Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

She lapsed, Ruth thought. She was tired or she was interrupted. She must have been constructing the message letter by letter.

They don’t understand.

Every sentence would have cost Freedman hours, the full message days or weeks, and it sounded like she was in prison. Were there guards? Other scientists? The Chinese must have caged Freedman so tightly it felt like she’d been pinned under a microscope herself, controlling everything about her: when to eat, where to sleep, and, most importantly, what to do and how to think. The idea of that never-ending scrutiny made Ruth claustrophobic.

It was amazing that Freedman had been able to construct her message at all, and yet Foshtomi was right even if she didn’t know it. Ruth was also bothered by Freedman’s verbosity.

If every letter counted, why so much? Her guilt must be unbearable. That was why she made her excuses, pointing the blame at Dutchess. Still, something in the tone of Freedman’s words seemed off. Was there another code hidden within this message? What if she’d used a cipher or some kind of subtle wordplay?

“ ‘Find me,’” Ruth read. “ ‘I know I can stop the new plague. As I write this, it is July twelfth, Year Three. I’ve learned I’m in southern California at sea level, but somehow we’re safe. These labs are in the Saint Bernadine Hospital in Los Angeles.”’

“Then we’re fucked,” Foshtomi said.

“What do you mean?”

“Our guys were hardwired to nuke Los Angeles if the Chinese hit us. That’s public knowledge. It had to be if we were gonna keep those bastards from overrunning us. Mutually assured destruction. So one way or the other, she’s dead.”

“We don’t know that!”

“How would you get to L.A. even if it’s still there? Flap your arms?”

“The whole thing could just be a trick,” Cam said.

Ruth shook her head, imploring him. “Why? What could they possibly gain by faking a message from her? You don’t realize how complicated it was, either.”

“If you tried to call her… Is there more to the message?” he asked. “A specific radio frequency? What if Chinese are waiting?”

“The message ends there.”

“It’s the perfect trap, like a trip wire,” he said. “The only people who could find the message are the ones they’d want to kill the most — the nanotech experts on our side. If it’s her, why doesn’t she know about the vaccine? ‘We’re at sea level, but somehow we’re safe.’ That’s what it says.”

“She’s isolated. They control everything about her life.”

“You really think she’s alive?”

“Yes. The binary string runs backward or even splits in two in thirty places, hidden in the nulls. That’s why the Chinese didn’t see it. They might not have even realized such a thing was possible.”

“And we know Freedman was the best,” Cam said as if wanting to convince himself.

He believes me! Ruth thought. He was taking her side against Foshtomi even after playing the devil’s advocate, and Ruth flashed him a big, girlish smile. “There’s no proof she didn’t make it to elevation!” she said. “Sawyer did.”

“Sawyer ran for the mountains as soon as possible,” Cam said quietly, “but Freedman went downtown to try to find the mayor or the police. That’s how he told it. Remember? She stayed behind.”

“We need to find her.”

Forty minutes later, Foshtomi’s unit had done everything possible to seal three Humvees, a Ford Expedition, and a half-ton Army truck. There were only seventeen of them. Foshtomi considered leaving the truck, but they also wanted to carry water, gas, and other supplies. She also hoped they might find other survivors and take them along.

The vehicles were a gamble. Foshtomi’s troops didn’t have any welding gear, only the plastic sheeting used for the greenhouses and a limited amount of tape. They’d covered most of the doors and seams. Once inside, they planned to finish the job, but if they drove through an invisible fog of nanotech, would the plastic be enough? It was the best they could do.

Ruth wanted to talk to Cam alone, but first he was busy with their medic and then Foshtomi wanted to compare notes with him over her maps. Ruth took her laptop to a spot alongside one of the planters, pursuing a new effort to find secondary codes hidden within the original message.

If Freedman knew how to turn off the mind plague, wouldn’t she have recorded that information, too? What if the awkward lapses were on purpose? Ruth tried writing down only the first letters of a dozen words, then only the second letters or the third. Each time, she ended up with nonsense and cursed herself.

Think! You have to think like her.

If there was an additional code, Ruth decided it wouldn’t be in word games. Freedman was always direct. Her work was superior exactly because it was so streamlined, which was indicative of a personality that functioned in the same manner. A second message would be carved into the body of the nano just like the first, either in binary or a different physical code like number substitutions for letters. Were there other molecular configurations that should stand out? What am I missing?

Cam joined her. “Hey. Change of plans.”

Ruth’s blood quickened as she glanced past his shoulder, measuring how far they were from anyone else. Fifteen feet. Bobbi was wolfing down a cup of onion soup and Foshtomi had walked away with two sergeants, arguing.

Ruth stepped close and laid her hands on Cam’s shoulders. She smiled — and when the motion attracted his gaze to her lips, her smile widened. He was still so cautious with her. He was still afraid. She understood. She’d punished herself for years, too, but she wanted to stop. She wanted to be happy. Would they ever have the chance?

Ruth lifted herself on her tiptoes to match Cam’s five-foot-eleven. Her excitement was good. It increased when she peeked sideways and saw Bobbi watching now with an angry face. Let her disapprove. Ruth touched her mouth to his. Their kiss was slow and sweet. It broke her heart.

I’m yours, she thought. I’m yours if you want me. You know that. Please know that, Cam.

She didn’t want to upset him, so she kept quiet. Maybe the intimacy was too much regardless. Cam squeezed her hand even as he pulled away. “Pack up,” he said. “Foshtomi got some of our guys on the radio and we’re going to intercept.”

“Who? Where?”

“A command group out of Grand Lake. Foshtomi told ‘em she has a nanotech expert and they used the same code. It sounds like they’ve got some scientists, too.”

Foshtomi put Ruth in the second Humvee with herself, Sergeant Huff, Bobbi, and Cam. The third vehicle was equally crowded, because Foshtomi deemed those positions to be the safest. The civilian SUV would be fourth, carrying only two men, and last was the Army truck, where Ingrid rode in the cab with two soldiers. Their lead vehicle was the only Humvee that had been outfitted with a FRAG 6 armor kit. All of the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles were 5,200-pound hardtop jeeps with fat wheels and steel plating, but FRAG 6 added a thousand pounds of metal, so Foshtomi set that Humvee in front with just a driver and a radioman.

As they left, the sky began to sprinkle a few bits of ash like black snow. The wind had failed to push the fallout away, and Ruth worried at that. What if it got worse?

She was grateful for her friends. Squeezed into the rear seat beside Cam, with Bobbi on his other side, Ruth was glad for his warm, firm weight as they rode for two hours on highways that might have taken forty minutes before the plague. Working down from Willow Creek to 40 and then back up toward Grand Lake, they drove south, east, and then north again. Most of the extra time was spent hiding from two Chinese jets. Foshtomi halted their convoy four times as the fighters patrolled overhead, alternately jamming their vehicles together or spreading them apart, parked at odd angles on the road like abandoned wrecks. It helped their little ruse that the colossal old traffic jams created years ago had been bulldozed from these highways, so the roadsides were jammed with cars and burned out hulks. Their engines would shine brightly in infrared, but the Chinese must have been wholly concerned with American missile launches and aircraft. Also, orbital coverage was hindered by the filthy sky. If the enemy was monitoring this area via satellite, their capacities were too strained to care about a few Humvees.