He had never felt more apart. Two of Hernandez’s Marines remembered him as an enemy. Nathan Gilbride was among those Cam had betrayed in Sacramento, and neither Gilbride nor Sergeant Watts seemed as ready to forgive him as their commanding of‚cer had been. Worse, they’d told their fellow Marines. It was an unexpected strain. Cam had never imagined he would see any of those men alive again. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes down. Even Ruth had been taken from him. Ruth had the only tent in camp, a lean-to they’d erected against one of the trucks and disguised with netting and dirt, blending the long shape of the vehicle into the rock. In a day and a half Cam had seen her just twice, both times in conference with Deborah, Hernandez, and Gilbride — and yet as much as he wanted to touch her, he’d stayed back. Her work came ‚rst. Cam was jealous of Deborah for being so necessary. Deborah served as Ruth’s assistant, organizing the blood samples from Sylvan Mountain. Deborah wasn’t above fetching Ruth’s meals, either, or emptying the bucket that served as her latrine.
Cam had to be careful. He’d made a mistake the last time they were in this situation. When Ruth disappeared into her lab in Grand Lake, he’d found Allison.
“Okay, let’s pack up,” Goodrich said. He slung two of the M4s over his shoulder and Cam and Foshtomi stood with him, gathering their own carbines. Sunset was giving way to night. In thirty minutes they were on watch.
As he walked with Foshtomi to the second truck, Cam could not stop himself from gazing at Ruth’s tent. It was a †imsy structure in which to house their best hope. They could never protect Ruth from artillery or planes, whether there were twenty soldiers here or ‚ve hundred, and he knew that he was the least useful of all, with minimal training, one good ear, and the quiet animosity between himself and the Marines.
He might have left on his own if he had anywhere to go, if only to get moving again. The urge ran that deep. He recognized the feeling for what it was, nerves and doubt and old trauma, but he wondered if he would ever be able to settle down. Even if Ruth gave him the opportunity, or Allison or anyone, Cam wondered if he would always be trying to get away from himself.
* * * *
“There she is,” Foshtomi said as lantern light spilled through the gorge. Two silhouettes held open the side of the tent, Deborah and Ruth.
Directly in front of the two women, a Marine ducked his head, pinned in the yellow light. Hernandez had ordered a total blackout. “Hey!” someone shouted. Ruth’s shape hesitated, but Deborah’s taller ‚gure let go of the tent †ap.
Cam set down his canteen and started toward them, blinking to regain his night vision. “Cam, wait,” Goodrich said. He didn’t stop. If the sergeant pressed the matter, he would say he hadn’t understood because of his ear.
“Where is General Hernandez?” Deborah asked the soldiers in front of the tent. She was supporting Ruth as well as speaking for her. Ruth stood awkwardly, protecting her hip, and Deborah kept one arm around her waist. Cam edged through the few Marines to reach her side. One of them said something that Cam only caught part of, “—ight now,” but the man pointed as he spoke and that was enough. Cam was more interested in trying to assess Ruth’s health in the dark.
She noticed him and smiled.
“How are you?” she asked. Then they were separated again as Deborah guided Ruth forward, walking through the Marines. Ruth looked back once, her curly hair like a soft tangle in the moonlight.
What did you ‚nd? Cam thought. He knew her moods well enough to recognize this exhausted pleasure. Good news. It was good news, and that meant none of their losses had been in vain. The thrill of it made him grin as he strode after the group. The wind sifted through the gorge, cold and alive. Cam was aware of another kind of motion around them as other soldiers got up and paced alongside them. Most of the twenty-six Rangers and Marines were in foxholes outside the gully, but Ruth drew the remainder to her in twos and threes.
Like the trucks, the jeep was also draped in netting. Hernandez slept beside the vehicle and its radio. A Marine corporal sat nearby, leaning against a tire with his submachine gun in his lap. He woke Hernandez, who coughed and pushed himself up. Then he coughed again, uncontrollably.
Deborah let go of Ruth and knelt close to him, laying her hand on his back as he rasped for air. “General,” she said.
“I’m ‚ne.” He choked the words out.
Deborah stayed with him. She was obviously trying to gauge the strength of his breathing and Cam didn’t like the obvious tension in her shoulders. Shit. Hernandez had hidden his respiratory problems from them, but even if it was just a cold, not radiation sickness, the man was in dangerously bad shape to be ‚ghting off a virus.
Hernandez was gaunt and pale. “Doctor Goldman,” he said, quickly locating the most important face in the crowd.
“They trusted you,” Ruth said. “They trusted you more than you think.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Leadville,” she said. “The labs.”
To the west, a clump of explosions †ared up from the black mountains. The booming reached them an instant later as Ruth knelt, too, twisting to protect the wounds in her left hip. Some of the Marines also crouched down and Cam was not surprised by this sudden intimacy. Everyone wanted to hear.
“They were testing nanotech on forward units,” Ruth said, “but they must have been almost certain how well the new vaccine would work. They trusted you.”
“A new vaccine,” Hernandez said.
“Yes.” Her eyes were large and childlike. “There are two nanos in you right now, and they’re both different from anything else I’ve seen.”
Hernandez coughed again, wincing. Beside Cam, one of the Marines touched his own chest and several others glanced down at themselves or ‚dgeted with their hands, afraid of the machinery that they could not see.
“They targeted you deliberately, General,” Ruth said. “They trusted you. We’ve taken hundreds of blood samples and no one else had the vaccine or a working ghost.”
“What does that mean?” a woman asked behind Cam. It was Foshtomi, and he turned to see that she stood away from the group, as if that could possibly save her. But she was loyal and brave. The wind blew Foshtomi’s dark hair across her face and she strode forward with the rush of the breeze, joining them despite her nervousness.
Ruth glanced at the younger woman, then turned back to Hernandez. It might have been Cam’s imagination but he thought Ruth looked at him, too, after dismissing Foshtomi. Why? Because she didn’t like it that he and Sarah were friends?
“How long were you stationed outside Leadville before the bombing?” Ruth asked Hernandez. “Were you above the barrier that whole time?”
“What are you saying — we were immune to the plague?”
“At some point. Absolutely. The atmospheric effects of the bomb had nothing to do with the fact that your troops were able to run below ten thousand feet and survive.”
Hernandez shook his head. “We would have noticed.”
“No. Not if you never tried it. You wouldn’t have launched any attacks below the barrier until after Grand Lake brought you the vaccine that Cam and I carried out of Sacramento, right?”