Plague Zone p-3

by Jeff Carlson

  “Cam!” Ruth said.

  He was staring. He snatched the paper from her and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, freeing his hands again as he tried to think. “What else do we need?”

  Her hands scrabbled at the wall, feeling for places to set herself. Then she tumbled forward. Matthew tried to hold her but Ruth fell against the wall, cracking one arm. “Oh!” she cried.

  “Ruth, stop! Is there anything else we need in there?”

  She flailed through the hole, hanging upside down until Cam snarled his left hand in the back of her shirt. Matthew took her arm. Together they set her on her feet.

  Ruth seemed rejuvenated by the cool night air. In the shifting beams of the flashlights, her burnt, naked face looked both excited and vulnerable. There was sweat in her bangs and her breath came hard, lifting her breasts against her shirt. When she leaned against him, Cam hugged her briefly — but he leaned away before she could put her arms around him, too.

  She didn’t even turn off the lights in there before she jumped out, he thought, worrying at the illuminated gash in the wall. He realized he hadn’t seen her bring her walkie-talkie, either. Should he climb back inside to get it and kill the lights? That seemed crazy.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Ruth said. Her tone was still out of sync with the rest of them, too vibrant, even happy, and Cam sensed the others stirring behind their flashlights.

  “Go where?” Owen said.

  “East. We can’t hold this place against the plague.”

  Greg shook his head. “We made contact with Grand Lake again. We told them everything you said, and they’re sending choppers.”

  “For everyone? When?”

  “If we’re not here—”

  “Bring the radio,” Ruth said. “The helicopters can adjust. But you can’t expect everyone to wait for a rescue that doesn’t exist. Do you really think Grand Lake’s going to send ten choppers?”

  They stared at her in the dark.

  “No,” Greg said.

  Ruth pressed her advantage. “We don’t have the equipment to shelter in place, so we go for Grand Lake. The mountains should stop the infected people! They’re clumsy, disoriented. They won’t follow us.”

  How much of that is her claustrophobia talking? Cam wondered. She just wants to move. “The nanotech is airborne,” he said. “It’ll follow us even if they don’t.”

  “It’ll be worse where there are carriers! We have to take that chance. Run for high ground.”

  “Okay.” Greg nodded slowly and lifted his walkie-talkie to relay Ruth’s demand. “We’re going to pack up and drive east,” he said to the rest of the village.

  Most of the people in the sealed huts didn’t want to leave, nor did several of the men and women at the guard posts. “We don’t know what’s out there!” Susan yelled on her walkie-talkie from inside.

  “At least here we have a chance to protect ourselves,” Owen said. “Besides, there’s barely any gasoline. How far do you think you can walk after the trucks run dry?”

  “You’re not taking the radio!” Susan yelled as other villagers filled Cam’s headset with noise.

  “They can‘t—”

  “—need it as much as—”

  He shut off his headset altogether. Most of their voices were still audible in the night, but the decision bought him a little space as he walked to the nearest sealed hut. Greg, Ruth, and Matthew came with him, but Owen went in another direction, probably looking for his buddy Neil. All of them wanted their closest friends.

  “Susan!” Cam said, trying to sound calm even hollering through the plastic. “If you’re smart, you’ll come with us. But the Ranger element is leaving town and that radio is ours.”

  Greg rapped on the door. “Tricia! Trish! Let’s go.”

  “I don’t think we should leave!” Tricia yelled.

  Cam tried another name. “Bobbi?” Could she even hear him? People were arguing and the baby was squalling, too. Cam turned to look past the hut. Two flashlights rocked through the darkness on the east side of the village, and a third winked into view from behind the dining hall. There was also someone yelling in that direction. Cam figured they had a minute at most before Owen showed up with Neil.

  “We might have to break in,” he said.

  “She’s scared,” Greg said, needlessly explaining for his wife. Cam felt a confused pang of envy and his own protective instincts. In some ways things were easier for him with Allison dead. He had less to lose. But he would fight for his friend’s wife and infant daughter, Hope.

  Greg Estey was as solid as anyone Cam had ever known, smart, if quiet, and unconcerned with bullshit like ego or rank. He’d let go of everything from his previous life to fit himself into Jefferson, maintaining only his loyalty to Ruth as he found new ways to define himself. Farmer. Husband. Father. He put his thumb on the SEND button of his walkie-talkie and said, “Bobbi? It’s Greg. Let me talk to Trish, please.”

  Cam turned his headset on again as Susan interrupted on the same frequency. “No way!” she said. “There’s no way!”

  The door was double-sealed, inside and out. Cam peeled away the plastic sheeting on the outside, but he didn’t want to tear the layers inside. He wanted them to open up themselves. Then the people who stayed behind would have a better chance of resecuring the hut.

  The flashlights were on top of them now. Cam winced as one of the beams cut across his face. Another light traced over the front of the hut, lingering on the torn plastic. “You son of a bitch!” Owen yelled. “They were safe in there! You can‘t—”

  “Bobbi wants out,” Cam said softly. Behind his flashlight, the other man was only a silhouette, faceless and menacing. “Just let us go,” Cam said. “That’s all we want.”

  “The radio stays here,” Owen said.

  “No.”

  “Owen, we’ll send help if we find it!” Ruth said. “You know we will.”

  Greg spoke simultaneously to his walkie-talkie and to the door of the hut. “My family is coming out! You stay if you have to. We’ll even seal the outside of the door for you.”

  “Fuck that,” Owen said, also transmitting. “We’ll do it ourselves. Go on. Go.” He jerked his flashlight away from them into the dark, as if casting them out, but his voice had grown rigid and controlled like Cam’s. Owen was willing to accept the compromise, giving them the radio to avoid a fight. Cam’s relief was intense. It also gave way to an impulsive sense of camaraderie, because they were better than their fear. They’d talked it out instead of using their fists.

  “Owen, come with us,” he said suddenly.

  “Just go,” Owen snapped.

  The door opened from the inside. The baby’s screaming got louder and lantern light spilled across the ground, full of shadows. Susan blocked the doorway as Bobbi pushed through with the Harris radio. Bobbi had already put on her jacket and Cam took the radio so she could don her goggles, gloves, mask, and hood.

  “You’re making a mistake!” Susan said.

  Tricia herself was bare-headed, probably for Hope’s sake. Otherwise the little girl might not recognize her mother. Tears spilled down Tricia’s cheeks as she desperately shushed and cooed at her baby.

  “Sweetheart,” Greg said.

  Their headsets and walkie-talkies crackled again. “This is Eleven,” a woman said in a whisper. “I see people in the fences. This is Ingrid at Eleven and there are at least twenty people in the fences!”

  Everyone froze except Hope. The baby’s angry sounds continued to lift on the wind.

  Oh, no, Cam thought.

  They’d done it to themselves. The commotion they’d made had been like a giant beacon in the night, yelling at each other and waving lights all over town. Now they’d attracted more infected people from beyond the village.

  “Get inside!” Cam shouted. He tried to force Ruth back through the door, but she resisted.

  “Let go of me!”

  “I love you! Stay here!” Greg yelled at Tricia as the young woman said, �
�Greg, no—”

  Cam and Ruth stared at each other, locked in each other’s grip. The other couple’s words might have been their own, and Ruth said, “I—”

  Cam broke away from her as there was a second alert on his headset. “This is Eleven!” the radio whispered again. “They’re caught up in the fences. Should I open fire?”

  The channel filled with noise. “No, wait,” Cam said, but Owen and several others were talking on the same frequency.

  “—at Two I see them—”

  “Light ‘em up.”

  “No!” Cam yelled. “No, shut off every light we’ve got!” He and Owen took their first steps toward Station Eleven, but Ruth and Bobbi followed, and Cam whirled to face the two women. “Get back inside!” he said.

  In that moment, Owen outpaced him.

  “Bobbi,” Cam said. “Stop. Ruth, you go with her and—”

  “We can’t hide in there if—”

  “Do it!” Cam bellowed in her face before he shoved the radio against Bobbi, weighing her down. “Go inside! Go!”

  People were shouting on the north perimeter as their flashlights jabbed and swayed. “Get back!” a man yelled. “Get back or we’ll shoot!”

  Two of the villagers stood with their weapons aimed. A third wrestled a floodlight into place. The Bull Dog was a lightweight aluminum tripod with dual five-hundred-watt bulbs. It was the long extension cord that was giving the man trouble. The floods weren’t on yet. There were only flashlights.

  At the farthest edge of the beams, human shadows moved in the fences. Cam counted nine, and he hoped Ingrid had exaggerated the threat.

  I don’t see twenty people here, he thought.

  The strangers banged through the low obstacles. One was stuck in a line of barbed wire, tugging at her left arm. None of them were fast or graceful. Cam’s impression was that of sleepwalkers. Maybe he was too influenced by their clothing. Most of them looked as if they were dressed for bed in loose, warm clothing. One man wore only his underwear. Very few had any shoes. They wore socks or were barefoot. They looked like they’d been taken completely by surprise, rising from their sleep into another kind of dream.

  Maybe the ant swarm in Greenhouse 3 had actually saved lives in Jefferson by keeping everyone awake. Otherwise the old woman might have walked among them unchallenged, infecting their guards and then everyone in town.

  But why did they come here? Cam wondered. These people had followed the wind southward instead of walking into it. Why? The flashlights couldn’t have been visible until they were within a mile or two of Jefferson. Was it possible they remembered this village? Could the nanotech be that sophisticated? Ruth said Patrick and Linda seemed compelled to move no matter how badly hurt or securely tied. What were they looking for? The safety of family and friends? If so, that would be an unstoppable method of spreading the plague.

  Everyone in Morristown might be headed this way.

  10

  The Reverend Timothy Morris had established his settlement directly after the war. As an unexpected reward, he received a full quarter-ton of seeds from Missoula. A few of the United States’ seed banks survived the plague year, the seeds held back for their potential rather than being eaten outright. Since then, the government had been paying people to grow specific crops in exchange for a percentage of future harvests and the right to dictate where new seeds and saplings would be sent.

  Their wealth steadily attracted more people to the Reverend’s influence. The folks in Morristown weren’t crazy. They were enthusiastic. The Reverend preached New Evangelism, which taught that man’s purpose was to regrow and repopu late. Sometimes it also meant plural marriages, wife swapping, or marriage at a young age. That was one reason why Tony had been so fascinated with Jefferson’s neighbors and why his mother despised them.

  The crowd on the perimeter was silent. A few of them groaned, but it was their faces that truly spoke for them. Their eyes were huge and afraid. One sandy-haired woman blinked spasmodically, but most of them walked with their eyes wide open as if lost or confused.

  “What do we do?” Ingrid asked.

  “We can’t just kill them!” Cam said.

  “Do it! We gotta do it!” another man screamed. The high pitch of his voice made it clear that he was trying to convince himself, too — but what choice did they have? The closest people were about to clear the fences.

  Cam wrenched his gaze away from the oncoming shadows as Greg and Neil jogged up behind him. “Where is the hazmat suit!?” Cam yelled, cursing himself. Did we leave it at Ruth’s hut?

  “What if we start a fire?” Ingrid said. “Is there any gasoline?”

  “The flamethrowers are back at the greenhouse!”

  “Then we’ll shoot into the ground at their feet.”

  Cam glanced at the older woman with respect as her hand clacked against her M16, flicking the fire selector to full auto. Ingrid had volunteered for guard duty when others insisted on taking cover inside the sealed huts, and Cam remembered the handsome, blunt nose and chin behind her face mask. Ingrid Wood was unusual not only for her age — few people in their sixties had survived the plague year — but because of her accent. Ingrid had emigrated from Germany two decades ago after a divorce, and she was friendly, tough, and unfailingly polite.

  “We may have to wound them,” she said.

  “Do it!” Neil screamed.

  The first of the infected people staggered out of the fences, a young man in a MICHIGAN T-shirt and a skinny girl with filthy white socks beneath her blue gown. Cam recognized one of them. The young man’s thick hair and the plague scarring on his nose were unmistakable. He was a farmer’s son and loud in his religion, taking every chance to explain about the Resurrection any time a crew from Jefferson came to trade equipment or food. Jake. The young man’s name was Jake and he was a good kid, rightly proud of his family’s apple trees.

  Cam raised his M4.

  The floodlights switched on before anyone fired. David had finally gotten his tripod ready and hit the power, draining electricity away from Ruth’s lab. Its dual lights burned into the people in the fences, illuminating the night like stark white glaring suns. Two shadows leapt from each person in a fan of silhouettes. Glass and chrome winked among the car parts on the ground.

  Their eyes looked incredibly strange. It was as if none of them had irises. Their pupils were huge, like black pennies, and did not shrink in the light. It was a permanent condition. They shared some uniform injury to their brains.

  The floodlights hurt them. The young man reeled away as the skinny girl ducked her head and scuttled sideways. Others raised their arms or moaned. The light stopped them. The Bull Dog was too strong. At first, Cam thought it might work. Then he noticed the second wave of human shapes. The field of light held at least a hundred figures, and there were hundreds more beyond them in the darkness.

  Cam felt his blood run cold. The nearest people were repelled by the glare, yet the larger crowd seemed to be attracted to it. It was an eerie sight. Most of the infected people had been headed toward Jefferson, but without purpose. Some had stopped or strayed in other directions. Others were looking at the sky or their feet.

  As the Bull Dog lit up the fences, the entire crowd turned as one, their white and brown faces reflecting the light like dishes. Blood gleamed on hands or bare legs where they’d fallen and hurt themselves. Then the crowd began to separate into two halves, circling in toward the brilliant corona from either side.

  “Oh my God,” Ingrid said.

  “Shut ‘em off! Shut ’em off!” Cam yelled. Too late. The infected people had a clear goal and began to pick up speed, shambling through the obstacles and barbed wire. Metal clanked, but they were silent, only grunting or heaving for air. Even the young apple farmer seemed to regain his bearings, stalking toward them even though he bent sideways from the light as if it was a physical force.

  “Open fire!” Greg shouted, blasting the young man in the head. The boy toppled.

  Cam’s eye
s stung inside his goggles but he repressed the emotion, screaming against his face mask. He welcomed the noise of his M4, too, because it overrode everything else.

  The carbine rattled in his arms as he dropped the skinny girl with a three-round burst. Her blood looked purple in the high-intensity lights. Cam took down the man behind her. Then a woman. Then another man. The range was too close. The M4 and the older model M16 were designed to penetrate Soviet helmets at a hundred yards, not unarmored targets at forty feet. Cam’s shots passed through the fourth man’s shoulder without knocking him down.

  At the same time, Owen and Ingrid blazed at the crowd with their M16s. Two more carbines and a shotgun ripped into action from Cam’s left, farther down the perimeter.

  The guns were withering. Twenty people twisted and fell. One man lay screeching on a chrome bumper, making noises that sounded almost like words before their Russian grenade launcher coughed somewhere to Cam’s right. A small rocket jumped into the field of light, splashing fire and smoke. The men and women of Jefferson had moved to reinforce Cam and the others like a well-schooled platoon, but they were downwind of the infected mob.

  The carbines on Cam’s left went silent first. He was reloading his own weapon when he noticed the change, yet it wasn’t until he set his M4 against his shoulder again that he realized the delay from the other position had lasted too long. Those men weren’t reloading. They were infected.

  Cam peered at the nearest hut, looking for flashlights or muzzle flashes. There was nothing. Then someone stumbled past the corner of the building. The man was not empty-handed or half clothed like the people in the crowd. In fact, he seemed to be pawing at his jacket hood as he struggled to shake his hand loose from the trigger guard of his shotgun, treating the weapon like a burden rather than a tool.

  “Oh shit we gotta move!” Cam yelled at Greg. “Fall back! Fall back!” He slapped at Ingrid’s shoulder, but the older woman was too focused on controlling her M16. She fired into the west side of the crowd.

  The infected people continued to advance. The guns did not frighten them, nor did the dead and wounded on the ground. They stumbled through their bleeding friends with no more attention than they gave to the fences and car parts. If anything, the muzzle blasts seemed to draw them. It was as if they were so deeply submerged in their trance that they seized on any external sensation. They walked right into the guns, which were much fewer now.