Plague Year (14 page)

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.”

11

There were surprisingly few bones in the forest, mostly just birds like elaborate little carvings. Their best theory was that every creature had tried to hide away. Squirrels and rabbits and fox had gone underground, while deer and coyotes disappeared into thickets. Birds had tucked themselves into brush and treetops only to be blown free later by the wind.

Humans had experienced that same burrowing impulse.

Each of the first six cars they came upon was a mass coffin, the stick shapes in their matted, stained clothing invariably bunched together against the doors or in the floorwells. The smell would have been worse except that during the first spring, bugs had slipped in through vents and doorjambs, stripping the rotted flesh and often the upholstery as well.

Sawyer dragged the remains out by their legs or skulls or punched them deeper into the car, whatever was easiest. Keys dangled from every ignition—but every engine had been left running, heat on, lights on, radio on.

Four of the six vehicles were locked. At first Cam had giggled at the absurdity, yet his head swam each time he bent to find a rock and he nearly cut open his jacket when he broke the third window, too weak to disengage himself from the momentum of heaving his crude tool into the glass. He stared back at himself from the fourth window. Even hefting ten pounds of asphalt pried from the road’s edge, his posture was tight and defensive, shoulders hunched, head bent, as if making himself smaller would help in any way.

He understood locking the doors.

Every vehicle was a bitter frustration and Manny wasted time trying each ignition again after Sawyer had given up. Sawyer was all business, in and out, cranking each key three times. Only three times. Then he walked away.

The blacktop let them maximize every stride rather than fighting rocks and mud. They were also now on nearly level ground, the bottom of the valley, halfway there. Moving too slow. It was as if they were old now, bodies bent inefficiently.

Highway 14 was not a parking lot. At 6,200 feet, this road had been under several inches of snow, yet Cam imagined the lack of cars was due more to the fact that most people had been drawn off by Highway 6, farther down the valley...but if they couldn’t get an engine running soon, their only option would be to continue on foot up the northern face. Hollywood had said Route 47 was blocked in at least two places, anyway, but if they could ride all the way to the first obstacle...

Erin slumped against him, as heavy as dread. They’d come upon another vehicle, an old brown pickup half in the ditch, and Sawyer simply let go of her.

A fly smacked into Cam’s fogged lens. He blinked, awareness opening and closing in him like a lighthouse beacon. It hurt. He burned. Molten barbs swam through his hand and his wrist. The same fire distorted his ear, pushing the tissue apart.

Erin tried to sit and he clubbed uselessly at her side. Then Manny bumped past. Erin’s weight peeled away from Cam and he staggered, trying to soften her fall but desperate to stay upright himself. He looked at the others for help.

Sawyer had dragged a freakish little body from the pickup.

Cam stared, realized it was a dog, and Erin managed one word hardly different than breathing. “Rest.”

Bacchetti’s boots scuffed into Cam’s field of vision and the big man grumbled, encouraging the truck just as he’d talked to the flies. “Rrrrrrr. Rrrrr—” He coughed.

“Help,” Cam said. “Get her up.”

Bacchetti had already settled into a wide, braced stance. He might have been a little nuts but Cam was glad for his presence, glad for his strength and his loyalty—so it confused him when Bacchetti sidestepped away, until he heard other boots.

Together, Cam and Sawyer heaved their lover into a sitting position. Her eyes rolled open and the band of skin framed by her goggles crinkled in a familiar way. She was smiling.

“I can’t carry you,” Sawyer told her. “I won’t.”

“Please,” Cam said, maybe to both of them.

* * * *

He’d studied the town so often from his favorite cliff that he thought he knew where he was going. The Forest Service and CalTrans shared a lot on the northeast side, a complicated zoo of chain-link fence populated with a limited variety of green trucks, orange trucks, and orange plows. They could get an engine running there for sure. It shouldn’t be hard to find. This place only had eight streets, a three-by-five grid set off-center on Highway 14, plus several curling back roads lined with old cabins and giant modern homes.

“Sick?” Erin said.
Six.
A wooden sign on metal stilts read

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