by Jeff Carlson
He was inextricably tied to them. Ruth thought it was this sense of obligation that had really brought him to the front line. Hernandez wasn’t supposed to be here. Sylvan Mountain had experienced a huge increase in attacks as the Chinese pressed north, spearing toward I-70. Local U.S. command was hidden deep in the Aspen Valley in a larger, more secure base. Hernandez had risked his life to drive across. He’d insisted on meeting the survivors of the Ranger squad, but he couldn’t have been sure that Ruth was among them. It was an excuse. He needed to see the troops he’d known only as numbers on his maps, and she respected him for it.
He spoke in a whisper. “We’ve started taking your blood samples right here in the tents.”
Ruth nodded. Good. This is where the bulk of their medical staff could be found, along with the few rosters and charts they’d kept despite being overwhelmed.
“What else do you need?” he said. “We’re refrigerating the needle pricks, but I don’t know if we’re capable of building a clean room for you.”
“Don’t waste the refrigerator space. Room temperature is ‚ne, and any work space is great. It doesn’t have to be much. I’ve been getting a lot of my work done from the back of a jeep.”
“Then I’d like to move you tomorrow. Their planes are hitting us everywhere, but this base gets too much artillery. I’d rather have you somewhere farther back.”
“Okay. Thank you.” Ruth wasn’t going to pretend to be so brave that she didn’t want protection.
He looked for her eyes again in the shadows. Then he set his hand on the cot near her face. The gesture was almost aggressive, she realized, a display of his ability to corner and control her. “What am I up against?” he asked.
“General—”
“I need to know, Ruth.”
She winced. Hernandez had never used her ‚rst name before and the informality was at odds with his little show of strength. He was trapped. He had to help her and yet he remained suspicious, either because of her treason in Sacramento or because of the staggering power of nanotech. Probably it was both. Ruth might as well have been a witch from the way that Hernandez treated her, with a mix of reverence and mistrust. He understood men and guns. She represented a different threat.
“I don’t have an answer for you,” Ruth said. “I swear. But I don’t think the ghost is a weapon. I think Leadville was experimenting with new vaccine types.”
“That’s the only reason you’re here?”
“Of course!” She forgot to keep her voice down and Deborah stirred against her, drowsy and soft. Cam was already awake. His eyes had turned to study Hernandez, and Ruth said, “What are you really trying to say?”
“We’ve been through your notebooks.”
“A lot of that is speculative.” She sounded defensive even to herself.
“I need to know about the saturation trigger.”
Ruth stared at him, her mind racing. What guesses had his people made from her numbers and shorthand? It seemed unlikely that Hernandez had anyone trained in nanotechnology. Had he simply asked combat engineers or computer techs to ‚gure out her notes as best they could? Based on its helix shape, Ruth had theorized that the ghost might be designed to coalesce into larger structures after crossing some threshold of density in a population…but that idea was still nothing more than an idea.
Firmly, she said, “If you read everything, you know I had serious questions about that line of thinking. And I gave it up days ago.”
“That’s not what my people tell me.”
“Then they’re wrong.”
Cam said, “What is he talking about?”
“Doctor Goldman has considered a way of stopping the Chinese army that would also kill everyone in these mountains,” Hernandez said. “Some kind of critical mass.”
“You don’t believe that,” Cam said, taking the argument upon himself.
“I believe Grand Lake would do anything to win,” Hernandez said, and Ruth ‚nally grasped the sheer depth of the changes he’d been through. He was the one who’d lost in Sacramento. He was the one who’d watched Leadville vaporized. Hernandez was testing her. If she failed his questions, if he truly believed that Grand Lake intended to destroy him, the American civil war might erupt again when they could least afford it. Even joined together, the forces in Colorado were barely holding a line against the Chinese.
“You think we came all this way just to die?” Ruth asked with biting sarcasm. “Like we thought a suicide mission was our best choice?”
“I know you have a lot of guilt.” He cut through her scorn as easily as that. “Your friends wouldn’t have to know what you were doing,” Hernandez said, and he was right.
He turned her contempt into self-doubt and she immediately reached for Cam. “It’s not true,” she said.
“I know.” Cam covered her hand with his own.
Behind her, Deborah lifted herself on one elbow to gaze at Hernandez. She laid her other hand on Ruth’s waist. It was an affectionate moment and Ruth would never forget their loyalty to her. She was grateful for it, because she still had one secret.
“I came to help you,” she told Hernandez. Her voice was tight with tears. “I came to help everyone,” she said, and slowly Hernandez began to nod in the darkness.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had to be sure.”
“You…But we didn’t..”
“I’m sorry.” His hand rose uncertainly, as if to ‚nd a place on her and join the small chain that connected her to Cam and Deborah. Ruth wished he would. Instead, Hernandez lowered his arm to his side. “My ‚rst responsibility is to the people here,” he said. “And your notes are terrifying.”
“Yes.”
They were quiet for an instant, listening to the restless sounds in tent — the rustle of wounded soldiers who were alone and cold despite sharing this nightmare.
“You shouldn’t get in her way,” Deborah said. “Ruth is the best chance we’ve got.”
“We’ll see.” Hernandez stood up.
Ruth reached after him. “Wait. Please.”
“There’s too much to do.”
“I don’t want you to leave like this,” she said honestly. “Please. Just a few minutes.”
“All right.” Hernandez sat again.
Ruth struggled to ‚nd something pleasant to say. “Do you want some of the soup?” she asked.
“No. It’s for you.”
But there were too many important things to know and never enough time. “We thought you were in Leadville when the bomb went off,” she said.
Hernandez nodded. “I was.”
* * * *
His company only survived because of the mountains surrounding the capital. The enemy plane must have been well below those fourteen-thousand-foot peaks when it detonated its cargo. The high ring of the Divide had acted like a bowl, re†ecting the explosion up instead of outward. U.S. intelligence estimated the blast at sixty megatons. A doomsday device.
There was no reason to pile so many warheads into the plane except the Russians must have been concerned they would be turned back or shot down. With an airburst of that strength, they might have leveled the city from ‚fty miles away or damaged it at a hundred.
Hernandez was lucky they’d gotten so close. Aerial and satellite reconnaissance showed nothing but slag at ground zero. There was no longer the slightest trace of anything human in that valley. The land itself was unrecognizable. Untold amounts of earth and rock had been vaporized, and the remainder brie†y turned liquid. The eerie new †at land was studded with lopsided hillocks and dunes. It almost looked as if someone had dumped an incredible †ood of molten steel from the sky. The effect was uneven. The shock wave had roared through every low point and gap, washboarding against the terrain. It was what had saved Deborah. The blast leapt and splashed and bounced, devastating some valleys and sparing others.
Hernandez had been on a south-facing slope away from the †ash. The long series of ranges between his position and Leadville redirected th
e worst of it. Even then his escape was a near thing. Impact jolted his mountainside sharply enough to close many of his ‚ghting holes like hands snapping into ‚sts. He had ‚ve dead and seventeen wounded in those ‚rst immeasurable seconds. Daylight turned to black. Then the windstorm hit with choking heat and dust.
They ran downhill, abandoning everything but their wounded. They were afraid of the machine plague, but they knew they would smother if they stayed. Later they realized the atmospheric pressure had plummeted over an area of tens of miles as the nuclear reaction sucked air into an immense, superheated column. It was the slightest bit of good fortune. The region was temporarily wiped clean of the plague. Once they reached the base of the mountain, they were able to stay on Highway 24, hurrying along the buckled asphalt. Then the mushroom cloud fell in on itself and collapsed, blanketing them in ash and unseen bands of heat.
Hernandez was sick like so many of his troops, which made it easier for the Chinese to surge northward against them. None of the surviving American forces had been any closer to the strike than his unit, but nearly a third of them had been exposed to the fallout. It ravaged their effectiveness. They were unable to mount the counteroffensives they needed simply to shore up their defensive positions, and the Chinese generals knew it. The Chinese continued to race past American emplacements, leaving their supply routes vulnerable but accepting that risk in exchange for the gains in territory.
The central Colorado army was being encircled. Soon the enemy would reinforce its advance units on I-70 and face Aspen Valley from three sides. There were other U.S. populations throughout the state, but other than Grand Lake, none of them had signi‚cant military strength.
The tipping point was here. That seemed to be why the Chinese gambled. Their need for fuel, food, and tools was part of it. Every small town they absorbed was a help, and they made it tougher on the American Air Force by sprawling out. Widespread targets were harder to hit and had more time to cover each other, but Ruth wondered if the Chinese were also pushing so hard in this area because, like her, they hoped to recover some trace of the nanotechnologies developed in Leadville.
They might have already found it in the American dead. Here and there, they would have taken prisoners, too. In fact, it wasn’t impossible that the U.S. had transmitted the nanotech to the Chinese with their bullets and missiles. Every time a soldier loaded his weapon, each time a ground crew rearmed a jet, their skin, sweat, and breath were tainted with it.
Ruth had no way of guessing if Chinese researchers were outpacing her or if the enemy had already developed new weaponized nanotech themselves.
* * * *
“You know about the snow†ake,” she said to Hernandez. She needed to warn him to be careful of his own planes if it looked like he was losing his ‚ght to keep the enemy from I-70.
If the Chinese †anked the Aspen group, if Grand Lake thought this was the last place to catch the Chinese in a bottleneck before the enemy surged toward the new capital, there was no telling what they might do. The snow†ake was the easy solution. There was no way to defend against it, and after its initial burst, the snow†ake was clean.
“The weapons teams were trying—” Ruth said, but she stopped when she realized she was distancing herself from what she’d done by using the past tense.
“I’ve heard about it,” Hernandez said. “I don’t think Leadville ever let the nanotech out of their control.”
He was trying to help. He thought the snow†ake was gone forever. For a moment, Ruth couldn’t even speak, overcome with self-loathing and embarrassment. His troops had saved her, and in return… “Grand Lake has it now,” she said. “I built it for them.”
His dark eyes stared at her in the gloom.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” Ruth said, and Cam murmured, “Jesus Christ.”
She hadn’t told him. What could he do? It had seemed like the right decision at the time. She’d thought she was providing her country with a powerful new deterrent, and that was still true, but now everyone in this place was in jeopardy.
Hernandez looked away from her even as his hand tightened on the edge of the cot. It was almost as if he swooned. He understood. Ruth saw it in his gray face. He was a tactician, and throughout the civil war he’d seen his people turn on each other again and again.
Grand Lake had always had the option of nuking the enemy. There were still USAF of‚cers in the sealed missile bases in Wyoming and North Dakota, but the Rockies would be downwind of any target in the western United States. Worse, the enemy would almost certainly answer in kind.
The snow†ake was different. A nano weapon would be an escalation. Using one would run the chance of a nuclear response, but desperate men might convince themselves that it would scare the enemy enough to stay their hands. Desperate men might believe that an unparalleled new weapon of mass destruction was exactly what could win the war.
It left Hernandez in a terrible dilemma. He needed to keep his guns and infantry in close to repel the Chinese, but at the same time, if he overcommitted, his troops would have no chance to pull back before Grand Lake dusted the area. And yet he needed to commit every last man. If he lost another battle, if Grand Lake panicked or simply lost patience with the limited strength of Aspen Valley, the jet ‚ghters that had aided Hernandez might instead bring death to everyone beneath them.
The bombing would not be indiscriminate. Ruth hoped they’d have the brains to drop their capsules on the far side of the Chinese, but their pilots had no experience with the snow†ake. Their pilots would be accustomed to hitting their targets straight on. Regardless, the chain reaction was inherent to the technology. It would reach American lines.
“The best thing we can do is tell Grand Lake I’ve found what I need,” Ruth said.
“You haven’t even started—” Hernandez shook his head at himself. He was clearly still stunned. “Of course. Okay.”
Lying isn’t easy for him even now, Ruth thought, despite how many times people have failed him.
He stood up. He seemed glad to move away from her. “What can I say on an open frequency?” he asked.
“Tell them I have what I was looking for. Just like that. It should buy us more time.”
“I’ll call them now.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ruth said. “I am.” Words were inadequate. Once again she’d hurt the very people who were risking everything to help her.
23
Chinese artillery pounded the land in the distance, a staggered thumping that came and went. Three or four explosions hit together, followed by a pause, then ten or more impacts in a rush. In the brief quiet, Cam heard American guns returning ‚re. His left ear was still partly deaf but the outgoing shells made a distinct crack. Crack crack. Then the heavier explosions picked up again, battering the other side of the mountain a few miles to the west. Cam wished they’d driven farther from Sylvan Mountain. He constantly expected this narrow rock gorge to erupt with death. They were still so close, and the enemy had begun a new offensive with reinforcements out of Arizona.
The war was always there. Smoke and dust poisoned the evening sky, drifting toward them on the wind. Cam stared at the sunset, a sooty orange glow beyond the dark peaks that formed the horizon — but people were dying in that spectacular light, he knew, and the beauty of it upset him.
He turned the other way, looking for Ruth in the gorge. He was huddled with Foshtomi and Goodrich along a split face of granite, cleaning half a dozen carbines. Busywork. Otherwise the waiting was impossible. Hernandez had ordered them to sit tight. Estey wanted to run patrols through the area — he was as restless as any of them, Cam thought — but they were behind their own lines and Hernandez insisted on as little activity as possible to keep from drawing the enemy’s attention. It was bad enough that they’d rolled away from Sylvan Mountain in two trucks and a jeep, with Ruth, Cam, Deborah, and the ‚ve Rangers supported by a Marine platoon and Hernandez himself.
Hernandez intended to take Ruth all the way to
the command bunkers at Castle Peak, but they’d already lost too much time. If she could produce an answer, he needed it now. So they waited. They ate. They tended each other’s wounds and tried to catch up on their sleep.
It had been nearly thirty-six hours since they’d hidden in this jagged gully. Cam ached with tension. More than anything else, the plague year had taught him to act. The urge to stay ahead of every threat, whether real or imagined, was exactly why he’d left Allison. He still wondered at himself. He’d given up her smile and her warmth in exchange for nothing except more hardship, blood, and glory. That was not the decision of a well-grounded individual. At the same time, he wasn’t sure what kind of man would have let Ruth go alone.
“Hey, take it easy,” Foshtomi said, pressing her knee against his.
The slight movement made Cam realize he was as rigid as the rock itself, his body hunched as if to jump up. His jaw hurt from grinding his teeth. She’s right, he thought. You’re actually damaging yourself.
“Sometimes the only thing you can do is wait it out,” Foshtomi said, returning her work. She was inspecting an M4’s bolt carrier group, yet Cam saw her hazel eyes lift to his face once more as if to catch him disobeying her. Sarah Foshtomi was a good squadmate. Cam almost smiled. There were worse things than sitting here with this resilient young woman. That much was true. But he didn’t have the bene‚t of Foshtomi’s years in the military. She knew how to do her job and only her job, accepting her place in the larger whole, whereas Cam had learned nothing except the self-reliance of a loner.
He had never felt more apart. Two of Hernandez’s Marines remembered him as an enemy. Nathan Gilbride was among those Cam had betrayed in Sacramento, and neither Gilbride nor Sergeant Watts seemed as ready to forgive him as their commanding of‚cer had been. Worse, they’d told their fellow Marines. It was an unexpected strain. Cam had never imagined he would see any of those men alive again. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes down. Even Ruth had been taken from him. Ruth had the only tent in camp, a lean-to they’d erected against one of the trucks and disguised with netting and dirt, blending the long shape of the vehicle into the rock. In a day and a half Cam had seen her just twice, both times in conference with Deborah, Hernandez, and Gilbride — and yet as much as he wanted to touch her, he’d stayed back. Her work came ‚rst. Cam was jealous of Deborah for being so necessary. Deborah served as Ruth’s assistant, organizing the blood samples from Sylvan Mountain. Deborah wasn’t above fetching Ruth’s meals, either, or emptying the bucket that served as her latrine.