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.
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.
Cam hadn’t said anything. She didn’t think he would push. Maybe he even believed she was unaware of his feelings. He must be painfully self-conscious, wrapped in his scars, and he was often quiet with her. Shy. They didn’t need the distraction, this little spark growing between them.
Just by itself, the long walk was too much. The two of them weren’t enough people to watch Newcombe and still look out for bugs and other hazards, watch their maps and compass, ‚nd water, ‚nd food, make camp. They’d had to talk it out with Newcombe and ultimately they’d had to trust him. He didn’t have any great options, either. What could he do? Wrestle with Cam to get his ri†e back, then shoot Cam and keep Ruth as a prisoner, tying her legs to keep her from running?
In this at least she and Cam had the upper hand. In camp they always lay down close together. Two would be harder to overpower than one, but the implications of bedding down side by side were only deepening that particular trouble. In the cool spring nights, Cam was warm. Even wrapped up in his gloves and jacket, he was much softer than the ground. Last night Ruth had burrowed against him, knowing she was wrong to encourage him but unable to forsake the basic comfort of it.
* * * *
Of everyone who’d been a part of her life, Ruth missed her step-brother most of all. Not her parents, not her few close friends. Ari had always been her favorite distraction. They still had yet to resolve their relationship and never would, not with him killed or, less likely, lost among the scattered refugees. He was the perfect memory, good and strong. He was safe. She recognized that. Even the cruel things he’d done were part of the easier world before the plague. He’d hurt her badly, in fact, because he was never quite in reach. Legally they were family and they’d been scared of what people would think. So he’d left her. Twice. A third time, she had been the one to call things off. It was messy. It was intense.
Ruth Ann Goldman had been an only child. Probably that was for the best. Her father was an independent software programmer/analyst, brilliant at his work and in high demand. He had few hours for his daughter and less for his wife. That he could have hired on with one company and settled into a steady nine-to-‚ve, yet chose not to, wasn’t something Ruth understood until much later. She was a loud girl, antic and capering, hungry for approval at home and therefore everywhere else — in school, with her peers.
After the divorce her mother found a better man, not so driven. Her step-father was a lot like her dad, enthusiastic and smart. He was more disciplined in giving of himself, however, more appreciative, having lost his ‚rst wife to cancer.
It wasn’t the Brady Bunch, no matter how many times her mother made that idiotic joke. Ruth shared a bathroom with Susan and Ari, which was both excruciating and thrilling for a thirteen-year-old who had always had a toilet and a shower to herself. The Cohen kids were casual about busting in on each other wearing only underwear or a towel. There were glimpses of skin and slammed doors and apologies, and it was all very dramatic. Both of them were older than Ruth, Susan by four years, Ari by two, and they were always running around getting ready for dates or, in Ari’s case, cleaning up after baseball and basketball. Ruth managed to get in the way often enough.
If love is indeed just chemistry, it shouldn’t have shocked anyone that step-brother and sister ended up together. His dad and her mom made a good ‚t. There was an echo of that attraction in the next generation and they circled each other for years, Ruth pushing him back with sarcasm and drawing him close in a thousand ways, teasing him and herself by asking about his girlfriends, by †aunting around the house in her pajamas, by sitting with him and his math homework — a low-charge erotic tension much like she would develop with Nikola Ulinov nearly
