Jim Price rallied support for himself, like a politician, with a series of proposals. His first was work assignments, popular because most people felt they were doing more than anyone else. He organized a sing-along and a “remembrance meeting.” He interceded in arguments, in discussions, in everything.
Two of the Koreans had been among the first casualties, and the third was their first suicide. The only black man lasted through their efforts to build the huts, but laid open his calf with a grazing touch of a chain saw and died of blood poisoning. After that, Cam and Amy Wong were the sole non-Caucasians.
It shouldn’t have been important. Too much of the human race had been decimated to worry about cosmetics…yet Cam suspected his skin color was another reason why so many people turned away from him to Price.
How many cultures had been lost forever? If they did reclaim the planet, what would humanity look like?
There wasn’t time to brood. The canned goods faded fast and they spent their days scavenging, and found plenty to eat if they would only work for it; confused, crippled rodents; one deer; lush new spring greens sprouting from the earth. No one even whispered of the bodies down in the avalanche field, which rotted away with the melting snow — and they’d buried all of their other dead. By summer, however, they’d picked the mountain so clean that nothing ever grew there again. And as winter returned, their only option was to raid below the barrier on a regular schedule.
They ate Jorgensen first.
9
The red Chevy long bed pickup, perched on the falling hillside, always made Cam think of television. It embodied that image of rugged power that a lifetime of commercials had hoped to project. They’d pretty much beaten the crap out of it, scraping off the paint, grinding the undercarriage over rocks and bumps, exceeding the load recommendation by a thousand pounds — and the truck had never failed them.
Somehow that made Cam proud. He kept glancing at the distant vehicle as he led the others through the mud and loose boulders above the worst of the avalanche. Manny leaned over the hood, furiously scrubbing grit from the windshield, and Bacchetti held his arms and body up to shield the gas tank from the rain as Sawyer wrestled with a plastic five-gallon drum. Water in the fuel lines would kill them.
This slope was constantly decaying, sometimes in house-sized chunks, or they might have tried to fashion a road through. But they had to take what the mountain gave them.
The downpour increased, beating into a fine mist on Cam’s shoulders. Sloppy brown puddles rippled with impacts.
Behind him someone made an outraged noise. “Huh!”—it had to be Price — and Cam glanced up again to see the truck moving. On the way back from scavenging trips they were always crazy to reach altitude and left the vehicle pointed upslope. Sawyer was carefully jockeying back and forth on the narrow flat, getting the nose around, as Manny stood at the downhill edge with both hands up, signaling how much space was left.
“Wait! Wait!” Price pushed to the front as soon as they hit solid ground, Nielsen and Silverstein moving with him.
Cam left Erin and jogged after them, but his heel skated in the muck and his knee twinged. His bad knee. He slowed and made himself concentrate on placing his feet.
Bacchetti was already in the truck bed and Manny hopped up as the group closed in, Price still hollering, “Wait! No!”
Nielsen got to the vehicle first, thumping against the driver’s side as he stumbled around to the hood. The white corona of the headlight exploded across his filthy yellow jacket, glinting in a bead of moisture tucked inside his nostril. Nielsen’s mask had pulled down and Cam said, “Hey—”
“I’m driving!” Price shouted. The handle on the door rattled as he tried it twice. Locked. “Get out!”
“Your mask,” Cam said, and Nielsen wasn’t the only one who cupped his face with his palms and pushed up.
Price slapped at the window. “I’m driving!”
“No.” The fogging glass had reduced Sawyer’s hood and goggles to a strange silhouette.
“It’s my truck!”
It was, actually. This full-size long bed was one of the few worthwhile vehicles in the lodge parking lots that they’d been able to get started. An incredible number of refugees had bothered to lock up and take their keys, and either died with these crucial bits of metal or lost them altogether.
Price threw his arms wide. “Just because you rushed down here! Just because you got here first!”
“You wasted too much time leaving those goddamn markers,” Cam said, harshly enough to divert their attention. Hollywood stood by the rear bumper, his head cocked uncertainly, and Cam lowered his voice. “Someone had to get it turned around.”
“Then tell him to get out!”
“Jim, we know this road better than you anyway.”
* * * *
The truck’s overloaded shocks responded poorly to the rough trail. Each time the tires hit a large bump or dip, the truck bed swayed like a boat sliding down between two waves, and Cam thought it was only a matter of time before someone fell overboard.
They’d crammed all four women into the cab, although it only had bucket seats for driver and shotgun, which put twelve men in the long bed. Even sitting half of them on top of each other left barely enough space for the rest to stand. It was safest in the middle and at the front, where Price and McCraney leaned over the cab with their hands out, but Cam had deliberately climbed in late on the passenger side. The uphill side. In most places the jeep trail was merely a flat strip bulldozed out of the mountain, vulnerable to erosion, and if the truck slid in the mud or if part of the trail fell away, he wanted a chance to jump free.
Sweat had pushed through the skin of his back and underarms as they hiked but now his body temperature dropped, pockets of wet and cold seeping through his GORE-TEX shell.
They rode into a calm hallway through a stand of fifty-foot pines, then back into the rain.
Then they reached the mid-mountain lodge. The parking lot was hardly glass-smooth, warped by a thousand freezes and thaws, but the jouncing of the truck bed settled into a mild vibration as they sped through the disorderly gathering of cars.
“Watch out—”
“Stop pushing my goggles!”
As Sawyer accelerated, the few men on their feet leaned in for balance, grabbing at the men who were sitting down, and Bacchetti and another guy shoved back. Hollywood cried something that Cam heard only partly. “You together!”
There was more grabbing at every turn and Sawyer revved the engine through each straightaway, no matter how short.
Price struck the roof of the cab. “Slow down!”
“Jim, let him concentrate!”
“I said slow down!” Price beat on the roof until Sawyer stabbed at the brakes, decelerating from thirty-five to ten in the middle of a long, easy turn. To Cam it was a clear warning and demonstration of power. Price obviously thought otherwise, rapping again with his fist. “That’s bet—”
Sawyer gunned the engine, two jolts, rocking them backward. Hollywood wasn’t the only man who shouted in protest but Cam was struck again by the disappointment in his voice. “What is he doing?” Hollywood cried.
Sawyer pushed it to fifty or more as the highway slanted straight down for a quarter mile. Cam thought the rain had let up, but it was impossible to be sure inside the corona of spray blasting up from the tires. His sodden face mask tasted of bitter old human stink.
Around a tight corner they passed a jam of three vehicles, then the entrance to the condominium village. Clusters of tiny yellow flowers on the roadside drew Cam’s gaze and then there was an acre or more of living color. “Look,” he said.
Sawyer slowed and left the highway. Cam hadn’t noticed the corliss reservoir sign, but recognized this turnoff.