Jeff Carlson - Plague War

Ruth Ann Goldman had been an only child. Probably that was for the best. Her father was an independent software programmer/analyst, brilliant at his work and in high demand. He had few hours for his daughter and less for his wife. That he could have hired on with one company and settled into a steady nine-to-‚ve, yet chose not to, wasn’t something Ruth understood until much later. She was a loud girl, antic and capering, hungry for approval at home and therefore everywhere else — in school, with her peers.

After the divorce her mother found a better man, not so driven. Her step-father was a lot like her dad, enthusiastic and smart. He was more disciplined in giving of himself, however, more appreciative, having lost his ‚rst wife to cancer.

It wasn’t the Brady Bunch, no matter how many times her mother made that idiotic joke. Ruth shared a bathroom with Susan and Ari, which was both excruciating and thrilling for a thirteen-year-old who had always had a toilet and a shower to herself. The Cohen kids were casual about busting in on each other wearing only underwear or a towel. There were glimpses of skin and slammed doors and apologies, and it was all very dramatic. Both of them were older than Ruth, Susan by four years, Ari by two, and they were always running around getting ready for dates or, in Ari’s case, cleaning up after baseball and basketball. Ruth managed to get in the way often enough.

If love is indeed just chemistry, it shouldn’t have shocked anyone that step-brother and sister ended up together. His dad and her mom made a good ‚t. There was an echo of that attraction in the next generation and they circled each other for years, Ruth pushing him back with sarcasm and drawing him close in a thousand ways, teasing him and herself by asking about his girlfriends, by †aunting around the house in her pajamas, by sitting with him and his math homework — a low-charge erotic tension much like she would develop with Nikola Ulinov nearly two decades later. Alone in the house, they wrestled for possession of the TV remote, and they played dunk wars in the community pool in front of everyone, smooth skin on wet skin.

Ari was popular and athletic. Ruth was more on the outside of the social scene, a brain. She had a decent body and great hair but a face that looked like she’d borrowed an adult’s nose and ears.

They ‚rst kissed when she was seventeen and still a virgin, after she came home unhappy after a bad time at a school dance. The boy she liked hadn’t been interested in her. Maybe Ari took advantage of that. Maybe she let him. He touched her through her clothes and she grabbed him once. But it was awkward the next day. Confusion drove them apart and silence ‚lled their friendship. Fortunately, Ari went off to college. They only saw each other over holiday breaks and the next summer, after which Ruth left home herself for Cincinnati U. Then he had a serious girlfriend. Then she had her ‚rst internship.

Ruth was more experienced when they both came home for Hanukkah the year she was twenty-one. She made eyes at him over dinner and across the living room while the family watched TV. After the house had settled down for the night, she left her light on, pretending to read a book. He rapped quietly on her bedroom door and it was exciting and nice and romantic as hell.

Things went on like that for years, stealing an afternoon or a few nights together. They certainly could have tried harder to make a relationship of it, but Ruth was too busy and Ari never had any trouble talking other women into bed, which †ustered her.

It was that unsettled karma that kept him in her heart.

Most of what Ruth knew and believed about religion, she’d learned from her step-father. She had hardly grown up Orthodox, eating tasty animal by-products on pizza with her friends, her dad banging away on his computer on the Sabbath, but this part of her life underwent a change after her mother remarried. Ari often had games on Saturdays and her step-father happily drove the family to attend, and yet the Cohens disdained pig meat as proscribed. They also made some effort to avoid work and to leave the TV off on the Sabbath. Her step-father’s faith was less a matter of worship than a practiced respect for all things. If pressed, he could boil it down to one cliché not typically perceived as Jewish. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It wasn’t scienti‚c or even particularly logical, given human nature, but it had balance and it appealed to her.

Ruth had been a child at ‚rst with Ari, and later she had been sel‚sh. She couldn’t afford to make that mistake again.

* * * *

The fact of the matter was that Ruth had gone out of her way to grab a box of condoms from a Walgreens while the men were three aisles over in the canned-foods section, wondering what the hell she was going to say if they caught her. Because I have to. Even if she said no, Cam might say yes, and her choices were limited. She’d encouraged him.

She resented him. Sometimes it was no fun being a woman, being smaller, being alone.

As she followed Cam past a dented van, Ruth willed herself not to ask him for a rest. More and more, she was afraid of appearing weak. She reached for the vehicle’s side mirror to balance herself, glancing up to regard Cam’s back. Then she reeled away from the broken skull pressed against the glass, its teeth smashed into an everlasting scream.

Ruth felt her doubt swelling, and new shame. Try not to think about it. Unfortunately her body hurt in too many places to ignore, and where she didn’t hurt she itched. She didn’t understand how Cam could get up and keep moving every day.

Don’t think. That’s the trick. Don’t think.

There were too many decisions to make among the cars. Cam stepped over a skeleton, but she had to walk around. Then he backtracked from several vehicles crammed together into a dead end, whereas Ruth was far enough behind that she could shortcut to his new path.

She stopped suddenly, gazing past him with sick disbelief. They had neared the top of a low rise and in front of them the Interstate swept upward for more than a mile, cutting in between steep hills of grass and gnarled oak trees. The road was studded with eastbound traf‚c on both sides. Cars ‚lled the shoulders and dropped into some of the lower points off-road and she could see a rockslide that had given way from one of the embankments, an iron-red vein of dirt and gravel. It looked like forever. Newcombe was right. There was no way they were going to reach elevation in less than another week or even two, laboring through every damned inch of wreckage.

Don’t. Please. Please don’t think, she warned herself, but the cold dread in her would not fade. Ruth couldn’t help staring at the long band of road as they pushed in between the hoods of two cars—

Cam turned and caught at her as a dry, shaking sound ‚lled her ears. Rattlesnakes. A host of muscular bodies were curled in the space in front of them, territorial and aggressive. Cam moved sideways and then backpedaled from more rattling. He’d obviously found more snakes beyond the nearest cars and Ruth glanced left and right, thinking to climb up onto something.

She struggled for words. “What do we do?”

“They like the road,” Cam said. “It’s nice and hot. Lots of places to hide. We might be better off going cross-country like we talked about.”

“Goddammit, this is crazy,” Newcombe said. “You don’t have any idea what we’re getting into.”

“I do. We can make it.”

“I can get a plane for us today!”

“They’ll kill us as soon as they see it land.”

“Stop,” Ruth said. “Stop ‚ghting.” But her voice was a whisper and the men didn’t respond, their faces locked on each other. She turned away, trembling.