Nancy Kress - Nothing Human

“No, I was going to… but I forgot because… she went for a walk, she said. Her Uncle Keith finally died, and she wanted to be alone.”

“Which way?”

“West. But you can’t…” Jody was already gone toward the barn to saddle his horse. A half moon, stars… all her boys could ride at night if they had to. Heart hammering, Theresa went inside.

How long?

They were back in an hour, Lillie seated on the horse, clutching the pommel desperately. Lillie, child of New York subways and a spaceship, had never learned to ride. Jody walked alongside, leading the horse. Theresa couldn’t help her image: Joseph and the pregnant Mary. None of her kids except Carlo would even recognize the icon.

“She’s fine,” Jody called. “But, Mom, we’ve got trouble.” Inside, he told them: a large band of refugees camped by the arroyo a mile to the west. Lillie had seen them before they’d seen her, and had caught the glint of moonlight on guns. She’d been starting back when Jody found her. He’d taken a closer look with night-vision binoculars.

“They have at least one shoulder-mounted missile launcher. Military, looks like. About thirty men and women, no kids that I saw. Military tents. This is no ragtag bunch of migrants, Mom.”

No. Theresa knew what it was. How had they escaped it this long, so many years, with the land growing more arable and desirable and prosperous? Dumb luck, she guessed.

She said quietly, “Lillie, take the other girls into the bedroom. You go, too, Sam and Alex and Rafe.”

“No,” Rafe said.

Theresa looked at him. She remembered him as a skinny, intrusive, intelligent nerd, and he still was. She almost tended to forget that he and Alex (but not Sam, noisy as ever) were around, so completely had they become her sons’ responsibility.

Rafe said, “We’re in this together. You said so over and over, Theresa. Whatever you’re going to do, tell us.”

“All right!” Theresa snapped. Rafe wasn’t the problem, anyway. Scott was.

She continued, “We have a few guns and ammunition and five people who can shoot. Nowhere near enough to stand against what Jody and Lillie saw. We’ve known that for a while. But we also have something else, something left over from before you came back, Rafe. A bioweapon.”

Scott jerked in his chair, rose to his feet.

“It’s an engineered virus,” Theresa said steadily. “Ten built-in replications after release before the terminator gene kicks in. Airborne. Lethal within five minutes.”

“Jesus God, Theresa!”

“Scott, don’t lecture me. Just don’t. I knew this day would come eventually, and when I had the chance to buy this stuff left over from the war, I did. I’m not letting all of you die because I’m too squeamish. That would be like being presented with a choice and choosing them to live, not us.”

Her knees trembled. Yes, she’d known this day would come, but she’d dreaded its coming, too. Thirty men and women… who would kill without any trembling. Remember that. At least there were no children with them. She hoped.

Theresa looked at the faces around the room. The rains had tapered off and the solar panels generated every clear day, but she tended to store the power or use it for farm needs. Candlelight flickered shadows around the room so that she saw a cheekbone here, a chin there. But it seemed to Theresa that she could see all their eyes, every pair. Shocked, frightened, impassive, angry.

“You can’t,” Scott said. “You don’t even know that those refugees are going to attack here!”

“I know. And so do you. They’re camped closest to us, we’re on a line from the other two attacks, people don’t carry around missile-launchers for fun. And anyway,” she said, her voice rising in fury, “what if the attack isn’t on us? What if it’s on the Graham farm, or even on Wenton? Is it the moral high ground to let those people die because we’re not the direct target?”

Scott said, “You’re going to kill—”

“Yes! Would you rather sacrifice these kids and unborn babies and my sons and daughter and grandchildren? Would you, Scott? Because if the answer is no, you better not judge what I’m doing.”

“You’re not the law, Tess!”

Abruptly the fury went out of her. “Yes. I am. Out here, now, I am.”

She put her hands over her face. Jody took them down, gently. “I’ll do it, Mom. Tell me where the canister is.”

She gazed at her first-born. Yes, he was the right person. Spring was too sweet-natured, Carlo too entangled in religious conflict. Carlo sat in a corner, his face gray. Well, she couldn’t talk to him now. At least he wasn’t interfering.

She led Jody out to the porch. Scott took a step as if to follow her, then didn’t. Outside, the infernal wind howled around the barn, blew her hair into her mouth, sent a chair carelessly left outside flying across the yard. Night wind, hot angry breath of the violated land. Well, the wind was her ally now.

“You’ll have to circle around the far side of the arroyo to get downwind of them,” she told Jody. “The dispersion distance is supposed to be only a mile, but I don’t trust it. Some micro might reach here. I only have six masks. I think I better take everybody in the bus, maybe three miles out into the desert.”

“All right,” Jody said neutrally.

“If they catch you—”

“They won’t catch me.”

They walked hand-in-hand to the barn, Jody keeping Theresa upright against the wind and her own trembling. She showed him where the canister was buried and gave him the code to activate it. His horse was already saddled from looking for Lillie. In ten minutes he was gone.

Theresa fought her way back to the house. “All right, everybody, into the bus. Now. We need to get out past the dispersion distance. Come on, we don’t have time to waste.” She didn’t look at any of them directly.

They crowded into the ancient bus, eerily silent. The only noise was the wind. Theresa drove until she reached the start of a patch of desert, a reverse oasis in the greening land. When she turned off the engine, it was pitch dark.

Julie sobbed softly.

Someone cleared his throat.

The baby, carried in Senni’s arms, woke and whimpered for the breast.

Then she heard Lillie’s clear voice. “How long before we can return, Tess?”

“I’m going to give it five hours.” Twenty minutes per replication, ten replications. After that, even if remnants did reach the house, the virus would be inactive.

They would all have to endure five hours here. So they would.

Maybe a few of the kids would be able to fall asleep.

When they returned to the farm, Jody was there. He nodded at her. Carlo pushed past his brother and headed for the barn. Scott went directly to his room, looking suddenly much older than his fifty-three years.

Jody and Spring sat with her, drinking coffee, saying nothing, until Theresa told them she could sleep now, from sheer exhaustion.

When she woke late the next morning, all three of her sons were gone, plus, surprisingly, Sam. They’d taken the cart and the decrepit horse that drew it. Carlo must have been driving; Jody’s and Spring’s horses were gone but Carlo’s bay snorted in its stall. Theresa thought of saddling him, but she was at best an indifferent rider and the wind blew at its full force. She returned to the house.

They came in after sunset, filthy and silent. She had already brought the well hose to the back shed and filled the two oversize plastic garbage cans sometimes used as vertical bathtubs. When the men were washed, she had their dinner ready. She’d sent everyone else to their rooms or the “den,” damn if she cared how cramped they were in there for an entire evening. Scott had left a day early to do his doctoring in Wenton, leaving word with Senni that he’d spend several nights there. Just as well.