Higher Ground (18 page)

“There’s no way to tell how far the island will sink,” Zach said. “It might only sink a few meters, or it might be totally submerged.”

“Or it might not happen at all,” Jones said. “You could be wrong.”

“I’m certain it will happen. It’s only a question of time.”

“But you
could
be wrong,” Jones insisted. He’d moved closer, and the firelight and darkness made him seem bigger and broader than Zach remembered him. Involuntarily, he took a step backward. Adam’s hand touched his back, and he stopped. Jones didn’t look ready to take a swing at Zach, but he seemed determined to prove a point, assert dominance. Torres moved closer to him. She hadn’t said anything so far, not taking sides, just ready to do her job of keeping the peace.

“You could be wrong,” Jones said again. “Your data could be wrong.”

Any scientist could be wrong, of course. Zach wasn’t infallible. Even having the backing of a senior colleague like Korrie didn’t mean he had to be right.

“Yes, it’s possible I could be wrong,” Zach admitted with reluctant honesty. He heard Adam groan.

“Ah.” Jones smiled triumphantly.

“Shouldn’t have said that,” Adam muttered, but Zach felt he had no choice. The people of Arius were a community of scientists. Even the nonscientists worked with or lived with scientists. Those born here had grown up around them. They knew a scientist who claimed he couldn’t possibly be wrong was either a liar or a fool. Surely to admit to them he could feasibly be wrong meant little. But were they thinking rationally? With blisters and aching backs and crying children? With the siren call of their homes and beds behind them?

“I know this climb is difficult for many of you. And I know what you’ve left behind to follow me. Please believe I wouldn’t ask so much of you unless I was absolutely sure that staying in Arius would mean your deaths.”

“But you could be wrong.” Jones wasn’t letting go of that fact. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to come at all. Perhaps his wife or someone had talked him into it, and he needed to have the argument again and win this time. And what would he do then? Would he jump from
could
be wrong to
is
wrong and then…what? Zach knew what, and it chilled him.
God, don’t let him have children. Don’t let him take children back down there to die.

“Yes,” Zach said again. “I could be wrong.”

With a triumphant look, Jones turned away. “He admits it,” he called to the watching crowd. “He’s not sure he’s right.”

“Listen to me,” Zach called, as loud as Jones but with pleading, not triumph, in his voice. “If I’m wrong, you can turn around and go back and everything will be fine. If I’m wrong and you keep following me, you get tired and sunburned and maybe have to argue with your boss when you eventually go home. But in the end, everything will be fine.”

He paused, looking at the silent faces watching him. Adam’s argument about sticking with Zach giving the best odds for survival played out in his mind and came out of his mouth.

“But if I’m right, then by following me, you get to live. If I’m right and you go back to Arius, you will die.”

He’d frightened them—he saw it in the faces of many of them. But he had to make them see. After spending the day wishing he and Adam were alone out here, he now feared that by this time tomorrow, they might well be.

“Please, don’t let the hardship of the journey cloud your judgment. There’s only one rational choice here.” He looked around at the faces one last time. His tribe, Adam had called them. “That’s all I have to say.”

And he had to get away suddenly. He walked, knees trembling, to his tent and then behind it, where he dropped to all fours and threw up. He knelt there, trembling, until he heard someone behind him. Adam. He held out a water bottle. Even in the near darkness, Zach could see the concern on his face.

“You okay?”

Zach drank water and spat. He rubbed a hand across his face, wiping away sweat and tears. “Adam, would you make me some tea? With honey in it if anyone has any.”

His mother used to give him honeyed tea when he got sick. It had earned him some teasing from roommates when he’d treated his infrequent student hangovers with it. But it worked for him.

“Ah, sure,” Adam said. “Why don’t you go into the tent and lie down? I’ll be a few minutes. And don’t worry. They’re tired, not thinking straight. Jones is all mouth. He’ll have changed his mind by morning.”

Zach wanted to believe it. But just as he could be wrong, so could Adam.

“Adam. Do you think I could be wrong?”

“We already talked about this, and you were obviously listening, as you gave them the same argument I gave you.”

Zach smiled. “Yes, I did. Thank you. It’s a good argument. Faultless logic.”

But would tired, aching, frightened people respond to logic?

* * * *

Zach woke in the morning spooned against Adam, lying on top of their sleeping bag. They hadn’t had sex the night before; Zach had fallen asleep shortly after he drank the tea Adam brought him, only partially undressed, too tired to get out of more than his boots and pants.

Adam’s erection pressed against Zach’s buttock, making him wish he had the time to turn into Adam’s arms and kiss him awake. Peel off his clothes and worship his beautiful body. Zach had a semierection himself, but knew he just needed to use the bathroom—the latrine, he’d have to call it—and began to move carefully out of Adam’s arms. Adam murmured, turned on his back, and went on sleeping.

But he didn’t get to sleep for long. Zach realized someone was right outside their tent. When he began moving around, they spoke. Korrie’s voice.

“Better come out here, lads.”

Zach pulled on some pants, moving less cautiously and waking Adam.

“Wha’ss goin’ on?” Adam muttered.

“I don’t know. Ann says to come outside.” Zach unzipped the door flap and scrambled out. Korrie sat outside, drinking from a steaming mug. Many others were awake and moving about, even though it was only 05:15. They were making breakfast and breaking camp, all rather quiet and subdued. A sudden fear gripped Zach. Korrie looked up at him as he stood.

“Some of them are turning back.”

“No!”

Zach’s shout brought people’s attention to him, and he ran to the dying campfire, finding Jones arguing with the Franes.

“You can’t go!” Zach cried. “You can’t go back!”

“I can do whatever I want,” Jones said. “At least half of them are coming with me, and if I can persuade them, I’ll take the rest too.”

“You’re certainly not persuading us,” Visha said. She scooped up Amina, who’d come up and taken her hand. “We’re not fools.”

“You’re the biggest fools here,” Jones said. “Gray, Dr. Howie, mad old Korrie, what have any of them got to lose? But you? You’ve lost your jobs and your home, made yourself criminals for him. You’re fools.”

“That’s enough,” Torres said as Simon stepped forward, ready to take issue with this. She stood between those two but looked at Zach.

“I’m going too,” she said.

“What?” Damn. He should have known. She had no loyalty to Zach; she didn’t believe him. She’d only come to do her job.

“Someone has to keep the peace,” she said as Jones stomped off to supervise the packing up. Simon took his family to have breakfast. Torres watched them go and looked back at Zach. “I know it means leaving your group with no cops. But I think I’m more needed with them. You’re less of a hothead than Jones.”

“Barbara, please, you can’t do this. You’re supposed to protect these people. You can’t take them back into danger.”

“I protect them; I don’t tell them what to do.”

“Then don’t go. Please don’t go with them.” She might only be here to do a job, but she’d been such an asset to the group he didn’t want to lose her. And he liked her. He didn’t want her to die.

She smiled and shook her head. She still didn’t believe him. Still thought nothing would happen. “I’ll see you back in town, Zach. And I’ll tell everyone you were acting for what you thought best, even if—”

He cut her off by turning away, unable to stand it. Adam stood behind him, hastily dressed, hair uncombed. He looked worried and then quite alarmed as Zach turned to him. How stricken must Zach look to produce such a shocked expression? He tried to pull himself together, harden his heart. He couldn’t stop Jones going. He could only keep on climbing with whoever would come with him.

“Come and eat,” Adam said, an invitation that appealed, despite Zach’s miserable state. He’d woken up hungry, since his dinner last night hadn’t stayed down long. He followed Adam back to their tent, realizing only then his feet were bare. The damp grass stuck to his skin.

Dr. Howie waited for them with Korrie. “Good morning, Doctor,” Zach said. Howie wouldn’t desert them, would he? Like Torres, he had a duty to people. Like her, there were going to be two groups he had a duty to. Which would he choose?

“Good morning, boys,” Howie said. “Looks like we start the really tough hiking today.”

Relief washed over Zach, and his appetite for his breakfast increased when Korrie handed him and Adam plates of scrambled eggs, chunks of rather unevenly toasted bread, and apples. He ate too fast to even taste the food. His mind whirled a mile a minute, working on what he could possibly say or do to stop Jones and his followers leaving. Even at this point, he must be able to think of something.

But they’d heard all the arguments and remained resolute. He knew what would persuade them—the smallest sign he was right about the island. A quake, even a tiny one, showing the ocean floor had started to subside. It frustrated him to distraction not having access to the monitoring instruments to tell him the status of the fault line. He’d only know it had finally given way when the ground under his feet told him.

Catching himself praying for an earthquake, he lost his appetite again and sat passing his uneaten apple from hand to hand. He didn’t want to be right, he tried to remember. Best in the end for everyone if he was wrong.

But he wasn’t wrong.

He looked at Adam, smiling and joking with the professor. How could he have missed the chance to have sex with him again last night? However sick he’d been, however scared, it had been madness to lose any opportunity. Tonight, he vowed, he wouldn’t fall asleep before he made love to Adam.

Made love? Seemed a rather fanciful idea, but justified, he believed. Two nights ago, the night the island could have cracked apart and sunk unnoticed by him, it had felt like making love. He’d been in love three times in his life. The first time, he’d been fourteen, and the other boy only liked girls, so it had faded away, like his many temporary crazes in those teenage years. Twice more since then, loves which had also faded in the end, but before then the sex had eventually become like it had been two nights ago with Adam.

Eventually was the word. After weeks and months, not days. It shouldn’t feel so profound so soon. He looked over at Adam, munching the last of his toast. What did it mean?

Adam must have sensed his gaze, looked over and smiled at him. Zach felt as if his knees had been suddenly replaced with water. He knew for sure what it meant.

He loved Adam.

Chapter Fifteen

Zach was back in the middle of the group packing up to head back down the mountain. Pleading with Jones, begging him not to go. Adam couldn’t think of anything else to say and knew it wouldn’t help anyway. So he’d found a sun-warmed rock to sit on and look back down into the basin.

Perhaps he should be over there with Zach, supporting him. But he supported him by staying with him, going on climbing. Actions speak louder than words, his dad often said. Usually to annoy Mom when she accused him of having all the conversational skills of a stuffed dummy. Adam resembled the women of his family more in that regard; he was a talker. But today he felt silent.

“Hi.” Torres sat down on the rock beside him.

“Come to say good-bye?” He had no bitterness or accusation in his tone. She was just doing her job as she saw it.

“I have to go with them. Jones is a hothead. He’ll cause more fights than he prevents. He’s not really a bad guy, but he’s been in the cells overnight a couple of times.”

“I’m not blaming you, Barb.”

“Thanks. And your group will be okay. You’ve got some levelheaded people in charge. You for one.”

I’m someone in charge?
Strange to think of himself that way. And “
your group
.” Suddenly, there were two groups. Their tribe had split. Shattered.

“The sheriff didn’t want you going off without a cop, but we’re going in different directions, and I’m only one cop. So I think I should deputize someone.”

He nodded. “Good idea. Simon would be ideal; he’s a rock. Or Zach himself, since he’s the leader.”

She shook her head. “Not Zach. The leader can’t be the enforcer too. Simon’s a good idea, but he’s got his family to focus on. You’re the best candidate.”

“Me?” He stared at her. “I’m just a grad student.”

“You’re smart, you’re not too excitable, and you seem to have the best interests of the group at heart.”

“I’m not sure about the last part,” he admitted. “I’m here for Zach.”

“Okay. But I still think you’re the one.” She rubbed her bare arms, didn’t have her jacket on, and the wind was colder this high up. “You’re not one hundred percent sure he’s right, are you?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m with him whether he is or not. He’s going to need my support either way.”

“Your loyalty is admirable, but don’t make a vice of it. Don’t let him lead you to disaster. You’re the only one he’ll listen to in the end.”

Adam didn’t answer. Would Zach listen to him if he started disagreeing? If Adam turned around and went back down the mountain, would Zach go with him? It hadn’t come to that yet. There was a difference between not being 100 percent sure and having actual doubts. He had no doubts about Zach.

“Will you let me deputize you?”

He shrugged. “Okay.” It didn’t matter much, did it? The group had been law-abiding so far. “Do I get to wear a star?” He smiled, and she rolled her eyes at him.

“Be a grown-up. Raise your right hand.” He did. “Adam Gray, I hereby deputize you. Do you accept? Say ‘I do.’”