Jeff Carlson: Plague War

There were other planes in the sky, maneuvering for position. They were already miles away and Cam held still as he tried to picture the chase in his head, seeking any advantage. Should they use this chance to run? Where?

“Fuck, I’m an idiot,” Newcombe said as he turned to grab his pack. His radio.

“What’s happening?” Ruth asked, blocked in behind them.

“The ‚rst planes are from the rebels, maybe Canada,” Newcombe said. “That’s good. They’ll help us. I just never thought they’d risk it.”

Cam frowned as he glanced at the other man, sharing his disgust. They had all made the wrong assumption, always afraid of the sky, but it had only made sense to act as if they were alone. Except for Leadville’s new forward base, there were no organized forces here along the coast, either rebel or loyalist. The mountains in California and Oregon offered little more than a few scattered islands above the barrier, with few survivors. Their nearest allies were in Arizona and northern Colorado and Idaho, where the refugee populations had declared their independence from Leadville. But with the lion’s share of the United States Air Force, Leadville had claimed military superiority even before developing weaponized nanotech. Cam and Newcombe had never expected anyone to interfere.

Their radio was a small, broken thing — a headset and a control box. It was designed to be worn with a containment suit, the earpiece and microphone inside, the controls on the suit’s waist. They had cut it free of Newcombe’s gear on the ‚rst day, splicing the wires back together again. They’d also packed up Ruth and Cam’s radios as extras.

Newcombe held up the headset and then there was a woman whispering inside their little concrete box. The same woman as always. Every day, every night, Newcombe worked to ‚nd a signal other than the loop broadcast cajoling them to surrender, but the suit radio was more of a walkie-talkie than a real ‚eld unit. It had limited range and only operated on ten military bands, and Leadville was jamming all frequencies except this one.

Her words were calm and practiced. “. come for you anywhere, save you, just answer me…”

In the city and on the highway, they had also found police, ‚re‚ghter, and army radios for the taking. Ri†es, too, although Cam couldn’t use a larger weapon with the knife wound on his hand.

During the ‚rst days of the plague, local and federal forces had tried everything to meet the threat, often with opposing intents. There were roadblocks. There were eastbound convoys and escorts. Once they’d come across an old battle‚eld where an armored Guard company had turned back CHP and sheriff units, uselessly. It was all just part of the mess.

Good batteries were a problem, though. Many of the civilian and military radios had been left on as their operators †ed or died, maybe hoping, impossibly, that help could still come. Even when Newcombe got something working, the civilian frequencies were deserted, and the Sierras made it easier for Leadville’s forward base to override the military bands. Sitting on top of the immense wall of the mountains, Leadville could block out every other voice.

The woman taunted them. “If you’re hurt, if you’re tired, we have medical personnel standing by and we. ”

Newcombe switched through his channels rapidly. Static. Static. “Those jets have been trying to reach us this whole fucking time,” he said. “That’s why they’re down so low, to get under the jamming. To stay off Leadville’s radar net.”

“But what can they do?” Ruth asked. “Would they land?”

“No. Not ‚ghters. Not here. But they can give us information and they can keep Leadville off our backs. We had contingencies. We—”

A lot of things happened fast. Two of the planes roared back again almost directly overhead, an invisible pair of shock lines that hammered through the ruins. It was as if a giant hand dragged two ‚ngers across the houses and the water, lifting waves and debris — and inside this hurricane, a †urry of white-hot sparks tumbled down toward the sea, so bright that a con†ict of shadows rippled over the drowned city, stark and black even in full daylight. It was chaff, a defensive tool intended to blind and distract heat-seeking missiles. But if there were missiles, Cam didn’t notice. A smaller line of destruction chased after the jets, stitching its way through mud banks, buildings, and cars. Gun‚re. Cam saw the large-caliber explosive rounds kick apart an entire home, tearing through wood and brick like it was paper, before he winced and ducked away and three more jets screamed past.

At the same time Newcombe grunted, ha , triumphant. Beneath the noise, the radio was chanting in a man’s voice loud with popping static:

“. air is against the wall, the chair is against. ”

It faded out. The jets were gone. Cam didn’t understand the weird phrase, but Newcombe was nodding. Newcombe clicked twice at his SEND button, a quick and untraceable signal of squelch, acknowledging the message even as he looked back and forth at Cam and Ruth. “Good news,” he said.

Ruth woke up hurting. Her ‚ngers. Her wrist. The feeling was a hard, grinding itch and Ruth thrashed out of her sleeping bag, frantic to move away from the pain. It was a re†ex as basic as lifting your hand off of a ‚re, but these embers were inside her. The machine plague. She knew that but she moved anyway, screaming in the dark.

“Get up! Get up!”

The stars were intense, close and sharp, like a billion fragments of light. Even through the bronze lens of her goggles, Ruth could see the neat, open canyon of the residential street around her — but as she tried to stand, she cracked her knee on something. Then the ground rocked and clanged beneath her. She nearly fell. She grabbed with both arms and struck Newcombe as he sat up.

The two of them were in the truck bed of a big Dodge pickup, she remembered. They’d found a boat at last, well before sunset, but spent forty minutes looking for a vehicle capable of towing it. Negotiating the truck through the ruins cost them another hour. By then they were losing daylight and Cam suggested using the truck itself for camp, two of them sleeping as the third stood guard. The tires were as good as stilts and they’d soaked the road beneath with gasoline in case ants or spiders came hunting.

“What—” Newcombe said, but he stopped and stared at his gloved hands. “Christ.”

He felt it, too.

“We’re in a hot spot!” Ruth cried, wrenching her bad arm as she staggered up again. “Cam? Cam, where are you!? We have to get out of here!”

A white beam slashed across the darkness from inside the long, thin ‚shing boat, parked on its trailer. Then the †ashlight jogged higher, re†ecting on the beige paint as Cam stepped onto the bow. “Wait,” he said. “Take it easy.”

“We can’t—”

“We’ll go. Just wait. Get your stuff. Newcombe? We’d better splash ourselves with more gasoline. Who knows what the hell else is awake right now.”

His methodical voice should have helped Ruth control herself. He was right. There were too many other dangers to run blindly into the night, but the pain was bad and growing worse and every breath carried more nanotech into their lungs.

Their ski gear was only designed to repel snow and cold. Jackets, goggles, and fabric masks could never be proof against the plague. In fact, the masks were nearly useless. They wore their makeshift armor only to reduce their exposure, but it was an impossible battle. Thousands of the microscopic particles covered each short yard of ground, thicker here, thinner there, like unseen membranes and drifts. With every step they stirred up great puffs of it, yet even holding still would be no help. They were deep within an invisible ocean. Airborne nanos blanketed the entire planet, forming vast wells and currents as the weather dictated, and this fog would be its worst down here at sea level. The wind might sweep it up and away, but rain and runoff and gravity were a constant drag on the subatomic machines. Newcombe hadn’t wanted to drink the water because he was afraid of bacteria, but even if he’d had puri‚er tablets, Ruth would have stopped him because this shoreline must be dense with the machine plague.