Plague War

by Jeff Carlson

  “Okay. And everyone out of the south has priority.”

  “Yes.”

  Deborah’s job had become more difficult when they packed up and ran this afternoon. Keeping the samples organized was vital to their mission, but that wasn’t why she’d intervened.

  The two of them were like moths competing for a light. Cam had seen the same polarizing effect between himself and Mark Newcombe. Deborah was here to protect Ruth. Her motivation was much like his own. Being with Ruth was a chance to share her incredible sense of purpose.

  “I should get ready for my shift,” he said. It was partly true. He stood up and Ruth rose with him.

  “Are you—” she began, but Cam stopped her.

  “It’s okay. You have a lot of work to do.”

  Her face was uncertain, but she nodded. She hadn’t even unpacked her microscope yet. The night before she’d taken hours to screen less than twenty samples, huddled beneath a silver foil survival blanket to hide her flashlight, and today they’d accumulated thirty-one vacuum caps of blood. Tomorrow there would be more. The job was already too big for her, even with Deborah and Captain Park as assistants. Ruth was too thorough. Cam would have taken half as many samples and doubled their travel time, but she was terrified of missing any clue.

  It would be perverse, but Cam also wondered if she was upset because she wasn’t responsible for the advances that had brought the nanotech this far. Life wasn’t like TV, where every success belonged only to the hero. Sometimes you could only react to other people’s accomplishments. They’d seen enough twists and surprises to know that was true. Cam thought Ruth had learned not to let her own ego work against her, and yet the fact remained that she was playing catch-up to other people’s work, when for most of her career she had been the hotshot. That must be tough, so he only smiled at her.

  “Sit with me for breakfast,” she said.

  “If I can.” Cam was important to the job, too, standing guard in three-hour watches just like the other Rangers, supporting the team and contributing to their ever-changing plans. Given a moment of privacy, Cam would have said more. You know why I’m here, he thought, but Deborah stirred beside Ruth with her chin tilted up in that aggressive way, so Cam only smiled again and turned to go.

  Deborah disapproved of him. Their backgrounds could not have been more different. The basic EMT classes he’d taken before the plague were a joke compared to her years of education, and he was definitely not a book that was judged well by its cover. A haircut and a clean uniform had only made his scarring more prominent, whereas Deborah’s skin was clear and unblemished— and Ruth’s temples and left cheek remained lightly marked from their long run in goggles and masks.

  Whether she realized it not, Cam thought that on some level Deborah was pulling at Ruth to keep her from becoming any more like him. Deborah was a good friend to Ruth. Cam liked her for it even if they didn’t get along. The bottom line was that Deborah Reece could be arrogant, even rude, but she had been safe in Grand Lake and she’d walked away from it for the greater good.

  * * * *

  Cam still wondered how close Ruth had come to being told she couldn’t leave. Governor Shaug hadn’t wanted to see Deborah go, either, or the elite troops or the atomic force microscope that Ruth demanded.

  In the end, Ruth convinced him there was far more worth to be had if she succeeded. She had also lost her value as a bargaining chip. Shaug could no longer fly her to the labs in Canada in exchange for food or weaponry, because Grand Lake’s allies had issued a quarantine. The ghost nanotech seemed limited to Colorado. They didn’t want to be infected themselves. They continued to coordinate their militaries with Grand Lake, but planes out of Colorado were no longer permitted to divert anywhere else even if they were hit or low on fuel. Colorado ground troops in need of help would not see reinforcements except from other Colorado units.

  Governor Shaug must have been desperate to change that edict, and Ruth could be forceful when the mood struck her. In Sacramento, Cam had seen her yell at seven armed men when she disagreed with them, so it intrigued him that she was tentative with him.

  There was no reason to ask him to join her except that she trusted him. Loved him. The Rangers were a top-notch escort, whereas he was a complication.

  Newcombe had opted out. Cam was disappointed, but he couldn’t resent the soldier for his choice. Newcombe had fit himself back into the larger whole of Grand Lake exactly as he’d always intended. Newcombe just didn’t have the same ties to Ruth. During all their time together, she’d chosen Cam instead, and he hoped she would do it again if Deborah continued to force the issue.

  * * * *

  She did. The next morning she brought Cam tea and oatmeal as he helped Wesner and Foshtomi load their gear into the jeeps. Later that day she even used Allison as an excuse to talk to him about their days in Grand Lake. She took another blood sample herself. She said she had to monitor how they were being exposed themselves, dealing with the refugees, but Foshtomi noticed that she let Deborah draw blood from the rest of the group.

  Foshtomi was delighted by their slow-motion romance because she was just one of the guys in her squad, Cam thought. She kept tabs on Ruth because it allowed her to be a woman.

  That Ruth was watching you again last night, Foshtomi would say, or, Did you see how that Ruth waited to eat until you were done helping Mitchell with the fuel cans?

  It was true. “That Ruth” found time to be with him despite everything else, even if it was just for a few minutes—and she had to be the one who approached him, because Captain Park gave her all the latitude she wanted, whereas Cam was always busy as a member of the squad.

  In many ways he enjoyed that pressure. The Rangers were a well-oiled machine. Their power appealed to Cam. They imposed order and direction on their world, which was a remarkable feat.

  By their fifth day, the land above the barrier pinched into a thin neck of ground along the Continental Divide, forcing them to turn west below ten thousand feet. Highway 40 ran eastward through the sheer peaks, zigzagging up through to the other side of the Divide and the refugee populations that had formed above the small cities of Empire, Lawson, and Georgetown, but the highway was thick with old traffic and new rockslides. Fires had blackened the mountainsides even where there was nothing to burn except damp moss and weeds. Ash and dust lay across the earth in vast streamers. It whispered up beneath their tires and boots. Three of the Rangers now wore radiation badges clipped to their jackets and Captain Park also had a Geiger counter that chittered and clacked at times. They seemed to be edging through an area where the fallout had settled after the explosion. They were lucky the prevailing weather was out of the northwest, behind them. It had carried most of the poison east, but the radiation was another reason to go west from the Divide.

  They spent two days in a long, green valley cut into the mountains by a good-sized creek that had briefly become a colossal flood. Nearer to ground zero, most of the snowpack had been vaporized, but at this distance the snow immediately slumped away as water and slush, increasing the landslides caused by the quake. Their jeeps rocked and crashed through banks of gravel, muck, and driftwood. They broke one of their four shovels digging a way through. They also encountered three groups of survivors. This valley faced north and had escaped the worst of the damage. Many of the aspen and spruce were still standing and the water ran clear—and there was nothing in this place to attract the air war, only wilderness.

  Finally they made it up through the Ute Pass, where Highway 9 arrowed south toward Interstate 70. On this high point, the blast wave had lifted cars by the thousands, overturning the old metal shapes. The road was a mess of broken glass and odd drifts of rust and paint flakes, and Captain Park took them back north instead of following the highway toward Leadville. He refused to move deeper into the blast zone. Ruth’s few protests were soft-spoken and confused.

  Ruth was haggard beneath her sunburn. She worked nights with her AFM and tried to nap in the day wh
en they were on the move, but it must have been like sleeping on the back of an elephant. The jeeps bumped and seesawed on the rocky earth, stopping and starting as the Rangers jumped down to push wrecks or boulders out of the way. She was exhausted. She carried that goddamn stone everywhere.

  She thought she’d failed. Two of the refugee groups they’d met in the valley had been clean. They’d infected those people themselves. Yes, she’d given them the vaccine, but at the cost of tainting them with the ghost, too. We couldn’t have known, Cam told her. Ruth only grimaced and shook her head. They seemed to have lost the trail.

  They were running out of time. Open broadcasts out of Grand Lake constantly advised American forces of enemy action, and Chinese armored units had pushed into Colorado.

  The Chinese had taken southern California and most of Arizona with relative ease. There was no one to oppose them except the tiny populations on the few peaks east of Los Angeles, who were quickly burned away. The Chinese armies numbered at least a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, pilots, mechanics, and artillery men—and their naval fleets were rushing away for more.

  Interstates 40 and 70 became the lifelines of the invasion. At low elevations, the freeways were mostly clear, except where American fighters had destroyed bridges and causeways. Planes from both sides clashed above the desert while, far below, Chinese combat engineers struggled to move their trucks and APCs across every break in the road.

  The Chinese armies were also disrupted by hot spots. There had been huge drifts of the plague out of the L.A. basin and it scattered the Chinese reserves, overwhelming the vaccine. At the Arizona border, the Colorado River was also seething with nanotech. U.S. surveillance put the enemy’s casualties in the thousands, and North American Command did their best to channel the invader into these death zones.

  The Chinese couldn’t slow down. They also had the bugs and the desert heat to contend with. Their best strategy was that of momentum and speed. They plundered every city and military base within reach and they were briefly rich for it, squandering fuel and ammunition.

  Flagstaff only lasted five days. While Cam and Ruth were in their quiet valley just west of the Continental Divide, the Chinese effectively claimed Arizona and turned toward the Rockies in full strength.

  The Grand Canyon served as a critical defensive line. This deep, ancient gash in the Earth stretched for hundreds of miles through Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, and not a single bridge or dam survived the American strikes. It split the Chinese in two. The enemy could provide air support for themselves across the entire Southwest, but their generals were faced with a decision as far back as Las Vegas, at the mouth of the Canyon, beyond which their armies were no longer able to reach each other.

  The Russians helped them in Utah, pounding at the largest American outposts in the mountains east of Salt Lake, but the enemy bogged down there. Interstate 70 ran north from Vegas and stayed tight along another high range for nearly a hundred miles before it squeezed into a series of passes and bent east toward Colorado. The Chinese advance was hit every step of the way.

  If they’d tried to charge through, they probably would have succeeded, with heavy losses, but the northern Chinese group didn’t want Utah at their backs as they assaulted Colorado. They appeared to settle in for a long fight.

  Their southern force had always been the larger one, however. It was also where they directed all reinforcements. The thrust by their northern army was only to hold Utah in check. Meanwhile, their southern force angled up into Colorado on as many smaller highways as they could access, swarming north and east as the roads curled away from the vast, sprawling bulk of the front side of the Rockies.

  Bombers out of Canada, Montana, and Wyoming struck the Russians and the Chinese from behind. Attack choppers out of New Mexico harassed the Chinese in Arizona, but New Mexico was preoccupied as smaller Chinese landings on the coasts of Florida and Texas began to launch their own assaults, picking at the U.S. forces from behind.

  Colorado armies still held Grand Junction, which straddled I-70 near the Utah border. The all-important airfields in Durango, Telluride, and Montrose had fallen. The Chinese were rapidly securing their grasp on the southern part of the state, and Cam was glad again for the insignificant size of his squad. Every day there were jets close overhead. More frequently, they heard distant planes or saw contrails or bright metal dots.

  If they were noticed by an enemy fighter, they would be dead in seconds. There had been reports of the Chinese strafing refugee camps simply to create more chaos, expending ammunition on nonmilitary targets because the survivors fled for the protection of Army bases, where they made trouble for the soldiers and pilots. Unfortunately, most of the people in this part of Colorado still did not have the vaccine. Grand Lake had flown it to military personnel across the United States and Canada, thoroughly screening those vials of blood plasma for the ghost nanotech. Soldiers everywhere had spread the vaccine to nearby refugees if they could, but Cam’s squad saw no one whatsoever for the next day and a half as they circled west and then south again below the barrier.

  Interstate 70 rolled nearly dead-center across the middle of the state. Reaching it was their first goal. Captain Park planned to join the freeway in the town of Wolcott, jog west, then continue south again on dirt roads and trails as they worked their way back toward elevation. They knew there was a large conglomeration of American infantry and armored units in the area, coordinating with Grand Lake command. West of Leadville, the mountains surrounding the once-famous ski town of Aspen were poised to become a stronghold against the Chinese.

  Ruth hoped to find her answers there. If not, the expedition was wasted. Everything boiled down to whether or not she’d guessed right—but if, for example, Leadville had only tested its nanotech on its troops along its northern border, they’d come all this way for nothing. There would be no perfect vaccine. They would have no explanation for the ghost nanotech and Ruth would be more alone than ever, as the last top scientist in the United States.

  She snapped at them and then apologized. She obsessed with her maps even when they hadn’t taken any new samples since the Ute Pass. Cam tried to kiss her that night and Ruth grabbed a handful of his jacket and used her arm like a piston, shoving him back. But first she pulled him closer and opened her mouth. He was sure of that.

  Ruth was a mess, strung out and unsure even of herself. Cam had never felt so clear. He knew he’d been right to come. The Rangers were committed but Ruth needed friends, not only protectors. He regretted adding to the demands on her. There was no time or privacy for them to pursue whatever was happening between them, and she wouldn’t relax until they’d found the remnants of Leadville’s military.

  Unfortunately, Wolcott was a swamp. The town sat in a steep channel along the Eagle River. The quakes and floods had turned this gorge into a muddy lake. It was June 27th. Their only choice was to turn back and fight around the water to the east, where they stumbled into a hot spot as they winched their jeeps up an embankment. Ballard was distracted, infected in his ear and hands. He caught his sleeve in the winding cable and the winch snapped his elbow before Park shut it down.

  Escaping the machine plague had to be their first priority. Ballard toughed it out, cursing himself, and eventually Deborah and Sergeant Estey reset his joint on a lush mountainside spotted with white and yellow flowers. Cam stared at the little blossoms. This place seemed completely untouched by the vast conflict of men and machines, and he imagined there were other safe pockets everywhere, even beyond enemy lines.

  The thought shouldn’t have made him sad. Angry and sad. If we’d just shared the vaccine, he thought. Had the entire war really hinged on that one decision? Where would the fighting stop? Even if Ruth was successful, even if she developed a perfect vaccine, that didn’t seem like enough of an advantage to push back the Chinese. Cam saw no end to it.

  They stayed in the meadow for lunch, bolting down a meal of tinned ham and fresh, bitter roots as distant percu
ssions echoed from the mountains. Artillery fire. Cam looked out into the pale blue sky but saw nothing, no smoke, no movement. The war was still hidden down in the west, but it was hurrying closer even as they drove toward the U.S. lines.

  Park expected it would be at least another day before they reached the northern edge of the Aspen group. They were only six miles from the nearest secured area, a base on Sylvan Mountain, but they weren’t moving much faster than a person could walk. The terrain was too rough. Park stayed on the radio constantly, trading coordinates with flank units and requesting information on the Chinese. He could call in air support if needed, if there was time, but until they reached Aspen Valley, ultimately they had no one to rely on except themselves.

  On the morning of the 28th that wasn’t enough.

  * * * *

  The hillside erupted in geysers of fire and dirt. Four or five towering blasts appeared out of nowhere, bracketing the jeeps, hot and bright. Then the explosions seemed to walk together like two drunken giants, stomping through the vehicles and then back again.

  One of the jeeps flipped. Captain Park’s? Ruth’s? In the third jeep, separated from the others by curtains of debris, Cam lost track of the two vehicles ahead of him. He’d gone deaf in the ringing impacts, yet he was aware of rocks and earth clattering against the jeep. The hood twisted up and stopped again, a jagged metal sheet. In the driver’s seat, Wesner twisted sideways as something whipped into his head. Cam was struck in the arm and chest, but the other man shielded him from the worst of it, even when the windshield cracked and imploded. Bits of fender and other shrapnel had rattled through the torn shape of the hood. Wesner took most of that, too.

  He was still alive. He pawed feebly at the steering wheel as Cam grabbed the biggest wound on Wesner’s neck, trying to stop the bleeding.

  “Get out!” Foshtomi yelled, directly behind Cam in the backseat. She sounded like she was at the bottom of a well and it wasn’t until she bumped past that Cam realized they’d quit moving. His inner ears were in shock. His balance was gone and he swayed as if the ground was an ocean wave when he left the jeep, dragging Wesner behind him.