Jeff Carlson: Plague Zone

Ruth had missed most of that. She’d spent the first thirteen months of the plague aboard the International Space Station as the centerpiece of a crash nanotech program, but the ISS was its own hostile environment, like a submarine. The recycled air became foul with human smells and bacteria. They were exposed to solar radiation and the more subtle damages of zero gravity, losing bone and muscle mass. Later, Ruth had also spent weeks on the outskirts of the Leadville crater, absorbing fallout. Perhaps worse, her body had been a war zone for different kinds of nanotech.

The next generation faced all the same problems as their parents and more. Babies required not only nourishment and warmth. First they needed a healthy start. The human body was capable of extraordinary resilience, but the most sinister wounds were those that went unseen, inside, at the cellular level or even deeper within their DNA.

So far, the women in Jefferson had suffered only four stillbirths and one toddler who showed every sign of being autistic. The other two children were okay. From what Ruth heard, however, the infant mortality rates were even more severe in Morristown. She hoped that was only because Morristown was thirty times larger, thus allowing for more data. It surely didn’t help that most of the people there were New Evangelicals, who pushed for as many babies as possible, no matter if the women were in their teens or in their forties or worn out from earlier pregnancies. Either way, the statistical curves were alarming. If the numbers continued to play out so poorly, the human race was no more than a hundred years from extinction.

There was a more personal insult. Ruth was thirty-eight. Her best years of fertility were already behind her, with few prospects in sight. She knew Cam tried to avoid her, which was impossible. They didn’t have enough firewood to make hot meals individually or to provide warm water in every home, nor were there enough pipes to install central plumbing throughout the village. It wasn’t safe to eat alone, either, so they ate in shifts and they bathed in the same hut beneath sun-warmed tanks, always with guards on duty. She saw Cam every day.

Who could blame her if she lived a bit vicariously through Allison? The girl should have been a sister to her, even if they were sisters who mistrusted each other.

Is it my fault we never got along? Her thoughts boiling, Ruth turned her eyes from Allison and the stranger and opened the door into her home at last. I’ll try harder, she thought.

Then the screaming began. Ruth jerked backward, staring, just in time to see someone drop to the ground with her spine bucking in the grip of a violent seizure.

The stranger killed Allison first.

The flashlights added to the confusion. One of the white beams spun into the ground, rocking up through the human shapes. The other two briefly pinned the old woman. Then another flashlight fell away. The sight paralyzed Ruth. She lost crucial seconds trying to understand what she was witnessing.

Allison had touched the old woman, reaching for her shoulder. In fact, Allison’s left arm was still thrown sideways from her body and clawed at the earth with a short, ripping motion. It peeled her fingers to the bone. Then her cheeks ran dark with blood as she chewed through her tongue.

There was one thing more that struck Ruth despite her wrenching shock. The old woman’s expression never changed. The wide look in her eyes was nervous, even rattled, but she didn’t even glance down at Allison as the others reacted. She’s contagious, Ruth thought before she added her voice to the yells rising across the village. “Get back, get back!” she screamed, running toward them.

Tony’s M16 fired a three-round burst. The shots were inef fective, aimed into the sky. Ruth saw him stagger as Allison continued to hammer herself against the ground. Then the boy fumbled his assault rifle and went to one knee, trembling. It was only a spasm that pulled the trigger.

Michael should have known better. He tried to drag Tony away from the old woman and suddenly he swooned, affected by the same shambling movements.

Nanotech, Ruth thought. Nothing else spread so fast.

“Michael!” Denise yelled, but her instincts were stronger. Instead of charging after her husband, she hesitated. “Michael! Oh Jesus, no!”

Allison had stopped moving, bloody and limp. Ruth was aware of more flashlights and yelling behind her. A small crowd was hurrying toward them, and her neighbors had emerged from their home with a lantern — but there was an enormous danger in bringing reinforcements, because they would go to their friends. Cam would run to his wife.

Ruth pulled her sidearm and shot the old woman dead, firing twice over Allison’s body.

“No!” Denise screamed.

The old woman toppled, knocking Michael down, too. Her blood must have been contagious, but they were partially upwind. If there was nanotech in the explosions across the woman’s chest, the microscopic disease was swept away from them.

Ruth shoved Denise farther into the slow current of the breeze. It was critical to keep their distance. Then she turned her pistol on Michael and Tony.

Denise drove Ruth to the ground, punching at her chest and gun hand. The worst part was that Ruth understood. Denise still had some frantic hope for her husband, but Ruth struck her in the head with two quick panicky blows.

Denise fell sideways and Ruth leapt up. “Stop!” she yelled in a flurry of lights. The other villagers had arrived while she was down, blazing with lanterns and flashlights.

Cam shoved through the crowd. His face was hidden in his goggles and mask. “Allison!” he yelled, as another man shouted, “What are you—”

“They’re contagious! Get back!”

“Oh my God, Allison.” His voice was raw with agony. Ruth didn’t think he’d even heard what she was saying.

He must have been thinking of his baby. She was, too, but she struggled for control of herself. “Stop! It’s some kind of nanotech! Cam, if the wind changes—”

Behind her, there was a distinct gritting noise as Tony rose to his feet.

Ruth swung around.

Tony was already advancing in a clumsy, looping path. He stumbled on Allison’s hand but kept coming. Something was wrong with his eyes. They were like holes. In the many beams of light, his brown irises looked black, as if his eyes consisted only of the whites and giant, hyper-dilated pupils.

“Stop him!” she yelled.

Cam hurled his flashlight. Someone else threw a spare clip for a rifle. The clip bounced off of Tony’s arm, but Cam’s flashlight banged into his shoulder. It knocked him back. Suddenly everyone was bobbing up and down, scratching at the ground for dirt and rocks, pelting the boy and shouting as if their voices might also drive him off. Their flashlights stabbed and winked. Tony staggered in the onslaught. Then he lost his balance, stepping on Allison again and falling down.

Michael came at them next. His eyes were lopsided. Only one pupil was distorted. The other had shrunk to a pinpoint, and his body hunched to that side as if to compensate.

The brain, Ruth thought. It’s something in the brain.

“Oh, fuck, shoot them!” a man yelled, but Denise drew her own pistol and thrust it at the nearest person who was also armed, a woman with a rifle.

“Don’t you touch him!” Denise cried.

“No, wait!” Ruth yelled. There were too many voices. The crowd hurled rocks and gear at Michael, a knife, a belt, even stripping off their jackets just to have something to throw. In the madness, two people fled. Ruth saw another man stagger. He wasn’t running away. He simply let his head slump. Was he infected? The man dropped to the ground as someone else began to jerk beside him, shaking all over.