“They would have found us wherever we went,” Elizabeth said. “That’s why I had to come here.”
Avery recognized this was an argument they’d had before. It probably was what they’d been talking about the day Gabe had arrived and she’d found them squared off on the bunkhouse steps.
“So you knew everything?” Boone asked Renata.
“Wait, I don’t understand this,” Savannah said loudly, her voice cutting through everyone else’s. She was holding Jacob tightly in her arms. “You came here knowing someone was after you. You deliberately put us in danger. There are seven pregnant women here—not to mention two babies!”
“And there are seven billion people and counting in danger because our planet is heating up past anything we’ve ever known before,” Elizabeth snapped back at her. “Isn’t that why you’re building a sustainable community? You’re letting your lives be filmed in order to light a fire under the viewing public’s asses. Well, I’m trying to save the entire human race. Not to mention the animals and birds and fish and trees and every other living thing on this planet. Do you really not understand that we’re hurtling toward a cliff, and we’ve got about a second left—maybe—to swerve in a different direction before we all go over it?”
Savannah stared back, wide-eyed. “But—”
“But nothing!” Elizabeth burst out. “No one’s willing to inconvenience themselves the slightest bit to stop it. No one’s even paying attention! There are fires and droughts and hurricanes and heat waves and mass migrations and extinctions, and no one even cares! Maybe I should have let that guy shoot me. At least I wouldn’t be alive to watch it all happen!”
“Elizabeth.” Gabe reached for her. She warded him off, still facing Savannah.
“Don’t you get it? We don’t have any more chances. We don’t have any more time. We’re right at the brink, and I don’t know if what I plan to do will change a damn thing! Even if I make it to Washington. Even if I give my presentation. I mean, who’s going to listen to me? What happens if I fail?”
“Honey—”
Elizabeth stopped Gabe with a raised hand.
“My family has passed down stories from generation to generation. My grandmother’s grandmother remembered when there wasn’t a single paved street in Montana. Her grandmother’s grandmother remembered when there wasn’t a single White person in the territory. What kind of stories will my grandchildren’s grandchildren have? One in which I’m the person who let it all go to hell?”
“You won’t,” Gabe told her. “You’ll make them see sense.”
“What if I don’t?” She looked around her, challenging each of them in turn. “What if I don’t?”
It was a question they’d all been asking themselves through their year of filming Base Camp.
Avery couldn’t bear to see Elizabeth’s anguish or the way Savannah was cradling Jacob close, tears slipping silently down her cheeks. “We’ll keep on fighting,” she said when no one else spoke up. “All of us. No matter what happens when you go to Washington. Because there’s no end to this fight until there’s an end to us all. This is existential. We all live or die—together. Which means no one in this room is going to tell Fulsom what’s happening until it’s over, right? Right?” She faced off with the crew.
After a long moment, Renata came to stand next to her. “That’s right. This is too damn important for anyone to break ranks. By now everyone in this room understands what’s riding on Elizabeth’s testimony. We’ve taken a lot of risks, pushed the envelope a lot of times on this show. Anyone who’s willing to risk not just Elizabeth’s life but the future we all share needs to speak up right now.”
No one said a word.
“William, Craig, you with me on this?”
Both of the older cameramen nodded.
“Byron?”
“Of course.”
Renata ran through the crew’s names one by one until each of them had vowed to keep the secret.
“You realize you’re putting us on the wrong side of a billionaire,” Craig said.
“I realize that. Want to change your answer?” Renata challenged him.
“No. It’s the right thing to do—unfortunately.”
Elizabeth dropped her head into her hands. All the fight went out of her, and she allowed Gabe to embrace her. As he murmured into her hair, the rest of them moved away as best they could in the enclosed space to give the couple privacy.
Riley was still pressing her hands to her belly.
“Are you okay?” Avery asked her.
Riley nodded. “She’s right, though. What kind of world are we going to give them—our babies?”
“The best one we can,” Avery promised her.
Chapter Eleven
‡
“Everyone ready?” Boone asked three days later.
Walker wondered if anyone had slept the previous night. For the last two nights they’d given up the separate sleeping arrangements and moved back into the bunkhouse. They’d given up almost all their other activities, too. Elizabeth never left the bunkhouse. The rest of the women spent almost all their hours indoors. One party of the men worked only the most crucial chores as a group while the rest stood guard.
Renata split the camera crews, too, some keeping to their normal task of getting footage for the show, others manning cameras pointed in different directions from the bunkhouse to capture any approach by an intruder. When the sun went down, they set up the enormous lights they used for nighttime filming in a circle around the bunkhouse pointed outward and kept them on until sunrise, lighting up the exterior until it was bright as day.
Now it was time to get Elizabeth on her plane.
