Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

Many of the old cars had skeletons in them. The dead left by the machine plague had never been cleaned up. The job was just too big, so the dented cars remained crowded with screaming ghosts. Skeletons sprawled through broken glass and doors.

The first time Ruth saw a wreck with living people inside, she thought she was hallucinating. All of them were on edge, waiting for the jets to bank toward them and dive. Then she spotted a white van with three shadows hunched together by its rear doors. Their lead Humvee had already passed the van, but the people inside didn’t get up. Only one even lifted her head.

“Look,” Ruth said. “What are they doing?”

Foshtomi also drove by without incident, but Sergeant Huff took the handset of their radio and said, “This is Two. Heads up. We got zombies on both sides of us.”

Ruth glanced the other way. Huff was right. At least one person was slumped inside a red Toyota across the road. Then she saw one more in a tan pickup truck. It’s like this spot is a camp, she thought.

“Are they okay?” Bobbi asked. “Do you think they don’t have the plague?”

“No. Their faces…”

Not all of the infected had chosen their shelters wisely. Minutes later, Ruth saw two limp, fresh bodies in the front of a sedan. They were motionless except for a surging black carpet of ants.

There were zombies on the road, too. Shambling uphill, arms spread to keep their balance, they turned to meet the oncoming vehicles with the same dull instinct. They’re so limited, she thought. They hear noise, see movement, and they go toward it.

Foshtomi tried to avoid them. “Move, you stupid shit,” she said. “Move. Move.” Then she hit them. Foshtomi braked or weaved if possible and once she ordered the convoy to leave the road entirely, jouncing off the shoulder to get around a dozen people. Ruth knew she was less interested in saving these strangers’ lives than in preserving her vehicles. Even in the second position, Foshtomi struck eight people altogether. Ruth wouldn’t forget. The harsh thump of a body against the Humvee’s fender was nauseating.

A naked woman came over the hood in a spatter of blood. Another time the rear axle leapt and clunked and Ruth screamed, sitting just a few inches above someone caught beneath the vehicle with an arm or a leg jammed in the wheelwell. Cam hugged both Ruth and Bobbi after that experience and Ruth rocked against him with her head stuck in a high-speed panic. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

By then they were driving upslope again, hurrying toward the blue stretch of water that gave Grand Lake its name. Foshtomi’s troops broke radio silence again and again to advise each other of more infected people, many of them hunkered down in “camps” alongside the road, either dozing in abandoned cars or snuggled down on the roadside against guard-rails or trees. Were the infected communicating with each other? It wouldn’t be impossible for them to establish some kind of social order, straining through their limited coherence like cattle or sheep, herding together because it felt safer than being alone. A school of phantoms. How much did they retain? Were they all screaming inside?

Ruth tried to occupy herself with more thoughts of Kendra Freedman. She tried to enjoy Cam’s arm on her shoulders.

Too many of the infected are acting differently, she realized.

“Those people taking shelter, that’s new,” she said without looking up from Cam’s embrace. “They barely noticed us. They’re docile. They must have walked here last night. Now something’s different.”

“Move,” Foshtomi said up front. “Move.”

“Maybe they’re just tired and hungry,” Ruth said, “but what if there’s a second stage of the mind plague? If the Chinese wanted to kill us—”

“Move.”

Wham. The Humvee shook as Foshtomi hit another person and Ruth raised her voice desperately. “If they wanted to kill us, everyone would have seizures or stroke out. That’s the only thing the nanotech would do.”

Cam tried to quiet her. “Shh, Ruth,” he said, stroking the back of her neck.

“No one’s asked what it’s really for! Don’t you get it? The first stage is just to spread the plague. They’re stunted and afraid. They go after their friends. But then what?”

“Maybe a slow weapon is the best they could make,” said Foshtomi’s sergeant, Tanya Huff. Tall and thick, Huff was one of the two other females in Foshtomi’s unit. Was that why Foshtomi had assigned her to this Humvee?

“I think the Chinese are waiting,” Ruth said. “I think everyone who’s infected will calm down in another five or six hours!”

“This is One,” the radio crackled. “We’re nearing position. Over.”

“It might make sense to go to ground,” Ruth said. “Don’t you see? The plague is a first-strike weapon, but it just makes us stupid. Easy to conquer. Then it hits a second stage, and maybe there’s a third. Maybe the fog wears off. People regain their coordination, but they’re still confused and suggestible. They’re slaves. It’s self-selecting, too. You’re only left with the strongest ones. So maybe we should just hide. If we wait a few hours, we won’t have to fight our own people as well as the Chinese—”

“Shut her up,” Foshtomi said as she braked and turned to the right. “I want a perimeter but stay in the vehicles.”

“Yes, ma‘am.” Huff picked up the radio again. “This is Two,” she said. “Form up in a circle, but stay inside your wheels. Watch for planes. Weapons tight. Remember, we’re looking for friendlies on the ground.”

“This is Five,” the radio said. “I’ve got zombies two hundred yards behind us.”

“Shit.” Foshtomi stopped the Humvee. “We probably need to get uphill if we can, but I don’t know if Five will make it. That truck was a bad idea. Call Viper first. Is he still inbound?”

Ruth was barely listening. Lord God, she thought. If she was right, the Chinese wouldn’t only gain tens of thousands of slaves in victory. There would be concubines, too, and the idea left a cold weight deep in her chest.

“It will be even worse for women,” she said. “Remember what happened in the labor camps. There was rape and forced pregnancies—”

“Not now,” Foshtomi said. “Christ.”

Ruth raised her head at last. She was surprised to find a brick building on one side of the vehicle, an old bank, which Foshtomi was using for cover. Everywhere else, there were only ruins, the square-cornered shapes of foundations lost among brush and weeds. They were in the remains of the original town of Grand Lake, most of which had been dismantled for building material. That meant they were just six miles from the peaks where the military base had been overrun.

Driving here was incredibly dangerous. The Chinese might find them at any minute — and yet they’d come to hunt the Chinese themselves. Rescuing the other Americans was a secondary goal as far as Ruth was concerned. Unfortunately, they could expect heavy casualties when they left their vehicles. After smashing through the infected people, the outsides of their Humvees and trucks would be laced with nanotech.

We’ll be lucky if half of us survive, Ruth thought as Huff switched frequencies and said, “Viper Six, this is Gray Fox. Viper Six, this is Gray Fox. Over.”

“We have you in sight, Gray Fox,” a woman answered. “Stay off the radio. Over.”

“Roger that, Viper Six. Be advised there’s a crowd of zombies coming up behind us,” Huff said. “I see thirty or more.”

“We see them, too. Hold your fire. We don’t want the Chinese to hear shots. How are your vehicles for space? We want to jump onboard, but we’re contaminated.”