“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.
By contrast, the men racing toward them looked as though they had been training for survival, as though they were handpicked to kill: deadly, fit, lean and determined. Their shouts carried across the expanse of bridge, guttural cries, terrifyingly close.
Dor was unshouldering his backpack. He lowered it gently to the ground, then knelt and started unzipping it. “Smoke. Cass. Nadir. Take everyone with you-now.
“What are you going to do?”
He pulled out the brick of plastic explosive and set it on the ground with great care. He looked up at Cass and for a second he went still, his eyes wide with emotion.
Then he looked away. “Go, damn it, Cass, get the fuck out of here.”
“You heard him,” Smoke said. “It’s the only way, Cass. Go.”
Nadir was already gone, shouting ahead to the others, who were running as fast as they could, some of them already off the bridge, scrambling up onto the grassy bank of the point. He ran behind them, shouting encouragement, urging them to go faster. More bullets flew around them, and ahead, a bright bloom of red appeared on a woman’s back and she went stiff, falling slowly to the ground on her face. The terrified screaming crescendoed.
“Come
The seeds of a new community.
“No,” she said, the decision made before she even considered the alternative. She would not leave him. She would not leave Dor. “You go. Go on ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Go, Cass, I don’t need you,” Dor muttered, but the wires slipped from his fingers and he cursed. Frantically he picked them up again, pressing the ends between his finger and thumb.
