“My hand,” Keene whispered.
“That station wagon might have keys in it,” Silverstein said, waving across the parking lot, and Price finally dropped to the ground and threw himself inside the truck cab.
“Hollywood,” Cam repeated. “Please.”
Price shut the door with a bang and shifted into gear.
Cam stepped back, and every inch between them felt like a huge gulf, widening fast as the truck began to roll away. Yes, Hollywood had every right to resent him. Diverting from the highway had been a nasty trick, but it was Price’s stubbornness that was to blame for the deception—
Maybe it was just that the boy’s leg hurt. Maybe Hollywood had realized during their short hike that he didn’t have the strength to walk all the way again.
Price braked beside the other car, but Keene didn’t move and Silverstein said, “Check it, you better check it now.”
Hollywood jumped down and was at the Subaru’s door in two paces. He tried the handle, then cupped both hands on the glass and pressed his goggles close. He straightened up, shook his head — and as Cam moved toward him, Hollywood stepped back to the truck and reached for it like a ballplayer touching base.
“Let’s go with them! I want to go with them!” Manny lurched toward Hollywood through the crowded bodies, even though the other side of the truck was closer. “Sawyer always knows what he’s talking about!”
“Don’t be stupid.” Silverstein caught Manny’s arm.
Cam’s amazement at this reaction vanished as McCraney also grabbed at Manny and Nielsen rocked over on his butt to block the kid’s path. These men were so threatened by any alternative to their thinking that they would fight to keep others from making a different choice. Safety in numbers, maybe.
“Your foot!” Price yelled through the driver’s window. “You can’t walk on that foot, Manny!”
“He’s in better shape than most of you,” Cam said. A mistake. Manny had jerked free, but now Silverstein hooked his skinny waist and McCraney used both hands to secure the kid’s left arm. Scaring them, threatening them, had only increased their resolve.
Manny pushed away from Silverstein, and Cam thumped his hand against the truck. “Let him go!”
Price yelled at Hollywood. “Get in, move it, we’re—”
The gunshot felt so loud that Cam stumbled back from the fight, impaled by the sound.
Sawyer stalked toward them with his tarnished revolver held up in one fist. There was no need to point it at anybody. McCraney shoved Manny away, and Silverstein only kept an arm around the kid in a reflex effort to keep him from falling.
Words were also unnecessary, but Sawyer seemed to relish the moment. He thrust his weapon overhead as if testing its weight and its power. “Get your fucking hands off him,” he said.
10
The wind in the trees sounded like clean ocean surf. It soothed Cam despite reminding him of his father, his brothers. The pervasive roar was loud enough to drown his worrying and this small surrender became easier with every step.
He was tired.
Sawyer kept up a merciless pace. Sawyer had his anger and his vision to feed upon, but Cam was tired. His knee hurt. His snow pants were hot and still heavy with moisture.
Sunlight rippled through the canopy of whitebark pines, cut into distinct rays that swarmed with gnats and flies. His boots made tiny sounds beneath the wind’s surf, the clack of pebbles kicked together, the snap of twigs. The rain-softened dirt absorbed all else.
His four companions might have seemed more obtrusive if they were marching down in a group instead of single file, but following Sawyer through the trees was easier than deciding on individual paths. Cam heard Erin’s breathing whenever he got close — whenever rocks or a deadfall slowed their parade or, more rarely, when she shied away from a tight squeeze and paused to find her own course. Mostly there was only the working beat of his heart and the monotone wind — and the bugs.
Black flies droned around Cam insistently, attracted by his heat or smell or color. No amount of waving could disperse these fat dots. They beat against his goggles and face mask with the weight of raindrops.
The flies were loud but for the past ten minutes Bacchetti had been louder, mimicking their engine buzz. “Vrrrve! Vrrrrrve!”
Finally, Sawyer stopped and swung his head around as they bunched up. Bacchetti outweighed him by thirty pounds, even wasted to the bone, yet Sawyer merely said, “Shut up.”
The grasshoppers were fewer here in the trees than farther up the mountain, before the storm, but Cam had noticed several veins of ants. One dark mass boiled around a flailing millipede. Another exploded up Sawyer’s calf when he stepped in the wrong place, and Cam shoved past Erin to help his friend sweep his leg clean before the jittering specks got inside his clothing.
Six times now Sawyer had dodged left or right. Cam could only guess why except during the fourth detour, when he heard the dry, warning shake of a rattler. Already he’d spotted two nests of snakes, babies coiled together for warmth — and it was unnatural for these creatures to be exposed. Maybe all the good crevices and overhangs were taken.
Maybe on a hot afternoon this land would crawl.
The lizard population was unbelievable. Chilled by the passing rain, small gray bodies hunched within every patch of sunshine. They clearly preferred rock but sometimes covered fallen logs and bare dirt as well. They scurried from Sawyer with astonishing speed, a low wave front of motion, yet quickly expended themselves and merged with the still earth again.
Cam studied the land to distract himself. The sensation in his left hand was undeniable. Shaking his arm would not disrupt the ever-worsening itch and it would not keep the nanos from spreading, but the only other option was to do nothing. So he snapped his wrist downward again and again. This threw off his balance, and he nearly toppled when he stepped on a pinecone.
His fear was real but not overpowering. Not until he noticed Sawyer’s green shape pacing back uphill—
Erin had sat down. Cam opened his mouth to yell but Sawyer stopped in front of a break in the pines. Their map hung open at his side, creased folds of white.
Manny slogged by and didn’t pause, moving to join Sawyer. The kid’s limp was clearly more pronounced.
“Go,” Cam said to Erin. “Let’s go.”
But Sawyer and Manny returned as Bacchetti caught up.
“Look. Everybody look.” Sawyer crouched and spread the map on the ground. “We’re drifting too far west.”
You’re the one who said it had to be you in the lead, Cam thought, yet resentment was more than petty; it could be dangerous.
He bumped Manny to move in by Sawyer’s shoulder. Manny was preoccupied anyway, digging into his boot with both thumbs, punching at the heel. Maybe the kid had only cramped, but the nanos had an unfortunate tendency to bunch up in scar tissue, attacking the parts of the body that had already been weakened. Cam always got it first in his hand or his ear.
A red grid covered the map, showing square miles, each block messy with brown contour lines of elevation, yet Cam located their intended path in a glance. They’d scratched big X marks into the lighter patterns of abrasion in the waterproofing.
Sawyer touched his gloved finger beside a tight, hooked contour nearly a full square off-course.
“God.” Manny stopped working at his foot. “Oh God.”
Cam said, “That’s the crest we’re on?”
“Right.”
They had been led three-quarters of a mile farther west than necessary by an undulation of ravines that ran oceanward rather than directly down into the valley, allowing themselves to be channeled by the shapes of the mountain.