Free Plague Year by Jeff Carlson Page A

would total twelve miles or more as he switchbacked up and down the steepest slopes, avoiding cliffs and hard terrain.
    He tightened his gogs and glanced toward the low, oncoming clouds. He wondered again why storms hadn’t washed the world clean, at least the mountain areas. Common sense suggested that rain and snow would press the nanos to the ground, then carry them downhill. Sawyer said he didn’t understand the rule of scale. Nanos weren’t little people. Airborne particles of that size barely noticed the finest drizzle or the thickest blizzard, and gusts of wind and the impact of a storm’s first raindrops would stir up pockets of grounded nanos. Bad weather probably swept away a good percentage of the invisible machines, yet brought just as many or even more up from the lowlands.
    “Wait.” Erin laid her hand on Cam’s hip. She’d set her goggles on her forehead and her eyes were a rich violet in the gloom. Several loose strands of her hair, flagging on the breeze, reached out from her hood to Cam’s face as she stepped close. Her smile felt funny when she kissed him.
    She was warmth and softness. He moved his hand up under her jacket but was frustrated by its tight fit, and ran his palm down to her crotch instead. She rocked her hips forward to increase the pressure.
    All around them, fifteen other human beings were engaged in similar embraces or slugging water from canteens or urinating there on the dirt. Keene had squatted down in a last attempt to move his bowels. After crossing the barrier, they’d keep their armor shut regardless of the body’s needs. No one wanted the nanos inside their clothing, exposing any cuts or bug bites.
    In a way, this was farewell. There wouldn’t be another chance to feel bare skin until they reached the other side.
    Cam wanted to say I love you , but it wasn’t true. Need was a more honest word. There had been times when taking care of Erin had been the only thing that kept him going.
    He said the words anyway, like a prayer. “Love you.”
    “Yes.” Her smile broadened so much that the corners of her eyes crinkled. A real smile. “I love you too.”
    Then she went to Sawyer, glancing back over one shoulder. But her smile had become that crooked little smirk again and Cam pretended to look elsewhere. He watched her gesture silently, watched Sawyer push his face open, goggles up, mask down. His friend had quit shaving the day after Hollywood came and seemed like someone else now with a patchy beard rounding his long face.
    Cam wished he’d gotten the last kiss. Didn’t everyone save their favorite for last?
    He turned uphill, thinking that the stay-behinds would have come to the top of the drainage to watch them go. Yet he saw nothing, no movement anywhere except a fleeting dust devil and one quick arrow of a bird.
    Anger stabbed through him, not pity. Faulk and Pendergraff should have been running downhill for early juniper berries and fresh greens, for lizards and insects slowed by the cold. He knew they weren’t busy double-checking their rain traps or putting out every spare container because he and Manny had already done that for them... He supposed they’d gone to their hut, reeling from the emotional shock, surrounded now by a new and equally dangerous sea of total isolation.
    Somehow Cam was certain they would haunt him much longer than any of the people he’d eaten.

7
    Shuttle Pilot Derek Mills shifted his body or grabbed for a new handhold each time Ruth matched his local vertical, a reaction that she thought spoke volumes. Not that the derision in his voice wasn’t clear enough.
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled. “It’s not like landing a plane.”
    Ruth bit down on her first response. If you’re really planning to stay up here forever you’d better learn to breathe vacuum, buddy. Instead, she turned to the others, glancing back and forth across the hab module, making a show of raising her eyebrows and sort of