Plague Zone

The blinding white sparks were U.S. missiles intended for enemy targets.

16

Eight hundred miles west of Grand Lake, Colonel Jia Yuanjun walked alone through an empty hallway. The silence was bewitching. Solitude was so unlike his daily life. Part of him welcomed it even as he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle with anticipation.

You shouldn’t be here, Jia thought, but this sublevel was a familiar place. He knew every corner. He went sixty paces into the damp, echoing shadows and moved left out of the corridor. This basement was always quiet. The architect who’d designed these bunkers had overdrawn his plans, no doubt hoping to impress his superiors, and their construction efforts had stopped long before completing the lowest floor. In many areas, the walls showed naked rebar. In others, there were no walls at all. Farther down the corridor, Jia knew there was a great room in which nothing stood except load-bearing pillars and scrawls of white paint to indicate where plumbing and electrical lines were never laid. The lighting consisted of only a few bulbs clipped to the ceiling. Nor was there heating or fresh air.

They’d built this base on the outskirts of Los Angeles, northeast of Pasadena, where the badlands had long since reclaimed the suburban sprawl, raking the streets and abandoned yards with sand. Beneath the sun-baked desert, however, the earth was cold, and the hundreds of people inside the compound were forever exuding moisture. Most of their breath, sweat, and cooking smells evaporated through the exits or dried up in the insufficient circulation of their fans, but Jia believed it was the living vapor of his fellow soldiers that made this sublevel so chilly. It smelled of people and earth, yet not in an evil way, mixed with the tang of concrete and iron. Jia was in the belly of their Army. He supposed that was exactly where he wanted to be. It was peaceful. He felt as if he belonged — and yet he’d risked everything by coming here.

A boot step ticked in the darkness.

What if you were followed? Jia thought. He sidled back against the wall, leaving the dim light entirely as the boot steps moved closer, gritting on the floor. One man? Two?

I was ashamed, he thought, rehearsing the same lies he’d planned for months. Why else would anyone hide themselves down here except to mourn their failures or their lost families? Access to this level was forbidden, but one of its entrances sat directly beside Jia’s quarters. The rooms below were used as storage space, giving him a plausible excuse to walk down here, and the crowded barracks were no place to show emotion.

If necessary, Jia would confess one weakness to conceal another. He had often done that to bind another man to him. He’d learned that if he volunteered one candid thought to a colleague or a rival, they felt empowered. Sometimes they would trust him enough to share their own truths. Less often, they reported him. Either way, he gained new relationships, either with the men who opened themselves to him or with the superiors who interrogated him and then saw his drive, his intelligence, and his humanity.

Neither the Communist Party nor the MSS wanted robots if they could have dedicated minds working for them instead. Automatons were easy to find. Men with initiative were not. This was how Jia had survived, but he’d always recognized that it was a double-edged sword.

One day, he would die on the wrong side of the blade. Today?

You shouldn’t have come here! he thought. Then he realized the boot steps were in front of him. The walking man had emerged from deeper within the basement. Jia allowed himself a small measure of relief. He had been pressing his shoulder blades against the hard concrete but now he leaned forward into the light, masking his nerves with an alert expression.

“N ho,” he said. Hello.

The other man jerked in surprise, then glanced left and right before saluting. With anyone else, his poor form would have earned a reprimand, but Jia was touched by the fear in Bu Xiaowen’s eyes.

“Colonel,” Bu said. “Are you… I didn’t think…”

“I needed a moment to compose myself,” Jia said. Then he added, “None of my team have slept since yesterday. General Zheng excused us.”

They both listened to the silence. Somewhere, a far-off noise resonated through the concrete. Pang. But there was no one else in the basement and Jia stepped forward and grabbed the front of Bu’s uniform. He pulled Bu’s open mouth against his own for a fierce, exciting kiss.

Jia had not chosen to be the way he was. He certainly did not celebrate his sexuality, but the attraction between himself and men like Bu Xiaowen was undeniable. They never needed words. They just knew. Jia supposed it was the same way in which heterosexual men and women felt a mutual spark. Their bodies were simply calibrated that way, and Jia and Bu had watched each other for weeks before they first discovered a chance to exchange a few words, unheard and unseen, in one of the stairwells.

He lowered his hands to Bu’s hips. He could not feel them beneath Bu’s gun belt, and yet he enjoyed the frustration of it because undressing each other was usually their only fore-play. Their sexual encounters were always rushed.

He pressed Bu against himself, yearning for more — but his self-control was stronger. He broke their kiss. “I can’t stay,” he said.

“No,” Bu agreed, holding him.

Jia didn’t go. In fact, his only movement was to return Bu’s embrace, bringing the other man’s cheek against his own. His heart continued to beat rapidly and his erection was stiff and eager, but everything else about him softened.

We can never be together, Jia thought. That only makes you more special to me. Your eyes. Your caring. “I didn’t think I’d see you,” he said.

“You almost didn‘t,” Bu said. “My unit’s on standby and then back on duty in another hour.”

“I can’t stay,” Jia said again.

“You shouldn’t have come at all,” Bu said, fishing for more.

Jia wanted to smile and say exactly what Bu wanted to hear, but after a lifetime of deception, he was too good at shielding himself. He didn’t know how to reveal something so honest. I love you. The words just wouldn’t leave his throat.

“Zheng is watching you,” Bu said.

“I know.”

Jia had been relieved of his duties as superior officers hurried to involve themselves in the assaults, and Jia hadn’t argued. Indeed, he had been most subservient. Their victories would be his success, too, so Jia detached himself from Sergeant Bu and ran his hands over his own shirt, straightening his uniform.

There was regret in Bu’s gaze. “I’m glad you came, zhng gun,” he said. It was Bu’s pet name for him. Sir.

This time Jia did smile. “Me, too,” he said, reaching for Bu’s hand. Could he actually say what he needed to? Revealing his heart would be insignificant compared to the crimes they’d committed together, and Jia decided he was going to do it.

Tell him, he thought.

Then they were thrown against the ceiling in an upheaval so loud that Jia went blind, too, his senses wiped out by the deafening roar. Slammed up and back, he fractured his left arm. He felt the bones crack within the endless black sound. His chest struck something hard, too. Then his face. He might have been screaming. The sound was too loud to know and he tumbled and crashed inside it.

When it stopped, there was more light than Jia understood. Daylight. Somehow the base had been torn open, leaving him in a pit filled with gray slabs of concrete and smaller debris. The air was choked with dust. It smelled like charred flesh, and Jia groped to place himself. The sky overhead was dim and gray. The predawn was much brighter than a few lightbulbs, but it would still be an hour before morning in California — if morning ever came.

Voices echoed from the rock. Paperwork spilled everywhere in thin white rectangles. Some of the pages took