“We need to rethink what we’re doing,” Newcombe said.
Cam shook his head. “Let’s not waste the time.”
“That plane was a show of commitment.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Newcombe.”
Every hour the temptation to agree with Newcombe was stronger. Ruth was unspeakably tired. She obsessed about her arm. Was it healing straight? Cam needed medical care even more, and yet he remained single-minded.
“I don’t know what more you want,” Newcombe said. “That mess back there, that was a hundred guys who knew they had pretty bad odds even if they actually found us — and they never even got that far, did they? But they came anyway.”
Ruth turned her head. More and more, the gesture was becoming a habit, denying what was in front of her. Nothing had changed despite the snatch of rebel broadcasts they’d picked up last night. They were still down here beneath a sky full of aircraft, no matter if the rebels declared themselves the legal American government. Both sides had made those claims before. So what? It was only words, and yet it had given Newcombe something else to argue with.
Newcombe hadn’t given up on persuading them. He probably wouldn’t. They had made the radio even more important to him, because he had no other friend, and Cam admitted it was smart to listen as much as possible. Whenever they stopped to eat or nap, the two men monitored the airwaves together. Cam had to be sure Newcombe never transmitted. He kept their radios in his pack and slept against it, and his hard pillow also included Newcombe’s pistol.
“Every day we hike east is another day we’ll have to hike back out again,” Newcombe said. “They’ll never try to get us right up against the Leadville base. It was high-risk for them already.”
“High-risk is the problem,” Cam said. “Listen to yourself. We’re not getting on a plane just to get shot down.”
He walked left suddenly into an open pocket like a strange asphalt meadow. Then they crunched through a puddle of glass alongside a Buick that had veered into a tiny Geo, smashing it against two other vehicles.
“Shit.” Newcombe waved his arms helplessly. “Pretty soon they’ll scrub the whole operation if you stay off the radio. They’ll think we’re dead.”
“We can make contact when it’s time.”
“This is crazy.”
“It’s already decided, man. Stop working against us.”
Ruth huffed for air against her mask. Her boots clattered through a broken femur and a torn suitcase and then the three of them dodged left again to avoid a small oil slick where an SUV seemed to have accelerated and reversed and accelerated again, bashing through the other cars all of thirty feet until its tires went †at and the engine seized because its radiator had burst. The ramming was something they’d seen again and again — dying people trying anything to escape — and every time it made her feel anxious and lost.
She kept moving, holding on to her thoughts like a beacon. They ducked under a torn bike rack and Ruth stumbled. She was immediately up again, woozy and dry-mouthed. She turned to stare back at the cloud of bugs. Was it leaning toward them? Her vision leapt with black threads and she twisted away—
She never seemed to hit the asphalt. She came awake in the damp, hot cocoon of her jacket and face mask with a new pain spiking through her arm.
Cam leaned over her. “Easy,” he said.
I passed out, she thought, but the realization felt dim and meaningless until he tried to help her up. He was obviously close to dropping himself, bent beneath his pack and the assault ri†e. His left arm trembled as he grabbed the front of her jacket.
Newcombe stepped in to help. Cam bristled. Even with his face and body concealed, it was unmistakable, like the way her step-father’s dog had tensed if anyone except her step-father approached the numbskull little terrier after it stole a pillow or a shoe.
Cam tipped a canteen into his glove and dripped the water over her hood and shoulders. Ruth frowned, confused. She was thinking too much of the past and she tried to avoid Cam’s eyes and the concern she saw there. She had seen the same look in her step-brother’s gaze when he asked if they were going to tell anyone about the two of them, that they’d slept together while she was home for Hanukkah and then again for a week in Miami. The excitement between them had become a lot more than just fun and convenient, but neither of them knew how to tell their parents. Ari. She hadn’t thought of him in what felt like a very long time and yet she understood why the memory came. The tangle between herself and Cam and Newcombe reminded her exactly of that wild, trapped feeling.
They’d made a bad situation worse. Their trust was gone and they could never relax, not even in camp at night when they needed it most. None of them had been resting well, not even with pills, and sleep deprivation was another ever-growing hazard. It made them stupid. It made them paranoid, but they were forced to work together. There was no other way out.
They were bound more tightly than she and Ari had ever been and her mind whirled as she fought for some kind of answer. Then she saw both men glance beyond her, leery of the bugs. Ruth nodded once and shoved herself to her feet, the nail in her head throbbing with new frustration.
* * * *
They’d made their situation almost unworkable. Ruth accepted that she was as much to blame as the other two. She could have simply obeyed Newcombe, instead of encouraging Cam to stand against him. She could have let Cam go east alone and taken her chances on a plane.
They were long past the rendezvous. Rocklin was miles behind them, along with all but the farthest outskirts of the greater Sacramento metropolis. In fact, they’d talked about leaving the highway soon, striking out across the dry brown oak-and-grassland hills. Cam thought they’d make better time off the road, and yet it would also become more challenging to ‚nd supplies. Newcombe and Cam were sure they could carry enough food for several meals, but each of them needed at least two quarts of water a day. Some of their canteens also had to carry gasoline. They had no idea how bad the insects might be in the open hills. Better? Worse?
There were other unknowns. Ruth still had yet to decipher her feelings for Cam. It was impossible not to be grateful and impressed. The dif‚cult choices he’d made were the only reason she was alive and free, and a huge part of the success she’d had so far. She didn’t want to hurt him. She felt real affection and loyalty, but she was also wary. In his protectiveness was also a possessiveness, and Ruth worried at that. She was also disturbed by how easily he’d turned on Newcombe. She’d thought he would argue, but instead he seemed very comfortable with the idea of betrayal. It made her wonder again what it must have been like for him on his mountaintop, surviving at any cost.
Maybe he’d only agreed for her sake. He was obviously smitten with her — not because she was so great, she thought, but simply because she was there, because he wanted so badly to be accepted and to feel normal and whole.
It was very human to join with whoever was available. Fear and pain only made that instinct stronger. Their predicament reminded her of Nikola Ulinov. As the space station commander, Ulinov had tried to separate himself from Ruth even as they traded glances and found reasons to touch each other, bickering in her lab or helping each other through the corridors and habitation modules of the ISS in zero gravity.
Her moments with Ulinov had been easy compared to here and now. Ruth couldn’t imagine pursuing anything physical. After so many days on the road, she was encrusted in dirt. and she and Cam were both wounded…and his face was so badly scarred, his body must be blistered and burnt as well. Plus he was just a kid, really, maybe twenty-‚ve, whereas she was all of thirty-six with another birthday coming soon.