Plague Year

by Jeff Carlson

  “Then tell him to get out!”

  “Jim, we know this road better than you anyway.”

  The truck’s overloaded shocks responded poorly to the rough trail. Each time the tires hit a large bump or dip, the truck bed swayed like a boat sliding down between two waves, and Cam thought it was only a matter of time before someone fell overboard.

  They’d crammed all four women into the cab, although it only had bucket seats for driver and shotgun, which put twelve men in the long bed. Even sitting half of them on top of each other left barely enough space for the rest to stand. It was safest in the middle and at the front, where Price and Mc-Craney leaned over the cab with their hands out, but Cam had deliberately climbed in late on the passenger side. The uphill side. In most places the jeep trail was merely a flat strip bulldozed out of the mountain, vulnerable to erosion, and if the truck slid in the mud or if part of the trail fell away, he wanted a chance to jump free.

  Sweat had pushed through the skin of his back and underarms as they hiked but now his body temperature dropped, pockets of wet and cold seeping through his GORE-TEX shell.

  They rode into a calm hallway through a stand of fifty-foot pines, then back into the rain.

  Then they reached the mid-mountain lodge. The parking lot was hardly glass-smooth, warped by a thousand freezes and thaws, but the jouncing of the truck bed settled into a mild vibration as they sped through the disorderly gathering of cars.

  “Watch out—”

  “Stop pushing my goggles!”

  As Sawyer accelerated, the few men on their feet leaned in for balance, grabbing at the men who were sitting down, and Bacchetti and another guy shoved back. Hollywood cried something that Cam heard only partly. “You together!”

  There was more grabbing at every turn and Sawyer revved the engine through each straightaway, no matter how short.

  Price struck the roof of the cab. “Slow down!”

  “Jim, let him concentrate!”

  “I said slow down!” Price beat on the roof until Sawyer stabbed at the brakes, decelerating from thirty-five to ten in the middle of a long, easy turn. To Cam it was a clear warning and demonstration of power. Price obviously thought otherwise, rapping again with his fist. “That’s bet—”

  Sawyer gunned the engine, two jolts, rocking them backward. Hollywood wasn’t the only man who shouted in protest but Cam was struck again by the disappointment in his voice. “What is he doing?” Hollywood cried.

  Sawyer pushed it to fifty or more as the highway slanted straight down for a quarter mile. Cam thought the rain had let up, but it was impossible to be sure inside the corona of spray blasting up from the tires. His sodden face mask tasted of bitter old human stink.

  Around a tight corner they passed a jam of three vehicles, then the entrance to the condominium village. Clusters of tiny yellow flowers on the roadside drew Cam’s gaze and then there was an acre or more of living color. “Look,” he said.

  Sawyer slowed and left the highway. Cam hadn’t noticed the corliss reservoir sign, but recognized this turnoff.

  “Don’t turn, don’t turn! What are you— This road is a dead end!” Price raised one fist to strike the roof of the cab again and Silverstein said, “He’s right, the reservoir’s just a few miles down and then it’s a parking lot.”

  Cam was glad for his mask and goggles. He knew his guilt was on his face. Would Sawyer stop if Price threatened to push him over the side? But Price was banging on the cab, and Nielsen was trying to find room to turn forward, and Hollywood had leaned over and placed his hand on Keene’s shoulder as Keene hugged his belly with both arms.

  It was Manny who drew everyone’s attention to him. “Cam? Where are we going?”

  The truck entered a series of turns and the hazy sun shifted to one side and back again, their goggles darkening and clearing in a pattern that reminded him of pendulums.

  Manny said it again, “Cam?”

  The urge to silence the boy actually carried his hands out from his body several inches.

  Manfred Wright had aged in ways that Cam both mourned and respected as necessary, yet still didn’t grasp some fundamentals of human relationships. Cam often believed that this was a kind of self-defense on Manny’s part, a willful retreat to childhood. His thoughtlessness had become a threat, however, and Cam realized that Sawyer had been very right not to trust the kid with their plan. Manny would have told Hollywood, who would have told Price, all with the best intentions in mind.

  “It’s a dead end,” Silverstein said.

  Price was also quiet, almost hoarse. “What are you guys trying to do?”

  Cam knew he needed to say something. There had to be a right word, but then a handful of fingers bunched in his jacket underneath his daypack. Nielsen.

  “Let go of him,” Bacchetti said, growling.

  The horn blared again. “Two minutes!” Sawyer ducked out his window and slapped on the door. “We’ll be there in two minutes and you can have the truck if you want it!”

  No one else spoke for an instant and Cam’s relief was mixed through with gratitude.

  “David’s infected,” Hollywood told them, still bent over Keene. Keene kept his arms tight into his belly and rocked his upper body back and forth as if nodding yes.

  But they had all turned toward Sawyer’s voice.

  “His hand,” Hollywood explained.

  Sawyer hit his door again, impatient with their lack of response. “Just another minute and you can have it!”

  Silverstein was the first to spare a glance back at Keene. Then he looked forward again and yelled, “You’re wasting time! This is a dead end.”

  “We’re saving time!” Cam said. “Look at the map. The highway runs west almost fifty miles before there’s a junction in the right direction, and it’s all turns. That’s at least two hours, maybe more, and if it’s blocked you’ll have to drive back up here again no matter what.”

  “What!” Price echoed his last sound in a squawk.

  “We hike down.”

  The few roads in the greater valley tended to run laterally west-to-east, because there was a limit to how steeply cars could climb and because there just weren’t many destinations in the area. East of Bear Summit, Highway 6 went nowhere except down into the Nevada desert, and westward for forty-six miles lay only campgrounds and orchards and three small towns. Eventually 6 did bend down to meet Highway 14, and eventually 14 branched into Route 47, which ran north up to Hollywood’s peak—but Cam and Sawyer had estimated the total mileage to be ninety or more.

  He said, “Even assuming 6 is clear all the way down, and it won’t be, you’ll spend two hours just to get to 14. But there’s only three and a half miles between the highways from here. We can cut cross-country. Forty minutes.”

  “It’ll take longer than that! That’s crazy!” McCraney looked at Price. “There’s a reason there’s no road down there!”

  “We can go places that cars can’t,” Cam shot back.

  “But then what?” Silverstein asked. “Then you’re on foot.”

  “We find another car, or hike straight up. Staying on the highway just because it’s there is going to get you killed.”

  Price said, “Everyone voted! Everyone already voted!”

  They’d actually conducted their ritual twice, as if a show of hands would somehow change the layout of the valley. Cam had raised the same objections only to be shouted down, but Sawyer hadn’t even tried to change anybody’s mind. He’d watched and he’d listened and he’d given Cam one silent nod when Price made a spectacle of tallying the votes for the first time.

  Cam looked at Hollywood now. The boy had also argued against using the truck initially and Cam had expected him to weigh in on their side, but he said nothing. Maybe he was trying to picture the map in his head.

  “We all went over it a hundred times!” Price pointed at Nielsen and Atkins and McCraney as if counting them. “We all measured it out! One hour! It’s only one hour down!”
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br />   “The roads will be blocked, Jim.” The snowline had been 6,000 feet, which might have kept the roads clear to that level—except for four-wheel drives and locals with plow attachments, snowmobiles, National Guard tanks. It would only take one pileup to stop them.

  Price flung his arm like he was throwing something away, his only acknowledgment that Cam had spoken. “It’s stupid to hike now if we don’t have to! Save our strength!”

  “You’ll die out there,” McCraney added, as if the truck were a fortress or a submarine, as if David Keene had not been breathing the same air as everyone else.

  The randomness of the attacks had always been nearly as terrifying as the speed and force with which the nanos consumed a host body, and Cam knew it was only a matter of time before the plague awakened inside them all. A very short time.

  Neat wooden signs appeared in clusters beside the road, showing stick figures making use of garbage cans and rest-rooms. Then they rode into an asphalt meadow occupied only by a Subaru wagon. Beyond a surprising expanse of dark and utterly still water, rock shapes jutted into the sky.

  Sawyer left the engine running and pushed through the door with his green pack in hand. Cam hopped over the passenger side across from him.

  Silverstein was the only one who joined them on the ground, immediately placing himself between Sawyer and the open driver door. There was a bustle of motion and shouting from the women inside the cab, and Bacchetti fought with the jam in the truck bed.

  Cam gazed up at them. He’d told himself that once they were committed, everyone would see that it was unrealistic to think they could just coast on over.

  Most of them hadn’t even moved.

  “Sawyer was right about you,” he said, hoping to spark some reaction, anger, anything, and Keene half rose as Bacchetti stepped down beside Cam. Manny had also come up on one knee but paused there, glancing from Cam to Hollywood.

  “I have to go back,” Keene said. He gripped his left wrist with his other hand. “Take me back.”

  The commotion inside the cab quieted as Erin lunged out on the driver’s side, bumping Silverstein from behind. The other women must have resisted getting out so violently that she couldn’t even open the passenger door.

  She stumbled into Sawyer’s embrace and Cam watched him lead her away from the group, readjusting her face mask and goggles with a minimum of efficient gestures.

  “I have to go back!” Keene thrust both arms up in a wild shoveling motion, never letting go of his wrist.

  Price yelled, “If these bastards hadn’t wasted our time—”

  “Hollywood,” Cam said. “You of all people, you know we’re right. We’ll be on the trail you took in forty minutes.”

  “You can’t,” Hollywood said. He might have been answering Cam. Then he patted Keene’s shoulder and said, “You know we can’t drive up again.”

  “My hand,” Keene whispered.

  “That station wagon might have keys in it,” Silverstein said, waving across the parking lot, and Price finally dropped to the ground and threw himself inside the truck cab.

  “Hollywood,” Cam repeated. “Please.”

  Price shut the door with a bang and shifted into gear.

  Cam stepped back, and every inch between them felt like a huge gulf, widening fast as the truck began to roll away. Yes, Hollywood had every right to resent him. Diverting from the highway had been a nasty trick, but it was Price’s stubbornness that was to blame for the deception—

  Maybe it was just that the boy’s leg hurt. Maybe Hollywood had realized during their short hike that he didn’t have the strength to walk all the way again.

  Price braked beside the other car, but Keene didn’t move and Silverstein said, “Check it, you better check it now.”

  Hollywood jumped down and was at the Subaru’s door in two paces. He tried the handle, then cupped both hands on the glass and pressed his goggles close. He straightened up, shook his head—and as Cam moved toward him, Hollywood stepped back to the truck and reached for it like a ballplayer touching base.

  “Let’s go with them! I want to go with them!” Manny lurched toward Hollywood through the crowded bodies, even though the other side of the truck was closer. “Sawyer always knows what he’s talking about!”

  “Don’t be stupid.” Silverstein caught Manny’s arm.

  Cam’s amazement at this reaction vanished as McCraney also grabbed at Manny and Nielsen rocked over on his butt to block the kid’s path. These men were so threatened by any alternative to their thinking that they would fight to keep others from making a different choice. Safety in numbers, maybe.

  “Your foot!” Price yelled through the driver’s window. “You can’t walk on that foot, Manny!”

  “He’s in better shape than most of you,” Cam said. A mistake. Manny had jerked free, but now Silverstein hooked his skinny waist and McCraney used both hands to secure the kid’s left arm. Scaring them, threatening them, had only increased their resolve.

  Manny pushed away from Silverstein, and Cam thumped his hand against the truck. “Let him go!”

  Price yelled at Hollywood. “Get in, move it, we’re—”

  The gunshot felt so loud that Cam stumbled back from the fight, impaled by the sound.

  Sawyer stalked toward them with his tarnished revolver held up in one fist. There was no need to point it at anybody. McCraney shoved Manny away, and Silverstein only kept an arm around the kid in a reflex effort to keep him from falling.

  Words were also unnecessary, but Sawyer seemed to relish the moment. He thrust his weapon overhead as if testing its weight and its power. “Get your fucking hands off him,” he said.

  10

  The wind in the trees sounded like clean ocean surf. It soothed Cam despite reminding him of his father, his brothers. The pervasive roar was loud enough to drown his worrying and this small surrender became easier with every step.

  He was tired.

  Sawyer kept up a merciless pace. Sawyer had his anger and his vision to feed upon, but Cam was tired. His knee hurt. His snow pants were hot and still heavy with moisture.

  Sunlight rippled through the canopy of whitebark pines, cut into distinct rays that swarmed with gnats and flies. His boots made tiny sounds beneath the wind’s surf, the clack of pebbles kicked together, the snap of twigs. The rain-softened dirt absorbed all else.

  His four companions might have seemed more obtrusive if they were marching down in a group instead of single file, but following Sawyer through the trees was easier than deciding on individual paths. Cam heard Erin’s breathing whenever he got close—whenever rocks or a deadfall slowed their parade or, more rarely, when she shied away from a tight squeeze and paused to find her own course. Mostly there was only the working beat of his heart and the monotone wind—and the bugs.

  Black flies droned around Cam insistently, attracted by his heat or smell or color. No amount of waving could disperse these fat dots. They beat against his goggles and face mask with the weight of raindrops.

  The flies were loud but for the past ten minutes Bacchetti had been louder, mimicking their engine buzz. “Vrrrve! Vrrrrrve!”

  Finally, Sawyer stopped and swung his head around as they bunched up. Bacchetti outweighed him by thirty pounds, even wasted to the bone, yet Sawyer merely said, “Shut up.”

  The grasshoppers were fewer here in the trees than farther up the mountain, before the storm, but Cam had noticed several veins of ants. One dark mass boiled around a flailing millipede. Another exploded up Sawyer’s calf when he stepped in the wrong place, and Cam shoved past Erin to help his friend sweep his leg clean before the jittering specks got inside his clothing.

  Six times now Sawyer had dodged left or right. Cam could only guess why except during the fourth detour, when he heard the dry, warning shake of a rattler. Already he’d spotted two nests of snakes, babies coiled together for warmth—and it was unnatural for these creatures to be exposed. Maybe all the good crevices and overhangs were taken.
/>   Maybe on a hot afternoon this land would crawl.

  The lizard population was unbelievable. Chilled by the passing rain, small gray bodies hunched within every patch of sunshine. They clearly preferred rock but sometimes covered fallen logs and bare dirt as well. They scurried from Sawyer with astonishing speed, a low wave front of motion, yet quickly expended themselves and merged with the still earth again.

  Cam studied the land to distract himself. The sensation in his left hand was undeniable. Shaking his arm would not disrupt the ever-worsening itch and it would not keep the nanos from spreading, but the only other option was to do nothing. So he snapped his wrist downward again and again. This threw off his balance, and he nearly toppled when he stepped on a pinecone.

  His fear was real but not overpowering. Not until he noticed Sawyer’s green shape pacing back uphill—

  Erin had sat down. Cam opened his mouth to yell but Sawyer stopped in front of a break in the pines. Their map hung open at his side, creased folds of white.

  Manny slogged by and didn’t pause, moving to join Sawyer. The kid’s limp was clearly more pronounced.

  “Go,” Cam said to Erin. “Let’s go.”

  But Sawyer and Manny returned as Bacchetti caught up.

  “Look. Everybody look.” Sawyer crouched and spread the map on the ground. “We’re drifting too far west.”

  You’re the one who said it had to be you in the lead, Cam thought, yet resentment was more than petty; it could be dangerous.

  He bumped Manny to move in by Sawyer’s shoulder. Manny was preoccupied anyway, digging into his boot with both thumbs, punching at the heel. Maybe the kid had only cramped, but the nanos had an unfortunate tendency to bunch up in scar tissue, attacking the parts of the body that had already been weakened. Cam always got it first in his hand or his ear.

  A red grid covered the map, showing square miles, each block messy with brown contour lines of elevation, yet Cam located their intended path in a glance. They’d scratched big X marks into the lighter patterns of abrasion in the waterproofing.