“We can still make the cars,” Cam said. “Go. Run through the greenhouses.”
“No,” Owen said, no longer shouting. “No.”
“Hope,” Greg whispered. “Christ, she‘s—Hope.”
They couldn’t reach her. There were twenty villagers scattered around the baby. All of them were contagious — and they ignored the little girl. Even her mother was indifferent. Lying against a man who’d dropped dead, Hope pawed weakly at the earth with her tiny hands. The three-month-old girl was too young to crawl on her own. She lacked the motor skills and strength, but, regardless, she was exhibiting the same insistent drive they’d seen in everybody who was infected.
“There’s someone behind us,” Ingrid said.
The floodlights still shone on the north side of town, a white corona in the dark. Silhouettes walked between the square shapes of the huts.
From the other direction, some of their friends also began to pace toward them — three villagers, then four and five. Tricia joined the disorganized march. She tripped on one of the dead and staggered sideways.
Cam’s group backpedaled without a word, even Owen, even Greg. Especially in the dim light, the infected people no longer looked like family. They looked alien and deadly and Cam yanked his 9mm Beretta from his gun belt.
“Run for the cars,” he said.
Greg tore his eyes away from his wife. His face was hidden in his goggles and mask, but everything about his posture shrieked of conflict and suffering.
“Greg,” Cam said. “Run.”
He didn’t know what else to do. Without Ruth, they were only a handful of ordinary people, but he would lie to Grand Lake if they reestablished contact. Get a helicopter, he thought. Save who you can. Maybe we can come back for her in hazmat suits—
A jeep horn startled him. It blared from the other side of the greenhouses. Cam’s nerves betrayed him. His hand clenched on his pistol and he put a bullet into the villagers. One of the oncoming shapes fell.
“No!” Owen screamed. He smashed Cam’s shoulder with his rifle, knocking Cam into Greg. Then he swung his M16 around and leveled it at Cam’s midsection.
The pistol shot must have sounded like an answering signal to whoever was in the jeep. The horn blared again and again. Maybe someone was shouting, too. Cam wasn’t sure. The pounding of his heart was too loud and Owen kept screaming.
“No, no, no, no!” Owen yelled.
“Put it down,” Ingrid said calmly, although she’d raised her M16 and moved to Owen’s left so his rifle couldn’t cover her, too. “Owen! Put it down.”
“I didn‘t—” Cam shouted.
“You son of a bitch, no!”
There wasn’t time. More and more silhouettes were bobbing through the lights on the north side of town. From the south, the infected villagers were also closing rapidly. In seconds, they would be overwhelmed.
Cam shoved Greg to one side and jumped the other way, trying to escape Owen’s weapon. He didn’t make it. The M16 blazed in his face, deafening and bright. A bullet smashed into the right side of his chest like an icy ball. Another might have nipped the inside of his arm. Impact threw Cam onto his back, but somehow he dragged his arm forward against that momentum. He shot Owen in the leg — partly because he didn’t want to kill the man. Mostly it was because it was the quickest shot from the ground.
The wound was devastating. At close range, the 9mm bullet ripped a melon-sized hole through the back of Owen’s thigh. It shattered his femur in a gush of dark arterial blood, but Ingrid killed him before he dropped. She emptied her clip into his chest, a burst of five or six shots. Sparks flew from Owen’s M16 as her rounds struck the weapon. Maybe it had been her real target.
Cam’s vision was fading, yet he heard David gasp as the man turned and fled. David ran into the corridor between the stripped frameworks of Greenhouses 2 and 3. The jeep horn was still bleating. Cam tried to get up but his legs wouldn’t work. The best he could do was to squeeze his arm against his side where his jacket was wet.
Then everything went dark.
He woke between Ingrid and Greg as they hauled him forward. His feet dragged on the ground, adding to the strain on his side. It felt like his ribs were being pulled apart and he tried to run with Greg, who had most of his weight. He couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds. They were still five steps from the skeletal wood structure of Greenhouse 3, moving without flashlights.
The jeep horn had gone quiet, too. Whoever was at the cars had either been infected or decided to stop making himself a target.
“Wait,” Ingrid said, bumping against Cam.
Greg pulled on his other side and they went two more steps before Greg froze, too. “Oh, God,” he said.
David sprawled in the corridor between the greenhouses. Their friend lay on his back, trembling, as if he’d struck a nonexistent wall. But there was nowhere else to go. Behind them, the villagers had walked over Owen’s corpse and the flashlights they’d left nearby, filling the few white beams with legs and feet. At the same time, a larger, different group of silhouettes walked into the flashlights from the north.
Jefferson belonged to the infected.
“Run through the greenhouse,” Cam said, gesturing with his entire body against Ingrid. Greenhouse 2 was upwind of David, if that mattered. Every breath was a gamble. The air must be streaked with nanotech.
“Go!” Greg said. “Ingrid, go. I got him.”
She stepped over the foundation wall, ducking one of the crossbeams that had supported the plastic. Instead of running ahead, though, she turned with her M16. There were more silhouettes to their left, bumbling through the space between Greenhouses 1 and 2. In a moment, they would be cut off.
Cam heaved his legs over the foundation wall as Ingrid took aim. Chik kik. She was empty. “Idiot,” she said, fumbling a new magazine from her jacket as she backpedaled through the low, broad planters, still soft and green with seedlings.
Greg and Cam outpaced her before she opened fire. Muzzle flashes danced over the posts and crossbeams, throwing shadows like crucifixes on the surface of Greenhouse 1. Someone howled. Most of the others tumbled in silence. Then another gun fired from the jeeps, supporting Ingrid. Cam recognized the chatter of an M4. A pistol barked, too, punctuating the lighter, popping noise of the carbine. At least two other villagers had survived, and Cam lunged forward with Greg, buoyed by a new surge of hope.
“This way!” a woman hollered.
They fell out of the back of the greenhouse. Greg staggered to his feet but Cam’s right arm wouldn’t work. He could only push himself onto his hurt side. His thoughts were short and confused.
Get up. Get up.
“Cam!” Ruth yelled. She stood over him with her hand thrust out, squeezing off three rapid shots from her 9mm Beretta. He thought he was dreaming.
Somewhere the M4 blazed again on full auto, running through an entire clip in seconds. Spent cartridges rang against the bumper of a jeep. Cam felt himself dragged against the vehicle’s fender, which was alive in a way that the ground was not. The jeep rocked violently as someone climbed in. The engine was idling, too, a low, bass grumble.
“Help me!” Greg shouted, heaving Cam upright. Ruth lowered her pistol and shoved her free hand against Cam’s stomach. Together they levered him into the back of the jeep, where Bobbi knelt with the M4, reloading.
“You crazy—” Cam said in admiration before he ran out of breath. Crazy goddamn females, he thought. Ruth and Bobbi had disobeyed him, running for the jeeps instead of entering the sealed huts like he’d told them.