Jeff Carlson - Plague War

Cam sat up, frightened. It was early in the night and the sky really was a solid dark mass, except where the quarter moon radiated light way down on the horizon. The clouds must have come in. Good. He glanced over at the other man, listening. Newcombe was only four feet away, but in the darkness it seemed farther. His breathing was soft and regular.

Ruth had volunteered to take the ‚rst watch, explaining that she’d napped in the boat and again when they ‚rst reached the canal. That was the only reason Cam and Newcombe had agreed, when normally the two of them let her sleep the whole night.

She’d wanted this. She’d wanted him.

“Please,” she said, laying her ‚ngers on his shoulder again. It was about as meaningless as contact could be, her glove on his jacket. She was barely more than a shadow herself, misshapen by her goggles and mask, but Cam remembered the shape of her mouth and her quick, intelligent gaze.

She doesn’t know, he thought. She can’t. No one would ever guess I could still feel that way about anyone, because no one could ever feel that way about me.

And if she did…If she was aware of his attraction, he would hate her for using it against him.

“Newcombe wants out of here,” Ruth whispered. “I can’t blame him for that, but he hasn’t been through what you and I have. He doesn’t realize.”

Cam nodded, brooding. He wanted more reasons to be closer to her, even bad ones, and not for the ‚rst time he wondered how she must have felt watching the planet go dark from the space station. Watching it stay dark, the cities on every continent abandoned and lost. She had suffered in different ways, more like a prisoner than a refugee.

“Don’t leave me,” she repeated.

“I won’t.” It was a promise. But at the same time, he knew it was very possible that Newcombe would force the issue. What else could the soldier do? Let them walk away? Newcombe had almost as much on the line as the two of them. He would never jump on a plane without Ruth or her data index.

Cam turned to regard the other man again as an old, animal feeling stole over him — an empty sort of clarity that he hadn’t known since he murdered Chad Loomas, the man who was the ‚rst to steal and hide food on the small mountain peak where Cam had survived the plague year.

If it came to a ‚ght, Cam thought Newcombe had every edge. Newcombe was stronger. He had the assault ri†e. Rather than confronting him face-to-face, Cam knew he would be smarter to shoot the other man in the back.

* * * *

Before dawn they continued north. It was necessary no matter what they decided. They had to assume there was a forward base, either on the mountaintop where Ruth and Newcombe had ‚rst met Cam or somewhere in Tahoe or Yosemite — or all three. They needed to be that paranoid. The helicopters yesterday might have only been on a random search grid, but Newcombe didn’t think so. Fuel was too precious.

The morning sun was still burning off the clouds when they discovered the reason for the helicopter patrol. There was only one body, a whole body, crushed and burned but whole, so immediately different than the thousands of bare skeletons strewn across the road.

“Stop,” Cam said. They were at least sixty yards away and he climbed onto the bumper of a station wagon, digging his binoculars out of his jacket.

“What is that?” Ruth asked, craning her neck.

It was a young man in uniform, wrapped in gear and still tied to a paraglider. A ripped glider. His clothes and skin were scorched and there appeared to be wounds caused by shrapnel. It was dif‚cult to tell because there were already bugs in him, an undulating haze like a ghost. Worse, he’d fallen to his death. Fallen a long way. Some of him had splashed and the rest was only held together by his uniform, belts, and pack.

“Christ,” Newcombe muttered.

Cam was already looking out across the horizon for the rest of the crew and the plane itself. That was the explosion we heard before the helicopters came to clean up, he thought. But he saw nothing. He supposed the aircraft could have gone down miles from here, depending on its altitude and direction when the missile struck.

“Is that a pilot?” Ruth asked.

She must think he ejected, Cam realized as he stepped off of the car. He gave Newcombe the binoculars, occupying the other man’s hands. “It’s a paratrooper,” he said. “What do you think, Newcombe? Is he Canadian?”

“But he’s not wearing a containment suit,” Ruth said.

“He’s American.” Newcombe appeared to recognize some articles of the man’s clothing, although there were no unit patches or insignia that Cam had seen. “A rebel, probably.”

“But he couldn’t last more than a couple hours down here,” Ruth said. “He would know that.”

“He probably expected to meet us,” Cam said.

“What?” She turned from the body to stare at them, although Cam was only aware of her peripherally. He kept his eyes on Newcombe, who made a vague, restless motion with the binoculars, but Cam didn’t reach for them and Newcombe set the binoculars down on the hood of the car.

“Bringing in more people is a great idea, actually,” Cam said. “They †y in a whole plane full of their best guys. We inoculate them. Then everyone spreads out with the vaccine.”

“You’ve been talking to them?” Ruth asked Newcombe.

Newcombe carried all three of their radio units. The components didn’t weigh much, but it had seemed like another team-oriented gesture, sharing his strength. Now Cam realized that the soldier’s decision was entirely sel‚sh.

“He’s probably just acknowledging messages,” Cam said, “tapping on the send button again, like Morse code. Right? If you broadcast too much, Leadville could zero in on it,” he said, just as another idea hit him. “That’s why you wanted to get away from us yesterday. You knew we couldn’t set any more food traps. You just wanted to use the radio without us around.”

“Listen,” Newcombe said, holding his arms away from his sides. It was an open, nonthreatening posture.

“What else aren’t you telling us?” Ruth asked, trying to put herself between them. Cam was proud of her, †eetingly, even as he kept his attention locked on Newcombe’s hands.

“The ‚ghting’s escalated,” Newcombe said. “It’s total war. If we get the chance, we have to get out of here.”

“This man,” Ruth said. “His plane was shot down?”

“The rebels and the Canadians are putting as much pressure on Leadville as they can, one offensive after another,” Newcombe said. “And it’s working. Most of Leadville’s attention is back in Colorado right now.”

“But this man,” Ruth said.

Cam’s heart beat hard in anticipation and his head swam as he imagined jets and helicopters spearing across the Continental Divide, down from British Columbia, up from Colorado. There would be others dodging west into the gray sky above him, engaging each other over the deserts of Utah and Nevada.

“Even if someone managed to reach us,” he said, “we’d be crazy to get on a plane right now.”

“That’s our best bet,” Newcombe said.

“No.”

“You said it yourself,” Ruth said. “Leadville is distracted. This is our best chance to run into the mountains.”

“But then you’re still nowhere,” Newcombe said. “It still leaves you an easy target.”

You’re. You. Newcombe was already separating himself from them in his mind, Cam realized. Should he say it? You go. He and Ruth could keep hiking while Newcombe made the rendezvous. Maybe that would be best. Splitting up was a way to double the odds that someone got away and Newcombe would have his success, completing at least some of his mission goals.