Jeff Carlson - Plague Zone

It was like shooting at sparks. The enemy guns flickered, faded, and flickered again. Hit or miss, she never saw anyone. Her frustration helped her concentrate. Every muscle was centered on her weapon, because firing her AK-47 was agony. Deborah barely had enough strength to control the weapon and she probably couldn’t have managed it on semi-auto. Instead, she picked at the Chinese with single shots, jarring her shoulder with each round.

She knew she’d better move. They would get a bead on her if she didn’t. So far, other guns had distracted them, being much closer, but now everyone on her side was either hurt or hiding or dead. The fighting had stopped. How long has it been since the chopper landed? she thought. Forty minutes. Maybe less. It’s not enough.

Deborah crept forward in the orange light, torn in two directions as her body shook with adrenaline and fear. Were any of her people still alive?

Jia slogged through the rubble on both knees and one hand, keeping his pistol up. He’d slung his slender-barreled Type 85 submachine gun in order to climb. The wasteland was peppered with sharp edges and gaps. It slid. It creaked. He’d lost count of the bruises on his legs. His left arm ached inside its cast.

Only Jia and the copilot were still mobile. The other soldier was dead and they’d left their pilot behind after he was wounded in both thighs.

Jia thought they were very close. In the half-light, past the ragged shapes of the debris and a bent lamppost, he glimpsed a somewhat open field that must have been a parking lot. Several cars were strewn across it in clumps, and the flat ground was covered in soot and trash, but compared to the rest of the city, this clear space was a garden. Beyond it stood larger buildings that might have been the same size and shape before the quakes — the lab site.

The enemy was using AK-47s, not American rifles. Nor was the one man he’d glimpsed wearing a containment suit, so why weren’t they sick with the mind plague? Who were they really?

Jia was out of grenades. Otherwise he would have thrown one to mask his approach. It was very quiet. Every movement was painstaking. He crept toward the lamppost through glass and tree branches and the soft cushions of a sofa, testing each bit of junk for noise. He wanted to holster his pistol — he needed both hands — but couldn’t bring himself to climb without any weapon at all.

He wondered if he would hear his planes before the bombs fell. How much time was left? Jia was close enough to the site that napalm or high explosives would incinerate him, too, and yet he pressed on, caught between the need for silence and the need to hurry.

Almost there, he thought.

A running shape broke across the field, sprinting out from the buildings. Jia did not hesitate. He leaned up from the wreckage and opened fire.

The pistol barked in Cam’s face — but it was not directed at him. It was pointed over his head. Where? Someone was racing from the campus. Deborah? The figure was too scrawny. Too short. Too crazy. With all the dense clarity of a nightmare, Cam knew Deborah had more sense than the charge into the open.

It was Kendra. What was she doing? He caught one hint of her expression in the fires, huge white eyes, white teeth, black cheeks streaked with sweat or tears.

The gunfire cut her down.

“No!” Cam screamed.

Jia reeled backward when an AK-47 stuttered in the ruins beneath him, surprisingly close. It chewed through the lamppost, then cut within centimeters above his head. Jia was lucky the copilot was to his left. He heard the copilot’s submachine gun chatter.

The two guns dueled, exchanging bursts. In a sudden break, Jia swung himself up and fired, too, emptying his pistol.

His reward was a thrashing body in the night. The enemy soldier collapsed.

Deborah saw the new firefight break out on the perimeter — and just as quickly, she saw the rifle on her side fall silent. Was it Cam or Alekseev? Deborah scrambled to help. She left her corner.

The enemy guns swung toward her. She was spotted against the open face of the building, drawing fire from at least two Chinese.

She leapt into the parking lot, finding safety behind an overturned car. Her shoulder felt like an oven, a hot box of bone and meat. The vehicle rang with bullets. Glass and paint showered her hair, but that didn’t stop her from peering through the wheelwell for her friends.

What she found was an even greater surprise. Twenty feet away, Kendra lay dying as she groped at her ruptured chest. No. The crazy witch seemed to be making passes at the air above herself, reaching for heaven or hell or something else only she could see.

Where did she come from!? Deborah thought.

Then: I shouldn’t have trusted her! But she said she was okay. The men needed me. Deborah’s conflict of pride and disgust was directed as much at herself as the other woman. We knew she was unstable. Cam told me to —

A trick of light changed everything in Deborah. As the fires licked and danced, a tiny square gleamed in Kendra’s hand. A substrate. Deborah’s low-level training was enough for her to recognize what had happened.

She wanted to celebrate. She needed to cry.

The stupid goddamned witch, she thought. They’d won! Kendra had built her counter-vaccine — but the nanotech needed to be absorbed by a host before it could multiply. It might not have escaped if Kendra inhaled it inside the lab. The mind plague would rob her of her senses. What if she’d become trapped in her tent or if the Chinese sealed her in the building? She needed other people for the new plague zone to expand beyond anyone’s control.

Maybe the crazy witch wanted to die. On some level, she must have realized how close the enemy had come. Why hadn’t she run to Deborah? Had she been looking for her in the night? The two of them could have infected each other, hiding beside the building or even here among the cars.

Kendra was trying to ingest the substrate, but she couldn’t lift her hand to her mouth. Blood dripped from her elbow as she trembled with weak, useless spasms.

This is it, Deborah thought. All we need to do is get the nanotech inside her. Or me.

Deborah ran into the open.

Jia fired on the third American, too, grimacing in pleasure as the blond-headed soldier jerked and fell. Then his pistol was empty again. He had no more spare clips, only his submachine gun.

He began to press forward again. He stopped when he realized the American sprawled in the parking lot was still moving. A ruff of yellow hair shone in the guttering light. Jia seated his submachine gun against his shoulder. The weapon was designed for brute power, not accurate shots, but it was critical to stop the Americans from whatever they were doing. Bringing nanotech? Wiring more explosives? Nothing else made sense. They wouldn’t have left their fighting holes without good reason, so he would shoot the wounded.

“Kill them!” Jia shouted to the copilot.

Deborah scrunched her eyes shut against the pain, then opened them again in a blur of tears and caustic ash. Her world had shrunk down to a few inches. She clawed at it with one good arm, dragging her body behind her, but the level asphalt seemed like a wall. It felt too steep.

Get to Kendra, she thought. That’s all. Just get to her. There are too many people counting on you.

Each breath was a struggle. She could feel her stamina oozing away with the blood from her mangled belly. Everything below that was numb. Her nerves were cut somewhere beneath her abdomen except for a single unsteady wire tricking up from her left thigh, where the muscles cramped and bunched.

Kendra lay three feet in front of her — three feet — but it was too far for either of them. Kendra’s loose fist hung motionless, propped just above her chest. Her wide eyes stared up. She was dead. Dead, but still warm. The two of them would be enough for the nanotech’s gestation if only Deborah could swallow it.