Plague War

17

They should have stopped long before sunset, but Cam shared her urgency and they were so goddamned slow on foot. Every step counted. He wanted to get out in front again, ahead of everyone else. They had to assume that most people were also heading east, not just other Californians but the invaders, too.

They still didn’t know who it was. Life wasn’t like the movies, where heroes and villains came with stupid dialogue to make sure everyone understood what was happening. Maybe it didn’t matter, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that if they knew what they were up against it might improve their chances.

Behind them, the small arms ‚re had continued for nearly an hour, popping and cracking. More than once they’d stopped to look back, trying to place the ‚ght. Cam also wondered how many other eyes were watching. Two groups besides Gaskell’s? Could the Scouts have been that successful? He wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be. The planes would drive any survivors into the same plummeting maze of ridgelines and gullies, and everyone was a threat of one kind or another. But they all deserved to live. Cam had been angry with Gaskell, and yet now that those people were behind him, he was glad.

He’d come full circle. Saving them was a way to save himself. Ruth would always come ‚rst, but the two goals were dif‚cult to separate.

It was criminal to abandon anyone above the barrier. What could that possibly feel like, watching the invasion and then the activity in the valleys below with no way to move or save yourself? The idea left Cam shaking. They’d been so close. Another week, another month, and the vaccine could have reached survivors over an area of a hundred miles and thousands of lives. The invasion had stunted everything. Ultimately it might kill more Americans than had died in Leadville. Ruth was right. As soon as the new enemy immunized enough of their own men, they could put them on planes back to China or Russia to reactivate their missile bases.

How long would it be? Hours to cross the oceans, hours to power up their silos and retarget their ICBMs. The planes might have left California yesterday — but it wasn’t impossible that the rebel forces in the U.S. controlled their own missiles, some fraction of the American arsenal. Maybe there had been nuclear strikes across Asia or Europe, destroying the enemy’s capacity to hit North America again. Maybe the U.S. had already blasted the Himalayas or the mountains in Afghanistan. The invasion †eet might be the last remnant of the enemy, only powerful for the moment.

It was a cold thought, and it comforted him, because Cam was in agony. His ear smoldered with nanotech and a second infection had begun to spread through his ‚ngers. They’d walked into a hot spot.

Ruth had it, too. She lurched like a crab, trying to stay off her left foot even as she bent to that side and thumped her cast against her ribs, beating at her own pain. Cam was to blame. He’d wanted to protect her. He’d stayed in a †atter area of the valley because the going was easy, ignoring the confetti of sunbleached plastic garbage in the trees. The blast wave must have eddied here, depositing trash and a higher concentration of the plague, and at sixty-‚ve hundred feet they were far below the barrier. The trees had become ponderosa and sugar pine. The underbrush was often snarled and thick.

“ ’M sorry,” Cam said, glancing through the long shadows. He was looking for garbage in the branches as an indicator, but his mask was damp and smothering and his goggles fogged as he tried to maintain a quicker pace, stupid with exhaustion.

He led them straight into an ant colony.

* * * *

There were dozens of powdery brown cones on the ground, low circles of clean dirt as large as bread plates. Red mound ants. They had denuded the area of most of its brush and attacked many of the pines, too. Cam instinctively jogged into the clear space as he ran with his eyes up.

The colony boiled over their feet and shins before any of them noticed. Then Newcombe yelled as the ants rushed inside his pantleg, biting and stinging. “Yaaaa!”

Newcombe turned to swat his leg. Ruth fell. Cam clawed at her jacket but couldn’t keep her off of the spastic earth. The bugs were a living carpet, shiny, red, wriggling. They surged over her on every side.

“God oh God oh—” she screamed.

They were in Cam’s sleeves, too, in his collar and in his waist. He dragged Ruth up from the seething ants and †ailed at her clothes with one hand. No good. They were both crawling with tiny bodies and the twitching mass surrounded them in every direction — the ground, the trees.

Newcombe seized Ruth from behind and Cam shoved the two of them away. “Move!” he shouted. He used his pack like a club, banging it against Ruth to clear as many ants as possible.

It was the gasoline in the outer pocket that he wanted. He splashed the †uid ahead of them, very close. He was clumsy with the pack hanging on one arm and the bites like nails in his cheeks, neck, and wrists. They were near the edge of the colony. Cam saw open ground, and yet there were still ‚ve yards of writhing bugs between them and safety.

He ‚red his pistol against the mouth of the empty canteen. The ‚re seared his cheek and hair as the fumes ignited. The small explosion kicked his hands apart and he spun over backward, knocking all three of them down into the spotty blaze.

“Up!” Newcombe yelled, but Cam chopped his arm at Ruth’s legs when she staggered away. She was on ‚re — and the heat and the concussion had accomplished exactly what he’d hoped, shriveling the mass of ants beneath them. So he tripped her. He pushed her up and shoved her down again. They thrashed across the ground together, banging elbows and knees, both to put out the burning spots on their clothes and to crush the ants inside.

The colony wasn’t done. Another red mass skittered toward them from the left and Ruth wailed, bashing her forearm against Cam’s ear as she scrambled to her feet.

Newcombe leaned over them and shot into the dirt with his assault ri†e. The weapon was deafening. He squeezed off a full magazine in seconds, using the bullets like a shovel to rip up the wave of ants. It only bought them an instant. The ants swarmed right through the broken earth, but it was enough. They ran. They were alive. And yet above them, the smoke was like a rising †ag.

* * * *

“We can’t stop,” Newcombe said, gasping. He tugged at Ruth and Cam, leading them downhill, and then Cam grabbed him, too, when he put his shoulder into a †exing pine branch and rocked sideways. “The smoke cloud,” Newcombe said.

And our guns, Cam thought, but his head was a blur and he didn’t even try to speak. The nano infections in him had quickly spiked. The ant bites had ‚lled his skin with †ecks like scalding water. It was gone now, after a short eternity, but the pain had cost each of them badly. They moved like drunks. Their feet dragged on the earth and Ruth bumped against Cam and then Newcombe, swooning. Her jacket had charred open on her upper left sleeve. Dirt and ‚re-black clung to them all.

Then she collapsed.

* * * *

The valley ‚lled with shadows as the sun went below the close horizon of mountain peaks — and a sheet of grasshoppers lifted up into the last rays of daylight, swirling out from a gray, ravaged stretch of forest a few miles across from them. There were enemy troops passing through the area, or maybe only more refugees.

“Go as far as you can,” Newcombe said. “I’ll ‚nd you.”

Cam’s attention was elsewhere. Ruth was conscious but still dazed. When he pulled back her hood and jacket to drop her body temperature, she moaned and said, “The senator. Two o’clock.”

He could only hope they were out of the concentrated drift of the plague. Hyperthermia and dehydration would kill her just as well, and her delirium frightened him. He didn’t think she was capable of more than a few hundred yards. He knew he couldn’t carry her.

Newcombe planned to buy Cam and Ruth as much time as possible. They knew it was possible to use the bugs in their favor, so Newcombe would set out the last of their lard and sugar across the mountainside. A new frenzy of ants and other insects might divert whoever was coming. If not, he would try to lead them away, sniping at them with his ri†e. Both men had one of their little radio headsets, and they’d divided the spare equipment and batteries evenly.

“Here.” Newcombe weighed the two thin packets of Kool-Aid mix in his palm before passing one to Cam. “Eat this. Give most of it to her, but you eat some, too. It’ll help.” Then he stood and slung his ri†e. “I’ll catch up tonight,” he said.

Cam roused himself in time to stop the Special Forces sergeant before he’d gone too far. “Hey,” he called, thinking of all the things that should have been clear between them — the things he’d seen and meant but hadn’t spoken of. “Be careful,” Cam said.

Newcombe nodded. “Just keep going.”

* * * *

The two of them came to a road suddenly and Cam hesitated, looking up and down the smooth blacktop. The road made a small two-lane corridor through the forest and the temptation drew him sideways despite Ruth’s weight. She nearly fell, sagging against him. Cam looked at the road again. They could walk far more easily on the †at, open surface, but it was also a good place to be seen. They had to stay in the brush and the trees.

“Fast as you can,” Cam said, dragging her forward. Their boots clocked on the asphalt. They were across in seconds and then he glanced back at the sky. Twilight was giving way to full night. His guess was they’d gone no more than half a mile, which was more than he’d expected. The slope helped. Ruth moved like a broken doll. He didn’t even think she could see where they were going. She just leaned against him and wheeled her legs as best she could, kicking at him.

They blundered on until Cam smashed them into a tree. It was like waking up. Enough, he thought. That has to be enough.

He angled uphill again into a clump of saplings that might hide them from anyone else heading down the mountain. Maybe he would hear them on the road, too.

Ruth fell onto her back, heaving for air. Cam dropped his pack and tried to ‚nd water. There was none. He still had one can of soup left, though, and found the can opener. Some of the precious juice slopped out when he wrenched off the lid.

“Ruth?” he said. “Ruth.” He took off his own goggles ‚rst. The cold night felt amazing and strange and he breathed it in to be sure he’d feel a nano infection before her. Then he stripped her goggles and jacket. Body heat leapt from her like a phantom.

He helped her drink, cradling her cheek against his shoulder. Maybe ten minutes passed that way. A small peace. He ruined it himself. He thought to kiss her. It was a simple thing. She was the only softness in his world and he’d ‚nally worn through his own defenses.

He studied her lips, still smooth and perfect despite the sweat, dirt, and creases left by her armor. She reacted. Her eyes shifted to his and he saw her recognize the intent in his face, the one spark of desire inside all his exhaustion and hurt. He turned away.

“Cam.” Her voice was a murmur and she put her good hand on his leg. “Cam, look at me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No.” Ruth moved her glove to his rough, bearded cheek. “Please, no. I owe you everything.”

I don’t want it to be like this, he thought.

“Just once,” she said. “Please. For luck.”

Then she did exactly the wrong — or right — thing. She lifted her face and gently leaned her nose against his cheekbone, showing him what her skin would feel like.

Cam pressed his mouth to hers and it gave him new energy. It changed the long tension between them. All around them, things were worse than ever, but this one small act was sweet and right.

He arranged her pack for her like a pillow and set their guns on the ground beside them. Ruth was quickly unconscious. Cam brie†y watched the stars through the trees overhead. Once he brought his bandaged left hand to his ruined lips and the concave on one side where his missing teeth had been.

* * * *

She kissed him again in the morning without saying anything ‚rst, tugging her mask down and then reaching for his, a quick kiss with her mouth shut. Maybe it was fortunate that they had so many more pressing needs.

“We have to ‚nd water,” he said.

“Yes.”

Ruth kept close as he dug the radio out of his pack and he looked sideways at her, distracted. They were both faceless again in their goggles and hoods, but Ruth touched his shoulder and nodded. Sunlight played on their ‚lthy jackets, rocking down through the trees. They needed to get moving, but he dreaded it. His knee had stiffened, his back, his neck, and his feet were battered and raw.

The radio was full of voices on seven channels. Maybe it had always been that way, but they’d been blocked from the noise by the mountains and the jamming of Leadville’s forward base. Neither of those obstacles existed anymore.

All of the broadcasts were military. All of them sounded American, too, except for one woman with an accent. “Condor, Condor, this is Snow Owl Five, we can af‚rm One One Four. Repeat, we can af‚rm One One Four.”

“She sounds French,” Ruth said.

Most of it was in similar code, numbers and bird names. It should have been reassuring to hear so much commotion. America was still on its feet, even now.

Cam didn’t trust them. He understood that if Newcombe was gone, it was up to him to get Ruth to safety. He needed to make contact with the rebel forces, but it would be very, very dif‚cult to take that gamble and reach out into the airwaves. Worse, all of the frequencies Newcombe had said to use were occupied. Cam’s instinct was to stay quiet.

They shared three sports bars for breakfast and choked down a handful of pills, too, four aspirin apiece and two antihistamine tablets. The drug would increase their grogginess but the ant bites felt awful and they were both scratching.

At last, Cam broadcast right on top of the other noise. “Newcombe,” he said. “Newcombe, you there?” The voices didn’t notice. He lacked the transmitting power to reach Utah or Idaho and apparently there wasn’t anyone listening nearby, either.

They were alone.

* * * *

They hiked.

* * * *

They hiked and Cam made sure not to rush her. The slower pace also allowed him to watch the terrain more carefully. They walked into a termite swarm and quickly backed off, not wanting to disturb the bugs. The front edge of the swarm rolled into the sky but Cam hoped the movement wasn’t unusual enough to attract the interest of anyone watching the valley. That was important. He couldn’t see much through the trees, but there were still planes overhead and the enemy must have observers on the mountaintops. Once a jet whipped past low enough to shake the forest. Had it been hunting them with infrared?

Cam led her to a creek an hour later and they both fell onto the crumbling bank. He leaned his mouth straight into the water. Ruth had a harder time with only one arm. She scooped her glove up to her lips again and again until Cam gained control of himself and ‚lled her canteen.

“Not too much,” he said. “It’ll make you sick.”

Ruth only nodded and laughed, splashing water on her face and scalp. The sound was a tired coughing but she laughed, and Cam was trans‚xed by it.

In some ways their wounds and exhaustion had left them childlike. Their vision was becoming more and more immediate, limited to the moment. Maybe that was good. No one’s sanity could endure pain without end. It was a survival mechanism. But it was also dangerous.

Cam forced himself to get up and walk away from her to ‚nd a better vantage point.

“Wait.” Ruth scrambled to her feet.

“I’m just looking—”

“Wait!”

He let her catch up. He found an opening in the trees where they could gaze back over the long rising shapes of the mountains both west and south. There was smoke in both directions, towering up from the forest.

“Let’s sleep,” he said. “Okay?”

Ruth nodded, but she waited to make sure he sat down before she did, too, leaning her shoulder against his. It was an odd kind of love. Sisterly, yes. They were both unreachable in their ‚lthy armor, but that would be different at safe elevation and the thought of her was strong and good. It was a new reason to live.

Cam monitored Newcombe’s channels again. Ruth napped. A cloud of black †ies found them and buzzed and crawled but didn’t wake her. Neither did the whispering radio. The sun hung at noon for what seemed like a very long time and Cam silently held her.

* * * *

He woke himself when Newcombe said, “David Six, this is George. Do you copy? David Six.”

The transition from sleep to consciousness eluded him for too long. Cam fumbled the headset over his hood and upped the volume, thumbing his send button. “This is Cam. Are you there? Hey, it’s Cam.”

David Six was their call sign for the rebels, but Newcombe was gone. The light had changed. The sun was near the high line of the mountains in the west. Dusk stretched over the long slopes and pooled in the valleys, revealing the far-off glow of wild‚res.

Cam stared at the thin control box. Should he switch frequencies? “Newcombe!” he said on 6, then changed to 8. “Newcombe, this is Cam.”

Ruth said, “Are you sure it was him?”

There was a man on 8 reciting coordinates, but a different voice broke over him. “Cam,” the radio said. “I hear you, buddy. Are you guys all right?”

“Oh, thank God.” Ruth squeezed Cam’s arm in celebration.

But he’d gone cold. “Shh,” he said, turning to look into the woods with a †icker of panic. Buddy. Newcombe had never said anything like that before and Cam shifted with restless fear. What if Newcombe had been captured?

“I’m pretty sure I picked up your trail,” the radio said. “Why don’t you stop. I’ll catch up.”

The two of them had probably kicked over every pinecone, rock, and fallen branch between here and the road. Jesus. And he’d slept. He’d sat here and slept for hours.

“Cam, can you hear me?” the radio said.

“You need to answer him.” Ruth was quiet and tense. She had also turned to gaze into the shadows behind them and Cam reluctantly nodded.

He spoke to his headset. “Do you remember the name of the man who got us off the street in Sacramento?”

“Olsen,” the radio said. One of Newcombe’s squadmates had given his life to delay the paratroopers who cornered them in the city, and Cam did not believe that Newcombe would disgrace his friend’s bravery. Not immediately. It was the best test that he could manage, providing Newcombe a chance to get it wrong if the enemy had a knife to his throat.

“Okay,” Cam said. “We’ll wait.”

* * * *

They tried to set up an ambush just the same, hooking back above the trail they’d left. They waited in a jag of earth with their pistols, but only one man came out of the night.

“Newcombe,” Cam said softly. The soldier ran to them and gripped Cam’s hand in both of his own, eager for contact. With Ruth, he was more careful, touching his glove to her good arm.

He was different. He was chatty. Cam thought Newcombe had been more scared than he would ever admit. He seemed to notice the change in them, too. As they ate the last of the packaged food, Newcombe looked up from his dinner repeatedly to peer at Cam or Ruth in the darkness — mostly Ruth. Cam smiled faintly. He was glad to have anything to smile about and he saw a tired, answering slant on Ruth’s mouth as they shared two cans of chicken stew from Newcombe’s pack.

“The bug traps worked,” Newcombe said. “Worked like crazy. There were ants coming out of the ground over a mile away. I had to circle north, that’s why I got so far behind you.”

“Did you ever see who was coming down the mountain?”

“No. But the radio says it’s the Russians.”

“The Russians,” Ruth said.

“Yeah.” Newcombe had left his set on, squawking beside him. Cam thought he’d probably been making calls the entire time just to hold on to the illusion of another human presence.

Only bad luck had kept them from hearing each other. Newcombe said, “It sounds like they fucked us in some land deal and brought the nuke into Leadville with their top diplomats and a bunch of kids. Their own kids. I—”

The dim murmur of voices was overcome by a louder broadcast, a woman speaking low and fast. “George, this is Sparrowhawk. George, come back. This is Sparrowhawk.”

Newcombe dropped his stew and grabbed the headset, talking before he’d even brought the microphone to his face. “George, George, George, this is George, George, George.”

The three of them were so intent on the radio that at ‚rst Cam didn’t realize there was another sound rising over the forest. A distant, familiar roar. He looked up through the dark trees.

“I need con‚rmation, Sparrowhawk,” Newcombe said, before he turned and muttered, “It’s our guys. It has to be our guys.”

The world exploded around them. A jet ripped overhead, dragging a wall of noise behind it. The rush of turbulence crashed into the mountains and echoed back. Dry pine needles and twigs showered onto Cam’s hood and shoulders.

“Hotel Bravo, Bravo November,” the woman said, “Hotel Bravo, Bravo November.”

“There are runners at third and ‚rst,” Newcombe said urgently. “The batter is Najarro. The pitcher is a Yankee. The ball goes to third.”

Her engines were red-white ‚re in the night, curving upward suddenly in a hard leftward arc. Was she coming back again? Newcombe’s broadcast couldn’t reach more than a few miles, but if she circled she’d give away their location — She was performing evasive manuevers. There were more ‚res in the sky. A peak to the south had lit up with searing yellow trails and the jet’s engines †ared as the pilot boosted away.

“Missiles,” Cam said, because Newcombe’s head was down, concentrating on his message.

“The ball goes to third,” Newcombe repeated.

Static. Her engines whipped down against the black earth and vanished behind a hill. Then an explosion skipped up from the terrain. Cam and Ruth reached for each other. “No,” Ruth said, but the engines rose into sight again, swiftly dwindling into the east. It was a missile that had struck the ground.

Cam decided this couldn’t have been the ‚rst scout that U.S. forces had sent blitzing into California, its cameras snapping like guns. “Baseball,” he said to Newcombe. “You think the Russians are listening, too.”

“Maybe not.”

“You used my name.” Cam had never been on the radio, and wouldn’t have been a part of any manifest before the expedition into Sacramento. “The pitcher is a Yankee. New York.”

“You want to go north again,” Ruth said. “Where third base would be from here.”

“Northeast. Exactly. There’s a county air‚eld near Doyle, not far inside the California-Nevada border. It’s right in line with the grid I just laid out.”

“What if the pilot doesn’t remember?” Cam said. “Or if she didn’t even hear you?”

“She’ll have it on tape. They’ll ‚gure it out.”

“Unless she was out of range.”

Newcombe shrugged con‚dently in the dark. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’ll be back.”