Plague War

by Jeff Carlson

  Ruth fell onto her back, heaving for air. Cam dropped his pack and tried to find water. There was none. He still had one can of soup left, though, and found the can opener. Some of the precious juice slopped out when he wrenched off the lid.

  “Ruth?” he said. “Ruth.” He took off his own goggles first. The cold night felt amazing and strange and he breathed it in to be sure he’d feel a nano infection before her. Then he stripped her goggles and jacket. Body heat leapt from her like a phantom.

  He helped her drink, cradling her cheek against his shoulder. Maybe ten minutes passed that way. A small peace. He ruined it himself. He thought to kiss her. It was a simple thing. She was the only softness in his world and he’d finally worn through his own defenses.

  He studied her lips, still smooth and perfect despite the sweat, dirt, and creases left by her armor. She reacted. Her eyes shifted to his and he saw her recognize the intent in his face, the one spark of desire inside all his exhaustion and hurt. He turned away.

  “Cam.” Her voice was a murmur and she put her good hand on his leg. “Cam, look at me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No.” Ruth moved her glove to his rough, bearded cheek. “Please, no. I owe you everything.”

  I don’t want it to be like this, he thought.

  “Just once,” she said. “Please. For luck.”

  Then she did exactly the wrong—or right—thing. She lifted her face and gently leaned her nose against his cheekbone, showing him what her skin would feel like.

  Cam pressed his mouth to hers and it gave him new energy. It changed the long tension between them. All around them, things were worse than ever, but this one small act was sweet and right.

  He arranged her pack for her like a pillow and set their guns on the ground beside them. Ruth was quickly unconscious. Cam briefly watched the stars through the trees overhead. Once he brought his bandaged left hand to his ruined lips and the concave on one side where his missing teeth had been.

  * * * *

  She kissed him again in the morning without saying anything first, tugging her mask down and then reaching for his, a quick kiss with her mouth shut. Maybe it was fortunate that they had so many more pressing needs.

  “We have to find water,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Ruth kept close as he dug the radio out of his pack and he looked sideways at her, distracted. They were both faceless again in their goggles and hoods, but Ruth touched his shoulder and nodded. Sunlight played on their filthy jackets, rocking down through the trees. They needed to get moving, but he dreaded it. His knee had stiffened, his back, his neck, and his feet were battered and raw.

  The radio was full of voices on seven channels. Maybe it had always been that way, but they’d been blocked from the noise by the mountains and the jamming of Leadville’s forward base. Neither of those obstacles existed anymore.

  All of the broadcasts were military. All of them sounded American, too, except for one woman with an accent. “Condor, Condor, this is Snow Owl Five, we can affirm One One Four. Repeat, we can affirm One One Four.”

  “She sounds French,” Ruth said.

  Most of it was in similar code, numbers and bird names. It should have been reassuring to hear so much commotion. America was still on its feet, even now.

  Cam didn’t trust them. He understood that if Newcombe was gone, it was up to him to get Ruth to safety. He needed to make contact with the rebel forces, but it would be very, very difficult to take that gamble and reach out into the airwaves. Worse, all of the frequencies Newcombe had said to use were occupied. Cam’s instinct was to stay quiet.

  They shared three sports bars for breakfast and choked down a handful of pills, too, four aspirin apiece and two antihistamine tablets. The drug would increase their grogginess but the ant bites felt awful and they were both scratching.

  At last, Cam broadcast right on top of the other noise. “Newcombe,” he said. “Newcombe, you there?” The voices didn’t notice. He lacked the transmitting power to reach Utah or Idaho and apparently there wasn’t anyone listening nearby, either.

  They were alone.

  * * * *

  They hiked.

  * * * *

  They hiked and Cam made sure not to rush her. The slower pace also allowed him to watch the terrain more carefully. They walked into a termite swarm and quickly backed off, not wanting to disturb the bugs. The front edge of the swarm rolled into the sky but Cam hoped the movement wasn’t unusual enough to attract the interest of anyone watching the valley. That was important. He couldn’t see much through the trees, but there were still planes overhead and the enemy must have observers on the mountaintops. Once a jet whipped past low enough to shake the forest. Had it been hunting them with infrared?

  Cam led her to a creek an hour later and they both fell onto the crumbling bank. He leaned his mouth straight into the water. Ruth had a harder time with only one arm. She scooped her glove up to her lips again and again until Cam gained control of himself and filled her canteen.

  “Not too much,” he said. “It’ll make you sick.”

  Ruth only nodded and laughed, splashing water on her face and scalp. The sound was a tired coughing but she laughed, and Cam was transfixed by it.

  In some ways their wounds and exhaustion had left them childlike. Their vision was becoming more and more immediate, limited to the moment. Maybe that was good. No one’s sanity could endure pain without end. It was a survival mechanism. But it was also dangerous.

  Cam forced himself to get up and walk away from her to find a better vantage point.

  “Wait.” Ruth scrambled to her feet.

  “I’m just looking—”

  “Wait!”

  He let her catch up. He found an opening in the trees where they could gaze back over the long rising shapes of the mountains both west and south. There was smoke in both directions, towering up from the forest.

  “Let’s sleep,” he said. “Okay?”

  Ruth nodded, but she waited to make sure he sat down before she did, too, leaning her shoulder against his. It was an odd kind of love. Sisterly, yes. They were both unreachable in their filthy armor, but that would be different at safe elevation and the thought of her was strong and good. It was a new reason to live.

  Cam monitored Newcombe’s channels again. Ruth napped. A cloud of black flies found them and buzzed and crawled but didn’t wake her. Neither did the whispering radio. The sun hung at noon for what seemed like a very long time and Cam silently held her.

  * * * *

  He woke himself when Newcombe said, “David Six, this is George. Do you copy? David Six.”

  The transition from sleep to consciousness eluded him for too long. Cam fumbled the headset over his hood and upped the volume, thumbing his send button. “This is Cam. Are you there? Hey, it’s Cam.”

  David Six was their call sign for the rebels, but Newcombe was gone. The light had changed. The sun was near the high line of the mountains in the west. Dusk stretched over the long slopes and pooled in the valleys, revealing the far-off glow of wildfires.

  Cam stared at the thin control box. Should he switch frequencies? “Newcombe!” he said on 6, then changed to 8. “Newcombe, this is Cam.”

  Ruth said, “Are you sure it was him?”

  There was a man on 8 reciting coordinates, but a different voice broke over him. “Cam,” the radio said. “I hear you, buddy. Are you guys all right?”

  “Oh, thank God.” Ruth squeezed Cam’s arm in celebration.

  But he’d gone cold. “Shh,” he said, turning to look into the woods with a flicker of panic. Buddy. Newcombe had never said anything like that before and Cam shifted with restless fear. What if Newcombe had been captured?

  “I’m pretty sure I picked up your trail,” the radio said. “Why don’t you stop. I’ll catch up.”

  The two of them had probably kicked over every pinecone, rock, and fallen branch between here and the road. Jesus. And he’d slept. H
e’d sat here and slept for hours.

  “Cam, can you hear me?” the radio said.

  “You need to answer him.” Ruth was quiet and tense. She had also turned to gaze into the shadows behind them and Cam reluctantly nodded.

  He spoke to his headset. “Do you remember the name of the man who got us off the street in Sacramento?”

  “Olsen,” the radio said. One of Newcombe’s squadmates had given his life to delay the paratroopers who cornered them in the city, and Cam did not believe that Newcombe would disgrace his friend’s bravery. Not immediately. It was the best test that he could manage, providing Newcombe a chance to get it wrong if the enemy had a knife to his throat.

  “Okay,” Cam said. “We’ll wait.”

  * * * *

  They tried to set up an ambush just the same, hooking back above the trail they’d left. They waited in a jag of earth with their pistols, but only one man came out of the night.

  “Newcombe,” Cam said softly. The soldier ran to them and gripped Cam’s hand in both of his own, eager for contact. With Ruth, he was more careful, touching his glove to her good arm.

  He was different. He was chatty. Cam thought Newcombe had been more scared than he would ever admit. He seemed to notice the change in them, too. As they ate the last of the packaged food, Newcombe looked up from his dinner repeatedly to peer at Cam or Ruth in the darkness—mostly Ruth. Cam smiled faintly. He was glad to have anything to smile about and he saw a tired, answering slant on Ruth’s mouth as they shared two cans of chicken stew from Newcombe’s pack.

  “The bug traps worked,” Newcombe said. “Worked like crazy. There were ants coming out of the ground over a mile away. I had to circle north, that’s why I got so far behind you.”

  “Did you ever see who was coming down the mountain?”

  “No. But the radio says it’s the Russians.”

  “The Russians,” Ruth said.

  “Yeah.” Newcombe had left his set on, squawking beside him. Cam thought he’d probably been making calls the entire time just to hold on to the illusion of another human presence.

  Only bad luck had kept them from hearing each other. Newcombe said, “It sounds like they fucked us in some land deal and brought the nuke into Leadville with their top diplomats and a bunch of kids. Their own kids. I—”

  The dim murmur of voices was overcome by a louder broadcast, a woman speaking low and fast. “George, this is Sparrowhawk. George, come back. This is Sparrowhawk.”

  Newcombe dropped his stew and grabbed the headset, talking before he’d even brought the microphone to his face. “George, George, George, this is George, George, George.”

  The three of them were so intent on the radio that at first Cam didn’t realize there was another sound rising over the forest. A distant, familiar roar. He looked up through the dark trees.

  “I need confirmation, Sparrowhawk,” Newcombe said, before he turned and muttered, “It’s our guys. It has to be our guys.”

  The world exploded around them. A jet ripped overhead, dragging a wall of noise behind it. The rush of turbulence crashed into the mountains and echoed back. Dry pine needles and twigs showered onto Cam’s hood and shoulders.

  “Hotel Bravo, Bravo November,” the woman said, “Hotel Bravo, Bravo November.”

  “There are runners at third and first,” Newcombe said urgently. “The batter is Najarro. The pitcher is a Yankee. The ball goes to third.”

  Her engines were red-white fire in the night, curving upward suddenly in a hard leftward arc. Was she coming back again? Newcombe’s broadcast couldn’t reach more than a few miles, but if she circled she’d give away their location—She was performing evasive manuevers. There were more fires in the sky. A peak to the south had lit up with searing yellow trails and the jet’s engines flared as the pilot boosted away.

  “Missiles,” Cam said, because Newcombe’s head was down, concentrating on his message.

  “The ball goes to third,” Newcombe repeated.

  Static. Her engines whipped down against the black earth and vanished behind a hill. Then an explosion skipped up from the terrain. Cam and Ruth reached for each other. “No,” Ruth said, but the engines rose into sight again, swiftly dwindling into the east. It was a missile that had struck the ground.

  Cam decided this couldn’t have been the first scout that U.S. forces had sent blitzing into California, its cameras snapping like guns. “Baseball,” he said to Newcombe. “You think the Russians are listening, too.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “You used my name.” Cam had never been on the radio, and wouldn’t have been a part of any manifest before the expedition into Sacramento. “The pitcher is a Yankee. New York.”

  “You want to go north again,” Ruth said. “Where third base would be from here.”

  “Northeast. Exactly. There’s a county airfield near Doyle, not far inside the California-Nevada border. It’s right in line with the grid I just laid out.”

  “What if the pilot doesn’t remember?” Cam said. “Or if she didn’t even hear you?”

  “She’ll have it on tape. They’ll figure it out.”

  “Unless she was out of range.”

  Newcombe shrugged confidently in the dark. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’ll be back.”

  18

  Six days later they were within two miles of the airfield and Ruth split away from Cam as he went to ground in a cluster of red desert rocks. Neither of them spoke. They simply acted. He picked his way into the small maze of boulders and Ruth hunkered down a few yards to his flank, watching their back-trail as Newcombe trudged past and then took his own position on Cam’s other side.

  The triangle was their default and their strength. It was as close to a circle as the three of them could manage, turning eyes in every direction.

  The path behind them was hazy with orange dust and the breeze had been erratic today, calming early in the morning. It might be hours before the fine, dry grit settled down again, but they couldn’t afford to wait for the weather to change. Instead, they watched for other dust trails.

  No one, Ruth thought. There may never be anyone out here again.

  To the west, the Sierras were a staggered wall of blue shadows and dusky forest. That color lightened and broke apart as it spilled down into the arid foothills. Their guess was that most survivors would move north or south along the edges of that uneven line, and if Russian troops had come in pursuit, they’d obeyed the same border.

  Ruth, Cam, and Newcombe were miles beyond any hint of green. The plague had been catastrophic in this place. Even the weeds and hardy sagebrush were dead. All that stood were a few dry stubs of windswept roots. Several times they’d seen the desiccated remains of grass and wildflowers laid on the ground like stains, brittle and black. In the heat, the insects had been destroyed, which in turn condemned the reptiles and the vegetation. Lacking any balance whatsoever, the biosphere tipped. The earth baked into powder and superheated the air.

  It drew moisture from every seam in their armor. Ruth was stripped down to T-shirt and undies inside the grimy shell of her jacket and pants, and still she broiled.

  Drinking water had become life-and-death. Every day they needed more than they could carry. Fortunately they’d also returned to civilization, passing through the outskirts of little towns with names like Chilcoot and Hallelujah Junction. Highway 395 paralleled their hike north and was spotted with stalled cars and Army trucks. They scavenged new clothing and boots. They also found bottles and cans easily enough, although many had swelled or burst in the sun.

  The highway was no protection from the dust. Red dirt and sand licked across the asphalt. It piled against cars and guardrails, forming dunes and bars. There were soft pits where culverts had been and other hazards like fences and downed wires. Once she’d cut her ankle on a fire hydrant concealed in the sand, so they usually went cross-country.

  They had yet to see another dust cloud. Most days had been windy, which erased t
heir trail but would also confuse the dust kicked up by anyone else. They worried constantly about planes and satellite coverage. Were the flags of dust running up from their feet noticeable from above? There was always movement around them. Huge whirlwinds walked in the desert and vanished and then leapt up again, especially to the east. Their hope was that they only looked like another dust devil.

  “Sst,” Cam whispered. Newcombe repeated the all clear and then Ruth, too. They drew together in a band of shade and Ruth blessed the wind-blasted rock for its size, glancing up along its pitted surface as she set her good hand against her pants pocket and the hard, round shape inside it. She still had the etched stone she’d taken from the first mountaintop. More and more she was treating inanimate objects with respect, making friends or enemies of everything that touched her.

  Part of her knew it was stupid. But she’d grown superstitious. There was no question that some things liked to bite. She would be a long time forgetting the rigid edges of the fire hydrant against her pantleg, so didn’t it make sense to feel obliged to benign objects like her little stone and the much larger shape of the desert rock? The idea was as close to faith as she’d ever been, a heightened sense of connection with everything around her.

  Maybe there really was a God within the earth and the sky. He would exist immaterial of whether religions were right or wrong. People tended to believe in what they wanted the world to be instead of looking to see what it was, inventing tribal power structures, skewing observable facts to make themselves important. Before the plague, in fact, the most successful religions had existed as shadow governments, transcending nations and continents. What fathers believed, they taught their sons, and they were encouraged to have as many sons as possible. Who honestly thought that the Catholic edict against birth control was based on the lessons of Christ? Or that the enforced ignorance of women in the Muslim world was holy in any way? Large families were the quickest way to expand the faithful— and yet none of these human blunders meant there wasn’t some kernel of truth to the idea of a greater being.

  Hundreds of forms of worship had been born throughout history, and new religions had surely begun since the plague. Why? Despite the suspicion and greed of the monkey still inside them, people could be smart and honest and brave. Had the best of them truly perceived some link to the divine? Ruth was beginning to think yes, although her sense of it was doubtful and faint.