Horizon

trying to tell him, that last day, when he left without saying goodbye because saying goodbye would have hurt too much, would have stolen his focus-he had chosen.

And she’d come for him anyway, saved him anyway. But what was left, after that battle, was a broken man, an un-whole man-and who could blame Cass and his old friend for letting down their guard, for giving up resisting, for seeking a little comfort?

He could. He could blame them, or at least Dor, and if it was wrong he didn’t care, and if it was pointless he didn’t care. He looked on his old friend and felt the burn of betrayal and the stirrings of hatred, and he knew he had to master these emotions or they would all certainly die. Dor, with his dexterity and determination and focus, was their best and possibly only hope for finding a way back out. Smoke would have to fight the Beaters without him. He turned away, forcing the bile of his hatred down, down and thinking only of the challenge of the next moments.

He had learned the Easterners’ names during the past few days of eavesdropping on their conversations. Mayhew-now dead. Davis was with the group that had pressed to the front-and Smoke saw him now, crouched next to Mayhew’s body, rifling through his blood-soaked shirt. What was he looking for, his weapon? Blade? But all the Easterners were well armed-in fact, he’d admired Nadir’s ebony-handled tactical knife.

The other two were working at the entrance-Nadir, the most outgoing of the four, the one who chatted with the older folks and made wisecracks with the kids, and the Mack-truck-built Bart. They were kicking at the emergency exit door a few yards from Dor, grim-faced and silent, Bart putting his shoulder into it and making the frame shiver with each assault. It was possible that he’d dent the thing, but nearly inconceivable that he’d break through. And definitely not in time. The mall architects and then its dwellers had made sure of that, locking everyone in with great care.

The issue came up every time someone wandered out of the Box, drunk or bored or simply looking for a little solitude, and managed to get themselves killed instead. Then there would be calls for securing the exits, for preventing people from leaving. These demands had been put down firmly by Dor: personal liberties were not taken for granted in the Box. But here-in this temple of suburban consumerism, it was not hard to imagine a different outcome.

Smoke made his choice. He didn’t know any of the group, other than Dor, well enough to be certain who would be best in a fight, but the Easterners were disciplined, at least, and armed. “Nadir. Bart. Come on, we need to deal with these fuckers.”

The men joined him, the crowd closing in around the doors behind them, and considered the shambling crowd of newly turned, still at the far end of the mall. They moved slowly at this phase of the disease, their languorous quality one of the things that made the early stages deceptively appealing, the thing that caused people to call it “the beautiful death,” like tuberculosis a hundred years earlier.

They stopped using that term when the suffering advanced to the cannibalistic stages of the disease.

“They’re all infected, aren’t they?” Bart said, and Smoke saw that he was afraid. Which shouldn’t have been a surprise-who wouldn’t be terrified?-but the Easterners had accumulated, in very short order, a mystique around themselves, one that all the Edenites had bought into. It was so easy to grasp onto anything when you had nothing. Smoke should have known-would have known, if he had been paying attention-that they’d given away their allegiance too fast, that they’d bought into the flimsy illusion the strangers held up, giving too little thought to the dark side they were hiding.

Because every man had a dark side. Smoke knew this more than anyone, didn’t he?

“Nadir, you take the front line with me,” Smoke said, motioning them to hurry. “Bart, you next.” He scanned the people nearby for anyone who could help. “Terrence, Shel-you too. Do you have extra ammo?”

Shel held up her handgun and nodded; her face was pale but her hands were steady. Terrence stepped up without a word. The street-sweeper auto he carried had seemed like a ridiculous affectation to Smoke earlier, but now its bulk and power seemed like a good idea. So what if Terrence was a boy with a man’s weapon? If there was ever a day to become a man, today was it.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Smoke was conscious of his limp, of the trembling that started in his chest and radiated out his arms. He gripped his gun harder and made a fist with his other hand. He knew it was more important to appear strong than to be strong right now. The others would follow his example, a lesson he’d learned over and over in the Box when he trained with the other guards. He’d never been the strongest, the fastest, the most accurate-but he’d been the most determined.

He had the most to atone for.

And that was the thing he held in his mind as he led them down the mall walkway. It was another day of atonement and that was all right, and if his body screamed with pain and his thoughts fell away until all that was left was this blood-rimed shadow of the man he’d been, that was all right too. The coward’s way, the easy way, would have been to die back in the stinking concrete basement room where the Rebuilders had taken their vengeance upon him, where they left him to lie on a floor streaked with the blood of others, but Smoke did not die.

Because he wasn’t done atoning.

And because of Cass.

He sought her out in the huddled crowd of Edenites. There-there, she had retreated to the center, with Ruthie in her arms and her father close by. Red would keep her safe, for now-another man who’d give his life for Cass, and that was all right with Smoke.

Nadir knew what he was doing. He kept pace with Smoke, though Smoke knew he itched to go faster, and focused on the group ahead.

“Get ’em in the chute, boss, what do you say?” Nadir said quietly.

Smoke saw what he meant-if they could get the infected to come across one of the narrow pedestrian bridges that crisscrossed the atrium, they’d be tightly clustered, a better target than they were now. Not yet close enough to catch the Edenites’ scent, they stumbled and wandered in a loose formation along the side of the mall, momentarily distracted by the brilliant flashes of light being spun by some sort of crystal hanging in the display window of a Hot Topic.

“Good idea.” He turned to the others. “Everyone…we need to get them to come across. I’ll stay on this side with…how about you, Shel? You and me. Then when they’re in the middle, Terrence, Nadir, Bart, you guys get to the other side and we’ll box them in. But you’ll have to be fast because you’re going to have to take the long way, see?”

He sketched the plan with his finger, pointing out the circuit made by the two pedestrian bridges and the walkways on either side of the mall.

“Got it,” Shel said. The others nodded their assent.

“Okay, we’re ready?”

He was more aware than ever that he was the one slowing them down, and Smoke threw himself into the short journey, holding on to the brass rail overlooking the atrium, and favoring his good leg, letting the other drag a little. The Edenites had stopped screaming, at least, though he could hear the moaning and whimpering from those who’d been trampled and injured. In the relative quiet, the voices of the infected echoed, a trick of the acoustics of the place. The mumbled syllables and nonsense words blended together when there were so many of them, almost losing their oddness; they could have been a polite crowd at an art gallery, a group of suburban parents at a middle-school open house.

When they reached the far side of the bridge, Smoke took one side of the opening and motioned them to spread out. “Now we make some noise.”

They started whooping and hollering, and the infected paused and turned their heads. The expressions on their faces were disturbingly, stirringly innocent, a combination of curiosity and good-natured interest, like children at a matinee when the curtains part. Their babble went up a few decibels and they turned gracelessly, bumping into each other and squawking with irritation, shoving at one another.

A couple of them lumbered toward the bridge, but most of the others, their attention fixed on the Hot Topic display-sunglasses and belt buckles and sequined tops all hung just out of their reach-stayed where they were.

Without warning Shel ran forward onto the bridge. She whooped and shot at the ceiling, hitting the skylight with a tinkling of glass that rained down not far from them, sparkling as it fell.

“Come and get me, cocksuckers,” she screamed. “Come on, I know you want me. I’m good, I’m good, I’m