Plague War

12

Bacchetti stayed with Erin and Cam. Otherwise they would have fallen. Erin managed only a cramped, kicking motion as they began to run, and Cam put his boot down on her ankle. Then Bacchetti hauled her forward and Cam regained his balance. That first gunshot still had yet to roll beyond their hearing.

They were twenty feet from the end of the block but it looked like forever, a wide, flat-walled canyon. Sawyer’s revolver barked again and stamped a hundred details into Cam’s mind; screams behind him; the square shadows of the buildings painted on the street. A rifle cracked and Nielsen’s pistols stuttered pop pop pop pop—

All three of them instinctively ducked and Bacchetti dodged sideways, pushing Erin into Cam. The noise felt like a solid thing, each slap backed by a crazy weave of echoes.

The corner building was brick. They ducked past it and fell together as the noise disappeared. There were still human sounds — hysteria, the ragged screech of someone hurt — but the shooting had stopped.

Unsteady even on his hands and knees, bumping against the rough brick, Cam looked for Manny first. He saw Sawyer across the intersection on this same crossroad, crouched against a shop wall, a barbershop, busy with something in his lap. Reloading. Cam’s face mask had pulled down over his chin and he reset it as he poked his head around the corner.

Silverstein had come several paces after them, still holding his rifle away from his lanky torso. He lurched stiffly, trying not to disturb the nano infection in his gut. “Get away!” he screamed. “Getaway getaway!”

Price didn’t appear to have moved, rifle leveled. Someone near him ran into the hunting shop. Everybody else was down, either wounded or making themselves as small as possible, bright jackets like human confetti strewn over the asphalt.

Some of the confetti moved, crabbing away, kicking in agony.

Manny was a blue figure between Silverstein and Cam, his goggles ripped from his thin, bloody face. The kid had been smart enough not to run for Sawyer’s corner, even though he’d been closer to that side of the street. Most of the fire must have been directed back at Sawyer’s gun, but at least one stray round had caught Manny nevertheless — or maybe he’d been too slow, too easy, hopscotching on that bad foot. Maybe Nielsen had targeted him in frustration when Sawyer escaped. Maybe Price had done it from spite.

The kid was alive. His body was bent as if he’d been thrown from a great height, chest down, hips turned on their side, but he was alive. He looked like he was still trying to run or maybe dreaming of running. Both legs worked pathetically and he inched one blue-sleeved arm over the filthy road.

In his heart, Cam said good-bye.

“Getawayyy getawayyyy!” The yelling was more frightened than frightening, and deprived Silverstein of any element of surprise as he paced closer. Silverstein had lost his mind.

Sawyer knew exactly what he was doing. Sawyer had always known. He looked across the intersection at Cam, hefting his revolver and pointing with his free hand. He walked two fingers, then tapped down on them with the weapon’s short barrel.

Club him if he comes up your side of the street.

The clarity of the idea, just the act of communicating, gave Cam focus. He slipped out of his daypack. The canteen in it was no more than ten pounds, but it was the only weapon he had. He balled his hand around the top of one shoulder strap to give himself as much reach as possible, then glanced back for Erin, not sure what he would see.

Both she and Bacchetti were in ready crouches and she bobbed her head once, the way Sawyer always did, like once was plenty. Cam nodded back. He knew then that he genuinely loved her.

“Getawayyy!” The warning cry sounded no closer.

Cam dared to lean over, peering through the chink between two bricks. Silverstein was still reeling around the beast in his stomach but he’d altered his direction, patrolling a line across the street instead of continuing to advance on them.

Cam’s eyes went to Manny again, left out there like a bloody sack of garbage. It should have been Price. It should have been Sawyer. The idea resounded through him with no sign of madness, quiet and clear and definite.

It should have been Price and Sawyer.

Most of the people lying on the ground were rising now, and clustered around the two figures who remained prone. One of them was alive, a woman named Kelly Chemsak. She sobbed when Atkins and McCraney hoisted her up. The other casualty was Nielsen, the big gory splotches on his torso turned purple by his yellow jacket. No one wasted any time on him. Jocelyn grabbed a pistol trapped under Nielsen’s shoulder as George Waxman emerged from the hunting shop with two shotguns.

Hollywood was backing away. Cam noticed him first as motion separate from the group, a good distance behind everyone else. Then Hollywood turned and ran. He ran back the way that Price’s group had come, away from Cam, away from them all.

Heads turned. Silverstein turned.

It was an opportunity. “Go,” Cam said, heaving himself into the open. He didn’t have enough left to help Erin.

His knee buckled on the first step, nearly dropping him.

Bacchetti and Erin went past immediately, leaning on each other, and the best that Cam could do was an uneven skipping like Manny.

He heard Price shout. Halfway there. But the first shot came again from in front of him.

Sawyer had leaned out around his corner and put two quick bullets down the street, then two more as Erin and Bacchetti made it to safety beyond him. Cam swung his arm into Sawyer’s chest as he dived for the sidewalk and they fell in a tangle.

“Watch it!”

“Stop—” But he had no breath in him.

Sawyer crawled back to the edge of the barbershop, even though looking out to shoot meant exposing himself to their fire. Cam could never have done it. The voices and scuffling down the block might have been retreating or charging closer, a hundred feet away or only five. Why not just run away? Why force a standoff in this place as the nanos chewed through them?

He saw his answer in the outline of Sawyer’s figure against the brick building across the intersection.

Sawyer had taken a bizarre interest in fashion during the past week, showing Cam and Erin different jackets from their stash of extra clothing. It’s new, it’ll keep you drier, he’d insisted, but Erin loved her soft-worn puffy red coat and Cam had been unwilling to give up his old ski patrol jacket — his orange jacket, designed with visibility as one of its main functions.

Sawyer’s green jacket and brown snowboarding pants had camouflaged him well in the forest. He was no less noticeable than any of them here, yet he had prepared himself as best he could. He had anticipated a need to run and hide.

Cam leaned toward his old friend across the cement.

Sawyer didn’t react, focused entirely in the opposite direction. Sawyer rocked his head past the edge of the barbershop and brought his revolver up—

“Don’t,” Cam said, catching his other arm. “Jesus, don’t.”

“Get off me!”

“Just let them go.”

“Fucking stupid, go where? Go where, Cam?” Sawyer shifted closer, back behind the corner, lifting his hand as if to keep the.38 from Cam. It was also a position that would allow him to bring the revolver’s weight down like a hammer. “Goddammit, I could’ve gotten a couple more! They probably took off by now!”

Cam stayed very still, staring up into Sawyer’s mirrored goggles. He was so busy doing this that he barely registered the news that the others had fled. Good news.

Sawyer said, “Next time we might not see them coming.”

Cam nodded, but the motion was only reflex. Agree with him.

“You have to help me!”

“CalTrans. Let’s just get to the CalTrans station.”

“You have to help me,” Sawyer said again, lowering the gun. After another moment he shifted away from Cam and peeked around the corner. Then he stood, in stages, grabbing at the shop wall. And when he was up, he held out his other hand.

Cam didn’t hesitate. It was difficult to follow a chain of logic through the shock and pain crammed through his body, but he saw little choice except to run off like Hollywood, and then what? Price would shoot him on sight, now or later, here or on top of the mountain. Sawyer was right about that — and maybe Sawyer had saved them by firing first. It was good to think so. Yes. Sawyer had saved him.

He held on to this decision in the same way that he clung to Sawyer’s hand, pulling himself up.

There were four bodies sprawled in the street now, Manny and Nielsen and two others, and he had seen Kelly Chemsak wounded. That left eight, maybe fewer if Sawyer had winged anyone else, and David Keene had been infected early, so he would be weak… They might not be outgunned by more than four or five people…

The reversal in Cam was swift and powerful. This wasn’t who he wanted to be. It would be a very small tragedy compared to everything else that had happened, but there was a way out of this box. There was a third alternative.

“I need a gun,” he said, with just the right reluctance.

Kill Sawyer. Kill Sawyer now and shout it to the others, that should be enough to end this war.

Erin’s groaning turned his head, yet his gaze caught on Sawyer’s mirrored face and Sawyer bobbed his head once, ignoring her sounds. “We both need rifles,” Sawyer said, “in case they come at us from a distance.”

He gestured with his revolver for Cam to start walking, but Cam found it impossible to turn his back. Sawyer depended on his own paranoia the way that most people used their hearing or their sight. Sawyer needed an ally, but he might have decided that Cam was unreliable. He might just drop Cam here in the street with the rest of the dead and go on alone.

Cam made a show of hobbling on his bad leg and reached for Sawyer’s shoulder. Sawyer stepped closer. His sweat smell was strong and evoked memories of bed.

“We can do it,” Sawyer told him. “We’re going to make it.”

Breath went in and out of Manny in rapid huffs. Cam saw blood high on the kid’s back and on his thigh, dark stains beneath his jacket and pants.

“It’s us or them,” Sawyer said. “It’s that simple.”

Manny lay facing the other way and Cam felt relief, then shame and horror. Were the kid’s eyes open? Was he listening to them? Cam expected him to roll over at any moment, and then what would they do?

The next body was Silverstein, shot in the back. In fact, Nielsen seemed to be the only one who hadn’t been trying to run away. Nielsen embraced the sky, arms open like a bird, but Silverstein had collapsed facedown with his rifle at his feet.

Cam pushed off from Sawyer and took three steps before he remembered he was exaggerating his limp. He almost glanced back. He bent, and closed his good hand on the smooth wooden stock—

“You have to help me,” Sawyer insisted.

Kill him.

“I was part of the design team that built the nano. Cam? I was one of the people who built it.”

He paused, tensing to spin around as he came up.

“Cam? Listen to me.”

Silverstein wasn’t dead, either. Life wasn’t like the movies, pow, one shot in the belly and you’re gone. The resiliency of the human body was amazing. Sometimes it would continue to fight even when the will was gone.

Doug Silverstein had lost consciousness and his lungs gurgled badly, but he might last for hours. He might wake here, alone, as the machine plague devoured him.

Cam shifted his rifle to the man’s head. He couldn’t have said when he’d started crying.

“No! You’ll just let them know where we are!” Sawyer grabbed his shoulder. “Are you listening to me? We were going to beat cancer in two years, we were that close. I swear. We had everything right in the pipeline.”

“What…”

“Just get me to the radio. I swear. I can show Colorado how to stop it, but you have to help me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I built the nano, Cam. I built it and I’m probably the only person alive who can stop it.”