Plague War

by Jeff Carlson

  No one in the leadership had anticipated their betrayal either. That was beside the point. Hernandez had been the man on the ground, and if he’d kept the vaccine, the rebels almost certainly would not have launched their new offensives against Leadville.

  Hernandez had been the linchpin. Resources were too scarce to waste an officer, however, especially with the sudden surge in the war. The irony of it annoyed him. The fighting had saved him. There were no courts-martial. There was not even an outright demotion. Instead they’d given him nearly twice as many troops as before, a mixed infantry-and-artillery detachment of eighty-one Marines supported by a Navy communications specialist and a priceless medic, a conscript who had been a firefighter in another life.

  The rebels in New Mexico were said to be mounting an invasion by helicopter and ostensibly that was why he was here, ready to rain fire down on choppers or ground troops coming through the pass. It could be seen as an opportunity to prove himself again. They were positioned on a southern face nearly twenty miles from Leadville—twenty miles as the crow flies, which in this upheaval of land was more than twice that distance on foot. The trucks that brought them to the base of this mountain were long gone. Hernandez had a lot of independence out here. He wanted to believe that the leadership wanted to trust him. Realistically, though, his people were only a speed bump. A small deterrent. They might launch a few shoulder-mounted missiles at incoming enemy aircraft but then they would be irrelevant or dead, either passed by or devastated by bombs or rocket fire. And his troops knew it. They had been condemned to hard labor and a potential death sentence for no other reason except that they were infantry and therefore disposable.

  “Hey! Hey!” A man yelled below them and Hernandez saw four troops hustling across the slope, including Powers and the medic. They carried extra jackets and a canteen.

  “Nice work, both of you,” Hernandez said to Tunis and Kotowych. Then the others closed around them.

  “What happened?” the medic asked.

  “Let’s get him back to the shelters first,” Hernandez said. “I’ve stopped the bleeding.”

  “That gorge is fuckin’ killing us,” another man said.

  Hernandez stiffened, but this wasn’t the time to assert himself. They’re frightened, he thought. You have to let them complain. And yet he couldn’t allow open dissent.

  They were excavating rock from far up the hill because he didn’t want to mark their position with a field of open scars. It required more effort but their shelters blended in fairly well, piles of granite among piles of granite. The waiting was the hardest part. They had a few decks of cards and one backgammon set and he knew his troops had taken to drawing names and pictures on themselves with ballpoint pens. It was better to work. Lugging rocks wasn’t much of a challenge, but it made them plan and it made them cooperate. It gave him a chance to evaluate them. He could have ordered the use of more explosives, and he supposed it might still come to that. The ground here was like concrete, hardened by eons of short thaws and long winters. The only way they’d gotten their bunkers started was to detonate too many of their AP mines facedown against the earth, but he wanted to save as much ordnance as possible.

  It was a threadbare camp that Hernandez saw as they helped Kotowych over a low ridge—a few scattered troops, a few green tarps nearly lost on the mountainside. Their shelters would never be enough. Even if New Mexico attacked somewhere else, their tents and sleeping bags could not protect them from the cold indefinitely. Still, Hernandez felt pride. He felt as good as he thought was possible. They’d built this together and that counted for something, although he couldn’t help surveying their positions and reanalyzing the distribution of heavy machine guns and Stinger missiles.

  The troops were right to worry. Fortunately, helicopters always had difficulty at this altitude. The weather was their ally. They could expect New Mexico to wait for a high pressure front to get as much lift as possible. The terrain was their friend as well. It would channel any approach into the pass below, where the slope tumbled away into a valley lined with the flat, winding ribbons of Highways 82 and 24.

  They took Kotowych to Bunker 5. Two more soldiers emerged from inside and one of them said, “I’ve got him, sir.”

  Hernandez shook his head, wanting to stay with Kotowych.

  The soldier insisted. “Please, sir.”

  Sergeant Gilbride surprised him. Gilbride appeared from the downhill side of the bunker, flushed from exertion. His bearded face was red in his cheeks, nose, and ears. He looked like he’d jogged all the way across camp and Hernandez felt a bright tick of alarm.

  “Major, I need for you a minute,” Gilbride said.

  “Fine.” Hernandez separated himself from Kotowych. “I hope you’re all right,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gilbride had already started down the hill again and Hernandez went after him. Then he heard two high, clean notes of a woman’s voice. He glanced back. Powers and another man were watching him and quickly averted their eyes.

  They didn’t want me inside, Hernandez realized. Damn.

  Nearly all of his troops had been garrisoned inside Leadville before being redeployed. They’d lost lovers and friends along with any sense of safety. His noncoms reported that there were at least three women smuggled in among his eighty-three troops— three women who were not Marines—but Hernandez had kept quiet. Only eleven of his troops were female themselves, so the disparity was bad. There hadn’t been more than a couple fist-fights, though, and Hernandez didn’t want to start a battle of his own, being heavy-handed about fraternization. The extra mouths were a demand he couldn’t meet, but he also didn’t think he could afford to take away the few good things in their lives, even if he was afraid of where it would lead. They couldn’t deal with pregnancies.

  He kept hiking, his face bent with a frown. He’d left someone behind himself, a younger woman named Liz who was fortunate enough to have a job in town. Liz was a botanist, in charge of an entire floor of greenhouses protected within one of the old hotels. That was a big deal, but when he thought of her, what he remembered was her tawny hair and the way she tucked it behind one ear, showing off her neck and the long, perfect line of her collarbone.

  He wondered again if he should have brought her out of Leadville. Would she have come if he asked?

  “Stop,” he said, reaching for Gilbride’s shoulder. They were halfway to the command shelter, alone in the slanting field. Hernandez saw no one else except a lone sentry at the edge of Bunker 7. “I get it,” he said. “There was somebody in 5 they didn’t want me to see.”

  Gilbride shook his head and gestured for him to follow.

  “No,” Hernandez said. “I have to make at least one more run for more rock.”

  “Please, sir.” Gilbride’s voice was rough and wet. His sinus tissues had reacted to the desiccated air by generating mucus, which was choking him.

  That wasn’t what made Hernandez search his friend’s eyes. Sir. The formality was unlike Gilbride. He knew it wasn’t necessary when they were alone. Nathan Gilbride was one of the four Marines who’d flown into Sacramento with Hernandez, and even before then Gilbride had earned every privilege. They’d been together through the entire plague year. The guilt that Hernandez felt went deep, shot through with anger and more. Gilbride didn’t deserve to be out here, but Hernandez was glad to have him, which made him feel guilty in a different way. He trusted Gilbride even if the leadership in Leadville did not. He knew Gilbride was a good barometer of how the troops were doing, and Gilbride was nervous.

  “You’re no good to us if you’re exhausted,” Gilbride said reasonably. “Come on. Take a break.”

  Hernandez knew better than to ignore him, but he dug into a jacket pocket to check his watch. 1:21. It was early to quit for the day, and if he did, he’d have to get a runner out to tell everybody to stop. And then tomorrow’s shift had better be short, too, or people would bitch, which meant he’d lose two afternoons’ worth
of work. Damn. “All right,” he said. “But then we need to pull everyone in.”

  “Not a problem,” Gilbride said.

  The command bunker was no different than the rest. It was simply a trench with two tents stitched together, surrounded by rock. They hadn’t been given lumber or steel. There had been an impossible amount of stuff to drag up the mountain anyway, so the bunkers had no roofs. That made them more vulnerable to rockets and guns—and snow. At this altitude, it wasn’t uncommon to see storms at any time of the year.

  There was one benefit to the cold. As they laid down their rock walls, they shoveled dirt into the gaps and then poured urine on it. The freezing liquid cemented earth and stone together. Drinking water was too precious, even though they’d found eight good trickles and seeps in the area.

  “I pulled some coffee for you,” Gilbride said, unzipping the flap of the long tent.

  Their home was dim and crowded with weapons, sleeping bags, a bucket for a toilet that gave off almost no smell at all in the thin, biting air. Still, Hernandez was surprised to see only Navy Communications Specialist McKay inside, sitting with a tattered paperback close to her face. It was torn in half to allow another trooper to read the other part. She barely glanced at them, but then looked up again. Hernandez realized there was something like fear in her brown eyes.

  “Sir. Afternoon, sir,” she said.

  “Was there a call on the radio?”

  “No, sir.”

  But she’s jumpy, too, he thought.

  Their furniture consisted of steel ammo boxes and a wooden crate that served as his desk and their kitchen. Gilbride had their stove out, a civilian two-burner Coleman. It was unsafe to cook inside, not only due to the fire hazard but because of carbon monoxide poisoning, but no one stayed outdoors if they weren’t on duty. Hernandez hadn’t tried to enforce this rule, either, although he encouraged his noncoms to constantly harass the troops about opening a few vents before lighting a stove.

  “McKay, I need a runner,” Gilbride said, rasping. “Tell everyone to knock off for the day. Short shift.”

  McKay nodded. “Aye aye, Sarge.”

  She’s too ready to go, Hernandez thought. And where is Anderson? He knew that only Bleeker and Wang were up the hill, mining rock. Gilbride was too efficient. The setup was too perfect and now Hernandez was nervous himself.

  It’s bad news, he thought.

  6

  Hernandez felt as if he’d walked into a minefield. He could only wait. Lucy McKay stayed just long enough to get an insulated mug of coffee, then ducked through the flap of the tent, the zipper rattling.

  Gilbride tipped his head toward an assortment of MRE pouches. Most were slit open, their contents eaten or traded away. “Sugar?” Gilbride asked.

  “Right. Thanks.” The whole sit-down was uncharacteristic, not the brotherly gesture itself but the extravagance of it, the using today what they wouldn’t have tomorrow. If there was a tomorrow. Sipping their mugs together in the chill green light of the tent, Hernandez deliberately gave voice to the thought. “Might as well live it up, right? If this is what you call living.”

  “Yeah.” Gilbride fidgeted, moving two pots and a canteen for no reason except to move them. “This is already about the last of it, by the way, until we’re resupplied. The troops have been going through it fast.”

  “Freeze your balls off,” Hernandez agreed.

  “We will be resupplied, right?”

  That must be the new rumor, that we’re on our own, Hernandez thought, and he was glad again for Gilbride’s friendship. His noncoms were the best way to get information to and from the rest of his command. “It could be a while before coffee makes their list,” he said, “but yes. Of course. They know we can’t live on moss.”

  Leadville wouldn’t have dumped this much firepower on him if they were afraid his troops might come back with it, hungry and mad, and yet too many of their supplies had been pilfered before they opened the cases. Nearly every Meal, Ready to Eat packet had been cherry-picked of its best components: candy, coffee, toothpaste. Even some of the ammo cases had been light.

  “They need us,” Hernandez said.

  “Sure.”

  “You know you can say anything to me,” he told Gilbride after another moment, curt now, even impatient. “It goes no further. Just you and me, Nate.”

  Gilbride set his dirty mug on the board where Hernandez had tacked his area map, putting it down on the Utah border where there wasn’t any fighting. No. Where it rested near the high region of the White River Plateau, where rumor said their own forces had used a nano weapon against the rebels, disintegrating two thousand men, women, and children for the crime of repairing a commercial airliner. White River had hoped to beat Leadville to the labs in Sacramento. Instead, they’d been annihilated as an object lesson to the other rebel forces.

  North America resembled a different continent on his maps. Nothing lived in the East or Midwest or the long northern stretches of Canada. Even the surviving populations were limited to two spotty lines up and down the West. The band formed by the Rockies was much thicker than the Sierras. Otherwise there was nothing.

  Red spearheads had been drawn to show air assaults out of Wyoming, Idaho, and British Columbia. Red squares showed advance armored units from Loveland Pass, plus circles and numbers for projected unit strength down in Arizona and New Mexico. A few of the numbers were black, from old Mexico. Leadville stood nearly alone against so much effort, except for three islands of loyalists.

  “There are just a lot of people pissed off at things,” Gilbride said. He indicated the map, pretending that was what he meant.

  Hernandez could see how much it cost his friend merely to edge around the idea. He respected Gilbride for it. Using their brains was the best of what the Marine Corps had schooled in them, after all, and the war scattered across the Continental Divide was no longer about food and resources. Not anymore. Everyone wanted the vaccine. He knew he should absolutely condemn Gilbride for even hinting at rebellion...but all he said was, “Yeah. Yeah, it’s a mess.” And that itself was a small kind of encouragement.

  Hernandez had only limited information, which he knew was intentional, another kind of leash. He was a career man and he smiled thinly at the traditional foot soldier’s complaint: I am but a mushroom. They keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit.

  Leadville wanted him to have no other options. Leadville had seen far too many deserters, so they not only intended to keep every field commander short on food and dependent on them. They also wanted their people to know as little as possible: the reasons for the war, and whether it was being won or lost. Hernandez had been ordered to maintain radio silence and quarantine, supposedly to prevent the rebels from discovering his location, but also to deafen him to the other side’s propaganda. They were all American. They all had the same equipment. The leadership had put Hernandez and other southern front commanders on frequencies once used by the Navy, yet it would be simple enough to listen to the enemy. To talk.

  Lucy McKay was here to decrypt any messages received from Leadville and to encode their own reports. Back in town, there were a thousand techs like her combing radio traffic across the continent for patterns and clues. A thousand more studied intercepts from all over the world. Most of the civilian and military communications satellites were still up there above the sky and Leadville was top-heavy with personnel from agencies like the NSA, CIA, DIA, FBI, and smaller intelligence groups like those of various state police.

  The rebels had those experts, too. Hackers on both sides had fought to lock out, retake, or destroy the satellites. The information war was just as real as the bullets and bombs.

  Sitting beside Gilbride, Hernandez was careful not to turn and look at the radio. Was it possible that McKay had heard something she wasn’t supposed to? Could she have made transmissions? He left the tent for hours at a time and there was so little for anyone to do in this goddamned place. The temptation must be huge. All of her train
ing, the whole reason she’d been assigned to his command, was to be a radioman—and there was no question in his mind that she and Gilbride had a secret.

  Hernandez breathed in from his mug, reluctant to finish it. The coffee had cooled but its taste was a luxury, as was the rich, bitter smell. In a way its goodness hurt. It touched the lonely feeling in his chest that he constantly fought to ignore.

  He waded into the silence again. “We’ll do okay,” he said. “We always have, right?”

  Gilbride only nodded, protecting his ragged throat.

  “You know this hill is about the most forgotten corner of the map. It’s a vacation.” Hernandez laughed suddenly. The notion was absurb. “Hell, this is a garden spot,” he said. “We’ll probably sit out the whole war.”

  He was babbling. He was scared, and Gilbride looked away from him as if ashamed.

  There was real dissent among their Marines. The question wasn’t if there was a problem, but how bad was it? That it had reached the command tent told Hernandez a lot.

  Over at Bunker 5, Gilbride had probably saved him from a confrontation he’d only begun to worry about. His troops were close to outright defiance. The injury to Kotowych could have been a catalyst. The more they saw themselves becoming hurt and sick, the quicker it would go. Tunis had said what many of his troops must be thinking. They wanted to stop working. They wanted to get out of here. Hernandez was lucky that word had spread in time for Gilbride to run to 5 and pull him away.

  He drained his mug and stood up, losing the heat of his friend’s shoulder. Then he stepped to the door flap, wrestling with his disappointment. He did not take a weapon. “Thank you,” he said cautiously, looking at the green fabric instead of Gilbride’s face. He tried to put as much meaning as possible into those two simple words.