Jeff Carlson: Plague War

First they emptied a pint of gasoline over the street above them, trying to cover their smell. Then they shared ‚ve cans of greasy uncooked soup and it was good beyond words, rich in fat and sodium. Cam’s stomach cramped. He ate too much too fast, dragging his mask down to gulp straight from the can, but slowly that knot relaxed as his body sang with new energy. Unfortunately all they’d found to drink were stale, odd-tasting boxes of juice, and they were leery of the water, certain it was teeming with bacteria and common household toxins like weed spray, detergents, and motor oil. Boiling it would at least kill any parasites, but they couldn’t risk a ‚re.

“Insects don’t have hemoglobin, either,” Ruth said, resuming their conversation from before. She was tenacious if nothing else, and Cam smiled to himself.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“They don’t have iron in their blood like we do, and the plague uses both carbon and iron to build more of itself. That could give them a little more protection. It might confuse the nanotech.” Her good hand shrunk into a ‚st. “Places that get hotter than this must have been absolutely wiped out, though, Arizona and New Mexico and Texas. Large parts of the South.”

“Yeah.” Cam thought of Asia and Africa, too, and everywhere along the equator. In jungles, the air would be hot and thick, which might increase the odds that bugs and reptiles would be susceptible to the plague.

There was nothing they could do about it. Ruth was still taking on more than she could handle, he thought. Or maybe she was only using the problem to distract herself.

The two jets crossed back again, trailing great wakes of sound. Newcombe identi‚ed the aircraft as F-22 Raptors and wrote brie†y in his journal, one of several little notepads he’d picked up. He expected to have to account for himself, providing a report of everything they’d seen and done, and Cam appreciated the man’s con‚dence more than he could say.

Ruth was already drowsing. “I’ll keep watch,” Cam said, and Newcombe lay down to sleep.

Cam felt surprisingly good. He was hurt, worn down, tense, and ‚lthy, but also full of purpose and self-worth. Companionship. Yes, they squabbled constantly, but it was for the best, everyone contributing. The redemption he needed was here with these two. He believed in what they were doing.

Still, it was damned odd. They were so dependent on each other. Day-to-day their survival was an intimate experience, demanding cooperation and trust, and yet the three of them were hardly more than strangers. There had never been time for more than a few words here and there, always on the run. Cam hadn’t even seen their faces for days. He only knew them by their actions.

Newcombe. The man was smart and powerful, with stamina to spare, but his pack was the heaviest and he’d already hiked twice as far as Ruth and Cam, ranging outward to set their bug traps. He had also suffered the most yesterday. He was peppered with bites, and Cam wanted him to nap because Cam needed him to stay sharp. It troubled him that their dynamic was uneasy. Newcombe was an elite and a combat vet. A sergeant. He naturally expected to take charge of two civilians, and yet Cam and Ruth each had their own authority.

Ruth. Cam turned to look and found her curled up against her pack like a little girl. His gaze lingered.

She was completely out of her element. Her power was in her intellect but she was changing, he knew, becoming more physical and more aggressive. Becoming ever more attractive. What he remembered most were her dark eyes and curly hair. Ruth was not what anyone would consider gorgeous, but she was trim and healthy and genuine.

He didn’t understand her guilt. Nothing that had happened was her fault, and the work she’d done was miraculous, and yet she clearly felt she was lacking. That was something else they shared — something else that set them apart from Newcombe. Newcombe had never failed. Yes, their takeover at the lab had ended in a bloodbath with ‚ve of his squadmates killed, but Newcombe had reacted as well as possible to every obstacle. None of the mistakes were his. He simply wasn’t hurt as deeply as the two of them. It was an awkward bond, but it was there.

Cam looked away from her and a brown spider †ed from his movement, scurrying across the concrete. He crushed it. He watched the ruins and the gossamer webs, ‚ghting inside himself for quiet.

He had learned to contain feelings like hunger and fear, but Ruth was something else. Ruth was warm and bright, and Cam was too starved for anything positive. He was too aware of what they could achieve together. The potential for improving the nanotech, the potential for new uses, was both stunning and dark. There was far more at stake than their own lives.

The world they knew was dying. Today was May 19 th, and yet they’d seen very little new spring growth and not a single †ower, not even resilient weeds like poppies or dandelions. The grasshoppers, ants, and beetles were devastating, but a lot of plants appeared to be wilting or extinct simply because they’d gone unpollinated. There didn’t seem to be any bees left, or butter†ies or moths, and it was the same in the mountains.

If they were successful, if humankind ever reclaimed the world below ten thousand feet, it would be a long struggle to survive as the environment continued to fall apart. Generations from now, their grandchildren would still be waging war against the bugs and sterile deserts and †oods, unless they developed new nano tools — machines to ‚ght and machines to build. Ruth had said that wasn’t at all impossible, and Cam realized he was watching her again when he should be looking outward.

“Shit,” he said.

The man-woman thing had already played some part in their relationship. If nothing else, she peed away from them, whereas Cam and Newcombe were as casual about it as boys could be. But there were other nuances — her hand in his, climbing over the bent wire of a fence, or her nod of appreciation when he opened a can of pears and gave it to her ‚rst. Had he ever done the same for Newcombe? He supposed so. More than once he’d grabbed the other man’s arm to help him past a car wreck. Last night he’d even offered Newcombe ‚rst chance at a jar of chocolate syrup because Ruth was still eating from a tin of ham, but with Newcombe these gestures were straightforward and thoughtless.

With Ruth, he read more into everything. He felt hope, and it was good and it upset him at the same time. Cam had no expectations that she regarded him the same way, not with his rough, blistered face. Not with his ragged hands.

He could have been angry, but he had seen what that kind of bitterness did to so many others. Sawyer. Erin. Manny. Jim. All of them dead. Cam had come far enough from those memories to see those people in a different light, and to see himself differently. Either you discovered how to live with yourself or you self-destructed, in hundreds of little ways or all at once, and Cam was thankful to be a part of something so much larger than himself. To be someone new.

But you can’t tell her, he thought. Things are too complicated as it is, and there’s no way she could —

Explosions pounded the earth. The vibrations hit in three or four rolling impacts and Cam jolted onto his knees and peered up out of the drain, looking for ‚re or smoke.

Newcombe wrestled past him. “Let me see.”

“It was that way.”

A steadier noise washed over them, a collection of howling engines that cut out of the southwest. The ‚ghters. Cam realized that what he’d thought were missile strikes had been sonic booms as the jets accelerated close above the city, ahead of their own sound, but then he saw two specks brie†y, darting east at an angle that did not correspond with the direction of the turbulence overhead.