Plague Zone p-3

by Jeff Carlson

  It was amazing that Freedman had been able to construct her message at all, and yet Foshtomi was right even if she didn’t know it. Ruth was also bothered by Freedman’s verbosity.

  If every letter counted, why so much? Her guilt must be unbearable. That was why she made her excuses, pointing the blame at Dutchess. Still, something in the tone of Freedman’s words seemed off. Was there another code hidden within this message? What if she’d used a cipher or some kind of subtle wordplay?

  “ ‘Find me,’” Ruth read. “ ‘I know I can stop the new plague. As I write this, it is July twelfth, Year Three. I’ve learned I’m in southern California at sea level, but somehow we’re safe. These labs are in the Saint Bernadine Hospital in Los Angeles.”’

  “Then we’re fucked,” Foshtomi said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our guys were hardwired to nuke Los Angeles if the Chinese hit us. That’s public knowledge. It had to be if we were gonna keep those bastards from overrunning us. Mutually assured destruction. So one way or the other, she’s dead.”

  “We don’t know that!”

  “How would you get to L.A. even if it’s still there? Flap your arms?”

  “The whole thing could just be a trick,” Cam said.

  Ruth shook her head, imploring him. “Why? What could they possibly gain by faking a message from her? You don’t realize how complicated it was, either.”

  “If you tried to call her… Is there more to the message?” he asked. “A specific radio frequency? What if Chinese are waiting?”

  “The message ends there.”

  “It’s the perfect trap, like a trip wire,” he said. “The only people who could find the message are the ones they’d want to kill the most — the nanotech experts on our side. If it’s her, why doesn’t she know about the vaccine? ‘We’re at sea level, but somehow we’re safe.’ That’s what it says.”

  “She’s isolated. They control everything about her life.”

  “You really think she’s alive?”

  “Yes. The binary string runs backward or even splits in two in thirty places, hidden in the nulls. That’s why the Chinese didn’t see it. They might not have even realized such a thing was possible.”

  “And we know Freedman was the best,” Cam said as if wanting to convince himself.

  He believes me! Ruth thought. He was taking her side against Foshtomi even after playing the devil’s advocate, and Ruth flashed him a big, girlish smile. “There’s no proof she didn’t make it to elevation!” she said. “Sawyer did.”

  “Sawyer ran for the mountains as soon as possible,” Cam said quietly, “but Freedman went downtown to try to find the mayor or the police. That’s how he told it. Remember? She stayed behind.”

  “We need to find her.”

  Forty minutes later, Foshtomi’s unit had done everything possible to seal three Humvees, a Ford Expedition, and a half-ton Army truck. There were only seventeen of them. Foshtomi considered leaving the truck, but they also wanted to carry water, gas, and other supplies. She also hoped they might find other survivors and take them along.

  The vehicles were a gamble. Foshtomi’s troops didn’t have any welding gear, only the plastic sheeting used for the greenhouses and a limited amount of tape. They’d covered most of the doors and seams. Once inside, they planned to finish the job, but if they drove through an invisible fog of nanotech, would the plastic be enough? It was the best they could do.

  Ruth wanted to talk to Cam alone, but first he was busy with their medic and then Foshtomi wanted to compare notes with him over her maps. Ruth took her laptop to a spot alongside one of the planters, pursuing a new effort to find secondary codes hidden within the original message.

  If Freedman knew how to turn off the mind plague, wouldn’t she have recorded that information, too? What if the awkward lapses were on purpose? Ruth tried writing down only the first letters of a dozen words, then only the second letters or the third. Each time, she ended up with nonsense and cursed herself.

  Think! You have to think like her.

  If there was an additional code, Ruth decided it wouldn’t be in word games. Freedman was always direct. Her work was superior exactly because it was so streamlined, which was indicative of a personality that functioned in the same manner. A second message would be carved into the body of the nano just like the first, either in binary or a different physical code like number substitutions for letters. Were there other molecular configurations that should stand out? What am I missing?

  Cam joined her. “Hey. Change of plans.”

  Ruth’s blood quickened as she glanced past his shoulder, measuring how far they were from anyone else. Fifteen feet. Bobbi was wolfing down a cup of onion soup and Foshtomi had walked away with two sergeants, arguing.

  Ruth stepped close and laid her hands on Cam’s shoulders. She smiled — and when the motion attracted his gaze to her lips, her smile widened. He was still so cautious with her. He was still afraid. She understood. She’d punished herself for years, too, but she wanted to stop. She wanted to be happy. Would they ever have the chance?

  Ruth lifted herself on her tiptoes to match Cam’s five-foot-eleven. Her excitement was good. It increased when she peeked sideways and saw Bobbi watching now with an angry face. Let her disapprove. Ruth touched her mouth to his. Their kiss was slow and sweet. It broke her heart.

  I’m yours, she thought. I’m yours if you want me. You know that. Please know that, Cam.

  She didn’t want to upset him, so she kept quiet. Maybe the intimacy was too much regardless. Cam squeezed her hand even as he pulled away. “Pack up,” he said. “Foshtomi got some of our guys on the radio and we’re going to intercept.”

  “Who? Where?”

  “A command group out of Grand Lake. Foshtomi told ‘em she has a nanotech expert and they used the same code. It sounds like they’ve got some scientists, too.”

  Foshtomi put Ruth in the second Humvee with herself, Sergeant Huff, Bobbi, and Cam. The third vehicle was equally crowded, because Foshtomi deemed those positions to be the safest. The civilian SUV would be fourth, carrying only two men, and last was the Army truck, where Ingrid rode in the cab with two soldiers. Their lead vehicle was the only Humvee that had been outfitted with a FRAG 6 armor kit. All of the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles were 5,200-pound hardtop jeeps with fat wheels and steel plating, but FRAG 6 added a thousand pounds of metal, so Foshtomi set that Humvee in front with just a driver and a radioman.

  As they left, the sky began to sprinkle a few bits of ash like black snow. The wind had failed to push the fallout away, and Ruth worried at that. What if it got worse?

  She was grateful for her friends. Squeezed into the rear seat beside Cam, with Bobbi on his other side, Ruth was glad for his warm, firm weight as they rode for two hours on highways that might have taken forty minutes before the plague. Working down from Willow Creek to 40 and then back up toward Grand Lake, they drove south, east, and then north again. Most of the extra time was spent hiding from two Chinese jets. Foshtomi halted their convoy four times as the fighters patrolled overhead, alternately jamming their vehicles together or spreading them apart, parked at odd angles on the road like abandoned wrecks. It helped their little ruse that the colossal old traffic jams created years ago had been bulldozed from these highways, so the roadsides were jammed with cars and burned out hulks. Their engines would shine brightly in infrared, but the Chinese must have been wholly concerned with American missile launches and aircraft. Also, orbital coverage was hindered by the filthy sky. If the enemy was monitoring this area via satellite, their capacities were too strained to care about a few Humvees.

  Many of the old cars had skeletons in them. The dead left by the machine plague had never been cleaned up. The job was just too big, so the dented cars remained crowded with screaming ghosts. Skeletons sprawled through broken glass and doors.

  The first time Ruth saw a wreck with living people inside, she thought she was hallucinating. All of
them were on edge, waiting for the jets to bank toward them and dive. Then she spotted a white van with three shadows hunched together by its rear doors. Their lead Humvee had already passed the van, but the people inside didn’t get up. Only one even lifted her head.

  “Look,” Ruth said. “What are they doing?”

  Foshtomi also drove by without incident, but Sergeant Huff took the handset of their radio and said, “This is Two. Heads up. We got zombies on both sides of us.”

  Ruth glanced the other way. Huff was right. At least one person was slumped inside a red Toyota across the road. Then she saw one more in a tan pickup truck. It’s like this spot is a camp, she thought.

  “Are they okay?” Bobbi asked. “Do you think they don’t have the plague?”

  “No. Their faces…”

  Not all of the infected had chosen their shelters wisely. Minutes later, Ruth saw two limp, fresh bodies in the front of a sedan. They were motionless except for a surging black carpet of ants.

  There were zombies on the road, too. Shambling uphill, arms spread to keep their balance, they turned to meet the oncoming vehicles with the same dull instinct. They’re so limited, she thought. They hear noise, see movement, and they go toward it.

  Foshtomi tried to avoid them. “Move, you stupid shit,” she said. “Move. Move.” Then she hit them. Foshtomi braked or weaved if possible and once she ordered the convoy to leave the road entirely, jouncing off the shoulder to get around a dozen people. Ruth knew she was less interested in saving these strangers’ lives than in preserving her vehicles. Even in the second position, Foshtomi struck eight people altogether. Ruth wouldn’t forget. The harsh thump of a body against the Humvee’s fender was nauseating.

  A naked woman came over the hood in a spatter of blood. Another time the rear axle leapt and clunked and Ruth screamed, sitting just a few inches above someone caught beneath the vehicle with an arm or a leg jammed in the wheelwell. Cam hugged both Ruth and Bobbi after that experience and Ruth rocked against him with her head stuck in a high-speed panic. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

  By then they were driving upslope again, hurrying toward the blue stretch of water that gave Grand Lake its name. Foshtomi’s troops broke radio silence again and again to advise each other of more infected people, many of them hunkered down in “camps” alongside the road, either dozing in abandoned cars or snuggled down on the roadside against guard-rails or trees. Were the infected communicating with each other? It wouldn’t be impossible for them to establish some kind of social order, straining through their limited coherence like cattle or sheep, herding together because it felt safer than being alone. A school of phantoms. How much did they retain? Were they all screaming inside?

  Ruth tried to occupy herself with more thoughts of Kendra Freedman. She tried to enjoy Cam’s arm on her shoulders.

  Too many of the infected are acting differently, she realized.

  “Those people taking shelter, that’s new,” she said without looking up from Cam’s embrace. “They barely noticed us. They’re docile. They must have walked here last night. Now something’s different.”

  “Move,” Foshtomi said up front. “Move.”

  “Maybe they’re just tired and hungry,” Ruth said, “but what if there’s a second stage of the mind plague? If the Chinese wanted to kill us—”

  “Move.”

  Wham. The Humvee shook as Foshtomi hit another person and Ruth raised her voice desperately. “If they wanted to kill us, everyone would have seizures or stroke out. That’s the only thing the nanotech would do.”

  Cam tried to quiet her. “Shh, Ruth,” he said, stroking the back of her neck.

  “No one’s asked what it’s really for! Don’t you get it? The first stage is just to spread the plague. They’re stunted and afraid. They go after their friends. But then what?”

  “Maybe a slow weapon is the best they could make,” said Foshtomi’s sergeant, Tanya Huff. Tall and thick, Huff was one of the two other females in Foshtomi’s unit. Was that why Foshtomi had assigned her to this Humvee?

  “I think the Chinese are waiting,” Ruth said. “I think everyone who’s infected will calm down in another five or six hours!”

  “This is One,” the radio crackled. “We’re nearing position. Over.”

  “It might make sense to go to ground,” Ruth said. “Don’t you see? The plague is a first-strike weapon, but it just makes us stupid. Easy to conquer. Then it hits a second stage, and maybe there’s a third. Maybe the fog wears off. People regain their coordination, but they’re still confused and suggestible. They’re slaves. It’s self-selecting, too. You’re only left with the strongest ones. So maybe we should just hide. If we wait a few hours, we won’t have to fight our own people as well as the Chinese—”

  “Shut her up,” Foshtomi said as she braked and turned to the right. “I want a perimeter but stay in the vehicles.”

  “Yes, ma‘am.” Huff picked up the radio again. “This is Two,” she said. “Form up in a circle, but stay inside your wheels. Watch for planes. Weapons tight. Remember, we’re looking for friendlies on the ground.”

  “This is Five,” the radio said. “I’ve got zombies two hundred yards behind us.”

  “Shit.” Foshtomi stopped the Humvee. “We probably need to get uphill if we can, but I don’t know if Five will make it. That truck was a bad idea. Call Viper first. Is he still inbound?”

  Ruth was barely listening. Lord God, she thought. If she was right, the Chinese wouldn’t only gain tens of thousands of slaves in victory. There would be concubines, too, and the idea left a cold weight deep in her chest.

  “It will be even worse for women,” she said. “Remember what happened in the labor camps. There was rape and forced pregnancies—”

  “Not now,” Foshtomi said. “Christ.”

  Ruth raised her head at last. She was surprised to find a brick building on one side of the vehicle, an old bank, which Foshtomi was using for cover. Everywhere else, there were only ruins, the square-cornered shapes of foundations lost among brush and weeds. They were in the remains of the original town of Grand Lake, most of which had been dismantled for building material. That meant they were just six miles from the peaks where the military base had been overrun.

  Driving here was incredibly dangerous. The Chinese might find them at any minute — and yet they’d come to hunt the Chinese themselves. Rescuing the other Americans was a secondary goal as far as Ruth was concerned. Unfortunately, they could expect heavy casualties when they left their vehicles. After smashing through the infected people, the outsides of their Humvees and trucks would be laced with nanotech.

  We’ll be lucky if half of us survive, Ruth thought as Huff switched frequencies and said, “Viper Six, this is Gray Fox. Viper Six, this is Gray Fox. Over.”

  “We have you in sight, Gray Fox,” a woman answered. “Stay off the radio. Over.”

  “Roger that, Viper Six. Be advised there’s a crowd of zombies coming up behind us,” Huff said. “I see thirty or more.”

  “We see them, too. Hold your fire. We don’t want the Chinese to hear shots. How are your vehicles for space? We want to jump onboard, but we’re contaminated.”

  “What?” Foshtomi barked. “Ask them what the fuck that means,” she said as Huff clicked at her SEND button and said, “Say again, Viper. Your people are infected?”

  “We’re in suits but we’re covered with nanotech,” the woman answered. “You can’t touch us. Not yet.”

  “What do we do?” Bobbi asked. “Ruth? What do we do?”

  There’s nothing we can do, she thought, but it was her job to find a way. “The lake,” she said. “They need to wash off in the lake. They’ll probably just pick up more nanotech on the shore, but they have to try. Then I’d have them scrub each other with dirt.”

  “Those zombies will be on top of us in five minutes,” Cam said.

  19

  “We need twenty minutes,” the woman on the r
adio said. “Then we can clear your vehicles, too. Buy us some time.”

  “Roger that, Viper,” Sergeant Huff said.

  “I want One and Three to sweep the road,” Foshtomi said as she dug for a pair of binoculars. “No guns. Just run ‘em down. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, ma‘am,” Huff said without meeting her eyes, and Ruth felt the same squeamish sense of alarm. It was one thing to shoot innocent people from a distance. Intentionally using the Humvees as battering rams was hideous, but Huff began to relay Foshtomi’s orders. “This is Two,” she said. “Listen up.”

  Foshtomi turned to Ruth. “How is Viper going to decontaminate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  An engine rumbled behind them as one of the Humvees rolled past. The other Humvee appeared from the corner of the bank and followed. Ruth was very, very glad she wasn’t in those vehicles, but it had always been that way, hadn’t it? Other people did the dirty work while she was safe.

  “I think I see them,” Foshtomi said. She lowered her binoculars and got up on her seat, twisting in the confines of the Humvee to find a better angle through the windshield. “Shit. They’ve got a drape or something like a tent.”

  “You mean an airtight tent?” Bobbi asked.

  “That wouldn’t work,” Ruth said. “This plague doesn’t have the hypobaric fuse.”

  “It’s just some kind of blanket.” Foshtomi slid back into her driver’s seat and handed the binoculars to Ruth. “Tell me what you see.”

  Suddenly the radio squawked, full of the sound of a growling motor. “Watch out!” a man yelled. Then the noise shut off. He was gone.

  “One and Three,” Huff said. “One and Three, are you okay?”

  Please be okay, Ruth thought, but the radio answered in the same man’s voice. “This is One,” he said. “I think Three’s infected. They nearly hit us.”

  Foshtomi punched the ceiling. “Fuck!”

  “We’re coming back around,” the man said. “He’s off the road. We — Yeah, I can see Coughlin. He’s sick. They’re all sick.”