Plague Zone p-3

by Jeff Carlson

  Kendra killed them, too.

  A second helicopter came as she hiked into the rubble. It buzzed past her only to return, landing in the city ahead of her… and she met Chinese soldiers in the ash as the chopper flew back overhead. Her mind disappeared. She must have killed them all, but she had no memory of it. When she gradually returned to herself, she was sobbing against the straight, solid little face of a mailbox. Somehow she’d found one thing that was still upright, although caked with soot. The mailbox remained bolted to the sidewalk and she leaned against it, surrounded by untold miles of flattened buildings and debris.

  It was the third helicopter that brought Cam to her.

  Alekseev and Obruch argued together in the cockpit until Deborah cut in, hearing something she didn’t like. “We need to see this through!” Deborah called forward.

  “We are not convinced this hunt is useful,” Alekseev said. “Let us try to get her out of here.”

  Cam shook his head. “For what? The answer is here.”

  “You are mad,” Alekseev said, but then Obruch shouted, “Tya! B M010 cmopoHy!”

  He banked the chopper to the left. They were about hundred feet above the blast-swept neighborhoods. At first, Cam couldn’t tell what had drawn Obruch’s gaze. There were no variations in the pattern below. The homes were small, eroded squares. The streets formed less-cluttered lines in the wreckage. Then he saw a group of structures with a hint of red in the torn rooftops, which was unusual. There were also the shapes of parking lots in front and a big athletic field on the other side. A school campus?

  “Kendra, look,” he said. “Kendra?”

  Her bulging eyes were locked on something he couldn’t see, so Cam swung away from her again. As they flew closer, he noticed two circles in the ash where helicopters had lifted off, scouring the rubble. It was the rotors’ force that had revealed what was left of the red tile roofs.

  “Bom uMeHHo,” Alekseev said. Then, in English, “We’re putting down. Be ready.”

  They landed close against the slumping dune of the largest building, which had probably been a gym, leaving Kendra and Obruch in the helicopter. She was catatonic. Obruch drew his sidearm.

  Deborah and Alekseev flanked one side of the building as Cam and Medrano took the other. His body clattered with two AK-47s and a submachine gun. Medrano and the others carried the same or more. The chopper’s noise meant there was no chance of surprising the enemy. No one expected even enough time to reload, so they would kick in as many doors as possible before they were killed themselves.

  Cam’s heart rattled like the metal slung across his back, but his head was clear — even disappointed. The campus was empty. Everyone was gone except for four bodies lined up on the floor of one classroom. From their injuries, they’d been hurt when the buildings dropped. The Chinese must have evacuated, first bringing their scientists to Saint Bernadine and then marshalling the remainder of their personnel to find Kendra after an emergency radio call that she was loose.

  Cam didn’t say it, but his disappointment turned into a new anxiety. What if the data and samples they needed were in the wrecked Chinese helicopters?

  They swept the campus more thoroughly, trying to identify which areas had been used for labs and offices. Ten minutes later, Medrano yelled for them to bring Kendra to a building near the athletic field. It had been shielded from the blastwave by other buildings. There was a gaping hole in the roof and one wall was down, but more than a third of its classrooms were intact.

  Cam went to help Obruch. Kendra didn’t want to leave the chopper. She’d nestled into the back seat and tried to pull free when Cam touched her leg.

  “We’re here,” he said. “We found the sister lab.”

  It was no use. They were forced to drag her outside — but her mood changed as they half carried her through the fallen buildings. Her giant eyes filled with curiosity. Maybe she’d forgotten her safe little nest in the helicopter.

  “What do you think?” Deborah asked when they escorted Kendra inside. There were opaque black plastic tents in two of the rooms, although the plastic was split or sagging, pelted by debris. Clean room suits sprawled on coatracks that had been knocked to the floor. More to the point, there were several desks that had been loaded with microscopy gear. Most of the equipment was on the floor. Another room held rows of laptops and larger computers, file cabinets, and a dry-erase board covered with the deft, boxy symbols of written Mandarin.

  Cam felt an unusual flash of optimism. The Chinese had been unable to carry even the beginnings of this stuff in their first flight to Saint Bernadine, and they couldn’t possibly have expected American troops this deep into the blast zone. They must have planned to come back for the majority of their equipment. In fact, we’re lucky they were hit so hard, he thought. The few planes and helicopters they’ve been able to make operational have been busy all day with other problems — but that’ll change. This luck can’t last.

  “We need to hurry,” he said.

  Kendra was subdued but responsive. She nodded and said, “Let me see. I can see. Let me see.”

  Was she consciously referring to the sky outside the roof? Cam didn’t think so, but it was getting dark. The unending twilight had become something deeper. Beyond the ash clouds, the sun was going down.

  Cam left Kendra with Deborah to help the other men. Medrano had located the power room on the collapsed side of the building. All three of the labs’ generators were buried. Worse, most of the fuel cans had ruptured. “I can get one of these running,” Medrano said, “but we’d better move it first or this place will ignite.”

  Cam, Alekseev, and Obruch pulled away the wreckage as Medrano tried to salvage some electrical lines, hampered by his broken arm. Then he identified which generator he wanted. By now, they could barely see. There were no stars or moon beneath the fallout. The night would be absolute.

  Obruch produced a small penlight, which he ran to give to the women as Cam and Alekseev dragged the generator into an open spot of concrete. “Give me two minutes,” Medrano said, splicing his new line to the classrooms.

  Kendra’s response was less satisfying when they hurried into the lab. “I need three hours,” she told them, rummaging through endless files as Deborah said, “There’s a machining atomic force microscope. It looks like it’s okay. She thinks she has what she needs.”

  Alekseev took Cam aside. “This is madness,” he said.

  “No. We’ve come too far to quit. Either she can do it or she can’t. There’s no sense in running away. Where would we go? The chopper’s nearly empty.”

  “They were keeping aircraft,” Alekseev said in his odd English. “I will check the fuel.”

  “Where would we go?” Cam said. “Your side is gone. So is ours. But go ahead — check for fuel. We’re going to need every weapon we can make if we’re going to hold this place against enemy troops.”

  Alekseev paused. “You are speaking of something like your Alamo,” he said. “Yankee Doodle do or die.”

  Cam almost smiled. Alekseev had his American history mixed up, but not its spirit. They were a nation created by rebels and underdogs who never did quite figure out how to manage their own success. Cam wanted to see them back on top again. “The Chinese won’t expect us here,” he said, “so we have surprise on our side. That should work against the first group that shows up.”

  “What about the next?”

  “Best case scenario, we won’t have to last that long.”

  “Do you believe her estimates? Three hours?”

  “Yes. You know who she is.”

  “We know who she was,” Alekseev corrected him.

  “I think she’s… motivated.” Cam chose the word carefully. “She wants to make things right. Do you understand? She wants to do something good.”

  The generator rumbled outside and the lights sprang on, flooding the building. “Got it!” Medrano called. Kendra screamed, thrashing her arms in the sudden brilliance. Deborah grabbed her, talking fast, as the m
en scrambled to turn off as many switches as possible. They didn’t want to be the only star in the night.

  When they were done, Alekseev walked over to Cam again. “We must seal this tent,” Alekseev said, indicating the black plastic. “She can work inside it.”

  Cam met the colonel’s hard brown eyes. “So you agree,” he said. “We’ll stay.”

  “Da.”

  Then we have about three hours to live, he thought.

  Deborah protested when they asked her to stay with Kendra, but she was hurt and she had some lab experience. It only made sense. They couldn’t leave Kendra alone.

  Before he went, Cam kissed Deborah’s cheek because he knew her better than anyone else. She caught his arm to keep him close, leaning her forehead against his with sudden intimacy. I wish you were Ruth, he thought. Who was she wishing for?

  “Take care of yourself,” Deborah said.

  “You, too.”

  The four men spread through the ruins to dig in against the Chinese. They even hurried despite the knowledge that if they won — if any of them survived — they would be destroying themselves with Kendra’s counter-vaccine.

  Cam, Deborah, and Medrano must have traces of the mind plague in their systems. All of them had walked outside the warehouse where the V-22 Osprey was stored after they were inoculated, preparing for their flight, and even the slightest whisper of nanotech would be enough. With luck, Kendra would create a new plague zone, a trap for any Chinese who entered it. Cam and the others would be the first to fall, but as more and more Chinese were infected, her counter-vaccine would spread. Their plague zone would grow. It would reach U.S. territory — and from there, the world.

  They could still win this war.

  26

  Colonel Jia Yuanjun snapped to attention and tried to convey in his bearing what could not be seen in his disheveled appearance. Dedication. Fortitude. He’d had only a few minutes’ warning to comb his hair and tug uselessly at his foul uniform, trying to straighten it before greeting his visitors. His forearm throbbed in a crude plaster cast.

  “Fàng sng,” said General Qin. At ease.

  “Welcome, sir,” Jia responded, also in Mandarin. He was unsure what to make of the general’s expressionless face, but Qin’s uniform was clean, as were those of his two subordinates and three Elite Forces bodyguards.

  MSS General Qin was in his sixties, stout, sunworn, and quivering with strain. Jia saw a tic in Qin’s jowls. That was bad. The old man was aware of it, too, patting at the underside of his jaw in a brusque, fussy manner. That his visit was a surprise could also be seen as dangerous. The Z-9 military helicopter that flew up from San Diego had declared itself a medevac, bringing much needed supplies to Jia’s base. Instead, it carried the MSS officer who’d become third-in-command of Chinese California after the bombing.

  Jia did not believe this subterfuge was intended to fool the enemy. No doubt there were still American satellites overhead, but there was no one left to control those eyes and ears. Jia was fortunate that one of his sergeants had risked a call from their landing field, announcing the real identity of their visitors as General Qin walked into the base.

  Jia regretted the look of his makeshift command center even more than his own poor showing. It had been necessary to escape the ash. They’d moved everything they could salvage to a second-level barracks with its ceiling and walls intact, using the bunk beds to hold their electronics, display screens, and paper notes. The place was a madhouse. Forty men knelt or sat on the floor to access their consoles while a dozen more acted as runners, stepping over an unsecured mess of cables and power cords. The noise was staggering. So was the smell. The ash had stolen into the room with them, and everyone was bloodied and sweat-stained and sour with dehydration and fear.

  Silence touched the barracks as Jia met Qin at the door. It vanished again in the busy voices, but everyone was aware of the change. The new arrivals looked as if they’d walked straight out of mainland China, unsullied and neat, and their authority was all the greater for their cleanliness. They had been protected while everyone else in California burned.

  “Where are your SATCOM personnel?” Qin demanded.

  “Here, sir.” Jia pointed.

  “These officers are now in command,” Qin said as his two subordinates moved past him into the barracks, a major and a lieutenant. Each man held a briefcase. The major also carried his own laptop.

  Jia felt a flash of resentment. We’ve done well, he thought.

  “There is someplace we can speak undisturbed,” Qin said, making his words a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, sir. Let me leave instructions with—”

  “My officers are in charge,” Qin said.

  “Yes, sir. This way, sir.” Jia didn’t even glance back into the room to signal the two survivors from his command team, Yi and Renshu. Instead, he walked from the barracks with the first of Qin’s bodyguards close at his back. His stride was brisk. It was important to Jia that he wasn’t shot within hearing of his troops, and Qin would afford him no more mercy or ceremony than he had given Dongmei.

  The corridor stirred with soot and debris, open to the night at one end. Each breath tasted of failure. Then the general emerged from the barracks himself with a second bodyguard. Jia’s relief was unfounded, perhaps — would they arrest him? — but he couldn’t repress a sense of victory, which made him resentful again. He loathed them for making him afraid.

  The door shut and left them in darkness. One of Qin’s bodyguards turned on a flashlight. Above, Jia heard shouts from his engineers and the dozens of soldiers pressed into duty as laborers. They had worked all day to secure the base and would continue all night. He was proud of them.

  Jia led Qin and his bodyguards past two doors, the second blocked by a hunk of concrete and rebar. Insignificant pieces of grit littered the floor, difficult to see in the ash. Qin moved elegantly in the pool of light cast from his bodyguard’s hand. Nevertheless, Jia saw an opportunity to show respect.

  “Watch your step, sir,” he said.

  The third door led to a supply room that had been locked until the wall buckled in the quakes, fracturing the door and its frame. Otherwise Jia would have forced it open. No one had recovered the keys, but the children’s boxed juices and the canned goods inside had been all that kept his troops going since sunup.

  Jia sidestepped into the doorway and hit the light switch, illuminating the empty concrete. Nothing was left except one garish blue wrapper with a smiling red dog on it. Jia stared at the cardboard. Would it share his tomb?

  No, he realized. They weren’t even looking at him.

  “Sir, I don’t like this,” the bodyguard said, tracing his flashlight up the exterior of the doorframe.

  “A few cracks in a wall are hardly the greatest risk we’ve seen today,” Qin said. “Leave me. Guard the hall. I only require a few minutes.”

  What does he want?

  Jia faced Qin as the older man entered the room alone. Qin hadn’t even bothered to have Jia’s sidearm confiscated, which spoke of his power and his toughness. Clearly he was also familiar with Jia’s MSS files. Qin expected obedience. Jia would give it to him. He only wished he looked the part. He felt conscious again of the blood and filth on his uniform— yet he also gloried in it. There had never been time to hunt up a new set of clothes. Nor was it likely that there were new clothes, certainly not enough for everyone, and Jia was disinterested in making himself more comfortable when his troops could not share the same improvement. His tattered uniform spoke well of his own conduct.

  He’d pushed his men harder than ever. It had taken them hours to establish their new command center and reconnect with the few radar stations left in southern California. During all that time, they were helpless, their borders unmonitored and unpatrolled. The majority of their surviving planes had been returning from enemy territory, scattered across North America. A few aircraft were tucked away here and there in California, but lost their runways in the holocaust or
their pilots or their ground crews.

  Jia’s base was among the first to come online again. Until early afternoon, in fact, he had been the senior officer in charge of the People’s Liberation Army. Radio was intermittent. Landlines were gone completely. He was able to form up some infantry and several armored units in a dozen locations, but to what point? None of them could reach each other, nor would they have been any use against enemy fighters.

  It was even more crucial to watch for missile launches, either China’s own or another American attack. He needed to know. Yet he was unable to reconnect with their satellites.

  His first useful command had been to redirect their planes into Russian territory, where the air fields were free for the taking. This decision seemed even more farsighted when he learned that a second wave of Chinese ICBMs blasted Montana and the Dakotas, destroying the last of the American silos. He’d preserved their air strength, which otherwise might have suffered further casualties in the missile strikes. Then he set patrols above California again.

  There were two counter-attacks. Three F/A-18s flew out of Flagstaff and knocked down five Chinese fighters before falling themselves. A single V-22 Osprey rose out of Colorado and, using Chinese codes, pierced deep into California before it was shot down, too. There were also several American planes that ran for the East Coast or overseas. They were pursued and killed. Perhaps a few escaped.

  The fight was won, but the cost had been too steep. Jia was even rightly to blame, not a scapegoat, and honor demanded that the men who’d set the war in motion take responsibility for their losses. Qin would assume command of this base — that much was obvious.