Plague Zone

22

Sweeney returned with Huff forty minutes later. Deborah helped them decontaminate both their suits, and then herself again — but she suggested it was impossible to clean the blood and tissue samples. Huff had splashed two canteens with gore and sealed several pieces of charred flesh in another. Bringing the canteens inside the plane would risk infecting everyone, because irradiating the blood to kill the mind plague would also kill the vaccine. Nor did they have any way to separate the two. That meant it would be a toss-up as to whether anyone without a suit would absorb the vaccine before the plague.

Cam volunteered to be the first to try it, earning another kind word from Emma. “You’re very brave,” she said, but Walls stopped him. “You know Freedman, don’t you?” Walls asked, and it was true that Cam had secondhand knowledge of her, which no one else could match. That put him in Walls’s elite with the other untouchables like their pilots, translators, and medics.

One of Foshtomi’s Rangers drew the short straw. His name was Ayers. Foshtomi volunteered herself instead, but Ayers refused. “It’s all right, Lieutenant,” he said.

Ayers walked out wearing his biochem mask and hood. Deborah produced a needle from a med kit. She wet it in the blood, then stabbed his forearm, repeating the process several times. Finally, Ayers took off his gear. He went to the warehouse door and walked outside, escorted by Sweeney, who reported every move on his suit radio.

“He’s okay,” Sweeney said. “It works.”

“What about Ruth?” Ingrid asked. “Cam? What in the world are we going to do about Ruth?”

They stood beside the plane, breathing in the acrid, dusty smell of the ash. The immunizations were done. The soldiers were removing their goggles and jackets and chatting in quiet relief, even laughing. Ingrid’s hazel eyes were sad. Cam hugged her again, but he couldn’t allow his heart to soften. He wanted to keep his rage. So while Ingrid nestled her face against his neck, he was rigid, with his chin up, which is why he saw Deborah approaching with a bloody canteen.

Deborah had stripped off her containment suit. She pointed in the direction of the RVs beyond the warehouse and said, “Do you two want to come with me?”

“Yes.”

“It’s good to see you again,” Deborah added, briefly embracing Cam herself. The gesture was uncharacteristic — but after so much death, all of them were more open and physical. Every word felt like good-bye.

The three of them walked outside as Bornmann and Pritchard rolled open the tall warehouse doors. Most of the others were already sorting through their vehicles, food, and other gear, unencumbered by the fear of infection. Bobbi glanced after Cam, but she’d gone to help Lang with three cases of water and didn’t break away. Maybe that was smart.

Deborah led them to one of the RVs, a huge, sand-colored Holiday Rambler. “Brace yourselves,” she said. “This isn’t Ruth. Do you understand? This isn’t Ruth like you knew her.”

Cam heard a repetitive clunk clunk, clunk clunk from inside. What was it? The A/C or the plumbing? He met Deborah’s gaze and realized she was gritting her teeth.

“Okay,” he said.

Deborah pushed in the folding door and led them up the steep, narrow steps. Inside, the floor broadened. The luxury vehicle was nine feet wide with long, tinted windows and a lighter windshield. Behind the driver’s seat, tan couches and a wood table filled the front space. Cam wasn’t watching where he was going. He cracked his head on a low-slung TV, but didn’t take his eyes off of Ruth.

She was tied to a cabinet knob behind one couch, her hands drawn up behind her head. Sweeney did this, Cam thought. He couldn’t imagine Deborah binding her friend so thoroughly. It was an immobilizing position Ruth couldn’t outfox without hurting herself. That basic instinct seemed to work. She’d slumped partway off the couch, yet hadn’t fought the rope any further, although her ankle beat steadily against the couch’s baseboard. Clunk clunk. Clunk clunk. The rhythm was unending. Was she trying to signal them? If so, her memory was stunted and pathetic, limited to a few seconds. She was trapped in a loop. Clunk clunk. Clunk clunk.

She stank. Her clothes were filthy with ash, sweat, blood, and urine. Worse, she was drooling, and her eyes were twisted in their sockets.

“Oh,” Ingrid gasped. “Oh, no. Ruth, no.”

Cam didn’t move. His thoughts had been compressed into a sharp dark line of disbelief. It rocked him, but he held onto his sense of destiny.

“Try the vaccine,” he said. If Ruth was wrong, it would counter the infection. Deborah went to Ruth’s side — but Ruth was proved right, as always. They waited several minutes after puncturing her thigh with the bloody needle, yet there was no change in her vacant, animal face.

Ingrid cried. Deborah’s smooth, pretty features screwed tight as she battled her own tears. Cam’s feelings were strangely muted. This wasn’t the end. Ruth was alive, and she’d talked about how there appeared to be different stages of infection. She might wake up on her own tomorrow. Maybe it would take a week. The main thing was to be sure the Chinese weren’t in total control, so they couldn’t hurt or enslave her.

“Can you hear me?” Deborah asked. At first Cam wasn’t sure who she was speaking to. He felt very far away, but then Deborah said, “Ruth? Ruth, honey, please.”

“I’ll take care of her,” Ingrid said, kneeling. She tried to soothe Ruth’s jerking leg with one hand. Ruth was oblivious. Ingrid looked back up at them. Her eyes were frightened, but her voice was firm. “I’ll stay with her, Cam. You can count on that. I’ll feed and bathe her and keep her safe.”

“Yes.”

It didn’t matter if he made it back. As long as they beat the Chinese, that was okay. Even if they failed… It’s okay, he thought. If there is anything on the other side, I’ll find you. If we do go to heaven or anyplace like that, I’ll wait for you. We’ll be together.

Allison was in his mind, too, but his love for both women was the same. It hurt him and filled him with resolve at the same time, and it was better than anything else he’d known.

Cam bent and kissed Ruth’s sweaty hair, lingering against her scalp as he remembered the good smell of her. I’ll find you, he thought.

Then he turned and walked away.

General Walls couldn’t risk himself on the plane. If they did establish contact with other U.S. forces, he needed to be alive to coordinate them, so Walls intended to remain in Colorado with only Rezac and Ayers in his command, plus Ingrid and Bobbi as nursemaids for Ruth. They would go south. Another small squad would drive east.

Foshtomi herself refused to stay behind. “Sir, I’m responsible for what happened to Goldman,” she said. “You have to let me be a part of this.”

Walls agreed. He also allowed Sergeant Huff to stay with Foshtomi. He put Pritchard in charge of the second squad, which consisted only of Pritchard, Emma, and the other two survivors from Foshtomi’s group. Cam thought it might have made more sense to leave Foshtomi or even Huff in charge, but Walls must have trusted his commandos more. Lieutenant Pritchard would be on his own. In fact, if Walls was captured or killed, Pritchard would become the acting U.S. commander in chief. Captain Bornmann outranked Pritchard, but Bornmann would be radio silent in the plane, thus removing him from the chain of command. Walls also refused to send any of their codes or data on the mission into California. He gave one of his laptops and several files to Pritchard instead.

Rezac had a different sheet of notes for Bornmann. She also passed around her laptop. An hour ago, she’d brought up several file photos of Kendra Freedman — but she had no printer. There was no way to share the pictures, except to commit them to memory.

Freedman had been in her early forties before the machine plague. She was chubby and very black, an African American woman with pitted, rich chocolate skin and even darker lips. Her hair was straightened. She had surprisingly small eyes for her broad face, maybe an illusion caused by her fat cheeks.

While everyone studied the photos, Rezac discussed the Osprey’s transponders with Bornmann. “Leave ‘em on,” she said.

“I can disable the Mode II,” he argued, but Rezac said, “That’ll flag you as a problem as soon as you’re on radar. None of their stolen aircraft run dark.”

“Take care of Ruth,” Cam said to Bobbi and Ingrid. Bobbi kissed him. “God bless. Be safe.”

Bornmann powered up the plane and trundled out of the warehouse. Cam didn’t look for Ruth before he climbed in. He preferred to recall her bright, laughing face instead of the rag doll she’d become. There were no seats. The only restraints were a trio of cargo belts that had been bolted across the struts on the port wall. Cam sat with Foshtomi and Huff against the canvas straps and Deborah joined them, looking grim.

The Osprey heaved into the sky. It lurched out of the narrow space inside the depot’s fence, thrumming with its rotors overhead. After a few minutes, Cam heard the wings squeal on either side. The familiar chopping sound of a helicopter’s blades intensified into the softer blur of an airplane’s propellers. Their speed increased. Somewhere below, General Walls and the others were leaving, too, but their Humvees were already far behind.

Cam had fifty questions for Deborah. She probably wanted at least as many answers from him, but neither felt like talking. They both drowsed. So did Foshtomi, Huff, and Medrano. The drone of the V-22 lulled them, and everyone had been pushed beyond endurance. Nor was there anything to see. The interior of the plane fluttered with shadows and light, which grew more distinct as they escaped the fallout. Sunlight gleamed in the windshield. Cam should have slept, but his thoughts wouldn’t quit. His muscles wouldn’t relax. The best he could manage was a light, waking doze.

His view through the front of the aircraft was blocked by Sweeney, who stood between the two pilots’ seats, keeping his head down with Bornmann and Lang. They expected trouble. It didn’t happen. The Osprey hummed into the west. Sweeney continued to study Rezac’s notes, ruffling through the few pages with nervous energy. He rearranged and folded the paper and scribbled in the margins with a blue pencil.

They’d been flying for twenty minutes when Lang began to chatter in Mandarin. Just as suddenly, he stopped.

They had more than eight hundred miles to go. The Osprey could push as fast as 315 miles per hour, yet Bornmann said he’d keep it at cruising speed, which was closer to 275 mph. He didn’t want to look like trouble. Also, he wanted to conserve fuel. With full tanks and a small payload, the Osprey’s range was over 2,400 miles, but someone must have bled off its fuel for other purposes during the long peace. The tanks were barely half full. Even so, with nothing on board except eight people, small arms, and other gear, Bornmann estimated their max range at 1,500 miles. It wasn’t inconceivable that they could fly into San Bernadino and escape again without needing to refuel. They wouldn’t be able to go far, but that extra margin might make the difference between life or death.

Once they hit a pocket of turbulence. Several times, Bornmann banked through minor course corrections or Cam’s stomach felt the aircraft ease up or down. His impression was they’d never lifted far from the ground and he wondered at one big sweeping turn to the left. Were they avoiding mountains?

The flight became mundane. Medrano excused himself to go to the bathroom by the rear loading ramp. Deborah and Cam each took their turns. Foshtomi passed around water, coarse bread, and dried peppers. Cam reveled in the strong flavor, chewing with his eyes shut. He thought of Ruth. Allison. Everything that could have been.

“Heads up!” Lang shouted, looking back from his copilot seat for Sweeney even he began to jabber into his headset in a much calmer voice.míng hi,“ he said.míng hi. Wán bi.”

Someone’s seen us, Cam thought.

“Here we go,” Foshtomi murmured as Lang said, “W dn wèi zhng yòng zhè jià fi j yòng yú yì liáo chè tuì. W mén zài fi j shàng yu q ming shng yuán hé ling ming s zh. Wán bì.”

Beside him, Sweeney said, “You have to give them a name. Here.”

Sweeney pointed to his notes and Lang said, “W shì shn yáng meng h duì Bi duì zhng. W zhòng fù y biàn. W shì shn yáng mng h dui Bi dui zhng. Yu xin y y si míng hi. Wán bi.”

Cam didn’t think they’d been flying for more than two hours yet. That meant they were still over Arizona or Nevada or just barely inside California’s borders. The game was only beginning.

The NSA had caught and decrypted thousands of exchanges between Chinese aircraft and ground control. Some of those signals were very recent, and Rezac had given Bornmann and Lang as much intel as possible. They could only hope their codes worked. In their favor, China had never been as advanced as the U.S. at data sorting or systems integrity. Even better, the Chinese Air Force had been confused even before the missile strikes. U.S. Command estimated that less than 40 percent of the enemy’s strength consisted of Chinese aircraft. The rest were captured American planes, both military and civilian.

Cam wasn’t sure what Lang was saying, except for what he’d gleaned from hearing the commandos discuss their cover story. They would pretend they were a squad of Shenyang Fierce Tigers, whom Rezac believed were involved in the assault on Grand Lake. Lang would assert that the Osprey had been commandeered to bring the worst of their casualties back to California.

“Què rèn,” Lang said. Then, after a moment, “Bù w zhòng fù y biàn. Y y si míng hi. Wán bì.” His tone was level but he grimaced up at Sweeney.

“This was a mistake,” Medrano said.

“Shut up,” Foshtomi snapped. “We can outsmart those fuckin’ Chinamen any day of the week.”

That’s right, Cam thought. He gave Foshtomi an admiring look yet didn’t say anything, touching her arm and then raising one finger to his lips. It wouldn’t help Lang to have Americans chatting in the background.

The silence was anticlimactic. Lang hit two switches above his head. Bornmann continued to fly the aircraft, and, in back, Cam and Foshtomi exhaled at the same time. They were both pleased by the small coincidence. Foshtomi bumped his shoulder with her own in a blunt, sisterly way.

“They bought it,” Sweeney said.

Lang nodded. “They’re a mess. We’re cleared into Bakersfield. Sounds like that’s the nearest base they’ve got operational.”

“What about Edwards or Twenty-Nine Palms?” Bornmann asked.

“Blown away,” Lang said.

“We need a better story before we divert into Los Angeles,” Sweeney said, fidgeting with his notes. “Let’s stick with the idea that we’re a medevac. There’ll be casualties in L.A., too. We can say we have room to evac some of their—”

An alarm sounded in the cockpit. Bee bee bee bee bee.

“Oh fuck,” Bornmann said. “Strap in.”

“Bogies at four o‘clock!” Lang yelled.

The Osprey was already rolling to its portside. Cam banged against the curved wall with Deborah and Medrano on top of him.

Through the tangle, looking forward, Cam saw Sweeney hanging onto Bornmann’s seat. Then Sweeney opened his arms. He leapt for the same area where the rest of them were piled on the wall, which had almost become the floor. Cam felt the port engine screaming somewhere beneath him. The fuselage shuddered as if buffeted by the wind.

“Strap in!” Sweeney yelled. “Strap in! Strap in!”

The Osprey carried no armament. Nor was its top speed any match for fighters, much less ground-to-air missiles. Their only hope was evasive action, and the plane lifted and spun. Cam was still pulling free of the others. He grabbed at a cargo belt but swung away from the wall, wrenching something in his wrist and back. Deborah hung beside him from one hand. Everyone else seemed to be roped to the fuselage above. Huff clawed at his jacket. With that slight help, Cam kept his grip, but the accelerating torque was too much for Deborah. Her arm twisted and then her hand sprung free.

“No!” Foshtomi shrieked, snatching at her. Foshtomi had deftly slid behind two straps. They sawed into her waist — but even bent in a horseshoe, Foshtomi didn’t have enough reach to catch the other woman.

Deborah tumbled away from them. She smashed into the ceiling and then the far wall. Then the dizzying sideways-and-up motion changed as the Osprey plummeted to the starboard. It threw Deborah back into them. Cam was too off-balance to grab his friend even when her leg thumped him in the chin, but Foshtomi seized Deborah’s waist, trusting the straps to hold them both. She’d never lacked for confidence, and Cam felt another glint of admiration for her.

“Here!” Foshtomi yelled. “Here!”

Unbelievably, the aircraft leveled out. The six of them worked to clip themselves down in a furious panic. Cam finished with himself — the canvas belts seemed too thin — and turned to help Foshtomi with Deborah. Somehow they wrestled her in between them. Deborah’s forehead was swollen with a fat goose egg that had been cut open on one side, throwing blood through her yellow hair. Her blue eyes were groggy and dim.

Up front, Lang chattered in Mandarin again as his hands danced over the consoles. The Osprey was climbing now and Bornmann hollered back, “Missiles! Two fighters on our tail! We’re going to ditch this bitch if we can just—”

The wall exploded. Fire and heat burst through the rear of the plane in a hundred tiny holes. Metal fragments clattered through the fuselage. Then the fire was replaced by smoke and sunlight. Air whistled through the holes at a deafening pitch. Most of the swirling black fog was stripped away, but it was replaced by the red mist streaming from Foshtomi’s chest.

“Sarah!” Cam yelled, fumbling past Deborah to help her.

The explosion must have been a near miss, he realized. Otherwise they’d be gone. But the damage was bad enough. Wind and sunlight howled through the aircraft as he tried to catch the meaty organs spilling fromFoshtomi’s side. Herintes tines were hot. Her face was white and dead. Cam screamed and tried to apply pressure anyway, his arm trembling against the wild force of their descent.

The Osprey was in a tailspin.

No, Cam thought. No! He glanced forward again, looking for the sky — for God — for anything other than this horror. Beyond the pilots, he saw a patch of blue. Then the horizon tilted into view.

The hard orange color of the desert filled the windshield. The ground was very close.

It’s not supposed to end like this! he thought, but the Osprey caught its starboard wing against the earth and whipsawed into an uneven leaping cartwheel as the fuselage disintegrated.