Month after month Eddie had wasted batteries trying to raise them on the ham radio, wasted wood and grass making smoke signals. He built flag towers and laid out giant words in rock — and then one morning he was gone, leaving only a note signed with his bold, chosen name. Hollywood.
That night they lit a row of bonfires to alert the people across the valley or to help poor Eddie find his way home. His journey was both foolish and grand, of course — it was entirely adolescent — and yet he’d been vindicated beyond even his wildest imaginings.
Without Eddie, Sawyer might never have reached a radio.
* * * *
The two Special Forces medics examined Cam first in the semi-privacy of the cargo plane, while the other soldiers let the kids get in the way as they set up tents and dug a fire pit. If these corpsmen were less educated than Dr. Anderson, their supplies made up for it. They re-dressed the stubborn, swollen divot of rash under Cam’s right arm and gave him wide-spectrum antibiotics that they warned could cause diarrhea, Anderson agreeing that the risk of dehydration was better than relying on his wasted immune system to overcome the infection.
The medics didn’t even attempt to deal with his dental problems. Across the valley they had eaten all of the toothpaste they’d found on scavenging trips, and Cam had been chewing lightly on a cavity for months now. The bits of floss he’d shared with Erin and Sawyer, the few brushes they’d worn down to nothing, had probably kept him from developing worse trouble — but toward the end of his climb, nano infestations had destroyed his gums along the upper left of his mouth. His eyetooth and the molar behind it were loose, dying. Both would need to come out soon, and the gap would further deform the contours of his face.
When he emerged from the plane, Ruth and the other two scientists were questioning Maureen. They turned, however, and the loud one, D.J., immediately hammered at him: “Where is Sawyer’s lab? Do you know the street address?”
Cam had expected impatience, but this guy was nervous. All of them. Why? Not for a lack of guns.
And that wasn’t a question they should have asked.
Ruth quickly intervened, glaring at D.J. “I need to sit down,” she said. “I’m tired. Can we all just sit down and talk?”
Cam nodded, and they walked with D.J. and Todd to the downhill side of the road, not far from the planes or the cabin — or the two Marines who followed the scientists over. This berm of hardpack and crumbling granite had become Cam’s favorite spot; favorite because the kids came here often, noisily rooting for quartz; favorite because the views were west, away from Bear Summit.
Neither D.J. nor Todd was much for conversation, though.
D.J. didn’t know how to listen and Todd didn’t open his mouth, scratching and scratching at the blot of old scarring on his nose, looking anywhere except at Cam’s ruined profile.
“We’re going to beat the plague,” Ruth said, “I swear,” but Cam barely glanced up from the rock he’d picked up, a shard of milky quartz shot through with orange-black veins of iron.
Sunset would be unspectacular today, no clouds, the yellow sun falling to the edge of the world without changing in hue or strength. The grasshoppers sang and sang and sang.
“We were already close,” Ruth insisted. “Close enough to test out in lab conditions.”
He nodded. It was everything he wanted to hear. But his reaction to their arrival was not what he’d hoped, and he turned the gleaming white rock over again in his gnarled hands.
He had thought he was beyond self-pity, yet found himself avoiding Ruth’s eyes. She stared at him with the same open wonder as the children, and spoke with compassion and an astonishing deference, which affected him in ways that D.J.’s disgust did not. Because it was undeserved. Because disgust was all that he felt for himself, for his appearance, for his past.
This bright, daring woman would never have been so respectful if she knew the truth.
Few men would have considered Ruth pretty, but she was healthy and trim and dedicated. Cam wanted to like her, which was exactly why he couldn’t trust her. Not yet.
“You’re with the rebels,” he said matter-of-factly, just to get a reaction. It didn’t matter. Sawyer was theirs, unless somebody flew in and shot all of these soldiers. Jesus. No wonder they were in such a rush.
Ruth seemed startled, but didn’t shy away when he lifted his gaze. “What? No, we’re from Leadville.”
“Then you should know.”
D.J. interrupted. “This is bullshit. Just tell us.”
“You should know.” Cam didn’t have any idea where to find Sawyer’s lab, and he had been definite about that fact with his radio contacts. Sawyer refused to share the location until they came for him, until they treated him, until they took him wherever he would be well fed and protected and clean.
Cam had begged Dr. Anderson to call Colorado before he even told them his own name, identifying Sawyer first. Unfortunately, ham radio wasn’t like picking up the phone. The family who’d lived here kept a transceiver for recreation and for emergencies, and it had more-than-sufficient wattage to bridge the distance — but unless there was someone waiting at the right time on the right frequency, a broadcast was no more effective than a prayer. And these days, nearly all radio traffic was on military and federal bands. No one was monitoring amateur channels.
The International Space Station would have been an ideal relay, and the survivors here had spoken to the astronauts several times during the past year, so they began transmitting on a diligent, revolving schedule, certain that they’d intercept one of the rapid orbits overhead. But the ISS never responded.
They had also developed several contacts on the ground, both near and remote. Within ten days they’d raised some again. None could help. Most were just as helpless, stuck on scattered high points along the coast, while those in the Rockies had strived all this time to remain uninvolved with Leadville or its enemies.
Cam was aware of the slow-developing civil war along the Continental Divide. Hollywood had shared his limited knowledge of it, a distant curiosity, but those hostilities confused their attempts to reach across seven hundred miles.
The silence became an invisible sea in his mind, wide and desolate, into which they ventured each night when reception was best — but nights passed while atmospheric activity prevented them from sending a clear signal. Nights passed in which they chased down intermittent contacts only to be dismissed as a hoax or simply too far away.
Finally, three weeks after their arrival on this mountain, Cam and Sawyer spoke with a nanotech expert in Leadville named James Hollister. Open broadcasts could be intercepted by anybody on the same wavelength, however, and Cam had been prepared to see someone other than Leadville fly in— someone who might have heard only parts of their conversations.
“Seems like Hollister would’ve told you what we told him,” Cam said, and D.J.’s eyebrows rippled in anger.
“You’ll get your price,” D.J. said. “Whatever you want.”
“I want to know where you’re from.”
“Hey, come on.” Ruth tried to elbow D.J. with her cast and shrug at Cam at the same time. Busy lady. “We’re all on the same side here,” she said.
He remembered when he had played the peacemaker.
“James told us only Sawyer knew what city,” she explained. “We just hoped you were holding out. We weren’t exactly Miss Manners about it, though.”