Jeff Carlson - Plague War

After sixteen days within the invisible sea, their bodies must be thick with it. Too thick. That might explain her headaches and it might explain the discomfort in her gut. Those things might simply be the result of constant strain and bad food, but it wasn’t impossible that the vaccine would hurt people, too, catching and clotting in the bloodstream, rupturing capillaries, increasing the odds of stroke and arrhythmia. They didn’t know. It had never been tested.

Ruth wanted to believe they’d have days or even weeks before their immunity faded to dangerous levels, but if they had to run…If there were soldiers waiting…They had already been near ten thousand feet for more than eight hours and Ruth couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t be a problem.

The men were just as apprehensive. Newcombe had prepared her for the chance that he and Cam wouldn’t return. He broke down their packs and reassembled one for her to carry herself if necessary, mostly food and a bedroll. He carefully showed her how to use the radio and he made her demonstrate again that she knew how to ‚re and load her pistol, as if she’d last through a gun battle by herself.

Ruth knew she couldn’t go with them but she hated the price on her skills and education, like she was some goddamned princess in a tower, too precious to be let out — so at last she forced herself to stir in the cold.

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“Me, too,” Cam said. He was always surprising her.

Ruth shook her head. “Why would, no, you’ve been…”

“Maybe we should have done it Newcombe’s way,” Cam said. “He’s got training I could never…I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to hike it. Maybe you would have perfected the nanotech by now.”

“Cam, no. It was my idea. Remember? I’m the one who insisted on coming here.” And then after everything else, tomorrow you’re going to walk up there for me, she thought. You’ll walk into the soldiers’ guns, maybe, or ‚nd a pack of disease-ridden survivors. There’s no way to know.

Still sitting in his blankets, Cam shifted once, as if containing an argument inside himself.

I couldn’t have done this without you, Ruth thought. Then she touched her ‚ngertips to his forearm, careful not to let it be more. She was careful not to draw down her mask and kiss his cheek, no matter how deeply he deserved the gesture or her gratitude.

“Please be careful,” she said.

Cam slipped easily across the rough terrain of granite and sparse forest. He’d dropped his pack this morning but kept his pistol and a canteen — and he knew this environment well, if not this particular mountain. The whitebark pines and junipers were a familiar world, the chokecherry brambles and wild grass.

There was a †utter of grasshoppers to his right. The insects scattered as Newcombe loped over with his ri†e in hand and they hunched together behind a tangle of boulders.

They’d heard voices above them distantly. Someone up there liked to yell to his friends, a boy, alternately impatient or happy, his young voice carrying across the open sky. It seemed like a good sign, but maybe the kid was only excited because Leadville troops had recently arrived.

“What do you think?” Newcombe whispered.

Cam only shrugged. In many ways their relationship reminded him of his bond with Albert Sawyer, the man who’d taken them to the lab in Sacramento. His friendship with Sawyer had been loaded with mistrust and need and ‚erce loyalty all at the same time. He wanted things to be better with Newcombe. He wanted to save his energy, instead of always trying to keep one eye behind him, so he tried again to make peace. “I think you’re right,” he said.

“The layout here might be as good as it gets,” Newcombe said, tipping his chin up at the ridges. “Let’s map this drainage before we work any farther north.”

“Yeah.” Cam reached for his binoculars as Newcombe took a small notepad from his pocket and quickly added to his sketches. The Special Forces soldier had his own shorthand that was detailed and accurate, but Cam paused with his binoculars lifted halfway, reaching out with his ears and other senses instead, measuring the wind and the early afternoon sun. The dust-and-pine smell of the mountain. He could still feel Ruth’s hand on his arm.

He itched to take off his goggles and mask, but the day was warm and clear. Without a barometer, Cam had to assume they were still in danger. The nicest weather typically came with high pressure fronts, which lifted the invisible sea of nanotech. On their maps, the nearest benchmarks read 9,985 and 10,160 feet, but Cam had learned to hold his pessimism close. They were still at least two hundred yards below the tallest peaks.

So far they hadn’t been able to get a look at whoever was up there. They had a bad height disadvantage. This archipelago of high points was like a string of castles. Each of the small islands sat above a sheer, ragged band of lava. If there were soldiers, if they were forced to shoot it out, they would be very exposed.

“Stay here,” Newcombe said.

“We’ll go together.”

“No. We can’t leave her alone, and if I’m coming back in a hurry I’ll need you to cover me.”

Cam nodded. Mark Newcombe was a good man, despite all their disagreements. Newcombe had helped him every day with his hand, cleaning and rebandaging the wound, and Newcombe had continued to haul the largest pack even after Cam took possession of the radios.

“We’ll go together,” Cam said. “At least as far as the ridge. That’s a better place for us to stay in sight of each other, and sooner or later…You know they’ll spot us. The longer we sneak around, the more likely it’ll happen.”

“Yeah. Stay here.”

“You don’t understand,” Cam said. “Even if there are no soldiers up there, those people will be…different. They could be dangerous.”

Newcombe glanced brie†y at the ravine again, then studied Cam for a much longer time. Newcombe’s expression was hidden in his mask and goggles, but his posture was intent. For once Cam was glad to be wrapped in his own gear. He still had one secret and he meant to keep it, especially from Ruth.

“It’s better if it’s both of us,” Cam said, ‚nding his voice again. “Not just for the show of strength. I’ll know what to say to them but you’re proof that it really works, the nanotech. That could make all the difference.”

Newcombe remained silent. Maybe he was thinking of the ‚rst mountain and the mad, grinding obsession that must have driven those people to carve thousands of crosses. The sight had shaken Cam to his core, because he never would have believed that anyone had things worse than on his own mountaintop. His group had only lasted eight months before they began to kill and feed on each other.

* * * *

Voices echoed through the ravine and Cam ducked against a car-sized boulder, leaving sunlight for the cool shadows beneath the rock. Newcombe squeezed in beside him with a wild look, then checked his ri†e’s safety again. Cam had misjudged the other group’s position. He’d led Newcombe too far up this gully to run back down again and there was no other route from here to the long cliff face above, where they might have scrambled into a crevice and waited and watched. The mountain had fooled him, bouncing the noise away until the other group abruptly moved past a ridgeline and their voices were redirected downhill.

They sounded very close.

“Sst,” Newcombe hissed. He bumped Cam with his elbow and signaled ef‚ciently. Four ‚ngers. South side of the rock.

They’ll cross our tracks, Cam thought, although the ground was rough and dry where it wasn’t dotted with snow. He and Newcombe had avoided the ‚elds of dirty ice and the soft new wild†owers and grass. They hadn’t left much trace.