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Lucas: “What do you think are the chances?”
Tank looked around and said, “If she didn’t grab a car…I don’t think she’d be going up, because there’s nothing up there and it’d be a hell of a climb. Standing right here, we’re at better than nine thousand feet. You try to climb that wall, you’d be sucking wind pretty damn quick. She’s probably following the road down. Maybe thinking to grab a car along the way. If she didn’t take water with her, she’ll be looking for some. There are a few guest houses and a condo down the way…”
Lucas: “Let’s get some water for ourselves…” Lucas turned to Rae: “Do you have a backpack in your gear bag?”
“A small one…”
“We need to take water…”
Rae: “My pack is big enough for that.”
Lucas looked at Letty: “That okay with DHS?”
“Good with me,” Letty said. “Alec is okay with an M4, he can stay with me, you can stay close to Rae, but we’ve gotta run.”
Tank radioed to another cop, told him to bring water ASAP. He warned Lucas and the others that when they got down the valley, they’d lose cell service. Rae got an empty backpack from her bag, gave it to Hawkins, since she and Lucas would be wearing armor.
They had a few last warning words for Tank, then started jogging along the road, stopped for the water cop, who gave them four cold bottles for Hawkins’s backpack.
The cop said, “Tank is going to cover the bus with another guy. I’m going down the road to the bottom. I’ll look for her. I’ll call or radio if I see her, but the canyon’s weird with electronics. If I can’t get through, I’ll fire three shots in the air.”
Letty nodded: “Do that. Don’t let her get close to you. If she tries, shoot her. Don’t listen to any bullshit—she just tried to kill us.”
Rae: “Come on, guys, keep moving.”
—
They spread out,Rae in the trees on one side of the street, Lucas in the trees on the other, Letty and Hawkins farther up the mountainside. A dirt hiking trail ran parallel to the road for a while, before slanting uphill. The trees and brush were not as dense as they wouldhave been in a well-watered forest but were thick enough that their sightlines were limited as they moved through.
And the chase turned rough. The ground underfoot was broken, uneven, a mixture of sand, dirt, and rock, all of it on a forty-five-degree hillside. The day was still hot, and ten minutes along the road, they were all sweating, and panting from the thin air.
They passed above what looked like a trash collection area, with heavy equipment parked around it, and Rae went down and threaded her way through it. She found a man welding a hinge on a dumpster and asked him if he’d seen a woman running or stopping a car. The man looked at her M4 and the armor, swallowed, and asked, “Should I have? I mean…no, I haven’t.”
She moved on along the road, waved at Lucas.
They were moving quickly but were as cautious as they could be. They went by a couple of cabins, both occupied; none of the occupants had seen a running woman.
Then Letty, who was higher on the mountain above Hawkins, spotted Turney struggling across a steeply pitched slope ahead of them.
“I got her,” she screamed. “There! There!”
Hawkins, down the slope from her, looked where she was pointing, and saw nothing but trees. He began running, as best he could, and fifty yards along, saw Turney disappear into a clump of immature fir trees. He ran that way, shouting down to Lucas, pointing. Lucas, working through the more heavily treed verge of the road, called, “Where, where?”
“Fifty yards. Didn’t see a weapon.”
“What?”
“No weapon,” Hawkins shouted.
Hawkins was moving faster than Lucas because he knew where he was going, and he was running downhill. Letty was coming down the mountainside a hundred yards above and behind him, too fast, dodging trees, then skidding and falling hands-first down the rock-littered slope.
Hawkins saw Turney break out of the clump of fir, running heavily toward the next clump, and shouted at her, “Stop! Stop!”
She looked over her shoulder but kept running. She wasn’t fat, but looked soft, out of shape, her blond hair bouncing around a narrow face. She ricocheted off a branch, nearly fell, looked back again at Hawkins, who was closing fast, both the Davenports now well behind him.
Then Turney quit, slumped over, hands on her knees. Hawkins came up, shouted, “Are you infected?”
She looked at him and grinned. “Maybe. I hope so.”
