Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

Everyone froze except Hope. The baby’s angry sounds continued to lift on the wind.

Oh, no, Cam thought.

They’d done it to themselves. The commotion they’d made had been like a giant beacon in the night, yelling at each other and waving lights all over town. Now they’d attracted more infected people from beyond the village.

“Get inside!” Cam shouted. He tried to force Ruth back through the door, but she resisted.

“Let go of me!”

“I love you! Stay here!” Greg yelled at Tricia as the young woman said, “Greg, no—”

Cam and Ruth stared at each other, locked in each other’s grip. The other couple’s words might have been their own, and Ruth said, “I—”

Cam broke away from her as there was a second alert on his headset. “This is Eleven!” the radio whispered again. “They’re caught up in the fences. Should I open fire?”

The channel filled with noise. “No, wait,” Cam said, but Owen and several others were talking on the same frequency.

“—at Two I see them—”

“Light ‘em up.”

“No!” Cam yelled. “No, shut off every light we’ve got!” He and Owen took their first steps toward Station Eleven, but Ruth and Bobbi followed, and Cam whirled to face the two women. “Get back inside!” he said.

In that moment, Owen outpaced him.

“Bobbi,” Cam said. “Stop. Ruth, you go with her and—”

“We can’t hide in there if—”

“Do it!” Cam bellowed in her face before he shoved the radio against Bobbi, weighing her down. “Go inside! Go!”

People were shouting onthe north perimeter as their flashlights jabbed and swayed. “Get back!” a man yelled. “Get back or we’ll shoot!”

Two of the villagers stood with their weapons aimed. A third wrestled a floodlight into place. The Bull Dog was a lightweight aluminum tripod with dual five-hundred-watt bulbs. It was the long extension cord that was giving the man trouble. The floods weren’t on yet. There were only flashlights.

At the farthest edge of the beams, human shadows moved in the fences. Cam counted nine, and he hoped Ingrid had exaggerated the threat.

I don’t see twenty people here, he thought.

The strangers banged through the low obstacles. One was stuck in a line of barbed wire, tugging at her left arm. None of them were fast or graceful. Cam’s impression was that of sleepwalkers. Maybe he was too influenced by their clothing. Most of them looked as if they were dressed for bed in loose, warm clothing. One man wore only his underwear. Very few had any shoes. They wore socks or were barefoot. They looked like they’d been taken completely by surprise, rising from their sleep into another kind of dream.

Maybe the ant swarm in Greenhouse 3 had actually saved lives in Jefferson by keeping everyone awake. Otherwise the old woman might have walked among them unchallenged, infecting their guards and then everyone in town.

But why did they come here? Cam wondered. These people had followed the wind southward instead of walking into it. Why? The flashlights couldn’t have been visible until they were within a mile or two of Jefferson. Was it possible they remembered this village? Could the nanotech be that sophisticated? Ruth said Patrick and Linda seemed compelled to move no matter how badly hurt or securely tied. What were they looking for? The safety of family and friends? If so, that would be an unstoppable method of spreading the plague.

Everyone in Morristown might be headed this way.

The Reverend Timothy Morris had established his settlement directly after the war. As an unexpected reward, he received a full quarter-ton of seeds from Missoula. A few of the United States’ seed banks survived the plague year, the seeds held back for their potential rather than being eaten outright. Since then, the government had been paying people to grow specific crops in exchange for a percentage of future harvests and the right to dictate where new seeds and saplings would be sent.

Their wealth steadily attracted more people to the Reverend’s influence. The folks in Morristown weren’t crazy. They were enthusiastic. The Reverend preached New Evangelism, which taught that man’s purpose was to regrow and repopu late. Sometimes it also meant plural marriages, wife swapping, or marriage at a young age. That was one reason why Tony had been so fascinated with Jefferson’s neighbors and why his mother despised them.

The crowd on the perimeter was silent. A few of them groaned, but it was their faces that truly spoke for them. Their eyes were huge and afraid. One sandy-haired woman blinked spasmodically, but most of them walked with their eyes wide open as if lost or confused.

“What do we do?” Ingrid asked.

“We can’t just kill them!” Cam said.

“Do it! We gotta do it!” another man screamed. The high pitch of his voice made it clear that he was trying to convince himself, too — but what choice did they have? The closest people were about to clear the fences.

Cam wrenched his gaze away from the oncoming shadows as Greg and Neil jogged up behind him. “Where is the hazmat suit!?” Cam yelled, cursing himself. Did we leave it at Ruth’s hut?

“What if we start a fire?” Ingrid said. “Is there any gasoline?”

“The flamethrowers are back at the greenhouse!”

“Then we’ll shoot into the ground at their feet.”

Cam glanced at the older woman with respect as her hand clacked against her M16, flicking the fire selector to full auto. Ingrid had volunteered for guard duty when others insisted on taking cover inside the sealed huts, and Cam remembered the handsome, blunt nose and chin behind her face mask. Ingrid Wood was unusual not only for her age — few people in their sixties had survived the plague year — but because of her accent. Ingrid had emigrated from Germany two decades ago after a divorce, and she was friendly, tough, and unfailingly polite.

“We may have to wound them,” she said.

“Do it!” Neil screamed.

The first of the infected people staggered out of the fences, a young man in a MICHIGAN T-shirt and a skinny girl with filthy white socks beneath her blue gown. Cam recognized one of them. The young man’s thick hair and the plague scarring on his nose were unmistakable. He was a farmer’s son and loud in his religion, taking every chance to explain about the Resurrection any time a crew from Jefferson came to trade equipment or food. Jake. The young man’s name was Jake and he was a good kid, rightly proud of his family’s apple trees.

Cam raised his M4.

The floodlights switched on before anyone fired. David had finally gotten his tripod ready and hit the power, draining electricity away from Ruth’s lab. Its dual lights burned into the people in the fences, illuminating the night like stark white glaring suns. Two shadows leapt from each person in a fan of silhouettes. Glass and chrome winked among the car parts on the ground.

Their eyes looked incredibly strange. It was as if none of them had irises. Their pupils were huge, like black pennies, and did not shrink in the light. It was a permanent condition. They shared some uniform injury to their brains.

The floodlights hurt them. The young man reeled away as the skinny girl ducked her head and scuttled sideways. Others raised their arms or moaned. The light stopped them. The Bull Dog was too strong. At first, Cam thought it might work. Then he noticed the second wave of human shapes. The field of light held at least a hundred figures, and there were hundreds more beyond them in the darkness.

Cam felt his blood run cold. The nearest people were repelled by the glare, yet the larger crowd seemed to be attracted to it. It was an eerie sight. Most of the infected people had been headed toward Jefferson, but without purpose. Some had stopped or strayed in other directions. Others were looking at the sky or their feet.