Plague Year (15 page)

Bacchetti continued to help Cam each time Sawyer tried another car, stepping in to keep Erin upright, but the big man had stopped making his engine sounds. He coughed whenever he did. He coughed constantly now.

The fucking things were in his lungs.

Regret filled the core of emotion that Cam maintained inside himself, banked against his despair in the same way they’d learned to protect the embers of their cookfires. Bacchetti had been the real surprise, the surprise hero, and Cam hoped somehow he would make it.

Woodcreek seemed remarkably well preserved. Two homes had burned and there was a jeep rammed up on a guardrail, but anyone who’d died here had hidden themselves away.

The ghosts came out as they reached downtown. Their feet echoed down every road, and shadows paced alongside them in the dusty storefront windows.

Then Sawyer got a van to turn over. Tucked between a deli and an antiques shop, the white Ford would not idle, dying again and again. He pumped the gas and tried shifting into neutral or first, giving the van more time than the last three cars put together. But it just wouldn’t catch.

They detoured left when they wanted to go straight, avoiding a huge nest of rattlers sunning in the street. The thick, brown, ropy bodies held their ground when Manny waved his arms and yelled in a pleading voice—“Go! Move!”—and the ghosts began to talk.

They were not alone in Woodcreek.

* * * *

The mumbling and whispers became real words as Cam hurried Erin into an intersection, Bacchetti dragging on her other arm. He actually looked the wrong way first, tricked by the silhouettes in the glass of a real estate office.

McCraney’s urgency was clear. “Heard him—”

“—doing, you know, we don’t—” Hollywood saw them and lifted both arms overhead. “
Hey.
”

Cam shouted back, “Hah!”

They were seventy feet off, standing in a bunch on the sidewalk. He recognized Silverstein and Jocelyn Colvard and that was as much counting as he could manage. All twelve seemed to have made it.

Price had been right. Jim Price had made the best choice. Yes, these people had gotten stuck farther west of Cam’s group—they must have, or they would’ve driven into town an hour ago—but while both groups had hiked roughly the same distance, the miles that Price covered on foot had been the last part of the logging road and then the easy surface of Highway 14.

Even better, Price hadn’t wasted time trying to get any cars started. It must have been obvious, doors open, bones scattered, that each vehicle had already been tested. Every failure and disappointment had been a help to them.

The surge of gladness in Cam carried him forward despite Erin’s weight and she moaned, “Stop.”

He knew that she hurt. He knew she wanted to sleep. It was smarter to keep moving. The others would need to come up the street to reach the CalTrans station, but he wanted to see their eyes. That was worth fifty steps.

Erin let her legs go limp and Cam and Bacchetti sagged together, holding her up. “Stop,” she said.

“Get back!” Sawyer yelled behind them.

Cam felt his thoughts open and close again, and realized suddenly that Hollywood had not raised his arms in welcome. The boy had made himself larger as a warning.

The knot of people on the sidewalk shifted, retreating, leaving three men in front like fence posts. Price. Nielsen. Silverstein. An open doorway stood at Nielsen’s elbow and above it jutted a touristy Old West sign. the hunting post.

Price held his rifle down alongside his leg as if its heft was too much for him, and Silverstein’s long torso had kept the outline of his weapon from showing. Only the tip of its muzzle poked above his shoulder. Nielsen’s hands were oversized, a pistol in each, the barrels like stiff ugly fingers.

“Get back,” Sawyer called again, to Cam, and Silverstein screamed, “You get back! Stay away from us!”

Cam had never heard Doug Silverstein speak in any way except a controlled manner, not even during their worst arguments, and the hysteria made him seem like an imposter.

There was more. Silverstein was shorter, hunched to one side. Price made a familiar slashing wave yet stayed silent.

These were not the same people Cam had left on the mountain.

Hollywood’s voice held no trace of the confident madman who’d crossed this valley for them. “Just go away,” he said. He sounded lost. He sounded old.

Sawyer ignored him. “Put ’em down, Price.”

“Get out of here!” Silverstein brayed.

Then Bacchetti coughed and there was an answering hack from someone at the rear of the other group. A weak, wet rasp. It could have been enough to reunite them. Their suffering was the same. It had always been that way.

But Sawyer yelled again, “Put the guns down!”

Caught between them, Cam was afraid to move or speak. Motivation came from a sharper fear. Sawyer and Price, here, now, had only one conclusion.

Sawyer and Price had too much hate between them.

Cam flicked his gaze over his shoulder, shaping words inside his crowded head before he reconsidered making himself a target. Manny had followed them down the block and stood ten yards back. Sawyer was still in the intersection but stepped close to a blue mailbox with his revolver.

“Come on, hey,” Hollywood said, louder now. His intent must have been the same as Cam’s, but the poor deluded ass-hole had never understood the depth of the fear and resentment among them. They had tried to conceal it from him, yet Hollywood had also willingly ignored a thousand clues.

The boy repeated his words, “Hey, hey,” and his voice seemed to stir Price, who directed nonsense at Sawyer.

Price said, “Took too long, killer.”

The bewilderment in Cam resolved into a fleeting memory of Chad Loomas, the second man they’d murdered and eaten. But they had all eaten. They had all wanted the stew. What had Price been telling Hollywood, redirecting the blame?

“Killed her,” Price muttered again. Cam had misunderstood, deafened by his own guilt.
Lorraine.
Price must be talking about Lorraine;
too long
meant hijacking the pickup truck.

He looked for her but the people behind Price were too similar, all hoods and goggles. Apparently she was missing. “I helped her, Jim, her arm, remember?”

“Spic.”

Cam hadn’t heard that curse since the end of the world. In all their time together, all their confrontations, no one had ever condemned him out loud for the color of his skin—and it meant nothing now except that whatever remained of Jim Price had been burned down to something base and primitive.

“You goddamn spic, you faggots, you killed her.” Price waggled his right arm, his rifle. “Faggots,” he said.

Something happened behind Cam. He saw Silverstein and Nielsen react together. Silverstein pulled his rifle from his shoulder and pushed it forward like a spear, as Nielsen lifted both pistols.

Cam moved. He yanked hard on Erin’s arm as he turned and Bacchetti came with them, one step, two.

Sawyer stood behind the mailbox now, his revolver leveled.

“Get away, get away!” Silverstein screamed, and Hollywood said, “Come on, hey, just let them—”

Sawyer fired first.

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—