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.
Sawyer had given Bacchetti the.38 but Cam suspected it was empty. He knew Sawyer didn’t share his faith in the big man.
The new gunfire had a weird rhythm, methodical, paced, rather than the tight frenzies of attack and answer. It also consisted entirely of pistol shots — and there were other sounds mixed in, ringing metal, flat pops.
“Priiice!” He knew what they were doing. “Priiiiice!”
He put another shot across the street, helpless to stop them. He couldn’t even look around the corner.
The other group had obviously found a working vehicle. The other group was ready to go and they were now disabling the rest of the motor pool, shooting out radiators and tires.
* * * *
“Tell me where to find your lab,” he said, cleaning Sawyer’s wounds. He was no longer afraid that Waxman or anyone else might charge their position, and he emptied most of a canteen over Sawyer’s head, scrubbing with two fingertips as Sawyer flinched. Then he risked three quick drinks himself. Each mouthful was sweet beyond understanding, and almost certainly laced with poison. Inert nanos carried into his belly would soon awaken, but the dust-and-damp fragrance had been too compelling to resist.
“Tell me.” He was careful with his voice.
If something else happened, if Sawyer didn’t make it, at least he could tell Colorado where to look. The lab would have computers, files, something. The radio broadcasts had implored survivors in the West for any clues.
“Just to be safe,” he said. “You have to.”
But Sawyer’s brown eyes were as flat and guarded as his mirrored goggles had been. “I don’t think so.”
“Jesus Christ, I’ll help you! Swear to Christ!”
* * * *
The blaze at the CalTrans station spread fast. Greasy black smoke lurched up in two thickening towers, and Cam heard the fire crackle and laugh as they limped away. Gas tanks detonated in a random array of claps that rolled over the valley walls, sounding out every inch of elevation between them and the afternoon sky.
They walked.
They walked apart, Sawyer striding into the lead again, and Cam tormented himself with the question. Tell me where to find your lab. If his thinking wasn’t so fragmented, he would have asked it earlier. It should have been the first thing out of his mouth after Sawyer confessed.
It was a measure of what they’d become that he dropped Erin just to give Sawyer a hand with Nielsen’s body, stripping the yellow hood and cheap goggles. He actually looked back at her then — her gogs were high-quality Smiths — before he thought to check Doug Silverstein and see if his gear was any better.
Not far behind them, exploding vehicles threw the fire from one block to the next like a giant kicking his way through town. They were forced west, then cut north again ahead of the holocaust.
Beyond the center of Woodcreek, the terrain canted upward and pine trees closed in on the gravel road. The homes here were small and old and comfortable. They passed a fat SUV tucked under a carport, then a driveway with a 4Runner and a sedan. Then the road ended and they hustled through someone’s overgrown yard. No doubt they could have searched for keys, gotten an engine started, but then what? Work their way around the fire just to catch up with Price?
Hollywood had come across on foot. Hollywood had told them Route 47 was no good. Getting into a car was a trick, a trap. Sooner or later Price and the others would be forced to leave their truck and angle back this way again on foot from farther up the valley.
The rifle was too heavy, but Cam kept his pistol.
* * * *
The north side of the valley, facing the sun, bristled with more plants and trees than the mountain they’d hiked down, and the lush spring growth would keep the fire from racing after them. They were safe from that danger at least.
They climbed.
They climbed, and the giant raged behind them. Cam let his tattered spirit roll upward on the booming of a propane tank. He let himself go away from here. He reached for the distant rim of the valley where the earth quit and the sky fell on forever. There were other minds gathered there at the highest points, watching for him. If Hollywood’s people hadn’t heard the gunshots, which seemed unlikely, the explosions told the story. The smoke would be visible for fifty miles.
They climbed to judgment.
They climbed on distended muscles and broken feet. They climbed carrying acid and coals inside their bodies.
A wrinkle in the terrain brought them out of the trees and into a brown meadow and suddenly the ground leapt up in dark, fluttering sheets. Ten thousand grasshoppers. The four of them reared back, pelted by tiny, kicking bodies — and Erin fell, folding and squeezing her innards. It destroyed her. She bled out in a rush, a horrible soup that spilled out of her pants.
In some ways it was a mercy, but like Silverstein, like Manny, she retained a flicker of life even after this incredible trauma. She stared up at Cam as he pulled off her goggles, her gem blue eyes wide and confused.
He brushed the twitching bugs away from her face and out of her long hair because there was nothing else to do. He thought to kiss her, but then the bloody froth poured from her mouth.
* * * *
They climbed and the mountain was everlasting. They climbed like drunken men, careening off of trees, bumping shoulders. They passed an empty canteen and Cam scuffled another ten yards before he realized he was in front. He swayed and nearly toppled when he raised his eyes from the slanting rock face.
Someone was ahead of them.
Cam put his hand on his wide chest pocket, on his pistol. He turned into the late, low sun as Sawyer tottered up behind him, rubbing at his yellow hood with one black glove. Were they high enough yet to run into Price again? Maybe. Maybe they were almost at the top, they didn’t know, they’d only tried to place themselves on the map twice since fleeing Woodcreek— No. The opposite side of the valley was clearly higher. How much higher was tough to judge, but Price wouldn’t have crossed their path so soon unless he’d come laterally across the mountain.