Plague War

by Jeff Carlson

“I can get in,” Gus said.

  “If they shut down the entire network—”

  “Let me try another phone.”

  Ulinov shrugged and nodded and made certain his smile did not show. It seemed to him that the Americans had missed a good bet with Gus. If they’d trusted the man, he could have been a significant asset. If nothing else, Gus was a familiar voice to survivors everywhere, but the Americans had more radiomen than radios and Gus was a foreign national.

  After confirming access and control codes to the space station, they’d left Gus unemployed. It was a problem he’d anticipated. The Americans had wanted all of Ruth’s files and the entire backlog of Ulinov’s surveillance work. They wanted the use of the cameras and other instruments. Even empty, the ISS made a valuable satellite—and Gus, like Ulinov, had reprogrammed his computers long before they disembarked, knowing it might be useful to leave open a few back doors.

  Gus had deliberately created a bug that only he could correct, blaming the problem on the avalanche of data relayed through the ISS in the past year, not all of which was clean. “Fixing” the bug gave him two days to send code back and forth from the station after the Americans got frustrated. Two days to study. Two days to rig his patches.

  Ulinov had always planned to act alone in his mission, using the ISS databases to store, send, and receive messages. The Americans agreed that he could still access the station to provide photos and weather reports for the Russian defenses, which gave him every excuse to transmit complex files—but the Americans watched too closely. They recorded every keystroke. They made sure they had experts on hand to “help” him, combat engineers and meteorologists who were unquestionably CIA computer techs, no matter how competently they discussed demolition efforts or high pressure fronts.

  Ulinov’s only transmissions to the secure database had been a weather report and then a duplicate of the same report, a clear signal to his countrymen that nothing else was safe.

  His next message, however, was a short burst of text via wireless modem, reestablishing contact. Gustavo had three ways to pirate into the local system, delay-and-relay programs that attached packets of data to larger transmissions. Whenever the Americans uploaded commands to the ISS, which was constantly, Ulinov’s notes leapt into the sky as well.

  Gustavo had shared this trick with Ulinov for reasons that Ulinov never fully trusted. For friendship, yes. And to keep busy. And yet he knew that Gus had been cooperating with American intelligence almost from the start of their twelve months in orbit... surely on orders from his own people...

  What game were the Italians playing?

  The situation in the Alps was not much better than in the Middle East. There were multiple battlefronts, a patchwork mess of alliances and counter-invasions, with Italy holding on to a few small shards of land against the French, Germans, Brits, Irish, Dutch, Poles, Greeks, Czechs, Belgians, Swedes, and Slavs. Ulinov had to trust Gustavo’s resentment. The whole world wanted to bring the Americans down a few notches to better their own chances of begging or buying help, but Ulinov was also aware that Gus could win favor by exposing him. The Italian spy agency, SISMI, had surely tried to copy all of Ulinov’s messages. If they’d succeeded, by now they must have broken the simple encoding.

  The relay through Gus was never more than a short-lived chance to update and confirm contingency plans. Gustavo would betray him. Perhaps it had already happened. The Russian leadership must know this, and yet twice in the past twenty-four hours they’d alluded to their envoys to the Chinese. They’d also instructed Ulinov to demand the nano weapon, making certain the Americans learned of his deceit.

  He was a tool that had been sacrificed, but to what purpose? Why did they want him in trouble and how did they want him to act? To try to minimize the problem? Make it worse?

  “I’m in,” Gus said, beckoning for him to move closer.

  Ulinov reluctantly took his hand from the pistol inside his heavy jacket. His bare fingers tensed in the breeze as he accepted Gustavo’s phone. He had never felt so vulnerable.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Gus nodded and grinned. He stepped away to give Ulinov a margin of privacy and Ulinov forced himself not to stare after his comrade. His enemy. It wasn’t that he expected men to crash into the room behind them, shouting, like a drama on American TV. Not yet. How did they say it in their Old West? They would hand him enough rope to hang himself.

  Ulinov stabbed his finger expertly over the tiny face of the cell phone, holding it and his PDA in his left hand, using his right to enter his own codes now that Gus had keyed him into the Trojan database across town. He needed the PDA to remember his passwords and to encode and decode his messages, even though the cipher was very basic, substituting numbers for the Cyrillic alphabet. Again, it was only meant to keep the Americans guessing for a few days.

  He used shorthand and abbreviations, perhaps three words in a row without most of the vowels, then one fully written out. He ran the numbers together so that 25 might as easily be a 2 and a 5. Also, the number substitution began arbitrarily, 1 for R—but only for messages transmitted on Sunday. The number representation shifted forward and back depending on the day of the week.

  Ulinov was good with data, but he couldn’t instantly make sense of a hundred numerals squeezed together. Composing his reports wasn’t any easier, encoding a hundred letters after deleting vowels at random. He needed to organize his messages ahead of time, then key them into the phone as he read off of his PDA. Likewise, when he received text he transcribed it into the PDA as rapidly as possible and only later worked through it.

  Even before he’d returned from talking with Kendricks, the Americans had disturbed his few belongings in the thin private area that was his living space, the back part of a suite that had been walled off with plywood. It wasn’t much, blankets and a mattress on the floor, two spare shirts, underwear. And they hadn’t searched too hard. They’d moved things just enough to show they’d been there—to see what he would do, if he would panic—but Ulinov had stashed his contraband elsewhere in the old hotel. He’d found a small slot behind the exposed studs of the wall in the second-floor stairwell where the paneling had been removed for firewood.

  The gun was not to kill Gustavo, nor himself nor anyone else. It was not for fighting at all. There was no chance for Ulinov to escape Leadville, nor any reason. He intended to use the weapon to destroy his PDA and the pitiful few files he’d created and received, no matter that the Americans might already hold copies of most. Let them think there were more. Let them worry there were real secrets.

  I can make everything worse, he thought, glancing out at the night again and the muted white points of the stars. Much closer, he saw the red beacons of a comm/radar plane returning from patrol.

  Ulinov believed the Russian leadership was using the link through the Italians to create confusion and fear. He believed it was a backhanded test of strength. They were pushing in order to be pushed back. They wanted to be slapped down. They wanted the Americans to feel confident, and that meant . . .

  It meant a double cross.

  The idea was so dangerous that he tried to move it out of his head completely, but the signs were all there. He’d never expected to go home again anyway. Not home, that was impossible, but he’d always understood he had little chance of rejoining his people no matter where they ended up. His duty was here. That was acceptable as long as he succeeded in doing his part.

  Were they selling their loyalty to the Chinese after all? Something different?

  Nikola Ulinov turned his eyes to the pockets of light in this cold, small, overcrowded city, his pulse beating with guilt and conviction at the same time. First he tried to access new messages, but either there were none or the Americans had intercepted them. Then he began his text with his authentic sign-on, Charlie, perhaps someone’s idea of a joke. It had been given to him months ago by the Russian foreign intelligence agency, SVR. Broken down into English, his message would be ominous,
and his leadership would realize he was playing along. No bargain yet on ntech but U.S. pressed hard by rebels. Suggest you download all ISS files. Make offer to—

  He interrupted himself, breaking the connection as if the cellular system dropped him or his phone had failed. Let the Americans make a mountain out of that. Ulinov could sell them enough bullshit in the meantime to keep them occupied.

  Something awful was going to happen.

  10

  Helicopters thudded in the darkness and Ruth crawled into the flat tire of an Army truck before she was awake, scraping her cheek and forehead against the lug nuts.

  “Here,” Cam said. “Over here.”

  She moved to his voice, shuffling in the dirt. They’d left the highway to make camp, settling down against an old troop carrier that had gone no more than four hundred yards before bogging down. The vehicle’s nose canted into the earth, which had been mud at the time. Now the conflicting angles of the hillside and the truck added to Ruth’s disorientation. She bumped into Cam. He held Newcombe’s rifle in both hands but leaned toward her for an instant, like the beginnings of a hug. She pushed against him, needing more physical contact.

  The helicopters were far away and seemed to going farther. Ruth glanced wildly into the night, not believing it. Then a man’s silhouette blocked out the stars and she flinched. The scattered light was mirrored in the lens of Newcombe’s goggles. “They’re headed south,” he said.

  The noise echoed and slapped against the foothills, fading. But there was a new sound, the hammer of guns. It was barely audible, a tat tat tat tat against the larger drumbeat. Tat tat tat. Assault rifles.

  “Oh shit,” Ruth said with sudden clarity. She and Cam jumped to their feet beside Newcombe, staring into the dark. There was nothing to see. The fighting was too distant. They probably wouldn’t have heard the clash at all in a living world. The sound carried for unknown miles.

  “They got Young and Brayton,” Newcombe said.

  Cam shook his head. “You can’t be sure.”

  “There’s no one else down here.”

  It changed everything. In her mind, Ruth had already quit, and she didn’t know how anyone could blame her. She’d done her best. She’d decided to tell Newcombe in the morning. Let’s call your people. I can’t hike any more. Now the safety net was gone. She wasn’t able to hold on to the hope that Captain Young and Todd Brayton would spread the vaccine themselves. Leadville had the nanotech, and Ruth knew exactly what the president’s council intended to do with it.

  One world. One people.

  What would humanity look like if they succeeded? Most of the survivors in the United States were white. The immigrant and minority populations across North America had lived on the coasts and in the inner cities. Los Angeles. New York. Toronto. Detroit. It was the heartlands that had survived—and to a certain mind-set, this purity would increase the appeal of claiming the entire Earth. Leadville would share the vaccine only if they needed to expand their labor force, permitting foreign populations to come down from the mountains as farmers and slaves.

  What if one of her friends had gotten away? Captain Young might have covered Todd as he ran from the choppers...No. Ruth was through fooling herself. The responsibility was hers. It had always been hers. She glanced at the stars again, fighting tears. Then she clenched her fist and held on to the grinding ache inside her cast.

  It’ll be light soon, she thought.

  She walked to her sleeping bag and began to pack up.

  * * * *

  It took them seven days to cover eighty-five miles, the last twenty-five away from any roads. Newcombe was afraid that Leadville had dropped motion detectors or even a few soldiers on every peak in the area, equipping small squads with radios and rations and then ordering them to wait. Cam pointed out how many islands there were throughout the nearest fifty square miles, and Leadville had no way of knowing they’d gone north out of Sacramento, not south. There would be countless acres of safe ground on the plateaus of Yosemite. Much closer to their real position, around Lake Tahoe, were dozens of high mountains and ridgelines. Even if Leadville only targeted the major highways that branched up toward elevation, they would need to commit hundreds of troops. Still, the chance existed, so Ruth, Cam, and Newcombe had bypassed the largest islands within reach and hiked toward a smaller line of bumps instead.

  Eight more times they’d felt the burn of nano infections. There was now a dark, thready patch of subcutaneous hemorrhaging on the back of Ruth’s left hand—her broken arm, the nanotech always going after any preexisting weakness. The bruise was healing but she suspected it would scar. Another mark on her. Worse, her feet were rubbed raw in her boots because she didn’t want to complain. Her pack had chafed her left shoulder badly because it rode funny, the strap catching on the sling for her cast.

  There were helicopters again. There were jets. They stumbled into another stretch of land that was thick with lizards and snakes, and then a dead forest littered with dead beetles, and then the hike abruptly got easier.

  The Sierra range had been in its third day of blizzard conditions when the plague spread. The snow stopped a lot of vehicles. They began to see the traffic breaking apart around sixty-five hundred feet, the cars falling off the road or lined up in strange ways. Cam attributed the new patterns to bad visibility and traction. At one point Newcombe got a Ford Expedition started and they made fourteen miles in a hurry. Another time they went three miles in a van, and nearly twenty in a pickup truck. Unfortunately there were still plenty of stalls and crashes, especially wherever the road curved. In the snow, the turns had become traps. They had to leave all three of their vehicles. Thousands of four-wheel drives and military trucks and tanks had fought up through the blizzard, as had little snowmobiles and more unexpected things like farm tractors and fire engines, whatever was heavy enough to bull through the snow. But even these vehicles had gathered in clumps and fence-like formations. Wherever one stopped, others hit or steered wide and got stuck. The drivers had been hysterical and bleeding and blind.

  Newcombe rummaged through most of the military trucks, not only looking for food and batteries but for clothing. They had all been in civilian gear they’d scavenged in Sacramento, but Newcombe took a stained Army jacket for himself. He had always found comfort in his training and experience. This was different. Ruth thought he wanted to have conducted himself well if they were captured or killed. He wanted to belong to his squad in the end, and she admired him for it.

  She wasn’t sleeping well. She dreamed too much and constantly woke despite her exhaustion, as if her mind was in overdrive trying to process it all.

  That the air kept getting thinner didn’t help. Any decrease in oxygen made the body anxious. The heart beat harder, and the brain reacted. Cam gave her melatonin and he gave her Tylenol PM, first a minor overdose, then as many as five pills at once. He even tried antihistamines because a side effect was drowsiness, and still Ruth muttered and twitched.

  The nightmare was real.

  * * * *

  “Don’t touch anything,” Newcombe said, stepping backward into the rushing wind. The sky was clear and perfect but the few, thin clouds were moving very fast. The cold ripped across the desolate earth, whistling through the gaps in the small rock structure in front of them.

  Cam stared into the low hut with one hand on his gun belt, although Ruth didn’t think he was aware of his defensive pose. “It looks like some kind of...like murder-suicide,” he said.

  No, she thought. No, I don’t think so.

  This mountaintop was a dead place. Walking across the barrier had been a dizzying experience. There were thousands of crosses scraped into the rock. The shape was everywhere. Hundreds of the marked stones had also been arranged into larger crosses themselves, laid across the ground. Some stretched as long as twenty feet. Others, made of pebbles, covered only a few inches. It was the work of countless days.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Newcombe said.

>   “We need to bury them.” Ruth couldn’t bear to look at shriveled corpses anymore. She let her eyes follow the wind instead. Farther east and south, toward Tahoe, the Sierras created a high, ragged skyline as far as she could see. They’d reached ten thousand feet, but only barely. This peak stood alone above the barrier, separated by miles of open space from the nearest other peaks.

  In the late afternoon, the distance looked much greater, crowded with shadows. Her grief was equally vast. Ruth’s face twisted suddenly and she slumped down, catching herself on one knee and her good hand. The marked pebbles lay all around.

  Cam knelt beside her. “Ruth? Ruth, whatever happened here was a long time ago,” he said, but that didn’t change her exhaustion or her lonely despair.

  How many islands were like this one?

  All this way for nothing, she thought. Then, like a different voice, They suffered for nothing.

  These people had lived through the first winter or even longer, stacking rocks for shelter, breaking the pine trees and brush beneath this tiny safe zone for firewood. Now they were gone. There were six big graves, each too big for a single person. Two more bodies sprawled inside their pathetic little shack with no one left to put them in the ground.

  A knife and a special rock lay in between the two women, a nearly round boulder etched all over with crosses. It had been used to crush the smaller woman’s head and then the last survivor seemed to have sawed open her own throat.

  Cam thought there had been some sort of religious holocaust. Ruth believed the crosses were something else. They had begged the sky for salvation. They’d tried to direct their souls away from this misery. Disease had taken them. The men might have missed it, because birds had been at the corpses, but the tight rotted film of their skin was distended and black behind their ears. They had endured the machine plague only to be destroyed by another contagion.

  “We need to bury these people,” Ruth said.

  Cam nodded. “Okay. Okay. But there’s no shovel.”