Plague War p-2

by Jeff Carlson

  Cam monitored Newcombe’s channels again. Ruth napped. A cloud of black †ies found them and buzzed and crawled but didn’t wake her. Neither did the whispering radio. The sun hung at noon for what seemed like a very long time and Cam silently held her.

  * * * *

  He woke himself when Newcombe said, “David Six, this is George. Do you copy? David Six.”

  The transition from sleep to consciousness eluded him for too long. Cam fumbled the headset over his hood and upped the volume, thumbing his send button. “This is Cam. Are you there? Hey, it’s Cam.”

  David Six was their call sign for the rebels, but Newcombe was gone. The light had changed. The sun was near the high line of the mountains in the west. Dusk stretched over the long slopes and pooled in the valleys, revealing the far-off glow of wild‚res.

  Cam stared at the thin control box. Should he switch frequencies? “Newcombe!” he said on 6, then changed to 8. “Newcombe, this is Cam.”

  Ruth said, “Are you sure it was him?”

  There was a man on 8 reciting coordinates, but a different voice broke over him. “Cam,” the radio said. “I hear you, buddy. Are you guys all right?”

  “Oh, thank God.” Ruth squeezed Cam’s arm in celebration.

  But he’d gone cold. “Shh,” he said, turning to look into the woods with a †icker of panic. Buddy. Newcombe had never said anything like that before and Cam shifted with restless fear. What if Newcombe had been captured?

  “I’m pretty sure I picked up your trail,” the radio said. “Why don’t you stop. I’ll catch up.”

  The two of them had probably kicked over every pinecone, rock, and fallen branch between here and the road. Jesus. And he’d slept. He’d sat here and slept for hours.

  “Cam, can you hear me?” the radio said.

  “You need to answer him.” Ruth was quiet and tense. She had also turned to gaze into the shadows behind them and Cam reluctantly nodded.

  He spoke to his headset. “Do you remember the name of the man who got us off the street in Sacramento?”

  “Olsen,” the radio said. One of Newcombe’s squadmates had given his life to delay the paratroopers who cornered them in the city, and Cam did not believe that Newcombe would disgrace his friend’s bravery. Not immediately. It was the best test that he could manage, providing Newcombe a chance to get it wrong if the enemy had a knife to his throat.

  “Okay,” Cam said. “We’ll wait.”

  * * * *

  They tried to set up an ambush just the same, hooking back above the trail they’d left. They waited in a jag of earth with their pistols, but only one man came out of the night.

  “Newcombe,” Cam said softly. The soldier ran to them and gripped Cam’s hand in both of his own, eager for contact. With Ruth, he was more careful, touching his glove to her good arm.

  He was different. He was chatty. Cam thought Newcombe had been more scared than he would ever admit. He seemed to notice the change in them, too. As they ate the last of the packaged food, Newcombe looked up from his dinner repeatedly to peer at Cam or Ruth in the darkness — mostly Ruth. Cam smiled faintly. He was glad to have anything to smile about and he saw a tired, answering slant on Ruth’s mouth as they shared two cans of chicken stew from Newcombe’s pack.

  “The bug traps worked,” Newcombe said. “Worked like crazy. There were ants coming out of the ground over a mile away. I had to circle north, that’s why I got so far behind you.”

  “Did you ever see who was coming down the mountain?”

  “No. But the radio says it’s the Russians.”

  “The Russians,” Ruth said.

  “Yeah.” Newcombe had left his set on, squawking beside him. Cam thought he’d probably been making calls the entire time just to hold on to the illusion of another human presence.

  Only bad luck had kept them from hearing each other. Newcombe said, “It sounds like they fucked us in some land deal and brought the nuke into Leadville with their top diplomats and a bunch of kids. Their own kids. I—”

  The dim murmur of voices was overcome by a louder broadcast, a woman speaking low and fast. “George, this is Sparrowhawk. George, come back. This is Sparrowhawk.”

  Newcombe dropped his stew and grabbed the headset, talking before he’d even brought the microphone to his face. “George, George, George, this is George, George, George.”

  The three of them were so intent on the radio that at ‚rst Cam didn’t realize there was another sound rising over the forest. A distant, familiar roar. He looked up through the dark trees.

  “I need con‚rmation, Sparrowhawk,” Newcombe said, before he turned and muttered, “It’s our guys. It has to be our guys.”

  The world exploded around them. A jet ripped overhead, dragging a wall of noise behind it. The rush of turbulence crashed into the mountains and echoed back. Dry pine needles and twigs showered onto Cam’s hood and shoulders.

  “Hotel Bravo, Bravo November,” the woman said, “Hotel Bravo, Bravo November.”

  “There are runners at third and ‚rst,” Newcombe said urgently. “The batter is Najarro. The pitcher is a Yankee. The ball goes to third.”

  Her engines were red-white ‚re in the night, curving upward suddenly in a hard leftward arc. Was she coming back again? Newcombe’s broadcast couldn’t reach more than a few miles, but if she circled she’d give away their location — She was performing evasive manuevers. There were more ‚res in the sky. A peak to the south had lit up with searing yellow trails and the jet’s engines †ared as the pilot boosted away.

  “Missiles,” Cam said, because Newcombe’s head was down, concentrating on his message.

  “The ball goes to third,” Newcombe repeated.

  Static. Her engines whipped down against the black earth and vanished behind a hill. Then an explosion skipped up from the terrain. Cam and Ruth reached for each other. “No,” Ruth said, but the engines rose into sight again, swiftly dwindling into the east. It was a missile that had struck the ground.

  Cam decided this couldn’t have been the ‚rst scout that U.S. forces had sent blitzing into California, its cameras snapping like guns. “Baseball,” he said to Newcombe. “You think the Russians are listening, too.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “You used my name.” Cam had never been on the radio, and wouldn’t have been a part of any manifest before the expedition into Sacramento. “The pitcher is a Yankee. New York.”

  “You want to go north again,” Ruth said. “Where third base would be from here.”

  “Northeast. Exactly. There’s a county air‚eld near Doyle, not far inside the California-Nevada border. It’s right in line with the grid I just laid out.”

  “What if the pilot doesn’t remember?” Cam said. “Or if she didn’t even hear you?”

  “She’ll have it on tape. They’ll ‚gure it out.”

  “Unless she was out of range.”

  Newcombe shrugged con‚dently in the dark. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’ll be back.”

  18

  Six days later they were within two miles of the air‚eld and Ruth split away from Cam as he went to ground in a cluster of red desert rocks. Neither of them spoke. They simply acted. He picked his way into the small maze of boulders and Ruth hunkered down a few yards to his †ank, watching their back-trail as Newcombe trudged past and then took his own position on Cam’s other side.

  The triangle was their default and their strength. It was as close to a circle as the three of them could manage, turning eyes in every direction.

  The path behind them was hazy with orange dust and the breeze had been erratic today, calming early in the morning. It might be hours before the ‚ne, dry grit settled down again, but they couldn’t afford to wait for the weather to change. Instead, they watched for other dust trails.

  No one, Ruth thought. There may never be anyone out here again.

  To the west, the Sierras were a staggered wall of blue shadows and dusky forest. That color lightened and bro
ke apart as it spilled down into the arid foothills. Their guess was that most survivors would move north or south along the edges of that uneven line, and if Russian troops had come in pursuit, they’d obeyed the same border.

  Ruth, Cam, and Newcombe were miles beyond any hint of green. The plague had been catastrophic in this place. Even the weeds and hardy sagebrush were dead. All that stood were a few dry stubs of windswept roots. Several times they’d seen the desiccated remains of grass and wild†owers laid on the ground like stains, brittle and black. In the heat, the insects had been destroyed, which in turn condemned the reptiles and the vegetation. Lacking any balance whatsoever, the biosphere tipped. The earth baked into powder and superheated the air.

  It drew moisture from every seam in their armor. Ruth was stripped down to T-shirt and undies inside the grimy shell of her jacket and pants, and still she broiled.

  Drinking water had become life-and-death. Every day they needed more than they could carry. Fortunately they’d also returned to civilization, passing through the outskirts of little towns with names like Chilcoot and Hallelujah Junction. Highway 395 paralleled their hike north and was spotted with stalled cars and Army trucks. They scavenged new clothing and boots. They also found bottles and cans easily enough, although many had swelled or burst in the sun.

  The highway was no protection from the dust. Red dirt and sand licked across the asphalt. It piled against cars and guardrails, forming dunes and bars. There were soft pits where culverts had been and other hazards like fences and downed wires. Once she’d cut her ankle on a ‚re hydrant concealed in the sand, so they usually went cross-country.

  They had yet to see another dust cloud. Most days had been windy, which erased their trail but would also confuse the dust kicked up by anyone else. They worried constantly about planes and satellite coverage. Were the †ags of dust running up from their feet noticeable from above? There was always movement around them. Huge whirlwinds walked in the desert and vanished and then leapt up again, especially to the east. Their hope was that they only looked like another dust devil.

  “Sst,” Cam whispered. Newcombe repeated the all clear and then Ruth, too. They drew together in a band of shade and Ruth blessed the wind-blasted rock for its size, glancing up along its pitted surface as she set her good hand against her pants pocket and the hard, round shape inside it. She still had the etched stone she’d taken from the ‚rst mountaintop. More and more she was treating inanimate objects with respect, making friends or enemies of everything that touched her.

  Part of her knew it was stupid. But she’d grown superstitious. There was no question that some things liked to bite. She would be a long time forgetting the rigid edges of the ‚re hydrant against her pantleg, so didn’t it make sense to feel obliged to benign objects like her little stone and the much larger shape of the desert rock? The idea was as close to faith as she’d ever been, a heightened sense of connection with everything around her.

  Maybe there really was a God within the earth and the sky. He would exist immaterial of whether religions were right or wrong. People tended to believe in what they wanted the world to be instead of looking to see what it was, inventing tribal power structures, skewing observable facts to make themselves important. Before the plague, in fact, the most successful religions had existed as shadow governments, transcending nations and continents. What fathers believed, they taught their sons, and they were encouraged to have as many sons as possible. Who honestly thought that the Catholic edict against birth control was based on the lessons of Christ? Or that the enforced ignorance of women in the Muslim world was holy in any way? Large families were the quickest way to expand the faithful— and yet none of these human blunders meant there wasn’t some kernel of truth to the idea of a greater being.

  Hundreds of forms of worship had been born throughout history, and new religions had surely begun since the plague. Why? Despite the suspicion and greed of the monkey still inside them, people could be smart and honest and brave. Had the best of them truly perceived some link to the divine? Ruth was beginning to think yes, although her sense of it was doubtful and faint.

  Earth was a very late planet in the life span of this galaxy, †ung deep into its spiral arms. If there was a God, maybe he’d used the farthest, most forgotten worlds of his creation for experiments, knowing that most of them would be half-perfect mistakes. What could He hope to learn? The limits of their imagination and strength?

  Her little stone, etched with crosses, had become more than a reminder. It was a talisman. It had power. She could sense it.

  The stone protected her.

  “What do you think?” Cam asked.

  Newcombe was peering north through his binoculars. Ruth turned and squinted into the desert herself. The town of Doyle was a squat collection of buildings like boxes and square signs elevated on long metal poles. Mobil. Carl’s Jr. Beyond it, brown hills and ridges rolled upward into the dazzling light.

  Newcombe shrugged and traded Ruth the binoculars for a plastic bottle of mineral water. She swung her gaze away from town to the few structures of the air‚eld, feeling both wary and hopeful. She couldn’t deny that she was also pleased. The men were beginning to trust her as much as they relied on each other, and she’d earned it.

  Her transformation was complete. Ruth had always been tough but now she was a warrior in every aspect, lean and hard and too sensitive all at the same time. To say that she was twitchy would not be incorrect. And yet the twitch was a cool, distant feeling, insulated by experience.

  She let her eyes drift over the air‚eld’s fences and high buildings. “Looks good,” she said.

  Still they waited, drinking more. Newcombe passed around some candy for quick energy and dug out the radio, too. He didn’t speak. He only clicked at his send button a few times, transmitting three short ticks of squelch. It meant I’m here but there was no reply, only empty white noise.

  They’d established direct contact with the rebel forces twice more, once for nearly a full minute with a ‚ghter that jettisoned an automated relay. Both times Newcombe had talked nonstop, accepting the chance of being triangulated or overheard, using as much slang as possible in case the enemy was recording him. He had never been explicit, though, and the pilots had also hedged their language. No one ever came right out and said the Doyle air‚eld or June 11 th, before noon.

  “Okay,” Newcombe said. “You know your marks.”

  Cam nodded. “Ten minutes.”

  “Thirty,” Ruth said.

  Newcombe touched her shoulder and then Cam’s before he moved out, intending to reconnoiter wide around the air‚eld. They were badly hamstrung by the short range of their equipment, and the relay had vanished in the dust. They just didn’t know what to expect. U.S. soldiers couldn’t wait below the barrier, unless a pilot had landed in a containment suit with a stack of air tanks. That seemed unlikely. They’d had the air‚eld in sight for a day and a half now with no sign of activity, but there were any number of ways the Russians could stop them.

  Because they had the vaccine, the enemy might have left men at every airport within a hundred miles. Or they could have simply dropped motion detectors or antipersonnel mines. An effort that widespread would have used a lot of fuel and gear, of course. It was a good bet that the invaders hadn’t done it. The stakes weren’t quite so high for them.

  The same couldn’t be said for the United States, because the

  U.S. had yet to gain possession of the vaccine. The two ‚ghters they’d spoken with weren’t the only ones Newcombe identi‚ed as their own. Four days ago, a trio of F/A-18 Super Hornets had slashed into the mountains. Yesterday, a lone bomber came limping out of the southwest before two MiGs overtook the wounded aircraft and gunned it down.

  Their side was trying to cover them and misdirect the enemy. They’d been surprised to ‚nd an ongoing exchange between a weak transmission from a man who said he was Newcombe and a stronger signal urging him toward a pickup in Carson City. The weaker trans
missions were still more powerful than their own, and so more easily overheard, and Carson City lay sixty miles away from Doyle in the direction they would have gone if they’d chosen to head south instead of north. It was a neat trick, and Ruth appreciated the help — but meanwhile other people were sacri‚cing their lives.

  Larger con†icts were taking place in Yosemite and farther south. The Russians had been airlifting the rest of their people into California, which was good and bad. It meant the enemy was preoccupied with shielding their planes from American and Canadian interceptors, but they were also growing stronger and better established.

  The U.S. was crippled in meeting the enemy. A large part of the nation’s air force had disappeared with Leadville — and for hundreds of miles, the surviving planes were only so much aluminum, plastic, and rubber. The EMP had burned out electronics even below the barrier, where U.S. forces might have scavenged new parts and computers.

  Estimates on the radio said the Russians had already landed tens of thousands of troops and civilians. More were on the way. In fact, their numbers were surging. There were more and more planes every day, because the Russians had carried the vaccine overseas. The Russians had freed every available pilot and engineer to scavenge below the barrier, lifting aircraft out of the Middle East and their homeland.

  Ruth was certain her tiny group couldn’t stay ahead of the invaders much longer. The Russians would spread out if only to improve their defenses and food stocks. They would ‚nd her.

  She still kept her grenade with the data index and slept with both under her head.

  She also worried about her arm and whether it was healing correctly. How would they know when to cut off the worn, stinking cast? The men could fashion a splint easily enough, but their opinions differed on when she would be ready to lose the ‚berglass sheath. She was honest. She explained that the doctors in Leadville had been concerned about her bone density and said the break might be a long time knitting together. It still hurt, which couldn’t be a good sign.