Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

“Colonel!” a man called. “Colonel!” It was an Air Force lieutenant whom Jia recognized, although he couldn’t remember the man’s name.

“Report,” Jia said.

“Casualties are overwhelming, sir! Most of the base is gone, sir! I can’t raise anyone else on the radio and Captain Ge said it looks like the whole city is gone!”

The young man was hysterical, but his reaction only seemed to increase Jia’s self-possession. “Where are Generals Zheng and Shui?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir! You are the most senior officer I’ve found, sir! We’ve been trying to organize our rescue efforts—”

“You’ve done well, but we need to reestablish communications both here and with the mainland. I need to know how badly we were attacked and what assets we have available. Especially our Air Force, lieutenant.” Jia clapped him on the arm paternally and saw his own steadiness register in the lieutenant’s expression — steadiness and gratitude — and he was glad somewhere beneath his rage.

Jia Yuanjun would hit the Americans with everything left at his command.

Cam was no longer sure where to go, but their first priority hadn’t changed. Protect Ruth. Survive. He led the women east into a narrow valley because he wanted to get out of the line of sight of any more nuclear flashes. They also needed to stay out of the wind, although he was glad for it. The breeze would be spotted with nanotech, but it might also keep the towering black clouds in the east from collapsing across them with radioactive dust. His most distant landmarks were already gone, the snow-white peaks absorbed by the storm.

“Wait,” Ingrid said. “Please.”

They were walking single file with Cam in front. He glanced back. Ingrid was favoring her right leg, and he worried that she’d turned her ankle among the immature aspen and crumbling granite shale.

“Keep going,” he said to Ruth. “We’ll catch up.”

“No.”

“I’ll carry her if I have to—”

“No. We stay together. I need a minute on my computer anyway.”

He couldn’t see her face because of her goggles and mask, but the stubborn way she’d lifted her chin was enough. What could he do? There wasn’t time to argue, and, as Cam wrestled with himself, trying to find some way to outsmart her, Ruth unslung her carbine and her backpack. Then she knelt and opened the pack.

“Goddammit,” he said as Bobbi stepped out of his way. He crouched in front of Ingrid, who sat down on a worn nub of rock. The sunrise was gone, lost behind the hideous, roiling clouds, and yet there was enough light that the mica in the granite sparkled and winked. The yellow aspen rattled in the wind.

The land had been scoured by the blast waves. When the ground shook, the four of them tried to hang onto the grass only to be slammed into the sky. Then came swirling winds full of dirt and plant life, but this aspen grove was still beautiful despite everything that had happened. The trees were mostly saplings, reed-thin but strong, growing among the few larger trunks of their parents. Cam hoped this place would always be so vibrant — alone, safe, and forgotten.

“I’m sorry,” Ingrid said. “My toe.”

“Let’s see if we can splint it,” he said, yanking at her boot-lace as he looked at Ruth. She was gazing at him, too, with her half-open laptop in her arms. They both turned away.

Why does she keep pushing me? he thought.

There was a third reason to move east. They’d heard fighting. It was a distant sound — the snap of outgoing artillery — but it meant someone was alive. Cam knew there were old refugee camps among the upper reaches of these mountains. Some of those camps were still in use as supply depots. They might have been excellent rendezvous points for American units trying to escape the plague.

Who were they firing at? Their own infected people? The artillery might also be aimed at Grand Lake, trying to clear those peaks of enemy troops, if in fact the Chinese had landed. These mountains and Grand Lake were at least twelve miles apart as the crow flies, but that was well within range of their guns.

It was insane to hike toward a combat zone and the fallout, yet Cam didn’t see any options. If the torn, intermingled bulk of the mushroom clouds was going to drift this far west, hiking a few miles in either direction probably wouldn’t matter. They’d eaten the last bits of their food and water. They needed help. More than that, they needed trained soldiers and volunteers.

Ruth saw the Chinese troops as an opportunity, because she thought they must be carrying some immunity to the mind plague in their blood.

However the new plague operated, Ruth continued to believe its core structure was modeled after the booster tech. There was no reason to think the Chinese hadn’t also developed a new, contagion-specific vaccine as well. How else could they be operating in the plague zone? Were they all wearing containment suits? It seemed unlikely that the Chinese could have stockpiled or manufactured so many suits, and soon enough the mind plague would reach Asia itself.

If Cam’s group could capture or kill an enemy soldier, they might be able to transfer his immunity to themselves as easily as they’d shared the original vaccine.

Was it possible it might even reverse the effects of the plague in people who were already infected? Ruth wouldn’t say, which Cam knew meant no. At least she didn’t think so. It was still worth the chance. If nothing else, they could protect themselves. Then they could begin to hunt out other survivors and protect them, too, creating a small guerrilla force against the Chinese.

Cam frowned as he examined Ingrid’s foot for bruises or swelling. She looked okay — but the four of them weren’t capable of the last-ditch ambush that Ruth envisioned. Maybe me and Bobbi, he thought. The two of us can try it if there’s no one else, but then who’s left to protect Ruth? Ingrid? We need more than one old lady to guard her.

“This vaccine,” he said. “Would it interfere with the old one? What if it eats it up, too? Then we’d be vulnerable to the machine plague again.”

“No,” Ruth said. “They must have reconfigured the heat engine in the new plague and its vaccine. Not a lot. Even reversing its structure as a mirror image would work. Then the different sets of plagues and vaccines wouldn’t even notice each other.”

“Aren’t we going to fill up at some point?” Bobbi asked. “How many kinds of nanotech can anybody have inside them?”

“The vaccines kill everything else, Bobbi.”

Arguing with Ruth was pointless. She had an answer for everything, so Cam turned his attention to Ingrid again. Her toe wasn’t even sprained that he could see. She was just sixty years old. She probably hurt in other places, too — knees, hips, back — but she’d toughed it out until this one pain was too much.

“Bend your toes for me,” he said.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Any numbness?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s do what we can to keep you moving,” Cam said, taking a knife to his own sock. He cut off most of the material above his ankle, then did his best to seal his pantleg into his boot again. Next, he used the few inches of spare sock to pad the ball of Ingrid’s foot. She didn’t have any extra meat on her at all, and her foot was bony and lean.

His thirst was maddening. It made him weak. They needed fluids, especially Cam, after losing so much blood, but running water might be even more dangerous than the air. Ruth had said that if the mind plague only replicated when it found new hosts, the worst of it might have passed. Everyone else in this region was infected, so the thickest clouds of nanotech should have already floated away by now, leaving only trace amounts in random, invisible traps — and yet the plague was less likely to adhere to the earth or rock or plants than it was to be absorbed by water. Moving water would enfold the nanotech in itself, gathering and concentrating the mind plague, lining the banks of rivers and lakes with it, so they didn’t know what to do except suffer.