trying to drive off the insects as Bobbi squeezed off another short burst at nothing that he could see, sweeping the earth. If there were more snakes, Cam didn’t know if the gunfire would excite them or drive them off, but he drew his pistol, too, thinking to reinforce her.
By now, Ingrid was running with more momentum than intent. She collapsed. Ruth dragged her up and Cam fired six times in front of them, hoping the muzzle flashes and gun-smoke might affect the bugs. Bobbi had the same idea and squeezed off the rest of her magazine, strafing the air. Bullets thunked into the trees. Leaves and bark spun overhead.
Somewhere, far away, Cam thought he heard rifle fire crackling in response to their weapons, like Morse code. They kept running. Bobbi reloaded but held her fire exactly as Cam was hoarding his last shots.
They broke out of the yellow aspen into a green meadow. The insects seemed to be gone. Cam didn’t want to stop, but Ruth and Ingrid were staggering and his side felt like it had split open, tearing the stitches.
“Rest,” he gasped. “Rest but get ready to move.”
“I saw fifty of them! Fifty snakes!” Bobbi said. Heaving for air, she tried to climb onto an old log but slipped and half fell. At the same time, Ingrid, Cam, and Ruth stepped gingerly in the brush, facing outward from each other.
“Water,” Ruth said. “There has to be water.”
“We’ll follow that gully,” Cam said. The north side of the meadow dropped away into a pair of ravines. He was sure they’d find a creek eventually… but would anything be safe to drink?
Bobbi wept, removing her mask to knead at the welts on her face and neck. Cam distracted himself by listening for more gunfire. The artillery unit must have heard them. Were they trying to signal Cam’s group or were they losing the on-and-off battle he’d been following for more than an hour? If they’d left their artillery and were fighting with small arms instead, was that because they were retreating from infected people?
There were no more shots, so Cam glanced back into the trees, wondering at what he’d just seen. Bull snakes were not indigenous to this elevation. Neither were yellow jackets. Cam believed they were at nine thousand feet. There shouldn’t be anything here to feed the snakes, who lived mostly on rodents and small lizards. There were no rodents left below the death-line, and not many above it, either — but maybe that was why the bull snakes had migrated this high, finding just enough chipmunks, immature marmots, birds, and eggs to endure all this time. Maybe the snake population was actually descending again after surviving the plague year above ten thousand feet, hibernating through the long winters and leaving only the hardiest, most adaptable individuals to reproduce.
The bull snakes could very well be evolving to eat bugs, too, adapting their diet to the only available food source. Maybe they’d kept the ant colonies from expanding into this area, which was why the yellow jackets had survived up here, too, developing a crude symbiosis with the reptiles.
He had more important questions.
“Would the mind plague affect animals?” he asked into the silence. “Ruth? Hey. Would the new plague affect snakes and yellow jackets?”
“How the hell would I know?”
Cam bristled at her tone, but Ingrid spoke first. “We got out of there,” Ingrid said. “That’s all that matters.”
“It’s not. We need to know if we’re going to have problems with them, too. I mean if they’re contagious.”
Ruth shrugged. She wouldn’t look at him or the other woman. At last, she said, “Animals don’t have the same neurological makeup as humans do. Not even close. My guess is the nanotech would misfire or only partially activate, but how would you know if a snake was acting funny?”
“They could be paralyzed,” Cam said. “Or go blind or have seizures.”
She met his eyes now. “Yes.”
“I didn’t see any snakes that weren’t moving,” Bobbi said, and Ingrid said, “Ruth, do you want to finish whatever you were doing with your laptop? Then we’ll get moving.”
“Yes.”
Cam wouldn’t let it go. “If they’re warm enough, the plague could be breeding in them even if it doesn’t affect the way they act,” he said. “That means we’d better avoid everything. Kill everything.”
None of them spoke. Ingrid worked at her foot. Ruth opened her laptop and Cam glanced over the meadow, watching for yellow jackets.
“Jesus, I’m thirsty,” Bobbi said.
He might have had a hand in saving the insects and snakes. Maybe it was perverse, but the idea made him glad. This world needed every life-form it could find.
Long ago, in Grand Lake, Cam and Allison had participated in a widespread trap-and-release program to share the vaccine with as many animal species as possible. Mostly, they’d succeeded with rats. The elk, marmots, grouse, and birds that were native to this elevation had been hunted to extinction, but the rats thrived in the crowded refugee camps, and, once immunized, the rats did the rest of their work for them.
There were mountaintops where no people had gone. There were others where no one had survived for long. Some animals must have persisted in those lonely peaks. In time, they were attacked by the vaccinated rats. The rats bred uncontrolled beneath ten thousand feet, warring with the insects and invading the new outposts built by men. In the summer, the rats also returned to the mountains, where they took the young of the few remaining marmots and swarmed the old or injured elk. They stole the eggs of the grouse and other birds. But they also passed the vaccine to the animals they attacked but didn’t succeed in killing.
Were the yellow jackets now immune after an encounter with the rats? Cam hoped so.
The emotions in him were both lonely and good, because he knew the idea would have made Allison happy. It would have made her feel rich.
They lost sight of the horizon as they edged into Willow Creek, a high mountain canyon within ten miles of Grand Lake. Cam would have stayed out of this valley altogether if he wasn’t sure the artillery unit was stationed inside it. Even so, he kept his group as far up the box canyon’s north side as possible, traversing east without losing any more elevation than necessary. He didn’t want to have to climb back out if it looked like the gun crews had fled or were infected.
The creek meandered through the canyon floor, running southwest toward the only low point, where eventually it jogged south and fell downslope alongside a small state highway. That road hit Highway 40, which wasn’t so far from Interstate 70, Loveland Pass, and roads leading into the Leadville crater. Cam knew the area well. During the war, his Ranger unit had picked their way cross-country from 40 to 70, skirting the fallout zone. Any number of civilian camps and small military garrisons had filled the region since then.
The first body was below them to the south. The man lay on his back, his face and naked chest much lighter than the rock and brush. Only the white skin drew Cam’s gaze. Then he realized the ground down there was burned and torn, concealing what had been a rutted dirt road.
“Look,” he said.
Ruth and Ingrid both knelt, merely using the opportunity to rest. Bobbi squinted in the direction he’d pointed. Her eyes must have been better than his. “Jesus,” she said. “How many people do you think are down there? Thirty?”
Once he understood what he was looking for, his eyes registered at least twenty bodies littered in an area as big as a football field. The mind plague must have driven some of the infected to follow the survivors into these mountains… The artillery crews had walked their guns back and forth across the mouth of Willow Creek, dropping everyone who’d chased them. Cam was doubly glad he’d kept them out of the canyon. The battlefield was at least a mile away, but it was surely contagious.
“Bobbi,” he said suddenly. “Fire two shots.”
“What? Why? I’m almost empty.”
He was down to a few rounds himself, but touched his holster. “They’ll have spotters looking for anyone like us who comes over the mountains,” he said. “Then they’ll shell us if they don’t think we’re okay.”
Ruth was already struggling back to her feet. She unslung her carbine while Bobbi stared into the canyon as if
