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Horizon
Sophie Littlefield
OF LIVING THINGS THERE WERE FEW, BUT THEY CARRIED ONCass Dollar is a survivor. She’s overcome the meltdown of civilization, humans turned mindless cannibals, and the many evils of man.But from beneath the devastated California landscape emerges a tendril of hope. A mysterious traveler arrives at New Eden with knowledge of a passageway North—a final escape from the increasingly cunning Beaters. Clutching this dream, Cass and many others follow him into the unknown.Journeying down valleys and over barren hills, Cass remains torn between two men. One—her beloved Smoke—is not so innocent as he once was. The other keeps a primal hold on her that feels like Fate itself. And beneath it all, Cass must confront the worst of what’s inside her—dark memories from when she was a Beater herself. But she, and all of the other survivors, will fight to the death for the promise of a new horizon….
Of living things there were none
But they carried on
Cass Dollar has survived the worst Aftertime has to offer: civilization’s meltdown, humans turned mindless cannibals, men visiting and revisiting evil upon one another.
If Cass can overcome the worst of what’s inside her—after all, she was once a Beater herself, until she mysteriously healed—then their journey may finally end. And a new horizon will be born.
Praise for Sophie Littlefield
“Littlefield turns what could be just another zombie apocalypse into a thoughtful and entertaining exploration of many themes.… Littlefield has a gift for pacing, her adroit and detailed world-building going down easy amid page-turning action and evocative, sensual, harrowing descriptions that bring every paragraph of this thriller to life.”
—Publishers Weekly on Aftertime (starred review)
“Driven by a tough, smart heroine with a dark past… Littlefield’s compelling writing will keep readers turning pages late into the night to find out what happens next. Outstanding!”
—RT Book Reviews, on Aftertime (Top Pick, Seal of Excellence)
“Sophie Littlefield shows considerable skills for delving into the depths of her characters and complex plotting as she disarms the reader.”
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“I’m geeking out of my mind after reading Aftertime because I felt almost the same way reading it as I do watching The Walking Dead: captivated.”
—All Things Urban Fantasy
“A new generation of post-apocalyptic fiction: a unique journey into a horrifying world of zombies, zealots and avarice that examines the strength of one woman, the joy of acceptance and the power of love. A must read.”
—JT Ellison, author of A Deeper Darkness
”Grab a Littlefield pronto.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Littlefield excels at keeping the momentum going and she knows how to inject a huge beating heart into any story, even one in which humanity is barely alive.”
—Pop Culture Nerd
“Rebirth not only matches Aftertime’s thematic punch, it just may have surpassed it!.…Littlefield’s Aftertime trilogy is top-notch post-apocalyptic fiction. It’s an innovative take on the zombie mythos. It’s a heartrending love story….If Aftertime was [Stephen] King’s The Stand in a bra and panties then Rebirth is McCarthy’s The Road in a dress and sensible heels.”
—Paul Goat Allen, BarnesandNoble.com
“A book about what it means to love and be human disguised as a story about a zombie-riddled dystopia.”
—RT Book Reviews on Rebirth
“From H.G. Wells to Max Brooks to Cormac McCarthy, the End Times have always belonged to the boys. Sophie Littlefield gives an explosive voice to the other half of the planet’s population…a whole new kind of fierce.”
—Laura Benedict, author of Isabella Moon
“You will have a very good day, indeed, when you enter the wonderful world of Sophie Littlefield’s fiction.”
—Mystery Lovers Bookshop
Horizon
Sophie Littlefield
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
In honor of all beginnings
failed and fresh
hopeless and hopeful
And for M:
safe in His arms
Contents
Chapter 1 (#ub80ca620-f15e-557c-aa52-be924ecc7035)
Chapter 2 (#ue0817892-b244-5f8a-8deb-231d20fdd315)
Chapter 3 (#u3e0fe2f5-f156-5e43-a1b2-5c0bfd4a10c2)
Chapter 4 (#u15b2c287-e05b-5485-a7d6-53e0014fcc71)
Chapter 5 (#ud31f9f4e-9f06-5d57-ba4d-27dd0b712491)
Chapter 6 (#u55d3514d-0693-5e20-95bb-5482c35dcc10)
Chapter 7 (#u65911482-53be-5a87-9948-bb86ef264d50)
Chapter 8 (#ucc0426bf-c418-5bbb-b021-3c3218783908)
Chapter 9 (#u78a7bb77-c6b3-5cff-a9d0-517d05131418)
Chapter 10 (#ue1dfcb91-6835-5f0e-8c16-4b64eb65d273)
Chapter 11 (#uc17ffcc1-d804-59ca-9e57-41738a0d4359)
Chapter 12 (#u8e78cac7-9350-574d-9ee7-de9756e60ddd)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1
ALL THOSE SHADES of red—candy-apple and cinnamon and carnelian and rust and vermilion and dozens more—people arriving for the party stopped and stared at the paper hearts twirling lazily overhead on their strings. No one had seen anything like it since Before. No one expected to see anything like it again Aftertime.
Except, maybe, for Cass, who dreamed lush banks of scarlet gaillardia, Mister Lincoln roses heavy on glossy-leafed branches, delicate swaying spires of firecracker penstemon. Cass Dollar hoarded hope with characteristic parsimony when she was awake, but since coming to New Eden her dreams were audacious, greedy, lusting for color and scent and life.
Even here, in this stretch of what had once been Central California valley farmland—rarely touched by frost, the sun warming one’s face in March and burning in April—even here it was possible to long for spring in February. In her winter garden, homely rows of black-twig seedlings and lumpy rhizomes protruded from the dirt. There was little that was lovely save the pale green throats of kaysev sprouts dotting the fields beyond, skimming the entire southern end of the island with verdant life beyond the few dormant acres in which Cass toiled. At the end of each day she had dirt under her nails, pebbles in her shoes, the sweet-rot smell of compost clinging to her skin and nothing to show for it yet in the fields.
Cass was not the only one who was tired of winter. In fact, the social committee’s first idea had been a cabin-fever dance, until someone suggested the more upbeat Valentine’s Day theme. There was romance to be found in New Eden, for some—different than Before, of course. Some kinds of human attraction thrived in an atmosphere of strife and danger. Others waned. Cass couldn’t be bothered to care.
It wasn’t the first time she’d ignored the social committee’s call for volunteers, though it wasn’t like she was swamped with work. The pruning was done. She’d sprayed the citrus with dormant oil she’d hand-pressed from kaysev beans, and she covered the thorny branches whenever nighttime temperatures dipped. A second round of lettuces and cabbages and parsnips were planted. Beyond weeding and the eternal blueleaf patrol, there would be little else to do until warmer weather launched the growing season into full swing. So Cass would have had plenty of time to join the other women in turning the public building into a party room, fashioning decorations from bits gathered from all around the islands. She’d declined to help as they set aside ingredients for special dishes and tested out cocktails made with kaysev alcohol, its gingery taste overpowering anything else they tried to mix it with. The committee had even talked the raiding parties into bringing home scrap wood for the past two weeks, enough for a bonfire to burn until the wee hours.
Cass watched them as she walked home across the narrow bamboo bridge from Garden Island, stretching her tired limbs and working the kinks out of her neck, sore from the backbreaking work of checking the kaysev for blueleaf every afternoon. The sun was still high enough to offer some warmth, so they’d thrown open the skylights and French doors to let it in on their party. Once, the building had been the weekend getaway of some tech baron with lowbrow taste, a man who preferred booze cruises and wakeboarding to wine tasting in Napa. Most of the residents of the banks along the farm channels opted for trailers and prefab buildings and listing shacks, so the house stood out for both its size and the quality of its construction. Well before Cass had arrived in New Eden, all the non-load-bearing walls had been removed, opening it up; there were foosball and pool tables, bar stools, leather furniture, a community center of sorts. A clubhouse surrounded by the little town that had sprung up on three contiguous islands wedged in the center of a waterway that had been nameless and unremarkable Before.
It was supposed to be called Pison River now, after one of the four lost rivers that carried water away from Eden in the Bible. But the Methodist minister who had named the river had died in a cirrhotic coma after coughing up black clotted blood. He had the disease long before coming to New Eden, but everyone had taken to calling it the Poison River instead.
Cass slipped just inside, curious about the party preparations despite herself. There was Collette Portescue, with her signature apron and a colorful scarf in her hair. Collette was inexhaustibly cheery, a born organizer, a Sacramento socialite who’d found her true calling only after she lost everything.
“Cass! Cass, there you are.” The woman’s cultivated voice called to her now, unmistakable in the high registers over the murmurs of the other volunteers and a handful of early guests. Even though she’d agreed to this, Cass’s gut tightened as Collette put a drink cup down and rushed toward her on—Cass’s eyes widened with astonishment—teetering red satin high heels. Beneath the wrinkled linen of her embroidered apron, Collette wore a tight red jersey dress. Cass glanced around at the others; some of them had made an effort, with hair washed and tied back, even an occasional slash of lipstick or jingling silver bracelet—but February was still February and most people wore layers to stay warm, none of it new and none of it truly clean. It was a testament to Collette’s fierce commitment to New Eden’s social life that she stood before Cass with her arms bare and her hair in home-job pin curls.
Her smile was as splendid as ever—that kind of dental work probably came with an apocalypse-proof guarantee—and her kindness was genuine, only kindness felt like a blade to Cass’s heart and forced her to turn away, pretending to cough.
“Oh, precious, you haven’t got that bug that’s going around, have you?” There was a faint note of the South in Collette’s voice, a hint of the Miss Georgia crown she’d worn four decades ago. The early eighties would have been the perfect era for her—big hair, big parties, big spending. Austerity never seemed like a greater affront than it did where Collette was concerned.
“No, ma’am, just—dust, maybe.”
