“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.