Plague War p-2

by Jeff Carlson

  Aching, she peered at the rows of homes below the highway. There was only a small chance she’d learn anything, but so far small things had made the difference — and she could not pretend that the ugly fascination in her didn’t exist.

  More than a mile away, a steel meteor had furrowed through two residential blocks, hurling shrapnel as it went. At least a dozen houses had exploded or slumped open, leaving only hunks of walls and ceilings and great drifts of white plaster and furniture. Here and there were also torn segments of metal. This was the booming they’d heard the day before, the missiles that had brought the plane down. The aircraft must have been closing on their rendezvous point on Highway 65, although they were not. They were past Rocklin now, farther east and north.

  The debris ‚eld was lost in a tornado of bugs. Attracted to the blood and bodies strewn among the wreckage, ants and †ies †ooded the ground and pillared up into the air, lifting and swirling. The three of them had tried to avoid the storm without realizing what was causing it until Newcombe spotted the fuselage within the haze. The largest piece was most of the nose-end of a big C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane. It must be the aircarft that had carried the dead man they’d found yesterday, and it was nearly ten miles from that ‚rst corpse.

  Lord God, my God, she thought, trying not to imagine it. The plane coming apart. The men thrown away into the sky. There would be more craters wherever the other parts of the C-17 had slammed down. Even roasting inside her jacket, Ruth felt a chill. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t asked them to come. These men had died for her, and their heroism was something she could never repay.

  She closed her eyes. She wanted to pray but she didn’t believe in it. God was only an emphatic word to Ruth. Still, going through the motions made her think of her step-father and his calm faith and then she was angry and jealous and she looked up again, her breath thick in her chest.

  She reeked of gasoline and repellent. They all did. Cam had grown uneasy at the number of †ies persisting at them despite the perfume, bumping at their goggles, squirming to get inside their collars and hoods. He’d done the only thing he could think of to further conceal them. He’d soaked their jackets with fuel and entire bottles of bug repellent and it made the pain in Ruth’s head like a dull nail.

  “What do you think?” Cam asked. “Forty guys? Fifty?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Newcombe said, hefting his pack. Then, too loudly, he turned back and said, “Yeah. Which means there were probably a hundred altogether.”

  Scattered like the ‚rst man we came across, Ruth thought, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to provoke them. Cam and Newcombe were still learning to read each other as well as she understood the two men herself, and they clashed even when the argument was already said and done.

  Ruth tried to end it before it started again. She hurried after Newcombe, and Cam fell in behind her. They hiked hard and fast, pushing themselves. Ruth saw the skeleton of a dog and a wad of money and then a red blouse that hadn’t faded at all. Otherwise the carnage was numbing — cars, bones, garbage, bones — and her mind caught in a loop as she struggled on.

  A hundred men, she thought. A hundred more, dead for me. She knew that wasn’t fair. Her role had always been defensive, reacting to the holocaust. She could never be blamed for the machine plague, but it felt like the truth. It felt like she should have done more. She should have done better.

  “We need to rethink what we’re doing,” Newcombe said.

  Cam shook his head. “Let’s not waste the time.”

  “That plane was a show of commitment.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Newcombe.”

  Every hour the temptation to agree with Newcombe was stronger. Ruth was unspeakably tired. She obsessed about her arm. Was it healing straight? Cam needed medical care even more, and yet he remained single-minded.

  “I don’t know what more you want,” Newcombe said. “That mess back there, that was a hundred guys who knew they had pretty bad odds even if they actually found us — and they never even got that far, did they? But they came anyway.”

  Ruth turned her head. More and more, the gesture was becoming a habit, denying what was in front of her. Nothing had changed despite the snatch of rebel broadcasts they’d picked up last night. They were still down here beneath a sky full of aircraft, no matter if the rebels declared themselves the legal American government. Both sides had made those claims before. So what? It was only words, and yet it had given Newcombe something else to argue with.

  Newcombe hadn’t given up on persuading them. He probably wouldn’t. They had made the radio even more important to him, because he had no other friend, and Cam admitted it was smart to listen as much as possible. Whenever they stopped to eat or nap, the two men monitored the airwaves together. Cam had to be sure Newcombe never transmitted. He kept their radios in his pack and slept against it, and his hard pillow also included Newcombe’s pistol.

  “Every day we hike east is another day we’ll have to hike back out again,” Newcombe said. “They’ll never try to get us right up against the Leadville base. It was high-risk for them already.”

  “High-risk is the problem,” Cam said. “Listen to yourself. We’re not getting on a plane just to get shot down.”

  He walked left suddenly into an open pocket like a strange asphalt meadow. Then they crunched through a puddle of glass alongside a Buick that had veered into a tiny Geo, smashing it against two other vehicles.

  “Shit.” Newcombe waved his arms helplessly. “Pretty soon they’ll scrub the whole operation if you stay off the radio. They’ll think we’re dead.”

  “We can make contact when it’s time.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “It’s already decided, man. Stop working against us.”

  Ruth huffed for air against her mask. Her boots clattered through a broken femur and a torn suitcase and then the three of them dodged left again to avoid a small oil slick where an SUV seemed to have accelerated and reversed and accelerated again, bashing through the other cars all of thirty feet until its tires went †at and the engine seized because its radiator had burst. The ramming was something they’d seen again and again — dying people trying anything to escape — and every time it made her feel anxious and lost.

  She kept moving, holding on to her thoughts like a beacon. They ducked under a torn bike rack and Ruth stumbled. She was immediately up again, woozy and dry-mouthed. She turned to stare back at the cloud of bugs. Was it leaning toward them? Her vision leapt with black threads and she twisted away—

  She never seemed to hit the asphalt. She came awake in the damp, hot cocoon of her jacket and face mask with a new pain spiking through her arm.

  Cam leaned over her. “Easy,” he said.

  I passed out, she thought, but the realization felt dim and meaningless until he tried to help her up. He was obviously close to dropping himself, bent beneath his pack and the assault ri†e. His left arm trembled as he grabbed the front of her jacket.

  Newcombe stepped in to help. Cam bristled. Even with his face and body concealed, it was unmistakable, like the way her step-father’s dog had tensed if anyone except her step-father approached the numbskull little terrier after it stole a pillow or a shoe.

  Cam tipped a canteen into his glove and dripped the water over her hood and shoulders. Ruth frowned, confused. She was thinking too much of the past and she tried to avoid Cam’s eyes and the concern she saw there. She had seen the same look in her step-brother’s gaze when he asked if they were going to tell anyone about the two of them, that they’d slept together while she was home for Hanukkah and then again for a week in Miami. The excitement between them had become a lot more than just fun and convenient, but neither of them knew how to tell their parents. Ari. She hadn’t thought of him in what felt like a very long time and yet she understood why the memory came. The tangle between herself and Cam and Newcombe reminded her exactly of that wild, trapped feeling.

  The
y’d made a bad situation worse. Their trust was gone and they could never relax, not even in camp at night when they needed it most. None of them had been resting well, not even with pills, and sleep deprivation was another ever-growing hazard. It made them stupid. It made them paranoid, but they were forced to work together. There was no other way out.

  They were bound more tightly than she and Ari had ever been and her mind whirled as she fought for some kind of answer. Then she saw both men glance beyond her, leery of the bugs. Ruth nodded once and shoved herself to her feet, the nail in her head throbbing with new frustration.

  * * * *

  They’d made their situation almost unworkable. Ruth accepted that she was as much to blame as the other two. She could have simply obeyed Newcombe, instead of encouraging Cam to stand against him. She could have let Cam go east alone and taken her chances on a plane.

  They were long past the rendezvous. Rocklin was miles behind them, along with all but the farthest outskirts of the greater Sacramento metropolis. In fact, they’d talked about leaving the highway soon, striking out across the dry brown oak-and-grassland hills. Cam thought they’d make better time off the road, and yet it would also become more challenging to ‚nd supplies. Newcombe and Cam were sure they could carry enough food for several meals, but each of them needed at least two quarts of water a day. Some of their canteens also had to carry gasoline. They had no idea how bad the insects might be in the open hills. Better? Worse?

  There were other unknowns. Ruth still had yet to decipher her feelings for Cam. It was impossible not to be grateful and impressed. The dif‚cult choices he’d made were the only reason she was alive and free, and a huge part of the success she’d had so far. She didn’t want to hurt him. She felt real affection and loyalty, but she was also wary. In his protectiveness was also a possessiveness, and Ruth worried at that. She was also disturbed by how easily he’d turned on Newcombe. She’d thought he would argue, but instead he seemed very comfortable with the idea of betrayal. It made her wonder again what it must have been like for him on his mountaintop, surviving at any cost.

  Maybe he’d only agreed for her sake. He was obviously smitten with her — not because she was so great, she thought, but simply because she was there, because he wanted so badly to be accepted and to feel normal and whole.

  It was very human to join with whoever was available. Fear and pain only made that instinct stronger. Their predicament reminded her of Nikola Ulinov. As the space station commander, Ulinov had tried to separate himself from Ruth even as they traded glances and found reasons to touch each other, bickering in her lab or helping each other through the corridors and habitation modules of the ISS in zero gravity.

  Her moments with Ulinov had been easy compared to here and now. Ruth couldn’t imagine pursuing anything physical. After so many days on the road, she was encrusted in dirt. and she and Cam were both wounded…and his face was so badly scarred, his body must be blistered and burnt as well. Plus he was just a kid, really, maybe twenty-‚ve, whereas she was all of thirty-six with another birthday coming soon.

  Cam hadn’t said anything. She didn’t think he would push. Maybe he even believed she was unaware of his feelings. He must be painfully self-conscious, wrapped in his scars, and he was often quiet with her. Shy. They didn’t need the distraction, this little spark growing between them.

  Just by itself, the long walk was too much. The two of them weren’t enough people to watch Newcombe and still look out for bugs and other hazards, watch their maps and compass, ‚nd water, ‚nd food, make camp. They’d had to talk it out with Newcombe and ultimately they’d had to trust him. He didn’t have any great options, either. What could he do? Wrestle with Cam to get his ri†e back, then shoot Cam and keep Ruth as a prisoner, tying her legs to keep her from running?

  In this at least she and Cam had the upper hand. In camp they always lay down close together. Two would be harder to overpower than one, but the implications of bedding down side by side were only deepening that particular trouble. In the cool spring nights, Cam was warm. Even wrapped up in his gloves and jacket, he was much softer than the ground. Last night Ruth had burrowed against him, knowing she was wrong to encourage him but unable to forsake the basic comfort of it.

  * * * *

  Of everyone who’d been a part of her life, Ruth missed her step-brother most of all. Not her parents, not her few close friends. Ari had always been her favorite distraction. They still had yet to resolve their relationship and never would, not with him killed or, less likely, lost among the scattered refugees. He was the perfect memory, good and strong. He was safe. She recognized that. Even the cruel things he’d done were part of the easier world before the plague. He’d hurt her badly, in fact, because he was never quite in reach. Legally they were family and they’d been scared of what people would think. So he’d left her. Twice. A third time, she had been the one to call things off. It was messy. It was intense.

  Ruth Ann Goldman had been an only child. Probably that was for the best. Her father was an independent software programmer/analyst, brilliant at his work and in high demand. He had few hours for his daughter and less for his wife. That he could have hired on with one company and settled into a steady nine-to-‚ve, yet chose not to, wasn’t something Ruth understood until much later. She was a loud girl, antic and capering, hungry for approval at home and therefore everywhere else — in school, with her peers.

  After the divorce her mother found a better man, not so driven. Her step-father was a lot like her dad, enthusiastic and smart. He was more disciplined in giving of himself, however, more appreciative, having lost his ‚rst wife to cancer.

  It wasn’t the Brady Bunch, no matter how many times her mother made that idiotic joke. Ruth shared a bathroom with Susan and Ari, which was both excruciating and thrilling for a thirteen-year-old who had always had a toilet and a shower to herself. The Cohen kids were casual about busting in on each other wearing only underwear or a towel. There were glimpses of skin and slammed doors and apologies, and it was all very dramatic. Both of them were older than Ruth, Susan by four years, Ari by two, and they were always running around getting ready for dates or, in Ari’s case, cleaning up after baseball and basketball. Ruth managed to get in the way often enough.

  If love is indeed just chemistry, it shouldn’t have shocked anyone that step-brother and sister ended up together. His dad and her mom made a good ‚t. There was an echo of that attraction in the next generation and they circled each other for years, Ruth pushing him back with sarcasm and drawing him close in a thousand ways, teasing him and herself by asking about his girlfriends, by †aunting around the house in her pajamas, by sitting with him and his math homework — a low-charge erotic tension much like she would develop with Nikola Ulinov nearly two decades later. Alone in the house, they wrestled for possession of the TV remote, and they played dunk wars in the community pool in front of everyone, smooth skin on wet skin.

  Ari was popular and athletic. Ruth was more on the outside of the social scene, a brain. She had a decent body and great hair but a face that looked like she’d borrowed an adult’s nose and ears.

  They ‚rst kissed when she was seventeen and still a virgin, after she came home unhappy after a bad time at a school dance. The boy she liked hadn’t been interested in her. Maybe Ari took advantage of that. Maybe she let him. He touched her through her clothes and she grabbed him once. But it was awkward the next day. Confusion drove them apart and silence ‚lled their friendship. Fortunately, Ari went off to college. They only saw each other over holiday breaks and the next summer, after which Ruth left home herself for Cincinnati U. Then he had a serious girlfriend. Then she had her ‚rst internship.

  Ruth was more experienced when they both came home for Hanukkah the year she was twenty-one. She made eyes at him over dinner and across the living room while the family watched TV. After the house had settled down for the night, she left her light on, pretending to read a book. He rapped quietly on her bedroom door a
nd it was exciting and nice and romantic as hell.

  Things went on like that for years, stealing an afternoon or a few nights together. They certainly could have tried harder to make a relationship of it, but Ruth was too busy and Ari never had any trouble talking other women into bed, which †ustered her.

  It was that unsettled karma that kept him in her heart.

  Most of what Ruth knew and believed about religion, she’d learned from her step-father. She had hardly grown up Orthodox, eating tasty animal by-products on pizza with her friends, her dad banging away on his computer on the Sabbath, but this part of her life underwent a change after her mother remarried. Ari often had games on Saturdays and her step-father happily drove the family to attend, and yet the Cohens disdained pig meat as proscribed. They also made some effort to avoid work and to leave the TV off on the Sabbath. Her step-father’s faith was less a matter of worship than a practiced respect for all things. If pressed, he could boil it down to one cliché not typically perceived as Jewish. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It wasn’t scienti‚c or even particularly logical, given human nature, but it had balance and it appealed to her.

  Ruth had been a child at ‚rst with Ari, and later she had been sel‚sh. She couldn’t afford to make that mistake again.

  * * * *

  The fact of the matter was that Ruth had gone out of her way to grab a box of condoms from a Walgreens while the men were three aisles over in the canned-foods section, wondering what the hell she was going to say if they caught her. Because I have to. Even if she said no, Cam might say yes, and her choices were limited. She’d encouraged him.