Jeff Carlson - Plague War

Earth was a very late planet in the life span of this galaxy, †ung deep into its spiral arms. If there was a God, maybe he’d used the farthest, most forgotten worlds of his creation for experiments, knowing that most of them would be half-perfect mistakes. What could He hope to learn? The limits of their imagination and strength?

Her little stone, etched with crosses, had become more than a reminder. It was a talisman. It had power. She could sense it.

The stone protected her.

“What do you think?” Cam asked.

Newcombe was peering north through his binoculars. Ruth turned and squinted into the desert herself. The town of Doyle was a squat collection of buildings like boxes and square signs elevated on long metal poles. Mobil. Carl’s Jr. Beyond it, brown hills and ridges rolled upward into the dazzling light.

Newcombe shrugged and traded Ruth the binoculars for a plastic bottle of mineral water. She swung her gaze away from town to the few structures of the air‚eld, feeling both wary and hopeful. She couldn’t deny that she was also pleased. The men were beginning to trust her as much as they relied on each other, and she’d earned it.

Her transformation was complete. Ruth had always been tough but now she was a warrior in every aspect, lean and hard and too sensitive all at the same time. To say that she was twitchy would not be incorrect. And yet the twitch was a cool, distant feeling, insulated by experience.

She let her eyes drift over the air‚eld’s fences and high buildings. “Looks good,” she said.

Still they waited, drinking more. Newcombe passed around some candy for quick energy and dug out the radio, too. He didn’t speak. He only clicked at his send button a few times, transmitting three short ticks of squelch. It meant I’m here but there was no reply, only empty white noise.

They’d established direct contact with the rebel forces twice more, once for nearly a full minute with a ‚ghter that jettisoned an automated relay. Both times Newcombe had talked nonstop, accepting the chance of being triangulated or overheard, using as much slang as possible in case the enemy was recording him. He had never been explicit, though, and the pilots had also hedged their language. No one ever came right out and said the Doyle air‚eld or June 11 th, before noon.

“Okay,” Newcombe said. “You know your marks.”

Cam nodded. “Ten minutes.”

“Thirty,” Ruth said.

Newcombe touched her shoulder and then Cam’s before he moved out, intending to reconnoiter wide around the air‚eld. They were badly hamstrung by the short range of their equipment, and the relay had vanished in the dust. They just didn’t know what to expect. U.S. soldiers couldn’t wait below the barrier, unless a pilot had landed in a containment suit with a stack of air tanks. That seemed unlikely. They’d had the air‚eld in sight for a day and a half now with no sign of activity, but there were any number of ways the Russians could stop them.

Because they had the vaccine, the enemy might have left men at every airport within a hundred miles. Or they could have simply dropped motion detectors or antipersonnel mines. An effort that widespread would have used a lot of fuel and gear, of course. It was a good bet that the invaders hadn’t done it. The stakes weren’t quite so high for them.

The same couldn’t be said for the United States, because the

U.S. had yet to gain possession of the vaccine. The two ‚ghters they’d spoken with weren’t the only ones Newcombe identi‚ed as their own. Four days ago, a trio of F/A-18 Super Hornets had slashed into the mountains. Yesterday, a lone bomber came limping out of the southwest before two MiGs overtook the wounded aircraft and gunned it down.

Their side was trying to cover them and misdirect the enemy. They’d been surprised to ‚nd an ongoing exchange between a weak transmission from a man who said he was Newcombe and a stronger signal urging him toward a pickup in Carson City. The weaker transmissions were still more powerful than their own, and so more easily overheard, and Carson City lay sixty miles away from Doyle in the direction they would have gone if they’d chosen to head south instead of north. It was a neat trick, and Ruth appreciated the help — but meanwhile other people were sacri‚cing their lives.

Larger con†icts were taking place in Yosemite and farther south. The Russians had been airlifting the rest of their people into California, which was good and bad. It meant the enemy was preoccupied with shielding their planes from American and Canadian interceptors, but they were also growing stronger and better established.

The U.S. was crippled in meeting the enemy. A large part of the nation’s air force had disappeared with Leadville — and for hundreds of miles, the surviving planes were only so much aluminum, plastic, and rubber. The EMP had burned out electronics even below the barrier, where U.S. forces might have scavenged new parts and computers.

Estimates on the radio said the Russians had already landed tens of thousands of troops and civilians. More were on the way. In fact, their numbers were surging. There were more and more planes every day, because the Russians had carried the vaccine overseas. The Russians had freed every available pilot and engineer to scavenge below the barrier, lifting aircraft out of the Middle East and their homeland.

Ruth was certain her tiny group couldn’t stay ahead of the invaders much longer. The Russians would spread out if only to improve their defenses and food stocks. They would ‚nd her.

She still kept her grenade with the data index and slept with both under her head.

She also worried about her arm and whether it was healing correctly. How would they know when to cut off the worn, stinking cast? The men could fashion a splint easily enough, but their opinions differed on when she would be ready to lose the ‚berglass sheath. She was honest. She explained that the doctors in Leadville had been concerned about her bone density and said the break might be a long time knitting together. It still hurt, which couldn’t be a good sign.

“How’s he doing?” Ruth whispered. Cam didn’t answer. Her job was to continue to guard behind them, but it took all of her self-discipline not to turn and watch Newcombe. That was Cam’s responsibility, studying the area between them and the air‚eld in case Newcombe †ushed any threat. The ground was deceptive. The desert blended into a single red expanse, but the †ats weren’t †at, as they’d learned too well. The land rolled with hidden pockets and gullies and rock.

Ruth said, “Hey, are you listening?”

“He’s ‚ne.”

The sun †ashed across her goggles as she leaned too far from the boulder, glancing sideways, but Cam didn’t look at her. Empty static on the radio. Warm sweat down her ribs.

You’re angry with me, she thought.

Sleeping side by side now carried an electric charge, and more than once she’d been restless despite her exhaustion. Their situation was still the all-time worst for romance, caked in dirt, strung out on adrenaline, in danger of bugs and enemy troops. The friction between the two of them was maddening.

They both found excuses to get away from Newcombe. Scavenging for food was a good one, or calling a short rest as Newcombe scouted ahead. There had been more kissing and careful hands. Ruth enjoyed pressing her body against Cam’s despite all their bulky gear. At night she’d considered more. They could touch each other, at least. Was it worth risking the machine plague? No. But she knew their clothes only gave them the slightest protection. She thought about it incessantly. If I push down my pants and he takes off his glove …Two nights ago, when Cam was asleep, she’d rubbed her ‚ngers in her crotch to no satisfaction, her blunt glove against her jeans.