Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

Seal your exits at any cost.

That duty might have been easier because many of them didn’t know each other. Instead, Deborah was saved by the same thing she’d learned to value most in herself — their loyalty to the uniform. They could have slammed the door shut with her locked on the other side, but first they made a hole, lifting their rifles and sidearms so she could pass.

Focused on their weapons, Deborah wasn’t light-footed enough to clear their legs. She tripped and sprawled on the hard floor.

“Major!” one of her soldiers cried, Emma Kincaid, a medical corps officer like Deborah.

“I told you to abandon that door!” Mendelson yelled. He was the USAF major, a square-headed man of fifty. His words were directed at the other troops instead of Deborah, challenging her for command.

This short concrete hall was lined with office doors. Several of the men and women held armloads of paperwork and more files lay on the floor. Like most of the complex, these offices served intelligence personnel from all five branches of the military, and yet the low cubicles hadn’t only been ransacked for priority files but also for simple, precious desk supplies like Scotch tape. They had no other way to seal the doors. Deborah, Emma, and two nurses had snatched as many medical kits as they could find, breaking out adhesive bandages and tape, but those were almost gone.

Behind her, one soldier had closed the steel door. Three more slapped sheets of paper over the lock and hinges. Half a dozen hands held the sheets in place as others jabbed at the paper with tape or an incongruous tube of toothpaste, anything to create a seal.

“We should give up this door, too!” Mendelson yelled. “We need to get ahead of the nanotech! Don’t you see? It’s getting deeper into the complex because of us! It needs people!”

Two men had died because of her. That much was true. Still, Deborah said, “No.”

She should have volunteered herself, but a CO couldn’t afford that luxury. If she’d taken the Marines’ place, she would be dead now, too, leaving Mendelson in charge, and either he didn’t have the guts or he didn’t understand. The air systems had been shut down, so an empty room might serve as a buffer — it might have been best to lock several doors and hope that some dead space between them and the infected soldiers would be enough — but they didn’t have any more space to give up. From this hallway, there were barely fifty yards left before they hit the command center. It was critical to protect the operations room. Otherwise they would be deaf and blind to the outside world even if they found their way into a few safe corners inside the complex — and then what?

Without this base, the war was lost. Communications had ceased with nearly every other major installation across North America. Spokane. Calgary. Salt Lake. Flagstaff. Two hours ago, the president was reported safe in Missoula, and there were survivors in Yellowstone and in Albuquerque, but more than 80 percent of U.S. and Canadian forces seemed to have been wiped out. The rest were isolated and in chaos.

“I’m staying!” Deborah said.

“We’re with you,” an Army man said, as another yelled, “This isn’t working! We need to try something else!” His fingers were smeared with blue gel toothpaste, which he’d used like caulk in the doorjamb.

“They were laying insulation in Sector Four,” one of the Navy officers said. “What if we—”

“Four is cut off,” the Army man said.

“The rest of you get going!” Deborah shouted. “Move!” She turned to the troops at the door and said, “We’ll wedge paper into the cracks where you haven’t sealed it already. Maybe we can get it wet, too, make some sort of paste.”

“We can chew it if we have to,” the Navy officer said.

Behind them, there was a rustle of boot steps. Mendelson went with those soldiers, yelling back at Deborah. “Goddammit, leave the door!”

But her orders were straight from General Caruso. Maybe she couldn’t walk away from the men she’d shot in the other room, either. She could still see the captain’s face and feel her pistol jump in her hands.

What was the plague doing to them? Anything that increased pressure in the skull would push the brain downwards through the foramen magnum, the hole through which the spinal cord exited. The cranial nerves that controlled pupil response were in the brain stem and quit working if they were squashed. Were the infected people hemorrhaging? Maybe the nanotech hit them like a concussion. Deborah wondered if anti-inflammatory drugs could possibly slow or stop the effect.

Then her friend Emma grabbed her arm. Emma’s eyes were alive and clean, and Deborah spoke urgently to her. “We need someone to cover us,” Deborah said.

“I — No,” Emma said.

“I can’t do it again!”

“I won’t.”

“That’s a direct order, Lieutenant,” Deborah insisted, cradling her friend’s waist with her arm when she should have pushed her away.

Emma was a slight, pretty woman much like Deborah herself, although Deborah was taller. A classic blond, Deborah knew she was very pretty, but Emma more than held her own against her. Emma was a carrottop — orange hair, orange freckles — with a shy but ready smile. They complimented each other well, neither outshining the other, and Deborah had been pleased when they became confidants.

“I know I can trust you,” Deborah said.

Emma nodded and shook her head in the same uncertain movement. Even her body moved left and right in denial like a fox in a trap.

“Draw your weapon,” Deborah said as coolly as if she was working through any checklist. “Get as far back as possible. If you see us fall down or start to twitch, stop it before it gets to you. Shoot us.”

“Deborah, please—”

There were shouts at the other end of the hallway. A deep clang reverberated from the walls. Deborah pulled Emma aside and raised her gun, protecting her friend.

The far door looked as if it had been thrown open before Mendelson reached it. He’d yelled as the other men and women jumped aside. One of them stumbled to his knees, grasping at the laptop and paper files in his arms.

For an instant, Deborah thought the nanotech had spilled all the way through the complex from the other side. Then a new squad barged through her people. These men were identical in their green containment suits, their heads misshapen by hoods and masks with heavy eyepieces like insects’ eyes. Air tanks thickened the lines of their shoulders. The two in front also bristled with carbines and a flashlight, which winked and glared, even though the overhead lights were on. Grand Lake’s primary power source was the hydroelectric station in the river much farther down the mountain, but it could be destroyed. There were also diesel generators inside the complex, although their fuel reserves were dismal and would be dedicated entirely to the command center.

My God, Deborah thought. What are we going to do if the lights go out?

“Clear a hole! Clear a hole!” someone screamed.

There was nowhere to go. Deborah tried to flatten herself against the wall, only to bump against Emma. By then, the first man had reached them. The hard edge of his M4 caught Deborah in the shoulder — accidentally, she thought — and his weight drove her sideways with exploding force.

“Oh!”

Somehow Emma and another soldier caught her, rucking her uniform up against her neck. Deborah glanced after the suited man, weeping in pain.

Then her eyes stung again from a new emotion. The suited men were combat engineers, sent to burn the door at last. One of them clutched several rods of dark welding metal in his gloves. Behind him, two others wrestled with the pipe-stem nozzle of an acetylene welder and two fuel tanks. One man also carried an oversized helmet with a black-glassed visor.