Plague War

11

Cam slipped easily across the rough terrain of granite and sparse forest. He’d dropped his pack this morning but kept his pistol and a canteen — and he knew this environment well, if not this particular mountain. The whitebark pines and junipers were a familiar world, the chokecherry brambles and wild grass.

There was a †utter of grasshoppers to his right. The insects scattered as Newcombe loped over with his ri†e in hand and they hunched together behind a tangle of boulders.

They’d heard voices above them distantly. Someone up there liked to yell to his friends, a boy, alternately impatient or happy, his young voice carrying across the open sky. It seemed like a good sign, but maybe the kid was only excited because Leadville troops had recently arrived.

“What do you think?” Newcombe whispered.

Cam only shrugged. In many ways their relationship reminded him of his bond with Albert Sawyer, the man who’d taken them to the lab in Sacramento. His friendship with Sawyer had been loaded with mistrust and need and ‚erce loyalty all at the same time. He wanted things to be better with Newcombe. He wanted to save his energy, instead of always trying to keep one eye behind him, so he tried again to make peace. “I think you’re right,” he said.

“The layout here might be as good as it gets,” Newcombe said, tipping his chin up at the ridges. “Let’s map this drainage before we work any farther north.”

“Yeah.” Cam reached for his binoculars as Newcombe took a small notepad from his pocket and quickly added to his sketches. The Special Forces soldier had his own shorthand that was detailed and accurate, but Cam paused with his binoculars lifted halfway, reaching out with his ears and other senses instead, measuring the wind and the early afternoon sun. The dust-and-pine smell of the mountain. He could still feel Ruth’s hand on his arm.

He itched to take off his goggles and mask, but the day was warm and clear. Without a barometer, Cam had to assume they were still in danger. The nicest weather typically came with high pressure fronts, which lifted the invisible sea of nanotech. On their maps, the nearest benchmarks read 9,985 and 10,160 feet, but Cam had learned to hold his pessimism close. They were still at least two hundred yards below the tallest peaks.

So far they hadn’t been able to get a look at whoever was up there. They had a bad height disadvantage. This archipelago of high points was like a string of castles. Each of the small islands sat above a sheer, ragged band of lava. If there were soldiers, if they were forced to shoot it out, they would be very exposed.

“Stay here,” Newcombe said.

“We’ll go together.”

“No. We can’t leave her alone, and if I’m coming back in a hurry I’ll need you to cover me.”

Cam nodded. Mark Newcombe was a good man, despite all their disagreements. Newcombe had helped him every day with his hand, cleaning and rebandaging the wound, and Newcombe had continued to haul the largest pack even after Cam took possession of the radios.

“We’ll go together,” Cam said. “At least as far as the ridge. That’s a better place for us to stay in sight of each other, and sooner or later…You know they’ll spot us. The longer we sneak around, the more likely it’ll happen.”

“Yeah. Stay here.”

“You don’t understand,” Cam said. “Even if there are no soldiers up there, those people will be…different. They could be dangerous.”

Newcombe glanced brie†y at the ravine again, then studied Cam for a much longer time. Newcombe’s expression was hidden in his mask and goggles, but his posture was intent. For once Cam was glad to be wrapped in his own gear. He still had one secret and he meant to keep it, especially from Ruth.

“It’s better if it’s both of us,” Cam said, ‚nding his voice again. “Not just for the show of strength. I’ll know what to say to them but you’re proof that it really works, the nanotech. That could make all the difference.”

Newcombe remained silent. Maybe he was thinking of the ‚rst mountain and the mad, grinding obsession that must have driven those people to carve thousands of crosses. The sight had shaken Cam to his core, because he never would have believed that anyone had things worse than on his own mountaintop. His group had only lasted eight months before they began to kill and feed on each other.

* * * *

Voices echoed through the ravine and Cam ducked against a car-sized boulder, leaving sunlight for the cool shadows beneath the rock. Newcombe squeezed in beside him with a wild look, then checked his ri†e’s safety again. Cam had misjudged the other group’s position. He’d led Newcombe too far up this gully to run back down again and there was no other route from here to the long cliff face above, where they might have scrambled into a crevice and waited and watched. The mountain had fooled him, bouncing the noise away until the other group abruptly moved past a ridgeline and their voices were redirected downhill.

They sounded very close.

“Sst,” Newcombe hissed. He bumped Cam with his elbow and signaled ef‚ciently. Four ‚ngers. South side of the rock.

They’ll cross our tracks, Cam thought, although the ground was rough and dry where it wasn’t dotted with snow. He and Newcombe had avoided the ‚elds of dirty ice and the soft new wild†owers and grass. They hadn’t left much trace.

He clenched his teeth, trying to hold down his adrenaline and the stark memories of gun‚re and screaming. Then the other group passed into view. They wore uniforms. Cam raised his pistol but Newcombe jammed one hand against his forearm exactly where Ruth had touched him.

“No,” Newcombe whispered.

The uniforms were ragged, once green, now a sun-bleached, filthy color very much like army olive drab. The shoulder patches and other insignia were paramilitary, but they were undisciplined. One had his shirt open and another wore a frayed San Francisco Giants baseball cap. They were teenagers. They were Boy Scouts. All four carried handmade backpacks, stout bare frames of branches lashed with rope, made for stacking and hauling wood.

The boys were skinny and hard and sunburned, and in good spirits. They were laughing.

Cam barely recognized the sound, his body still tight with fear. But it was only his own nerves and the distortions of the rock that had deepened their voices. In fact, he already knew the loudest boy. After listening below them for most of a day, he identi‚ed the con‚dent tone immediately as the kid said, “I’m gonna beat your ass today, Brandon.”

“No way.”

“Lose like always.”

“Bite me.”

They were using their chatter like a shield as they crossed into the machine plague, keeping each other brave. That was why they’d grown noisier and noisier as they approached.

Newcombe seemed as stunned as Cam at their fun, stupid banter. Both men hesitated.

It was the loud boy who saw them ‚rst, his eyes suddenly huge in his smooth face. “Holy fuck!” The boy’s face drained white and he grabbed two of his friends, yanking them back.

Cam had hoped to meet someone else ‚rst. He’d planned to call out from a distance and give them time to react — but the loud boy was a leader. He probably took part in every scavenging mission, and his simple heroism threw his friends apart like a grenade. He shoved them away from Cam and Newcombe even though it delayed him from running himself.

Newcombe said, “Wait!”

The teens continued to stagger back. One kid had fallen over another’s feet and the loud boy yelled again, dragging at his buddy on the ground. A second later there were answering shouts from above, lost and thin in the blue sky.

Cam stayed back as Newcombe slung his ri†e and pushed off his goggles and hood, exposing his freckles and sandy blond hair. “Wait,” Newcombe said. “It’s all right.”

“Holy fuck, man—”

“—did you come from!”

Their skin was not without old blisters and bruising. Some of these scars were lost beneath sunburn, windburn, sweat, and dirt, but they’d been caught below the barrier more than once. Maybe these low islands were even submerged in the invisible sea on hot summer days. Cam could only imagine how bad that must have been, attacked by the plague with nowhere left to climb.

“They’re soldiers,” said the kid on the ground, taking in Newcombe’s jacket and gun belt. Then he looked up abruptly, as if to check for planes.

The loud boy ‚nished the thought for him. “You’re American. You guys get shot down?”

“U.S. Army Special Forces, I’m Sergeant Newcombe and this is Najarro,” Newcombe said, letting them misunderstand about Cam for the moment — and now the teenagers’ movements were slower, wondering.

The loud boy began to grin at them. “Holy fuck,” he said again, savoring the curse.

* * * *

His name was Alex Dorrington. He was nineteen years old, with thick brown hair and a habit of squinting, an adaptation to the unrelenting sun on their islands. He also seemed short for his age. Cam remembered how Manny’s growth had stunted. All of these boys would have been a year and a half younger when the plague broke loose, still in the middle stages of adolescence, and their diet had been limited and poor.

The Scouts were like Manny in another way. They were elated. They pummeled Cam and Newcombe with a hundred questions and constantly touched them, especially Newcombe, picking at his jacket as if to con‚rm he was real.

“Who’s in all the planes?”

“—if we help you—”

“But how can you walk around below the line?”

They gave Cam a little more distance once he took off his goggles and mask, unable to hide their shock. Cam exploited it. “How many more people do you have up there?” he asked, and Alex said, “There’s four, sir. Four more. You, uh, you better talk to Brandon’s dad, I guess.”

“Good. Thanks.”

They cautiously followed the Scouts up through the ridge, saying nothing of Ruth. Alex had sent a kid named Mike ahead of them, but there were still people yelling down from the top— a man, a girl.

The two groups met in a crack in the rough black lava and Cam let Newcombe take the lead, not because of his ruined face but because he was trembling. It scared him. The boys had been desperately friendly and yet Cam felt himself continuing to measure the situation and not liking it, pinned in the gully. His tension reminded him of Sawyer again. There had been times when his friend was as sel‚sh and violent as a rat, all of which made him the perfect survivor, but Sawyer’s strength became a crucial weakness when he was unable to stop striving, stop ‚ghting, creating threats that hadn’t existed until he imagined them. Ultimately it had killed him. Cam didn’t want to be that person, and yet he wasn’t fully in control of himself.

“U.S. Army Special Forces,” Newcombe said, taking charge. He stepped forward to shake hands.

“I’m Ed,” the man said. “Ed Sevcik.” He was in his forties and dark-haired like Brandon, but with gray in his beard like salt.

Newcombe said, “Can we sit down someplace, Ed?”

“Oh my God, yes. I’m sorry. This way. I’m not…I can’t believe you’re here,” the man said, glancing back and forth between them. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Cam forced a smile, although he wasn’t surprised by their enthusiasm. The arrival of new faces must be profound.

They continued back up the ravine. The girl stayed close to Ed. She had the same dark hair and snub nose, Cam noticed, and a long pair of legs she’d chosen to show off, wearing shorts when all of the boys wore pants to protect themselves from the rock.

“Are there more of you coming?” Ed asked, and Newcombe said, “No. Just us.”

“They’re not off a plane, Mr. S,” Alex said, squinting, always squinting. Maybe it wasn’t the sun but that he’d begun to need glasses.

“Then how did you get here?”

“We can show you,” Newcombe said, and the kid they called D Mac added, “They were below the line, Mr. S.”

“But if you didn’t come off of a plane…”

“We’ll show you, I promise,” Newcombe said. “Let’s get over to your camp and sit down, okay?”

They moved across the slanting face of a short, barren plateau. There was more snow here in larger patches, ‚lthy with dust and pollen. Forty yards ahead, Brandon disappeared into a gap in the land, hurrying across to another small high point where they’d piled earth and rock to form windbreaks around a few tents. In every other direction the world dropped away, steep to the west, more gradually to the east, where other peaks thrust up across a great, broken valley. For Cam, the view was like coming home. It was endless. There was only the wind and the sun and the few tiny human beings around him, their voices loud and bright.

“Be careful on this slope,” Alex said, moving to crouch at the edge of the gap. He helped Ed ‚rst and then Newcombe. He also helped the girl, which earned him a smile.

Cam watched her as they climbed down and then up again. She was thin and †at-chested. There was no fat on any of them, which must be why she drew attention to her legs. Even with a few old scabs and fresh scratches, they were her best feature.

She was the only female. She can’t be more than ‚fteen, Cam thought, but if Ed was the leader here, she must be a large part of the in†uence that he commanded, simply by being under his control. King and princess. She would be the magnet at the center, holding all the boys, and her role only would have grown during their long isolation. Cam wondered how Ed had managed to keep the peace all this time — why there was no baby. It sounded like he’d taught the boys to call him “Mr. S,” reinforcing the habit of his authority, but they’d all grown older and Cam wondered if the girl still obeyed her father completely or if she’d begun to exert her own power.

Cam was careful not to study her too closely, looking at the boys’ faces instead. The girl had been quiet so far, yet the boys kept glancing at her for her reaction. For approval. That sort of charisma would be a heady feeling for such a young woman, and Cam and Newcombe were about to take it away from her.

That made her dangerous.

* * * *

They had set eight boulders around their ‚re pit, like chairs, inside the larger ring of windbreaks. Brandon and Hiroki gave up their seats for Cam and Newcombe, and Cam ‚nally realized that Brandon was a beta male, possibly because he was the brother of the girl. Cam would have thought Ed’s son would be his right-hand man, but Alex and D Mac appeared to be the lieutenants here.

It was an odd dynamic, but it had been shaped by their circumstances. Ed very likely hadn’t had the energy to spare to groom his son while protecting his daughter, which in turn had given rise to Alex and D Mac as those two worked to prove themselves and eventually dominated the rest. Brandon just didn’t have the same goal or motivation. More than that, he might have put himself in danger if he’d fought to keep a place near the top of pack. A king and a princess did not need a prince to stand with them, they needed knights.

“It’s not much,” Ed apologized, as Brandon handed over two battered plastic canteens. Then he fetched two aluminum cups full of berries and roots. Cam had also seen a small pot and a crude canvas bag heaped with grasshopper carapaces. There was a smooth rock for mashing the bugs, along with tree bark and fresh tufts of weeds and moss, but Brandon had held back the insects and the weeds on his own initiative, offering their best instead.

“I have something, too,” Newcombe said, rummaging through his jacket. From one pocket he came up with a spare notepad, which he gave to Ed. From another he produced a colorful sixteen-ounce packet of Berry Storm Gatorade powder.

Most of the boys cheered. “Oh, fuck yeah!” Alex said. Even the girl smiled.

Ed let them mix up the sweet red powder. The girl and a few of the boys choked theirs down immediately — the sports drink was loaded with salts and sugar — but Brandon drank his in sips with his eyes closed and Alex held on to his for later, demonstrating remarkable control.

“So how did you get here?” Newcombe asked.

“What? Where did you—” Mike began, but Alex shushed him and said, “Tell ’em, Mr. S.”

Ed Sevcik nodded, recognizing like Alex that Newcombe’s question was a test. He understood that Newcombe and Cam had the ability to get up and leave. “We were snowshoe camping,” Ed said, gesturing back down into the west. “Me and the boys, my wife, and Samantha.” He touched his shirt absently and the three square patches stitched onto his chest. 4. 1. 9. A troop number.

The girl was indeed sister and daughter to Brandon and Ed. Samantha and her mother had also been avid hikers and ‚shermen, and they’d tagged along for a week in the snow with the Scout troop. Ed was a roofer and usually worked straight through every summer, so the annual camping trip had doubled as a family vacation for years. His wife liked to say it beat the heck out of standing in two-hour lines at Disneyland. All of the kids were glad to skip school even if it meant extra homework afterward. Sam got to bring her iPod. Brandon had merit badges far ahead of his age. Both he and Alex had achieved the rank of Eagle Scout before the plague, and by Ed’s estimation all of the boys — and Samantha — had long since quali‚ed for Eagle Scout themselves.

They’d reached these low, tiny islands with three people they didn’t know, Ed said honestly, when he could have lied. Cam didn’t ask about the unlikely statistics. Why was it only the three strangers and Ed’s wife who were dead? Either someone made a move for the girl or her mother, or someone started cheating with the food. Cam had committed murder himself for all the right reasons, and anyway the killing was long done.

The Scouts were perfect to help spread the vaccine, Cam thought, and it wasn’t such a coincidence that he and Newcombe and Ruth had found this able group. No one else could have survived on these miniscule patches of ground.

“We need your help,” Newcombe said, as he explained about the vaccine and the ‚ght for control of it.

Ed and his wolf pack were aware of the sudden air war. At ‚rst, the surge of jets and helicopters had ‚lled them with wild hope. They’d wanted to believe that a massive rescue effort was ‚nally underway, but the batteries for their little radio had faded more than a year ago and they had only been able to guess who was ‚ghting and why.

“You want us to go out there,” Ed said uncertainly when Newcombe was done, but his son was more ready to get away.

“We know there are people over there,” Brandon said, pointing across a narrow valley to the east. “We’ve seen smoke on two of those mountains.”

At the same time, Samantha ‚nally spoke up. “It doesn’t look like your vaccine works very well,” she said, gazing at Cam. “I’m sorry. I just have to say that.”

“All of this happened before we got the nanotech,” Cam explained, gesturing at his face, but it was no accident that he’d kept his gloves on, hiding his hands.

“The vaccine works,” Newcombe said.

“This will be the most important thing you ever do,” Cam said, meeting Brandon’s eyes for an instant before turning to Alex and D Mac. They were the ones he really wanted, but D Mac was frowning and Alex seemed uncharacteristically quiet.

Alex was waiting for Samantha and her father, even as D Mac made his ‚rst small break from them.

“How do we get it?” D Mac said. “I mean, is it a needle?” he asked, and then Brandon and Mike ‚lled the circle with words, leaning forward as they competed to be heard.

“So you’re on the rebel side—”

“—but how do we know—”

“You have a duty,” Newcombe told them.

“I’m not sure we want any part of this war,” Ed said, and Cam understood. The man had seen these children through the entire plague year. His paternal instincts would be cut deep in him. He must have given up any hope of changing things and begun to plan through the grim, impossible chore of enduring in this place, breeding his daughter with each of the boys.

They’d surely talked about it — their limited genetics, the maximum population this string of islands could sustain. Cam couldn’t see how else it would have played out. Ed must have used the promise of her to keep them patient until Samantha was old enough not to complicate her childbirth, and somehow their discipline had held. He’d done well, but now it was ‚nished.

“You go or you don’t get the vaccine,” Newcombe said. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”

“We’re not asking you to ‚ght anyone,” Cam said.

“You are,” Ed said. “They’re looking for you. They’ll look for us, too.”

“You’re still Americans,” Newcombe said. “You can be a part of that again. Just help us spread the nanotech. That’s all we want. Just help a few people like we helped you.”

“That sounds pretty good, Dad,” Brandon said.

“But the planes,” Ed said.

“You’re still Americans,” Newcombe repeated, looking around at their frayed uniforms and B.S.A. caps. He was obviously ready to draw on their past and their patriotism.

Cam could see it would be much easier than that. Alex might stick with Samantha. He was the tightest with her, but the other teenagers were restless and girl-hungry and excited. “Listen,” he said. “Those other mountains over there are just the beginning. There’ll be people everywhere who will be very, very happy to see you.”

Samantha shook her head. “It’s so dangerous.”

Yes, Cam thought, looking at the boys instead of Ed and his daughter. “You’ll be kings,” he said.

* * * *

It was early evening before Cam and Newcombe returned for Ruth, allowing D Mac, Mike, Hiroki, and Brandon to come along. The boys had looked like they were ready to ‚ght to keep them from walking away. No promise to return would have been enough.

“We might drop below the barrier for an hour or more,” Cam warned them, but D Mac shrugged and said, “We’ve done it before.”

Even without Alex, the teenagers were extra noisy as they descended, questioning Cam and Newcombe about the war and the plague. They knew so little. They were still in shock. They were good kids, mostly, but it made Cam uneasy that Alex had stayed behind with Ed and Samantha and Kevin, the sixth boy. Kevin had big eyes and a small mouth. He was the bottom dog as far as Cam could tell, and he would probably do whatever Ed and Alex told him.

What if they decided to stay? They could be forced off of their mountain at gunpoint, he supposed. Either way, it would be better to give them the vaccine. Cam wouldn’t abandon them here without it, but if Ed or the girl saw that, they would never leave. Not at ‚rst.

They won’t stay here forever, he thought. Even if a few of them delayed for months, even if it took them the entire summer to become comfortable with the idea, ranging ever-farther below the barrier for food and wood, they would see the truth. Winter would drive them lower. And if Samantha did become pregnant, especially if most of the Scouts had left, wouldn’t Ed want to ‚nd other people to help him raise his grandchild?

Cam smiled faintly as he led the boys across a ‚eld of rock and wild grass, listening to Newcombe fend off Mike.

“But if the president’s in Colorado,” the boy asked.

“There are at least two presidents now,” Newcombe said.

“But if the real one is in Colorado—”

“President Kail died in the ‚rst month of the plague and the VP stepped up, but the Speaker of the House was in Montana, which went over to the breakaways.”

“So the vice president is the real president.”

“Look, kid, it’s all fucked up, okay?”

He just needs to know he’s on the right side, Cam thought, but they were within a quarter-mile of the camp spot and he wanted to be sure Ruth didn’t run away. He cupped his mouth with his gloves and shouted, “Ruth! Ruth, we’re okay!”

No answer. He felt a thread of nervous fear, but the whitebark forest was murmuring in the breeze, a sound like distant ocean surf, and they were still pretty far away. She might not have recognized his voice.

“Ruth! Hey!”

“There,” Brandon said.

She’d gone to high ground, running to the splintered mess of a deadfall on the slope above them. She stood among the tangle of branches with a fresh red scratch across her cheek, her chest heaving for air. In her good hand was her pistol and Cam smiled again, glad for her. “It’s okay!” he said.

“Are you all right?” she called.

The waiting had been hard on her. He realized that, but his heart changed as he closed the sixty feet between them. Ruth pushed off her goggles and he saw more than relief in her expression. Last night she had managed to hide it in the dark. Now he saw genuine affection, even attachment, which made him sick because he didn’t know how to accept it. He knew that his bent, ragged hands on her would be repulsive.

Her eyes swept over the boys and also went to Newcombe, yet her smile and her tears were for Cam. “I was scared,” Ruth said without shame. Her boots crunched in the twigs and pine needles. “You were gone so long, it was hours—”

Cam stepped back from her embrace. Her ‚ngertips touched the back of his neck and then slid to his shoulder as he turned. His own arm came up brie†y to her waist. That was all. Then he tipped his head at the boys and said, “We got lucky. These guys are great.”

Ruth’s face was torn with surprise and her lower lip hung open in a dull way that looked very much unlike her.

“Cam,” she said, reaching for him again. She’d clearly made her decision. She was opening herself to him, and yet he had to say no.

“Let’s get our packs. Come on.”

“Cam, wait.”

“It’ll take us a while to hike back up again and we can have dinner there,” he said as he moved away.

The four boys had shifted back from them, glancing at each other, but D Mac stepped forward as Cam went past, allowing Cam plenty of room. “Miss,” D Mac said, ignoring the fact that Ruth was nearly twenty years older. “I’m D Mac. I mean Darren.” He blushed and tried to cover it with a grin. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

“Yes.” Ruth took the boy’s hand, but Cam was aware of her gaze following after him.

* * * *

They said nothing about who she was or the data index. They’d already risked enough, and they had to keep in mind that rumors would spread with the vaccine. They didn’t want anyone else to come hunting them for any reason.

The wind continued to pick up as the sun fell. It scraped over the mountain, howling and cold. The wolf pack did not complain. They put on all of their extra clothes. Samantha kept herself very noticeable in a yellow jacket. Then they hunkered down behind their rock berms in twos and threes, using each other for shelter and heat. Cam found space for himself beside Brandon and Mike, leaving Ruth with Ed, D Mac, Hiroki, and Newcombe. The distance between the tiny groups wasn’t much. Their camp barely covered thirty square feet inside the piles of rock, but he saw Ruth glancing at him again and again.

They threw a small party — a large ‚re and exotic food from Cam and Newcombe’s packs. Deviled ham. Canned pears. The ‚re snapped in the wind, throwing sparks and ashes, but Ed allowed the boys to use as much wood as they liked to keep the †ames high. “There won’t be much left for breakfast,” Alex told him, and Ed said, “What the hell. We’ll get more.”

The boys hollered at the ‚rst can of food as if they’d never seen anything like it, but every one of them was careful not to dig out too much of the ham with their ‚ngers. They passed the tin around so that everyone got some, even if Mike and Kevin had to lick the insides. It was the same with the pears, the crackers, the chocolate. Even faced with sudden wealth, they were careful. They were a team. Despite his raw mood, Cam was glad for their joy. He felt jealousy and pride.

The sky turned dark but held its blue half-light for more than an hour. Shadows grew in pockets across the land below, ‚lling the leeside of every hill and low place like black lakes and seas, but there was nothing to shield this peak from the sun except the edge of the world itself. A few distant clouds glowed on the horizon.

“I say we take off tomorrow!” Mike still held one cracker in the frayed wool glove of his left hand, treasuring it. “That was the best food I’ve had in a year,” he said. “We might as well hike on it.”

“Yep.”

“Makes sense to me.”

That was Brandon and Hiroki, and Cam glanced up to ‚nd D Mac. He’d expected the boy to add his voice to theirs, but D Mac was quiet. A minute ago, Samantha had risen from her spot with Alex and Kevin to join her father, asking if she could brew some bark tea, but her real goal had been D Mac. She’d pulled him aside and Cam saw them whispering together. That must be how she operated. Just a private moment with her was an enticement and she had already drawn D Mac back to her side.

“We can carry as little as possible,” Mike said. “Bedrolls, canteens, just one cook set. We can make it there in two days, don’t you think?”

“Maybe you want to carry more,” Ed said in his tentative way of moving around a problem. Cam had noticed that the man did not give absolute commands. He tried to nudge the boys with half-formed concepts instead, letting them come to him to complete his ideas.

“You mean in case there’s a problem,” Hiroki said.

“We don’t know what’s down there.”

“Yeah. Fine.” Mike nodded impatiently. “So we also take a tent. Extra food. We should still be able to get over there in two days. Maybe less.”

“I just want you to be prepared,” Ed said.

He’s bending instead of breaking, Cam thought. The man had realized he’d never hold on to them, but he still hoped to rein them in a bit.

“It’s been a long time,” Ed said. “If it takes another week, what difference does it make?”

“Maybe just a couple of us could go ‚rst,” D Mac said. “Someone should look around, you know. Look for food. There must be all kinds of good stuff down there.”

Cam glanced past D Mac at the girl. It was her fear that D Mac was expressing.

“No,” Cam said, pushing himself up. The wind was like freezing water in his hair and just the change from sitting to standing made a vast difference in the light. The orange heat of the bon‚re only rose to his waist. Above it, the sky went forever, empty and cold. “You go or you don’t get the vaccine,” Cam said. “It’s that simple, and every day matters. We told you. We’re at war. Leadville could †y over this mountain tomorrow. And why the hell would you want to stay on this fucking rock anyway, when the whole world is down there?”

“That’s right,” Mike said, muttering.

“You go or you stay.” Cam stared across the leaping ‚re at Ed and D Mac. “But you don’t get the vaccine unless you go.”

“You were careful with us,” Ed said evenly.

“Yes.” This wasn’t a conversation that Cam wanted to have — the monsters they might ‚nd. “You can be careful, too,” he said. “But you have to go. You have to try.”

* * * *

Cam noticed Ruth and Newcombe with their heads together and was immediately reminded of Samantha and D Mac, full of anger and suspicion. It was a weakness. He recognized that, but the destruction of his body had also destroyed something in his mind. He couldn’t see how he would ever have a woman again and it colored everything about them both, the girl and Ruth.

The camp was settling down for the night. The ‚re had burned down to coals and only Mike and Brandon remained at the red glow of the pit, murmuring together. Ed, Alex, and D Mac moved in the darkness, carrying blankets from one tent to two others to make room for their guests. Ed’s voice carried from the second tent as he argued with Samantha.

Cam knelt with his two friends. “What’s up?”

“We’ve been talking,” Ruth said. She seemed apologetic, even wary.

“You know we have to push these guys,” Cam said.

“That’s not it,” Newcombe said.

“I think we’d better try for our rendezvous,” Ruth said quickly. “The plane. I’m sorry, Cam. I’m sorry. My feet…I don’t think I can hike any more. And these guys can spread the vaccine for us now.”

I could, too, Cam thought, an instant before he understood that her worried frown held the same idea.

She didn’t want him to stay behind, but he didn’t want to keep going with her. She was his only hope of becoming whole again, developing powerful new nanotech to rebuild the damage to his skin and his insides, but how realistic was that? It was a dream. That was all. It would be years before scientists like her had any time or energy to spare, and even then what they knew best were weapons — simple, attacking technology like the plague and the vaccine. Sawyer had talked of immortality, but in the same breath he’d admitted he spent years just building the prototype that became the plague.

Cam didn’t want to be her dog, and Newcombe could protect her, and these boys needed help. They needed someone to lead them. He could begin to reorganize the survivors here and take the ‚rst small, dif‚cult steps to try to rebuild.

Even if the vaccine wasn’t 100 percent effective, it was enough, and what if her plane was shot down? What if she never reached safety? It was crucial to save as many people as possible before next winter. Someone, somewhere, had to have a chance to reclaim the lowlands, and there might never be a better start than the opportunity presented by the Scouts.

“Newcombe still has his radio codes,” Ruth said. “The Canadians can send a plane that can touch down on a road or a meadow. Somewhere close.”

“As close as they can,” Newcombe said.

Cam only nodded. I should stay here, he thought.