Plague Zone

Satisfying his thirst only made him more aware of his tired muscles, his aching feet, and his hunger. He could have slept. He said, “Are you in contact with anyone?”

Foshtomi shook her head. “There are no landlines out of here and the atmosphere’s totally fucked. I’ve got some guys trying to patch into a satellite.”

“Okay.”

The women settled down around Cam, except Foshtomi, who wasn’t good at sitting still. She stayed on her feet, glancing toward the greenhouse door as if that might hurry her medic. In fact, she was probably glad to have Ruth to rally around, because until now her troops had lacked any purpose except to hold on and wait.

“How much fuel do you have?” he asked.

Foshtomi stared at him. “You came on foot out of the mountains, right? So maybe you don’t know what it’s like in the cities.”

“Greg and Eric are dead,” he said, meeting her bluntness with his own. The two Rangers had been her squadmates first. “They stayed with us all this time, Sarah. They died last night.”

“I…” she said.

“Our whole town was infected. There were hundreds of them, Sarah. Greg bought us enough time to get out.”

“Eric was my husband,” Bobbi said.

“I’m sorry.” Foshtomi’s gaze went from Cam’s face to Bobbi’s to Ruth‘s, but Ruth unzipped her backpack and took out her laptop with that old, stubborn focus.

Cam nodded to himself, admiring the same dedication that had infuriated him in the aspen grove. Ruth would never give up. Not if they gave her time. Her fingers rattled on her keyboard and Cam said, to Foshtomi, “If you have enough fuel, we can try to seal those Humvees. Make a break for it.”

“Where you gonna go?”

“Grand Lake.”

“You’re crazy. There’s a million fuckin’ zombies between here and there, and we think the Chinese took the base anyway.”

Zombies, he thought. In a different life, Cam had loved those corny old movies. Maybe it was strange that his group had never called sick people anything except “the infected.” They were zombies in every way that mattered, lethal, stupid, and relentless. But they were family. Cam’s group hadn’t fought anyone except their own friends and neighbors. Foshtomi’s battle had been larger, more impersonal. Zombies was a way to make the killing easier, reducing the infected to caricatures instead of real victims.

Cam said, “The Chinese have a vaccine against the new plague. Ruth thinks we can steal it.”

“What about the parasite?”

“You… What do you mean?” he said, even though he’d imagined the same thing himself. The parasite nanotech would shut off the first vaccine, the one that kept them safe from the machine plague. Anyone who couldn’t reach safe elevation would die, and Cam knew how badly that would disrupt the Chinese assault — but at what cost?

Foshtomi’s eyes were narrow with hate. “What if we let it go? That’d fuck up the Chinese in a big way.”

Ruth’s hands stopped on her keyboard but she didn’t look up, as if too afraid to let Foshtomi see anything in her expression. Cam worried what Foshtomi might have read in his own face. “Sarah,” he said. “The parasite would affect everyone below ten thousand feet, not just the Chinese.”

“Our people are already dead, aren’t they?”

She lost somebody last night, too, he thought. There was a new, cold edge in Foshtomi’s voice, and it made him think she was just barely holding onto her composure, using her reckless tone as more than a front. Her attitude had become a crutch to keep herself sane.

“We don’t have the parasite anymore,” he said.

“Bullshit. I know it was for real. Deborah Reece gave up her vial. Grand Lake stashed it away somewhere, and everyone says it really would’ve done what Ruth said. So what could you do? Hide yours somewhere?”

“That’s exactly what we did,” Ruth said, tapping slowly at her laptop again. “We buried it fifteen feet down in a metal box.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“I think you still have it,” Foshtomi said, and Cam wondered if he was going to have to fight her. Would her troops obey an order to seize and search his group?

Yes, he thought. They will. For her, they will.

Cam almost glanced down at his pocket before he caught himself. Even with the map, even knowing where they’d buried the nanotech outside of Jefferson, Foshtomi wouldn’t have much chance of retrieving it, but he needed her to stay focused in another direction, toward Grand Lake.

“Sarah, it’s not an option,” he said.

“They’ve hit us with nukes.”

“Even if we had it, which we don‘t, the parasite wouldn’t be instantaneous. It would take days to spread far enough. It might not reach California for a week. They’re up-weather from us. You wouldn’t accomplish anything except killing our own people until the wind took it all the way around the world to our coastline.”

“So you do have it.”

“Sarah, no. My point is that we can’t just stay here.”

“Driving to Grand Lake is crazy.”

“You were glad to see us,” Cam said. “You were already restless. Look at you.”

Foshtomi sneered even as she turned away. The motion was one of denial, rejecting what he’d said, except that by jumping up she’d proved him right. Yes, she was afraid to leave this canyon. One of her first responsibilities was to preserve her fighting strength — but for what? To sit and wait until Chinese planes attacked them, too?

“We’re short on masks,” Foshtomi said. “We only put them on our spotters and point men.”

“If we get the vaccine, it won’t matter.”

“You’ve seen how fast the plague jumps people. How would we get close enough to—”

“Cam?” Ruth said.

Foshtomi turned on her. “He’s not in charge here.”

“Cam. All of you.” Ruth’s eyes were stunned. “The extra bulk attached to the nanotech is a message,” she said. “It’s not meant to do anything. It’s just binary code. Someone built it into the machine like a note.”

“We don’t have anyone who can read Chinese,” Foshtomi said, but Ruth shook her head.

“It’s in English. Once I isolated the code, the computer translated it in seconds.”

“What? What do they want?”

Ruth blinked and wet her lips first, as if testing her words before sharing them out loud. “It says it’s from Kendra Freedman,” she said.

18

“That’s impossible,” Cam said, but Ruth thought, No, it’s the only thing that really makes sense.

She didn’t want to fight with him any more, so she tamped down on her excitement. She knew she could be too loud when she was in the grip of inspiration. “Let me show you how it says what it does.”

“What do you mean ‘how’?” Foshtomi asked. “What’s the message?”

Ruth turned her laptop to face them and said, “Look at the coding. It’s a spiral of ones and zeroes embedded in the nano. Most of the extra bulk is just nulls, but the binary string is unmistakable.”

Foshtomi glanced at Cam, who shook his head. “Look at it! I highlighted the ones. Here are the zeroes.” Ruth touched her keyboard again. “These specific molecular configurations are repeated hundreds of times. That’s why my analysis picked it out in the first place.”