Just go away, he thought.
The woman’s legs scissored as she moved into their path. There were nonre†ective black bars on her shirt collar and the squad leader said, “Excuse me, Captain.”
She didn’t even look at him. “Ruth?” she asked. “Ruth, my God.” Her smooth hand went to Ruth’s shoulder, as deft as a bird.
Cam said, “Leave us alone.”
“I know her,” the woman insisted.
He would have shoved past, but Ruth wriggled free of the soldiers and took one step, unsteady, smiling, before she buried her face in the woman’s long hair and embraced her. “Deborah,” she said.
* * * *
The wind picked up as the light changed, fading to orange, but Ruth clung stubbornly to her friend in the same way she’d refused to lose sight of Cam.
“Please, ma’am,” the squad leader said.
“Can’t you just bring our dinner here?” Ruth asked. She sat between Cam and Deborah on the tracked bare earth near the corner of the surgical tent, where they were mostly out of the breeze but could still look across the mountains in the west.
“Ma’am,” the man repeated, but Deborah said, “Just do it, Sergeant. Send one of your guys. The rest of you can keep her plenty safe for a few minutes.”
“My orders are to get her inside, Captain.”
“I like the air,” Ruth said distantly.
Cam worried that she might be confused, but Deborah only repeated herself in that haughty way. “A few minutes,” Deborah said. “Go on.”
The squad leader jerked his thumb at one of his men, who moved off. There were other people passing by, two doctors, two mechanics, a teenager in civilian clothes.
“What can I do?” Deborah asked softly. “Are you okay?”
“I’m cold,” Ruth said, still gazing at the horizon.
Deborah glanced past her at Cam with a worried look and he felt for the ‚rst time that they might be friends, too, although it was strange. If he remembered right, the two women had been adversaries before today.
Deborah Reece, M.D., Ph.D., had been the physician and a support systems specialist aboard the International Space Station. All of the astronauts had worked two or more jobs to maintain the station, and she was a formidable woman. Most impressive of all was that Ruth had last seen her in Leadville. Somehow Deborah had walked away from the nuclear strike, and yet Cam held his tongue, watching the people come and go until Ruth shook herself, coming into focus at last.
“Deb, what are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought Grand Lake was a rebel base.”
“It’s not important. Did you get what you went for?”
“Yes. Yes, we did.” Ruth set her good hand on Cam’s knee and squeezed, although she didn’t look at him.
Deborah noticed the contact. She glanced past Ruth again, and Cam tried to smile. “We need to know everything about this place,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what I can.” But mostly Deborah talked about Leadville. She had yet to make peace with it, Cam realized, and that was no surprise.
“Bill Wallace is dead,” she told Ruth, counting friends. “Gustavo. Ulinov. Everyone in the labs.”
Nikola Ulinov had sacri‚ced four hundred thousand people for the Russians, saving only one. Playing on the authority he’d once had aboard the ISS, Ulinov quietly suggested that Deborah volunteer for a combat unit. Her medical training could be of real use, he said, helping the men and women on Leadville’s front lines rather than babying the politicians in town.
“It was a warning,” Deborah said. “It was the best he could do. If he ran…If our entire crew disappeared, Leadville would’ve known. They would have shot down the plane that brought in the warhead.”
Cam let her talk, watching the ‚ne wrinkles that appeared at the corners of her eyes and mouth as she struggled with herself.
“When I think of him waiting,” Deborah said. “When I think of him being sure, but still waiting…” She leaned against Ruth and sighed, blinking back tears even as her eyes sparked with rage.
“It’s okay,” Ruth said. “Shh, it’s okay.”
Cam frowned and turned to gaze out across the mountains again, wondering at the man’s determination in bringing such force down on himself. He had seen all kinds of bravery and evil. Sometimes they were one and same. The only difference was in where you stood, and that made Cam uneasy. He believed in what he was doing, but maybe it was a mistake.
He coughed hard into his palm. Then he touched the back of Deborah’s hand as if to comfort her, infecting her with the vaccine. “I’m sorry,” he said.
* * * *
Grand Lake had gone underground. Many of the trailers and huts concealed tunnel entrances. On their way from the medical tent, Cam saw a wide shape of camou†age netting that covered new excavations. Work had stopped for the day, but it looked as if they’d dug a ‚fty-foot pit by hand and were still hacking at one edge while other teams built wooden frameworks into which they’d pour concrete. He supposed that after the boxy shapes of the walls had set, they’d add ceilings, then pile the dirt back in to hide and insulate the bunker. A wasted effort.
You can all go back down again, he thought. You should all be able to walk off this mountain.
That was probably why Shaug sought to control it. If too many people ran, he’d lose his ‚ghting force. A mass exodus down from the Continental Divide could be its own disaster, because without an organized military, they would be helpless against the Russians.
Maybe the governor was right.
Cam felt new adrenaline as the squad leader led them to a sun-faded mobile home with a tarp for an awning, hiding its door. Deborah had already left, promising to visit Ruth again before breakfast, and Cam was glad that someone else knew where to ‚nd them. What if Shaug meant to lock them in?
He was unarmed and outnumbered. He went through the door when the squad leader gestured. Inside, the prefab home was little more than a shell, no furniture, no carpet. Most of the wall panels had been torn apart for ‚rewood and to get at the wiring and plumbing. Only two light ‚xtures remained. The kitchen was gutted of its cabinets, sink, and counters, and in this bizarre scene stood a short-haired Asian woman with a cigarette. The home was only here to cover the stairwell and the ventilation holes in the †oor.
Cam hesitated at the top of the dark stairs. “I need to talk to Shaug,” he said. It was all he could think of.
“We’ll walk you over in the morning, sir,” the squad leader said.
Ruth glanced into Cam’s eyes, ready to play along, but the noise from below did not sound like a prison and the woman with the cigarette was disinterested and relaxed. Cam heard laughter as a man shouted, “Five bucks! That’s ‚ve bucks!”
They went down nearly twenty feet. The walls were un‚nished concrete lined with a single black wire. Two lamps had been bolted to the ceiling. Eight doorways ‚lled a short hall, hung with blankets, and Cam worried at the damp cold.
“This is you, sir,” the squad leader said, pointing at the ‚rst door. “We’ll be right across, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” Cam led Ruth into their room. It was cramped but private, and equipped with an electric coil space heater. He turned it on. There was also one narrow Army cot and four blankets, although he was too keyed up to sleep.
Ruth gently touched her ‚ngers against his chest and kissed him. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Cam.”
He only nodded. There was no anxiety in the moment. That made him feel pleased. She trusted him and he was very glad for his sense of kinship and safety.
Ruth lay down on the cot and Cam sat awake on the †oor, his mind churning. Deborah had vouched for Shaug. I think he’s a good man who’s done his best with very little, she said, and she knew more than he did. She had been here for two days before they arrived, and her medical training had been a ticket straight into the middle echelons of the leadership.