Plague Year (16 page)

“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.”

13

Sawyer rarely spoke of who he had been, who and what he’d left behind, but that was not unusual or any cause for suspicion. Many of them had abandoned their pasts.

Sawyer had always taken an authoritative stance regarding the plague but he seemed to be knowledgeable about the workings of almost anything mechanical, diesel engines, radio reception, and he had argued like an engineer when they were building their huts, pointing out drainage and foundation problems.

Cam had never worried about it, not even during the light-less days of winter when his mind stole away from their reeking hut and came back remembering the wildest fantasies as actual memory. Everyone talked about the plague. Everyone had theories. His long-lost buddy Hutch had read enough articles about nanotech to spout impressive factoids as they watched the first confused reports on TV. Manny offered plausible ideas based on nothing more than comic books and
Star Trek
.

There was no question that Sawyer seemed smarter about the problem than anybody else, but Sawyer had always been smarter than everyone about everything.

Kneeling in Doug Silverstein’s blood, Cam rejected all of the easy questions. Four thousand feet into the invisible sea was no place for an interrogation.
Colorado,
Sawyer had said.
Radio.
That had been his first demand of Hollywood, seventeen days ago,
Is there a two-way radio
?

He knew Sawyer would say and do anything to save himself—but this, this would be such a crazy lie, such a risk, all or nothing.

The crafty son of a bitch knew exactly how to play him.

Cam looked up. Sawyer hadn’t moved from his side, waiting on a verdict.

“Hurry,” Cam said.

Sawyer nodded and strode away toward Nielsen’s body and the gun shop. Cam might have shot him then. Instead, he rummaged through Doug Silverstein’s pockets for extra ammunition, and the man jerked at his touch. It should have been awful.

It was nothing.

Cam had regained his feet before Sawyer stepped out into sunlight again, cradling two pistols and another rifle. Then they shuffled back up the street toward Erin and Bacchetti.

“You ran,” Cam said. How else had Sawyer reached safe altitude? Without a head start, he would have been trapped in the cities or on the chaotic highways with all those millions of others. “You ran instead of trying to help.”

“I had nothing to do with it getting loose.”

“But you ran.”

“Everything that, everyone...It wasn’t my fault.”

Cam pressed him again. “You said you can stop it.”

“I swear. I’ve worked out a way to turn the nano against itself. Here.” Sawyer touched one of the pistols to his head. “
Archos
is a highly adaptable template, that was the whole point. We can rework—”

“Why didn’t you stop it before?”

“Right. On the goddamn mountain? You don’t build nano keys out of dirt.”

“Before. Why didn’t you do anything
before
.”

“There wasn’t time! It’s not something we’re going to bang out in an afternoon! I didn’t get any more warning than anyone, I swear it. It wasn’t my fault.”

Cam said nothing. They’d nearly reached the corner, and he didn’t want Bacchetti to overhear.

Sawyer was for real. Sawyer was telling the truth. He was more than canny enough to bury a secret of such magnitude— they would have killed him if they knew—but he had never been much of an actor, letting his contempt and superiority show even after those traits became a danger to the survival of their threesome.

Cam had hated him before. Cam had mistrusted Sawyer enough that, ultimately, he had been ready to silence him with a bullet. It was the anger of love betrayed. In many ways their bond had been the most intimate of Cam’s life, past or present. They were family in every way that counted.

He knew he’d carry the bastard if he had to.

* * * *

Cam and Bacchetti hooked Erin’s elbows around their necks, dragging down on both wrists, and she walked with a new determination just to relieve the stretching and tearing of her gut. Somewhere inside she had ruptured.

He supposed the cure wasn’t as close as he dreamed. She wasn’t falling just short of the finish line.
It isn’t something we’ll bang out in an afternoon.
Still, her suffering was a waste. He and Sawyer could have come across the valley alone, perhaps with Hollywood to guide them.

Of course that was exactly what Sawyer had fought for.
Let ’em stay.
He’d said it again and again.

Cam was the one who convinced the entire group to try.

We’ll never make it. He barely got here and he’s not half-starved!
Whose voice was that? Lorraine. Dead for no reason. She could have stayed on the mountain, too. They all could have stayed if they had only known.

Two blocks to the CalTrans station. Two blocks and Erin could sit and rest.

Sawyer ranged ahead, shoulders cocked like a man pushing into a stiff breeze. Cam wondered how bad he had it. Not bad enough. It was insane but he wanted Sawyer to look at her. The back of that green jacket was an insult, and Cam tried to hurry her moaning weight forward. “Wait,” he said. “Hey!”

“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.