Read Online Plague Year by Jeff Carlson - Free Book Online Page B

space. He smiled. They had shrieked like idiot hyenas whenever a trucker hit his horn for them.
    Erin was smiling, too, the only other face not tight and brooding. Cam shook himself. He knew her weird cat’s smirk only meant she was thinking, but he didn’t want anyone to see the two of them standing there grinning. Jesus. He waved back at Sawyer in a slow arc meant to convey patience.
    Wait. This is important.
    The center of their gathering was a knot of handshakes and embraces, private words. It was the greatest display of emotion Cam had ever seen on this high, barren island, and he wished he was more a part of it. He wished so many things.
    It didn’t matter that they’d already enacted this same ritual two days ago, when the skies clouded up and spit hard for half an hour, or that everything had been decided for more than two weeks now. They all wanted to touch the few who were staying—Faulk, Sue, Al, and Amy Wong. Amy’s three-monthold boy, Summer, was passed among a dozen people who cooed and murmured to him and scratched at the puffy down jacket that served as his swaddling clothes.
    Cam hadn’t gotten a chance to hold him and hadn’t fought for it, either. Summer gave him the willies. Babies should cry. Summer only stared, oblivious even to this morning’s commotion. Cam suspected brain damage. Their diet had been dangerously short on protein, and Amy had gone beneath the barrier twice before she knew she was pregnant. The nanos might have affected that part of her body or attacked the baby directly, or both.
    Below, Sawyer moved past the line of rock markers and Cam’s thoughts vanished in a jolt. It shouldn’t have been frightening, that dark silhouette against the rough slope of grays and browns, but they had survived long enough to develop a new set of instincts. Nothing belonged down there. Nothing human.
    Watching him, Cam hesitated, then turned suddenly and shouldered in toward the heart of the crowd. He needed to say something. Anything. He was pleased when Erin grabbed his hand and came along.
    It felt as much as ten degrees warmer inside the gathering, shielded from the wind. Their jackets whistled against the others’ GORE-TEX skins, a sound that Cam associated with busy weekends at the resort. His past had never seemed closer.
    Amy and Lorraine were crying softly, heads together, holding Summer between them; but Sue studied Cam’s approach with dry, steady eyes, both hands on her pregnant belly. He couldn’t read her expression. No one else had noticed him yet. Price was clapping people on the shoulder like a football coach, out of words for once, and both Hollywood and Doug Silverstein fidgeted with bundles of yellow twine that they’d cut into lengths of roughly two feet.
    “We really appreciate this,” Faulk said, for the hundredth time, and Hollywood nodded and shrugged.
    Their plan was to tie markers on trees near berry patches and snake pits and anything else of use down to 7,000 feet or more, to decrease the time that Faulk and Al Pendergraff would spend below the barrier on future scavenging trips.
    “Really,” Faulk repeated, and Cam cleared his throat. They all turned. Hollywood looked relieved but the others just stared at him with the same careful intensity as Sue.
    Beside Cam, Erin ducked her head.
    He put his hand out and Faulk took it immediately. And that was all. He and Pendergraff repeated the handshake and Amy smiled through her tears, and Sue even kissed his cheek as he bent to hug her around her big belly. After everything they’d been through, it came down to a civilized exchange of gestures.
    * * * *
    He never saw any of them alive again.
    * * * *
    Seventeen days hadn’t been enough for Hollywood. The boy still hunched slightly over his right side and couldn’t seem to move his left leg forward all the way, resulting in a swaying waddle even worse than Manny’s lopsided gait. Manny had long since grown accustomed to his missing toes and walked or ran with an