Horizon. Sophie Littlefield
back into the earth, no longer a danger to anything.
Cass watched it struggle, beginning to tire, swallowing great gulps of river water. But right before she turned to go, she saw something that made her pause.
The Beater stopped flailing and paddled. For a moment she doubted what she was seeing, but the longer she watched, the more she became sure of it. Its hands stroked the water in front of itself, a sloppy dog paddle, fingers splayed and weak against the current. A moment later it sank beneath the surface, the water quivering and swirling above where it disappeared for a moment before the current smoothed it over.
The Beater was as good as dead.
But before it died, it had started to teach itself to swim.
The kids were all fussy, as though they had sensed Cass’s mood despite her efforts to cover it up. Twyla whimpered and sucked her thumb, a habit Suzanne had been trying to break her of for some time, and which she had given Cass strict instructions to monitor. But today wasn’t the day for it, and Cass let the little girl comfort herself, wiping her tear-streaked face gently.
Dane and Dirk squabbled, and as the morning wore on, it got worse, Dane making a game of snatching away any plaything that caught Dirk’s attention. The little boy was enraged, screaming and bunching his hands into fists, so Cass picked him up and walked him around the living room, making loops through the kitchen. On one of her rotations she came back to find Dane holding his hands squeezed tightly together, yelling at Ruthie.
“She bit me! Cass, Ruthie bit me!”
Cass sighed and set Dirk down next to Twyla, who was giving play shots to a stuffed dog with a fake plastic syringe. Then she bent to examine Dane’s hand. Sure enough, there was a perfect angry red imprint of Ruthie’s teeth on the soft flesh of his palm.
“Oh, Ruthie,” Cass said, and Ruthie shyly picked up the skirt of her play dress and pulled it up over her head, a new habit that Cass usually found charming. “Were you two fighting?”
Dane shrugged, and Cass saw that he was trying to hide the pile of play money behind him. Dane was a hoarder, and she frequently had to intervene when he took things from the others, only to find little stashes here and there around the house, piles of doll shoes and board books and spoons. She was always at a loss as to how to discipline for this habit; the parenting books of Before never gave advice about what effect seeing your dad beaten to death trying to defend a water supply, or watching your happy-go-lucky neighbor get dragged away by a horde of screaming monsters, might have on children and what you could do to help.
She’d tried to talk to Ingrid about Dane, but she didn’t believe Cass. Ingrid’s answer to every parenting problem involved more of her relentless structured activities; she suggested Cass read a book called Red Monsters Share and discuss it with the children.
“Dane. There’s enough play money for everyone to share,” she said now, digging deep to come up with enough patience to see her through at least until lunch. By the time she served the children their tea and jam sandwiches—jam made from the nectarines she’d grown herself—she would probably be able to force down a few crackers. She always felt better after she got something in her stomach to absorb the churning bile left behind by one of her infrequent all-out benders.
Which she never would have had, if it hadn’t been for—
No, don’t
Dane was looking at her doubtfully, groping around behind him, trying to push the coins out of her sight.
“There’s enough for everyone,” Cass repeated. “You don’t have to keep them all yourself.”
“She bit me,” Dane repeated stubbornly. “Biting is not okay.”
And it wasn’t, of course; biting was one of the things that could get a kid thrown out of child care, Before. That and not being current on vaccinations. Or a failure to potty train. All offenses that seemed ridiculously irrelevant now.
“Biting is not okay, but neither is not sharing,” Cass said through gritted teeth. What she really wanted to do was seize all the plastic coins and put them in a box and put the box up on the counter where none of the kids could reach it, and keep taking things away from them every time they fussed, until they had nothing, nothing, and maybe that would keep them quiet, just long enough for her to get her strength back, just long enough to think.
“Maybe Ruthie’s got the fever,” Dane said, watching her closely, a mean little smile at the corner of his mouth.
Cass froze. She ground her fingernails into the palms of her hands, forcing herself not to react. “Don’t you ever say that,” she finally whispered, her own voice sounding strange to herself, stripped bare and dragged over coals.
There must have been something in her tone or expression that finally got through to Dane, because the smirk left his face and his lower lip wobbled and he looked down at the carpet.
“Don’t you ever say anything like that, Dane,” she repeated. Because if an adult could accuse, who was to say that a child couldn’t, as well? She was nearly positive that Phillip had the fever, but if more cases popped up, there was sure to be hysteria, finger-pointing, blame. There were people in New Eden—the weak ones, the easily swayed and those with a tenuous grip on reality—who might latch onto an accusation, even a groundless one, even one that came from a child. “None of us have the fever. We are careful. We are healthy.”
Before long she managed to distract the boy with a stub of crayon and pages torn from a microwave manual. The densely printed instructions were in English, Spanish, Japanese, but there was plenty of white space, which Dane and the other kids set to filling in with colorful scribbles at the kitchen table while Cass made preparations for lunch.
Long ago, Cass had practiced affirmations, little phrases from a book someone had given her at A.A. Live life on life’s terms. Faith chases away fear. Some days they seemed utterly worthless, sentimental drivel, mindless pleasantries. And some days they worked, a little.
I can do this I can do this I can do this, Cass repeated soundlessly to herself, turning away from the children and forming the words on trembling lips. It wasn’t much of a mantra. It lacked imagination and substance.
Worst of all, Cass seriously doubted whether it was true.
But she did. She got through lunch, settling only one disagreement over who got the last of the cookies. She managed to eat a few herbed kaysev crackers and the crusts of Ruthie’s sandwich, and after cleaning up the kitchen she got all the children to lie down for a nap, even Dane, who was not much of a sleeper these days. When she was sure they were all out, she lay down between Ruthie and Dirk, thinking she would just close her eyes for a moment, perhaps catch fifteen minutes’ rest before one of the children woke her up.
But images of the morning’s discovery kept her awake. Bubbles had risen to the surface of the water after the Beater went under. Was it possible that she had imagined the other—the sudden paddling of its hands?
The sound of the front door opening yanked Cass out of her thoughts. She scrambled to her feet and smoothed her clothes. There was already enough trouble between her and the other moms without them thinking she wasn’t doing her part with the children. She picked up the closest book—one of the historical romances Suzanne liked—and put her finger between the pages so it would look like she’d been reading, and sat in the recliner.
Ingrid came into the room, followed by Jay Swarmer, who headed up the security rotation, guarding the bridge and dragging away dead Beaters from the shore. His presence here, in the middle of the day, caused an uneasy cramp in Cass’s stomach. As for Ingrid, her onetime friend’s lips were set in a thin line and twin red spots stood out on her cheeks, and she refused to meet Cass’s gaze.
“What’s going on?” Cass said quietly. Getting no answer other than grim looks, she set the book down on the coffee table. “Let’s talk in the kitchen so we don’t wake the kids.”
“I’ll stay with them,” Ingrid said primly. She settled