Jeff Carlson: Plague Zone

Allison said, “You’re at Station Five?”

“Yes, ma‘am.”

Cam glanced at the southern perimeter, impressed that Tony hadn’t abandoned his post despite the ant swarm. He knew for a fact that other lookouts had left their stations, because he was one of them.

The village was supposed to have three people on patrol during the day and twice that many at night. The best time to travel was in the cold and in the dark, when most of the bugs were dormant. That made it tough to see people coming, but they’d surrounded their home with irregular rings of early warning fences. In some places, they’d actually strung barbed wire. Mostly these “fences” were just fenders, hoods, and hubcaps stripped from the dead traffic on Highway 14, which they’d scattered on the ground like bells and gongs. Not everyone who walked out of the hills was friendly. Sometimes there were bandits, and they were constantly afraid the military would learn where Ruth was hiding.

“It’s just one person?” Allison asked, tipping her head at Tony’s weapon. The M16 was equipped with a big infrared sniper scope, and Tony said, “Yeah. I think he’s either shit-faced or hurt. He’s making a lot of noise in the fences.”

“Great.” Allison’s tone was sarcastic.

Their village was one of the smallest in northern Colorado, but they did business with Morristown and New Jackson. Word got around. Sometimes their permanence made them a target for people who hadn’t worked so hard, like the weed-heads, drunks, or other troublemakers who weren’t welcome elsewhere.

Cam seized the opportunity. “See what this guy wants,” he said to Allison. “We’ll take care of the ants.”

His wife met his gaze in the dark. She knew what he was doing, but she grinned like a cat. “Fine,” she said, almost daring him. It was precisely what Ruth had said. Cam didn’t know what to make of that, although Allison could be playful about the weirdest things.

She was very pretty. A few blond strands had pulled free of her ponytail and framed her steady eyes, flagging in the wind. Then she set down her gas cans and left. Tony hurried after her, toting his rifle.

Cam glanced at a couple named Michael and Denise Stone, who both wore pistols. “Go with them, okay?”

“No problem,” Michael said, dropping his shovel and ski mask. Denise added a pry bar and her own makeshift body armor.

Now we’ve got more tools than people, Cam thought. He considered going after Allison himself, but he was in no mood to be diplomatic to some lost, hungry loser. “Let’s throw some dirt on the fire,” he said. “I want to get Eric out of there.”

“Yeah.” Greg winced. In a different life, Greg had been Eric’s squad leader. Cam could barely imagine what he must be feeling. With Eric’s death, the best link to Greg’s days as an Army Ranger was gone.

They heard Allison call out at the edge of the village, challenging the newcomer. Her voice was strong in the wind. A moment later, she repeated herself. Cam and Greg began to suit up with the other three people on their smoke team, donning goggles and masks.

“I’ll go in first,” Cam said.

Then somebody screamed from Allison’s direction, a high, boyish shriek. It was Tony. Cam whirled, trying to place the sound beyond the blocky silhouettes of homes and greenhouses. He saw flashlights and human shapes. One was familiar, fair-haired and lean, yet round in the middle. The others were only shadows. They seemed to dance spastically.

Jefferson was under attack.

Ruth was standing at her door when Tony and Allison hurried past. She almost said something, but what? Allison didn’t even like to hear thank you from her, much less complaints, so Ruth stood quietly against her home as their flashlights rocked by, followed by Michael and Denise. There was someone in the fences. Ruth could hear him banging through the car parts, and Allison called, “Hey there! What’s your name?”

Her mild tone was an odd counterpoint to Tony’s M16, which the boy seated against his shoulder with the barrel pointed skyward. It was a position that made the weapon more visible in the glinting white beams of their flashlights. Ruth nearly went to add herself to the guns beside Allison. The girl was a force to be reckoned with, but she was pregnant, and that increased her importance in more ways than Ruth could put into words.

They should have been friends. They owed each other their lives, but it wasn’t only Cam who stood between them. Allison excelled at being mayor and she had always been very watchful of Ruth, seeing her as a potential rival for this role as well. Ruth’s nanotech skills were a brand of authority that Allison could not match. The girl had never believed Ruth when she said she wished she could give it up. Allison was always thirsty for more control over their lives, whereas Ruth’s decisions had led to thousands of deaths during the course of the war. Given the choice, Ruth would have become just a regular person again, anonymous and ignored — and yet she felt that old conflict of responsibility now.

I should back her up, Ruth worried, watching Allison. Then her gaze shifted. Michael’s flashlight had picked out the stranger in the fences.

It was a woman about fifty years old. She was short and thin and dirty. Ruth thought there was blood on the woman’s elbow, staining her jacket sleeve. She was unarmed. She wasn’t even wearing a backpack. Had she been robbed? She looked skittish as hell, turning away from them when Michael’s light traced over her pale face.

Even so, Allison was cautious, holding her ground instead of going to help. “It’s okay,” Allison called. “We have food and water and a place where you can sleep.”

Michael aimed his flashlight into the dirt. Tony lowered his rifle, and, well behind them, Ruth lifted her hand from the 9mm Beretta on her hip.

There was no question that she and Cam would have been a better fit cosmetically. He was black-haired and black-eyed and Ruth’s coloring was dusky, whereas the darkest thing about Allison was her sunburn. Ruth often wondered what their baby would look like, but it had been the same with Bobbi and Eric. Bobbi was black, Eric was white, and neither of the mismatched couples turned many heads. They were alive. Nothing else was important.

The only exceptions were people of Chinese or Russian descent. There was still widespread hatred since the war, which made things tough on anyone with Asian heritage. Some idiots didn’t bother to differentiate between Japanese, Koreans, or Chinese — or even Filipinos or Malaysians — not even those who’d lived in the U.S. for generations.

Racism had become a very different thing after the plague. Yes, there were some communities where people were trying to preserve ethnic purities, breeding only with fellow whites or Hispanics or blacks. Once a runner came through their village with marriage offers for anyone who was at least 50 percent Jewish. Ruth hadn’t been tempted, but it did make her wonder. Had the Israelis reestablished themselves on the other side of the world? Were there enough Jews alive to sustain their culture? For nearly everyone, though, race was trivial, and Ruth knew she was grasping at straws comparing her skin to Allison’s.

She was jealous of the younger woman. She was afraid for Allison, too. They had all been exposed to high levels of insecticide and other chemicals, not just in their village but during the plague year. Many of the pathetic refugee shelters had been slapped together with welding torches or made of vinyl or rotting carpet or cardboard, exposing the inhabitants to heavy metals, mold, or toxic compounds like vinyl chloride. Everyone had burned furniture, tires, plastic, and dung for warmth and cookfires, filling their homes with poisonous smoke.