Plague Zone

6

The new Cold War was unsustainable. The politicians could posture all they wanted. The reality was that neither side had the resources to maintain their standoff indefinitely. Someone would stumble, and Colonel Jia was among those who believed it might be their own side.

Yes, the Americans had been on the verge of defeat before the cease-fire. Their losses were staggering. But with the end of the fighting, the People’s Liberation Army suffered one of its greatest military defeats. The cease-fire was not a stalemate. It was a horrendous beating because of the price they’d paid just to reach that detente. Their wars had left them with countless veterans and the new Elite Forces like Jia’s Striking Falcons — but every day that passed, their strength bled away a little more.

Even though the two places were seven hundred miles apart, California had been demolished by the nuclear strike on Leadville, Colorado. Every fault line on the West Coast let go. The vast metropolitan areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles were ripped apart. Undersea shock waves brought the ocean over the land. Adding to the struggle, most of California consisted of arid, dry grasslands or outright desert, especially in the south where the Chinese forces were gathered. Before the plague, the Golden State had only been able to sustain its population by an elaborate system of reservoirs and canals that stretched over hundreds of miles, all of which collapsed.

Neither the Russians nor the Chinese arrived in California until the worst of the quakes subsided. They were able to salvage food, fuel, tools, vehicles, and ammunition — but the tools weren’t calibrated for their equipment. The ammunition didn’t fit their weapons, nor did the ordnance work in their artillery or fit their planes. For the short-term, that was fine. Throughout the first weeks of the war, they sent up makeshift squadrons of Chinese pilots in American planes. They advanced their infantry in civilian cars and U.S. Army trucks supported by their own tanks and armor. It had been necessary to press the attack while the Americans were reeling, and the blitzkrieg was a success.

Peace was more difficult. They were outnumbered. Within a month of the cease-fire, the Russians began in earnest to evacuate their people back to their motherland before anyone else entered its borders, leaving behind only fifteen thousand airmen and troops as a check and bargaining chip against the United States. The Chinese themselves drew their occupying force down to half strength, positioning a hundred and fifty thousand Heroes of the People’s Republic against several million Americans.

Since then, the Americans had reestablished only a few pockets of heavy industry, but even that outstripped what the Heroes were able to put together in their battered cities. They didn’t have the power to meet an arms race. Just holding their ground was difficult enough. They needed water. They needed housing. The insect swarms were a fine source of protein, but the bugs made it difficult to grow wheat or rice. They lost as much food as they gained, fighting the ants. They were also ordered to tap the invaluable crude in California’s many oil fields, rebuilding the derricks and refineries. In the meantime, they faced a slow attrition of the pilots and planes lost in every border skirmish.

Jia had not designed the mind plague himself. He didn’t even know the whereabouts of their labs, yet he had been among the officers who suggested such a thing even before their invasion of the United States. The MSS and the Communist Party had nearly a full century of experience with so-called brainwashing, indoctrination, abnormal psychology, neurology, and population control. Under the guise of normal medical research, their weapons programs had also performed extensive studies with Alzheimer’s patients and victims of Parkinson’s disease.

The mind plague was a bloodless weapon, combining several disciplines into one perfect tool. For years, Jia champi oned its potential.

Tonight, he’d become the one who unleashed it.

Jia had hoped to do better. Ideally, he would have finished his assault before MSS counterintelligence units noticed the steady number of Chinese planes lifting out of Los Angeles under new orders, much less before they traced his signals into the labyrinth of Army bunkers. He’d intended to emerge from this room with the attack over and done with, allowing a superior officer to claim responsibility.

His orders never said who that man would be. He’d guessed it couldn’t be Shao Quan, but it wasn’t impossible that the governor, like Jia, also worked for the Sixth Department. Nearly every officer and politician had been recruited by the MSS in one capacity or another. Among the Elite Forces, even the junior officers also held ranks in the intelligence agency, answering to two masters. Jia had been prepared to obey Governor Shao if Shao met him with the appropriate codes. Instead, it looked as if the compartmentalized nature of the MSS had worked against itself. Jia couldn’t be sure when Shao or Zheng joined the Second Department forces moving against him, but, after the door was smashed in, the best case scenario would have been if General Zheng arrived late, trying to stop the governor from interfering. That was why Jia waited — but Zheng was not part of the conspiracy.

Before the Second Department troops did irreparable damage to his computers, Jia uttered one sentence to the general. “The autumn rain is cold and sweet,” he said.

“Stop!” Zheng yelled.

His troops paused. One of Jia’s display screens lay shattered on the floor. Sergeant Bu clutched a laptop in his hands, and another man had grabbed a handful of cables, yet no more harm was done.

Governor Shao’s brown face jumped with fear as Jia and Zheng stared at each other. “I represent the Communist Party!” Shao said. The old man recognized Jia’s non sequi tur as an MSS directive. He knew what was happening, but he fought it anyway. “I am the governor! You will obey my orders!”

Shao’s bodyguards lifted their rifles only to find half a dozen submachine guns aimed at them. The Second Department troops had reacted with equal speed, and they outnumbered Shao’s bodyguards more than three to one.

“Don‘t,” Dongmei whispered to both sides. Her voice was an odd, lilting counterpoint to the men’s voices.

“Hold your fire,” Zheng said.

“Obey me!” Shao screamed, stabbing his finger at the bank of electronics again. “Shut it down!”

Zheng said, “The rains give way to winter.”

“But winter must always come before the spring,” Jia said, completing the protocol.

The crowded room was still. The laptop in Bu’s hands beeped once, and, on the floor, Yi brought his palm to his bleeding cheek. Somewhere, a headset murmured.

Zheng turned suddenly on the governor. “Take him alive,” Zheng said, indicating Shao — but he dismissed the governor’s bodyguards with the same curt, slicing motion of his hand.

Shao’s men yelled as the submachine guns blazed. One fired his rifle into the knot of black-uniformed troops, toppling three of them. Then it was over. Zheng’s troops restrained Shao as others knelt to tend to the wounded and killed. One soldier screamed and screamed, clutching at the splintered bone shoved through his elbow.

In the swarm of black uniforms, Jia swung on one man in particular. Sergeant Bu had dropped the laptop to bring his own weapon to bear, running forward to shield General Zheng. “Be careful!” Jia shouted. Bu had charged right to the edge of the bodyguard’s gunfire, and Jia’s feelings turned heartsick at the sight of Bu missing a bullet by inches.

Then he realized the danger in showing his emotions.

“You clumsy bastard, I’ll put you in the labor camps if you broke that laptop!” Jia said, finding another reason to berate the other man. Was he overdoing it? No. All of them were shaken, and most of their attention was on the screaming soldier or Governor Shao. “What is your name?” Jia shouted.

“Sir, my duty is to the general,” Bu said, stupidly prolonging the exchange.

Jia almost struck him. He even raised his fist. But in Bu’s dark eyes, Jia saw unmistakable affection and distress. Bu’s heart had also been betrayed by the close-quarters gunfire. In fact, Jia wondered if Bu hadn’t run to protect General Zheng but to save him instead.

Jia turned from his lover, snapping orders to his squad. “Back to your stations. Confirm all contacts. Lieutenant Cheng, you may need to hand your aircraft off to the others if your station is down.”

“Assist them,” Zheng said, directing Bu and two more of his soldiers away from the bloody floor. “Colonel, what else can I do? We need to bring our forces to full alert. You must have other signals to send, too.”

“Sir. Yes, sir. We’ll give those orders now,” Jia said. “With your permission, please allow me to reestablish command over our attacks before I explain.”

“Yes,” Zheng said.

Jia saluted again, admiring Dongmei’s self-control as the Second Department troops helped them reorganize their electronics. She had never seen combat before. Her chest rose and fell against her uniform as she laid one slender hand over her breast, trying to calm herself… but it was the lines of Bu’s shoulders and narrow hips that distracted Jia’s gaze from his team.

The other man truly cared for him. Jia was surprised. He’d thought their relationship was merely convenient. As far as he knew, there was no one else like the two of them in Los Angeles. It had been a pleasure to find Bu Xiaowen even though Jia was ashamed of what they did together. Now he was shamed in a different way to think he’d been rejecting the possibility of something more meaningful. Fortunately, there was no time to brood.

“Colonel, I’ve lost my connection with our UAVs,” Yi reported, and Huojin said, “Sir, there are more enemy fighters scrambling out of Wyoming.”

“My systems are down, sir,” Dongmei said, tapping swiftly at her laptop.

“Have our aircraft hit their targets yet?” Jia asked as he sat down at his own station. It was past time to send new commands to their orbital cameras, and he was worried about Yi’s unmanned aerial vehicles. His team wasn’t running those UAVs directly. Jia didn’t have the manpower. “Call the Air Force units controlling your drones,” he said to Yi.

As he spoke, Jia dared another glance at Bu, who lingered nearby, sorting out the last of the cables on the floor. Usually it had been days at a time before the two of them found an opportunity to talk privately, even a few words here and there. These bunkers were overcrowded. They were on duty at different times. Their physical liaisons had been even rarer, and Jia wondered when the chance would come again.

Then he saw General Zheng watching his eyes.

If ever there was a nation that was primed to endure a holocaust and move against its rivals, it was twenty-first-century China. Even before the end of the world, they were a country of desperate young men.

In the late 1970s, the Communist Party initiated their historic population control laws, the so-called One Child policy. Although widely opposed, the laws had prevented more than 420 million births. One couple, one baby. It was the only way to ensure better education and health care and to revolutionize the People’s Republic from a rural, peasant state into a technological force. Their population had skyrocketed after World War II, leaving the world’s largest nation in danger of collapsing from within. Merely keeping everyone housed and fed became their greatest industry, which was the main reason why they lagged behind other developed countries in the space race, the nuclear race, and in modernizing their armies — but forty years later, the law had changed the People’s Republic in unforeseen ways. Forced abortions and sterilizations were not uncommon as local authorities pursued the severe birth quotas set by Beijing. Many families also elected to abort healthy female fetuses, swayed by a preference for male heirs to carry on their name, their businesses, or their place in society. Girls were subject to infanticide and abandonment.

In most areas there had been many, many more young men than women, sometimes by a ratio as steep as five to one. Gay women especially were ostracized because lesbians might rob China of their wombs. Men faced an enormous pressure to avoid failing their ancestors.

Growing up, Jia Yuanjun didn’t understand there was anything wrong with him. In fact, he noticed he was better than average. He wasn’t weakened by a certain anxiety that affected the other boys in their male-only classes. He was comfortable without girls. They were not. So while the others bickered, looking for something they couldn’t find, Jia was able to focus instead on his studies and his teachers.

His career in the People’s Liberation Army was respectable and covered his basic needs, allowing him to send his small wages home to his parents. A star lieutenant, Jia was approached in his early twenties by the MSS. The intelligence agencies were always looking to recruit overachievers, but by then he’d realized he had a terrible secret. The furtive trysts that so many of his school-age peers engaged in, not only in search of physical relief but also to develop emotional connections, had also been full of dominance games and menace. Boys who were outed were expelled from the military. Perhaps worse, that stain often denied them any high-paying jobs in the cities as word percolated down from the Party of their offense.

There was another risk. Condoms were expensive. Most of his intercourse was unprotected. HIV was rampant in Asia, and if Jia ever tested positive it would be difficult to explain, a death sentence in two ways. There would be no medical care for an officer banished in disgrace.

Nevertheless, he was drawn to his friends despite himself. Was it only luck that kept him from being betrayed? Or was it his true nature that allowed him relationships in which both men became more vulnerable and committed? He was capable of tenderness, which went against their rough, boyish ways. It humiliated Jia that his yin was so strong, but the pull he felt was irresistible. The sex was good. The love was better. Jia had also seen that it was often the most reckless affairs that led one man or the other to anonymously report his partner. Jia was safer for committing to his boyfriends. All of them held each other’s fates in their hands, and yet it tended to be those who felt the most self-disgust who became the cruelest, destroying their lovers.

In ancient China there had been little or no bias against homosexual relationships. As long as a man fulfilled his duties as a husband and a father, what he did elsewhere was ignored. That attitude changed during the Cultural Revolution. The Communist Party targeted homosexuals as deviants and a threat to their ideal society. Openly gay men were jailed, even executed.

This persecution began to relax again in the twenty-first century. Sodomy was decriminalized, homosexuality removed from a list of mental disorders — but the Party and the military continued to hold onto the conservative views of the Revolution.

The machine plague brought the worst of that era crashing back again. There wasn’t enough room in the mountains for everyone. Many of China’s minorities were gone. The subtle racism of the Han had become a survival mechanism, blatant and merciless. The Communist Party resurrected all of the old prejudices, cutting away anyone who was suspect.

Jia was not an activist. Even before the apocalypse, he would never have worked against his country. For one thing, it seemed futile. He wasn’t a coward. He was smart enough to see how forcefully the river flowed. All he wanted was to belong. He owed them his success. On some level, Jia also knew that the best way to save himself was to become indispensable. The Party overlooked small crimes if a man proved loyal and hard-working. Jia recognized the irony. He was willing to give everything of himself for China precisely because China did not want all of him, only his stamina and cleverness.

He was also aware that a prominent role in coordinating the nanotech would expose him to great scrutiny. The MSS must have interviewed everyone who’d ever served with him. Many of those men were dead, but what if the MSS uncovered a former lover? What if they spoke to someone who suspected? For weeks, Jia worried at being found out. He did not want to forfeit his chance, and yet it occurred to him that perhaps they did know. They must know.

The mind plague was a gamble. The attack was launched without the knowledge of their own people precisely because it might not work. Jia had been told the nanotech was untested except for a few limited trials, so the job required not only a senior officer but also a man whose obedience was propped up by extreme fear and ambition. He was the ideal fit. If anything went wrong, they could discard him effortlessly, casting him as an over-reaching upstart and a homosexual as well. There would be no defense. Jia would be held up as a failure, and then shot.

General Zheng said, “The governor is not a fool. He’s correct that our forces are unready.”

“Sir,” Jia said, “everything is exactly to plan.”

Zheng turned to study their display screens again. “This is nanotech,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“What does it do?”

“Our people taught it to hunt out the basic structure of the human brain, sir. From there, it attacks the frontal lobes of the cerebrum.”

“So it kills.”

“No, sir. It’s a bloodless weapon. I didn’t mean to imply that it destroys the tissue. The nanotech simply gloms onto the synaptic clefts in the areas affecting time sense and memory. Right now, the Americans are badly confused.”

There was a high failure rate, of course. By clogging millions of the brain’s receptors, impeding the electrochemical impulses that normally jumped between the synapses, the mind plague not only left its victims witless and agitated. People varied too much. Sometimes the nanotech caused permanent injury.

Zheng said, “What if the wind changes or if it reaches as far as mainland China?”

“We’re immune, sir.”

“Your machine is that sensitive to racial genetics?”

“No, sir. We were given a vaccine in our health injections, sir.”

There was no difference between Oriental and Occidental brains. The mind plague would have attacked them all without a cousin nanotech to ward it off.

Three weeks ago, Jia had been among the first who received the hypodermic shots of fluid purported to be rich in nutrients. The order to launch the plague had waited only until everyone in the People’s Republic quietly received the same shots. The MSS also made certain to allow black marketeers to sell small amounts of it across their borders with the Russians, both in Asia and here in California. Those cases had been altered to have the vaccine to the mind plague removed, of course, because they knew the Russian spy agencies would sell their analysis of the serum to the Europeans as part of their own double-dealings with the enemy. The Russians believed the shots were merely another of China’s heavy-handed medical programs, a soup of B vitamins intended to help their mal nourished armies.

“I see,” Zheng said. “The Americans would have noticed us mobilizing if we were prepared to march in behind the nanotech. Or they might have intercepted our communications if the plan was widespread.”

“Yes, sir.” Jia was relieved. By reaching the facts himself, Zheng allowed him to say more without costing face. It was a delicate situation. Zheng must feel wildly uneasy receiving orders from a young colonel, which is why he’d sided first with Governor Shao. Jia needed to restore their normal relationship as fast as possible. “You have my loyalty, sir. My role was only to begin the attacks. You reacted more quickly than anyone expected,” Jia explained, and that was true. “I’m sure there are confirmations waiting for you even now.”

“Who are you reporting to?” Zheng asked.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Is it General Qin?”

“I swear I don’t know, sir.”

“And yet your operation extends through dozens of air and ground units in addition to our nanotech labs. I want your control codes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who are your contacts? Are they MSS?”

“Yes, sir. Sixth Department, sir. Colonels Feng and Pan have been my go-betweens.”

Huojin interrupted. “Colonel? The first transports are in the air, sir.”

“Stick to the plan. Take the capital,” Jia said.

Their border troops and Elite Forces were always on standby, so Jia had been able to mobilize two companies of paratroopers without being concerned that it might alert the Americans. Soon the entire PLA would be on the move, rolling through the deserts and taking to the sky.

“What about a nuclear response?” Zheng asked. “These bunkers aren’t hardened against their missiles.”

“No, sir, but we’re on American soil, and the plague is spreading like the wind itself. They’ll have no time to consider their options.”

The Americans would also be in the path of any fallout themselves. If they hit the West Coast, the normal west-to-east flow of the weather would carry the radioactivity over their own homes on the Continental Divide — and the old, implacable power of mutually assured destruction still held true.

“They can be certain our mainland would retaliate with missile launches of our own,” Jia said. “The expectation is the Americans will hesitate. Then the plague will have them.”

In all of history, had there ever been a war that was decided in a few hours? Jia hadn’t accepted this task for the glory. His name was meant to be kept secret, yet he thrilled at the idea that someday he might be remembered among the greatest of Asia’s warlords, Khan, Sun Tzu, and China’s own heroes like Mao and Chiang Kai-shek.

The war in North America should have been theirs from the start. The Russians had been honed down to a cold-blooded war machine during their long fight in the Middle East, but the all-male invasion of the PLA had a deeper motivation.

They wanted to go home.

They wanted women.

North America could have satisfied both needs, becoming a second China. There had been thousands of prisoners taken in California, Arizona, and Colorado. For every female of age, this was less horrible than for the men. The People’s Liberation Army had been too hard-pressed to dedicate any troops to building shelters for their POWs, nor was there water to spare in the desert.

The labor camps killed many of the enemy combatants, but the females were spared. Most of them had been repatriated as part of the cease-fire, except for the bù l zhì few who chose to stay with their masters. Victory would have meant a thousand times as many concubines. If the Chinese armies won, they might have been complete, graced with lizhide, low-class wives and a giant work force of slaves to run their farms and factories. Even now, after the stalemate, hundreds of American women must have given birth to Chinese babies. Eventually the People’s Republic might claim the world through breeding out the other races. That would take generations and it would create new ethnic minorities, but Jia could see how they might establish their peace one pregnancy at a time.

The new plague was immediate. It was something in which Jia could participate wholeheartedly, and if the attacks went well he should be safer than ever, praised and accepted by the Ministry’s highest leaders.

He was unspeakably proud of his inclusion in the Sixth Department, which had only tightened its clutches on the Communist Party. The MSS would use their victory to cement their power, adding momentum to their bid to unify the Party beneath their own generals. With new leadership, they also intended to bring a change in direction. Originally, the People’s Republic had planned to evacuate their forces as agreed in the cease-fire. The reality was that much of Asia was eroded down to its bedrock like the American Midwest. Only the coastlines and the mountains were inhabitable. Mainland China was no more able to house and feed another hundred and fifty thousand soldiers than those men were capable of fending for themselves in occupied California.

The mind plague was the only answer for the troops who’d been left behind. They needed to take America or there they would die, because new orders were about to be unveiled along with the announcement of Jia’s attack.

They had been told never to come home.