Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

“I’ll burn the town. The fire should keep them back.” His voice was loaded with fear and Cam understood that, more than anything, Greg Estey intended to join his wife and daughter.

“You can‘t!” Ruth shouted. But their friend had run into the darkness. He was headed for the toolshed, Cam realized — where the last of their fuel cans were kept — and Ingrid leaned out of the jeep with her rifle and blasted the truck beside them. Bullets slapped and whined from the side of the truck, shredding the rear fender and gas tank. Gasoline spattered on the earth. Ingrid was starting the job Greg intended to fulfill, but then Bobbi accelerated. She nearly threw Ingrid from the jeep. She must have thought the truck would explode and they roared out of the motor pool, speeding between two huts on the east side of town.

Cam might have caught a glimpse of Greg. Would his friend hesitate at the toolshed? Instead of creating a barricade for the infected people, a fire might kill Tricia and Hope and everyone else in Jefferson, asphyxiating them with smoke. Maybe that was Greg’s intent even if he couldn’t be honest with himself. If he’d been able to get close enough, maybe he would have shot his baby instead of leaving her to suffer in the night and then in the heat of the day, neglected and helpless — or maybe Greg had convinced himself that his love for Hope would survive the mind plague in some form. He might believe he would retain enough of a spark to care for his daughter.

Hurry, Cam thought. He didn’t want to say good-bye, so he tried to imagine Greg’s success instead. It was the only way he could stay with his friend.

The jeep slammed over a bump in the ground. Bobbi braked hard and swerved through the fences, turning on her headlights at last. Something like a hubcap careened up from the front tire. Then a heavier object smashed against the undercarriage.

“People on your left!” Ingrid shouted.

There were more figures approaching Jefferson in their bare feet and pajamas. The cold made their skin like marble: blue lips, white eyes. One woman had cut her face and her chest was slick with blood.

After that, Bobbi seemed to clear the silent migration. She slowed down and leaned over the wheel to stare into her headlights, weaving constantly. The ground was rough and spotted with rocks. Cam buckled his elbow down against his side, trying to staunch the wound. “Help me,” he said to Ingrid, but Ruth turned to him first. “My ribs,” he said.

“Oh no,” Ruth pleaded, touching his shoulder.

Cam grimaced and sat up. He needed to give her room to inspect his wound and, at the very least, pack something against the side of his chest.

He couldn’t let Greg’s suicide go for nothing.

Their losses were unimaginable. Allison, Hope, Tricia, Tony, Owen, and the rest… the hundreds of people from Morristown… How many other survivors must be feeling the same despair? What if the new plague really was everywhere across America? That was how Allison would have looked at things, including herself in the larger whole instead of standing apart, and Cam grasped at the sense of being with her. He nursed the bright embers of his grief, encouraging it. Rage was a defense mechanism he’d learned years ago, burying his pain and taking energy from his hate. At times, it had been the only thing that kept him going.

It gave him direction.

If there was any chance of reversing the mind plague, they had to get Ruth to safety and the equipment in Grand Lake.

The soldier at the bunker door stiffened, then relaxed and fell. Beside him, a second Marine began to twitch against the concrete wall. He dropped the medical tape he’d been using to seal the door. Then he collapsed on his friend, bucking all over with short, rigid, stuttering movements. Both men were volunteers, but that didn’t make the decision any easier for Major Reece, who stood across the room with her pistol in her small hands.

Dry-eyed, Deborah Reece fired. She had always taken pride in the clarity of her self-discipline, no matter what she was feeling. But she couldn’t breathe and her balance was off. She missed her first shot. The round sparked from the concrete floor and banged into the wall.

“Please,” she said, like a prayer.

The first soldier was already trying to wrestle free of his buddy, pinned by the other man’s weight. Impossibly, he looked straight at her despite his struggle. His pupils were the same enormous holes she’d seen in every other casualty.

She didn’t know his name. He was simply one of the J2 specialists who’d been inside the complex when the nanotech swept over the Continental Divide. He looked to be about thirty-five, the same age as Deborah, and very much in his prime. A captain. Lean and sunburnt, he was exactly the sort of man she preferred for her discreet, almost professional affairs, and in that instant Deborah felt a startling intimacy with this stranger.

Kill him, she warned herself.

Grand Lake was buried in the new plague. Even at eleven thousand feet, sealed within the mountain, their superstructures were vulnerable. Everyone up top was infected. Some of them seemed to remember what lay beneath, clawing at the tunnels and blast doors. The nanotech was more insidious than fallout or chemical agents. Complex 4 had gone silent within the first minutes of the attack, and 1 and 2 were both compromised.

These warrens had been built by engineers who were limited in equipment and supplies. Most of the subterranean complexes had been designed only to withstand the brutal winters at this elevation. Air strikes had been a secondary concern, and, possibly, the chance of surviving a nuclear near-miss.

Over time, many sections had settled badly, shifting out of plumb. Snowmelt seeped through the mountain and pushed against the bulkheads, eroding the rock alongside or beneath them, creating new pressures and holes. Today, the steel doors would stop people, even fire, but not microscopic machines. Attempts to retrofit the base after the war had been brief. Far more energy had gone into expanding these warrens than into improving the existing, upper levels. Complex 1 had grown to include three entrances to the outside — and from the last reports, the nanotech was cascading inward from all three directions.

It wasn’t just the doors. The air systems were also a weak point, as were the thousands of conduits for electrical and communication lines. Once inside, the nanotech was unstoppable. The warrens were too small. Built like honeycombs, even the largest complex barely covered one full acre with its offices, storerooms, and other areas stacked in a tight, vertical puzzle. Deborah had asked for volunteers and the Marine captain turned to his buddy and said, “It’s us.” Then they gave their lives trying to secure a door with nothing more than medical tape.

He did his best, she thought. Now do yours. There was a terrible symmetry in the idea. Deborah respected their bravery too much not to emulate it, and her next bullet went through the captain’s head.

The other Marine’s spasms had slowed to a pace that was erratic and weak. He was dying. Her way was quicker. Deborah shot him, too.

She turned and ran past an overturned desk at the back of the room. Her long legs danced easily through the mess as she clapped one hand against the white Navy shirt she’d cinched over her nose and mouth, snarling the knot in her blond hair even though she’d taken to wearing it short.

The mask was still there. So was the team at the rear entrance of the room, which shouldn’t have surprised Deborah, but they were less a squad than a hastily picked group without an obvious chain of command. Most of the eleven men and woman were Army, and therefore her subordinates, yet she’d also ended up with an Air Force major and three Navy officers, and their orders were more important than any individual’s life.