Plague Zone p-3

by Jeff Carlson

  “Fuck,” she said when she lost the needle in the gore. She had to dig for it. “Sorry. Fuck. I’m sorry.”

  He was bleeding again. She tried to hurry.

  She believed the only reason they’d escaped Jefferson was because the plague was its most dangerous in newly infected people. The crowd out of Morristown hadn’t been exuding the nanotech as strongly as their own villagers. Somehow it knew not to replicate without end inside any particular host. Otherwise it would flay people alive much like the original machine plague. The amount of soft tissue used from each person was infinitesimal — the merest pinch was enough to create millions of nanobots — but maybe that was why some victims dropped dead. Maybe the problem wasn’t that the mind plague experienced glitches when it crossed into the brain. The nanotech multiplied wherever it happened to activate. Being in the blood, sometimes it opened an artery or the muscles inside the heart…

  Still, Ruth marveled at its capacity to record and verify who was already infected. There must be a universal marker of some kind, she thought. The nanotech communicates with itself. How? Can I use those signals to shut it off or make us immune?

  “I’m done,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans because she wanted to save the last not-so-dirty parts of his shirt to wrap his wound again.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Let me get a pressure bandage on there,” she said as she washed her hands with the last of one canteen. She was all business. She wanted to maintain her distance in her head, but her fingers shook when she reached for him again.

  What must he be feeling? Pain. Heartache.

  Ruth cut the waist-strap from her pack in order to tie the new bandage in place, and she took a small measure of satisfaction in destroying the pack. She didn’t know why, except that she felt angry and helpless. She knew her movements were too rough.

  “Ruth,” he said.

  Don’t look at him, she thought, even as another, more persistent voice inside her said, You could both be dead in seconds.

  “Ruth.”

  She met his eyes. They were much darker and richer than her own, she knew, sad and frightened and strong. He was the strongest person she’d ever known. Somehow he always knew what to do.

  He kissed her. He tipped forward and kissed her with his beard against her cold face and for an instant she was too surprised to react. Then she felt her mouth split open with a smile and a short, happy sound like laughter.

  “Oh. Please. Cam, please.”

  Ruth raised onto her knees without letting herself leave their kiss. She straddled him, spreading her legs to the lean shape of his hips. His hand was inside her jacket. He touched her waist, squeezing as if to make sure she was real. Ruth pulled her shirt out of her pants so he could feel her bare skin.

  They broke for air. That was dangerous. When she looked into his face, she thought his expression was even more tortured. The confusion in his eyes made her heart lurch and she almost kissed him again — but she stopped herself, breathing in. She laid her palms on his naked chest and used them like a buttress, keeping her body several inches from his even though they were connected where her open thighs met his hips and groin.

  Allison, she thought.

  If he wanted to stop, she would stop. She respected Cam too much to mislead him or plead or beg. Then she rocked against him. She didn’t intend to. Her body reacted on its own, drawn to the friction and heat against her jeans.

  He responded. His hand traced up her neck into her hair, cupping his fingers over the back of her skull. They kissed again and she stopped thinking, caught up in the taste of him and the sweet, maddening pressure of his erection. She pushed down slowly, insistently.

  He made her feel young.

  They wrestled her out of her jacket. He went to her shirt next, but he had only one hand, so Ruth began to open her shirt buttons for him and she felt her body flush, nervous and eager. Her face especially radiated heat into the night. She kept the shirt on to cover her back. The fabric rubbed at her breasts and on either side of her stomach, teasing her, teasing him. His hand parted her shirt like a curtain.

  Ruth was as lean as Cam after years of hardship and strict rations. She let his fingers wander over her body for a moment. Then she lowered her hands to her jeans and unbuckled her belt.

  Everywhere the crickets chirped on the hillside. The short grass rustled in the breeze. Ruth was aware of the stars all around them like a carousel of lights broken by the sliver of moon down in the west, but she refused to let it draw her eyes back toward Jefferson.

  She had to move away from Cam to take off her pants. She kicked off one boot. Then she rode her jeans and undies down over her hips, pulling that leg free. She couldn’t believe it was happening at last. She crouched beside him with her knees apart, wishing he would touch her. “Let me help you,” she said, laying her hand on his jeans. She meant to tug at the button and his zipper, but first she stroked the bulge there.

  His good hand lifted underneath her. She was smooth and wet. His fingertip stroked and circled and her pelvis rocked involuntarily, losing that exquisite touch.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, please.”

  Cam touched her again. Ruth squeezed her hand down on his erection. The feelings coursing through her were bright and delicious even as she closed her eyes against the sting of tears. This is wrong, she thought. Is this wrong? Her emotions were as bewildered as his own must be, awash in good animal sensations, worry, guilt, and self-hate.

  The attraction between them had always been more than a stupid crush. If physical pleasure was all she needed, she would have picked someone who wasn’t so badly ruined by the machine plague. That was why they’d managed to be friends all this time. They trusted each other. The affinity she felt for him ran deep enough to overcome any selfishness or even the lonely, painful love she’d tried to forget.

  Nevertheless, she’d always wanted to cement their relationship like a woman and man, so she desperately reminded herself again. The nanotech could infect us both in seconds.

  Cam and Ruth nuzzled together. They rubbed each other. Her orgasm was a quiet thing exactly like her climaxes had been when she was alone in the cabin she’d shared with Eric and Bobbi, sometimes as she listened to them at night or sometimes early in the mornings when she woke from a dream and needed someone, only to find herself with nothing but her memories of Ari and Cam and other fantasies.

  Tugging down his pants was another joint effort. She wanted him to make love to her on her back. She wanted him to fuck her on her knees. But his wound left him handicapped, and she knew it would be very, very good just to lower herself onto his lap. “Let me…” she said.

  Cam nodded. He even helped her, placing his good hand against her side to hold her weight as she straddled him again.

  He was damaged here, too. She felt rough old blisters in his hip socket. Was that another reason he’d kept himself apart from her? Because he was embarrassed? He must have known she would keep his secret.

  The only thing that mattered was her body working against his in the night.

  There was no talk of birth control or protection. No one had seen any pills or condoms for years, except as overpriced commodities on the black market. Most women she knew were either trying to have a baby, using the rhythm method, or having sex in ways that didn’t involve intercourse. Ruth was glad she’d had her period eleven days ago, so she didn’t have to turn him away. As she got older — the time she’d spent in zero gee might also be to blame — her cycle had shortened until her periods began every twenty-six days, which was annoying as hell, even if she wasn’t sleeping with anyone — but the timing also meant that she was ovulating. She could get pregnant. Was that something to worry about?

  She was being too cerebral and she knew it. She was recording every moment of their lovemaking. She let it change her. Having him was magnificent. She came again, and she’d nearly worked herself to a third before he reached his own orgasm. Afterwards, she stayed on top of him in a s
ilent embrace, reveling in the sweat trapped between them until her butt was just too cold and she decided she’d better get dressed.

  “Cam,” she said.

  “No. I love you. You know I love you. But let’s not talk right now. I…”

  “It’s okay,” she said quickly. “It’s okay.”

  Tomorrow, she thought. We can rest, and tomorrow maybe things will make more sense.

  “I need to find Ingrid,” she said.

  “No. Don’t.”

  “What?” Ruth would have argued or played dumb for hours just to stay in his lap. In the warm space against his chest, her nipples were still full, and the muscles up and down her belly and spine were tired and relaxed.

  “Sleep if you can,” he said. “You need to be sharp if you’re going to make sense of the nanotech.”

  “I don‘t—” I don’t have any gear except my laptop, she thought, but maybe he was right. Maybe they’d flag down a helicopter or meet up with a convoy, making their way to Grand Lake or any of the other labs scattered throughout the U.S.

  Ruth got up at last. Her legs trembled and she smiled at that, flashing her teeth at Cam in the dark before she hid her feelings again. She’d been concealing things from him more and more, which felt especially wrong now that they’d been intimate, but it was the same night he’d lost his wife. She had to be careful.

  She got dressed. She helped him back into his pants and his jacket. Then she walked several steps away to pee. She wished she could wash herself but there was no water to spare, and she was girlishly pleased by the evidence of their sex.

  When she came back, he shared a little more of a canteen with her. They double-checked that their weapons were at hand. “Rest,” he said, staying upright against the jeep.

  A large part of her wanted to stay awake. What if they were infected? Maybe it would better if she didn’t see the nanotech coming. Close your eyes, she thought. Then their time together would be the last thing she experienced.

  Ruth curled up on the ground beside him. He set his hand on her side, and she was glad. She shouldn’t feel glad — she knew she shouldn‘t, because she crying, too — but a part of her that had been locked away was now content. She was in love, and, remarkably, she slept. But she dreamed that she lost him.

  14

  Cam listened to Ruth’s breathing change as she fell into a restless doze beside him. Despite her exhaustion, he didn’t think she really slept. Her hand closed on his leg, flexing and pulling. Her brain never seemed to stop. He remembered the same habit from their weeks together during the war. Ruth’s insomnia had become its own threat, never allowing her to recuperate even when she was staggering from her wounds.

  In the darkness, Cam touched her cheek. “Shh, Ruth,” he said, listening for Bobbi or Ingrid. The crickets might be his only warning if one of them was infected. A person’s footsteps would quiet the bugs, so Cam closed his eyes and absorbed the familiar song.

  Ree ree ree ree ree.

  He was simultaneously elated and suicidal. He felt half insane. Having sex with her had been very good. His body was content where it didn’t hurt or where his muscles weren’t knotted from stress and grief, but his mind was twisted in the same way. What the hell had they been thinking?

  In some ways, the worst part was that he supposed Allison would have understood — even approved. His wife was nothing if not pragmatic. Fine, she’d said, like a dare. The offhand remark was the last word she ever spoke to him, and Cam tried to hear it again now. She would forgive him. Wouldn’t she?

  He could still feel Allison against himself, shorter than Ruth and even stronger, heavier in her breasts, wider in her hips. She liked to be kissed just under her ear.

  Christ, he thought. You betrayed her. Allison died in front of you and hours later you’re fucking Ruth. But he couldn’t avoid how right it felt. Touching her was something he’d anticipated for years.

  Cam opened his eyes to the stars and darkness. He tried to fight his way toward some kind of peace. Watching the sky made him feel small and lost and yet deeply connected with the earth around him. The grass rustled in the breeze. He smelled spruce or some other pines.

  Are you out there? he wondered, but he didn’t believe in ghosts or any kind of god, not after so much killing. He knew it was different for Ruth. She’d had an epiphany during the war. They’d never talked about it much. Cam had grown up Spanish Catholic and Ruth as a secular Jew, and he thought she was embarrassed by her new faith because it couldn’t be quantified or explained like her research. Before they came to Jefferson, though, there had been times when Ruth said some interesting things. She seemed to need to share, and maybe she still thought she could pry him away from Allison.

  On the first occasion, their group had been camped on a hot, dusty plain east of the Rockies with no wood for a cook-fire and only a few stale Army rations in their packs. Cam recalled everything about that evening clearly. Ruth had asked if they thought all of this — their lives, the world — might be some kind of test. “I don’t mean between good and evil,” she added with a wary look. “I mean like a materials test.”

  Materials test was an engineering term for methods of determining the limits of any given machine or substance. If there was a Creator, she imagined He was a distant, uninvolved God who was only interested in them in ways they could never comprehend. The notion was typical Ruth. Her ideas were huge and convoluted and, ultimately, also very simple.

  “What sort of half-wit God would bother to create quintillions of other star systems if we’re the most important thing to him?” she said. “And that’s just in this galaxy. There are billions of other galaxies around ours. Why not just one sun and one planet? He doesn’t have the whole world in his hands. That’s ridiculous.”

  Earth was a very young planet in the life span of the Milky Way, lost deep in its spiral arms. Their home was just one extremely average ball of rock among an endless sea of others.

  “It’s laughable to think any of our mythologies have much to do with reality,” Ruth said, and yet she obviously tried to conduct herself with goodwill, purpose, and self-restraint. Those were the traits professed by most religions, weren’t they? She believed it was what they were made for — to help each other, to cooperate, to show endurance and insight.

  Ruth felt like she had something to prove — that her abilities weren’t just a randomly generated mistake. She believed there was a divine spark in everyone, something to be found and nurtured.

  How did their relationship fit into her sense of destiny? Because he was meant to help her?

  Shit, Cam thought. They didn’t need to sleep together to be a team, and he knew he was only using rationalizations to justify what they’d done. He wondered what Ruth would say if he asked.

  Cam agreed with some parts of her philosophy. He believed everyone was responsible for his or her own life, either trying their best or failing to make the effort. It was so easy to blind yourself with selfishness, fear, or greed. But he still wasn’t sure. Had the two of them made a mistake or done something right?

  What if the answer was both?

  He touched Ruth’s cheek again. Stupid. She reacted, shifting her weight and her hand on his thigh. This time he didn’t say anything to reassure her subconscious. I love her, he thought. I do. Yet he was afraid to wake her up. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to look her in the face again.

  The cloudless sky slowly lightened and Cam left Ruth to check on Bobbi and Ingrid, moving through the predawn in full armor — goggles, mask, jacket, gloves. The wind had died. The crickets were silent. The valley below him to the northwest seemed empty and peaceful. Morristown had burned out, and there was only a long, ancient row of electrical lines to indicate that people had ever lived down there.

  Bobbi was asleep in a small fighting hole. Cam heard her snoring before his eyes were able to separate her shape from the pile of rocks she’d built. He stopped. Was there any way to be sure she wasn’t infected? Sleep was nearly as essent
ial as eating. If the mind plague stopped people from fulfilling those basic needs, none of the infected would last more than a few days. The autumn nights were sharp in the Rockies, and Cam remembered how the crowd out of Morristown had been dressed only in their bed clothes, often barefoot or in socks at best.

  They came for us, he thought. They walked eleven miles to find us even though it was midnight and barely thirty degrees out, so maybe they don’t sleep.

  He crept away from Bobbi just the same. If he threw a pebble at her and she stood up and turned on him with that drunken, searching walk… He didn’t want to kill another friend. Either way, she needed her rest. Leave her alone, he thought, searching across the hill for Ingrid. He expected she would be south of Bobbi’s position, bracketing either side of the gully they’d driven up. There was a knoll where Ingrid would have a clear field of vision and Cam made for it, circling through the brush and rock in the half-light.

  The older woman sat in a hollow in the grass, leaning forward on her M16. It was an uncomfortable position that forced her to stay awake. She’d fall over if she didn‘t, and Cam smiled to himself. Good girl, he thought, pitching his voice at a whisper. “Ingrid.”

  She turned and nodded.

  Cam approached and held out his good arm. “How about breakfast?”

  Ingrid took his hand but didn’t rise beyond a few inches, trying to work some life back into her legs. The cold had hurt her. “Where is Ruth?” she asked. Maybe she was only trying to cover her infirmity, but Cam owed her an honest answer.

  “I let her sleep,” he said.

  “Good.”

  Something else went unspoken as she studied him through the yellow lens of her goggles. Ingrid knew they’d made love. She seemed pleased by it. Ingrid lived alone, and Cam supposed she wasn’t so old that she hadn’t found some enjoyment in the lives and romances of the other women in the village.