Jeff Carlson - Plague War

Eighteen survivors gathered before him in a half-circle. Ruth saw uncertainty and distrust in their eyes — and the ‚rst incredulous glimmers of hope.

“I know it’s getting dark, but grab your stuff and get below the barrier,” Cam said. “The vaccine works in a few minutes. Faster than the plague. The longer you stay, the better the odds that a plane’s gonna come overhead and kill everybody. You’ve seen what’s happening.” He tipped his head north toward the blasted mountaintops, but only a few people glanced away.

He was trying to distract himself as much as convince them, Ruth thought. The cut hadn’t had any chance to heal and the skin was angry and red, well on its way to infection. Cam sunk the tip of his knife directly into it. Ruth caught her breath and heard several of them react as blood ran down Cam’s gnarled ‚ngers into the bowl.

“We sure could use some help ‚rst,” said the scrawny black man, Steve Gaskell.

Ruth looked up, furious that he was so indifferent to Cam’s effort, but Gaskell’s expression was wide-eyed and yearning. He stared at the neat, clear vinyl components of Newcombe’s med kit, which she’d unfolded on the ground. Tape and gauze. Antibiotics. Salve. Ruth †ushed with new stress. She was intensely aware of the bulk of strangers above her. Even with their packs nearly empty, the three of them must seem unbelievably wealthy — and Cam wouldn’t stop pushing.

“There’s no time,” he said.

“We’ve got two pregnant women and three people sick,” Gaskell said.

“We’ll give you what we can spare, but get off the mountain if you want to live,” Cam said. “Tonight.”

Ruth wondered at Cam’s disgust. Dealing with these people must be like staring into a mirror for him and he’d shown the same impatience toward the Boy Scouts for clinging to their islands. It was profoundly self-destructive. His behavior put them all at risk and she felt her own hot anger and fear.

The crowd shifted restlessly in the dusk.

Ruth looked for the ri†eman.

“They can’t leave,” the girl said to Gaskell, and another man grimaced at Cam and said, “Wait. You can wait.”

“We can’t stay,” Newcombe said.

“You don’t have to, either,” Cam said. “You can leave. You should.”

“We’ll come with you,” Gaskell said.

“It’s better if we split up.”

“Just let us pack. Ten minutes.”

“Try to reach as many other survivors as you can,” Cam said. “Pay us back.”

“Tony, Joe, Andrea, start getting our food together,” Gaskell said, not looking away from Cam. Three of his people left the group and hurried to their shelters.

“There are others like us,” Newcombe said. “We’re all spreading out.”

A woman said, “But who’s in the planes?”

“We don’t know.”

“Tomorrow, send out a couple of your strongest guys,” Cam said. “That’s the best thing you can do. Find another group. Pay us back.”

“We’re coming with you,” Gaskell said.

“That’s okay tonight,” Ruth told him quickly, before Cam could answer, and Newcombe said, “Yeah, ‚ne, but then we spread out.”

“We have to make sure somebody gets out,” Cam said. “Drink.” He’d squeezed his hand into a ‚st to stop the bleeding but kept his dripping knuckles over the bowl as he stood up, holding the scuffed green plastic picnicware with his good hand. He held the dark soup out to Gaskell.

“It’s ‚ne, you won’t feel anything,” Ruth said, trying to soften the moment, but these people weren’t as healthy as the Scouts, and she thought again of the ‚rst mountaintop they’d found, wiped out by disease. As the vaccine spread, so might bacteria and viral infections. Anyone with a seriously compromised immune system was likely to have died long ago, but there were any number of slow-acting pathogens. Hepatitis. HIV. Too many survivors would be weak and susceptible. Some islands would carry their own kinds of death, but it couldn’t be helped, not until they reached a place with a minimum of technology.

Gaskell drank ‚rst, then the girl and another man and another. Ruth saw no hint of horror in their faces. They’d seen and done worse to survive, and she turned away to stare into the last fading red coals of the sun.

Newcombe had offered to bleed himself, too. He’d taken Cam aside and said, Fair is fair. The two men had come a very long way, from allies to enemies to real brotherhood, and Cam just shook his head. You still have two good hands, he’d said. It would be stupid to change that . There was so much good in him. Ruth had to forgive his rage and his self-hate.

The woman with the belly hesitated when the bowl came to her. “What will it do to my baby?” she asked, looking at her husband and Gaskell and Cam.

“We don’t know,” Ruth said. “It will protect you both, I think. There shouldn’t be a problem.”

She was doubly glad she hadn’t slept with Cam or anyone else. How much harder would their struggle have been if she was pregnant? Her ‚rst two periods back on Earth had been bad enough. After twelve months in zero gravity, both times she’d bled and bled through cramps and nausea — but each time it had only been four or ‚ve really bad days. What if she’d had morning sickness for weeks instead or developed complications like gestational diabetes or high blood pressure?

This late in her term, the pregnant woman would be having back problems and sore feet. A mother’s bones began to soften noticeably in the third trimester to help the baby’s passage through the pelvic bone. Trudging down the mountainside would be brutal for her, and yet a new generation was beyond price. This woman was exactly who they were ‚ghting for, so Ruth forced a smile and said the words again like a promise.

“It will protect the baby, too,” she said.

* * * *

She lied again that night, huddled together with the others near eighty-‚ve hundred feet in a clump of backpacks, tools, and weapons. Fighter jets crisscrossed the night, mumbling and echoing. The grasshoppers sang and sang. She told Gaskell they’d been given the vaccine by a squad of paratroopers, which was close enough to what had really happened to confuse things if the rumor ever caught up to the wrong people. She told him they’d survived the plague year on a mountaintop above one of Lake Tahoe’s ski resorts, south of here, and Cam was more than convincing in discussing a few local landmarks.

The worst deceit was how Ruth explained their goggles. Gaskell’s group had jackets and hoods and they’d torn up a few rags for face masks, mimicking their rescuers, and Ruth told Gaskell that her goggles and other gear were because of the bugs. There was nothing more these people could do to minimize their absorption of the plague. She didn’t want to give up her own equipment and she didn’t want to ‚ght.

* * * *

In the morning they left each other. Gaskell promised to send a few guys to another peak to the southeast. Ruth wasn’t sure he’d do it but she was glad just to get away from them, not only because they scared her but because a crowd would be more easily noticed. A pilot might spot them or a satellite. It was good to hurry into the woods again with Cam and Newcombe. Still, in the ‚rst few hundred yards she glanced back a dozen times, a little afraid of herself. Maybe it would have been better if they’d all stuck together, but Gaskell’s people seemed equally relieved to split up now that they had some answers.

We’re all so much smaller than we used to be, she thought.

* * * *

They worked their way north even though it brought them closer to the nearest launch-point for the ‚ghter patrols. The jets seemed especially close on landing, groaning overhead, but the aircraft were thousands of feet up and miles away. That distance increased with every step down the mountain. Their plan was to curve eastward tomorrow. Ahead, the map showed a pair of valleys that fell all the way down into Nevada.