Plague War

up toward Cam, then looked back at Hernandez and said, “It’s rebuilding you.”

“But I’m sicker than ever.”

“I don’t think it can keep up. It’s an early model.”

Hernandez didn’t say anything else, although his mind must have been racing. Cam was still trying to make sense of everything they’d heard and he hadn’t just learned that he belonged in his grave.

“I’m sorry.” Ruth reached for Hernandez again, and the general took her hand.

She could ‚x us, Cam thought.

“I’m so sorry,” Ruth said, but Hernandez pressed his lips into a thin smile and said, “They kept us alive longer than we had any right to expect.” He meant himself and the survivors from his company. He was still drawing connections between himself and Leadville, taking comfort in the past.

“Can you save him?” Cam asked, because it would have been awful to say what he really wanted to know. Can you ‚x me? He was ashamed to be so sel‚sh, because Hernandez continued to put everyone else ‚rst. Hernandez wouldn’t plead with her, not for himself — but his troops spoke on his behalf.

“Make the nanotech better,” Watts said. “Please,” Foshtomi added, as another man said, “The thing already works pretty good, right?”

Ruth ducked her head. Every day she seemed more humble, which was strange in someone so masterful. Her little habit of turning away came frequently now and Cam remembered the gesture especially from the day she’d ‚rst met Allison, avoiding the younger woman. Ruth was learning to evade challenges, which was dangerous for all of them, and Cam shared some of the blame for her indecisiveness.

“Maybe,” she said at last. “Yes. The potential here is incredible. The model you have inside you represents the best work of the top people in nanotech, ‚fty researchers with full machining gear and computers.”

She meant that she was alone. She was still hedging her words, as if there were any possibility they wouldn’t back her into this corner. Their lives depended on it. More importantly, her work would shape the outcome of the war. Mankind would rebuild on North America. There was no question of that, but the color of the natives’ skin and the languages they spoke would depend on Ruth’s success or failure.

The ability to move freely in the plague zones was only the beginning. A nanotech capable of healing even serious wounds would make them unstoppable.

Cam †exed his ruined hands and glanced at Deborah, Ruth, and Hernandez, all of them hurt in different ways. What if they were able to stand up again after being shot or burned? They would be superhuman, and Cam tried to form a prayer to all of the scientists who had been killed in Leadville.

Help her, he thought. You can help her somehow. Shouldn’t they be able to talk to Ruth through their work? There would be clues and other evidence in the nanotech, obvious problems to ‚x and improvements to be made.

“You’ve done it before,” Cam said.

“I’ve seen it,” Watts agreed.

In the lab in Sacramento, Ruth had quickly drawn together and improved the work of four science teams, building upon the original archos tech to create the ‚rst working vaccine. Of course, she had also had the help of two specialists, D.J. and Todd, both of whom were either dead or hopelessly lost.

“A lot of people are depending on you,” Hernandez said.

Ruth wouldn’t look at them. “I need time,” she said. “Maybe too much time. And I don’t have any equipment here.”

“You do in Grand Lake,” Hernandez said.

“Yes. Some.”

“We can get you there.”

* * * *

They ran northeast on the morning of July 1^st, moving downhill before the dawn lifted over the horizon. The mountains in the east topped out at fourteen thousand feet, hiding the sun. Cam felt his gaze drawn again and again to those peaks. It was dif‚cult to tell in the brilliant new light, but those mountains looked unusually smooth along their southern edges. They were melted. Their bulk was all that had spared Aspen Valley from the bombing, channeling the worst of the blast away. Even so, Ruth’s escort had quickly hiked into an area where the ground was a marsh, still waterlogged from the †oods of snowmelt, and yet the fallen trees were brittle and dry.

“Watch out.” Foshtomi stopped Cam from following Mitchell. Mitchell had stepped over a dead gray stump into an ordinary-looking puddle, but the surface was deceptive. Mitchell sunk to his hip. He twisted to grab the stump and Foshtomi splashed forward to help, both of them coated with the spotty black muck of eroding bark. “Hang on,” Foshtomi called.

Cam looked back. They were in the middle of the group to assist Ruth while most of the squad ranged ahead, but Ruth was already looking for another way through, talking with Deborah. She pointed and moved left.

“Wait!” Cam said, hustling to join her.

A few trees still jutted into the sky, lea†ess and broken. This long mountainside was covered with blowdowns. Fortunately the spruce and aspen forest had been thin at ninety-‚ve hundred feet, because moments after the blast wave knocked them over, the †oods had locked the shattered trunks and branches together in a treacherous puzzle like pick-up sticks.

The undergrowth was a different matter. Most of the brush and grass had survived the heat and the windstorms. In many places, they weren’t drowning either. The trees and rocks formed thousands of small dams, directing the water into rivulets and swamps — but even where the ground bumped up, the brush was sickly. When he touched one, the leaves crumbled away like confetti. Every minute on this ruined slope, Cam was sure they were absorbing radiation.

He reached for Ruth’s arm as she began to crab her way over a pair of logs after Deborah. “You have to wait,” he said.

Her dark eyes †ashed at him. They no longer wore their goggles and masks. There was no need, so he got the full brunt of Ruth’s expression. “Let go,” she said. “Let go of me!” She climbed across, peeling bark away in clumps beneath her damp gloves and boots.

Cam followed her. “Goddammit, wait,” he said, looking for Deborah’s eyes instead of Ruth’s. He was slowed by his ribs and Ruth had already limped to the next blowdown, grabbing for handholds among its jagged branches.

She’d been like this ever since Hernandez left them.

“You have to talk to her,” Cam said, striding alongside Deborah, but the tall blond only shrugged, almost indifferent.

“I think she’s right. We need to keep moving.”

“If she breaks her leg,” Cam said, raising his voice.

Suddenly Ruth stopped in front of them. Cam looked out across the hillside. Forty yards ahead, Estey had raised his hand, signaling for them across the snarled trees, mud, and water. In the space between, Goodrich and Ballard also stood waiting. The soldiers made three strong human shapes among the debris.

Cam waved back at Estey and said, to Ruth, “It’s stupid for you to walk in front. We have to get back to the others.”

But that wasn’t what had stopped her. She’d found a bird. “Oh,” Deborah said softly as Ruth knelt and reached for the pathetic creature.

The ‚nch couldn’t have been in the plague zone very long because it was still alive, although its feathers were molting from its belly and neck. It †opped weakly in the muck, trying to escape. It had no strength in its wings and it might have been blind, too. The bird’s eyes were a cloudy blue-white that Cam had never seen before.

“This way!” Estey yelled, and Cam waved again, although he wasn’t sure if Ruth would obey. She hesitated with her gloves on either side of the bird. He thought she must not have seen the bloated chipmunks they’d passed ‚fteen minutes ago, two little bodies that had washed down the mountainside together. The chipmunks would have stopped her, too, and he preferred her wild impatience.

Ruth could be careless of her own safety when she was manic, but it also made her dangerous to anything in her way. They couldn’t afford for her to fall apart. They needed to harness her expertise one more time — and they were still an hour from their rendezvous. Cam hoped to God she’d make it.