of miles.
Would it reach them?
Was that what this was about? Who had launched the missile, the rebels? A foreign enemy?
Ruth laid her good hand on the dirt and traced her ‚ngers through one boot print, as if the broken tread marks were some sort of Braille. As if there were answers.
“It couldn’t be Colorado,” Mike said.
“Look, kid, somebody just shot off a few warheads!” Newcombe yelled. “You—”
Cam stopped them. “Easy,” he said. He had been quiet for several minutes and Ruth realized this wasn’t the ‚rst time she’d seen him step aside to gauge everyone’s state of mind before neatly solving a problem. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter!?” Alex shouted.
“Whatever happened, we have to decide what to do. I say we all get moving. Today. Now.” Cam gestured east into the valley below them. “We need to try to reach as many other people as possible and get off the mountains.”
For an instant, there was only the wind.
“Before there are more bombs,” Cam said.
“Yeah. Yeah, all right.” Newcombe glanced at the Scouts and their stunned faces, Mike with his hands still on his eyes, Brandon squeezing his palm against his bloody cheek.
“We split up,” Cam said. His voice was aggressive now, and he pointed at Ed and Alex. “Three groups. You, you, and us. That just makes the most sense.” He kept his back to the hole in the sky, staring at them instead. “We have to do this,” he said. “Get up. We’re going.”
* * * *
D Mac and Hiroki chased Ed back up to their camp to grab the rest of their packs and sleeping bags as Cam unwrapped his left hand again. He reopened the knife wound he’d made earlier, bleeding too much into a tin cup.
“No,” Samantha said to her brother. “Please, no.”
Brandon shook his head. “We can’t stay here, Sam. You know we can’t.”
Alex drank from the cup quickly and Kevin did the same, but Alex took it back from him when Samantha refused. “He’s right,” Alex said. “Come on. He’s right.”
“Stay with me,” she said.
The ground trembled lightly again and they heard one of boys shout on top of the mountain. Then the earth heaved. Ruth was still sitting down but immediately lost her balance. She thought she bounced. Cam and Newcombe slammed down on either side of her and someone kicked her arm, a bolt of pain. Her mind went white. Somewhere there was screaming, Samantha and Brandon and herself.
Gradually she realized it was over. She looked for Cam and saw his face bent with his own agony. He lay on his side, picking dirt out of the cut on his bad hand. Kevin groaned, testing his ankle. Ruth heard more yelling from above and Mike said, “What’s happening?”
“Every fault line on the continent might be letting go,” Newcombe said. “That’s my guess. Anyone see another †ash?”
They shook their heads.
“You guys all lived here,” Newcombe said. “Are we near any faults?”
“It’s California,” Mike said. “Yes.”
“The ‚rst quake was the bomb. Maybe the second one, too. I don’t know. Christ. Let’s hope it’s done.”
“Behind you,” Cam said.
In the east, morning had become night again. Ruth believed the vast distortion in the atmosphere was slowing down, but now a poisonous black stain crawled up from the farthest edge of the horizon, undulating after the shock wave. It rippled and popped, a thin, growing band of darkness.
It was fallout — pulverized debris that had brie†y turned hotter than the sun.
* * * *
Everyone drank, even Samantha, as they shouldered their packs and tucked away their knives and a few precious keepsakes. Hiroki had a shiny old quarter that he showed to Mike, then pressed into his hand as a gift. Brandon repeated the sudden gesture with his Giants hat, offering it to Alex.
Before they divided, the Scouts clutched at each other and shouted and cried. D Mac spontaneously turned to Cam and hugged him, too, and suddenly the children enveloped Ruth as well. Mike hurt her arm. Alex kissed her cheek.
It was the perfect farewell against the roiling sky. Ruth would not forget them or their courage, and she hoped that she would see them again. But as she started downhill after Cam, running east, Ruth clenched her ‚sts and wondered how far west the fallout might come toward them against the wind.
15
“Wait.” Cam moved quickly to his right, leading Ruth sideways over a log. The ropy brown snakes he’d seen probably weren’t rattlers. Gopher snakes looked very similar and had been more common before the plague, but he couldn’t chance it. Even nonvenomous bites would inject them with the plague and leave wounds that were vulnerable to more — and fresh blood might excite the bugs.
He helped her get her boots down. Then he kept his glove on her hip, looking for her eyes. Ruth was breathing hard inside her mask, but she kept her face down and all he saw was goggles and hood. His own gear seemed especially ‚lthy after the night on the mountain, feeling the cold on his naked skin.
Newcombe climbed over the log behind them. Cam turned away and hurried in front again, moving east, always east, using himself to sound their trail through the forest. He was totally recommitted to her now. Any thoughts of sending Ruth away on a plane had been a fantasy. The idea that he could stay here with the Scouts, slowly beginning to rebuild, ignored the need and desperation of the rest of the world. He should have known better. Of course Leadville’s enemies would attack. They’d only waited for the opportunity.
His guess was that it was the rebels. They’d taken out Leadville to end the competition to get Ruth. That was a good thing if they’d succeeded. He had to act as if they hadn’t. If help came, great. If not, leading her safely through this valley to the next mountaintop was all that was important. In twenty minutes they’d avoided a cloud of grasshoppers, more snakes, and two furious sprouts of ants bearing white eggs out of the ground. Black †ies continued to lose and ‚nd them among the pine trees. Cam hoped the Scouts hadn’t turned back. The quakes alone were bad enough and had yet to quit shuddering through the valley, agitating the reptiles and insects everywhere.
Newcombe was right. The bomb had acted like a hammer, triggering the worst fault lines. As those landmasses fell and clashed, they must have shoved against other regions and set off any weaknesses there. Once the chain reaction was done, California might be unusually stable for years, but for now the mountains rumbled and twitched. Cam was glad they’d escaped the lowlands. More of the failing dams and levees would collapse, adding to the destruction, and there must have been tidal waves along the coast and inside the Bay.
“Stay with me,” he said.
Ahead, another huge tree had fallen. Cam angled laterally across the slope instead of risking a way through. There were snake holes in the earth and that made him nervous. He kicked his boot into the pine needles and dirt, showering the fallen branches with debris to scare anything curled up out of sight.
But the movement he expected was overhead. The trees stiffened. Daylight winked.
It was as if God had touched the sky. A new current shushed through the forest from the east, countering the
