Jeff Carlson - Plague War

The three of them were so intent on the radio that at ‚rst Cam didn’t realize there was another sound rising over the forest. A distant, familiar roar. He looked up through the dark trees.

“I need con‚rmation, Sparrowhawk,” Newcombe said, before he turned and muttered, “It’s our guys. It has to be our guys.”

The world exploded around them. A jet ripped overhead, dragging a wall of noise behind it. The rush of turbulence crashed into the mountains and echoed back. Dry pine needles and twigs showered onto Cam’s hood and shoulders.

“Hotel Bravo, Bravo November,” the woman said, “Hotel Bravo, Bravo November.”

“There are runners at third and ‚rst,” Newcombe said urgently. “The batter is Najarro. The pitcher is a Yankee. The ball goes to third.”

Her engines were red-white ‚re in the night, curving upward suddenly in a hard leftward arc. Was she coming back again? Newcombe’s broadcast couldn’t reach more than a few miles, but if she circled she’d give away their location — She was performing evasive manuevers. There were more ‚res in the sky. A peak to the south had lit up with searing yellow trails and the jet’s engines †ared as the pilot boosted away.

“Missiles,” Cam said, because Newcombe’s head was down, concentrating on his message.

“The ball goes to third,” Newcombe repeated.

Static. Her engines whipped down against the black earth and vanished behind a hill. Then an explosion skipped up from the terrain. Cam and Ruth reached for each other. “No,” Ruth said, but the engines rose into sight again, swiftly dwindling into the east. It was a missile that had struck the ground.

Cam decided this couldn’t have been the ‚rst scout that U.S. forces had sent blitzing into California, its cameras snapping like guns. “Baseball,” he said to Newcombe. “You think the Russians are listening, too.”

“Maybe not.”

“You used my name.” Cam had never been on the radio, and wouldn’t have been a part of any manifest before the expedition into Sacramento. “The pitcher is a Yankee. New York.”

“You want to go north again,” Ruth said. “Where third base would be from here.”

“Northeast. Exactly. There’s a county air‚eld near Doyle, not far inside the California-Nevada border. It’s right in line with the grid I just laid out.”

“What if the pilot doesn’t remember?” Cam said. “Or if she didn’t even hear you?”

“She’ll have it on tape. They’ll ‚gure it out.”

“Unless she was out of range.”

Newcombe shrugged con‚dently in the dark. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’ll be back.”

Six days later they were within two miles of the air‚eld and Ruth split away from Cam as he went to ground in a cluster of red desert rocks. Neither of them spoke. They simply acted. He picked his way into the small maze of boulders and Ruth hunkered down a few yards to his †ank, watching their back-trail as Newcombe trudged past and then took his own position on Cam’s other side.

The triangle was their default and their strength. It was as close to a circle as the three of them could manage, turning eyes in every direction.

The path behind them was hazy with orange dust and the breeze had been erratic today, calming early in the morning. It might be hours before the ‚ne, dry grit settled down again, but they couldn’t afford to wait for the weather to change. Instead, they watched for other dust trails.

No one, Ruth thought. There may never be anyone out here again .

To the west, the Sierras were a staggered wall of blue shadows and dusky forest. That color lightened and broke apart as it spilled down into the arid foothills. Their guess was that most survivors would move north or south along the edges of that uneven line, and if Russian troops had come in pursuit, they’d obeyed the same border.

Ruth, Cam, and Newcombe were miles beyond any hint of green. The plague had been catastrophic in this place. Even the weeds and hardy sagebrush were dead. All that stood were a few dry stubs of windswept roots. Several times they’d seen the desiccated remains of grass and wild†owers laid on the ground like stains, brittle and black. In the heat, the insects had been destroyed, which in turn condemned the reptiles and the vegetation. Lacking any balance whatsoever, the biosphere tipped. The earth baked into powder and superheated the air.

It drew moisture from every seam in their armor. Ruth was stripped down to T-shirt and undies inside the grimy shell of her jacket and pants, and still she broiled.

Drinking water had become life-and-death. Every day they needed more than they could carry. Fortunately they’d also returned to civilization, passing through the outskirts of little towns with names like Chilcoot and Hallelujah Junction. Highway 395 paralleled their hike north and was spotted with stalled cars and Army trucks. They scavenged new clothing and boots. They also found bottles and cans easily enough, although many had swelled or burst in the sun.

The highway was no protection from the dust. Red dirt and sand licked across the asphalt. It piled against cars and guardrails, forming dunes and bars. There were soft pits where culverts had been and other hazards like fences and downed wires. Once she’d cut her ankle on a ‚re hydrant concealed in the sand, so they usually went cross-country.

They had yet to see another dust cloud. Most days had been windy, which erased their trail but would also confuse the dust kicked up by anyone else. They worried constantly about planes and satellite coverage. Were the †ags of dust running up from their feet noticeable from above? There was always movement around them. Huge whirlwinds walked in the desert and vanished and then leapt up again, especially to the east. Their hope was that they only looked like another dust devil.

“Sst,” Cam whispered. Newcombe repeated the all clear and then Ruth, too. They drew together in a band of shade and Ruth blessed the wind-blasted rock for its size, glancing up along its pitted surface as she set her good hand against her pants pocket and the hard, round shape inside it. She still had the etched stone she’d taken from the ‚rst mountaintop. More and more she was treating inanimate objects with respect, making friends or enemies of everything that touched her.

Part of her knew it was stupid. But she’d grown superstitious. There was no question that some things liked to bite. She would be a long time forgetting the rigid edges of the ‚re hydrant against her pantleg, so didn’t it make sense to feel obliged to benign objects like her little stone and the much larger shape of the desert rock? The idea was as close to faith as she’d ever been, a heightened sense of connection with everything around her.

Maybe there really was a God within the earth and the sky. He would exist immaterial of whether religions were right or wrong. People tended to believe in what they wanted the world to be instead of looking to see what it was, inventing tribal power structures, skewing observable facts to make themselves important. Before the plague, in fact, the most successful religions had existed as shadow governments, transcending nations and continents. What fathers believed, they taught their sons, and they were encouraged to have as many sons as possible. Who honestly thought that the Catholic edict against birth control was based on the lessons of Christ? Or that the enforced ignorance of women in the Muslim world was holy in any way? Large families were the quickest way to expand the faithful— and yet none of these human blunders meant there wasn’t some kernel of truth to the idea of a greater being.

Hundreds of forms of worship had been born throughout history, and new religions had surely begun since the plague. Why? Despite the suspicion and greed of the monkey still inside them, people could be smart and honest and brave. Had the best of them truly perceived some link to the divine? Ruth was beginning to think yes , although her sense of it was doubtful and faint.