“Don’t turn, don’t turn! What are you— This road is a dead end!” Price raised one fist to strike the roof of the cab again and Silverstein said, “He’s right, the reservoir’s just a few miles down and then it’s a parking lot.”
Cam was glad for his mask and goggles. He knew his guilt was on his face. Would Sawyer stop if Price threatened to push him over the side? But Price was banging on the cab, and Nielsen was trying to find room to turn forward, and Hollywood had leaned over and placed his hand on Keene’s shoulder as Keene hugged his belly with both arms.
It was Manny who drew everyone’s attention to him. “Cam? Where are we going?”
The truck entered a series of turns and the hazy sun shifted to one side and back again, their goggles darkening and clearing in a pattern that reminded him of pendulums.
Manny said it again, “Cam?”
The urge to silence the boy actually carried his hands out from his body several inches.
Manfred Wright had aged in ways that Cam both mourned and respected as necessary, yet still didn’t grasp some fundamentals of human relationships. Cam often believed that this was a kind of self-defense on Manny’s part, a willful retreat to childhood. His thoughtlessness had become a threat, however, and Cam realized that Sawyer had been very right not to trust the kid with their plan. Manny would have told Hollywood, who would have told Price, all with the best intentions in mind.
“It’s a dead end,” Silverstein said.
Price was also quiet, almost hoarse. “What are you guys trying to do?”
Cam knew he needed to say something. There had to be a right word, but then a handful of fingers bunched in his jacket underneath his daypack. Nielsen.
“Let go of him,” Bacchetti said, growling.
The horn blared again. “Two minutes!” Sawyer ducked out his window and slapped on the door. “We’ll be there in two minutes and you can have the truck if you want it!”
No one else spoke for an instant and Cam’s relief was mixed through with gratitude.
“David’s infected,” Hollywood told them, still bent over Keene. Keene kept his arms tight into his belly and rocked his upper body back and forth as if nodding yes.
But they had all turned toward Sawyer’s voice.
“His hand,” Hollywood explained.
Sawyer hit his door again, impatient with their lack of response. “Just another minute and you can have it!”
Silverstein was the first to spare a glance back at Keene. Then he looked forward again and yelled, “You’re wasting time! This is a dead end.”
“We’re saving time!” Cam said. “Look at the map. The highway runs west almost fifty miles before there’s a junction in the right direction, and it’s all turns. That’s at least two hours, maybe more, and if it’s blocked you’ll have to drive back up here again no matter what.”
“What!” Price echoed his last sound in a squawk.
“We hike down.”
The few roads in the greater valley tended to run laterally west-to-east, because there was a limit to how steeply cars could climb and because there just weren’t many destinations in the area. East of Bear Summit, Highway 6 went nowhere except down into the Nevada desert, and westward for forty-six miles lay only campgrounds and orchards and three small towns. Eventually 6 did bend down to meet Highway 14, and eventually 14 branched into Route 47, which ran north up to Hollywood’s peak — but Cam and Sawyer had estimated the total mileage to be ninety or more.
He said, “Even assuming 6 is clear all the way down, and it won’t be, you’ll spend two hours just to get to 14. But there’s only three and a half miles between the highways from here. We can cut cross-country. Forty minutes.”
“It’ll take longer than that! That’s crazy!” McCraney looked at Price. “There’s a reason there’s no road down there!”
“We can go places that cars can’t,” Cam shot back.
“But then what?” Silverstein asked. “Then you’re on foot.”
“We find another car, or hike straight up. Staying on the highway just because it’s there is going to get you killed.”
Price said, “Everyone voted! Everyone already voted!”
They’d actually conducted their ritual twice, as if a show of hands would somehow change the layout of the valley. Cam had raised the same objections only to be shouted down, but Sawyer hadn’t even tried to change anybody’s mind. He’d watched and he’d listened and he’d given Cam one silent nod when Price made a spectacle of tallying the votes for the first time.
Cam looked at Hollywood now. The boy had also argued against using the truck initially and Cam had expected him to weigh in on their side, but he said nothing. Maybe he was trying to picture the map in his head.
“We all went over it a hundred times!” Price pointed at Nielsen and Atkins and McCraney as if counting them. “We all measured it out! One hour! It’s only one hour down!”
“The roads will be blocked, Jim.” The snowline had been 6,000 feet, which might have kept the roads clear to that level — except for four-wheel drives and locals with plow attachments, snowmobiles, National Guard tanks. It would only take one pileup to stop them.
Price flung his arm like he was throwing something away, his only acknowledgment that Cam had spoken. “It’s stupid to hike now if we don’t have to! Save our strength!”
“You’ll die out there,” McCraney added, as if the truck were a fortress or a submarine, as if David Keene had not been breathing the same air as everyone else.
The randomness of the attacks had always been nearly as terrifying as the speed and force with which the nanos consumed a host body, and Cam knew it was only a matter of time before the plague awakened inside them all. A very short time.
Neat wooden signs appeared in clusters beside the road, showing stick figures making use of garbage cans and rest-rooms. Then they rode into an asphalt meadow occupied only by a Subaru wagon. Beyond a surprising expanse of dark and utterly still water, rock shapes jutted into the sky.
Sawyer left the engine running and pushed through the door with his green pack in hand. Cam hopped over the passenger side across from him.
Silverstein was the only one who joined them on the ground, immediately placing himself between Sawyer and the open driver door. There was a bustle of motion and shouting from the women inside the cab, and Bacchetti fought with the jam in the truck bed.
Cam gazed up at them. He’d told himself that once they were committed, everyone would see that it was unrealistic to think they could just coast on over.
Most of them hadn’t even moved.
“Sawyer was right about you,” he said, hoping to spark some reaction, anger, anything, and Keene half rose as Bacchetti stepped down beside Cam. Manny had also come up on one knee but paused there, glancing from Cam to Hollywood.
“I have to go back,” Keene said. He gripped his left wrist with his other hand. “Take me back.”
The commotion inside the cab quieted as Erin lunged out on the driver’s side, bumping Silverstein from behind. The other women must have resisted getting out so violently that she couldn’t even open the passenger door.
She stumbled into Sawyer’s embrace and Cam watched him lead her away from the group, readjusting her face mask and goggles with a minimum of efficient gestures.
“I have to go back!” Keene thrust both arms up in a wild shoveling motion, never letting go of his wrist.
Price yelled, “If these bastards hadn’t wasted our time—”
“Hollywood,” Cam said. “You of all people, you know we’re right. We’ll be on the trail you took in forty minutes.”
“You can’t,” Hollywood said. He might have been answering Cam. Then he patted Keene’s shoulder and said, “You know we can’t drive up again.”