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.

Sawyer touched his gloved finger beside a tight, hooked contour nearly a full square off-course.

“God.” Manny stopped working at his foot. “Oh God.”

Cam said, “That’s the crest we’re on?”

“Right.”

They had been led three-quarters of a mile farther west than necessary by an undulation of ravines that ran oceanward rather than directly down into the valley, allowing themselves to be channeled by the shapes of the mountain.

Cam shut his burning hand into a fist. “I’ll walk point with you, watch the compass while you keep an eye on the map.”

“Right.” Sawyer stood up and Cam rose beside him.

Manny also broke into motion again, frantically squeezing his foot and kneading his ankle.

Erin said, softly, “Can’t we just sit for five minutes?”

Cam bent and took her arm.

* * * *

She went inside herself. Cam wasn’t sure how much time had passed since they’d worked down from the ridge — fifteen minutes, maybe; the sun was no higher than midmorning — but already Erin had bumped into him twice when he slowed to read the compass. She was tapping some reserve of energy.

Cam needed that second wind himself. They’d tromped through a hundred yards of wilting stalks before he remembered it was spring. This field of Mule’s Ear looked as if autumn had come. The yellow flowers, usually the size of a silver dollar, were just incomplete nubs — and the long, fleshy leaves that gave the plant its name had browned. Many were dry enough to crackle beneath his boots despite the storm runoff that made this meadow an uneven carpet of muck and puddles.

He’d seen no bees or butterflies this year, and wondered if the ants and reptiles had devoured every hive and slow-moving caterpillar. He wasn’t sure that a lack of pollinating bugs would doom these plants. Maybe a fungus was also to blame, or mites, or aphids…

Cam had nearly grasped the tremendous interlocking gestalt of it when mosquitoes gathered at the bottom edge of his goggles, a sudden fog probing for entry.

He slapped the spindly black cluster and twisted his mask. “Christ—”

Sawyer jumped and almost fell, turning to look back at him. Thirty small shadows clung to Sawyer’s face, his fabric mask stained with a wet comma over his mouth.

“What?” Sawyer said, and Cam reached out. Sawyer blocked his arm, the map flagging out from his hand in stiff paper zags, but none of these movements dislodged the bugs.

The bloodsuckers themselves were a minor threat, no more than an irritation. It was the bites that could kill. Each puncture might also drive nanos into their skin.

Cam mashed his gloves against his chin and forehead and turned to Erin. Her hood bristled with thin bodies like hair. Behind her, Bacchetti was already rubbing busily at himself. Manny lifted both hands before his eyes in disbelief.

“Oh shit,” Sawyer said.

“Run.” It was all Cam could think of. But they stood there for another instant, water chuckling somewhere among the dying plants. He bent to wipe his thighs and saw that inky living hair attached to his boots as well.

He stared, as Manny had.

The mosquitoes’ egg cycle must have been broken long ago. They lived no more than a few weeks, and the females needed blood to become fertile. Could they have adapted in such a short time to feed on soft-skinned frogs and salamanders? That seemed impossible. This entire species should have been wiped out except for some remainder of the breeds whose eggs lay dormant in mud until wetted by flooding.

Spring runoff. Christ. And Hollywood had probably suffered enough bites to fertilize five hundred females, each capable of birthing a thousand more—

Cam killed twenty with his hand and it meant nothing. He straightened up into a haze of bodies, squinting against their high, brittle whine. “Run.” He pushed Erin and she stumbled, crunching through two yards of Mule’s Ear. “Run!”

Manny bounded away, milling his arms, and they all broke after him. The mosquitoes were black snow.

Cam screamed when the blue jacket ahead of him disappeared, but then he saw another figure and changed course. He fell. He jumped up and Manny staggered into him, coming sideways across the slope. Cam began to shove at him, but Manny resisted. They went in different directions and Cam ran another forty yards before he realized that Bacchetti, to his left, was also moving laterally across the floodplain. West, into the wind.

Maybe it would be enough to push off the bugs.

He saw flashes of green and red disappear over a low rise, Sawyer and Erin. They might have yelled for him. He scrabbled after Manny to the top of the embankment.

They thrashed into the brush and lowest branches, shielding their goggles and masks with their forearms. These pines were different than any Cam had seen for twelve months, with thin needles and fragile orange soft cones that showered pollen over him. Each impact squashed mosquitoes by the dozens and chased away hundreds more.

He saw Bacchetti’s blue jacket and then spotted Erin ahead, a red figure working toward the sparsely wooded face of a hill. The wind would be stronger there.

Adrenaline was a poor substitute for real stamina. Cam made it to the slope, but the incline knocked his feet out from under him. He began to crawl. Then Manny helped him stand again and they struggled up.

At the crest, Erin lay on her side, heaving for air. Sawyer was still standing. There was nothing beyond them except more forest and rock bumps. Cam saw himself as a distorted blob in Sawyer’s mirrored lens when Sawyer stepped toward him, patting at his face and chest, killing the few bugs that still clung to him. Bacchetti was more clumsy, his efforts like punches.

“We have to keep moving,” Sawyer told them.

“The ridges,” Manny said, panting. “Stay on the ridges.”

“Right. If we can. Definitely keep away from water.”

“You think we’re near the road?”

Sawyer shook his head, untangling the torn map. He crouched and pinned the folds to the ground with his arms.

“We must be close,” Manny insisted.

But all the distance they’d hiked eastward again had been lost. They might even have run farther west than they’d been before. At least they had also fought a good ways downhill, north. The lodgepole pines and abundance of undergrowth were proof that they’d reached a lower altitude, more vivid to Cam than numbers on a map—6,600 feet. That was the benchmark nearest to the point where Sawyer’s tracing finger stopped.

“Maybe here,” Sawyer said.

The new sound on the wind didn’t register with Cam at first. They would need to head northwest to avoid the floodplain and the worst of the mosquitoes, but Highway 14 wasn’t more than a mile off. They could find a car.

A car. Cam turned his head. “Is that—”

The horn cried and cried again, a mockery of the coyotes who had once sung here. Then the howling became bleats.

“That’s Morse,” Manny said. “Ess oh ess.”

Three short, three long, three short. The pattern was obvious once the kid had pointed it out.

“Right.” Sawyer laughed and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know what the hell Price thinks we’re going to do for him. Look.” He slid his finger two and a half miles west, upwind. “Somehow they got onto this logging road.”

Cam said, “But it goes through.”

“Unless it’s blocked. Or they crashed.” Sawyer teetered noticeably when he rose to his feet. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We can’t help them.”


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