by Jeff Carlson
“I’m sorry,” Ruth continued. For what? She was still kneeling very close to him and she tipped her head back, trying to redirect his attention away from herself. “It’s supposed to be Newcombe’s shift, but I thought…I wanted to talk again. Without him.”
“Yeah.”
She had volunteered to stand guard through the ‚rst six hours of the night because tomorrow she would stay behind as the men hiked the rest of the way up without her. She would be safe down here. They knew there was no one else below the barrier, whereas the islands above might hold any number of threats.
Ruth had spent three hours in darkness before she woke Cam, three hours with the bugs and the wind. Her head was crowded with fear and loss and distance, poised on this invisible border with thousands of miles of dead zone below them and tiny safe areas above that might not be safe after all.
She didn’t know how to say good-bye.
She owed Cam her life. She should have been able to give him the response he wanted, even if she hadn’t felt an honest attraction. She was tempted. She had become too self-conscious of her backpack whenever she reached into it for water or food or a clean face mask, being very careful to let neither man see the glossy purple box of condoms. She needed comfort and warmth, and yet Cam still frightened her. It wasn’t only the capacity for violence that she saw in him, but his own wretched hunger. She was afraid to get too near because she couldn’t predict how he would react, so she was quiet, sitting beside him in the whispering night.
There was another danger that Ruth had kept to herself. She didn’t want to rush Cam and Newcombe. Her science team had not incorporated the hypobaric fuse into the vaccine, so that it wouldn’t self-destruct like the plague, but the vaccine was also unlike the plague in another way. It was able to replicate only by attacking and breaking down a single target — its rival. Every minute they spent above the barrier was a new danger, because without its ongoing war against the plague, the vaccine had no way to maintain its own numbers. In fact, if they stayed too long they might become trapped like anyone else after sweating it out, exhaling it, losing it by the millions each time they went to the bathroom.
After sixteen days within the invisible sea, their bodies must be thick with it. Too thick. That might explain her headaches and it might explain the discomfort in her gut. Those things might simply be the result of constant strain and bad food, but it wasn’t impossible that the vaccine would hurt people, too, catching and clotting in the bloodstream, rupturing capillaries, increasing the odds of stroke and arrhythmia. They didn’t know. It had never been tested.
Ruth wanted to believe they’d have days or even weeks before their immunity faded to dangerous levels, but if they had to run…If there were soldiers waiting…They had already been near ten thousand feet for more than eight hours and Ruth couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t be a problem.
The men were just as apprehensive. Newcombe had prepared her for the chance that he and Cam wouldn’t return. He broke down their packs and reassembled one for her to carry herself if necessary, mostly food and a bedroll. He carefully showed her how to use the radio and he made her demonstrate again that she knew how to ‚re and load her pistol, as if she’d last through a gun battle by herself.
Ruth knew she couldn’t go with them but she hated the price on her skills and education, like she was some goddamned princess in a tower, too precious to be let out — so at last she forced herself to stir in the cold.
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
“Me, too,” Cam said. He was always surprising her.
Ruth shook her head. “Why would, no, you’ve been…”
“Maybe we should have done it Newcombe’s way,” Cam said. “He’s got training I could never…I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to hike it. Maybe you would have perfected the nanotech by now.”
“Cam, no. It was my idea. Remember? I’m the one who insisted on coming here.” And then after everything else, tomorrow you’re going to walk up there for me, she thought. You’ll walk into the soldiers’ guns, maybe, or ‚nd a pack of disease-ridden survivors. There’s no way to know.
Still sitting in his blankets, Cam shifted once, as if containing an argument inside himself.
I couldn’t have done this without you, Ruth thought. Then she touched her ‚ngertips to his forearm, careful not to let it be more. She was careful not to draw down her mask and kiss his cheek, no matter how deeply he deserved the gesture or her gratitude.
“Please be careful,” she said.
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 exp
ression 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.
