd, assembling his shooters.
Everyone else focused on Roger. He got the canoe unhooked with little trouble, but as soon as he started dragging it back toward shore, it was clear that he was in trouble. He sidestroked with only one hand free, kicking hard against the current. But the canoe dragged in the water and slowed him down.
“Go, Roger,” a man said near Cass. Another man repeated it, and then they were all saying it, quietly.
Though the struggling man could not possibly hear them, Cass felt their energy, their frantic hope. The sun slipped a little lower in the sky and orange brilliance shone along the horizon, the last gasp of the day. In an hour the sky would be velvety dark blue, and the Beaters would not be able to see. Their tiny pupils, altered by the fever so that they were no longer able to expand, would not let in enough light for them to make out rough shapes, much less details. If they could hold off this wave until then…
Roger paused, his hand on the lip of the canoe, and treaded water for a moment. Cass saw him gasping for breath. For a moment he went still, and was it her imagination or was he sinking down, down, under the water-
“Damn it,” his girlfriend exclaimed. “Do something, don’t you see he can’t make it, someone do something, save him!”
Cass wasn’t the only one to turn to Dor. He was deliberating, his jaw pulsing the way it always did when he focused on a problem.
“You could send someone else in for him.”
“And lose two men?” Dor answered quietly; their conversation was not meant for anyone else to hear. Valerie was as good as forgotten in the moment, and Cass saw that she knew it, her face blanched the shade of parchment. Defeat contorted her fine, frail beauty, and she turned away.
“Roger’s our best swimmer,” Dor continued, reaching for Cass’s hand. She didn’t think he was even aware of touching her, and in that moment she understood she was his mooring, the source of his steady courage. “No one else could have gotten as far as he has.”
No one else could bring him back in-that’s what he was saying. Around him the voices had turned imploring-
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.
