by Jeff Carlson
“Okay,” Caruso said. “Okay. Just wait.”
Ruth held two swords at their throats. The tiny glass packets she’d worn into the bunker were only the first of her weapons, because given the choice, she’d realized there was no choice. She needed to honor the effort and sacrifice of people like Hernandez and the Boy Scouts and every nameless soldier who’d died in the attempts to rescue her, even the invaders—even Nikola Ulinov. She wanted to save all of the survivors of the machine plague and the war.
Ruth had used the great leaps forward she’d found in the new vaccine and the booster, but instead of improving the booster she’d created a very dangerous new ANN, a parasite capable of interfering with and shutting off both versions of the vaccine. Permanently. The parasite had no other effects or functions, but that was enough, forever denying the world below ten thousand feet to anybody it touched. Someone with the parasite inside them would never be able to host the vaccine again. It would ruin the armies spread across the western United States, robbing them of artillery and armor and far too many more lives as they scrambled back to the barrier.
It would briefly cause the fighting to intensify. In Utah, the Russians’ only choice would be to charge into the guns of the American positions east of Salt Lake City. In Colorado, the Chinese would face the same problem. Their reserves and supply chains throughout the Southwest would be devastated. The advantage would swing to the United States, and yet that first day would be horrific. The losses on all sides would be crippling.
Ruth had sworn to do this unless there was a cease-fire and unconditional withdrawal. Unfortunately, she needed some cooperation. The enemy would take any threat of nanotech seriously, but words alone wouldn’t stop them. There had to be proof, so she’d also designed a second model of the parasite. This one had a strict governor. It would only affect an area the size of a few city blocks, instead of replicating without end.
It was this second ANN that she’d worn into the bunker. She had also left four capsules of it for them to find in her lab. They would need jets equipped with missiles that had been stripped of explosives, carrying only the nanotech—and even as America announced its ultimatum, they could hit four places deep inside enemy lines, delivering incontrovertible evidence of the parasite’s strength.
There were too many details for it to be done instantly. Ruth expected to have to push them every step of the way, holding Grand Lake hostage for hours or days. That was the real reason for the first, ungoverned version of the parasite. This morning Cam and Deborah had both left the mountaintop with capsules full of billions of the parasite, running in opposite directions. They would disperse it on Ruth’s command or if anyone found and cornered them, or if she failed to make contact at all.
“Call the eight four six number first,” she said, studying the complicated radio console. “Give me your headset.” If they had someone tap the line, she wouldn’t know, but she didn’t want to be on an open microphone.
The comm specialist obeyed. He punched in the number and Ruth heard a normal telephone ring tone, once, twice. It was a stranger who answered. “Burridge,” a man said, and Ruth went cold.
She yanked the headset away with her bad hand. “This is the wrong number,” she said, whirling on the specialist.
“No, ma’am. It’s correct.”
“Burridge,” the man repeated as Ruth pressed the earpiece back against the side of her head, breathing deep in an attempt to control her panic. My God, she thought. Lord God. He was a soldier or an intelligence agent. Ruth knew they answered calls with their last name, so she responded the same way.
“This is Goldman,” she said, testing him.
“We have your friend in custody, Dr. Goldman. And the nanotech. We—”
“Let me talk to her.”
“We know where the other man went—”
“Let me talk to her!” Ruth shouted. The triumph on Shaug’s face made her flush with rage. She nearly snapped the glass pack in her fingers. Instead, she looked away and inadvertently found Estey. His mouth was open with fear. He understood.
Without the outside threat, Ruth would not be able to control them. Even if she infected the people inside this bunker, they were already trapped by their duties here. They could quarantine themselves. It had always been a weak threat to tell them they’d have to stay, and Ruth sagged as Estey rushed to hold her arm. My God.
Finally, Deborah Reece came on the line with none of her usual arrogance. “Ruth, I,” she said. “Ruth, I’m sorry. You can’t do this.”
* * * *
Deborah had been uncertain. That was why Ruth called her first. She didn’t worry about Cam, but the look in Deborah’s eyes still lingered in her mind. When she passed over the vials she’d smuggled out of the lab, Deborah had closed her fingers on the small plastic capsules as if to hide them. This doesn’t seem right, Deborah said, and Ruth covered her friend’s hand with own. We can stop the war, Ruth said, but she hadn’t been able to say enough.
Deborah had turned herself in.
* * * *
“It’s over,” Shaug said, gesturing for the headset.
Ruth stepped back from him. “You don’t have my other guy,” she said. She’d almost used his name. Maybe she still should. Foshtomi had immediately guessed who was helping her and it might improve her stance if they knew who held the parasite— one of the few men who’d walked out of Sacramento. “Make the call,” she said. “You’re short on time.”
“We’ll find him,” Shaug said.
“I don’t care. If he pops the capsule, that’s it. The nanotech hits us first. You lose everyone who’s evacuated and every forward unit across the Rockies.”
Caruso grimaced. “This is insane.”
“Make the call,” Ruth said to the comm specialist before she turned to Shaug and Caruso again. “Don’t you get it? If you do it my way, the Chinese retreat. We win. Please.” She stared into their faces. “Please.”
The headset only rang once.
“Yeah,” Cam said, as steady as always. His voice set her heart thumping again.
“Are you okay?” she asked, too loud.
“Yeah. What’s going on?”
Ruth found it very easy to picture him alone with nothing except his rifle and his pack, hurrying across the mountainside. After all this time, he belonged out there, whether he wanted it or not. He would have crossed below the barrier hours ago, losing himself in the trees and rock, but he was no longer wearing goggles or mask, his face exposed to the wind...and in Ruth’s imagination, his dark eyes lifted at the drumbeat of helicopters...
“I need you to go through with it,” Ruth said gently. Then she realized how that might have sounded. “No, I mean, just keep moving, but I need you to stay ready.”
“If you—” Cam said.
Another voice broke in. Grand Lake’s people had been listening all along and Ruth felt a sickening bolt of panic as a new man on her headset said, “Najarro, this is Major Kaswell. Stand down, soldier. Do you understand? Stand down. If you let her use that nanotech, you’ll kill thousands of your own people.”
Cam didn’t even respond to the other man. “If you think it’s best,” he said.
“I do,” Ruth answered like a promise.
He was the perfect one to shoulder the responsibility. He was accustomed to relying only on himself and to being apart. Maybe he even resented them because he wanted so much to belong but always felt on the outside.
“Cam,” she said, without thinking. Then she repeated it. “Cam, thank you.” She knew they had to keep their conversation short to prevent Grand Lake from triangulating him, and she wanted to make their connection as real as possible. “Don’t worry about me,” she said.
“You’ll be fine.” Then his tone changed. “You let her go or I’ll release the nanotech anyway,” he said to everyone else on the line. Then he hung up. There was so much more to say and they’d never had the chance.
Ruth was shaking. She nearly dropped the bu
tton. But she had learned to channel the force of her emotions and she turned it on Shaug and Caruso. She let the tremor show in her voice. “I’ll give you one hour,” she said. “Get your planes ready. We’d better have them in the air before we warn the Chinese, or they might just sterilize this place with another nuke.”
Caruso said, “We need longer than that!”
“One hour. I’m through arguing.”
“Goddamn it, this is insane.”
“We win,” Ruth said. “Do this and we win.”
The parasite had it all, the advanced targeting of the new vaccine and the unparalleled replication speed of the machine plague. Because it lacked the hypobaric fuse, it would spread worldwide in far less time than it had originally taken the plague, filling the atmosphere, riding the jet stream. The nanotech would hit Europe and Africa in days instead of weeks, dooming everyone to the tiny fragments of land above ten thousand feet. With their other war in the Himalayas, the Chinese couldn’t risk it even if the Russians might—and without their allies, the Russians would also fold.
“Think what those bastards did to us,” Shaug said. “You’re going to let them keep California?”
“Some of it. For now. What does it matter?”
“It’s our home! It’s ours.”
“They’ll go back to their homes if we let them. If we give them a little time. They’ll go back or I’ll wipe them out. Just them, don’t you get it?” Ruth knew she could design a new plague to eradicate the enemy—only them, all of them—a smart bug that understood geographical limits. The parasite was merely the first step in a stunning new level of nanotech.
“Then do it now,” Caruso said. “Kill them now.”
“No.”
He was as exhausted as all of them, she realized at last, and since the invasion he’d seen little except defeat. He would grasp at any straw, but she would never start a genocide if there was any other option. Even a new plague would not be instantaneous. The Chinese would have time to launch their missiles.
The desperate nations around the world simply could not continue fighting. The cost was too steep and there was no end in sight except total collapse.
“It has to stop somewhere,” Ruth said, blazing with sorrow and faith. “It stops today.”
25
The mountainside was busy with people, a confusion of dark shapes against the lighter earth. Hundreds of them formed two slow-moving chains, following the long V of the two gullies cut into the slope. Dozens more picked their way down through the hills outside of the ravines. Daylight flashed on weapons and equipment. The late afternoon sun was nearly gone from the eastern face of the Rockies, and its low rays turned everything to shadows or sparks.
Cam stood motionless above a short cliff, squinting into the light. “So many soldiers,” he said.
Allison grinned. “That’s good.”
He shook his head. Grand Lake seemed to be losing a significant number of troops to desertion and their uniforms added to the disorder. Most of them had taken off their helmets and field caps. They’d donned civilian jackets or hats. And yet they stuck together for the most part, making concentrations of Marine or Army green despite their efforts to blend. The other refugees tried to avoid them, which was impossible, creating knots and jams within the migration.
There was no fighting that Cam had seen. Everyone was too busy, loaded with packs and slings, but he’d noticed more than one collision. The nearest ravine had a crooked drop in it. Again and again people tripped and fell there, jostling in the crowd. Cam supposed it was only a matter of time before someone’s frustration led to blood. He worried that a lot of the troops were still organized squads. He was especially interested in the loners and small groups who chose to hike through the rougher terrain outside the ravines. Not all of them were heading down. Here and there, tiny figures trudged upward against the larger trend. Why? Allison thought they were giving up. Others were probably looking for places to camp out of the wind, but she agreed that some of them must be hunters sent by Grand Lake to get to Ruth first.
Cam tugged restlessly at his carbine’s shoulder strap. Then he swung his binoculars to another man standing on a high point across the slope, one of Allison’s people. Cam signaled with his arm straight out from his side, holding the pose until the man saw him and returned the gesture. It meant “I haven’t seen anything.”
Shit, he thought.
They should have planned to meet Ruth somewhere else. This pass was a madhouse, although Cam didn’t know where the situation would be any better. Even the western faces of the Divide must be covered in people. Ruth could walk right past and they’d never see her, but Cam did not complain out loud. Allison and the other mayors had done more than he had any right to expect, mustering nearly forty armed men and women who were willing to stay and watch. They were still at least a day’s hike from Deer Ridge, the nearest town where there would be shelter from the bitter nights, and meanwhile the refugees who’d gone ahead would claim all of the available food, clothing, and other gear.
“I should try to talk to them,” Allison said. She meant the soldiers, he realized. She was staring into the gully below, where four men in coveralls and a USAF jacket moved among the other people. Allison’s scarred cheeks had lifted in another confident grin and Cam smiled at her ambition.
If Ruth got free, it would be due in large part to the other woman’s efforts. Cam was grateful. Allison could have walked away, but she was selfless enough to feel her own kind of gratitude. She was smart enough to see an opportunity.
It had been three days since Ruth walked into the command bunker and ended the war. Cam had shut off his cell phone to avoid being tracked, yet they knew from radio reports that the test strikes had been a success. One of the American planes was shot down before delivering the parasite, crashing in the wilderness, but in three spots the Chinese and the Russians suddenly found themselves overwhelmed by the machine plague. Some of them survived. That only helped Ruth’s scheme. The invaders’ aircraft were turned away by their own people in the mountains in Arizona and California, but they managed to find safe ground just the same, landing on isolated peaks—and they continued to report their survival.
The cease-fire was established hours later. The withdrawal began the next day. Ruth remained in the command bunker throughout their negotiations, staying the hands of the American officers who wanted to chase the enemy back into the desert. Cam had spoken with her twice more, turning on his phone again at midnight on the second day and at noon on the third. She was okay. And then she was outside.
“Come with me,” Allison said, tugging intimately at Cam’s gun belt. He was aware of her blue eyes, but he continued to sweep the mountainside with his binoculars.
“Let’s give it another hour,” he said.
“It’ll be dark before then.”
“You can talk to those guys after they’ve made camp. They wouldn’t listen to you now anyway.”
“Come with me,” Allison said, drawing Cam near enough for him to notice her good, female scent despite the wind. She said, “It’s not safe for us to be alone out here at night.”
The pace of the crowd was increasingly anxious. Some groups were already staking claim to the flatter areas inside the ravines, blocking the flow of other refugees, erecting lean-tos and tents. There was no firewood. There was no food except whatever they carried and weeds and moss. Water seeped from the earth in a few muddy trickles but Cam saw a pack of men and women in Army uniforms settle down on top of one spring, denying it to anyone else.
Yesterday at dawn, the sun had found several cold bodies among the thousands of those still breathing. The war was over, but the dying went on. Not all of the sick or injured would survive the trek down from the mountains, and Allison’s people had dug in against a low knoll away from the ravines, stacking rock to form windbreaks and filling every canteen, cup, pot, and plastic bag from their own spring, buying the goodwill of nearby refugees with water and advice.
>
Allison kept her hand around his waist. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “We’re doing what we can. If she made it this far, we’ll find her.”
“Yeah.”
There were so many things that could have gone wrong. Grand Lake might have captured Ruth as soon as she called to say she was clear, gambling that Cam would never release the parasite. They could have tracked her by satellite or plane despite his warnings to let her go. The refugees worked to conceal her, but at the same time, the crowds were another danger. A woman by herself would be a target.
We should have gone after her, Cam worried, but Allison had had her hands full organizing her camp and her sentries. Cam couldn’t have hiked back into Grand Lake himself. He still carried the nanotech and he didn’t trust it with anyone else. Allison’s people were ready to embrace Ruth as a savior for forcing the peace, but they didn’t know about his involvement. He’d told them Ruth did everything herself.
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Allison said. She finally let go of him. She held both arms over her head, calling in the line of sentries. The nearest man didn’t notice, his binoculars aimed up the mountainside, but on a hump of granite beyond him, the next woman saw Allison’s signal and repeated it. Those two had even farther to walk to camp than Cam and Allison, and he was glad they’d stayed as long as they had.
“Thank you,” he said, taking Allison’s hand. He would repeat the words in camp, too, as he asked them for one more day. They were all discouraged—but the nearest man was waving off Allison’s signal.
The man raised his left fist, then turned and pointed at the mountainside. Cam immediately twisted away from Allison, though not so fast that he didn’t see the emotion in her face. She covered her hurt with her grin, but he knew he’d done a little more damage. For the moment, he didn’t care. He brought his binoculars to his eyes and tried to find what the man was indicating.
About a mile up the hill, outside the ravines, a trio of uniformed figures had stopped to gaze back at Allison’s sentries with their own binoculars. That was not unusual. Both the civilian refugees and the AWOL troops reacted uneasily to the lookouts. There was nothing distinct about this threesome, two men and a woman, filthy and tattered like everyone else, but they’d recognized Cam. They all had their hands up. It was Ruth and Estey and Goodrich.
