by Jeff Carlson
The survivors were situated on a flat area like a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by a bend in the creek, which they’d used to maximize their defenses. It separated them from Cam’s group, even if the water didn’t look more than shin-deep, and there were two catwalks built across it.
They had tried to erect barricades on the canyon floor. Cam saw four pickups and a jeep set nose-to-tail across the dirt road. There were no trees available. Everything had been clear-cut for fuel during the long winters, so they’d dug a few pits with shovels and possibly high explosives, too, reducing the canyon to distinct fields of fire. As far as he could tell without binoculars, less than half a dozen infected people had made it anywhere near their encampment. The closest body sprawled two hundred yards away. Their artillery had caught most of the infected at the other end of Willow Creek. Then snipers dropped the rest.
Their base consisted of ten long greenhouses, two smaller barracks, two 155mm howitzer emplacements, and a few trucks and Humvees they’d kept back to avoid contaminating the vehicles. The government had been using this canyon for a major farming operation. It was shielded from the weather and high enough to escape most of the bugs, and they’d already had some of the necessary assets in place. That was why the guns were here — to protect the crops from raiders. Maybe now they were housing people inside the plastic, too. He couldn’t tell.
Cam stopped his group within shouting distance of a fighting hole on the canyon’s northern slope. He saw at least one soldier. The man’s head was obvious. He wore an M40 biochem mask with oval plastic eyes and a shoulder-length hood, but the gear was desert camouflage. Its tan and beige patches were too light for this environment.
“Hands up,” Cam said to the women. “Let them see us.”
“Identify yourselves!” the man yelled.
“Corporal Najarro with the Seventy-Fifth! I have three civilians with me!”
It probably wouldn’t have mattered what he said. They just wanted to verify that he was thinking and talking. The man stood up and waved for them to come forward. “Okay!” he said, lifting a walkie-talkie to his hood.
When they were within a hundred yards, Cam saw two more soldiers with their weapons leveled. Even closer, he helped Ruth and then Ingrid over an uneven wall of earth and rock as Bobbi climbed over herself. The soldiers themselves stayed back.
“We need water,” Cam said. “Do you have bottled water?”
None of them directed him to the creek. Either they’d reached the same conclusion about watersheds or they’d seen someone infected by drinking from it. “There are storage tanks,” the first man said, pointing back at the greenhouses. “We’ll get you inside in a minute. The lieutenant wants to talk to you.”
“We’ve been hiking all night.”
“The lieutenant’s gonna talk to you first.”
Another soldier was already striding across the nearest catwalk. That she was a woman was evident despite her old-fashioned gas mask, jacket, and the rifle slung over one shoulder. She was slim, with no breasts to speak of, but her walk was female and her dark hair fell in a mane very much unlike the rest of her. Her uniform was perfect to the button — dirty, but perfect — whereas her hair suggested a rebellious streak. It spilled from the back of her mask like a flag.
There was something familiar about her, Cam thought, and when she spoke, he knew, even though her voice was distorted inside the rubber mask. “Najarro,” she said, glancing from him to Ruth. “I just had to see it myself, you fuckin’ traitors.”
It was Sarah Foshtomi.
Ingrid went for her M16. Foshtomi’s tone was bitter, even hateful, and the older woman wasn’t so exhausted that she missed the threat. “No!” Cam shouted, but Ingrid stepped in front of Ruth with her assault rifle, growling, “You can’t hurt her!”
Cam grabbed the barrel of Ingrid’s weapon and jerked it skyward. At the same time, Foshtomi’s men snapped up their own rifles. One of them caught Bobbi’s arm. Everyone froze — and then Foshtomi laughed.
“Put ‘em down,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
The greenhouse reeked of bell peppers and onions. It was a good smell, and Cam had never been happier to remove his headgear. His bare skin reacted to the warm air as if he’d entered a sauna, soaking in the pungent scent of the crops.
Foshtomi led them through alternating rows of bushy green pepper plants and the onions’ short stalks. The hundred-gallon tank in back had been pumped full three days ago, so it was safe. Foshtomi’s unit had opened the plumbing at the base of the tank, using a spigot to fill their canteens and cooking pots. The floor was damp with it. Cam only managed to let the women drink first by sheer force of will, shrugging out of his jacket as Ruth and Bobbi splashed water from their hands into their mouths and faces. Ruth coughed but didn’t stop. Ingrid drank more slowly from one of the cups left beside the tank.
“You’re wounded,” Foshtomi said, staring at his bloody side. “Let me see what we can do about that.”
“Ingrid’s hurt, too. Her foot.”
She took her walkie-talkie from her belt. “This is Foshtomi. I need a medic in Building Six.”
“Roger that,” the ‘talkie answered.
“Cam,” Ruth said. “Drink.” Curly wet bangs hung over her clean face, which was full of contradiction. Her brown eyes were both soft and penetrating. For an instant, she refused to look away from him, even though he could see that she was afraid of what he might say. They hadn’t been this close and unguarded since before Allison’s death, not even when they made love, hidden in the starlight.
They were bound so deeply together. Cam didn’t want to be angry with her and he tried to show it. He touched her arm as he moved past. Then he bent and gulped more water than he should have in five huge uncontrolled swallows. His stomach flip-flopped. He nearly threw up. But it was good. It was so good to be alive and lost in the sensation of the water’s cool liquid perfection.
“If you have to pee, just go on the plants,” Foshtomi said, as blunt as ever. “They can use the nitrogen. Or there’s honey-pots in the back. We’ll get you some food and stitch you up and then I’ve got to figure out what the hell we’re gonna do with you.”
“Thank you,” Cam said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have to like it.” She looked at Ruth as she said the last part. “Are you responsible for this new shit?”
“She’s trying to stop it,” Ingrid said, and Ruth shot her a grateful look.
“So it was some other fuckin’ genius this time,” Foshtomi said. Her dark, oval face was unforgiving. “You’re conscripts, all of you. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” Cam said.
“You follow orders. You’re all privates — even you,” she said, pointing at Ruth. “Legally, I have that power under the new Constitution. We’re still under martial law.”
They used to be squadmates. Sarah Foshtomi had been a member of his Ranger unit, a corporal like himself and the only woman in the group. That was why she talked so tough, overcompensating for her size and gender. Apparently her style had seen some success. Foshtomi must have continued to serve with local forces, that much was clear. She’d even made lieutenant. Had she been stationed here or had she run to Willow Creek with other survivors? It didn’t matter. Cam knew she could be a powerful ally.
Suddenly that good feeling gave way to woozy-headed nausea. He slumped to the floor beside the tank. Satisfying his thirst only made him more aware of his tired muscles, his aching feet, and his hunger. He could have slept. He said, “Are you in contact with anyone?”
Foshtomi shook her head. “There are no landlines out of here and the atmosphere’s totally fucked. I’ve got some guys trying to patch into a satellite.”
“Okay.”
The women settled down around Cam, except Foshtomi, who wasn’t good at sitting still. She stayed on her feet, glancing toward the greenhouse door as if that might hurry her medic. In fact, she was probably glad to have Ruth to rally around, because until now her troops ha
d lacked any purpose except to hold on and wait.
“How much fuel do you have?” he asked.
Foshtomi stared at him. “You came on foot out of the mountains, right? So maybe you don’t know what it’s like in the cities.”
“Greg and Eric are dead,” he said, meeting her bluntness with his own. The two Rangers had been her squadmates first. “They stayed with us all this time, Sarah. They died last night.”
“I…” she said.
“Our whole town was infected. There were hundreds of them, Sarah. Greg bought us enough time to get out.”
“Eric was my husband,” Bobbi said.
“I’m sorry.” Foshtomi’s gaze went from Cam’s face to Bobbi’s to Ruth‘s, but Ruth unzipped her backpack and took out her laptop with that old, stubborn focus.
Cam nodded to himself, admiring the same dedication that had infuriated him in the aspen grove. Ruth would never give up. Not if they gave her time. Her fingers rattled on her keyboard and Cam said, to Foshtomi, “If you have enough fuel, we can try to seal those Humvees. Make a break for it.”
“Where you gonna go?”
“Grand Lake.”
“You’re crazy. There’s a million fuckin’ zombies between here and there, and we think the Chinese took the base anyway.”
Zombies, he thought. In a different life, Cam had loved those corny old movies. Maybe it was strange that his group had never called sick people anything except “the infected.” They were zombies in every way that mattered, lethal, stupid, and relentless. But they were family. Cam’s group hadn’t fought anyone except their own friends and neighbors. Foshtomi’s battle had been larger, more impersonal. Zombies was a way to make the killing easier, reducing the infected to caricatures instead of real victims.
Cam said, “The Chinese have a vaccine against the new plague. Ruth thinks we can steal it.”
“What about the parasite?”
“You… What do you mean?” he said, even though he’d imagined the same thing himself. The parasite nanotech would shut off the first vaccine, the one that kept them safe from the machine plague. Anyone who couldn’t reach safe elevation would die, and Cam knew how badly that would disrupt the Chinese assault — but at what cost?
Foshtomi’s eyes were narrow with hate. “What if we let it go? That’d fuck up the Chinese in a big way.”
Ruth’s hands stopped on her keyboard but she didn’t look up, as if too afraid to let Foshtomi see anything in her expression. Cam worried what Foshtomi might have read in his own face. “Sarah,” he said. “The parasite would affect everyone below ten thousand feet, not just the Chinese.”
“Our people are already dead, aren’t they?”
She lost somebody last night, too, he thought. There was a new, cold edge in Foshtomi’s voice, and it made him think she was just barely holding onto her composure, using her reckless tone as more than a front. Her attitude had become a crutch to keep herself sane.
“We don’t have the parasite anymore,” he said.
“Bullshit. I know it was for real. Deborah Reece gave up her vial. Grand Lake stashed it away somewhere, and everyone says it really would’ve done what Ruth said. So what could you do? Hide yours somewhere?”
“That’s exactly what we did,” Ruth said, tapping slowly at her laptop again. “We buried it fifteen feet down in a metal box.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“I think you still have it,” Foshtomi said, and Cam wondered if he was going to have to fight her. Would her troops obey an order to seize and search his group?
Yes, he thought. They will. For her, they will.
Cam almost glanced down at his pocket before he caught himself. Even with the map, even knowing where they’d buried the nanotech outside of Jefferson, Foshtomi wouldn’t have much chance of retrieving it, but he needed her to stay focused in another direction, toward Grand Lake.
“Sarah, it’s not an option,” he said.
“They’ve hit us with nukes.”
“Even if we had it, which we don‘t, the parasite wouldn’t be instantaneous. It would take days to spread far enough. It might not reach California for a week. They’re up-weather from us. You wouldn’t accomplish anything except killing our own people until the wind took it all the way around the world to our coastline.”
“So you do have it.”
“Sarah, no. My point is that we can’t just stay here.”
“Driving to Grand Lake is crazy.”
“You were glad to see us,” Cam said. “You were already restless. Look at you.”
Foshtomi sneered even as she turned away. The motion was one of denial, rejecting what he’d said, except that by jumping up she’d proved him right. Yes, she was afraid to leave this canyon. One of her first responsibilities was to preserve her fighting strength — but for what? To sit and wait until Chinese planes attacked them, too?
“We’re short on masks,” Foshtomi said. “We only put them on our spotters and point men.”
“If we get the vaccine, it won’t matter.”
“You’ve seen how fast the plague jumps people. How would we get close enough to—”
“Cam?” Ruth said.
Foshtomi turned on her. “He’s not in charge here.”
“Cam. All of you.” Ruth’s eyes were stunned. “The extra bulk attached to the nanotech is a message,” she said. “It’s not meant to do anything. It’s just binary code. Someone built it into the machine like a note.”
“We don’t have anyone who can read Chinese,” Foshtomi said, but Ruth shook her head.
“It’s in English. Once I isolated the code, the computer translated it in seconds.”
“What? What do they want?”
Ruth blinked and wet her lips first, as if testing her words before sharing them out loud. “It says it’s from Kendra Freedman,” she said.
18
“That’s impossible,” Cam said, but Ruth thought, No, it’s the only thing that really makes sense.
She didn’t want to fight with him any more, so she tamped down on her excitement. She knew she could be too loud when she was in the grip of inspiration. “Let me show you how it says what it does.”
“What do you mean ‘how’?” Foshtomi asked. “What’s the message?”
Ruth turned her laptop to face them and said, “Look at the coding. It’s a spiral of ones and zeroes embedded in the nano. Most of the extra bulk is just nulls, but the binary string is unmistakable.”
Foshtomi glanced at Cam, who shook his head. “Look at it! I highlighted the ones. Here are the zeroes.” Ruth touched her keyboard again. “These specific molecular configurations are repeated hundreds of times. That’s why my analysis picked it out in the first place.”
“All I see is dots and bumps,” Foshtomi said.
“Exactly. She chose simple forms to represent her ‘ones’ and ’zeroes.‘ They don’t need to accomplish anything else. They’re static frames. That’s why Freedman was able to hide—”
Bobbi interrupted. “My God, Ruth, what does it say?”
“ ‘My name is Kendra Freedman,”’ she said, tipping the laptop back to face herself. “ ‘I designed the archos plague, the nanotech that kills below 9,570 feet. It was a mistake. Maybe it can be stopped. My lab should still be intact at 4411 68th Street, Sacramento, California, along with our design work, software, samples, and machining gear.’ ”
“That’s old news,” Cam said. “Years old.”
“Please. Just listen.”
“You’ve already been to Sacramento,” Bobbi said, echoing Cam. Her eyes were perplexed and, despite the fragrant heat of the greenhouse, Ruth felt cold and off-balance. The message had awakened too many ghosts.
“ ‘If you can read this, find me. I want I need—’” Ruth glanced up. “There’s a break here. Freedman didn’t have the chance to rewrite,” she said, irritated by the doubt in their eyes. She looked back at her laptop and read, “ ‘Andrew Dutchess is the man who re
leased the archos plague. It was Dutchess. But I’ll do anything. I can fix this.’ ”
She sounds like me, Ruth thought.
The realization was a poignant one. The two of them had never met, except through Freedman’s work, but Ruth had spent too much time pursuing Freedman’s brilliance to feel anything except admiration. On a personal level, she’d also learned to feel horror and pity for the other woman. Freedman’s vision had been one of immortality, wealth, and peace. She’d meant to change the world in a very different way. Without one man’s greed, she might have succeeded.
Ruth had never dreamed she would confront Freedman again in a new competition. Cause and effect had come full circle. The science teams in Leadville had designed the booster on the foundation of Freedman’s work. Then the booster gave Freedman the insights necessary to accelerate her own designs.
She was alive, and she was the creator of the mind plague.
“ ‘I reached the mountains in northern California,”’ Ruth read, “‘where I survived until the Russian invasion. They traded me to the Chinese.’ ”
“It has to be a trick,” Cam said.
“ ‘This machine is also mine. It is an unholy mistake, and it is mine. I was deceived. I thought I was working to bring peace in the Himalayas, but they lied to me. I was never in Tibet. There is no snow or Indians and I’m sure now that—’” Ruth frowned. “It breaks again.”
“She’s rambling,” Foshtomi said.
She lapsed, Ruth thought. She was tired or she was interrupted. She must have been constructing the message letter by letter.
They don’t understand.
Every sentence would have cost Freedman hours, the full message days or weeks, and it sounded like she was in prison. Were there guards? Other scientists? The Chinese must have caged Freedman so tightly it felt like she’d been pinned under a microscope herself, controlling everything about her: when to eat, where to sleep, and, most importantly, what to do and how to think. The idea of that never-ending scrutiny made Ruth claustrophobic.