by Jeff Carlson
“I’m sorry,” Allison said. “Who had the vaccine?”
Ruth realized she wasn’t making sense. Cam would have understood, but Allison hadn’t been there. “I need your help,” she said.
“You bet.” Allison nodded, watching her face closely. The girl had ‚nally noticed Ruth’s exhaustion.
“There were two more people with us who made it out of Sacramento,” Ruth said. “A soldier and another scientist like me. They had the vaccine. Leadville caught them. That was about two weeks ago, and Leadville must have started running trials and new versions based on that technology.”
There were four different strains of the ghost. Ruth had solved that much of the riddle without coming any closer to knowing what the ghost was supposed to do. At the same time she’d also identi‚ed, very roughly, four infection points that had since blended as the remnants of Leadville’s armies split and surrendered and migrated away from ground zero. The leadership there had been secretly testing new models of the ghost on their own people. They’d dosed forward units to see what would happen — and yet the ghost was not a perfect vaccine, even though it should have been easy for them to improve the crude, hurried work that Ruth had done in Sacramento.
The teams in Leadville never would have left the vaccine exactly as it was, not bothering to improve it. Ruth knew that much. A better vaccine must exist. Leadville’s machining gear far exceeded anything that Grand Lake had been able to steal or buy. Leadville also had the expertise of ‚fty of the best minds in nanotech. A vaccine that offered full immunity against the plague would have been their ‚rst priority, but they must have kept it for themselves exactly as she’d feared. Then they’d begun to experiment with other nanotech.
What did the ghost do? Could she recover the improved vaccine somewhere? Ruth would never be able to match their work or recreate it on her own, not for years or decades, but there might be survivors from their inner circle or molecular debris that had been thrown clear of the blast and absorbed by the nearest refugees. She was certain she could ‚nd other traces of their handiwork, if only she looked.
“We have to get out of here,” Ruth said, “and I need you to help me convince Shaug to let me go. I need an escort. Cars. My equipment.”
“That won’t be easy. I can talk to the other mayors.”
“Thank you.”
Ruth needed to follow the muddled, invisible trail back into the south to see if she could recover LaSalle’s best work before it was lost forever. There wasn’t anyone else who could sort through and identify the nanotech.
“Do you think Cam…Will he come?” Ruth ducked her head from Allison’s gaze and spoke to the †oor. “He’s ‚nally safe here. And he has you and his other friends.”
Allison waited until Ruth looked up again, then shook her head and smiled once more. This time the smile was sad, and Ruth understood that Allison carried her own resentment. In fact, Allison would have been glad to see her go.
“Try to stop him,” Allison said.
21
“Move away from the jeep,” Cam said, holding his carbine on the burned man. Beside him, Corporal Foshtomi aimed her submachine gun at the man’s teenage sons. They stood in the middle of a small crowd. Cam and Foshtomi had their backs against their jeep, with Sergeant Wesner perched above them— but when Cam risked one glance, he saw that Wesner had turned away to cover the other side.
There were at least seventy refugees on the hill. Most of them gathered in a clump at the ‚rst of the three vehicles, where Ruth, Deborah, and Captain Park were drawing blood. Some people had already hurried away with a can of food or a clean sweater, their reward for cooperating. But there were others who’d drifted out of line. The burned man and his sons had reached into the back of the second jeep to grab whatever wasn’t tied down until Wesner shouted at them.
“We need it more than you,” the burned man said.
“Move.” Cam pulled the charging bolt of his M4, a harsh metallic clack, but the burned man only stared at the supply cases as if convincing himself. “Move!” Cam yelled.
“Get back! Get back!” Wesner shouted, supporting him, and at the head of the column, six more Army Rangers took up the warning, suddenly pushing into the crowd.
The noise from the refugees was less powerful, although the Rangers were badly outnumbered. Cam saw Deborah grasp at a starving woman to keep her in their canvas folding chair. Captain Park was inoculating everyone with the vaccine after Deborah drew a blood sample, but the stick-‚gured woman thrashed away from Deborah, screaming. At the same time, Ruth lurched back from the crowd and drew her pistol.
Good girl, he thought. His divided attention nearly killed him. The burned man stepped in with a knife and Foshtomi shifted her weapon.
“No!” Cam said, jostling Foshtomi’s arm. Foshtomi was small and tightly built. She probably weighed a hundred and ‚ve in her boots, but she was quick as hell. She bent away from Cam and swung her gun up again, jamming its snub nose into the man’s ribs.
“Don’t fuckin’ move,” she said.
Cam covered the two boys with his carbine. There was more shouting at the head of the column, but he kept his eyes locked on their faces. The burns were radiation. They’d been close enough to the †ash that their skin had seared. Now they wore permanent shadows like cracked brown paint. Where was the boys’ mother? Dead? Only hiding? This family had seen the world end twice but still had the determination to ‚ght their way north, and Cam did not want to hurt them. He’d felt it before — this sensation of staring into a mirror. It was only a wild chain of luck and circumstance that had put him on the other side of the glass, well-fed, in uniform, and armed.
“Just go. Please.” Cam almost reached into the jeep for a few cans of food, until Foshtomi added, “You’re lucky I didn’t blow your guts out through your spine.”
Foshtomi continued to glare after they’d left. She was trembling, though, and Cam smiled to himself. Of all the good men and women who’d volunteered to leave Grand Lake, this brash little Ranger was his favorite. Like so many of the best survivors, Foshtomi possessed certain traits. As the only woman in her squad, she could be crude at times, even heartless, as if compensating for her small size, but Foshtomi was also smart, active, and tough. In fact, she often reminded Cam of Ruth, in the same ways Allison did, except that the only history he shared with Sarah Foshtomi was uncomplicated and new.
* * * *
Being with Allison had changed him. His self-image was still shaky, but his con‚dence was growing again. He wasn’t so bitter or afraid. Maybe he should have been. He’d taken the ‚rst hesitant steps toward building a normal life in Grand Lake, only to leave her. Allison had stayed behind and he didn’t blame her. She had other responsibilities. He’d realized his place was here.
He made a point of ‚nding Ruth that evening in camp. She looked up from her maps and Cam glanced left and right, feeling like he was on stage. The three jeeps sat in an open triangle with ‚ring positions at each corner, in the middle of a long, slanting area of low brush and rock. The space inside was no more than ten yards across at its widest point. Twelve people made for a good crowd, even though most of them were either sitting at the guns or sacked out in their bedrolls. Cam saw Captain Park and another man watching him.
The Rangers were curious. They’d gambled their lives for Ruth and they weren’t quite sure how Cam was attached to her— and he was obviously with her, no matter that he’d given his oath and wore their uniform. Cam was a Ranger in name only. He was still learning to disassemble and clean his weapon, the 5.56mm M4 carbine. He was slightly more familiar with the older M16, which had been carried by the troops out of Leadville, like Newcombe, but although the two models were very similar, Cam had never trained with one. The difference was unexpected. He knew the plague year had forced the military to draw on old stockpiles and equipment, yet it surprised Cam to learn that rebel soldiers were better armed than the troops had been in the capital, at least in this instance.
/> Most of the Rangers were friendly, like Foshtomi. They were willing to teach him, but they wanted to know how he ‚t into the puzzle. So did he.
The look in Ruth’s eyes was wary, though she tried to hide it with a smile. “Hi,” she said.
“How are you doing?” Cam paused at the edge of her notes. Then he crouched on the far side of the battered sheaf of paper.
Ruth began to tidy up and seemed glad for an excuse to avoid his gaze. She pointed at the map. “We haven’t found anything new yet,” she said.
That wasn’t what he’d asked, but he nodded.
Ruth shook her head. “I didn’t really expect to. We haven’t covered enough ground.”
“We will,” Cam said.
The sunset had that lasting quality he’d only found at elevation. Her hair shone in the twilight, and when she looked up, her brown eyes were dark and beautiful and so very serious.
She deserved better. She should have been able to remain in Grand Lake, and Cam wondered at her insistence that no one else could screen the blood samples for nanotech. Ruth was still punishing herself. Why?
The drive had been tough-going. They had the ability to drop below the barrier but they wanted to meet people, and the vaccine had yet to spread south of Grand Lake except where they’d distributed it themselves. There were no refugees below ten thousand feet. Regardless, the roads were jammed with stalled traf‚c. Mostly they went cross-country. In three days they’d gone just twenty-four miles, most of that weaving like a snake. Once they’d had to winch the jeeps down a broken mountainside. Several times they had to reverse direction and ‚nd another way. They didn’t have enough people to send anyone ahead as a scout, and even the best maps had become unreliable as mud slides or refugee encampments blocked the way.
They avoided the largest groups. Twice they’d †ed below the barrier after being surprised by shantytowns. Ruth wanted as many blood samples as possible, but they were afraid they’d be overrun. The squad carried four M60 machine guns in addition to their carbines and two snub Mac-10s that Foshtomi called “meat grinders,” but twelve people could never be a match against a thousand. Their supplies made them a target. Fortunately they’d kept ahead of word of mouth. Their vehicles were a huge advantage, and almost everyone they met was learning about them for the ‚rst time.
Their group was small for several reasons. They needed to be able to scavenge enough food and fuel to keep going. It was also important to avoid the attention of Russian-Chinese planes and satellites. A large convoy would have been more visible, and the sky was a greater threat than any starving survivors.
Much like the expedition into Sacramento, this squad was all chiefs and no Indians. Foshtomi and Ballard were the only corporals. The others were sergeants of various sub-ranks, and John Park and Deborah were both captains, although it had been made clear that Park was in command.
Deborah was an outsider like Ruth and Cam. She was never far from her friend. The tall blond had been charting her own notes, but now she got up and walked four paces and sat down again, joining Ruth. “Can I talk to you about the second group today?” she asked, interrupting whatever else Cam might have said.
On purpose, he thought. Deborah had been quietly writing by herself for twenty minutes. She’d only stepped in after he came over. Had he missed a signal? Ruth might have looked past his shoulder and caught Deborah’s eyes… No. Ruth answered Deborah with a nod, but she turned to Cam and gave him an apologetic look. She wanted the chance to talk, even if he made her nervous, and Cam frowned to himself as he watched the two women. His rivalry with Deborah was just getting worse.
“Four of those refugees also said they’d come from the east,” Deborah said, touching her notepad. “Do you want me to put their samples with the ‚rst group?”
“Absolutely not,” Ruth said. “Let’s make a subset, though. Cross-reference them.”
“Okay. And everyone out of the south has priority.”
“Yes.”
Deborah’s job had become more dif‚cult when they packed up and ran this afternoon. Keeping the samples organized was vital to their mission, but that wasn’t why she’d intervened.
The two of them were like moths competing for a light. Cam had seen the same polarizing effect between himself and Mark Newcombe. Deborah was here to protect Ruth. Her motivation was much like his own. Being with Ruth was a chance to share her incredible sense of purpose.
“I should get ready for my shift,” he said. It was partly true. He stood up and Ruth rose with him.
“Are you—” she began, but Cam stopped her.
“It’s okay. You have a lot of work to do.”
Her face was uncertain, but she nodded. She hadn’t even unpacked her microscope yet. The night before she’d taken hours to screen less than twenty samples, huddled beneath a silver foil survival blanket to hide her †ashlight, and today they’d accumulated thirty-one vacuum caps of blood. Tomorrow there would be more. The job was already too big for her, even with Deborah and Captain Park as assistants. Ruth was too thorough. Cam would have taken half as many samples and doubled their travel time, but she was terri‚ed of missing any clue.
It would be perverse, but Cam also wondered if she was upset because she wasn’t responsible for the advances that had brought the nanotech this far. Life wasn’t like TV, where every success belonged only to the hero. Sometimes you could only react to other people’s accomplishments. They’d seen enough twists and surprises to know that was true. Cam thought Ruth had learned not to let her own ego work against her, and yet the fact remained that she was playing catch-up to other people’s work, when for most of her career she had been the hotshot. That must be tough, so he only smiled at her.
“Sit with me for breakfast,” she said.
“If I can.” Cam was important to the job, too, standing guard in three-hour watches just like the other Rangers, supporting the team and contributing to their ever-changing plans. Given a moment of privacy, Cam would have said more. You know why I’m here, he thought, but Deborah stirred beside Ruth with her chin tilted up in that aggressive way, so Cam only smiled again and turned to go.
Deborah disapproved of him. Their backgrounds could not have been more different. The basic EMT classes he’d taken before the plague were a joke compared to her years of education, and he was de‚nitely not a book that was judged well by its cover. A haircut and a clean uniform had only made his scarring more prominent, whereas Deborah’s skin was clear and unblemished— and Ruth’s temples and left cheek remained lightly marked from their long run in goggles and masks.
Whether she realized it not, Cam thought that on some level Deborah was pulling at Ruth to keep her from becoming any more like him. Deborah was a good friend to Ruth. Cam liked her for it even if they didn’t get along. The bottom line was that Deborah Reece could be arrogant, even rude, but she had been safe in Grand Lake and she’d walked away from it for the greater good.
* * * *
Cam still wondered how close Ruth had come to being told she couldn’t leave. Governor Shaug hadn’t wanted to see Deborah go, either, or the elite troops or the atomic force microscope that Ruth demanded.
In the end, Ruth convinced him there was far more worth to be had if she succeeded. She had also lost her value as a bargaining chip. Shaug could no longer †y her to the labs in Canada in exchange for food or weaponry, because Grand Lake’s allies had issued a quarantine. The ghost nanotech seemed limited to Colorado. They didn’t want to be infected themselves. They continued to coordinate their militaries with Grand Lake, but planes out of Colorado were no longer permitted to divert anywhere else even if they were hit or low on fuel. Colorado ground troops in need of help would not see reinforcements except from other Colorado units.
Governor Shaug must have been desperate to change that edict, and Ruth could be forceful when the mood struck her. In Sacramento, Cam had seen her yell at seven armed men when she disagreed with them, so it intrigued him that she was tentative with him.
/>
There was no reason to ask him to join her except that she trusted him. Loved him. The Rangers were a top-notch escort, whereas he was a complication.
Newcombe had opted out. Cam was disappointed, but he couldn’t resent the soldier for his choice. Newcombe had ‚t himself back into the larger whole of Grand Lake exactly as he’d always intended. Newcombe just didn’t have the same ties to Ruth. During all their time together, she’d chosen Cam instead, and he hoped she would do it again if Deborah continued to force the issue.
* * * *
She did. The next morning she brought Cam tea and oatmeal as he helped Wesner and Foshtomi load their gear into the jeeps. Later that day she even used Allison as an excuse to talk to him about their days in Grand Lake. She took another blood sample herself. She said she had to monitor how they were being exposed themselves, dealing with the refugees, but Foshtomi noticed that she let Deborah draw blood from the rest of the group.
Foshtomi was delighted by their slow-motion romance because she was just one of the guys in her squad, Cam thought. She kept tabs on Ruth because it allowed her to be a woman.
That Ruth was watching you again last night, Foshtomi would say, or, Did you see how that Ruth waited to eat until you were done helping Mitchell with the fuel cans?
It was true. “That Ruth” found time to be with him despite everything else, even if it was just for a few minutes — and she had to be the one who approached him, because Captain Park gave her all the latitude she wanted, whereas Cam was always busy as a member of the squad.
In many ways he enjoyed that pressure. The Rangers were a well-oiled machine. Their power appealed to Cam. They imposed order and direction on their world, which was a remarkable feat.
By their ‚fth day, the land above the barrier pinched into a thin neck of ground along the Continental Divide, forcing them to turn west below ten thousand feet. Highway 40 ran eastward through the sheer peaks, zigzagging up through to the other side of the Divide and the refugee populations that had formed above the small cities of Empire, Lawson, and Georgetown, but the highway was thick with old traf‚c and new rockslides. Fires had blackened the mountainsides even where there was nothing to burn except damp moss and weeds. Ash and dust lay across the earth in vast streamers. It whispered up beneath their tires and boots. Three of the Rangers now wore radiation badges clipped to their jackets and Captain Park also had a Geiger counter that chittered and clacked at times. They seemed to be edging through an area where the fallout had settled after the explosion. They were lucky the prevailing weather was out of the northwest, behind them. It had carried most of the poison east, but the radiation was another reason to go west from the Divide.