decontamination. She was out of options. This was it.
“Cam,” she said to the walkie-talkie, but everyone else was listening, and Allison’s body lay just a few feet away in the other room. It wasn’t right to say anything. Still, she wished she could tell him so many things.
“I’m here,” he said. “We’re ready.”
“Wait for my signal,” she said lamely. She shut off the lamp and cracked the seal on her collar. The moist heat surrounding her body wooshed out of the suit. Ruth couldn’t help but hold her breath even as she closed her eyes, not only to protect them but to savor the soft, cool air on her face.
Standing alone in the plastic, separated from him by just a few feet, Ruth waited to see if she’d lose her mind.
9
Cam was uncertain at first when Ruth’s face appeared in the gash in the wall. Her curly hair was matted and sweaty. Her skin looked bright red in their flashlights, and her eyes were bloodshot. Some of the men stumbled back. They banged against each other as Greg stiffened with his rifle. “Ruth!?” Greg shouted.
“I’m okay,” she said.
There was a sunburned patch across the right side of her face that began as a remarkably square corner on her temple. Cam realized it was the same shape as the faceplate in her helmet. She’d done it to herself with the UV lamp.
He pushed through the others to reach her. “Careful,” he said. He was still armored in his goggles and face mask, and yet Ruth tried to meet his gaze in the white beams of the flashlights. Then she smiled and ducked back inside with a noise like a laugh.
“Wait!” he yelled.
Her euphoria seemed out of place. Cam wondered if he had the guts to club her if she popped her face into the gap again. Was she infected?
“Here,” she said, filling the hole in the wall with her laptop. Her hands fluttered once and then vanished. The black Dell would have fallen if Cam hadn’t dropped his crowbar and caught the laptop instead.
Through the wall, he saw her lab and the plastic tent. Ruth stood very close to him, yanking at something on her desk with lithe, harried movements. Cam finally realized how eager she was to escape and he thought of other times when she hadn’t acted her age, either. Sometimes her intellect was overshadowed by her emotions. In fact, Cam thought that energy was tied directly to her IQ. Part of Ruth’s genius was her ability to tap deep into herself, but her moods could be dangerous, too, childish and loud.
“Help me,” he said, holding the laptop out to the group. No one took it and he barked, “Help me! There’ll be more stuff in a second.”
A man named Matthew grabbed the laptop and Cam turned again just as Ruth muscled her AFM into the gap in the wall.
The atomic force microscope wasn’t much bigger than his thigh, a white metal cylinder with a stout base and a tapered white cone that rose to a single black eyepiece. Cam had always marveled that something so small could design machines of such consequence, but, by its very definition, nanotech was infinitesimal. The AFM housed a power system and a shovelful of microprocessors, yet most of its bulk was only necessary to provide optics and controls that could be used by human beings. The heart of the machine, its computerized tip array and work surface, filled a space no larger than a dime.
The AFM weighed forty pounds, though, and Ruth shoved it through as hard as she could. Cam slumped beneath the device, catching it at an awkward angle against the wall. “Wait!” he shouted. Owen shouldered in beside him. The two of them lugged the microscope away through the debris on the ground. Cam nearly twisted his ankle when he stepped on a chunk of wood and then some loose bricks.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Matthew go to the hole in time to catch two notebooks and Ruth’s containment suit, a yellow wad that spilled its legs and sleeves over Matthew’s body. The air tanks tipped out of Matthew’s grasp and pulled the suit to the ground.
“Jesus, Ruth!” Cam shouted, but she wasn’t listening.
“Cam!” she yelled. “Where is Cam?”
He left the AFM with Owen and another man, running back to the hut. Ruth held a piece of paper. Matthew made as if to grab it, but Ruth shook her head in one violent, sideways motion.
“Cam?” she said, trusting the paper only to him.
He recognized it in a glance. A map. After the war, they’d carried the vial of the parasite nanotech with them. What else could they do? At first they needed it as a goad against the enemy and their own government, forcing both sides to stand down, and then they were caught in another kind of trap. They found a small shockproof case for it, a plastic clamshell meant to hold a pair of glasses, but if the parasite broke loose in an accident — if they were robbed or killed — it would destroy the world again. The vial was too dangerous to leave behind. They wanted to bury it, but what if rain or erosion brought it to the surface? Someone might open it.
They hadn’t found a solution until they settled in Jefferson. They bought an iron box in Morristown and stenciled warnings on it in English, Hebrew, and Russian. Now the vial was buried twelve feet down in the foothills west of town. It would have to stay there. They couldn’t spare two or three hours to dig the box up again, even if the parasite might be exactly what they needed to threaten the Chinese. Could they still bluff the enemy?
“Cam!” Ruth said.
He was staring. He snatched the paper from her and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, freeing his hands again as he tried to think. “What else do we need?”
Her hands scrabbled at the wall, feeling for places to set herself. Then she tumbled forward. Matthew tried to hold her but Ruth fell against the wall, cracking one arm. “Oh!” she cried.
“Ruth, stop! Is there anything else we need in there?”
She flailed through the hole, hanging upside down until Cam snarled his left hand in the back of her shirt. Matthew took her arm. Together they set her on her feet.
Ruth seemed rejuvenated by the cool night air. In the shifting beams of the flashlights, her burnt, naked face looked both excited and vulnerable. There was sweat in her bangs and her breath came hard, lifting her breasts against her shirt. When she leaned against him, Cam hugged her briefly — but he leaned away before she could put her arms around him, too.
“Okay, let’s go,” Ruth said. Her tone was still out of sync with the rest of them, too vibrant, even happy, and Cam sensed the others stirring behind their flashlights.
“Go where?” Owen said.
“East. We can’t hold this place against the plague.”
Greg shook his head. “We made contact with Grand Lake again. We told them everything you said, and they’re sending choppers.”
“For everyone? When?”
“If we’re not here—”
“Bring the radio,” Ruth said. “The helicopters can adjust. But you can’t expect everyone to wait for a rescue that doesn’t exist. Do you really think Grand Lake’s going to send ten choppers?”
They stared at her in the dark.
“No,” Greg said.
Ruth pressed her advantage. “We don’t have the equipment to shelter in place, so we go for Grand Lake. The mountains should stop the infected people! They’re clumsy, disoriented. They won’t follow us.”
