Jeff Carlson - Plague War

“Remember our signal,” Cam said, handing her the binoculars.

“Be safe,” she answered.

He didn’t seem to want more. He dropped his pack beside Newcombe’s and quickly loped away, circling out to the left to form a pincher with the other man.

Ruth trapped her peppermint against the back of her teeth and set her good hand against the inside of her hip, centering herself, touching her frayed pants and the round stone in her pocket. She should have jumped him. That was what she would have done in her old life, take the opportunity, have some fun. They could both be dead in minutes.

Cam faded into the terrain, leaving only dust. The horizon shimmered in the heat. Ruth kept her head on a swivel, trying to cover a full three hundred and sixty degrees now that she was the last one in hiding, and yet she caught herself looking after Cam more often than not. She smiled grimly.

You’re not in love with him, she thought.

* * * *

The sky shook before her thirty minutes were up. Jet ‚ghters lanced out of the northeast in three arrowheads, barely off the ground. One group was different than the other two. She’d come to recognize the twin vertical tails of F-35s, but the third group consisted of a sharp-nosed model she’d never seen before, with lean, swept wings. It didn’t matter. Ruth felt her heart leap with elation — and a new concern.

The planes weren’t slowing. They ripped past and cut into the Sierras, transmitting in bursts: “Hotel Yankee, Bravo Quebec. Hotel Yankee, Bravo Quebec. George, respond. This is Flicker Six.”

Ruth gawked at the thundering sky. She thought wildly of leaping onto a rock and screaming for Cam and Newcombe, maybe ‚ring her pistol, but there was still no guarantee that the three of them were alone out here. She couldn’t chance giving them away. The decision was hers, and the simple code matched what Newcombe had told her.

“This is Goldman, con‚rm, con‚rm,” Ruth told the radio. She bent to take the men’s packs with her own. Then the desert shook again. The mountains behind her rattled with sound and motion, enveloped in torn cyclones of dark lines and ‚re — jets and missiles.

Somehow the same voice acknowledged her, even though the ‚ghters were engaged. “Roger, George, your retrieval is in ‚fteen. Repeat, your retrieval is in ‚fteen.” The rebels had come in force. There was no way to hide a plane over the basins of Nevada, so they were using themselves as a battering ram, clearing space between the enemy and the Doyle runways.

Ruth hiked with her pistol out and the radio hissing softly beneath the roar of the jets and a distant explosion — a smoke trail down into the mountainside. Somehow she turned her back on the spectacle and kept moving.

There was a ri†eman in the desert. Oh please, no, she prayed even as she freed her gun hand.

It was Newcombe. “What are you doing!” he shouted, glancing away from her to the mountains. Ruth did the same. The air war was fast and terrifying and had visibly separated into two con†icts now, bright specks and smoke.

“Where is Cam?” she asked, panting. “Plane for us. Twelve minutes. We need to get to the air‚eld.”

Newcombe took the radio from her but simply walked away from his pack and Cam’s. “We can’t mess with this stuff. You have the nanotech, right?”

“I’m not leaving him!”

“Do you have the nanotech?” Newcombe said. “He’ll see us down there. Come on. Goddammit, come on. There’s no point running around looking for him. We could miss each other and miss the plane!”

Ruth nodded, but the irrational feeling stayed with her as they ran. She hadn’t understood how deeply she was attached. She had been fooling herself pretending that her relationship with Cam was just physical, just circumstance, just anything. She would have paired herself with Newcombe if it was really only about a warm body.

Too soon another plane darted out of the heat, smaller, slower. The ‚ghters had come in very low, but this one kept within a few feet of the terrain, swerving and diving like an old barnstormer. The buzz of its engine was very different than the high scream of the jets. It was a stubby little Cessna.

Newcombe banged against a chain-link fence and cursed, rocking the wire violently. “Damn it!” They were a hundred yards from the air‚eld with no way through. He could have climbed it with no problem, but she had her arm.

Ruth glanced out into the rocks and bare earth again. What if Cam ran all the way back to our hiding place for me? she worried. She wanted to shout. Where are you?

Newcombe led her forty yards to a gate. He put his ri†e barrel against the lock and ‚red. They hustled between two long aluminum hangars as the Cessna droned into the open space ahead, but suddenly the plane lifted away.

“Wait, wait, we’re here!” Newcombe yelled into the radio. Then they got past the hangars and saw the runways were drifted over with sand. The desert had long since reclaimed this ‚eld exactly as it had buried the highways. The plane swung back again in a loop and Ruth glimpsed black skids against its belly. Of course. They knew what to expect from satellite photos. Their ‚rst pass had only been to get a closer look.

“Stay back,” Newcombe told her, maybe thinking of ‚re and shrapnel if it crashed.

The white Cessna kicked up sand as it touched down, bouncing. Newcombe waved and yelled as the plane trundled back around for takeoff, but he was looking past her shoulder. Ruth turned to see Cam behind them. She touched her hand to her chest as if to hold the warm feeling there.

“I told you,” Newcombe said. “Move!”

She resisted. She wanted to help Cam, but he waved her away so she turned and ran. The door of the plane was open. Ruth tried to climb aboard with Newcombe’s help. A man leaned out and grabbed her jacket.

Ruth looked up. “Thanks—”

There was something wrong with his face. A bandage. He was not wearing a containment suit or even a gas mask. She glanced at the cockpit. In the pilot’s seat was another man with the same perfect wound. No. The ‚rst man wore a square of white gauze over his right eye, while the second had a square taped over his left. Otherwise they seemed unhurt and even clean. New uniforms. Both of them held submachine guns.

Ruth began to push back against Newcombe, but he was stronger and the other man yelled, “Let’s go, let’s go!”

“Come on, Ruth!” Newcombe shouted.

She leaned inside despite her instincts. Maybe it was okay. The man in the cockpit had lowered his gun, and the ‚rst guy reached down to help Newcombe and Cam, too. No one else was aboard. The less weight, the longer their range. In fact, the thin carpet was spotted with holes where rows of seats had been torn out.

Ruth took one of the few that remained, and Cam fell heavily beside her. Newcombe dropped into a seat behind them. Then the other man bolted the door. “Strap in,” he said as he ducked into the cockpit.

The pilot was already accelerating. The plane slammed against the dunes and a familiar cold weight ‚lled Ruth’s chest like a ball of snakes, choking her. She’d forgotten. Her long months in the space station had left her uneasy with tight places. The rattling cabin felt like a deathtrap. Then they heaved into the air.

“What happened to their eyes?” she asked Cam, mostly to be close to him. The pilots’ wounds were too symmetrical, which made her wonder if they were self-in†icted. Why?

Cam only shook his head, still gathering himself. Then he turned to Newcombe and indicated his face.

“Nukes,” the soldier said quietly. “They’re afraid of more nukes. The †ash. If they only lose one eye, they can still land the plane.”