Plague War

by Jeff Carlson

  It was close to noon before they went to ground, much later than they wanted it to be. At last they found a wide, dry canal that ran beneath the highway. Five minutes later there was an explosion in the distance like a sonic boom.

  “Oh, please, God, no,” Ruth said, lifting her head from where she’d curled up to nap.

  “You think they tagged us?” Cam asked Newcombe. The soldier only shrugged. They gazed out from their hole in silence. Cam made Ruth drink as much water as she could hold. They all had salty chips and tuna fish and Newcombe quickly updated his journal, looking at his watch twice again. The man took real comfort in the time and date, Cam had noticed. He supposed it made sense. Those numbers were reliable in a way that nothing else could be.

  Finally, Ruth and Newcombe settled down to rest again. A pack of helicopters swept through the valley, unseen—a distant rolling thunder. But there was nothing more. The hunters never came closer.

  * * * *

  “Don’t leave me,” Ruth whispered, her small hand on Cam’s shoulder. He turned and opened his eyes to darkness, unsure if he’d been asleep or only in and out of waking. He wasn’t surprised to find her leaning over him.

  He felt the hair rise on his arms and neck. It was as if he’d expected her and he realized he’d been having his nightmare again, the same nightmare of Erin bleeding out as ten thousand grasshoppers covered the sun. The sky beyond the canal was black, like in his dream, and the two of them were positioned exactly as he and Erin had been, one on the ground, the other kneeling, except their positions were reversed. In his dream he’d been in Ruth’s place, staring down at his lover as she drowned in her own eroded lungs.

  Cam sat up, frightened. It was early in the night and the sky really was a solid dark mass, except where the quarter moon radiated light way down on the horizon. The clouds must have come in. Good. He glanced over at the other man, listening. Newcombe was only four feet away, but in the darkness it seemed farther. His breathing was soft and regular.

  Ruth had volunteered to take the first watch, explaining that she’d napped in the boat and again when they first reached the canal. That was the only reason Cam and Newcombe had agreed, when normally the two of them let her sleep the whole night.

  She’d wanted this. She’d wanted him.

  “Please,” she said, laying her fingers on his shoulder again. It was about as meaningless as contact could be, her glove on his jacket. She was barely more than a shadow herself, misshapen by her goggles and mask, but Cam remembered the shape of her mouth and her quick, intelligent gaze.

  She doesn’t know, he thought. She can’t. No one would ever guess I could still feel that way about anyone, because no one could ever feel that way about me.

  And if she did...If she was aware of his attraction, he would hate her for using it against him.

  “Newcombe wants out of here,” Ruth whispered. “I can’t blame him for that, but he hasn’t been through what you and I have. He doesn’t realize.”

  Cam nodded, brooding. He wanted more reasons to be closer to her, even bad ones, and not for the first time he wondered how she must have felt watching the planet go dark from the space station. Watching it stay dark, the cities on every continent abandoned and lost. She had suffered in different ways, more like a prisoner than a refugee.

  “Don’t leave me,” she repeated.

  “I won’t.” It was a promise. But at the same time, he knew it was very possible that Newcombe would force the issue. What else could the soldier do? Let them walk away? Newcombe had almost as much on the line as the two of them. He would never jump on a plane without Ruth or her data index.

  Cam turned to regard the other man again as an old, animal feeling stole over him—an empty sort of clarity that he hadn’t known since he murdered Chad Loomas, the man who was the first to steal and hide food on the small mountain peak where Cam had survived the plague year.

  If it came to a fight, Cam thought Newcombe had every edge. Newcombe was stronger. He had the assault rifle. Rather than confronting him face-to-face, Cam knew he would be smarter to shoot the other man in the back.

  * * * *

  Before dawn they continued north. It was necessary no matter what they decided. They had to assume there was a forward base, either on the mountaintop where Ruth and Newcombe had first met Cam or somewhere in Tahoe or Yosemite—or all three. They needed to be that paranoid. The helicopters yesterday might have only been on a random search grid, but Newcombe didn’t think so. Fuel was too precious.

  The morning sun was still burning off the clouds when they discovered the reason for the helicopter patrol. There was only one body, a whole body, crushed and burned but whole, so immediately different than the thousands of bare skeletons strewn across the road.

  “Stop,” Cam said. They were at least sixty yards away and he climbed onto the bumper of a station wagon, digging his binoculars out of his jacket.

  “What is that?” Ruth asked, craning her neck.

  It was a young man in uniform, wrapped in gear and still tied to a paraglider. A ripped glider. His clothes and skin were scorched and there appeared to be wounds caused by shrapnel. It was difficult to tell because there were already bugs in him, an undulating haze like a ghost. Worse, he’d fallen to his death. Fallen a long way. Some of him had splashed and the rest was only held together by his uniform, belts, and pack.

  “Christ,” Newcombe muttered.

  Cam was already looking out across the horizon for the rest of the crew and the plane itself. That was the explosion we heard before the helicopters came to clean up, he thought. But he saw nothing. He supposed the aircraft could have gone down miles from here, depending on its altitude and direction when the missile struck.

  “Is that a pilot?” Ruth asked.

  She must think he ejected, Cam realized as he stepped off of the car. He gave Newcombe the binoculars, occupying the other man’s hands. “It’s a paratrooper,” he said. “What do you think, Newcombe? Is he Canadian?”

  “But he’s not wearing a containment suit,” Ruth said.

  “He’s American.” Newcombe appeared to recognize some articles of the man’s clothing, although there were no unit patches or insignia that Cam had seen. “A rebel, probably.”

  “But he couldn’t last more than a couple hours down here,” Ruth said. “He would know that.”

  “He probably expected to meet us,” Cam said.

  “What?” She turned from the body to stare at them, although Cam was only aware of her peripherally. He kept his eyes on Newcombe, who made a vague, restless motion with the binoculars, but Cam didn’t reach for them and Newcombe set the binoculars down on the hood of the car.

  “Bringing in more people is a great idea, actually,” Cam said. “They fly in a whole plane full of their best guys. We inoculate them. Then everyone spreads out with the vaccine.”

  “You’ve been talking to them?” Ruth asked Newcombe.

  Newcombe carried all three of their radio units. The components didn’t weigh much, but it had seemed like another team-oriented gesture, sharing his strength. Now Cam realized that the soldier’s decision was entirely selfish.

  “He’s probably just acknowledging messages,” Cam said, “tapping on the send button again, like Morse code. Right? If you broadcast too much, Leadville could zero in on it,” he said, just as another idea hit him. “That’s why you wanted to get away from us yesterday. You knew we couldn’t set any more food traps. You just wanted to use the radio without us around.”

  “Listen,” Newcombe said, holding his arms away from his sides. It was an open, nonthreatening posture.

  “What else aren’t you telling us?” Ruth asked, trying to put herself between them. Cam was proud of her, fleetingly, even as he kept his attention locked on Newcombe’s hands.

  “The fighting’s escalated,” Newcombe said. “It’s total war. If we get the chance, we have to get out of here.”

  “This man,” Ruth said. “His plane was shot down
?”

  “The rebels and the Canadians are putting as much pressure on Leadville as they can, one offensive after another,” Newcombe said. “And it’s working. Most of Leadville’s attention is back in Colorado right now.”

  “But this man,” Ruth said.

  Cam’s heart beat hard in anticipation and his head swam as he imagined jets and helicopters spearing across the Continental Divide, down from British Columbia, up from Colorado. There would be others dodging west into the gray sky above him, engaging each other over the deserts of Utah and Nevada.

  “Even if someone managed to reach us,” he said, “we’d be crazy to get on a plane right now.”

  “That’s our best bet,” Newcombe said.

  “No.”

  “You said it yourself,” Ruth said. “Leadville is distracted. This is our best chance to run into the mountains.”

  “But then you’re still nowhere,” Newcombe said. “It still leaves you an easy target.”

  You’re. You. Newcombe was already separating himself from them in his mind, Cam realized. Should he say it? You go. He and Ruth could keep hiking while Newcombe made the rendezvous. Maybe that would be best. Splitting up was a way to double the odds that someone got away and Newcombe would have his success, completing at least some of his mission goals.

  “Our first priority has to be to spread the vaccine,” Ruth said, never swerving. “That has to come first.”

  “Christ, lady, that’s exactly what I’m trying to accomplish,” Newcombe said as his gaze slid away from Cam to her backpack. To the data index.

  “You go if you want to,” Cam said quickly.

  “My job is to see you safe,” Newcombe said.

  What did they tell him? Cam wondered. What kind of promises would I hear if I had one of the radios at night?

  “We have to get you back to the labs,” Newcombe said. Cam raised his left hand like a schoolkid with a question, his bandaged hand. A few inches of gauze had come loose and dangled from his glove, stained with dirt and one rust streak from the fender of a car like blood. He raised his hand in a big distracting gesture and then drew his pistol with the other.

  Newcombe flinched. It looked like he almost went for his rifle, but he froze with both palms out.

  “Give me the radios,” Cam said.

  5

  Major Hernandez moved carefully, trying to keep the weight on his shoulders from riding him sideways down the hill. It would be easy to turn an ankle, especially with his legs and body encumbered in gear.

  Up on the Continental Divide, above thirteen thousand feet, even a sunny May afternoon was icy and brisk—and the nights were lethal. Weapons jammed in the cold. Dental work and glasses and rings could burn. Like all of the troops in his command, Hernandez dressed thickly, wearing more layers than fit well inside his olive drab jacket. They would rather be uncomfortable than dead. But it made them clumsy.

  “Gaaaah—” A man screamed behind him, and Hernandez heard a clang of metal. His pulse jumped, yet he caught himself, hefting his canvas sling away from his back before he let go of his rock. The forty-pound boulder crashed down as Hernandez stepped away from it, looking for his trooper.

  Private Kotowych was on his knees against the wall of the gorge, squeezing his arm. Hernandez saw a dark splatter on the ground and a crowbar that had instantly congealed with blood and skin. “Hey!” he yelled at Powers and Tunis, who’d also hurried over. There were only eight of them in the gorge and Hernandez glanced at Powers.

  “You’re my runner,” Hernandez said. “Go tell the doc. But go slow. We don’t need to pick you up, too, understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Powers said.

  “The fucking bar went through my hand,” Kotowych groaned.

  Susan Tunis lifted her own pry bar like a club. “You can’t make us keep working like this,” Tunis said. Her breath came in short, heavy gasps and the steel bar rocked in time with her body.

  Kneeling beside Kotowych, Hernandez gazed up at her without moving. “Why don’t you help me,” he said.

  “We should be using explosives instead of digging like this!” Tunis said.

  Hernandez looked past her for support, but he barely knew any of these soldiers and none of his noncoms were present. His T/O was a mess. His table of organization was devoid of company-level officers—he had only himself, three sergeants, and a corporal—and he wanted to make at least six field promotions if he could identify the right people.

  He couldn’t ignore the insubordination. He stood away from Kotowych and held Tunis’s eyes. “Get your head straight, Marine,” he said.

  Her face was white with tension.

  “Help me.” Hernandez was careful not to make it an order. If she said no, he would have to enforce it. So he tried to divert her. He shrugged out of his jacket and swiftly removed one of his shirts. Kotowych had nearly stopped bleeding as glassy red ice formed outside his fist, but it was still important to apply pressure. If they didn’t, he might continue to hemorrhage inside his arm.

  Hernandez put his jacket back on before he felt for breaks in Kotowych’s fingers and wrist. There were none, but the hand was a disaster. Hernandez used his knife to cut his shirt into three strips. He folded one into a square and forced the bandage into Kotowych’s palm, then wrapped the other two as tightly as he could.

  “That’ll have to do,” he said. “Can you walk? Let’s get you down the mountain.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kotowych said, gritting his teeth.

  Tunis echoed the word suddenly. “Sir,” she said. “I’m sorry, sir. It was. We.”

  “You were upset,” Hernandez said, giving her an out. Tunis nodded. He let her fidget under his gaze for another instant, then looked away from her and called, “The rest of you get back to work. But for God’s sake, pay attention to what you’re doing.”

  The men hesitated. Hernandez almost snapped at them, but he hid his frustration—and he realized he didn’t want to leave Tunis with them. She was trouble.

  “Take his other side,” he said.

  Supporting Kotowych, Hernandez and Tunis worked their way from the gorge into a bleak, moss-softened rock field. Nothing grew taller than the coarse grass and a few tiny flowers. Mostly there was only the spotty brown carpet of moss among pale rock darkened by lichen. A lot of rock. Rock and snow. In many places, in fact, the snow never melted completely.

  Up here, the air was frigid and thin. Every survivor had acclimated to elevation or they hadn’t survived, but headaches and nausea were very common among the population in Leadville, and that was down near ten thousand feet. More than half a mile higher, any physical effort made it necessary to gasp to get enough oxygen, breathing too fast to let the air absorb any warmth in the sinuses. It didn’t take much to scar your lungs or even freeze from the inside out, dropping your body core temperature almost before you knew it. Anxiety was also a common side effect of hypoxia. Not getting enough oxygen, the brain naturally created a sense of panic, which did nothing to help people who were already under a lot of strain. In fourteen months, Hernandez had seen a lot of soldiers ruined as outposts and patrols sent their casualties back to Leadville.

  These mountaintops were dead and ancient places, never meant for human beings. The orange-gray rock had been worn smooth and broken and worn smooth again. The elements could do the same to them in far less time. Hernandez had issued orders to dig and build only in the few hours of midday, and only on staggered shifts. No one worked every day, no matter how urgent their situation. His command had reached this slope just forty-eight hours ago. Already he had three troops on sick call, plus Kotowych, and there was little sense in having superior fighting holes with no one capable of fighting from them.

  That goes for you, too, he thought. His back hurt, as did his hands and shins. Frank Hernandez was barely on the wrong side of forty, but the cold made everyone arthritic.

  He was committed to doing more than his share of the grunt work, rather than sitting back and passing out bad j
obs. He was too worried about morale and too many of his Marines were strangers to each other, thrown together from the remnants of five platoons. There were too many rumors and fears.

  “We’re almost there,” he told Kotowych.

  Their bootsteps faded into the clear, brittle sky. Hernandez kept his eyes on his footing, but the mountainside fell away so dramatically that it was impossible not to see the immense up-anddown horizon, a collision of dark peaks and snow and far open spaces. It was a distraction. Panting, Hernandez glanced west. There was nothing to see except more mountains, of course, but he imagined reaching across the basins of Utah and Nevada to the heavily urbanized coast, where everything had gone wrong for him in one minute.

  By necessity, the American civil war was mostly an air war. The urgent struggle to claim and scavenge from the old cities below the barrier was dependent on the ability to maintain their helicopters and planes. Infantry and armor could only cross the plague zones if they were flown over, and yet this patch of ground he’d been ordered to hold was still a frontline assignment, when just a week ago he’d been the security chief for Leadville’s nanotech labs and a liaison between the scientists and the highest circles of the U.S. government. Hernandez had been tapped to lead the expedition into Sacramento because they relied on him, because that confidence was more valuable than food or ammunition. Now he was on the outside. The hell of it was that he understood.

  Their mission hadn’t been a total loss. They’d returned to Leadville with a stack of computers, paper files, and a good deal of machining hardware. The hidden cost was the conspiracy itself. All except five of the fifteen traitors had been accounted for—six dead, four captured—but their betrayal screamed of larger problems.

  Who could be trusted? The rebellion had finally reached the innermost circles of Leadville itself, although no one had said anything so blunt to Hernandez. He’d seen the doubt in their eyes. The fact that he hadn’t been called in to meet with General Schraeder or any of the civilian leaders was also telling. The top men had distanced themselves from him. They couldn’t help but suspect the possibility of his involvement. His friendship with James Hollister was too well-known. As the head of the labs, James had been instrumental in substituting the wrong scientists aboard the plane. Worse, Hernandez’s Marines failed to put down the takeover by the Special Forces unit.