SEEING BOBBY HUNT IN PERSON was little like seeing it on TV. The BFG, while large and multi-barreled, was smaller than it looked onscreen. Bobby’s calm (which Alice had always thought must be put on considering the tense situations he was always in) now appeared genuine, even as they strode into the brush with all its granite outcroppings and excellent hiding spots. There was nothing nervous about him. Alice, on the other hand, was plenty tense. She knew this song and dance in theory — considering all the reporting she’d done on Hemisphere BioTech, Archibald Burgess, and the sticky ethical issues that came with overprotective government agencies and a blended, perhaps aggressively mainstreamed society — but being in the hot zone was so much more nerve-racking than sitting behind a computer.
“There,” Bobby said, pointing. “You see?”
Alice did. There was one man shambling along what seemed to be an old hiking trail, climbing over boulders, intermittently stumbling, moving with an unsteady gait. Alice had a neighbor who moved just like him, but Kelly Pulombo didn’t share this man’s vacant, bloodthirsty stare.
Alice looked at Bobby. She knew his shows were best-of reels by definition (Bobby said it took forty hours of hunting to get enough good footage for twenty-two minutes’ worth of show), but she still hadn’t been prepared for how much missed nuance was in front of her now. The devil might be in the details, but apparently it wasn’t in the aired show, the outtakes, or the bonus footage.
“Why is nobody taking aim?” She looked at the other hunters — those who were part of Bobby’s team and those who’d booked paid charter on his bus. None were raising weapons to sight on the deadhead across the rock scree. There were hunters scattered across the reserve, but those who chose to ride with Bobby Baltimore were supposed to be the richest — and, supposedly, the best at bagging game.
“Because he’s not raging yet.”
“How can you tell?”
“Years of hunting.”
“But if you got closer, maybe he’d—”
“He wouldn’t, and he’s not. Trust me. That one’s still grazing. I’ll bet if we went over there, we could even have a simple conversation.”
That gave Alice the chills. It had often occurred to her that Panacea clarifiers had the worst jobs in the world, choosing who was curable and who was bound for Yosemite. Or rather, they had the worst jobs in the world if they were psychologically healthy … which, now that Alice considered it, wasn’t a condition that clarifiers were likely to maintain if they stayed on the job long. And if they were sadistic bastards, then clarifying was a dream job. Who lives? Who dies? I get to decide! Because if they got one wrong, who would know?
Alice’s neighbor Kelly seemed safe, but with her shambling gait, forgetfulness, and penchant for the rarest beef, she had to have been in the ballpark of her inflection point when initially clarified. But even the newly infected would eventually turn if left untreated, and then ultimately vanish in the Yosemite wilds.
“How long does it take for the greenest of them to turn?” Alice asked.
Bobby looked at her with amusement. Alice returned the look, feeling jealousy at his easy calm. The smug bastard wasn’t even breathing heavy. He certainly wasn’t watching every tree and boulder as if a group of deadheads was about to spring out and rush forward. But Alice couldn’t help it.
“I thought you were an expert.”
“I’m just asking for an on-the-ground account,” Alice replied, her tone more defensive than she’d intended. “I’ve heard rumors that the disease is evolving, with shortened incubation times. Plus, the chatter I’m getting from every Tom, Dick, and Harry who visits my blog. Some are legit and plenty are wackos, ranging from conscientious objectors to tinfoil theorists, but most are saying that clarifiers are erring on the side of selecting-against way too often for new infections. I figured that since you spend so much time in the wild, you might have some insight into aspects of SP-terminal behavior that we, who aren’t in the trenches, couldn’t possibly have enough perspective to — ”
“Look out!”
Bobby shot a hand toward Alice mid-rant, the heel of his palm striking her chest hard enough to knock her backward. His weapon came up in one fluid motion, like a reflex. Alice heard a guttural roar, like an animal’s, and suddenly saw three half-decayed things coming toward them too fast, seemingly having sprung from nowhere like macabre jack-in-the-boxes. There was a loud, booming report, flat and hollow like a cannon fired into an enormous pillow.
The sound echoed five times in rapid succession as flashes and activity strobed from the right. A great glut of something exploded from where Alice had been standing, and by the time she’d drawn another two breaths, she found herself looking down at her shirt, now covered in semi-congealed blood and clots of gore.
She looked up at Bobby, who was entirely covered in red. He lowered his weapon, as did the two hunters to his right who’d unloaded into the sneak attackers. All three guns were smoking at the ends, but the deadheads were now invisible: carcasses on the ground ahead, maybe, or burst like water balloons.
“Three weeks,” Bobby said.
Alice was still on her back, her heart pounding out of her chest, panting like a dog.
“What?”
Her eyes were everywhere at once, unable to focus. How many tens or hundreds of thousands of deadheads had Calais said were wandering the park? And of those tens or hundreds of thousands, how many were in the rockfall ahead of them now, waiting to tear Alice in half?
Bobby pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and casually wiped his face. “You asked me a question. The answer is that it takes three weeks for those dropped here, closest to their inflection points, to rage.”