by Jeff Carlson
“Oh—” Erin made a mournful sound.
Sawyer should have told her. She should have stayed back above the barrier. The bastard was right to consider himself more valuable than the rest of them put together, too valuable to risk, and Cam saw the sense in skipping a general announcement. Price’s reaction would have been hysterical, a trial, a sentence. But Sawyer had chosen not to keep Erin and Manny safe.
“Heyyy!”
Sawyer stopped and turned with one fist up, his index finger extended. Cam thought it was a threat before he saw that Sawyer was merely shushing him like a schoolteacher, the oddness of the gesture due to his face mask.
Erin had pulled her mask off. Erin had shaken her head violently when he tried to reset it. Erin smiled, lolling her head toward Cam because Bacchetti was two inches taller than him and held her up higher on that side.
Erin had a relationship with pain that Cam had never understood, and he hated her gruesome little cat’s smirk.
“God, I’m sorry,” he told her.
At least Bacchetti’s coughing hadn’t grown worse. Cam was optimistic that the big man might survive.
One block to go, after they got past the bank on the corner. This big concrete cube had been one of the easier landmarks from his cliff. One block and then a left past the gas station.
Sawyer reached the intersection first and paused at the tall edge of the bank, working the bolt of his rifle. Then he leaned his head around the corner directly into the concussive blast of Waxman’s shotgun.
Some or all of Price’s group had chosen not to flee into the woods after Hollywood. Some or all of them had circled around to the CalTrans station as Sawyer and Cam found weapons—and Jim Price had posted guards while he got a vehicle started.
Price had made the better choice again.
Sawyer’s head snapped away from the corner of the building in a huge fan of concrete dust and his body followed like a poorly designed flag, tangled and limp. He lost his goggles and one flap of hood and Cam thought his face was gone—
gone it’s gone it’s all over
—and Cam stumbled backward even as Sawyer flopped into the gutter, his left arm sprawled over the sidewalk.
Erin hung on to Cam, choking one elbow around his neck, as he let go of her and brought up his rifle. But when he shifted forward again, the change in momentum was too much. She tugged lightly at his daypack as she slid off.
Sawyer was alive. Sawyer had bent his left arm in and pushed, lifting his chest from the ridge of the gutter.
Before Cam reached him, a rifle cracked somewhere up the street and a fleck of black leapt from the asphalt near Sawyer’s boot. They could see his legs! Cam threw himself down, dropping his weapon, grabbing the back of Sawyer’s jacket. His infected hand came free but he pulled Sawyer nearly two feet, out of sight of anyone around the corner.
Blood curled in the gray concrete powder that covered the side of Sawyer’s face, speckled with green fibers from his hood, yet he seemed more dazed than seriously wounded. The worst was two divots on his temple. Cam saw bone or white tendon at the bottom of these small, shallow wells. The shotgun blast must have only grazed him, deflecting first off the wall of the bank, and Cam guessed that Waxman was at the edge of the gun’s short range. The end of the block. The pellet blast had widened and weakened, which was why the dust cloud had been so big and why the top of Sawyer’s skull wasn’t pulp.
Cam pulled his pistol and fired two shots past the bank at an angle that hit almost directly across the street from him. It should be enough to slow anyone advancing on them.
The shotgun roared back, then the rifle twice.
More gunfire erupted farther up the block and Cam bent his head around as fast as his pains would allow, wondering if somehow Bacchetti had outflanked Price and was trying to chase the other group back this way. Time had become elastic. He was afraid he’d lost several minutes. Yet Bacchetti stood right behind him, over Erin, revolver up in one hand.
Sawyer had given Bacchetti the .38 but Cam suspected it was empty. He knew Sawyer didn’t share his faith in the big man.
The new gunfire had a weird rhythm, methodical, paced, rather than the tight frenzies of attack and answer. It also consisted entirely of pistol shots—and there were other sounds mixed in, ringing metal, flat pops.
“Priiice!” He knew what they were doing. “Priiiiice!”
He put another shot across the street, helpless to stop them. He couldn’t even look around the corner.
The other group had obviously found a working vehicle. The other group was ready to go and they were now disabling the rest of the motor pool, shooting out radiators and tires.
“Tell me where to find your lab,” he said, cleaning Sawyer’s wounds. He was no longer afraid that Waxman or anyone else might charge their position, and he emptied most of a canteen over Sawyer’s head, scrubbing with two fingertips as Sawyer flinched. Then he risked three quick drinks himself. Each mouthful was sweet beyond understanding, and almost certainly laced with poison. Inert nanos carried into his belly would soon awaken, but the dust-and-damp fragrance had been too compelling to resist.
“Tell me.” He was careful with his voice.
If something else happened, if Sawyer didn’t make it, at least he could tell Colorado where to look. The lab would have computers, files, something. The radio broadcasts had implored survivors in the West for any clues.
“Just to be safe,” he said. “You have to.”
But Sawyer’s brown eyes were as flat and guarded as his mirrored goggles had been. “I don’t think so.”
“Jesus Christ, I’ll help you! Swear to Christ!”
The blaze at the CalTrans station spread fast. Greasy black smoke lurched up in two thickening towers, and Cam heard the fire crackle and laugh as they limped away. Gas tanks detonated in a random array of claps that rolled over the valley walls, sounding out every inch of elevation between them and the afternoon sky.
They walked.
They walked apart, Sawyer striding into the lead again, and Cam tormented himself with the question. Tell me where to find your lab. If his thinking wasn’t so fragmented, he would have asked it earlier. It should have been the first thing out of his mouth after Sawyer confessed.
It was a measure of what they’d become that he dropped Erin just to give Sawyer a hand with Nielsen’s body, stripping the yellow hood and cheap goggles. He actually looked back at her then—her gogs were high-quality Smiths—before he thought to check Doug Silverstein and see if his gear was any better.
Not far behind them, exploding vehicles threw the fire from one block to the next like a giant kicking his way through town. They were forced west, then cut north again ahead of the holocaust.
Beyond the center of Woodcreek, the terrain canted upward and pine trees closed in on the gravel road. The homes here were small and old and comfortable. They passed a fat SUV tucked under a carport, then a driveway with a 4Runner and a sedan. Then the road ended and they hustled through someone’s overgrown yard. No doubt they could have searched for keys, gotten an engine started, but then what? Work their way around the fire just to catch up with Price?
Hollywood had come across on foot. Hollywood had told them Route 47 was no good. Getting into a car was a trick, a trap. Sooner or later Price and the others would be forced to leave their truck and angle back this way again on foot from farther up the valley.
The rifle was too heavy, but Cam kept his pistol.
The north side of the valley, facing the sun, bristled with more plants and trees than the mountain they’d hiked down, and the lush spring growth would keep the fire from racing after them. They were safe from that danger at least.
They climbed.
They climbed, and the giant raged behind them. Cam let his tattered spirit roll upward on the booming of a propane tank. He let himself go away from here. He reached for the distant rim of the valley where the earth quit and the sky fell on forever. There were ot
her minds gathered there at the highest points, watching for him. If Hollywood’s people hadn’t heard the gunshots, which seemed unlikely, the explosions told the story. The smoke would be visible for fifty miles.
They climbed to judgment.
They climbed on distended muscles and broken feet. They climbed carrying acid and coals inside their bodies.
A wrinkle in the terrain brought them out of the trees and into a brown meadow and suddenly the ground leapt up in dark, fluttering sheets. Ten thousand grasshoppers. The four of them reared back, pelted by tiny, kicking bodies—and Erin fell, folding and squeezing her innards. It destroyed her. She bled out in a rush, a horrible soup that spilled out of her pants.
In some ways it was a mercy, but like Silverstein, like Manny, she retained a flicker of life even after this incredible trauma. She stared up at Cam as he pulled off her goggles, her gem blue eyes wide and confused.
He brushed the twitching bugs away from her face and out of her long hair because there was nothing else to do. He thought to kiss her, but then the bloody froth poured from her mouth.
* * * *
They climbed and the mountain was everlasting. They climbed like drunken men, careening off of trees, bumping shoulders. They passed an empty canteen and Cam scuffled another ten yards before he realized he was in front. He swayed and nearly toppled when he raised his eyes from the slanting rock face.
Someone was ahead of them.
Cam put his hand on his wide chest pocket, on his pistol. He turned into the late, low sun as Sawyer tottered up behind him, rubbing at his yellow hood with one black glove. Were they high enough yet to run into Price again? Maybe. Maybe they were almost at the top, they didn’t know, they’d only tried to place themselves on the map twice since fleeing Woodcreek— No. The opposite side of the valley was clearly higher. How much higher was tough to judge, but Price wouldn’t have crossed their path so soon unless he’d come laterally across the mountain.
That should have felt like good news. They weren’t going to sneak up on anyone, not with Bacchetti wheezing, not with their bootsteps echoing from the castle shapes of granite, and they couldn’t afford to search for a different route to avoid an ambush. A crippled man with a shotgun could have held them off until they were crippled themselves.
It had to be Hollywood, which had to mean they were on the right course. Good news.
But Cam was beyond anything good.
They climbed. They climbed over a jumble of car-sized boulders and Cam went first, testing the footing. At the top of a loose drainage, he held his burning arm down to Sawyer like a rope.
They climbed too slow.
Sawyer knocked himself over, beating at his temple. Cleaning and armoring his wounds might have minimized the infestation, but the machines were in him just the same.
Cam leaned down and summoned a voice. “Tell me where.”
Sawyer snapped his head like a dog shaking off wasps. Cam wasn’t sure it was an answer.
“Tell me. You son of a bitch.”
Sawyer lifted one shredded glove. That was his only response. He lay there panting until Cam pulled him up.
They climbed and Bacchetti matched their pace for three hundred yards on his hands and knees, convulsing and choking. Cam glanced back too many times. The man probably wouldn’t have made it even with assistance, but they would never know. Cam chose to stay with Sawyer.
They climbed above the sun.
At this elevation, the gradual mornings of spring were capped by sudden afternoons, and the mellowing light had eased down into the west. Soon it would be canceled altogether by a saw-toothed ridge.
They climbed and their sight dimmed as the day settled into dusk. They climbed through a field of dirt-browned snow and ice, the first they’d encountered. Cam knew this meant something. Wrapped in stars, his consciousness shot through with hard pinpoints of white, he didn’t realize that there were three of them again until he kicked into a silhouette and, when he tried to pick Sawyer up, the shape of the body seemed unfamiliar.
Hollywood had scratched open his round face before he passed out, maybe trying to stay awake. In the starlight his blood was black and glossy, and only hinted at the raw furrows he’d clawed through the rash on his cheek.
“Hey,” Cam whispered. “Hey, get up.”
They were almost there. He was sure of it. On this side of the valley, snow remained only in the highest reaches. The sun had destroyed the rest, and this gravel moonscape was the same as home. They were almost there.
Hollywood had won. Hollywood had succeeded, twice, at a punishing odyssey that they wouldn’t have even attempted without his example—and there was no question that it would have gone faster if they were better people. If they hadn’t bickered and lied and killed.
More than anyone, this young man deserved his help.
“Sawyer,” Cam said, looking around. “Hey.”
Sawyer was already beside him, clacking through the gravel on his knees. He blundered past Cam and pushed a chunk of rock into Hollywood’s teeth.
The boy’s eyes bulged open, shining glints in the dark. “Glaah! Glah!”
Cam screamed, too, putting his arms in the way. “Stop—”
“He fell.” Sawyer reeled away from them, hefting the rock again and then driving it down onto Cam’s wrist.
“Stop, stop, you don’t have to—”
“He fell. He fell and hit his head but we carried him up. We carried him all the way.”
“We could! We could have done that!”
Sawyer panted against him. “We have to. To be the good guys. In case Price makes it. His word against ours. And we’re the good guys. We carried their friend.”
“We could have. Oh Jesus, we could have.”
“Price wanted to take over. Remember that. It’s what we have to tell them. Price grabbed all those guns and planned to take over.”
They climbed to the barrier. They climbed with Hollywood between them, dying or already dead, draining blood down the front of his jacket, and then an invisible wall slammed through them in bits and pieces.
The pain did not miraculously cease. Too much tissue had been disintegrated. Too many machines had filled them.
Cam shrieked and hit the ground, unaware of the impact. He had known that transition would be awful but he had never been so thoroughly infected.
He flailed against the ungiving rock, crabbing upward, a spasm of nerves encumbered by thick, strengthless muscle. Clots and blotches rose beneath his skin and merged, expanding, piling into reefs of blisters. He climbed, but his foot was trapped beneath Hollywood’s weight, and his leg held him like a leash. He did not know this. He did not understand that his progress had stopped. He tried to climb—would always climb—and screamed again as his own blood abraded him from scalp to toe.
Sawyer rolled close, thrashing in the same animal frenzy, though he made no sound except a strangled, nasal grunting.
The voices that answered Cam were from above.
He would never guess how long it took the footsteps and flashlights to reach him. Long enough that the overall agony settled again into specific burns and aches. Long enough to worry that it was Jim Price, that Price had reached safety hours ago and would now kill them both.
Long enough to wonder if it mattered.
Sawyer was still in the grip of a massive seizure, grinding his teeth as his head drummed against the gravel.
The strangers descended together in a halo of light, and cutting beams stabbed out at Cam and played over his trembling, stained body. The tall figures stayed back. They murmured among themselves, quick, guttural, alien. Then they broke apart and encircled him. He saw the beveled shaft of a baseball bat, the gleam of an ax...
Realization cut through his delirium.
Sawyer’s original fear had been right, as he had been right about so many things. The situation here was no less desperate than on their own peak. These people had sent Hollywood across to bring back food. His strange enthu
siasm, his urging and his promises, everything made sense now. Cattle drive.
It was a fate that they deserved, but Cam rasped up at the faceless shadows. “Wait. Me.” Then the empty black of the valley swept up and claimed his mind before he could say more to convince them to spare Sawyer’s life.
14
The shuttle’s trademark sonic booms rattled over the high mountain basin like cannon fire. Moving fast enough to compress air at the front of its nose and its wing, Endeavour sent twin shock waves through the Colorado sky.
James Hollister looked up. He had been watching the crowd.
This basin formed a vast natural amphitheater in roughly the outline of an egg, its oval floor two miles across and three long. Canyons, sinks, and gullies creased the surrounding hillsides and James estimated the total surface space to be in excess of fifteen square miles.
The northern and western slopes were mostly empty—bald humps of green wild grass and rock. Along the eastern face, however, people stood shoulder to shoulder, horizon to horizon, like a great bison herd of Native American legend.
James had always possessed a flair for numbers but this mass defied him. It was unreal. It was hypnotizing. And its voice was an inconstant rumble, louder now that the Endeavour’s far-off thunder had split the clear blue afternoon.
“I don’t see them—”
“You think they’re okay?”
Some of the camera crew near James had turned south, shielding their eyes from the sun. That wasn’t the right direction. It was too soon. Endeavour would still be turning into its approach path, hidden from everyone down in this basin.
James looked back at the teeming crowd. He stood at the broad end of the egg, the southeast end, on top of a low knoll set beneath the mountain’s bulk. Highway 24 wound north from Leadville and took one last bend directly below him before shooting straight across the basin, riding its eastern edge to avoid the heart of the marsh. “Front-row seats,” he’d told Ruth, and she’d laughed. Actually he would have preferred another location farther north. All they’d see from here was the shuttle’s tail. Endeavour would pass nearly overhead and come down a quarter mile beyond him.