Plague Zone

Fifteen feet. Bobbi was wolfing down a cup of onion soup and Foshtomi had walked away with two sergeants, arguing.

Ruth stepped close and laid her hands on Cam’s shoulders. She smiled — and when the motion attracted his gaze to her lips, her smile widened. He was still so cautious with her. He was still afraid. She understood. She’d punished herself for years, too, but she wanted to stop. She wanted to be happy. Would they ever have the chance?

Ruth lifted herself on her tiptoes to match Cam’s five-foot-eleven. Her excitement was good. It increased when she peeked sideways and saw Bobbi watching now with an angry face. Let her disapprove. Ruth touched her mouth to his. Their kiss was slow and sweet. It broke her heart.

I’m yours, she thought. I’m yours if you want me. You know that. Please know that, Cam.

She didn’t want to upset him, so she kept quiet. Maybe the intimacy was too much regardless. Cam squeezed her hand even as he pulled away. “Pack up,” he said. “Foshtomi got some of our guys on the radio and we’re going to intercept.”

“Who? Where?”

“A command group out of Grand Lake. Foshtomi told ‘em she has a nanotech expert and they used the same code. It sounds like they’ve got some scientists, too.”

Foshtomi put Ruth in the second Humvee with herself, Sergeant Huff, Bobbi, and Cam. The third vehicle was equally crowded, because Foshtomi deemed those positions to be the safest. The civilian SUV would be fourth, carrying only two men, and last was the Army truck, where Ingrid rode in the cab with two soldiers. Their lead vehicle was the only Humvee that had been outfitted with a FRAG 6 armor kit. All of the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles were 5,200-pound hardtop jeeps with fat wheels and steel plating, but FRAG 6 added a thousand pounds of metal, so Foshtomi set that Humvee in front with just a driver and a radioman.

As they left, the sky began to sprinkle a few bits of ash like black snow. The wind had failed to push the fallout away, and Ruth worried at that. What if it got worse?

She was grateful for her friends. Squeezed into the rear seat beside Cam, with Bobbi on his other side, Ruth was glad for his warm, firm weight as they rode for two hours on highways that might have taken forty minutes before the plague. Working down from Willow Creek to 40 and then back up toward Grand Lake, they drove south, east, and then north again. Most of the extra time was spent hiding from two Chinese jets. Foshtomi halted their convoy four times as the fighters patrolled overhead, alternately jamming their vehicles together or spreading them apart, parked at odd angles on the road like abandoned wrecks. It helped their little ruse that the colossal old traffic jams created years ago had been bulldozed from these highways, so the roadsides were jammed with cars and burned out hulks. Their engines would shine brightly in infrared, but the Chinese must have been wholly concerned with American missile launches and aircraft. Also, orbital coverage was hindered by the filthy sky. If the enemy was monitoring this area via satellite, their capacities were too strained to care about a few Humvees.

Many of the old cars had skeletons in them. The dead left by the machine plague had never been cleaned up. The job was just too big, so the dented cars remained crowded with screaming ghosts. Skeletons sprawled through broken glass and doors.

The first time Ruth saw a wreck with living people inside, she thought she was hallucinating. All of them were on edge, waiting for the jets to bank toward them and dive. Then she spotted a white van with three shadows hunched together by its rear doors. Their lead Humvee had already passed the van, but the people inside didn’t get up. Only one even lifted her head.

“Look,” Ruth said. “What are they doing?”

Foshtomi also drove by without incident, but Sergeant Huff took the handset of their radio and said, “This is Two. Heads up. We got zombies on both sides of us.”

Ruth glanced the other way. Huff was right. At least one person was slumped inside a red Toyota across the road. Then she saw one more in a tan pickup truck. It’s like this spot is a camp, she thought.

“Are they okay?” Bobbi asked. “Do you think they don’t have the plague?”

“No. Their faces…”

Not all of the infected had chosen their shelters wisely. Minutes later, Ruth saw two limp, fresh bodies in the front of a sedan. They were motionless except for a surging black carpet of ants.

There were zombies on the road, too. Shambling uphill, arms spread to keep their balance, they turned to meet the oncoming vehicles with the same dull instinct. They’re so limited, she thought. They hear noise, see movement, and they go toward it.

Foshtomi tried to avoid them. “Move, you stupid shit,” she said. “Move. Move.” Then she hit them. Foshtomi braked or weaved if possible and once she ordered the convoy to leave the road entirely, jouncing off the shoulder to get around a dozen people. Ruth knew she was less interested in saving these strangers’ lives than in preserving her vehicles. Even in the second position, Foshtomi struck eight people altogether. Ruth wouldn’t forget. The harsh thump of a body against the Humvee’s fender was nauseating.

A naked woman came over the hood in a spatter of blood. Another time the rear axle leapt and clunked and Ruth screamed, sitting just a few inches above someone caught beneath the vehicle with an arm or a leg jammed in the wheelwell. Cam hugged both Ruth and Bobbi after that experience and Ruth rocked against him with her head stuck in a high-speed panic. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

By then they were driving upslope again, hurrying toward the blue stretch of water that gave Grand Lake its name. Foshtomi’s troops broke radio silence again and again to advise each other of more infected people, many of them hunkered down in “camps” alongside the road, either dozing in abandoned cars or snuggled down on the roadside against guard-rails or trees. Were the infected communicating with each other? It wouldn’t be impossible for them to establish some kind of social order, straining through their limited coherence like cattle or sheep, herding together because it felt safer than being alone. A school of phantoms. How much did they retain? Were they all screaming inside?

Ruth tried to occupy herself with more thoughts of Kendra Freedman. She tried to enjoy Cam’s arm on her shoulders.

Too many of the infected are acting differently, she realized.

“Those people taking shelter, that’s new,” she said without looking up from Cam’s embrace. “They barely noticed us. They’re docile. They must have walked here last night. Now something’s different.”

“Move,” Foshtomi said up front. “Move.”

“Maybe they’re just tired and hungry,” Ruth said, “but what if there’s a second stage of the mind plague? If the Chinese wanted to kill us—”

“Move.”

Wham. The Humvee shook as Foshtomi hit another person and Ruth raised her voice desperately. “If they wanted to kill us, everyone would have seizures or stroke out. That’s the only thing the nanotech would do.”

Cam tried to quiet her. “Shh, Ruth,” he said, stroking the back of her neck.

“No one’s asked what it’s really for! Don’t you get it? The first stage is just to spread the plague. They’re stunted and afraid. They go after their friends. But then what?”

“Maybe a slow weapon is the best they could make,” said Foshtomi’s sergeant, Tanya Huff. Tall and thick, Huff was one of the two other females in Foshtomi’s unit. Was that why Foshtomi had assigned her to this Humvee?

“I think the Chinese are waiting,” Ruth said. “I think everyone who’s infected will calm down in another five or six hours!”

“This is One,” the radio crackled. “We’re nearing position. Over.”

“It might make sense to go to ground,” Ruth said. “Don’t you see? The plague is a first-strike weapon, but it just makes us stupid. Easy to conquer. Then it hits a second stage, and maybe there’s a third. Maybe the fog wears off. People regain their coordination, but they’re still confused and suggestible. They’re slaves. It’s self-selecting, too. You’re only left with the strongest ones. So maybe we should just hide. If we wait a few hours, we won’t have to fight our own people as well as the Chinese—”

“Shut her up,” Foshtomi said as she braked and turned to the right. “I want a perimeter but stay in the